novelraw Chapter 76 : Eden, the Garden (15)
Chapter 76 : Eden, the Garden (15)
Chapter 76: Eden, the Garden (15)
"What is that…?"
Dionea couldn't keep up with what had just happened.
A portion of the fragment had been grafted into her chest. There had been no problem.
Yet there was also a severed leg in the Vessel's grip. That could not have been the fragment, but she couldn't make sense of the way he flaunted it.
“Hee hee hee hee.”
The Vessel laughed in a way that made her skin crawl. He looked like events had unfolded exactly as he intended.
Was it a bluff?
Or did he have something to rely on.
Even a witch who had lived three hundred and fifty years felt shaken. The Vessel's actions were impossible to predict or understand.
“…What scheme is this, son?”
The witch provoked him as she asked. The word son was what he hated most.
“A scheme? There isn"t one!”
“...Then this is?”
“It is just that you are stupid.”
Nike smirked. No one looked more foolish than he did right then, which only made it more confusing.
It was bravado the witch had never seen in all her long life.
"You think you can fool me with a fake… and that I will fall for it? How foolish."
"Hmph!"
Nike snorted and flicked the leg into the air. He used magic that controlled space. He had gotten quite proficient with spatial magic.
"…"
"…"
Both the witch and the angel watched in silence. In their eyes, the leg grafted into the witch was clearly the true fragment.
The only uncertainty was that the leg Nike had held had also radiated a dreadful magic.
"Urgh…!"
Dionea gagged again. This time the grafted leg tore free and fell to the floor.
It was a rejection that had erupted from her body.
"Why…?"
Dionea's eyes wavered. The fragment had been grafted cleanly. For nearly a year there had not been a single side effect.
"There is no way this happens all of a sudden!"
"There is!"
"What?"
"Because that is my leg!"
Nike held his stomach and burst into cackling laughter. No one understood what he found so funny.
With the laughter wiped from her face, Dionea picked up the fallen leg.
"…?"
Her eyes widened.
It was different.
It wasn"t the true fragment.
It resembled the fragment in many ways, yet it was distinctly different. She couldn't understand. How could he possibly trick her?
"So that is how it was."
The angel laughed softly. The crimson light was fading from her flesh.
The angel asked Nike,
"Ashen boy, I ask your name."
"Hah? I won"t tell a stranger!"
"…"
The angel closed her mouth. She had nothing more to say. She beat her wings once more and rose into the sky, then leveled her spear at the witch.
"Evil thing. Your eyes are so blinded by darkness that you cannot even see through a simple trick."
"What…?"
Dionea lifted her head. She wanted to know what had happened. But the angel and witch were mortal enemies.
Instead of answering, the angel hurled her flaming spear.
Kwoooom.
The golden spear pierced Dionea's heart. Her back bent backward. If the Mouth of Greed hadn"t swallowed the blow, it would have killed her outright.
"Ugh… a mere minion of a false god…!"
"I would punish you thoroughly if I could, but our time is over. I leave the rest to you."
"Leave it to me!"
The angel looked at Nike without expression, then turned and flew off. She landed beside Hestia and returned Elena’s body.
The gate of heaven closed again.
Rrrrrumble.
Thunder rolled as black clouds spread across the sky. What remained were the witch, furious to her core, and Nike.
* * *
"Ulp, urgh, krrrragh! Damn it! What is this…!"
Dionea, whose condition had plummeted, retched up her guts and drooled as she screamed.
"Ugh… explain what you did—!"
Nike smiled in a chilling way. He pointed with his index finger at Dionea's chest.
"That is my leg."
Nike's shoulders shook. His lifted cheekbones refused to come down. The thought of having fooled the great witch perfectly sent a fierce thrill through him.
"H-How…?"
Dionea looked at the leg. To the senses, there was no foreignness at all. If one thought a little further, it was a simple trick.
No, it wasn"t even fair to call it a trick.
‘He is the Vessel… a piece of the fragment.’
In other words,
it had the same constituent material as the leg of sin she had implanted in her body. When his skin was being absorbed in her stomach, if he cut off his own leg and swapped it in, it would be hard to notice.
