Chapter 579
Chapter 579
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Translator: Ebonarch
Chapter: 579
Chapter Title: Farce
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The sharp pain of the spear blade ripping through her abdomen.
Just before the dull ache sharpened into agony, Dorothy slowly collapsed and belatedly realized his ploy.
If there was an impregnable fortress you couldn't topple, target the ground beneath it instead.
Anyone who grasped the principles and conditions of manifestation could attempt such a tactic.
But what if that fortress wasn't built on soft earth?
What if it stood upon unyielding granite?
Dorothy's magic was a sturdy fortress, and the chapel supporting its foundation boasted defenses incomparable to mere granite.
Even if his full-force spear throw had lost some power, it would have only scratched the surface.
Yet no matter how solid the base, the Red Branch could wound it.
That's where he began his dismantling.
Shin Si-woo stubbornly engaged Dorothy in close combat.
He took her sword head-on, pushing her just enough that she seemed on the verge of falling—yet she didn't.
Dorothy thought she had charged straight ahead, but he had lured her into drawing a wide arc while backpedaling.
So why had he done that?
The moment he punched the spear embedded in the ground.
Just before the floor shattered and a storm of distortion erupted from within.
Dorothy saw it.
The traces he had scraped into the floor even as he struggled to deflect her fierce assaults.
He would deflect her absolute-force strikes as if brushing them aside, then use that momentum to carve scars into the ground.
Some of those wounds—which Dorothy had dismissed as futile efforts—began glowing in response to Si-woo's mana.
Astonishingly, his constant scraping had been to draw a magic circle.
Of course she hadn't noticed.
Even a simplified magic circle, etched into the floor amid such ferocious combat? It was acrobatics far beyond common sense.
Even as Dorothy unwittingly stepped into the trap one foot at a time, he remained clever.
Dorothy was a first-rate witch.
Even without focusing on the floor, she would have sensed it if the magic circle had been obvious.
That's why Si-woo hid his grand design beneath a pile of meaningless strokes, ensuring the magic formula stayed concealed.
He consistently feigned exhaustion, never letting her doubt her superiority.
Right up to the end, he hid his plan, pretended disadvantage, and overturned the board in one move.
Had he carelessly stabbed the spear into bare ground and tried the same, the destruction wouldn't have spread so wide.
It would have been just a slightly larger crack, and Dorothy wouldn't have fallen.
She thought he was clawing at the granite bedrock, but in truth, he was digging deep holes to stuff with explosives.
Yet he methodically completed the magic formula—and it was none other than Nuckelavee's.
The overlapping distortion field, propagated through transverse waves, pulverized the foundation with ruthless efficiency.
Unable to dig deeper, the distortion surged upward like an inverted bell screaming sound.
Ah, really.
One couldn't help but applaud in admiration.
Soon, Dorothy's consciousness drowned in pitch-black darkness.
2.
It was a familiar voice that snagged the fraying edge of her consciousness as it sucked into the blackout.
"Stab her."
Darkness, iron chair, witch, Dorothy, plump rat, musty mold, gas lamp, iron chains, master.
Fragments of an old dream she hadn't had in ages.
Really.
She hadn't wanted a deathbed flashback like this.
Dorothy took the slender knife her master offered.
Her tense, ragged breaths mingled with the basement's clammy dampness.
The leather-wrapped dagger hilt slicked with sweat.
Before her eyes: a witch her master had captured.
"Come on, stab her."
The urging, gentle voice and the hand pushing her back.
The witch, gagged and in ragged disarray, rolled her eyes back until the whites showed, twitching faintly.
Used up in her master's experiments, she hadn't even the strength left to beg for mercy—pitiful.
Dorothy glanced between the knife, the witch, and her kind master's face.
But soon she stepped forward briskly.
Gripping the dagger tight so sweat wouldn't slip it, she stabbed the spot her master had taught her in one thrust.
The well-honed blade slipped precisely between ribs and pierced the heart.
She twisted for the finish, feeling bone scrape the edge.
The witch's eyes rolled back fully.
Her body convulsed vigorously.
