Chapter 702
Chapter 702
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Translator: Ebonarch
Chapter: 702
Chapter Title: The Witch of Silence (2)
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1.
Tag.
This game, beloved by children across both Eastern and Western cultures, is quite bizarre when you trace its name back to its origins.
Strictly speaking, tag isn't a game where the runners catch the tagger—it's a game where the tagger catches a multitude of participants.
But the tag game proposed by Roji and manifested by the playroom recreated the situation true to its name.
The tagger was Si-woo.
Dozens of hellhounds charging at him from all directions to play tag.
In a mere dome-shaped space just twenty meters in diameter, these were rules too absurd to fathom.
The hellhounds' simultaneous frenzy left almost no room to dodge within the dome.
-Woof! Woof!
-Grrrrrr...
Even if their eyelids had been sewn shut with wire, the hellhounds' ability to detect prey remained exceptional.
Driven by their deeply ingrained gluttony, their enhanced sense of smell locked onto Si-woo's scent without fail. Soon, they swarmed like a pride of lionesses hunting buffalo, closing in from every side.
Even as mere familiars, these magic-enhanced evil spirits boasted mobility far beyond ordinary beasts.
Even if the thing standing in the center of the dome were an elephant instead of a buffalo, it would be reduced to bones in an instant under normal circumstances.
However.
-Boom! Kaboom!
The pack of hounds swept up by black ribbons whipped at high speed had their heads explode like bursting melons.
Green curses scattered into the air amid the flying shards of skull.
Triple shockwaves radiating from a ring-shaped magic circle smashed the hellhounds like swatting flies.
The hounds ruptured from the inside, spewing black blood and dying without even a chance to scream.
Occasionally, pitch-black flames incinerated the starving beasts.
The creatures, charred well-done down to their bones, rolled across the floor as blackened husks.
All of this was the tagger's resistance, accomplished without taking a single step from his spot.
Despite orchestrating such overwhelming dominance, Si-woo's expression refused to relax.
The situation was far from as smooth as it appeared at a glance.
The rules of tag were stringent.
If this playroom was faithfully implementing the "game" as intended, then Si-woo was repeatedly breaking the rules right now.
In tag, runners can't do a thing against their pursuer—that's the rule.
Si-woo's attacks on the hellhounds were blatant rule violations.
And the magic he wielded wasn't even landing at half its intended potency—no, not even a quarter.
But the problems didn't end there.
The corpse of the hound that had just been turned into mincemeat began bubbling like crude oil.
From the black puddle, a fully restored hellhound rose with a snort, unscathed.
Not a single hound's number had diminished.
Through this sequence, Si-woo could gauge the degree of coercive force the game's rules held.
Not as potent as the chapel Dorothy had manifested, but still sufficiently powerful.
Without the red branch, complete disruption was impossible.
He reassessed the merits the playroom granted its opponent.
"......"
"Wow."
Meanwhile, Roji let out an exclamation, her eyes wide round in admiration.
Roji was a great witch too.
Capable of reproducing Si-woo's unleashed might in her own way.
A natural disaster that could reduce an entire nation to ruins single-handedly, without interference from another witch.
Tracking the myriad magics Si-woo unleashed one by one, Roji reached a single conclusion.
"What are you?"
His magic was blatantly abnormal.
Typically, a witch's self-generated magic carried her unique hue.
Even if she researched other systems, it would converge through evolution toward a unified style.
For instance, Roji's recovery magic, built on curses, took the form of "exponentially boosting recovery and bodily durability at the cost of sacrificing pre-extracted despair."
But the magic he wielded showed no common convergence.
The ribbons lashing the hellhounds—if it wasn't an illusion—resembled Ea Sadalmelik's "Virgin's Loom."
That familiar ring evoked Dorothy Sahaquiel's "Angel's Ring."
Underpinning both was a shadow unlike anything she'd seen in her life.
Wielding magic from Clifford's luminaries was suspicious enough.
Yet he didn't stop at mere copies of originals.
Through a unique method of engraving magic circles onto the ribbons, he deployed force fields, then generated mana waves like crashing tides from those fields.
In the midst of it all, he spewed black flames that appeared to be orthodox elemental magic.
It evoked the colorful magical feast reminiscent of Gehenna's great sage, Duke Ererim's "Heavenly Void Record," heard only in rumors—but in reality, it was clearly an inferior imitation.
The strength of a great witch's magic stemmed from the synergies between her self-generated spells.
His magic seemed crudely stacked like a haphazard block tower, promoting no such upliftment among themselves.
Even so, it was potent enough that the tag game held no amusement...
The hellhounds were merely a stalling tactic to buy preparation time anyway.
"Alright. Shall we get serious?"
Entrusting the familiars to handle combat, Roji condensed her mana and prepared a massive magic circle.
Her fingertips elegantly swept through the air like a conductor's baton.
-Vwooom!
At that instant, the ground supporting the floor vanished, unveiling a new space.
