Chapter 259
Chapter 259
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Translator: Ebonarch
Chapter: 259
Chapter Title: All Darkness Comes from the East (5)
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An immeasurable amount of time had passed.
The pitch-black darkness, without even a sliver of light, had first shattered Della's biological clock.
She couldn't tell when to sleep, when to wake, or even how much time had gone by.
Not that she could have slept anyway, even if her biological clock was functioning normally in this state.
The white spears piercing densely through Della's body had, at some point, healed around the tender flesh, becoming a part of her very form.
She couldn't even laugh.
She'd always prided herself on her ironclad mentality, unshaken by most things.
But being pinned to the wall like an insect specimen, forced to watch the horrors unfolding before her eyes—it was utterly nauseating.
-Uuuuuu!
Especially that sound.
The massive vibration echoing through the underground cavern drilled into her ears.
Listening to that hellish noise rising from the depths made her want to gouge out her own eardrums.
"……."
Della weakly lifted her bowed head.
Her face was as gaunt as a dying patient's.
No matter that she was a spirit body—the accumulated stress and pain on her flesh had long surpassed its limits.
She might just lose her mind like this.
Suppressing the urge to spit curses, Della gazed at the bizarre object booming in the center of the cavern.
It resembled a lotus bud that had failed to fully bloom.
Towering over ten meters high and wide.
A massive peak stacked in layers, awaiting the moment to unfurl.
And every single petal was made of human arm bones interlocked as if in prayer.
Even Della, whose moral and ethical barriers were abysmally low, couldn't hold back her nausea at this artwork's grotesqueness—and it didn't stop there.
The stem supporting the flower was a tangled mess of red threads, like ropes knotted together.
At a glance, it looked like a chaotic bundle of wires, but its true nature was the human central nervous system.
Beneath the stem, which still twitched slowly as if alive, lay a pale, murky grayish mass of flesh coiled like fish guts.
Too many to call just one—a brain mass shaped like a lump of clay, submerged in the pooled brain fluid and blood on the floor, propping up the lotus stem and bud like roots.
A flower of bone, a stem of nerve bundles, roots of brain...
The lotus, fit for some trashy B-grade gore flick, was an altar.
A colossal altar crafted from human bones, brains, and nerve bundles.
A compact collective art piece from the crowd, reduced to solely praying, wishing, and yearning on Paola's behalf.
Anyone ensnared in that artwork would pray to Paola until their synapses and nerves burned out from overload.
No.
Whether to even call those things, having lost everything that made them human, by the name "human" was debatable.
-Ooooooo
A vibration like countless wraiths screaming in unison rang out massively once more.
Another arm bone unfurled outward, like a petal sprouting.
At the lotus's dead center protruded the "Red Branch."
The artifact of the Red Knight, bearing the property of "Distortion."
Della knew its power well.
The White Knights, replicas of the Red Knight, wielded mere copies of the white spears—yet they resonated with the Red Branch, disrupting magic.
But what Paola sought wasn't simply enhancing the Red Branch's combat prowess.
She focused on the concept of "Distortion" it held, drawing it to its extremes and bending it to her will.
Not distorting space or mana fields, but ultimately distorting the natural order and reality itself.
In other words, her goal was to declare her apprentice witch's death as "something that never happened."
"Urk...!"
Della wasn't the only audience to this repulsive spectacle.
From the raid orchestrated by Dagon's flute last time, she'd collected "1,200" hearts to forge the knight order.
And among the four witches hunted with every available combat homunculus, the sole survivor was also witnessing this unprecedented catastrophe's artwork.
-Ooooooo!
Paola Sochitl knelt demurely beneath the lotus, offering her prayers.
Her madness and resolve, casting all aside for that single wish, were chillingly pure.
Even in this gruesome scene, she almost looked like a saint.
-Splash!
Paola rose from her spot.
Ignoring the brain fluid and blood staining her robes, she approached a witch pinned to the wall.
The Red Knight that had guarded her followed with a splashing sound.
"Hic... Hic... Eek...!"
How pitiful.
From her face, she was a young witch, freshly turned.
Her eyes, once brimming with bloated self-importance and pride as a chosen seeker of ultimate secrets, now held only the terror of a frightened girl.
No wonder, after enduring such horrors.
"P-Please... spare me... Spare me..."
Paola gazed at the golden-haired witch begging with tears and snot, her eyes devoid of emotion.
Insect-like, inorganic, and dry.
"A-Anything... I'll do anything... Please, have mercy..."
The witch trembled as if her body might shatter.
Had she not been impaled, she'd have clung to Paola's feet, begging.
Maybe even licked her shoes.
To the frail witch shuddering in terror, Paola unexpectedly spoke in a gentle tone.
"Don't worry."
As the young witch's face lit up with faint hope, Paola drew a sharp obsidian blade.
"It won't hurt much."
"W-Wait... Just a moment... Kkhk... Hnng... Kyaaaaak...!"
