City of Witches Chapter 61

A colossal spear.

Magic power compressed and accelerated to its extreme became a single line of sublime radiance.

An aurora intense enough to blind any onlooker tore through the void.

It was but an instant.

The homunculus instinctively extended its arm, along with its shadow.

It didn't feel like a deliberate defensive action.

It was more like a cat chasing a laser pointer out of curiosity. The meaninglessly outstretched arm turned to dust in the torrential flow of magic power.

Even if magic power itself possesses no offensive capability, at this level of density and compression rate, it was no different from a massive weapon.

The fingertips, boiling and disintegrating from the tips upward.

The spear of light dispelled the shadows like dawn sweeping away the darkness of night.

The deluge of magic power that engulfed the three crimson eyes rolling with curiosity.

Upon reaching the shadow, the monster's body, the extremity of its form, it incinerated everything and vanished.

Siwoo watched as the homunculus, swallowed by the silent explosion of light, evaporated without a trace.

Thump

With the feeling of having completed a marathon, he dropped to his knees on the grass.

"Ugh... Ugh...! Ugh...!"

The moment the taut string of tension that had barely sustained him loosened, nausea surged up along with a bitter taste.

He had done plenty of crazy things today, but the desperate measure Siwoo took to defeat the homunculus was the craziest of them all.

Not only did he absorb that highly pure magic power, but he also offered the magical circuits within his body as a single 'pathway'.

Had there been even the slightest miscalculation, his body would have exploded from the overloaded magic power, or he would have been permanently crippled.

Even now, having mostly succeeded, he felt like he was entering the precursor stage of Qi Deviation.

"I'm gonna die."

Siwoo rolled away from the vomit and lay flat on his back.

He felt the blood vessels throughout his body swelling and shrinking with each pulse.

A sense of exhaustion, burnout from overworking his brain even with mushroom doping, and a body creaking from the massive magic power that had rampaged and then subsided.

"Keuk... Kkukkukkeuk..."

Yet, Siwoo felt as if he had regressed to a middle schooler and laughed heartily.

How could he not feel good?

Until now, he had diligently studied magic alone, but he had no way to verify or prove his skill.

At least, not with such a spectacular, visible result.

It was like spending a lifetime beating up bots and wondering, 'Am I actually any good?' and then overwhelmingly carrying and winning every ranked match.

He had repelled a homunculus that one shouldn't even think of tackling unless they were a witch of the 15th Hierarchy, possessing Autonomous Defense.

That terrifying monster that even the Twins could barely manage to stop.

Then, from far away, the voices of the Twins grew closer.

"Assistaaaant!"

"Assistant! Assistant! Assistant!"

As he barely managed to sit up, he saw the Twins running towards him up the hill.

Odil, who came to a stop almost as if sliding, tightly hugged Siwoo in his seated position.

Odette, stroking his cheek with her palm, asked urgently.

"Are you okay? Are you hurt anywhere?"

"Assistant, how many fingers do you see? You're alright, right?"

Not to be outdone, Odette also clung to one of his arms and waved three fingers in front of Siwoo's face.

Siwoo chuckled and signaled that he was fine.

Simultaneously, the Twins let out a deep sigh of relief and then began hopping up and down excitedly.

Their cheeks flushed bright red, they seemed even more exhilarated than Siwoo.

"When I heard the plan, I just thought you were crazy. But Assistant, you're more awesomely crazy than I thought!"

"You defeated it! You really defeated that homunculus!"

Odette stomped her feet on the spot, unable to contain her excitement, and Odil kept patting Siwoo's head.

"Well done, well done, Assistant."

"I believed in you!"

They were squealing so noisily that even Siwoo, burning with a sense of achievement, began to calm down a bit.

Because the Twins were exuberantly celebrating on his behalf.

After a period of self-congratulation, Siwoo took the hands offered by each Twin and stood up.

"I thought I was going to die for a moment there, thanks to you, Assistant."

