Chapter 237
Chapter 237
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Translator: Ebonarch
Chapter: 237
Chapter Title: The Witch of Luck
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Everything looked like it was unfolding in slow motion.
A harpoon jutting out abruptly from behind Sharon's back.
Its jagged, serrated teeth evoked something so absurdly out of place that both the harpoon itself and the woman it had pierced took on the appearance of bizarre objects.
In the fractured gap of his fading sense of reality, a dark, viscous emotion welled up.
Terror.
His consciousness felt trapped inside his body.
Even though Sharon was suffering right before his eyes, he couldn't muster the strength to lift a single finger.
Breathing itself seemed impossible without conscious effort.
-Thud!
Just before Sharon's body collapsed.
Siu bit his tongue to snap himself out of it.
With a gruesome crunch, half his tongue was severed, and the pain finally allowed him to move and catch Sharon.
She'll be fine.
Nothing serious happened.
It can't be anything major.
Sharon, who had been chatting so cheerfully just moments ago.
A witch, no less—not some ordinary person—couldn't possibly die this easily.
Knowing her mischievous nature, she was probably just pretending to be fatally wounded to tease Siu.
"Sharon. Hey. Say something."
Siu carefully flipped over her motionless body.
The cloak had hidden it, but now her gruesome wound was fully exposed.
As the harpoon slowly dissolved like black seawater, a hole the size of a ping-pong ball became visible.
A deep gash that pierced straight through from her solar plexus to her back.
The gaping red wound bore traces of serrated blades having ravaged it.
Pink flesh, muscle, even glimpses of pale ribs—all laid bare in raw detail.
"Urk... Uuugh..."
Sharon's body trembled violently from shock.
Siu recalled hearing that you should never remove an object piercing a through-and-through wound.
It would make the bleeding uncontrollable.
With every convulsion of her shuddering body, gouts of blood surged out.
Like a broken sprinkler, her heart pumped blood in spurts.
Siu instinctively tried to stem it, but crimson blood welled up between his fingers.
Siu watched the scene as if in a dream.
Sharon, dying?
His body shook.
Blood from his half-severed tongue filled his mouth, but the air was thick with the metallic tang of blood, making it impossible to tell whose it was.
"Ah..."
He had been so arrogant until now.
Just because he'd taken down a few homunculi.
Because he'd gotten lucky and beaten Della once.
Because he'd received a single compliment about his rapid progress.
He'd strutted around like he was hot stuff, drowning in self-importance.
And the price of that complacency lay right here in his hands.
Sharon vomiting blood and dying seemed to mock him.
This is the reality you inhabited, it taunted.
The cost of your negligence is before your eyes.
It clearly implied that all the peace he'd known was merely a fleeting respite within safe walls.
He could do nothing.
Normally, he'd be furious.
He'd rise with the sole resolve to slay the homunculus before him and save Sharon, no matter what.
But.
Meeting the drowned witch's bulging eyes drained all his will to fight.
The dark seawater rising to his waist eroded the very foundation of his desire to battle.
His shadow armor dispersed.
The armor that had always pulled off a last-ditch miracle in the worst situations crumbled powerlessly.
Siu simply clutched the blood-soaked Sharon to his chest.
-Clang!
Weapons rose above the water's surface.
Anchors and chains, ropes and harpoons.
The guillotine blade of execution filled the slightly expanded cabin.
"You shouldn't peer too deeply into the darkness."
At first, he thought it was a hallucination.
Because the idea of a third ally hadn't even crossed his mind.
A person lost in despair loses both ingenuity and fighting spirit, with no thought of seeking hope anew.
Besides, the voice was so calm and leisurely that it didn't fit this tragic scene at all.
"The monster rippling on the black surface is ultimately born from human fear. Homunculi spawned from dread grow stronger the more fear they consume."
A witch had appeared before he knew it.
Her navy-blue hair cascaded to her hips like part of her dress, swaying gently, while her matching eyes pierced the enemy without a flicker of disturbance.
Even wrapped in a loose bathrobe, her stunning figure and the seductive tear-shaped mole beneath her eye couldn't be concealed.
The witch who had openly flirted with Siu at the docking station before.
Kybele Periwinkle.
"That's why witches who've felt death's terror deeply can't cope with the drowned witch. The imagination of one who knows fear runs deeper and darker than one who doesn't."
Gripping a pristine rapier in one hand, Periwinkle calmly stepped between them and glanced at Siu.
It wasn't pity or sympathy.
Her cool, analytical gaze looked down at him with a hint of intrigue.
"You seem to have experienced death far too closely."
"Please... help... I'm fine... save Sharon at least..."
Siu rolled his numb, swollen tongue and begged desperately.
That was the limit of thought his paralyzed mind could muster.
