Chapter 235
Chapter 235
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Translator: Ebonarch
Chapter: 235
Chapter Title: Homunculus Night (2)
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"M-M-M-M-Master... M-M-Mistress..."
Siu's outline began to distort.
His skin and muscles melted away, slimy and oozing as if drenched in molten lava.
At the same time, the room's scenery shattered into hundreds of fragments, like peering through a kaleidoscope.
Eloa watched the scene to the end, still gripping her sword.
The rippling image, like a lake whipped by a storm, splintered apart, revealing the true nature of what had once been Siu—no, of the thing that had pretended to be Siu.
-Grrrrr...!
It was a homunculus.
She knew instantly, even without seeing its three gleaming eyes.
No animal in reality looked like that.
Three eyeballs floated in midair, buried in unidentified flesh.
Hanging below them were black tentacles like arteries from a rotting animal carcass, dangling in clusters.
From the slightly parted flesh beneath the eyes, saliva-like drool poured out in streams. By the time she snapped to her senses, Eloa's body was coated in the sticky fluid.
Eloa had roamed the world and hunted countless homunculi.
With the vast information provided by Wizpoint, she identified her foe at a glance.
The monster before her was a dream demon.
-Grooo...! Grooo...!
As Eloa regained her composure, the beast frantically wriggled its tentacles.
There was no time for disgust or revulsion.
When facing a homunculus, there was only one course of action.
Hunt it down.
It wasn't even a real fight.
The dream demon was far too weak to block Eloa's sword strike.
-Whoosh!
Eloa gripped her Contract Sword straight and slashed upward at a diagonal.
The strike, refined to its absolute limit without waste, bisected the homunculus's core silently, without even the sound of slicing flesh.
-Kieeeek!
With a grotesque screech like wringing a crow's neck, the dream demon's body split apart and tumbled across the bed.
The dimensional barrier extending from the dream demon naturally began to dissipate.
"........."
Eloa gazed down at her naked body and the homunculus corpse dissolving into the air like melting.
Though the battle itself had been disappointingly one-sided, it had been an incredibly perilous moment.
A being's strength and its danger level didn't always correlate perfectly.
The dream demon was just a homunculus with three eyes, but it had a record of assassinating two witches.
Of course, assassinating a witch beyond the 15th hierarchy was nearly impossible under normal circumstances.
Even while sleeping or unconscious for some reason, a witch's autonomous defense always activated.
When sensing hostility, when an enemy touched her body, when an unexpected attack came.
The stigma's built-in autonomous defense system blocked, intercepted, and counterattacked.
The dream demon was a homunculus specialized in breaching that autonomous defense.
It infiltrated a sleeping witch's dreams, burrowed into her mental world, assimilated with her mana to neutralize the defense.
Then it stole the life of the now-defenseless witch.
If Eloa had noticed even a moment later, she might have had her throat slit on the bed without any chance to resist.
Eloa used magic to vaporize the unidentified sticky fluid coating her body.
And then it hit her.
Siu was in danger.
"Siu...!"
Eloa's body shot toward the balcony like the wind.
The dream demon wasn't infamous solely for being the only homunculus capable of assassinating witches.
It was also well-known as the familiar of the Coward Witch.
Recent incidents and events flashed through her mind in sequence.
The cloned homunculi reported by Branch Manager Sua, and the human hearts modified with offerings extracted from them.
The white knight identical to the red knight she'd encountered on the rooftop.
And the mass slaughter at Coex.
Finally, the dream demon that had ambushed her tonight.
Branch Manager Sua had suspected the Coward Witch, Paola Sochitl, from the start.
Though they hadn't located her, renowned for her skill at hiding.
With a clattering hallucination, all the clues clicked together.
The recent string of incidents in Seoul had been orchestrated by the Coward Witch.
She didn't know the purpose.
But Sochitl, once called the Thousand-Hand Witch, could command vast numbers of homunculi simultaneously.
The key was "simultaneously" with "many."
In other words, while Eloa had been distracted by the dream demon, black hands had likely reached out toward Siu and Evergreen as well.
"Siu!"
Eloa shattered the locked living room window and burst inside.
But Siu's room was empty, Evergreen's room was empty, and even after meticulously checking the bathroom and kitchen just in case, there was no sign of them.
The absence of battle traces didn't mean it was safe.
Homunculi hunted within dimensional barriers, so they might have already slain them and withdrawn the barrier.
"Ah......"
The moment she confirmed the two weren't here, a shock like a lump of lead dropped into her chest.
At the same time, nausea-like fear and terror rapidly consumed her body.
The dim room, the ominously heavy silence.
It forcibly dredged up a memory from the past.
The day she lost Rafi, that agonizing memory.
"No.... No, no, no, no...."
Her mind went blank.
Blood drained from her face, her hands and feet grew ice-cold and trembled.
She couldn't lose him again.
She couldn't lose him to a moment's carelessness and mistake, helpless like this.
Eloa frantically pulled out her phone.
She pressed the buttons on the portable terminal she still wasn't used to after years, and made a call.
First to Siu, but...
No answer.
Even after several rings, no connection.
"What... what do I do... R-Right... Sua, Branch Manager Sua...!"
This time, she called Wizpoint's Branch Manager Sua.
But the same result.
No matter how many rings, no pickup, straight to voicemail.
Suddenly attacking familiars from Sochitl.
Missing Siu and Evergreen.
Branch Manager Sua not answering.
This wasn't normal.