"If it weren't for you, Assistant, we'd all be in big trouble."

"It was only possible because Odette-nim and Odil-nim drew its attention."

"That's true."

"Right! A snipe shot while we were bait! Still, it's amazing!"

He didn't want to seem too boastful, so he tried to be modest, but the corners of his mouth wouldn't come down.

The three of them, with endless self-praise, moved their steps towards the clearing where the homunculus had vanished.

Perhaps because the flow of power was so intense, the area from which the magic spear had been launched looked as if it had been hit by an artillery shell, the ground upturned.

The reason they came back here, of course, was to check the spoils.

They had worked hard on the raid, so of course they had to take the rewards.

Siwoo and the Twins jumped down into the freshly made crater.

Inside, there was a single egg glowing with a faint black light.

Its size was roughly that of a chicken egg?

Though its shape and size were similar to an egg, its appearance was closer to a cat's eye gem.

Inside the egg, which seemed to be made of thin glass, a black shadow was trapped, constantly shifting and changing.

"Is this the legacy of that Witch of Creation?"

"Yes, it's 'Gnosis's Egg'."

"What's that?"

The three of them, crouched around the egg, spent a long while admiring the mysterious appearance of their spoils.

"There are various types of legacies that come from hunting homunculi. It could be an Artifact like my music box, a potion containing the essence of magic like Amelia-nim's Fragrance, or sometimes just a scrap of paper with a Magic Circle scribbled on it."

"What about Gnosis's Egg?"

"It's a type of memory storage device. Similar to the system of a 'Brand', you could say?"

"I heard it's a means to directly impart knowledge or enlightenment about a new magic."

Only then could Siwoo understand why some witches became so obsessed with hunting homunculi, even risking danger.

In short, wasn't this tiny egg a kind of skill book?

Beside him, Odil reached out and picked up the egg.

The Twins, having made eye contact, slowly nodded and concluded their brief consultation.

"Here, this is yours, Assistant."

"Is that really okay?"

He hadn't exactly not hoped for it, but it still wasn't an ordinary item of value.

The curiosity and obsession for new magic would surely be much stronger for the Twins, who were apprentice witches.

Moreover, even if Siwoo devised and executed the plan, the Twins had also risked their lives to draw the homunculus's attention.I never thought they'd hand it over so willingly without any conditions.

"I do feel a bit greedy too... but I think this should go to you, Assistant."

"I agree. If it weren't for you, Assistant, I'd still be trembling in fear."

"Thank you so much."

"Thank us? We're the ones who should be thanking you."

"That's right! You were incredibly cool, Assistant!"

Odette gave a thumbs-up with an affectionate look in her eyes and then placed the Gnosis's Egg into Siwoo's palm.

As the almost weightless egg rolled around on his hand, the shadow filling its interior rotated like galaxies in the universe.

"How do I do this?"

"They say a strong desire to accept the 'Gnosis' is enough."

The thirst for new knowledge is the innate instinct of a scholar.

Although Siwoo had been abducted just as his dreams were blossoming and castrated as a mathematician, he had instead poured that passion into the new discipline of Magic.

To the point where he felt deeply regretful that if he escaped Gehenna, he wouldn't be able to learn higher-level magic.

In that sense, this opportunity was an event he eagerly anticipated.

Siwoo swallowed hard and clenched the egg tightly.

Simultaneously, he felt his body being swallowed by darkness.

As his consciousness was sucked into a space where not even a floor existed, Siwoo tightly shut his eyes.

"Wh-what the..."

When he opened his eyes again, what existed was a dark, void space with no end in sight.

Siwoo's body was floating adrift in the very center of that space.

-Kugugugugung!

At the loud roar coming from behind, Siwoo turned his body to look at the source of the sound.

He had only thought he was floating weightlessly, but merely thinking caused his body to automatically change direction and move.

"Wow..."

What existed there was the golden light of wisdom, repelling the darkness of ignorance.

