༺ The Price of a Loss (4) ༻
1.
Siwoo stood motionlessly in his room, staring at the tree he had drawn.
The tree was his own interpretation of Gehenna’s barrier magic, the same barrier that they used to interfere with dimension and boundaries.
“…”
He was immersed in his thoughts, endlessly calculating about magic.
No, that expression didn’t fit him well.
After all, he had always been thinking about magic and he never entertained anything else when he was conscious.
He placed his hand on the trunk of the tree.
Mana manifested in his palm and began to seep into the stem of the tree.
Generally, males couldn’t preserve mana, Siwoo wasn’t any different.
But, for the current Siwoo, that wasn’t a problem.
He only needed a little bit of mana.
That little bit of mana that was forcibly held onto by his magic circuit then was amplified by him.
Then, he did it again.
And again.
This technique was called ‘recurrent mana amplification.’
It was one of the known methods to maximize mana efficiency when drawing magical circles.
But, if this method were perfect, high-grade mana water wouldn’t be offered for sale at such an exorbitant price.
This method had two limitations.
Firstly, when the mana was amplified, while its quantity would increase, its purity would decrease in return.
Secondly, those impure mana could become highly volatile and disappear before it could affect the circuits.
Typically, just two rounds of amplifications already greatly reduced the mana effectiveness, this technique was rarely used except in specific situations.
However, this wasn’t the case with Siwoo.
His ability to ‘absorb’ mana from the outside and ‘refine’ it to make it his own, had always set himself apart from the other witches.
Now that 99% of his brain function had been redesigned solely for magic, the results were beyond words.
The amplified mana he produced maintained a nearly constant purity.
Now, the same mana was seeping into the tree, continuously trying to look for something.
This tree drawing was connected to Duchess Keter’s concealment barrier that surrounded the entire Gehenna.
What was Siwoo trying to look for was a hole that had pierced through the barrier.
A tiny hole that had been bothering him for quite a while now.
He didn’t have any special reason for doing it.
When he was observing the barrier to improve his abilities, that tiny hole gave him a sense of discomfort.
As long as that hole remained, the Duchess barrier couldn’t be considered as ‘perfect.’
And such ‘imperfection’ was intolerable to him.
For a barrier that should have been perfect, it somehow harbored a flaw in it.
And so, the reason why he had been persistently searching for that hole was nothing more than a physiological aversion, just like how a proper human being wouldn’t go to sleep with their shoes on.
Then, it happened.
He managed to identify the location of the flaw in the barrier.
After that, he didn’t hesitate to make his move.
He retrieved all the amplified mana and opened himself a ‘Gate.’
A golden circle began to slowly form under his feet.
In the undulating and surging waves of mana, he quickly traversed a long distance in an instant.
And there, he found the flaw that he had been searching for so desperately.
Something was forcefully tearing the barrier apart.
Since it was the first time he had seen this kind of magic, he stood still to observe it for a while.
‘Can I interpret it?’
‘Can I replicate it?’
‘Will it be a help for my advancement?’
“Just when I felt like I was going insane from anger, you came here.”
Then, suddenly, he detected fluctuations of mana that disrupted his focus.
For the first time, Siwoo registered the presence of a figure in front of him.
A woman, a naked one.
This woman was casting a hostile magic against him.
Only then did he notice her face.
He couldn’t precisely identify who she was.
From his eyeball to the optic nerves that connected to it, up to the brain that processed all the information coming from those nerves, they had been repurposed solely for magic.
With his eye, he could read the flow of mana, see through its laws, interpret through everything magically with just a glance. But, as a price for that ability, his ability to perceive other objects had regressed.
In his eye, Ea’s face looked twisted and distorted like kneaded clay, and even that was blurred by the remnants of numerous formulas and geometric patterns.
As he contemplated deeply, he realized something.
The other person’s magic pattern, which was a unique pattern akin to a fingerprint, was incredibly familiar to him.
His left eye, covered by an eyepatch, throbbed.
