DXCVI (4)
The nun who pulled back the bolt scraped away at the chamber of the rusted rifle with her telekinesis, practically grinding it clean. Shell fragments ejected violently. Her handling of dud rounds with ignition incantations was one thing, but pinpointing spatial coordinates in unseen spots to project mana with such precision was a feat no natural awakener could pull off.
But without x-ray vision, the nun couldn't spot the fragment jamming the barrel. She slammed the bolt forward, chambered a round, and leveled the muzzle at me with eyes red-rimmed. The outcome was inevitable.
Crack! “Aaaagh!”
Shattered metal shards tore across a quarter of the nun's face. A standard assault rifle might've been fine, but the internal explosion from a hunting automatic twice as powerful shredded the frame and ruptured the shooter's eyes. The flared upper receiver, cracked bolt carrier group, and blown-out magazine said it all.
Her right eye gone, the nun writhed in agony, rolling on the ground. Between her hands clutching her face, thin, transparent vitreous humor mixed with blood and streamed down like tears.
By the time she gasped and propped herself up, I was already at point-blank range, muzzle trained on her.
“Don't move.”
I issued the warning calmly, suppressing my ragged breath. Her remaining eye fixed on me in terror. Her face drained of color, tinged blue. Teeth chattering. Her body temperature was low enough to drop a normal person.
Is this even a survivable injury?
The boundary where our mutually suppressing mana fields canceled each other out skewed closer to her side. With similar field radii deployed, that was blatantly off. It meant her circuit density—or processing power—couldn't match mine.
Was the owner's condition affecting her circuit? Body and mind both.
I didn't demand she shrink her field. Under the forest's influence, just running Life seemed to tax her; any more bleeding unchecked, and there'd be no interrogation at all.
“Grace, right?”
Hearing the witch's name triggered a violent spasm. “Don't call me by that nameeeee!”
She burst into wretched sobs. Her field destabilized, unmoored. Life flickered precariously.
“No! I hate it! I don't want any more! Please let me go... I'll beg you, Mother... Our family can lose just one like me, right...?”
...Mother? Our family? She sounded like she'd hit the edge of delirium.
Ignoring my gun, the fake nun wailed insanely and scrambled to flee on all fours. Squinting, I crushed her ankle underfoot and kicked her back to send her sprawling. I pinned her thrashing torso with my knee and smashed her bloodied face into the dirt with the muzzle against her nape.
Sobbing as she ground her face into the earth, she twisted her head, rolling her eyes sideways to glare up at me. Then, from pale lips, a chilling whisper.
“Better to die like this than go back.”
Huh! Her suppressed field ballooned. Mana essence flooded in, her body arching with unnatural force.
“Guhk, kkh, grraaaaghh!”
Eyes rolled back white, she vomited blood.
“Damn it...!”
I reflexively squeezed the trigger but hurled the gun aside instead, ripping open her nun's habit in a frenzy. It had to be at least an artifact, but stopping her death mattered more. The fabric tore, revealing the opaque mana circuit beneath.
Mana rampaging, rupturing circuits everywhere. I tried forcing it to halt, but even against Kyung-tae or Suyeon it'd be tough—against her, near impossible.
Her body thrashed wildly under my weight, then went limp as a corpse moments later. Blood drooling from her mouth. Magical suicide, feasible only for mages past a certain circuit mastery.
The forest's mana, probing in search patterns at the alien field's emergence, settled into gentle ripples as her field vanished with her death. If I'd interfered longer, we'd have been defenseless against the woods. A detail oversight in the heat.
“...”
Damn it all. I rubbed my dry face, swallowing frustration and emptiness. Unstoppable, no matter what. What the hell was this?
Steadying my whirling thoughts, I knelt by the cooling corpse. My partial field kept it from the forest's pull.
Her back, white as winter poplar bark, bore a stark inverted cross and inverted heptagram tattoo. Encircling 72 divine glyphs in reverse, the heptagram framed twelve radiating layers of angelic wings with a single Roman numeral: ⅮⅩⅭⅥ.
596 in Arabic numerals. I rolled the number in my mind. A hypothesis hit.
Bloodline decoy...?
She'd mentioned mother and family before dying. If "mother" meant Grace, and "family" her offspring?
No blood child could resemble Grace this closely. But if that mad witch perfected Life to forge fetuses from her own genes, she'd birth clones in body if not soul. Perfect biological deception.
If true, 596 was likely a production number to confuse pursuers. Military routinely inflates unit or ship IDs for misdirection. A witch long at war with the Round Table would know the trick.
But issues remained. Parthenogenesis from her biomass? Feasible with my Life knowledge. But a fully mature clone not two years post-mana return? Beyond reason.
She could've accelerated growth, inverting anti-aging. Not hard. But that explained body only. Mental maturity was another realm.
This woman wasn't a giant infant. Despite end-stage breakdown, she'd shown mature mage mindset and combat experience chasing us here.
Mage knowledge aside, battle-honed instincts demand years. Her circuit outclassed natural awakeners, though short of grand magus. No environment for etching precise circuits in others now.
Even I, with Golden Age's Eye and ritual sword, hit limits...
So, she must be Grace's pre-mana child. Soul-ground mana extraction possible even in depletion; dozens of live sacrifices yield plenty for parthenogenesis.
But accelerating gestation demands separate mana. No pregnant fugitive welcomes the burden. To minimize, she'd shorten via proportional birth sacrifices.
For DXCVI to mean anything as decoy—for dozens—she'd sacrificed a small city. Possible without notice? Heptagonal Knights' reach that vast? Not artificial wombs, unfinished tech...
Or DXCVI meant something else.
I checked her possessions. Mana-imbued: rosary and compass only. Otherwise, rifle sling with mag pouch belt, cracked wristwatch, thigh holster, shotgun shell belt.
Clack. The plain rosary held thermalization code. Light/heat magic differing from ignition. Short range, high circuit load, mana-hungry. I'd tested whip-form in dreams, whipping master's remains.
This aided the inefficient incantation: external processor easing circuit strain, speeding construct. Silver cross encased a tiny bone shard. Not quite antiquity, but top-tier artifact. Explained her mid-chase use.
The wooden-cased gold-disc compass with needle precisely gauged mana flow. Multi-layer dials with fine scales showed intensity/direction by distance independently. Needle tracked strongest mana in range. Useless for me, perfect for subordinates breaching hazards solo. Worth reverse-engineering, priorities pending.
The shredded habit too damaged for codes. Pity; leaving her would've yielded intact gear.
Shoving loot into my pack, I took fingerprints, snipped hair, enhanced smell, and sniffed deep by the corpse. Quality intel in the death scent.
Long time in this forest.
Foggy poplar reek soaked deep into skin. No deodorant or soap. Hair, dank with sweat, damp, oil, smoked of burning wood. Lighting live poplars in the giant's gut? Suicide. Dead wood campfire implied hidden spot ignoring light/smoke.
Human stench of water-only washes: solid tracking lead. I decided to hunt this Grace lookalike's forest traces.