Only Nike could have made that switch.
Even more startling, he had calculated it and deliberately let himself be swallowed so he could make the switch.
The curse had also rampaged suddenly because he planted the leg of sin in the severed place.
"…How absurd."
It was a counter not even Dionea could have imagined. A witch who had lived three hundred and fifty years could not believe that little brat had calculated a solution she never conceived.
‘Purely the realm of instinct.’
As a beast naturally knows a prey"s vital spot,
Nike had grasped Dionea's weakness as if it were obvious, and he struck it.
There was no difficulty to it at all.
Cold sweat ran down Dionea's spine. It was the feeling of fear she had not known for centuries. It felt like facing an overwhelming predator.
…To be precise, a very young predator.
‘He is already this dangerous now.’
She couldn't begin to predict how threatening that young predator would be once he grew.
She feared this must be how one felt when seeing an Ascendant as a child.
Crack.
"Urgh… ngh!"
The price of absorbing Nike's flesh and bone was horrific. The mighty witch writhed as if stricken with a plague. Even her self-healing refused to come easily.
"What… did you do."
Nike charged Dionea. Now that she was weakened, he had to be sure to cut off her breath.
Swoosh!
The air shuddered. Nike rushed like the wind. Raising his claws, he tore apart the living masses that barred his way.
"Ryaaaaa!"
Nike bellowed like a berserker. The flesh clung to him, and the teeth bit into his limbs.
Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch!
The Mouth of Greed ate him faster than he could punch through the wall of flesh. It was like hundreds of piranhas swarming him.
"Hah?!"
Nike panicked as he saw his arm vanish in an instant. Bare bones showed, and shreds of flesh dangled. Even now, one of his legs was disappearing.
Weakened or not, the opponent was the seventh rank great witch.
She was an absolute who had once stood as the closest aide to the Witch of Sin.
If he was sloppy, he would suffer.
If he was slow, he would die.
Unless he was more ruthless, he would be eaten.
To avoid being eaten,
…he had to eat.
Crunch!
Overheated, Nike bit into the flesh. Not to be outdone by the teeth, he began playing the piranha himself.
"…What?!"
It was impossibly tough, but Nike refused to quit. As much as he was bitten, he chewed and swallowed and recovered.
"Stop it!"
Even with blood pouring, Nike did not stop. His eyes, chewing flesh, gleamed like a beast"s, savage and bright.
"Wak, aghk, wak, wak!"
Dionea shuddered at the sight. That was not a human. It was not a witch, and it was not a beast.
Some indescribable thing was trying to kill her.
Before primal fear, three hundred and fifty years meant nothing. For what she had struggled to grow so strong.
What was the truth in the end?
Was the truth that even a witch was not eternal and undying?
"Ha ha, ha… stop it. I am scared. Son. Spare me."
Crrrack!
In the intoxication of blood, Nike performed Consumption, and his skin grew greedy. It transformed into a tough hide that no ordinary force could ever rip.
Now Dionea's teeth could not tear Nike's flesh. The reverse was true, Nike's teeth had grown even sharper.
The Mouth of Greed could devour anything in the world.
"Kraaaang!"
"N-No! Do not come! Do not come any closer!"
A starving beast charged. The witch fell on her backside, weak like in her human days.
Terrified, she raised an arm to block. Nike seized that arm and tore it off.
Rrrrip!
Muscle and vessels, ligaments and bone were ripped away in an unreal way.
"Grrrr…"
Red eyes fixed on Dionea. The ashen beast, drunk on blood, hummed a low curse without a word. Her body froze.
Her remaining limbs stiffened and would not move. All she could do was wait for death.
Her life flashed before her eyes.
She remembered childhood, mad with hunger. She had stolen her younger sibling's share. She could not remember if the greed she had used to live had been the desire to survive or a simple instinct.
When she came to, she was the only one of eight siblings left alive.
She had clawed through life like that, and now this was the end of the road. She would lose emptily, right before she gained everything.
"I want to eat more. I want more. I want to have more…!"