A crimson flame burst within his chest.
Discomfort, anger, annoyance.
All sorts of negative emotions, which had nothing to do with magic, filled his heart.
Then, he realized.
His priority above all else was to remove the entity in front of him.
2.
Ea didn’t waste any time.
The current situation was different from back when she toyed with the mischievous twins and the magic-wielding slave.
This time, she was angry and a suitable target for venting her anger was right in front of her eyes.
“Bloom.”
As Siwoo chanted his spell, shadows cloaked his body.
At this point, Ea furrowed her brows.
During their last confrontation, Siwoo had to consume expensive mana water, forcing him to use inefficient methods to fight.
Given the nature of him, someone without a brand, it was pretty much an unavoidable situation, but the sight of him doing that was quite comical.
But this time, he relied solely on his mana.
The shadows coiled around his body like serpents.
Forming an armor with a dark hue.
Unlike before, it lacked its luster.
But, Ea could still discern the differences.
Compared to before, this armor bore a refined elegance.
If the previous armor was a mere crude imitation, this one was the real deal.
The shadow formed a plated armor in such a perfect way that even if one were to take a look at it closely, they wouldn’t notice that it was created by shadows.
Seeing this, Ea stopped hesitating.
She didn’t know where he had learned such skills, but in the end, he was still just a man.
Ea had confidence that she could overpower him with ease, just like before.
“Rapid fire.”
-Clang, clang!
She decided to ignore whatever move Siwoo would make and aimed to tear off his limbs first.
‘I’ll torture him until he feels regret being born for thirty minutes first.’
Ten ribbons twisting their bodies in the air before shooting toward Siwoo simultaneously.
-Thwack!
In the blink of an eye, the ribbons rushed towards him and sent his body flying far away.
With a thunderous crash, he soared like a projectile and slammed into the rocky crevice, marking the end of his unexpected flight.
“What?!”
But, Ea was the one who was surprised by this outcome.
Seeing his enhanced armor, she had responded by immediately unleashing all her might on him.
Of course, compared to her peak, the power she just unleashed couldn’t even reach the tip of her toe. But still, she wanted to see how he’d try to block and retaliate against her. Instead, he just took the blow head-on with his body.
She didn’t want him to be knocked out in a single blow like this, as she wanted to watch him struggle.
While she stomped her feet with a worried expression, Siwoo, who had been sent flying and crashed onto the rocks, was staring at his body in a daze.
“…”
Her attack was too fast for him to identify.
He could feel his body trembling because of the impact it received.
Blood trickled down from the corner of his mouth.
However, the armor he wore remained unscathed even after receiving that heavy blow.
He tried to move his limbs, all of them moved without any problems.
His bones, tendons, muscles and magic circuits were all in perfect condition.
Then, he got to his feet,
The pile of rubbles, along with the dust sticking on top of his armor slid down, revealing the armor that looked as if it was brand new armor.
His gaze was fixed to Ea, who was standing a hundred meters away from him.
-Woosh!
Wings of shadows spread out and he rushed at Ea at a faster speed than her previous attack.
“Good! Don’t die so easily, okay?”
Ea muttered incomprehensible words to Siwoo as she unfolded her ribbon.
As the ribbons twisted and coiled, trying to accumulate elasticity, indicating that she was preparing another attack just like the previous one.
A shield appeared in Siwoo’s hand.
With the shield held up to cover half of his body, he made a resolute charge forward.
The ribbons flew towards him.
“What…?”
Seeing how he blocked ten ribbons at once made Ea widen her eyes in surprise.
Right before the collision, a radiant golden fractal light shimmered on his shield.
If this was just some kind of powerful magic he had prepared to take revenge on her, Ea wouldn’t be as surprised.
-Clang!
-Boom!
A thunderous noise, resembling that of an explosion, assaulted her ears.
All of her ribbons missed Siwoo completely. Instead, it hit random trees, rocks and some of them were even stuck into the ground.
