Chapter 722
Chapter 722
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Translator: Ebonarch
Chapter: 722
Chapter Title: Rinne's Rescue
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The pitch-black corridor flickered stark white.
Rinne's shadow, stretched long along the wall, blinked in sync with it.
-Boom!
Thunder rumbled half a beat later.
Rinne glanced up at the slanted window, her sword sheathed at her waist.
Hexennacht was a near-perfect pocket dimension.
But calling it flawless would be a stretch.
It always hovered at early winter chill, breath fogging the air, trapped in an endless night with barely any weather shifts.
Yet every now and then, storms like this rolled in, thunder and lightning crashing down.
The vertical city's structure and the massive cauldrons scattered throughout the towns birthed cumulonimbus clouds that unleashed these localized downpours.
Arcana Town, where the Almak Club sat, wasn't as sky-high as Fragrant Moon Tower, but the thunder echoed through the vast cavern, amplified into a deafening roar that rattled the ears.
"......"
It had been like this that day too.
The shower poured like a curtain, slanting crooked with the wind, clawing roughly at the ground.
Even screams that tore the throat couldn't reach her own ears.
It was a brutally rainy day.
Rinne turned her head left.
From midway down the long Western-style corridor, a stretch of wooden floorboards, muddied and mournful, shimmered like a mirage.
There stood Rinne.
"To the left."
A hand covering young Rinne's eyes.
Soaked to the bone, her heavy clothes dragging, young Rinne let the hand's owner lead her forward.
"Watch closely, never forget, and etch it in your mind."
The illusory vision of her child self flickered like a mirage before vanishing around the corridor's corner.
But her master's voice licked at her ear as vividly as if whispered right beside her.
"Life tolerates no weakness."
Rinne murmured the words that had clung to her tongue after thousands, tens of thousands of repetitions, like a mantra.
"All tragedies are byproducts of weakness."
As if entranced, Rinne nearly followed her younger self and master around the bend, but a noise at her feet snapped her head roughly aside.
"......"
Looking down, she saw Lydia's secretary wriggling like a worm, groaning "grrrk grrrk."
Rinne had roughly grabbed her ankle, tossed her into the room whose lock she'd just severed, and shut the door again.
Rinne certainly pursued strength relentlessly, sparing no means or methods.
But she wasn't some mindless slaughter fiend hacking down anyone in her path.
The blade that severed the secretary's throat hadn't been Rinne's cherished great sword.
What had actually swung was no physical sword, but one manifested from Rinne's mind— a heart sword, nothing more.
Yet the human imagination is a wondrous thing.
Hadn't the tale of sailors freezing to death in a powerless freezer become infamous as a nocebo effect anecdote?
Add a dash of magic to that, and temporarily "killing" consciousness becomes possible.
Just as with Randa, this nameless secretary would lapse into a coma for at least a week, trapped in the disconnect between a mind perceiving death and a body signaling normalcy.
Anyway, she'd expended enough mana to be detected nearby, so the time limit had tightened.
As she sketched a mental map and quickened her pace toward Lydia's workshop where Si-woo waited—
She glanced back, as if remembering something.
"......"
She had gained power.
To resist a life that forgave no weakness.
The frail girl who retched at the sight of corpses, who wept rivers at the clash of weapons and shouts— she was dead.
So then.
If she'd turned that corner following the vision just now.
Would she have seen something different from that memory?
The corridor, unnaturally linked to the past like a dreamscape, had reverted to its glossy marble floors.
"......"
Rinne hated the rain.
It dredged up irretrievable memories of the past.
It was unavoidable.
PTSD born from the intense shock imprinted in childhood.
Rinne had never known happiness or peace to overlay it.
The wound lingered eternally, unable to scab or scar.
Wrinkle forming on her nose bridge in disgust, Rinne shook her head vigorously.
No time to toy with such thoughts.
Now was the time to save Si-woo.
2.
"Keep an eye on the house, hubby. Let's play more when I get back."
Lydia waved cheerily before leaving Si-woo alone in the workshop.
The ball had ended without incident after the run-in with the Aries Witch.
A few guests had asked if Si-woo's wares were for sale, but that was the extent of it.
So, no gains at all? Hardly.
"She's alive after all..."
In a way, the trigger for Si-woo becoming a witch, and his master's enemy— he'd spotted the Aquarius Witch, Ea Sadalmelik, from afar.
Last he'd ravaged her and stolen her magic, Ea had been a helpless fool barely able to muster autonomous defenses.
