Chapter 173
Translator: penny
Chapter: 173
Chapter Title: Witch Hunt
Amidst a gradually rising sense of exhilaration, an unfamiliar landscape unfolds before my eyes.
'...What is this?'
"Urk, ugh! W-where... where is this?"
An unfamiliar environment. A man who has plummeted into what looks like some kind of laboratory lets out a voice full of panic. But I can't see that figure.
'This is... someone's field of view?'
"Tch. Another failure? Why? The passage clearly opened, but why does it only work one way? Is crossing from the lower world to the upper world that much harder? Fourth time already... Is this method a bust?"
"Ex-excuse me? Who are you? Do you know where this... ugh!"
A scene proceeding from someone's point of view. Just like someone who has freshly dropped into an unfamiliar environment, trembling and whipping their head around, the back of a man muttering to himself while clawing at his hair comes into view.
'Who?'
The moment I try to observe that figure more closely, the view flips in an instant. Like fast-forwarding a video, the landscape shakes and shifts.
And when the view settles, the laboratory-like scene has vanished, replaced by a dim, grave-like landscape.
"Status window! Skill window! Status! My status! Menu! Log out! Gallery! Stat window! Inventory! Character window!.....!"
The voice presumed to belong to the owner of the view I'm watching shouts out specific words one after another. Every one of them resembles 'commands' you'd only see in games.
"Damn it... why is there nothing...!"
'Nothing?'
And even though 'skill window' was clearly among those words, the voice's owner despairs as if unable to check it, collapsing face-down on the ground. And then...
-Pfsh!
"Ugh, uwaaak!"
From the grave the man's hand touched, a bare skeleton bursts out. A hand made of bone claws through the dirt and crawls from the earth, blue soul flames igniting in its eye sockets as a single skeleton rises.
"Uwaak! Monster! Hiaaak!"
And the voice's owner, as if their legs have lost all strength, plops down right there and screams. Then, as if anticipating the scene to come, they tremble and squeeze their eyes shut tight.
-Rattle.
"......?"
But no matter how long they wait, no hostility emanates from the skeleton. And when they cautiously open their eyes, they see the skeleton standing motionless, head bowed as if awaiting a command...
"No way...?"
In that instant, to turn the thought that flashed through their mind into reality, the view's owner extends their 'left arm' to make contact with the skeleton.
"Grk...!"
And in that moment, the faint mana energy latent in their body fades away, replaced as a foreboding aura of death begins to fill it up. Unable to endure that bizarre euphoria, the view's owner mutters.
"-Rise."
"Like hell rise."
[Necromancy Lv. 8] has been terminated. Skills altered by the influence of [Necromancy] return to their original states.
I forcibly cancel the actively running skill, and the death energy filling my body shrinks back. Then, blue mana surges out from my mana circuits once more, the soul flames rising from my eyes fade away, and my muddled mind clears up.
'Fuck... what the hell was that just now?'
I swear, I have no hobby of screwing corpses. Yet from the moment I used [Necromancy] earlier, a bizarre euphoria filled my entire body, and a strange urge welled up to kill Beatrice right then and violate her corpse.
Even now, the thought that it might not be so bad keeps trying to bubble up in my head.
-Crack.
I prop up my dizzy head with my arm, but instead of warm heat, a cold, hard sensation transmits through. I look down at my arm and flinch in shock.
'Fuck. It's bones.'
The flesh and muscle that had been on my left arm are gone who-knows-where, leaving only white bare bones. The shitty part is that even though there shouldn't be any nerves, the tactile sensations and such remain intact, granting a bizarre feeling.
-Splash.
And as my instincts dictated, I pull a bottle of holy water from my inventory and pour it straight onto my bony arm.
-Sizzle!
"Graaak!"
Then, a horrific sensation like being burned assaults me, and ominous black steam rises from where the holy water touched my arm. Unable to endure the pain, I try using [Sensory Block] to shut it out, but even blocking the pain, that burning sensation persists.
'It's different from pain receptors...? Well, there wouldn't be any anyway...!'
And when I instead try blocking the sensation from the 'holy water,' that works—the black smoke still rises from my arm, but the excruciating pain subsides.
With that certainty in mind, I keep pouring holy water onto my arm. The rising smoke weakens, and soon the black fumes completely stop, the pain vanishes entirely, and only then does my [Regeneration] skill activate like usual, flesh beginning to fill in on my arm.
'Why didn't it regenerate until just now? As if that state was the normal one...'
Fuck. Could using [Necromancy] gradually turn me into an undead? Good thing something felt off and I terminated the skill midway—if I'd kept [Necromancy] active... I don't even want to imagine.
'Seal it. Definitely seal it.'
This time the situation was urgent, so I used the skill in a do-or-die gamble, but I really need to seal this skill. My arm turns to bone, weird thoughts pop into my head...
Come to think of it, what the hell was that scene I glimpsed in that brief moment of disorientation? Could it be a memory from 「Death」? That terrified-sounding man's voice?
'Definitely something about status window and such.'
