Chapter 890
Chapter 890
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: Ebonarch
Chapter: 890
Chapter Title: Typhoon (3)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
1.
Witches from around the world who had pledged their aid began converging on the Hokkaido branch and the Seoul branch—the predicted first landing point—as their bases.
Most of them were exiles chasing citizenship lotteries, so assembling via Gehenna's "gates" was out of the question.
As such, witches capable of teleportation magic flew in, while the rest rushed over on military fighters as quickly as possible.
But time was short.
The legion was pressing southward by the moment, and it was plain as day that if things continued like this, the Korean Peninsula would be left in ruins by the time enough forces gathered for a frontal stand.
Thus, Eloa made her decision and passed it along to Lucien, the Hokkaido branch chief.
"Prepare for interception until sufficient defenses are in place."
Gather what scant forces they had and strike the flank.
Use hit-and-run guerrilla tactics to stall their advance as long as possible until reinforcements arrived.
It was an operation of extremely high risk—one that could see them picked off piecemeal before full strength assembled.
The sort of plan any ordinary witch would steer clear of.
"Recruit volunteers only from witches confident in their skills."
If it were an army that marched on orders, they could demand blind obedience, but forcing a reckless op on witches might breed deserters instead.
While Lucien scurried about gathering volunteers, Linne approached.
"Eloa, a messenger from the Defensive School. They dropped off the fully interpreted Memorial Stone."
"Right now?"
"Yes."
The Memorial Stone Dorothy had obtained wasn't fully decrypted, so they'd outsourced the remaining half's video analysis to the Defensive School.
Delivering the finished decryption results on commission wasn't strange at all.
But this was the calm before the storm.
Sending an urgent courier at a time like this meant the matter was of the highest priority.
Eloa and Linne huddled together to peer into the crystal orb.
They skipped the part they'd seen before.
The gorilla turning its back on the monster horde—this memory's owner—was frantically dashing along, anxiously alternating glances behind and ahead.
Eloa's eyebrows sharpened as she watched the footage intently.
"Linne, rewind it a bit."
"……."
Linne rewound without a word, then flinched this time.
Beside the buck haughtily tossing its head high, utterly ignoring the fleeing gorilla, stood a human-shaped shadow.
The silhouette of a "witch" far too elegantly adorned to pass as a mere humanoid homunculus.
"Stop here."
They enlarged the frozen image.
The footage, faithfully capturing the homunculus's vision, now clearly revealed the witch standing beside the buck.
Coincidentally, both Eloa and Linne knew her.
The witch who had unleashed terror in Seoul in the past. The one who commanded red knights. The one who controlled a homunculus with a twisted face on one side.
Paola Sochitl—the one called the Witch of the Thousand Hands or derisively the Witch of Cowardice.
Before, it would have plunged them into utter confusion.
Eloa had handled her personally, even after the makeup. Why was Paola alive again?
"It's the Whisperer."
"Sure looks like it."
But things were different now.
During their escape from Hexennacht, Siu and Linne's group had crossed paths with the Witch of Whispers.
And they'd seen fragments of the veiled Witch of Whispers with their own eyes.
According to Siu, the Witch of Whispers had taken Bianca Belliri's form and wielded her relic, the "Bow that Pierces the Heavens."
That came after the hypothesis that Lilith's self-gen magic replicated other witches' self-gen magic.
Armed with that, this incident made sense too.
Why a King of Monsters had appeared out of nowhere.
Why that King of Monsters was leading a homunculus legion.
The King of Monsters was likely Lilith's doing—stirring chaos across the world through the ages.
Couldn't guess her aims or reasons, but it proved the situation was even more dire.
"What now?"
"No choice. We do what must be done."
But there was no spare moment to shelve their plans.
All they could manage was delaying the legion's landing for as long as possible.
Eloa set out for the battlefield with the volunteers.
2.
Black waves writhed and undulated sinuously.
Thunderclouds blotting out the sky unleashed a torrent of storm and lashing rain.
The influence of homunculi, whose very existence summoned calamity.
Pitch darkness made it impossible to see even a step ahead, but the transcendent vision of witches outstripped the finest night-vision gear.
Thus, they could clearly survey the legion leisurely marching across the broad horizon, filling it entirely, as if it were broad daylight.
Each with wildly different shapes and forms.
From readily imaginable monsters—giant wolves, sea beasts, birds with wings of flame.
