Chapter 1081 – #257_Libra’s Witch(3) – DeepL
#1075
1.
There have been only two times that my unconscious has come to the surface since it was suppressed by Duke Ketter.
Once in a battle with the Witch of Desire, Bianca Bellilli.
Once during the Trial in the Kingdom of Nukelabi.
Each time, the gap between Xiu and the unconscious shrank.
She was even able to subdue him during the Trial, albeit in limited circumstances.
The Spirit Witch had warned me that there would be no next time, but at this rate, shouldn’t I be able to subdue him? It wasn’t strange to think that this would be enough to defeat him.
But then I realized how complacent I was.
Periwinkle’s gift is a four-leaf clover, having been transformed from a pink clover into a four-leaf clover after a series of twists and turns with his mother-in-law.
Xiu used the clover to enter a lyric state, deliberately awakening his unconscious by twisting the door.
His consciousness regurgitates through the cramped door.
Different egos, ideas, and perspectives that could not possibly be his unconscious mix.
At the same time, I felt the danger.
This guy is a monster.
Even though he’s grown so much, even though he’s overcome so much adversity, even though he’s trained so much, he feels like he’s going to be crushed by it.
“Let’s be gentle….”
Xiu and the unconscious Xin Xiu have different goals.
Xiu’s strongest ability is intuition, while the unconscious Xinxiu’s is math.
If you accept everything the unconscious has to offer, there’s no going back.
Use it only as much as you need, and only as much as it will help you in this battle.
When the unleashed unconscious has eroded a third of your consciousness, slam the door shut with all your might.
It is not its methodology that I need.
Only computational power.
“…….”
Lydia watched Xin Xiu in silence.
It wasn’t the good-heartedness of a villain waiting to be transformed.
It’s because he’s hiding his final move, and he needs all the attention he can get.
Variables were the number one thing Lydia wanted to keep out of the battle.
The strong have an aura about them.
Whether it’s the power of a witch’s magic field or the gravity of a prayer, there’s a certain way of being that only accumulated experience can determine.
The current Xin Xiu is ‘different’.
I don’t know if he’s on the same level as his most feared foes, but it’s clear that he’s no longer someone to be taken lightly.
“What can I do….”
Lydia was confident in her own strength.
The strongest of the 23rd rank, with the exception of the Pink Duke, who could not be described as anything other than out of specification.
The only 24th rank known to date, capable of holding the Duke of Erelim from the front and sagging.
A level where, with a bit of luck, she could even win.
That was Lydia’s own strength as she looked at it coldly.
-Woof!
A red circle spreads around the golden garden that Lydia summoned.
Since the golden garden itself is Lydia’s behind-the-scenes circle that holds the gold coins, Xin Xiu must be going through another layer of circles right now.
In other words, he’s creating a battlefield that can’t be exited until one of them dies, or until they both give up the fight.
In other words, the only time to leave is now.
Give up the captured Lerue, give up the tasty Xinxiu in front of you, and accept the loss of half your gold in exchange for safety.
Soon after the order is given, Las Werpanas, who are not all together, are called in to clean up the mess in Hexenacht and plan for the future.
It’s the safest bet.
Fighting, on the other hand, would probably mean risking her own life, and that was one of her least favorite things to do.
Gambling is the act of pledging risk for the sake of a fountain-full payoff.
It had nothing to do with the lowly Lydia Magnus.
“No, I can’t, I can’t.”
But his greed shows no signs of abating.
The binding is complete, and the two stand face to face.
“Peer.”
“Prove it.”
In a shower of scattered golden particles, the curtain rises on the end of a long feud.
2.
The poisonous moths fly in.
Not by the dozens or hundreds, but by the thousands and millions, the swarm flies toward a single individual.
The fluttering of even a single moth’s wings creates a stormy sound.
Lydia’s decisive weapon, the poisonous moth, can decide the outcome of a battle in a single encounter, but in this one, it was extraordinary.
-Crack, crack, crack!
With tens of thousands of poisonous insects flying through the air, Xin Xiu showed no sign of being defeated by her magic.
The armored Xinxiu circled around Lydia like a pine moth hunting for its prey, slicing through every poisonous moth in its path.
“Spectacular.”
Lydia is momentarily distracted by a swarm of moths scattering through the air.
-Whoosh!
Xin Xiu’s figure disappears.
The uncomfortable sensation of space warping behind her back as a swarm of poisonous moths lose their aim.
-Kwah!
“You have a lot of residuals, don’t you?”
“You too.”
Lydia, who had predicted from the close chase that Xin Xiu had the ability to close the distance in one fell swoop, effortlessly builds a wall of “flames of destruction” to block the blow.
Distortions and values.
Ideas and clash of ideas.
-Keying!!!
The flames, which seek to corrode and destroy all values, and the red branches, which emit a red concentrated ominous energy, clash in midair, pushing and shoving.
-Whirrrrrr!