The drowning's corrosion had already reached the depths of his spirit.
"I don't usually meddle in these kinds of messes. But I'm interested in you, so I'll make an exception."
With a flick of Periwinkle's hand, a four-leaf clover floated lightly down onto Sharon's body.
"That should keep it from worsening fatally."
After administering emergency aid, Periwinkle elegantly aimed her rapier at the drowned witch.
But even to Siu, a novice in martial arts, her stance looked utterly sloppy.
If she held a wooden stick instead of a rapier and struck a proper pose, it'd feel more intimidating than this.
Yet Periwinkle smiled with utter nonchalance.
"Anyway, better to deal with annoyances quickly."
The drowned witch, who had hesitated at the sudden interloper, showed no intent to grant further reprieve.
It opened its mouth wide, twisting into a grotesque, repulsive expression.
-Kuuuuu...
The entire room trembled with eerie sounds.
True to its battle-hardened nature as a homunculus, it knew exactly how to leverage its strengths.
Ferocious weapons defying everyday logic.
Just looking at them evoked visceral disgust and fear.
The rising seawater and the corroding surroundings.
It was deliberately inducing terror.
A straightforward tactic: forcibly rip open the fear in one's heart to weaken the foe while strengthening itself.
At least, against Periwinkle.
"How utterly repulsive. Just having it in my sight makes me sick."
In response to the insult, weapons whirled like a storm from all directions.
Six anchors slashed through the air with menacing shrieks, while harpoons shot obliquely from the water toward Periwinkle.
Before this storm of destruction, Periwinkle did something incredibly simple.
She didn't channel mana or conjure a defensive array.
She simply took one step forward.
-Boom! Bang! Kwang!
That alone caused chaos.
The anchors and harpoons, swung precisely, tangled and shattered chaotically as they pursued their target.
Rusted chains and rotten ropes collided with deafening roars in midair, flying wildly out of control.
Even as the debris scattered like cluster grenades, not a scratch marred Periwinkle's body.
By sheer 'coincidence,' every mishap and blast veered away from her.
"My fortune today was excellent. Well, it's always excellent."
The homunculus, briefly flustered by the unexpected turn, swung a massive anchor once more.
"Oh, right."
Periwinkle turned back to Siu as if something had just occurred to her.
Exposing her back completely to the enemy.
Yet, in a stroke of uncanny timing, the enormous anchor—swung exactly as anticipated—grazed past her by a paper's thickness.
"I think I forgot to say this. If I help you, you'll grant me one favor, right?"
Siu couldn't believe this situation.
The overwhelming foe he couldn't even touch was being toyed with effortlessly.
This was the power of a Rank 20 witch.
A force leagues beyond the strength he'd overestimated in himself.
"I'll take that as agreement. You don't seem in any shape to reply."
Without waiting for an answer, Periwinkle turned back to the drowned witch.
She pursued the retreating homunculus with leisurely steps.
-Kwoooo!
The drowned witch, silent until now, unleashed a scream from the abyss, like the wails of the damned.
"Getting anxious? Too bad—monsters are scarier when they don't talk."
The attacks grew fiercer.
Its once-patterned movements turned into savage, erratic flailing.
But the result was the same.
Whenever Periwinkle strolled forward as if in a garden, events defying explanation as anything but luck kept happening.
Playing Russian roulette with an automatic pistol, only for the bullet to be a dud.
A cremator exploding right beside her, yet the shrapnel missing entirely.
Luck on this level repeated endlessly.
-Kuu... Kuooo...
The drowned witch backed away slowly until its back hit the wall.
The grotesque groans leaking out sounded cowed to anyone watching.
Its protruding eyes spun wildly, searching for escape.
"Am I scary?"
The seawater, now up to her thighs, gradually receded until it barely lapped at her heels.
The decayed interior, worn by ages, began reverting to its original state, as if time itself rewound.
An ego that believed in its victory.
One unacquainted with fearing death tolerated not even the slightest corrosion.
Homunculi possessed faint intelligence.
It realized it couldn't win like this.
The drowned witch decided to flee the instant it understood.
In that fleeting gap as it sought escape routes and methods.
The moment its focus split between defense and offense, the white rapier thrust forward.
-Kwek!
Thus, even the languidly extended rapier caught it off guard.
It could only look down at the pristine blade skewering its chest like a spit.
The disgust on its face must have twisted into shock.
Homunculi generally boasted high durability.
At this level—with seventeen eyes—even an anti-materiel rifle barely scratched it.
Yet the mana-infused rapier sliced through rotting, burning flesh like tofu, shattering the homunculus's core.
Cold navy eyes reflected the drowned witch's end.
"I got lucky. Unfortunate for you."
The one-sided battle concluded.