City of Witches Chapter 8

"Something interesting happened."

A cold sweat trickled down his spine.

The suspicious smile plastered on Odil's tiny, doll-like face.

At first glance, Odil appeared to be an innocent, immature girl, but regardless, her essence was that of a Witch.

Odil and Odette always addressed Siwoo with honorifics, calling him 'Assistant-nim'.

It wasn't out of respect for Siwoo, nor was it because they treated him as a person.

It was simply because Amelia had introduced him as her assistant in class.

Therefore, outside the Academy, in places not during class, Siwoo was nothing more than a slave.

That thought was fully reflected in Odil's attitude and tone of voice.

Odil, who already had an unpredictable vector, had become even more dangerous.

"Assistant-nim, show me what you bought."

A slave purchasing Magic Artifacts from a magical tool shop.

Even a fool would sense something suspicious about this situation.

What would happen if it was discovered he could use Magic?

If it ended with just confiscating all the magic documents he had been researching and recording so far, he'd be lucky.

If word got out that a lowly slave had used Magic, permitted only to Witches, he could be stripped of his city slave status and become a private slave.

Of course, this was only Siwoo's speculation.

Feeling as if a blade was pressed against his throat, he handed over the bundle of battle magic paper with trembling hands.

"Battle magic paper?"

Odil flipped through the papers, fluttering them like she was counting a stack of bills.

He pondered what to say, how to smooth over this situation.

Should he sell out Amelia's name, saying it was her errand? Should he lie and say he bought it without knowing it was a magic item?

"Shopkeeper, isn't this a bit much?"

The person Odil lightly addressed after skimming through the papers was unexpectedly the shop owner.

Siwoo glanced over.

The shopkeeper, who had been looking at the ground and fidgeting with his glasses nervously, hurriedly raised his head.

"W-what do you mean?"

"Playing dumb."

Turning her body back to Siwoo, Odil fluttered the battle magic paper like a fan and asked.

"Assistant-nim, how much did you say you bought these for?"

"12 pennies, so 1 shilling for 3 sheets, and I've bought 2 so far."

Odil gave a cheeky smile.

Her exposed white teeth sparkled under the oil lamp light from the ceiling.

"This cheap stuff, 3 sheets for a silver coin?"

"Huh?"

"Even if the other party is a slave, you shouldn't rip them off this blatantly."

Siwoo looked at the shopkeeper in surprise.

Only now did he see it.

As the owner of a magical tool shop, he must have met Witches frequently.

Sweating like a waterfall just from meeting a Witch was unnatural in some way.

"Assistant-nim, haven't you lived your life too naively? When trading at a shop, you should check the condition of the goods and the market price."

"W-witch-nim, it's a misunderstanding. Here's the quality certificate received from 'Gemernai & Co.'..."

"No no, there's no need to see that."

Odil took out one sheet of battle magic paper and rubbed it briskly between her thumb and forefinger.

The thin sheets that had been stuck together as one split into three layers.

Between the two split sheets was a silver foil so thin the other side was visible.

Not aluminum or the like, but very, very thin pure silver refined through alchemy.

"Look at this! The condition of the silver foil is a complete mess, isn't it? This causes severe noise generation, wasting strokes for stabilization when drawing the Magic Circle."

Odil crumpled the creased paper.

"Not only selling defective goods like this for money, but 3 sheets for a silver coin? You look like a nice person, but you have a very, very nasty disposition."

Siwoo felt a belated sense of betrayal and glared at the shopkeeper.

He had been moved by the attitude of being treated as a customer despite being a slave.

He never expected to be stabbed in the back like this.

"Shall I take a look at that quality certificate? If you're really selling defective goods like this, I'll have to hold the managers at our paper mill accountable."

"Our paper mill...?"

The shopkeeper opened his mouth as if in shock, then looked at Odil with wide eyes.

"Y-you don't mean..."

"Yes, I'm that Gemernai."

'Gemernai & Co.' is a magical tool enterprise owned by one of the only seven 'Countesses' in Gehenna.

In other words, it meant the Witch before his eyes was part of Gehenna's highest decision-making body, the 'Tree of Sephirot'.