At the same time, the ‘String of Contradictions’ stretched out like a spider’s web in the air, trying to wrap around Xiu, and Xiu’s ribbons in response tangled in the air like a thread.
So far, the engagement hasn’t been too intense, as it’s been an exploratory battle for Lydia and a time of coordination for Xiu.
It hadn’t even been ten minutes since she’d run up the stairs, jumped over the wall, and reached the 23rd ranked cultivation level.
The process of holding on to reason to avoid being eaten by the unconscious.
The triple whammy of trying to tie two disparate techtrees together.
A quadruple if you count the fact that you’ve managed to ‘warp’ your half-collapsed body into a fighting condition.
The sense of danger is palpable, as if you’re on a monster-tuned bike and you’ve never practiced before.
“It turns off time?”
Lydia picked up on that subtle point.
Xinxiu had done something, and in exchange for that something, he’d lost control of the power he’d gained.
So now was her chance.
-Snap, snap, snap.
The gold coins scattered with a clear clatter.
A pillar of fire rises from where the coins fell.
The flames burn like karmic fire, adamantly and arrogantly denying the existence of anything other than Lydia.
A law beyond the laws of the world and the order of nature.
A being that has thrown off its shackles and reached the point of transcendence.
He declares them insignificant and destroys them.
“Boom!”
The symbol system shook precariously just by being around the pillar of fire, not directly in contact with it.
It was fortunate that Xiu’s magic didn’t rely too heavily on symbols.
-Rrrrrr!
A narrowing circle of flames cut off their escape route.
Poisonous moths, which were naturally placed all over the battlefield to impede movement from the moment we saw Xiu’s spatial shifter.
The myriad strands of golden cords that are laid out in advance to block your only escape route.
A style of metallurgical dominance that reduces your opponent’s options one by one.
It’s like the tricky style Dorothy told me about.
But something else is bothering me.
A blunt dagger floating in the air above Lydia’s head.
It’s more like a stake, twirling in place with Xiu’s every move and pointing its tip at her.
I don’t know what effect it had.
Dorothy never did figure out what it was.
But the eerie aura at its end restrained her from acting rashly.
“…….”
From the looks of it, I don’t think I can handle Lydia in her current state.
I can’t help it.
Xiu pushes open the gate between unconsciousness and consciousness just a little more.
He now allows the erosion of the unconscious from three to five percent.
“Open.”
At that moment, as if it had been waiting, the Subconsciousness broke free of Xiu’s control and formed a new formula.
Weaving together the three magnetic spells you’ve learned, it imposes Xiu’s signature in a way you never expected.
The ingredient is Angel’s Ring.
Angelic Ring.
Angel Ring.
Not just three different spells, but the same magnetic spell three times.
-Kii-Yii-Yiing!!!!
The sound of the fiercely spinning rings blares like tinnitus, and your vision turns white with a pain that feels like a blood vessel is about to burst.
His entire body’s magic circuits are burning to the limit, and he barely manages to control it with a ‘distortion’.
As if that weren’t enough, a trickle of blood rises in my throat and trickles down the side of my mouth.
“What?”
Lydia’s panicked cry hadn’t even reached Xiu’s ears.
He’s just realizing it vividly.
Life is worth nothing to him.
He’s just a machine that would be satisfied if he could step onto a higher plane for a second.
He also realizes.
A violent talent that even a witch’s hardened spirit can’t handle.
How far her computational power, more like a curse, can go when combined with Xiu’s intuition.
“Bloom.”
The unconsciousness didn’t stop there.
Overclocked with three amplifications, the Angelic Ring was utilized.
This time, three amplifications in a row.
-Bam!
A burst of pain in every vein in my body.
I hear my molars crack as I grit my teeth against the pain.
All I can see through my blurred vision is….
An eruption of magic unlike anything I’ve ever seen.
An amount of magic that could not be released by bringing several people to Leroux explodes around Xiu’s body with an unreal purity never seen before.
-Kwagaguagagak!!!
The aftermath of pure, concentrated magic power is blocked by the Flames of Destruction.
A miracle made possible by the fact that the flames are faster at amplifying magic than at destroying it.
But such power is not something a human body can harbor.
It’s more like a venomous poison coursing through their veins.
Recovery through ‘distortion’ is a futile attempt to hold on to a body that is crumbling in real time.
No, I don’t know if I can call it recovery.
It’s more like a makeshift repair to a machine that’s been overclocked to death.
“There are degrees of insanity.”
Lydia watched in disbelief as her vaunted magic was thwarted by a mere ‘power blast’.
It’s easy to see that it’s suicidal, regardless of how she did it.
But at the same time, I realize.
Even if it was suicide, it’s not something that just anyone can do.
Xinxiu had the “chops” to do it, and he stood before Lydia as her most feared enemy.
“Interesting.”
Lydia laughed, even as she realized that this might be her last day.
Lydia hates gambling.
But she’s made it this far because she’s never lost when she’s sat down at a gambling table.
