Chapter 276
Chapter 276
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Translator: Ebonarch
Chapter: 276
Chapter Title: Chapter 276 - #61_사제(6)
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1.
"Ahahahaha!"
The vast cavern, serving as both pump room and engine room while the rainwater tunnel still functioned properly.
In the dim space where the 'altar' had originally been placed.
Paola Sochitl, the Witch of Cowardice, laughed. And wept.
A mad cackle twisted across her grotesquely mangled half-face, while insane tears surged forth.
All preparations had been perfect.
No—they would have been perfect.
Seizing the opening from the Red Knight's successive defeats and weakened state, she had claimed the Red Branch.
What Paola coveted was the Red Branch's 'Distortion' function.
She had crafted an artifact that extracted and borrowed the concept of distortion, capable of twisting not just causality but even the past that had already slipped away.
To achieve it, she used 'Dagon's Flute' to harvest humans' 'karma,' countless corpses, and hearts.
She erected an altar sustaining the nervous systems and brains of 1,440 people, compelling them to offer ceaseless prayers.
Innumerable lives were lost in the process, but it didn't matter.
She wanted to reverse it all, no matter the cost.
She yearned to wash away her days stained with regret and atone.
And the fruit of that labor lay here.
Paola laughed and sobbed hysterically as she embraced the massive flower that had bloomed by devouring the altar.
Its form evoked a graceful lotus floating on a pond.
For something born from devouring countless sacrifices and lives, it radiated an aura of profound sanctity and mystery.
"Ahahahaha!"
Any witches who might interfere had been dealt with by the homunculi she had been raising—killed or scared off.
There was no cause for concern over a power shortage.
The Red Knight, wielding the fully bloomed Red Branch, stood ready alongside 1,200 replica White Knights.
As expected, the witches—too frantic securing their own safety—fled at the threat of such vexing troubles.
Proof lay in the fact that only three witches who had lingered in Seoul had ventured into this rainwater tunnel.
In the midst of it all, Paola had undoubtedly crossed the line several times.
Yet, just as the Witch of Whispers had assured her, Kether Duke made no move.
Everything unfolded exactly as planned, as if all doubts were mere fabrications.
To fulfill the long-cherished wish she had prepared for decades, only one final step remained.
Deploy the knight order en masse to gather human lives.
Offer those lives, karma, and mana to this lotus... and resurrect the apprentice witch.
She planned to bestow the stigma properly upon the revived girl and speak those words.
Sorry.
I was so terrified.
I had no idea halting the ritual could claim an apprentice witch's life.
It was all a mistake—and I love you so very much.
She longed to hold her close and apologize.
In witch society, a master's sins extended to her disciples.
The heirs of exiled witches became exiles themselves, while apprentices inheriting a public enemy's stigma became public enemies.
Occasionally, the Sephiroth Tree debated severing such chains of guilt, but for a criminal of Paola's caliber, it was all but impossible.
Yet none of that mattered to Paola.
Reviving her apprentice—whose voice and face had faded into haze, whose name she had eventually forgotten—that was all she had left.
Just one more day. No, twelve hours. Then it all would have become reality.
She could have spent those final moments with the girl reborn from this lotus.
But that dream was dashed by one woman and one man.
Eloa Tiphereth.
The 23rd-rank duke renowned as a public enemy hunter.
Paola had been aware of her existence.
With preparations honed to absolute perfection, she believed victory possible—and indeed, it had come perilously close.
The White Knights, deployed in waves, steadily drained Tiphereth.
Once her strength was sufficiently sapped, the mass assault by the Red Knight and White Knights claimed triumph over that fearsome duke.
One more step.
Had the Red Knight taken her life, the battle would have been Paola's victory.
At that juncture, the Red Branch remained unscathed.
The Red Knight was heavily damaged, true, but recovering the 23rd-rank witch's stigma would allow swift reconstruction of both White and Red Knights.
Then that man intervened, upending the entire board.
He was no formidable foe.
Not even a threat.
A feeble presence Paola hadn't bothered registering as a force.
Yet he intruded at the pivotal moment of the decisive bout and severed the Red Knight's life.
Ridiculously—at that instant—Paola's defeat was sealed.
"Ahahaha..."
Paola found it so absurd she could scarcely endure it.
She had repelled and vanquished mighty adversaries, only to stumble over a pebble mere inches from the goal.
No hatred stirred. No rage.
Only hollow emptiness and crushing futility howled through her vacant chest.
Now she had to flee.
Reason demanded it.
Diving straight into the rainwater channel without a second thought about direction—Della must have leaked her position.
Soon, they would arrive to judge Paola for her litany of sins.
Paola wasn't the type to stand on the front lines to begin with, and her foe was none other than Tiphereth.
No chance of victory whatsoever.
"......"
Paola gazed at the lotus with an inscrutable expression.
A culmination of obsession, madness, fixation, regret, reluctance, atonement, sacrifice, resentment, self-loathing.
The lotus, casting faint light to illuminate its surroundings, bloomed gracefully in elegant repose—untouched by the chaos.
There was no escaping.
