Chapter 1083 – #257_Libra’s Witch(5) – DeepL
#1077
1.
Xiu knows.
The most dangerous moment in a life-or-death battle.
It’s not the agonizing blow of a hammer to every bone.
It’s not when your head turns white as the tip of a hot awl pierces every nerve.
It’s not when the blood rushes up your throat and coughs out your guts.
“Ah….”
It’s now.
The moment when all pain and suffering fades away as if your brain is marinated in morphine.
It’s the moment when you feel a cold, hard sensation from your extremities, and then it’s gone.
The mental power drained by the massive computations in Hexenacht.
Spiritual endurance used up in the battle with Herja.
The temporary repairs to my ragged body from the fight had reached their limit.
Without these two things, I would have been able to fight much better than I did.
The composition and flow of the battle would have been different.
“Don’t you see? There’s a huge gap between our levels, and we can’t fight now.”
“So what? It’s a routine for me.”
Lydia, too, sensed that victory was at hand.
Her confidence in her superiority was unshakable until the moment he pulled out the lotus and placed his hand on it.
The only variable in this battle that could threaten her was Xin Xiu’s ceremonial red branch.
Lydia tricked him into blocking the Mystic Thane with the Red Branch and crushed it.
She had overcome Mystiltein’s weaknesses of absolute destructive power and penetrating powers, as well as its slow projection speed.
Lydia now has access to instant death protection with her special coin, while Xin Xiu has already been pushed to her limits.
If a witch of Lydia’s caliber can focus on defense and force a war of attrition, Xin Xiu, who has lost her main artifact, has no way of breaking through.
All Lydia has to do now is watch Xin Xiu slowly wither and die, and claim victory.
The gamble is over.
All she has to do is sit back and wait for her opponent to stab her.
“Bloom.”
Xiu used the Kite and Soul extracted from the lotus flower to power her.
Only about half of it was needed.
What was needed was the lotus’s inherent ‘revitalization through distortion’.
In fact, even Xiu isn’t sure it’s possible.
It’s more of a haphazard arrangement of overflowing power, like an inspired composer scribbling notes on a piece of scrap paper.
As a witch, this was Xin Xiu’s starting point, the most beautiful form she had in her mind.
Using the lotus as a starting point, the golden circle of magic stretched upward and upward in a fractal shape.
The circle resembled a single tree, so large that only from a great distance could the eye take in its entirety.
Lydia’s eyes could not fully comprehend its true nature.
But she can pick out the keywords within it.
Birth, growth, death, rebirth.
From these keywords and her observation of Xin Xiu, who was beginning to come to life, she guessed that it was probably a magic to repair the body.
But one thing is certain.
That tree, with its gnarled branches, is unfinished.
As magic, it is not complete.
Whether it lacked the math, the power, or Lydia’s poisonous insects still flying everywhere, it remained unfinished.
It was an ostentatious gesture.
This was Xinxiu’s last act.
“That’s it?”
Then there is nothing more to be wary of.
“Immutabilis.”
Lydia spent one of her special coins.
The glow of golden magic permeates Lydia’s body.
Just as the noble value of gold has remained constant throughout the ages, Lydia’s body is immortalized once more.
The Immortabilis is immune to instant death, and cannot be cut open without a red branch.
Lydia’s writing pattern is complete.
Xinxiu begins to fly.
It’s a fairly short distance, but it’s no problem.
He’s just drawn a magic circle and repaired his body a bit.
In his hand is not a red branch, but a plain black spear woven from shadows.
“Ohhhh——!!!!!!”
The final oxidation is indeed spectacular.
His shouting becomes more intense, and his charge is even more violent than at the beginning of the battle.
The vast expanse of “wood” is giving new life to Xin Xiu, who was turning into a return letter.
-Quang! Quang! Boom!
Unleash the power, create the waves, and blast off at pure speed.
Xiu’s spear, having overcome all resistance, is aimed at Lydia.
Now it’s time to give up one life and claim victory.
“……!”
Lydia felt the hairs on her body stand on end.
An uneasy feeling that came out of nowhere, even though all the indicators pointed to victory.
Lydia credited the instinctive sense of danger, which might be nothing more than a paranoid delusion.
“Prove it…!”
With her Mystiltein, Lydia blocked Xinxiu’s path and engulfed herself in flames.
But Xinxiu, now at full speed, can’t keep up with the Mystiltein’s sluggish movements.
He simply tilts his head to the side, dodges the Mystiltein, and slashes with his spear before the flames of destruction can fully engulf Lydia.
-Tongue
A creepy sound.
A throbbing sensation that could be described as hot rather than painful.
The combination of Lydia’s desperate scrambling to avoid the flames and Xiu’s incomplete spear strike narrowly missed her.
“Fuck….”
Lydia looked down at my side.
Immaculate skin cracked, peritoneum torn open, guts dripping with blood.
“Curb…!”
Crimson gore spurted from Lydia’s mouth as she clutched her side.
Horrified gazes turned to Xin Xiu, who was spinning the Whirligig Spear to shake off the blood.
“You, you….”
I’ve been slashed, cut, broken, and crushed countless times before coming here.
Magic is an all-encompassing art that requires the utilization of all the skills of the practitioner.
The loss of even one of the five senses would drastically reduce its power, so Lydia had endured the pain with a single cigarette.
If it was just a small tear in her side, it would be a laughable pain.
But this was no mere wound.
It’s a dangerous injury that seems to tear at the very fabric of your spirit.
An attack that can nullify a special coin’s Immutability just by touching it, and that can’t be healed by Libra.
There’s only one way to do it.
“…This bastard….”
The black spear Xin Xiu was holding transformed.
As if shedding a piece of black shadow, the black spear took on the form of a red branch.