Something terribly ominous was happening.
Eloa clutched her chest as if in a hyperventilation attack and collapsed to the floor.
"This can't happen... This can't be happening..."
Bracing her crumbling body, Eloa gripped her sword tightly and stood again.
Fierce killing intent and resolve burned in her eyes.
She forcibly shoved down the resurfacing trauma, the worries and anxieties.
She would find them.
She would find them and protect them no matter what.
This time, she wouldn't repeat the mistakes of the past.
"I make a contract."
The twelve engraved characters on the flat of her Contract Sword all began to glow.
A mana storm erupted, churning and ravaging the surroundings.
The mana unleashed at full power by a 23rd hierarchy witch was a wave intense enough to crush weaker witches into unconsciousness under its extreme density.
Eloa had remodeled all her personal spells for "combat."
Thus, she couldn't handle precise tracking or search magic.
So she would just tear through the entire area.
Eloa's body rocketed out the window.
She began streaking through Seoul at speeds faster than the wind.
Today's homunculus hunt had yielded no results either.
After two hours of searching, they checked into a hotel.
Once the sloppy, sweltering "treatment session"—in Sharon's words—was over, the two were rolling around on the hotel bed.
With Sharon covering the room costs, it wasn't a luxury place.
It was somewhere on the outskirts of Hongdae—better than a motel but too ambiguous to call a proper hotel.
Unlike before, when they'd jump each other at the slightest eye contact, their sex was now concentrated into one day every three.
They spent that time so sloppily that they tumbled together until nearly dawn.
"Haa... Today was good too."
Sharon, fresh from a quick shower, dangled naked off Siu's chest.
Her breasts, which Siu had been sucking noisily while thrusting moments ago, pressed softly against his bare skin.
Sharon planted light kisses on Siu's cheek with a happy smile.
"You say that every time?"
"It feels good every time? Especially lately—you don't seem to get tired at all."
"Yeah? Must be the training."
"Something like that."
Sharon giggled lightly and burrowed in closer.
They were already pressed together nearly body to body, no room left, but she clung even tighter.
Times like this made him think he was living a life of overflowing luxury.
Living together with a stunning beauty like Sharon, whom he couldn't have dreamed of before—no money worries, no real anxiety about the future.
Considering it all stemmed from his Gehenna slave days felt strangely surreal.
He'd been warned about homunculus attacks or public enemies eyeing him...
But it had to feel real to matter.
He stayed vigilant, but in the daily peace, the threat never felt imminent.
Like how Koreans in a divided nation don't fear war every day.
"I've felt a bit lonely since the duchess arrived. Before, we could do it anytime I wanted. Now I have to watch out and can't go all out. Don't you feel the same?"
"I miss it too. But we need to get stronger. You never know when something might happen."
"I know... but still, it's disappointing."
Sharon pouted her dissatisfaction.
Then, lips still pursed, she stared intently at Siu.
"What?"
Pretending ignorance, she tapped her own lips.
"Mmm... mmm... Kiss me quick..."
As expected, a signal for a kiss.
Still not enough for her.
Honestly, Siu had thought, "A bit short today?"
Normally, whenever they stayed at a hotel like this, Sharon would keep pouncing relentlessly until his pillar wilted.
As they leaned in for another kiss to reignite the night...
Mana began faintly permeating the surroundings.
"What is it?"
Siu bolted upright and scanned around.
The sensation prickling his skin, the distinctive mana patterns in view.
From countless encounters, he sensed the anomaly before the barrier fully spread.
A dimensional barrier was engulfing the entire hotel.
"Wh-What's going on? Huh?"
"Homunculus. Probably."
Sharon, startled by Siu's wary gaze sweeping the room, noticed the anomaly once the barrier completed.
Shadows oozed from Siu's body, wrapping around him fully.
The slimy mass swiftly formed armor, shield, and long spear.
No matter the special training from Tiphereth these past weeks, he wasn't fool enough to face a homunculus bare-handed.
Sharon cloaked her naked form in witch garb and readied for battle.
She scanned around, holding her wand with its large embedded emerald at an angle.
A tense atmosphere formed, as if suddenly thrown into a battlefield.
"Been a while since a hunt."
"Won't show when we're looking, but appears when we don't..."
Sharon gripped her wand tightly, displeased at the interruption of her hot night, and looked around.
-Splash!
"Huh?"
As they kept vigilant watch, Siu stepped toward the window to check outside.
Both tilted their heads at the splashing sound from underfoot.
This was a hotel room.
Yet now it was flooded like a swimming pool.
The water, pooled ankle-deep, was an incredibly dark hue, as if dredged from the abyss.
Too murky to see the original floor color.
"I've trained hard lately. Let's see some results? If not, we bolt."
Siu didn't think much of it.
Not blood—just water. Probably some nearby homunculus that spat liquid.
As he tossed out light words to ease the tension, Sharon's hand rested on his shoulder.
Sharon regularly checked Wizpoint's homunculus database.
She instantly recognized the homunculus from these precursors.
"Siu... don't. We should run."
The "Drowned Witch."
The Coward Witch's familiar, a powerful homunculus that had drowned three witches so far.
No way he and Sharon were equipped to handle it.
"What? What's wrong?"
-Splash splash splash
As Siu asked what was happening, rapid footsteps approached from beyond the door, growing closer.
The steps carried a sticky splashing, like trampling blood puddles on marble.
-Creak
And then.
The hotel door, with its lock, opened without resistance.