More precisely, she was the Apprentice Witch of that Countess.

"In transactions, even if the one being taken advantage of is a fool, if you're going to do it, you should do it thoroughly so you don't get caught."

"I... I have committed a mortal sin..."

The shopkeeper prostrated himself on the floor, begging for forgiveness, but Odil didn't even look down at him, just fiddled with her fingernails.

"I was blinded by momentary greed and committed a grave mistake...!"

"Where did you get those from?"

"I asked a friend named Dick at the paper mill to slip me some items headed for the scrap yard. Really, really, I won't do this again..."

The sight of the shopkeeper instantly rattling off his friend's name and begging for forgiveness was unsightly and disgraceful.

Right.

As if his very life was on the line.

"Please, please spare me...!"

An Incantation flowed from Odil's mouth, not batting an eyelash at the pitiful plea.

"Sing."

A lively voice filled the magical tool shop along with a massive Wavelength.

Even an Apprentice Witch who hadn't inherited even 10% of the Brand was still a Witch.

The Wave of Magical Power surged fiercely enough to make the hairs from his toes to the crown of his head stand on end.

It was Magic.

"The shopkeeper sold magical tools to a slave without permission. Moreover, he procured defective goods and even forged the certificate? It's an action that could greatly damage our company's trust. Do you think 'Odile Gemernai' would forgive that?"

"Ghk... ghhhk..."

The shopkeeper suddenly grabbed his throat and collapsed forward.

He began to flail, gasping for air, foaming at the mouth, and writhing in agony.

Siwoo reflexively gauged the flow and rules of the magic power.

The Magic Odil was currently deploying was an applied alchemy technique utilizing five elements and barrier magic.

A barrier based on the runic language, dominating space, was invisibly deployed.

The range was the wooden floor where the shopkeeper was rolling in pain.

Odil was making the internal space blocked by the barrier hypoxic.

So no matter how hard he tried to breathe, he was gradually suffocating.

"Odil-nim!"

"Don't interfere."

Siwoo tried to stop Odil.What returned was the cold, arrogant voice of the Witch.

The plea of a mere slave could not quell Odil's anger.

"You think I'd quietly let go of a swindler who nearly ruined our company's credibility?"

If this continued, he would die.

A person was about to die right before his eyes.

Siwoo closed his eyes for a moment and hesitated.

Strictly speaking, Siwoo didn't need to intervene.

The shopkeeper was just a swindler who knew Siwoo's circumstances and tried to exploit him.

He was merely receiving a fitting punishment.

But was it truly right to kill someone over something like this?

"...No way."

"What are you doing?"

Odil looked puzzled as Siwoo suddenly grabbed a bottle of Magical Power from the shelf.

"Bloom!"

After pouring the Magical Power generously onto his palm, he began to operate it, converting all that magic power into plasma at once.

-Whoosh!

The explosively surging magic power, whipping through his bangs, instantly swirled violently inside his body.

Siwoo shaped it into countless fine strokes.

Though each varied slightly in length and thickness, their purpose was uniform.

An interference device to halt the operation of a deployed Magic Circle.

Commonly known as a 'Dispel Pin'.

"You won't be able to stop it with that."

However, Odil's reaction to the Dispel Pin was indifferent.

It was interesting to see a slave perform a trick, but she didn't seem to take it seriously.

Naturally.

The Dispel Pin itself is a simple Magic, basic enough to be in the first chapter of any foundational magic textbook.

It's merely a spike of magic power that doesn't require complex formulas or calculations.

But successfully performing a dispel using that pin is an entirely different matter.

To dispel, one must fully understand and decipher every stroke of magic power and the meaning of the characters used on the Magic Circle.

And then, one must insert the pins in the exact places, in the precise correct order, to block the magic power.

It was his first time actually attempting a dispel, but fortunately, the formula Odil deployed wasn't that complex.

He drove two pins into the triangular protrusion located at the far right edge.

First, the invisibility attribute Odil had applied was released, revealing the shape of the barrier.

"What...?"