Toes and fingers clenched erratically.
"Yes, well done."
Darkness, iron chair, witch, Dorothy, musty mold, gas lamp, iron chains, master, dagger, blood smell, blood smell, blood smell.
Her first murder.
It happened when Dorothy was still an apprentice witch at age eight—a time when her master's kind word mattered more than good or evil.
Criminals don't make apprentices easily.
The data stolen from other witches' stigmas delays the 'wall' they could never surpass alone.
But the greater reason is the massive risk in creating an apprentice and passing on the stigma to a criminal.
A fresh criminal apprentice, newly stigmatized, faces a brutal world.
No safe haven, not even trusting fellow criminals.
One misstep could waste generations of research.
So her master taught Dorothy combat—and above all, mindset.
The resolve to kill anyone, anytime, if they became an enemy.
In short, Dorothy's first kill was early education from her predecessor.
She felt no guilt then.
Just the occasional nightmare of the witch's repulsive form.
Afterward, Dorothy killed quite a few humans.
As her master ordered, deeming it necessary.
She fought witches her master had 'prepped,' dueled fellow apprentices to the death.
Sometimes executed business traitors or death-row convicts.
By the time that number easily tripled her age.
"Trust no one. If they become enemies, kill without mercy. As long as your heart doesn't break, Sahaquiel is the strongest."
With words that could top the TOP3 'most harebrained last words ever,' her master closed her eyes contentedly.
Following the will, Dorothy then hacked her master's corpse with a knife.
She understood the intent, but saw it as twisted love and final lesson to the end.
If she could butcher a parent-like master's body, she was cruel enough to ease her worries.
Whether to feel sorry or proud, Dorothy still wasn't sure...
But back then, she swung the blade without hesitation, finishing the tedious task.
A lifeless body was no different from the daily meat slabs on the table.
The three years after inheritance were nonstop strife.
Word spread that the Cross Witch had just inherited, drawing all sorts of unwelcome guests.
Two exiles, one Gehenna hunter, two fellow criminals.
They expected a naive young criminal ignorant of the world, but Dorothy splendidly betrayed those hopes.
Thanks to her predecessor's arrangements, she wielded magic fearlessly.
No qualms judging lives' good or evil meant no hesitation in her strikes.
She swept away obstacles like swatting flies off her hand.
"Dorothy, are you alright? It must have been so hard."
By the time the newly inherited Dorothy became an object of fear, no longer underestimated.
The last visitor was her mother's friend—and a criminal.
She hugged her warmly, consoling past hardships.
"What? I'm not hurt at all~?"
Why receive comfort?
Why accept pitying eyes?
Dorothy didn't know.
Humans are social creatures.
Witches are human at root.
Even Dorothy, worn down and eroded, humanless.
Instinctively sought that warmth.
Just because her embrace was warm, Dorothy quietly followed.
Being together evoked the subtle peace of time with her master.
In a way, like wounds numb to pain are still wounds.
Dorothy had been exhausted without realizing it.
She learned months later it was all facade—preparations to seize Sahaquiel's stigma.
Then ranked 17th, two below Dorothy, she tried to take her life while she slept.
Had she waited a month patiently, Dorothy might have fallen unprepared—but she'd stayed vigilant.
"I was wrong! Just once... for the predecessor's sake, spare me once."
Watching her kowtow and weep, Dorothy thought it brazen.
Against her thoughts, for the first time, she halted her sword before a plea for life.
Her chest ached sharply.
Tears trickled from her dazed eyes.
Betrayal.
This must be betrayal.
"Get lost."
Dorothy turned away.
Ridiculously, the witch aimed for the final opening, stabbing from behind.
Rejecting mercy to the end, pursuing vile desire, she met a fittingly wretched death.
Dorothy stared blankly at the crushed corpse.
Is this death?
Pressing her bloodied hand to her pounding heart, she murmured.
And this, life?
From that day, Dorothy shed her last fragility.
A perpetual smile etched her once expressionless face.
The world surrounding her, the greater world.
The lives drifting within, mouths agape.
It all felt like a terribly ridiculous farce.