The hemispherical space now mirrored itself top and bottom like a sphere with a mirror affixed to its base—the playroom had taken on a perfectly symmetric spherical form.
Green mist-formed grids crisscrossed it like spiderwebs.
"Since sparring my rival might be the last time, I prepared this out of regret. What do you think?"
The moment the footing vanished, Si-woo levitated with telekinesis and surveyed his surroundings.
Filling the spherical space was a massive regular dodecahedron.
And inscribed on each of its faces, even smaller dodecahedrons formed anew.
He'd never seen one this scale before, but the space was utterly familiar.
The new game Roji had manifested was brilliantly straightforward.
The board game she boasted the utmost confidence in, where she truly showcased her peak prowess.
Position Board.
Not some rudimentary affair linking basic paths and runes to pit simple spells against each other—this was a real-world scale version utilizing each player's self-generated magic.
Even Si-woo, focused on combat, couldn't hide his astonishment.
Roji had manifested a prank of a scale fit for a childish witch's fantasy using her self-magic.
Separate from his incredulity, he probed the rules.
The Position Board was inherently a microcosm of magical combat.
A slight tweak to the rules could adapt it seamlessly to real battles.
The key here was what modifications had been made to those rules.
"......"
As a test, he cast magic into a space beyond the designated "paths."
Intense feedback surged immediately, golden sparks erupting.
-Tzzzzzt...
In truth, he didn't need to experiment—his magic eye revealed it plainly.
Mana resistance spiked to its limit everywhere outside the paths.
The board's exterior allowed magic, but at exorbitant cost.
Even close-quarters combat would feel sluggish as moving underwater with mana enhancement, demanding immense effort.
Whereas prior games had granted Roji unilateral advantage, this one was fair to both.
The mana relays hovering at vertices instead of runes were neutral.
The operational penalties applied equally to Si-woo and Roji.
Magic grew stronger under greater constraints.
Thus, this game's coercive force was on another level entirely.
Roji had dragged Si-woo into her strongest domain.
A pure contest of superior computational power.
A thorough brain battle judging only excellence in self-generated magic.
"You can't just stand there gaping, you know?"
Even adhering to Position Board rules, this was real combat.
No need for sportsmanship with alternating turns.
Aware of that, Roji seized the initiative.
She expanded her mana toward the center.
Her target: a neutral relay.
In spaces laden with maxed-out mana load, relays linking paths aided the occupier's smooth mana flow.
Equivalent to "runes" on a Position Board.
The once-white relay turned green as if injected with ink, its writhing dense mana swiftly forming a curse.
Dozens of pairs of fangs evoking viper teeth shot along the path toward Si-woo.
-Vwoom!
In response, the ribbon etched with a golden magic circle swelled.
The explosively expanding wave of force was the Yesod Count Family's protective barrier.
-Ping! Ping! Ping!
The bullet-like venomous fangs ricocheted off the barrier's surfaces with shrill cries.
Si-woo hadn't prepared only defense.
As he deployed the field, he dove into the fray to claim the relay.
-Kaboom! Boom!
Dazzling flashes and thunderous detonations accompanied magics tangling in midair.
Heat fiercer than a steel-melting furnace incinerated Roji's fangs,
While corrosion curses gnawed the writhing ribbon bundles like frayed ropes.
Empowered by the relay, the force field ballooned its influence,
Only for ring-shaped penetration curses to crumple it.
A battlefield borrowing Position Board rules, though not the game itself.
In this clash of limited moves, Roji's strength shone unreservedly.
"Hahahahaha!!!"
Extreme snowballing from minor gains into major ones.
Her sequence was as coldly precise as clockwork machinery.
Relentlessly exploiting Si-woo's weakness in magic linkages, while preparing her own far deadlier self-magic chains.
In mere seconds, amid spells unfolding, erecting, shattering, and reassembling, she endlessly accrued trifling advantages.
The result: Roji seized sixty percent of the relays in a flash.
With usable space for magic restricted on the board, control of relays and paths dictated available mana.
In short, the overall momentum tilted toward Roji.
-Groooar!!!
A condensed curse woven from shattered spell remnants targeted Si-woo.
Should it hit directly, even the Pope would curse God in agonizing torment.
"Ahh, games really are the best. So thrilling!"
Demonstrating an overwhelming skill gap beyond mere board gaming, Roji gazed at Si-woo with a cruel smile.
"What do you think?"
The Shin Si-woo she'd assumed would be floundering in despair by now.
He met her eyes with an expression utterly devoid of agitation.
Unyielding fighting spirit flowed along the golden reflections of his mana.
"......"
Roji was undoubtedly powerful.
Crafting a battlefield feigning fairness yet tilted in her favor, then dominating pure tactical exchanges.
It was impressive enough to understand how she'd survived amid cutthroat rivals who took kindred slaughter as baseline.
But preparations were complete.
Now it was time to teach Roji.
This wasn't some game.
It was a fight for their lives.