Unfazed by Odil's bewilderment, Siwoo didn't stop.

The next target was the stabilization device located at the vertices of the triangle inscribed within the circle.

It was a kind of firewall that normalized the barrier when it was interfered with by external magic power.

If he interfered with the barrier without removing this, the pins would vanish instantly due to the barrier's homeostasis.

"Kgh!"

A splitting headache throbbed, but Siwoo continued, waving his hands like a conductor, manipulating the pins.

As the pins were driven in one by one, the large circle surrounding the barrier shattered like glass and scattered into the air.

The final target was the pillar, which could be called the core of the barrier.

He drove twelve pins into the pillar supporting the barrier's ceiling, completely halting its operation.

"Done!"

He succeeded in releasing the barrier before the temporarily halted stabilization device reactivated.

"Huff... huff... Thank you, thank you..."

The shopkeeper, his breath returning, kissed Odil's shoe, expressing his gratitude for surviving with a flurry of bows.

But Odil paid him no attention whatsoever.

Her eyes were wide open, piercingly fixed only on Siwoo.

The magic he had studied all this time wasn't for nothing.

He had dispelled the barrier of Odil, an Apprentice Witch to a high-ranking Witch, entirely by his own power.

A sense of accomplishment blooming amidst his ragged breath sent an electric tingle through his heart.

"Hoh..."

And that sense of accomplishment vanished like a bubble the moment he noticed the look in Odil's eyes.

Because a gaze filled with an intimidatingly excessive curiosity was poking incessantly at his chest.

Ah, whatever.

Siwoo knelt before Odil, just like the shopkeeper.

"I apologize, a lowly being such as myself, for daring to interfere with the great Witch's Magic! But I simply couldn't bear to watch the Magic I love be used to kill someone!"

Considering that Witches were fanatical about magic, he subtly slipped this into his excuse.

Odil looked down at Siwoo quietly.

"Assistant, first, there's one thing I need to correct. I really didn't intend to kill him."

"Huh?"

"I only meant to give him a stinging lesson. A lesson that if you mess with a Witch's belongings, you could lose your head."

Then, did he intervene for nothing?

No.

Even so, how could he just stand by while someone died right in front of him?

Anyway, Odil was a highly curious Apprentice Witch, and she would have persistently questioned why Siwoo bought the battle magic paper.

"I thought Assistant was just a handsome slave, but it seems I was wrong?"

Odil walked over with light, almost floating steps, and helped Siwoo up.

Siwoo looked up at Odil with a bewildered expression.

"This is fun, fun, so fun. You mean you understood the structure of my barrier at a single glance?"

Otherwise, dispelling it would be impossible.

"I'm truly sorry for that..."

"No, no need to apologize. I just suddenly developed an immense fondness for you, Assistant."

Odil tapped the table with her fingertip, and vivid letters appeared, carved into the solid wood.

A serial number: 68.29.121.

That series of numbers was the number of a vault used in Gehenna, functioning like an account.

"Uncle, I expect all the silver coins you've swindled from my Assistant so far to be deposited into that vault."

"Yes, yes. Of course."

"I trust you'll also put in a generous amount for consolation and as a token of apology. I'll overlook a report to the city hall, so show some sincerity."

"Thank you! Thank you!"

Relief washed over the shopkeeper's face, not only for having his life spared but also for avoiding city hall sanctions.

Leaving behind the shopkeeper, who was bowing so deeply his head nearly touched the top of his feet, Siwoo and Odil exited to the first floor.

As soon as they stepped out, Odil, spinning around, asked.

"Assistant, are you free?"

Honestly, being with Odil was uncomfortable.

He didn't much like those violet eyes that seemed to try and see through all his thoughts, nor the always-scheming, sinister air about her.

"Well, I'm a bit busy today."

"Is that so? Then I guess I'll have no choice but to deliver some happy news to Professor Amelia. The fact that the Professor's assistant is actually a mage of tremendous talent."

"...I have plenty of time."

"That's more like it."

Only then did Odil smile with satisfaction.

Including this aspect, Siwoo disliked Witches.

A Word from the Author (Author's Note)

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