novelraw Chapter 72 : Eden, the Garden (11)
Chapter 72 : Eden, the Garden (11)
Chapter 72: Eden, the Garden (11)
It was a deep, heavy silence.
After a long stare, the two witches turned their heads.
The Witch of the Sword, Bougainvillea, swept a displeased gaze over Nike and the surroundings.
“...Cunning thing. Did you toy with me?”
Bougainvillea ran a hand down her blade. She wanted to swing it right now and cut everything she saw to pieces.
It was a humiliation she hadn’t suffered in a long time.
The Witch of Motherhood, who’d been still, asked,
“What do you think you are doing. Why did you leave your spit on someone else’s prey?”
“...Mind your words, greedy one. I found the vessel first.”
“Sure. You shoved a fragment into his head, so of course you’d say that. You’re working hard for once, aren’t you?”
The Witch of Motherhood stood. The severed surfaces writhed, and her body and head found each other and joined.
Back to normal, she spoke sharply,
“But what can you do? I’m going to eat this vessel.”
“...Hmph. I don’t care about your gluttony. It only annoys me that your meddling throws off my plan.”
“Plan?”
Arms folded, the Witch of Motherhood asked back. The Witch of the Sword answered without fuss, as if it were nothing.
“Originally, I intended to kill the alley cat who first laid hands on the vessel.”
“The first one? Ah... you mean that annoying girl, Morgana?”
Bougainvillea nodded.
“The moment she touched the vessel… she should’ve died on my sword. But once she realized I’d made a move, it seems she hid herself.”
“She’s always been a sly one. A kid whose thoughts you can never read too.”
“That was the problem. If I can’t read her, I can’t trust her. A filthy thing laid hands on the vessel… The best course was to execute her now. She’s filthy to the core.”
“You could just storm the Order of the Silver Blades headquarters, you know?”
Bougainvillea sighed.
“You think she’d get caught that easily? Her true body must be elsewhere. That’s why I planned to sever her mind the instant she touched the vessel.”
“...Fair. But, what about me? Can you trust me?”
At the Witch of Motherhood’s sneer, the Witch of the Sword sheathed her blade.
“I trust no one. I no longer trust the Ascendant either. I will take every shard of sin for myself.”
“So you were thinking the same. Then shall we decide this here?”
The dining hall’s ceiling and walls began to writhe as a whole. A crushing tide of magic spread in all directions, and killing intent surged.
“Stop with the vulgar picking of fights. I’ve no intention of playing with you.”
“Don’t be conceited. If I swallow the vessel, even you’ll have trouble handling me, you know?”
Bougainvillea looked back at the Witch of Motherhood. Her red hair and eyes burned like the flames of hell.
Flames that were said to wither all things.
“Don’t fool yourself, greedy one. It isn’t that I can’t handle you.”
“Then what?”
“It’s that you won’t be able to handle the vessel.”
“What...? Haha, ha.”
The Witch of Motherhood twisted her lips in a laugh. She ran confident hands over her full chest and waist.
“Interesting. Bougainvillea. Why am I only learning now that you’re this fun?”
The Witch of the Sword didn’t answer.
Instead, she closed the hole in Nike’s forehead with her own hands. She smoothed his hair. The motion was oddly gentle.
“If you grab for greed beyond your station, that belly button of yours will split. Dionea, that’s my last counsel for the sake of the old days, when we served the same lord.”
Crunch!
The writhing flesh yawned open and swallowed the Witch of the Sword. Bougainvillea’s avatar vanished just like that.
“How dare you try to teach me. Arrogant thing...”
The Witch of Motherhood bit her lip in plain disgust. Of all those whose minds she couldn’t read, the Witch of the Sword was the worst.
That she’d cared enough to plant an avatar in the vessel’s brain. It was truly unusual.
‘What is that wretch, Morgana, for Bougainvillea to...’
At best, she’d been the lowest of the twelve witches who served Sin.
A lowly thing prostrate at the very bottom would change nothing by getting greedy.
If she tried to hinder the truly strong witches, like herself and Bougainvillea, she would be ground underfoot.
To a truly strong witch, even Morgana was only a bug. When a bug wriggles, stomping it has its own charm.
“Ho ho... what a small amusement.”
Something unexpected had happened, but in the end nothing had changed.
She had the vessel.
And now she only had to swallow it.
Then after the Witch of Sin, the one closest to ascension would be Dionea herself.
“The truth is right before me. Aaah—”
With a coy nasal lilt, the Witch of Motherhood approached Nike. Nike still kept his eyes open and pretended to be unconscious.
“No?”
By the time she noticed those open eyes were red, Nike’s flaming fist had already punched through the witch’s belly.
* * *
The witch’s belly began to burn.
Charr— a crisp, green sound came from the fire. Tiny, sharp glass fragments lodged in the witch’s belly and tore flesh.
“Ughk... Son, my son! How can you treat your mother like this!?”
Clutching her stomach, the Witch of Motherhood spoke, acting the loving mother even now.
But it hurt more than she’d expected. This wasn't an ordinary fire. For the Witch of Motherhood, who scarcely felt any pain, that was all the more disconcerting.
“I’m sick of it! Mother, mother, mother! I don’t have a mom!”
Sick to death of the words son and mother, Nike charged in, enraged.
Rumble!
“Guh-guh-guh! Hrk!”
With glass-flame cupped in both hands, he pounded her with his fists. The witch’s fleshy skin rippled and burst.
Shhick!
Flesh and arms shot from floor and ceiling to strike Nike. With a shout, he scattered flame. Glass-flame caught on the flesh and arms, and the masses of meat writhed violently.
The witch narrowed her eyes in anger.