Even in a space where depth perception grew faint, a structure that showed no fading and asserted its presence was...

A Magic Circle composed of all sorts of Rune Characters, straight lines and curves, points and planes.

Each part of the Magic Circle, interlocked like intricate machinery, slowly rotated, producing a loud sound.

Even though it was his first time seeing it, he felt an intense sense of déjà vu.

Siwoo immediately recognized the identity of the massive structure that defied distance.

That was the large-scale Magic Circle he had researched and built over three years.

This space was a place where the accumulation of magical knowledge and wisdom he had explored and studied was visibly manifested.

Perhaps because Siwoo hadn't yet completed the magic, the structure wasn't in a finished form either.

The ends of the device stretching into darkness were obscured by a hazy gloom, and here and there, he saw gears spinning uselessly, unable to turn properly.

A shudder.

He had never imagined that the magic he was researching could inspire such awe.

It felt like his horizons were expanding.

It wasn't like being trapped in a forest and seeing only trees; it was like spreading wings, soaring up, and viewing the landscape from a macroscopic perspective, granting Siwoo another inspiration.

Now he could understand what parts were lacking, where he had taken a wrong turn in direction.

Confidence blossomed that he could revise it toward a higher realm.

The mystery didn't end there.

A large egg, about a quarter the size of Siwoo's Magic Circle, suddenly revealed itself.

Though the scale was different, its shape and form precisely matched the Gnosis's Egg he had held in his hand.

The shadow pulsating within it distinctly bloomed even within the same darkness, beginning to rise beyond the glass membrane.

"Ah..."

It was a strange sensation.

Like realizing something long forgotten.

New knowledge began to flow in without any resistance.

As the shadow undulating in the space constructed a new structure.

Perception expanded.

Thought deepened.

New,

subtle principles,

natural order,

laws,

truths that might have taken years to realize alone drilled into his brainstem.

This is the world as Witches see it.

As the Gnosis's Egg imparted knowledge to Siwoo, he, who originally had no Brand, was invited into a world where he couldn't have set foot.

Before long, the shadow that had erected another structure in Siwoo's universe melted away into the darkness as if having fulfilled its duty.

How the shadow spat out by the Homunculus could nullify magic.

What method allowed the maintenance of those countless Magic Circles individually without a proper magical power source.

What law allowed such tiny Magic Circles to flow like water without interfering with each other's composition.

Realization upon realization.

Before the shadow's structure perfectly took shape,

Siwoo felt his consciousness being sucked away again.

"Huh!"

It was just like when he entered this space.

It was as if he had merely blinked once.

His consciousness had returned to reality.

His body, which had been floating freely, resisted gravity, and his thoughts, which had been endlessly opening and expanding, accepted the impurities of his surroundings.

The faces of the Twins, their eyes sparkling as they looked at Siwoo, appeared right before his nose.

"......."

A new power had arisen.

New knowledge had arisen.

Siwoo murmured while looking at his own hand anew.

"Isn't it beautiful? The place you just saw, Assistant, is 'Ain (אין).' It's part of the unmanifested three realms, the world of '0' that ordinary human concepts cannot observe or judge."

The Twins seemed simply delighted to have shared the same world as Siwoo.

Their faces were similar to when they showed him Latifundium.

"Just because it can't be perceived doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Ain slumbers within the concepts of all who wield magic."

"No matter how I think about it, Assistant, it's such a waste you were born a man. If you had been born a descendant of a Witch and inherited a Brand, you would have made quite a name for yourself."

Only then could Siwoo understand why the Twins had passed on this golden opportunity.

They wanted to show him another world he hadn't known.

"Though it wasn't us who gave it, welcome to the true 'world of magic.'"

The Twins smiled brightly, showing pure congratulations without a hint of jealousy.

Author's Note (Author's Afterword)

Shin Siwoo has obtained the 'Law of Shadows'!

Shin Siwoo has obtained the 'Twins' Favor'!