This was when she realized that she wasn’t mistaken about what she witnessed.
The moment her ribbons touched his shield, she lost control over them.
Those ribbons were supposed to pierce through his shield, but they bounced off without delivering a single effective blow.
“Jamming…?”
What astonished her was that it wasn’t because of the shield deflecting her blow physically.
In the brief moment when the ribbons flew at supersonic speed and collided with his shield.
There was an interference from his spell, it made her lose control over her magic. This was a phenomenon called jamming.
Looking at Siwoo’s charge, Ea casted her astonishment aside.
She couldn’t let out such an exaggerated reaction mid-combat.
The execution of his jamming was astonishingly fast. It was at a speed beyond human’s capabilities.
But, that could be explained by him successfully analyzing the structure of her ‘Maiden’s Loom’ during their previous clash and preparing a countermeasure spell prior to this fight.
“You came all the way here believing in just that?”
‘Ridiculous. And naive.’
Ea’s ‘Maiden’s Loom’ was an artifact specialized in physical attacks and it was relatively easy to counter.
‘However, did he really think that I haven’t encountered something like this throughout the countless bloody battles I fought in?’
Ea spun her ribbons again.
She intertwined their threads of mana to create an entirely different structure and magical form.
While physically, they might look the same, magically they were completely different.
It was like rock-paper-scissors. Since Ea had known that Siwoo was preparing a ‘paper’ against her ‘rock’, she just needed to throw a ‘scissors.’
She was confident in her skills for interpreting magic and fighting compatibility mid-battle.
“Such tricks won’t work on me!”
The distance between them was only thirty meters.
Her newly woven ribbons locked onto Siwoo.
Even if he were to try to escape, the ribbons would follow him as long as he didn’t traverse beyond a kilometer in a blink of an eye.
“You made me a little surprised, but that’s it. I’ll show you the difference between our experiences!”
Siwoo glanced at the ribbon and threw aside his shield, which was practically his only means of defense, without hesitation.
Then, he lowered his head and crouched down.
A helmet manifested from behind the neck part of his armor, covering his head.
With arms clad in gauntlets, he raised them and changed his stance to a boxing stance before charging forward.
He didn’t choose to flee.
Nor did he look for a way to go around her attack and expose his back.
Hot air brushed past both his cheeks.
Golden magic circle emerged on the black armor that seemed to devour all of the lights surrounding it.
-Clang!
The same phenomenon occurred again.
Ea expected that he’d try the same thing again.
And so, she shaped her ribbon into scissors, sealing off his escape route.
-Bang!
And just like before, Siwoo managed to deflect her attacks once again. Ea could only look at the ribbons that had lost their way and went in the wrong direction with a bewildered gaze.
“Did you…? Predicted it…?”
‘Did he predict that I’d change my weaving pattern and attacking method? Then he prepared a new countermeasure for it? In that short period of time?’
Theoretically, it wasn’t impossible.
Even if she were to change her weaving pattern, essentially, it was the same ‘Maiden’s Loom.’
Also, if he had a perfect understanding of her Self-Essence Magic, it wouldn’t be impossible for him to do this.
But, still, even if it was theoretically possible, it didn’t mean Ea would just accept this outcome.
“Are you kidding me?! This is bullshit!”
Despite everything, she still took the wrong course of action.
In the first place, what she should have done shouldn’t be to look for the reason why her attack didn’t go through, but to distance herself from Siwoo and stop relying on her autonomous defense’s protective capabilities.
Though, the events unfolding in front of her were so unbelievable that even though he was an expert in reversing situations in battle, she still couldn’t accept this kind of outcome. Even if she knew that she made the wrong decision, she still couldn’t help it.
Siwoo’s gauntlet struck her soft abdomen with a resounding impact as she let out a gasp of surprise at the bewildering sight.
It pierced through her autonomous defense and sent her body flying.
“Kyaa!”
With a scream, her naked body rolled several times on the moss-covered ground before stopping.
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