Fuck. What is it? Was 「Death」 originally Korean or something? And who was that man whose back I saw first when the memory surfaced? The one rambling about passages and such...
'Put it aside for now.'
My head's a mess, and a ton of questions have cropped up, but I forcibly suppress my curiosity. Right now, my head's spinning like someone raped my brain—I can't think deeply at all.
First things first.
"Cough... cough..."
Beatrice, whose throat I'd just been choking, coughs violently with red marks etched on her neck, half-unconscious. On top of that, her brilliantly shining magic tools are mostly ruined and unusable, corrupted by death energy, the mana threads she'd been drawing from her body are all severed, and the dolls scattered around are in poor shape too.
'Recover the magic tools first.'
While Beatrice is still out of it, I recover the various magic tools attached to her body. Most are junk now, but a couple still function.
One of them—a ring on the index finger of her right hand—is a magic tool that can store 'dolls,' so I recover all the remaining dolls post-battle into it. Better if I hold onto it. I don't know what the other magic tools do...
'What to do with this bitch?'
Then, only the defenseless Beatrice remains. Honestly, slicing her throat now would be clean...
'Kinda wasteful, though.'
If I'm gonna kill her anyway, wouldn't it be better to squeeze out everything I can first? But she's not really in some deep relationship with Vivian, right? Even if she is, I struck first, so however I handle Beatrice, Vivian won't make an issue of it later, yeah?
Hmm... what to do. Honestly, if she wakes up like this, she'll come at me again, so better not take risks and just kill her...
'...Wait, this bitch. She's a witch, right?'
And suddenly, my thoughts reach Beatrice's race. I recall what Vivian told me before about witches' traits.
'No worries at all.'
I can just do what I planned from the start.
I hoist Beatrice over my shoulder and head upstairs. Despite all the chaos, the upper floor seems untouched by the aftermath—or perhaps protected by some means—as the rooms up here are pristine compared to the trashed lower level.
'What the hell is all this?'
I smash through the magically locked door of one room to find display cases adorned with a considerable number of magic tools, and the room filled with photos of Vivian and dolls resembling her.
I ignore those for now and spot a fairly large bed in the corner of the room, roughly tossing Beatrice onto it.
-Thud!
"Kehk!"
A pained groan leaks from the unconscious Beatrice's mouth, but I don't care. Honestly, I'd love to kill her right now, but I'm keeping her alive on purpose for another reason.
'[Lust Absorption].'
I'll kill her when I kill her, but sucking her experience dry with [Lust Absorption] before offing her isn't bad. Like when I killed those raiders in the Labyrinth before, or that 'plant merchant' in the commercial district.
'I can use [Lust Absorption] on corpses too, ri... fuck.'
And in that instant, an ominous thought flashes through my mind, but I slap my cheeks several times to shake off the horrific idea. Aftereffects of using [Necromancy] still lingering?
'Fuck. Unless it's dire, [Necromancy] is sealed for real.'
Corpse fetish, my ass. I'm a guy with normal sexual tastes. If I use [Necromancy] one more time and my head gets fucked up, I might start hunting down corpses to screw.
'Anyway.'
Time to finish up quick.
-Rip!
I tear off Beatrice's clothes right then. Once I do, her chest wrapped tightly in bandages comes into view.
'No way she even adjusted her chest size to match Vivian's?'
I knew from her yapping during the fight that she was obsessively fixated on Vivian in a creepy way, but this exceeds imagination. And since her outward appearance is so similar, it kinda feels like I'm about to fuck Vivian. What to say? If Vivian bulked up her frame a bit, wouldn't she look like this witch?
But I couldn't do this to Vivian.
-Rip!
After eyeing her chest briefly, I tear apart the stockings she wore under her robe and even the purple lingerie that matched, without bothering to remove them properly. Then, her plump, tightly closed pussy and chrysanthemum-shaped hole come into view.
'This part looks different from Vivian's.'
Her labia are a bit more pronounced than Vivian's? Her ass shape is slightly different too.
Looking at this brings Vivian's 'reward' to mind. Back then, Vivian said inserting into her pussy would leak mana, so she only allowed her back hole. That was pretty arousing and felt good too, but...
'I was curious.'
Just what kind of race is a witch that losing their virginity drains mana? And what would that sight look like?
It wasn't easy to get hard looking at the bitch who tried to kill me moments ago, but men are creatures who can erect at will if they set their minds to it. I superimpose Vivian's image over the fallen Beatrice and get my dick hard.
Then, I thrust into the sanctuary no man has ever breached. Foreplay? Why would I need that crap?
"Cough... where...?"
And right on cue, the witch who'll resolve my curiosity regains consciousness. Coughing repeatedly while looking around, Beatrice realizes she's lying haphazardly on the bed and that her clothes are torn to shreds.
And that right in front of her exposed privates, the monster—Vivian's new gift wrapping... no, the freak she was just fighting—is positioned with something shoved in.
"...You!"
And the moment Beatrice grasps the situation and is about to erupt in rage...
-Splurt!
Something tears roughly, and my dick charges in.