To things impossible to call living: glossy chrome statues, spheres of flesh a full kilometer in diameter.
The parade commanded by the buck at the center evoked the Night Parade of One Hundred Demons from ancient tales.
No crisp, disciplined army movements, but as reported, Eloa could tell the monster legion moved under shrewd command.
Homunculus packs marching in one direction, spaced well apart.
A counter to high-output magic.
Preventing wipeouts from sudden high-power spells by avoiding clusters.
Whispers rippled through the witches facing the legion head-on.
"Ha, is this for real...?"
"What's the big deal? We could bolt anytime if we wanted."
"Tiferet Duke's here too... Should be fine, right?"
Some had ties to the legion's projected path, or very rarely stepped up to avert human casualties, but most were swayed by hasty resolve and the lure of rewards rather than blazing zeal.
And the sight awaiting these half-hearted volunteers was grotesque enough to shatter any fighting spirit.
-Ooooooo!
-Kuoooo!
Roars erupted among the homunculi as they spotted the witch group.
Though kilometers apart, the colossal bellows shattered waves, cleaved the storm, and shook the black sea.
"……."
Eloa brushed the rain-plastered strands from her cheek and scanned the faces around her.
Morale was already crumbling.
An understandable reaction.
As the average witch's rank climbed, deaths at homunculi hands had plummeted.
But the foes here neared dozens of named ones.
Not the small fry relegated to pocket-change hunts and fading from notice. These were individuals that had earned "names" through long years untamed, feasting on witches and building infamy.
If they scattered now, even Eloa couldn't rein them in.
So she had to show them.
"I contract."
Who exactly they were fighting alongside.
Eloa's sword gleamed.
Her role was to seize the chance and slay the "king."
For mere stalling now, she couldn't—and shouldn't—go all out.
Three characters glowed on the blade's side.
Her mana surged in an instant, transmuting into raw power.
A pink straight line slashed across the choppy, heaving sea.
The flank jutted out in a flash; distance closed rapidly.
"Kkirruk?"
First to spot Eloa's charge: a pigeon the size of a man, clad in a tuxedo and monocle.
Ridiculously dubbed the "Gentleman Pigeon," but a horrific beast that had claimed countless lives over two centuries...
-Bang!
It scattered white feathers in a red blast, frozen mid-flap as it tried to cast a spell.
The instant it collided with Eloa's empowered body, it burst like a pigeon struck by a baseball.
"What the...?"
"When did the Duke get there?"
"Did she just one-shot it?"
The witches' scattered attention snapped to Tiferet Duke in unison.
Hunting homunculi was truly like "hunting."
Facing ones larger and mana-richer than most witches head-on was suicidal.
Usually, it involved patience or cunning to exploit their weak intellects.
Yet here was Tiferet Duke obliterating even a legion weakling in one blow—via sheer body slam.
-Kuoo!
-Kraaaaa!
Tiferet Duke dashed across the waves, effortlessly shaking off the pursuing homunculi as they rampaged and unleashed a barrage of spells.
She refused frontal clashes, then surged in at blinding speed on any opening, repeating hit-and-run strikes.
"How many is she kiting...?"
"Is that even possible?"
Witches crushed by the legion's unprecedented majesty finally remembered.
The one battling monsters on the front lines was the supreme hunter, with dozens of feats and hundreds of homunculi slain.
"Look over there!"
While Eloa circled the flank, drawing eyes, one witch pierced from the opposite side.
The Sword Witch, dual blades in hand, clad in a kimono.
Grasping Eloa's intent, she exploited the disrupted lines and charged a massive bull.
Its 5-meter frame was the Minotaur from myth incarnate.
The menacing homunculus, muscles taut like a beast's, made Linne's charge look like foolhardy bravado.
But her eerily twisting form coiled around the Minotaur's arm, shredding its muscular, axe-wielding limb in seconds.
"Kreeeeek!!!"
She vaulted to the pain-screaming Minotaur's face in a blink, rammed her blade deep into its throat, then landed butterfly-light on the waves.
"This... might actually be doable?"
"With the Sword Witch and Tiferet Duke? It'll work out."
"Where to?"
"Supporting. This is our chance!"
"Not a full-on war, just buying time... sure."
A mere skirmish, but the duo's overwhelming display eroded the unease.
From those wavering on joining to those eyeing escape, all surged toward the battlefield at once.