“Insolent brat… Today this mother needs to teach you manners. Now—”
She snapped her fingers, and the burning flesh sloughed off. Stripped of all skin, the witch glared at Nike with huge, rolling whites.
“Disgusting!”
As Nike recoiled, the witch gestured again.
Whooom.
With a thunderous sound, the ceiling collapsed. Entrails, blood, and flesh poured over Nike’s head.
“Waaagh!”
Nike thrust his hands toward the ceiling. He made a grasping motion at empty air, and space warped.
“Stop with the parlour tricks.”
“Huh?”
In that instant, the Witch of Motherhood seized Nike’s wrist. Her speed was absurd, like when she’d holed his forehead. Nike couldn’t even react.
Bang, bang!
Splat!
Nike was buried under blood and viscera. Breathing was hard. With flesh trying to become one with his skin, even moving a finger was difficult.
‘She’s strong!’
The Witch of Motherhood was far stronger than Nike had reckoned. Her fighting style looked brutish, but its intensity was on another level.
The density of her magic wasn’t something Nike could break easily.
“Ghk…! I can’t breathe…!”
Intestines coiled around his neck and squeezed. The flesh seemed to melt into his skin, as if trying to absorb him entirely.
“‘Son, my son. Come into your mother’s belly, just like when you were born. Inside me, cast off your ill nature and be reborn gentle and new.’”
The Witch of Motherhood whispered from within the flesh. Even in a space with no gaps, her voice carried perfectly. All those entrails and flesh were her belly.
“Ughya…!”
As the tightening flesh and guts constricted, Nike’s head swam. Breathing and blood flow both failed.
The writhing flesh heaved madly up and down, like the churn of a stomach dissolving food.
Nausea surged at Nike’s throat. Even so, with his neck strangled by entrails, he couldn’t vomit.
‘I’m going to die!’
He had no means to resist. Nike’s mind went dim.
“...Nike!”
He snapped his eyes open and listened. It wasn’t the Witch of Motherhood’s words. It was a familiar, longed-for voice.
“Tia?!”
“Nike! Here...!”
Hestia swam through the flesh toward him. With her war-scythe, she cut and cut the meat. Her speed was slow, but she advanced for sure.
Soaked head to toe in blood, Hestia finally reached him.
“Nike! Hold on a little longer!”
Hestia slashed the entrails choking his neck.
“Phwah!”
Barely able to breathe, Nike thrust out his arm. Flesh was knitting together into a single skin.
“...Damn it! That’s dangerous!”
There was no time to hesitate. Hestia drew her scythe and cut straight through the junction. Blood streamed from Nike’s skin.
“Ghhk! That hurts!”
“Bear it!”
Hestia didn’t stop. There was no time to be careful. She slashed and slashed the meat.
Long intestines shot from somewhere, trying to bind their limbs, but Hestia’s skill was better.
“...Nike! Can you move now!?”
“Plenty!”
Nike’s skin recovered swiftly. Though it looked roughly severed, Hestia could manage it because she remembered his original body well.
“Tia! Did your mind come back!”
“...Yeah. Sorry. I was really out of it earlier. Then suddenly it felt like my brain got sliced, and my memories snapped back. What happened?”
Nike knit his brow. If it felt like her brain had been cut, it had to be the Witch of the Sword’s doing.
“Ngh!”
The flesh started grabbing Hestia first. Even after reuniting, they had no time to talk.
“Tia. Get close to me!”
“...!”
Nike caught Hestia by the waist and pulled her to him. She wrapped her arms around his neck.
Then Nike set his whole body ablaze. This time it wasn’t the glass-flame.
‘Witch of the Sword.’
The sun-bright red fire that haloed that transcendent being. The varied heat that even Nike had found enthralling and sacred.
He summoned it in his mind, back-calculated by instinct, and cast it as magic.
For Nike, impossibility did not exist.
Only infinite possibility existed.
Whooosh—!
“Nike!? What is this...?”
It was hellfire.
It was the karmic fire of the sun.
It was the flame birthed by a sword that cut down countless humans and drank their blood.
Bloodflame.
—!
The flame of blood devoured the flesh of desire.
* * *
“T-This cannot be.”
More than anyone, the Witch of Motherhood was horrified.
The vessel held magic at all was a shock, and that he could handle sorcery was beyond her understanding.
His glass-flame and warped space had been surprising enough, but the Bloodflame left her speechless.
A fire that made everything it touched wither like fallen leaves. A flame that did not turn things to ash, but burned life itself.
A magic bearing the refined taste of the Witch of the Sword had a beauty one couldn’t forget after a single look.
Naturally, the Witch of Motherhood, who had once served Sin alongside her, remembered it.
So she trembled.
The fact that someone could imitate that high magic at all was a terror. She couldn’t even think of studying it.
The flame of blood burned all the flesh that formed the mansion. The house shriveled like a mummy’s hide.
It looked as if every trace of life had evaporated.
Power that could burn even Motherhood, the source of life.
While the Witch of Motherhood let out a hollow laugh, Nike pried through the slackened skin with Hestia and emerged.
Shaking with shock, the Witch of Motherhood waited for them.
The first to step forward was neither Nike nor the Witch of Motherhood. It was Hestia, who in her right mind had longed to see her mother again.
“Mo-Mom...?”
An autumn-reddened vista spread across the flower field.
The witch standing alone upon it frowned at Hestia, who called her Mom with such affection.
Her attempt to kill Nike a moment ago vanished in an instant. If there was a child who called her mother, the Witch of Motherhood played the mother.
“Daughter. My small, pretty daughter.”
“Mom...”
That was her way to survive, her secret to growing strong, and the very root of her greed.