It didn’t just take form.
From the prayer of the distortion field flowing around it to the performance of the effect.
This is the unmistakable original, not a cheap replica.
“Now that’s fair.”
Xinxiu smirked, revealing blood-stained teeth.
“What the fuck…. I’m the one that hurts more.”
Lydia responded with a twisted smile.
Lydia had obviously killed the Redbranches with Mistletoe.
If the form disappears, does the being disappear?
No, it doesn’t.
To Xiu, the Red Branch is just a tool.
If we understand the source, all objects in the real world are imperfect copies of an idealized form.
The twists and distortions are the source of the red branch.
If you understand the higher dimensional source, even if it disappears, you can always recreate it.
Just like this.
“Bloom.”
A huge, incomplete magic circle glowed along with the spear.
Red branches bloomed from the tips of the branches of the golden tree, which looked a bit like Xiu’s spear.
One, two, three.
One hundred, one thousand, ten thousand.
The red branches multiply exponentially, and soon the entire tree is painted red.
Not all of the red branches materialize as perfectly as the ones in Xiu’s hand.
They were still unfinished objects that would vanish the moment they left the magic circle.
But their purpose was clear.
-Woof!
Just as the Red Knight had resonated with the White Spear, a replica of the Red Branch, the resonance began.
With that, the worthless poisonous moths hovering in the air burst into flames.
The flames of destruction that had been raging across the battlefield slowed to a crawl.
The splendor of the golden garden was distorted.
The essence of the distortion that resonated through the tens of thousands of red branches was concentrated in the spear in Xiu’s hand.
This is the Red Tree.
The final trick, the last straw, the last move, the last thing Xin Xiu needed.
-Wu Wu Wu!!!!
The distortion field is amplified to the point where the image of Xin Xiu with the spear is distorted.
He was bathed in a reddish glow, as if the world had come to an end.
Looking at the sky, Lydia took out the remaining special coins.
“Yes, this is the least I can do for my most feared enemy.”
A single word flashes through my mind as I look at the scene in front of me and feel the pain of a wound that never seems to heal.
Defeat.
Two words that don’t even sound familiar.
Lydia braced herself against the terrible pain.
Grabbing the Mystiltein, she summons the strongest magic she can muster.
“Mors.”
The word means death.
Lydia unleashes the full power of Mystiltein’s Conceptual Killing, firing in all directions.
But you’ve already guessed.
It’s not enough.
It is absolutely impossible to stop Cynthius with a single Morse.
The High Witch’s intellect and public battle experience have already tipped the scales in her favor.
-Bang
The last of the gold coins scattered from Lydia’s hand.
The most treasured, the most powerful of the special coins.
A gold coin used to sacrifice a 22nd ranking witch.
But Lydia can only use one special coin for a single spell.
In other words, it’s an investment far beyond its marginal utility, and in a sense, a runaway.
Lydia felt the magic begin to rampage through her body, destroying it.
The magic circuits that had been severed in the side of my body had magically short-circuited.
The idea that had begun to twist and turn in an unreasonable way, now began to ravage Lydia’s body in earnest.
Ouch.
Was Xin Xiu fighting through this kind of pain?
I can’t help but applaud him in awe.
A moment of life and death.
Lydia pushes forward in a trance, her mind blurred by the pulsing, self-destructive magic.
Finally, she reaches a massive barrier.
A barrier that has given countless witches the gift of suicide in the name of succession.
A wall called Hierarchy that the unchosen cannot overcome, even with their whole lives.
A wall that even Lydia had turned away from in frustration countless times.
It crumbles with a thunderous crash.
Thus, this magic is something Lydia hoped to reach one day, something that could only be realized in theory.
“Mortalis.”
This means mortal.
No living thing, no object, not even the great stars and universe, can escape this mortality.
An absolute sentence beyond the concept of death.
We embody it here.
——!!!!!
The inescapable and unstoppable sentence of mortality spread out like a bright beam of light.
Everything that stood between Lydia and Xiu began to dissipate-objects, magic, invisible atoms and particles.
Lydia laughed soundlessly.
A smile on her lips, ecstasy bursting from her brain.
In the distance, she sees Xinxiu.
The sight of him running for his life, risking everything for a single spear, is as glorious as anything Lydia has ever wanted to hold in her hands.
The moment when Xinxiu meets the fan-shaped sorting of light that spreads out.
Like a pair of mending scissors cutting through a round piece of fabric, the fan silently splits.
Xinxiu approaches Lydia, denying the mortality that cannot be transcended.
“How romantic.”
Reaching the center of the fan and unable to get any closer, Xinxiu throws the red branches with all his might.
His eyes are fixed firmly on Lydia.
It’s quiet.
Perhaps it’s because the medium to transmit the sound of his scribblings is gone.
The time line stretched strangely.
Lydia thought as she watched the spear fly lazily, soundlessly, toward her.
A life of desire and triumph.
She’d told herself endlessly.
If one day I lose the gamble, I won’t regret it.
A loser is a loser is a loser.
I won’t wallow in self-pity and regret, dwelling on the ugly end of my life.
Countless scenes flashed by like a lantern.
Her succession as an apprentice witch, her leap through the hierarchy with a brilliance unlike her master’s, who was a third-rate accomplishment, her war with Clipport, her rise to the top of Solidus, her rise to power after Hexenacht was founded.
Lydia didn’t regret any of it, and she didn’t look back.
Except for one scene that lingered in the back of her mind.
The stepdaughters of the House of Angels.
Charlotte, Isabella, Patricia, Mitch, Tanya, Lepe, Maria.
The apprentice witches who had run up to Lydia like puppies.
“Maybe I should have given you more kisses then….”
Lydia’s body, floating in bitter laughter, scattered like leaves out of season.