Screams of "Kyaaak! Kyaaak!" soon echoed loudly.
The sounds of slicing flesh, peeling back the abdomen, extracting the womb—all drowned in those shrieks.
-Oooooooo
"……."
The screams cut off abruptly, like a radio suddenly powered down.
In Paola's hand was a red hunk of meat.
Fresh flesh brimming with the witch's stigma and mana.
Paola cradled the dripping uterus reverently and walked toward the lotus with pious steps.
"I offer this sacrifice."
As she knelt and presented it, countless skeletal arms reached out to receive the flesh.
-Ooo
-Ooooo
-Ooooooo
Far more petals bloomed in unison than ever before.
The White Knights encircling the cavern began pounding their spears on the ground.
The white spears resonating with the Red Branch wailed shrilly, and amid the clamor, Paola resumed her prayers.
This was the only chance.
In the frenzied roars evoking a devil's ritual, Della gathered her mana.
Sensing human mana alone wasn't enough for the ritual's pace, Paola had added the witch's stigma as sacrifice.
Each time, the lotus bloomed faster.
And each time, everyone, White Knights included, focused solely on controlling the ritual.
In short, this was the sole opportunity to escape using the mana she'd barely amassed so far.
-Thud! Thud! Thud!
Ignoring the wounds reopening, Della wrenched out the spear through her arm.
A horrific pain that whitened her mind.
Feeling flesh and muscle, fused as one with the white spear, tear away, she yanked out spear after spear from her body.
"Urk... Kkuuuh...!"
With each spear removed, her consciousness nearly fled.
Finally extracting all twelve, Della crawled out through the gap between the White Knights pounding their spears like excited zealots.
Time was short.
From observing three witches sacrificed so far, she knew the White Knights would resume ironclad vigilance in just five minutes.
"Kkhk... Kehek..."
She had to block it.
She had to warn them.
Paola's plan wasn't over yet.
Even fully blooming the lotus to draw out the Red Branch's potential, she'd still need far more mana for the resurrection ritual.
In other words, she planned to unleash the 1,200 White Knights and the Red Knight for a massacre.
Just like slaughtering civilians indiscriminately with Dagon's flute.
How many would die?
Ten thousand? A hundred thousand? A million?
Perhaps more victims than even the Plague Witch had claimed.
"Urk... Urk..."
Finally crawling out of the cavern into the massive tunnel, Della realized she couldn't last like this.
Having forcibly removed the spears plugging her wounds, the blood loss was too severe.
Death by hemorrhage or passing out—either way, she wouldn't escape.
"Hoo... Hoo..."
Panting, Della raised one finger.
With her ragged body sustained by a scant handful of mana, she couldn't waste it on healing magic.
She rolled up her sleeve, bit down on it, and cauterized her wounds with a flame from her fingertip.
"……!!!!!"
Pain like death itself.
The stench of searing flesh and burning meat as skin contracted.
Blood spurted from Della's clenched gums amid agony that would shock a human to death.
Controlling the bleeding with this crude, brutal method, Della gripped the frayed, rain-soaked tunnel wall like rotten fabric and barely stood.
She dragged her tattered body forward, feet scraping.
But there was no time to relax.
-Clank clank clank
Footsteps echoed from afar, heading this way.
Likely a White Knight stationed outside the ritual.
She couldn't get caught.
Even at full strength, Della had only slain twenty White Knights.
The white spears resonating with the Red Branch's distortion were anti-witch weapons without exaggeration.
Even if she escaped and exposed the plot, was there a way to counter that knight order?
Only witches like Tiphereth Duke or Ea Sadalmelik, wielding overwhelming physical attacks, could stand against them...
But such leisurely thoughts could wait until after full escape.
"Damn it... Cough! Cough!"
Uttering vulgar words unfit for her, Della propped her creaking body with mana and broke into a run.
Each step sent shattering pain through her.
-Clank clank clank clank
She couldn't be dragged back here.
As Della squeezed out her last strength, she spotted vertical light pouring down far ahead.
The escape route she'd noted upon first coming to meet Paola on her own feet, as a precaution.
"Ignite...!"
Della conjured flaming wings with all her might.
This was 45 meters underground.
In this state, climbing a ladder was impossible.
She had to fly in one go.
Wings like a phoenix's enveloped Della's body, rocketing upward and smashing through the massive steel cover.
"Ugh...!"
Her consciousness nearly faded shoving the hatch aside, but she'd made it out.
Fresh air tickled her lungs delightfully for the first time in ages.
"Hoo... Hoo... First, to Wizpoint..."
She had to reveal everything.
Get protection and treatment there.
Aiming only for that, Della burst from the alley—and her eyes met...
-Screeech!
Blinding white light.
A sports car with a grotesque, horseshoe-like grille braked late.
-Thud!
But Della's body flying like a sheet of paper couldn't be stopped.