The altar couldn't be moved.
Nor could the lotus it birthed.
Twisting irreversible causality—rewriting the past—was a feat no witch had ever accomplished.
For a mere 19th-rank witch like Paola to perfect a 'lotus' with resurrection capabilities stemmed not just from her mania and obsession, but from an element of sheer 'luck.'
As a witch, she would likely never achieve such a miracle again in her lifetime.
Abandoning it to flee would mean forsaking the final purpose of her entire existence.
And so, even as she heard the footsteps of the reaper come to claim her head, she couldn't budge an inch.
-Thud... thud... thud...
Indifferent footsteps.
Accompanied by the quiet echoes resounding through the cavern, the Witch of Contracts, Eloa Tiphereth, revealed herself.
2.
The mana received from Siu was astonishingly pure.
So crystalline that, without conscious focus, one might forget it even existed.
Assimilating that pristine mana and storing it in her stigma took less than a minute.
The trait of a male witch was startling enough, but mana recharge through intercourse was bizarre to the point of being a research subject in itself.
In any case, thanks to Siu's devotion, Eloa had amassed more than enough mana.
With contract payments deferred, she bolstered her body using six contracts, leaving four ready for immediate deployment as she positioned herself before the cavern.
This was the pump room Della had described.
The surrounding terrain matched the map from Sua Branch Manager.
"Will you wait here a moment?"
"Is it really okay if I don't help with anything?"
Siu had already fulfilled his role.
The absence of dangers on the journey here suggested Paola had no reserves left either.
From Eloa's perspective, it was more reassuring to keep him stationed nearby—ready to assist at a moment's notice—while she unleashed herself freely.
"Don't you trust me?"
Eloa smiled at Siu.
Siu stared at her face, momentarily entranced, then slowly nodded.
"Of course I do. I'll stand by."
Eloa ruffled Siu's hair once before advancing into the fray.
The iron door groaned and twisted open, revealing the Witch of Cowardice—the origin and end of this entire conflict—awaiting her.
This was their first face-to-face encounter.
A public enemy responsible for a horrific disaster... and poised to unleash more.
Yet the Witch of Cowardice appeared utterly exhausted.
Her twisted visage and her beautiful one alike were visibly gaunt.
The Witch of Cowardice, propping herself up as if embracing the enormous lotus, descended from the altar to confront Eloa.
"......"
"......"
The two women regarded each other in silence.
Wordless, their complex, inscrutable gazes tangled in the air.
No conversation was needed.
There was a mission to slay here.
An obsession to survive here.
Both sensed battle was inevitable.
"I offer."
Paola moved first.
Her opponent was the Witch of Contracts.
Victory was impossible—she knew that—but she clung to faint hope in Eloa's imperfect condition.
Her plan: exert full force here to repel the Witch of Contracts, then devise a way to relocate the lotus.
With no sacrifices remaining, the only thing Paola could offer to empower her homunculus was her own wretched flesh.
Turbid mana spread outward as her legs began to rot away.
Simultaneously, a subspace tore open behind her.
Thick tentacles resembling octopus limbs burst forth, coiling around her festering legs.
Where suckers should be clung thousands of tiny mouths.
The homunculus—starved relative to its bulk—devoured her offering, merging with Paola's body in recompense.
To bridge the yawning power gap, Paola had flung her own flesh as bait to her final homunculus servant and fused with it.
"I contract."
With Eloa's incantation, a surge of crystalline mana swept through the cavern.
Excluding the six already expended on bodily reinforcement, four contracts remained available.
Her condition was still far from ideal.
With payments forcibly deferred, mana abounded—but her extremities, from fingertips to toes, registered no sensation.
She could only brute-force the voids with raw mana.
"I will cut you."
As Eloa's lips parted, the seventh sigil gleamed.
The contract was sealed.
"I will cut you."
Eloa's contracts were no mere words.
They were self-hypnosis and reality-warping rooted in Words of Power.
Once forged, they bent even causality to ensure fulfillment.
"I will cut you."
For instance, declaring "cut" upon a single target.
Eloa's entire body mobilized to execute it.
Eyes, heart, muscle fibers, blood vessels, down to cellular fragments—all fortified solely for the contract's execution.
"I will cut you."
The tenth contract concluded.
This was why Eloa Tiphereth wielded near-invincibility against a lone foe.
Her form crushed the air around her with an unprecedented weight of mana.
"Die!"
Tentacles lashed from every direction.
The alien abomination—defying this world's laws—fused with Paola, unleashing tentacles of death.
But...
"......"
The flood of tentacles—hundreds strong—couldn't so much as nibble a single strand of Eloa's hair.
Her sword, swung with elegant precision, severed each tendril the instant it entered her range.
The gulf between them was one Paola could never bridge.
Eloa's body rocketed forward.
Ignoring the belatedly pursuing tentacles, she plunged her blade deep into Paola's heart.
"Keheuk!"
Crimson blood erupted from Paola's mouth.
The homunculus, one with her body, flailed its tentacles in ruinous agony before meeting its end.
Eloa withdrew her sword with a impassive expression.
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