Heat spread wet below Dionea. Thinking this was the end, the tension left her body. Lethargy washed over her.
Step, step.
The hungry beast walked toward her slowly.
Thud.
"…Huh?"
Kneeling came a moment before the beast could reach out. His eyes were terribly dim. Nike had crossed his limit long ago.
He had grafted the fragment of sin into his body.
He had endured a rampaging curse.
He had used Blood Flame, a high-order magic.
He had created a new magic called White Flame.
He had fought every battle that had taken place in the Flower Garden without rest.
His body and brain had both been driven to the extreme. Nike had burned his life to break his limit and reach this point.
Sadly,
Nike lost consciousness one step short.
Bringing the witch hunt to a close mattered more than anything.
"…!"
A witch like a cockroach, who had searched for chances inside danger all her life, would not miss even the briefest opening.
"Ha! Haha! Worthless thing, I knew this would happen!"
One single instant. In that sliver of time, Nike tried to force his power back, but… he was late.
With a shout of delight, Dionea focused all her magic into her eyes.
The primal greed, completed by eating and eating again, to the point of gnawing even her own flesh to satisfy endless hunger.
By merely looking at a target that felt hunger, it swallowed all.
"Son. Your mother is hungry."
The demonic eye.
Endless hunger.
The gluttonous eye.
"Grrk!"
Nike's upper body vanished.
Only a grotesque bite-mark remained as blood sprayed in sheets.
* * *
Every hair on her body stood on end. Hestia watched Nike's indescribable rampage from very far away.
Even for Nike, that cruelty was hard to look at. The only reason she kept her eyes on him to the end was love.
Having realized that a mother’s love was an illusion, Hestia was ready to love Nike in any form. She was a girl who had fallen into blind love.
"We won…"
Her love had brought a witch of the seventh rank to the brink of defeat.
Suddenly the smell of the air changed clean, and an amount of magic she had never seen or heard of condensed in one place.
‘I feel danger.’
Hestia hurled Elena aside and ran.
"No—!"
Hestia gasped. Nike's upper body had vanished. His body swayed on the edge. Bundles of tendrils writhed disgustingly.
Hestia blocked the witch's mouth, which was trying to devour Nike, with a battle scythe, and with the other scythe in her free hand, she sliced the witch's neck.
"Gkk… khak!"
Perhaps the witch had run out of strength too, because her resistance was weak. Even so, Dionea resisted to the end. At some point the teeth crawled up and began to bite Hestia's entire body.
‘The neck is not severed. The heart, I need to destroy the heart…!’
Hestia glared and put her strength into it. She used strength down to her last breath, but it was not enough. The witch that had begun eating Hestia's flesh regained power.
"No. No…"
In that moment of Hestia's despair,
Thud.
An arm burst out behind her back. Nike, who had partially restored his upper body, drove his arm through Dionea's chest.
"Ah…?"
Dionea groaned. Her wide eyes stared past Hestia's back. They were filled with fear. Having glimpsed something inside Nike, Dionea lost the will to resist.
"What are you…?"
Her hide weakened. Hestia did not miss the instant and pushed the battle scythe.
Slash!
Dionea's head flew through the air. A fountain of blood spouted from her neck.
Thud, thud, thud…
Roll.
The witch's head rolled through the Flower Garden. Blue petals stuck in clumps to the blood-smeared face.
A witch who had lived long had forgotten that she could die.
More shocking than death, which she had believed would never come, was the shape of the being that had destroyed her heart.
Everything was meaningless.
"Ah… centuries of greed end this hollow… I leave the dream of Eden here as vomit."
The witch left a final message.
Her last words became a key and triggered the device of ruin.
Gurgle.
Even in death, the incarnation of greed coveted more.
Over Dionea's corpse, a seed of greed sprouted and took form.
The first bestowed authority of Greed bloomed into a flower.
Its color was darkness.
Its name was Hungry Ghost.
Primal greed appeared before the Vessel and pried its maw wide.
Hestia gathered Nike in her arms and screamed.
"Nike… No!"