The Witch's Beloved (2)
The sound of ragged breathing filled the air. After sprinting what felt like an eternity, Lee Seol finally reached our class’s private lecture hall. She shoved me into a cabinet in the corner and immediately started messing with an artifact.
A transparent barrier wrapped around the cabinet.
She closed the door and whispered softly.
Thud. The door slammed shut. The sound of her footsteps racing away grew fainter and fainter.
Damn it. Lee Seol should’ve collapsed by now. Why the hell is she…
Had her Super Sensory picked up the danger and made her remove the ring? Even that felt off. No matter how broken that skill was, it shouldn’t have given her enough breathing room to set up an artifact barrier around a cabinet. Besides, she had only awakened Super Sensory two months ago. She couldn’t have built up any real proficiency yet.
Questions tangled together in my head, but only one thing mattered right now.
I need to get that ring back.
I slipped the defense artifact into my pocket and slipped out of the building.
What a fucking mess.
Demon Sect fanatics were hurling skills at the students. Lee Seol and the professors formed a desperate wall, blocking the onslaught to protect them. But the most striking sight was the one overhead.
They’ve been plugged in.
Black lines rose from the bodies of all seven hundred students, shooting straight into the sky. Negative energy. Life force. Magi. Call it whatever you want—the important part was this:
If you gathered that power and offered it to a Witch, her seed would bloom into a flower in an instant.
It was nothing like ordinary mana. This was demonic energy that couldn’t even be touched without special tools. Yet for the Witches, it was easier to handle than breathing. It belonged to them alone.
The seven hundred black lines eventually converged on a single point. I followed them and found a crystal drinking in all the magi.
A black crystal resting on a table. The sinister-looking stone was sucking down every last strand like straws. Four people stood in a standoff around it—Irena, two professors, and the principal.
Irena couldn’t believe what she was seeing. The mentor who had guided her all this time was the corrupted leader of the Demon Sect.
The principal gazed up at the sky. A black veil shimmered faintly above them.
"You’ve completely lost your mind…"
"This isn’t the person we knew."
The other professors shook their heads and readied themselves for battle. They couldn’t afford to waste any more time.
The principal laughed and took one step back, then another.
The professors hesitated. But they had no choice but to try.
The two professors—one wielding an axe, the other a spear—leaped toward the crystal and swung with everything they had. Their power was close to B-rank. Their weapons moved so fast the blades seemed to vanish, yet—
Clang!
They were blocked effortlessly. Magi traveled up the weapons and into their bodies.
"Aaaargh! M-my body!"
"Kuhak!"
They clutched their heads and screamed. Was this what soul corruption felt like? Their faces turned pitch black before they collapsed to the ground.
"Professor Kang! Professor Choi!"
"Kukuku! Of course. No ordinary human could withstand magi. Only someone chosen like me!"
"You knew that and still—!"
"I gave you a chance. A chance to save the students. You simply lacked the qualifications and threw it away."
Irena changed her target from the crystal to the principal. Hundreds of mana hands pointed at him. Yet the principal only scoffed.
"Ugh…!"
It was a perfect deadlock. The principal looked at Irena biting her lip and smiled in ugly satisfaction.
Irena’s eyes trembled.
Irena’s breathing stopped. Her entire body began to shake. The greatest choice of her life. Her mind violently wavered before it.
The principal’s lips curled higher as he watched her.
"......"
"I… I’ll—"
The moment Irena squeezed her eyes shut—
My voice cut through the tension. Both of them whipped their heads toward the sound. I stood right in front of the crystal, completely nonchalant. Irena’s eyes widened in horror.
"Kukuk! Kwahaha! Yes! Go ahead and try! Watching a tragic master-disciple moment isn’t half bad!"
The principal’s crazed laughter rang out. Irena desperately stretched out a thousand mana hands, but it was already too late.
Vrrr.
My hand touched the crystal first.
Along with Irena’s scream, the veil shook violently.
Rumble—!
"What?"
For the first time, panic leaked into the principal’s voice. I was supposed to have my soul corrupted and die, yet I stood there completely fine. And that wasn’t all.
"Impossible!"
Negative energy erupted from the crystal, exploding into a massive sphere of light.
I smiled at the screaming principal and raised my middle finger.
BOOM!
The entire area was swallowed by the explosion.
Magi explosion. After being tormented by three Witches, I had grown intimately familiar with the stuff. Maybe even before the torment began.
I couldn’t control the magi inside my own body, but when this much of someone else’s was concentrated in one place…
It might as well be my own energy.
The acrid smoke slowly thinned. My vision brightened, revealing the surroundings.
Whoa. Everything’s gone.
The magi explosion had obliterated everything except the spot where I stood. Irena had thrown the defense artifact in time and survived, but the shock had knocked her unconscious. As for our dear principal…
"Cough… This can’t be… How is this possible…!"
Only his upper body remained. He was coughing up blood in violent spurts.
I walked over with a mocking grin.
He suddenly switched to polite speech. The principal’s eyes slowly closed as he continued vomiting blood.
He was dead. I had prepared myself to fight a boss, but he went down way too easily.
A massive amount of magi really is fatal to humans.
I shrugged and took the Ring of Origin from his finger. Its color reminded me of stars scattered across the night sky. Just looking at it made my lips curl upward.
All that suffering was worth it.
I was about to leave when a crystal lying on the ground caught my eye. The explosion must have destroyed all the straws. The orb was now filled to the brim with magi.
A crystal orb packed with magi…
A decent plan suddenly flashed through my mind. I forced my smirk down and slipped the orb into my pocket. My arsenal of trump cards had just gained one more. And it was the strongest one yet.
I returned the defense artifact to the cabinet where it belonged and headed toward the professors. The situation there was still unfolding. The Demon Sect’s assault had been brutal—the defensive formation was broken, and several professors and students lay collapsed and bleeding. The silver lining was that the students who had been drained were starting to stir. They weren’t fully conscious yet, but it was something.
While I scanned the area, a shout erupted from one side.
More Demon Sect trash. I walked closer and Lee Seol spotted me. She rushed over in a panic.
"Yeah, I’m fine. But what’s the current situation…"
As I drew closer, the scene became clear. A dozen Demon Sect members facing off against the professors. Two female students held hostage in their arms.
One of them was someone I knew.
Choi Ahyeon.
She still looked mentally hazy, unable to control her own body. The cultists pressed a blade to her throat while slowly backing away.
They had lost their minds. With their boss dead, they couldn’t think straight. The distance between us kept growing. Still, the professors didn’t look like they planned to pursue. They weren’t in any condition to fight either. After taking heavy losses, they probably wanted to regroup first.
If the hostages had been Han Yuri or Lee Seol, they would have charged in with fire in their eyes.
But Choi Ahyeon was at the very bottom of the rankings. She was a disposable card. She must have sensed it. Tears welled up in her eyes. As if she couldn’t believe what was happening, she cried without making a sound.
Our eyes met. Her pupils widened. Then she gave me a small, trembling smile. It was the same smile she had shown me the first time we met in the plaza. Even with a knife at her throat, it said don’t worry. At her forced smile, I could only return a bitter one.
It’s the complete opposite.
The relationships from the first round and the second round had diverged so sharply. I thought to myself that regressing had been the right choice.
And then—
I closed my eyes and placed my hand over my left chest. My poor body.
Just hold on a little longer.
Equivalent Exchange
Consuming 40% pain threshold to strengthen the body!
Thunder roared inside my ears.