Yet her mana now raged far more ferociously than at their first encounter, suggesting she'd fully restored her brand and ascended to greater heights.
Si-woo even gleaned trivia: she took an especially radical stance among Hexennacht's hardliners, operating independently without affiliating with Clifort.
Anyway, with ample alone time, he could ponder deeply.
The dilemma: "Is it okay to stay under Lydia like this?"
For starters, Lydia wasn't overtly hostile toward Si-woo.
One could even say she'd unintentionally benefited.
Her plan, meant to derail completely with Rozhi's death, had been cushioned to only half off-course—assuming her words rang true, doing nothing would hand him to Duke Ererim in four or five days.
She'd mulled the concerns plenty, so onward.
Si-woo's focus shifted elsewhere.
This.
Before the ball, during their tryst, what Lydia had said about meeting Rinne.
'Rinne dropped by. She was desperately looking for you.'
Rinne hunting for Si-woo was within expectations.
Her disciple, who'd said she'd visit Rozhi's estate, vanishing like that.
Plus, wasn't Si-woo a rare male witch collectible?
'She's got skills, making Rinne fall head over heels like that. Heh, and calling you "hubby"? I nearly died laughing.'
But Lydia's follow-up strayed beyond predictions.
Fall head over heels?
Calling him hubby?
Words from her mouth that made him doubt if the Rinne she'd met was the same one Si-woo knew.
Lydia had spoken as if Rinne sought him out of love for her missing lover.
Too unguarded an info slip for mere teasing or deception— that fueled the suspicion.
"No way. Things got pretty awkward after that day."
To shake Rinne off, he'd gone hard in play, ultimately giving her a woman's pleasure but yielding mount position, getting slapped till his nose bled.
They hadn't spoken till the next day.
"No way..."
In the head-tilting situation, something clicked.
Per Rinne, she was wired to feel no joy.
Yet somehow, mid-act with Si-woo, she'd wept from ecstasy.
If Dorothy's words held—"Don't overthink it, just conquer her with your dick already?"—and that had actually happened?
"Pfft, as if the world's some ero-game tutorial."
A ridiculous detour of imagination drew a chuckle.
No matter how baffling the fog, delusions had limits.
If life were that simple, he'd have conquered Rinne ages ago, then Lydia, then tonight's Aries Witch, building another Gehenna by now.
As he huffed in empty amusement, Si-woo sensed a ripple of mana throughout the workshop.
-Clang!
Moments later, a clear chime rang in his ears— harder steel snapping sturdier steel.
"What the—"
His battlefield-honed instincts screamed the intruder wasn't Lydia.
Maybe a hardliner had sniffed him out for kidnapping.
Si-woo bolted up reflexively, habitually summoning armor.
But the collar enslaving him as a witch performed flawlessly.
Lydia herself had crafted the artifact, after all.
Before Si-woo could dive behind the bed to assess, the intruder entered the bedroom.
"Master?"
It was Rinne.
She stared at him intently, eyes shimmering with black mana reflection.
"How did you..."
Rinne strode forward, halting before him.
Her mask-like stoic expression unchanged, yet she hesitated like facing a daunting foe.
"Here to rescue you. No time— we move fast."
But soon, her usual curt tone struck his ear.
"What's going on?"
"No time for details. The Witch of Gold will return soon."
In that brief exchange, Si-woo scrambled to piece it together.
A guest wouldn't storm in sword-drawn.
Her tone alone screamed illegal break-in for his sake.
In short, Rinne had turned against Lydia, one of Hexennacht's powerhouses.
The reason? Obviously, to save him.
"Why go this far?"
Si-woo blurted, unable to mask bewilderment.
Rinne was always inscrutable, but this left zero clues.
His question hit Rinne like lethal paralytic venom; her shoulders, ever relaxed like a seasoned swordswoman's, stiffened rigid.
"......"
She chewed her lip, averted her gaze, then murmured low.
Her ear, peeking through silken hair, flushed red— candlelight trick, perhaps?
"...Time's short."
His mind reeled once more.
Entrusting fate to Lydia felt iffy, sure, but tagging along with Rinne— now a public enemy for this stunt— was that wise?
Worse, might it tangle everything hopelessly?
"I know your worries. I know you killed Rozhi."
Rinne spoke first, as if reading his mind.
"But this time, trust me."
Magicless as he was, Si-woo couldn't defy her anyway.
Better surrender to this new current than predestined doom.
"...Understood."
"Then, climb on."
To flee swiftly, Rinne hoisted Si-woo piggyback and dashed through the Almak Club's corridors on wind-like feet.