The Ash Witch (5)
Crack—!
The ground froze solid, and the grass and trees that once thrived upon it were no exception.
Chains imbued with a biting cold.
These chains, coiled around Calcas’s hunting hounds, erased all life in their path, leaving only a chilling death in their wake.
And standing before them—
“You damn bastards, just die already!”
Lucia Castachald, a paladin with a penchant for colorful language, furrowed her brow and swung her sword down with force.
Clang—!
Her sword, infused with holy power, clashed against Calcas’s chains.
For a brief moment, cold and radiant light collided relentlessly.
In the end, it was the holy power that triumphed.
Clatter!
A chain, thicker than a human arm, was severed and flung far away.
Yet Lucia’s brow remained furrowed.
How many chains had she already cut through?
And still, the armor of chains enveloping the hound was barely half-broken.
Growl!
The hellhound lunged, drool dripping from its maw, its sharp, blue-tinged teeth bared.
The holy tattoo on Lucia’s leg flared with light, and she deftly sidestepped the beast’s reckless charge.
Thud!
Unable to stop its momentum, the hound crashed headfirst into a massive tree.
Swoosh!
Lucia seized the opportunity, her sword flashing as it sliced through several chains and pierced the hound’s eye.
Roar!
The hound staggered back, dark blood streaming from its wound. Lucia took a deep breath, calming the energy of her holy tattoo.
‘This isn’t easy.’
Calcas’s hound.
She knew of this massive hellhound, wrapped in chains of cold, from her studies with the knights.
It was a minion of the demon known as “Calcas of the Chain Throne.”
Calcas was one of the nine thrones under the evil god Enaxagous, ranking ninth among them.
Even as the lowest of the nine, its power was not to be underestimated.
‘They say there are thousands, if not tens of thousands, of such hounds around Calcas’s throne.’
Watching the chains sway with the hound’s movements, Lucia thought.
Even a single chain could freeze the skin of an ordinary person upon contact.
And there were thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of such creatures.
Clench.
She tightened her grip on her sword, steadying her wavering resolve.
The light of her holy tattoo dimmed to a gentle glow, and the holy power on her sword flared into a white flame.
She was but a human clad in flesh.
Though resisting with the power of her holy tattoo, enduring the hellish cold for long was no easy feat.
What she needed was a single, decisive strike.
One blow to sever all the chains of cold and cut through the hound’s neck.
Growl.
But she couldn’t move easily.
Another hound circled its injured companion, waiting for her to make a move.
Its blue eyes gleamed with greed.
It had no intention of protecting its kin.
It was merely waiting for Lucia to strike, ready to pounce and devour her flesh and blood.
This was the cold nature of the beast, as ruthless as the chains themselves, and it was what held Lucia back.
If she took down one, she’d have to sacrifice an arm to the other.
Yet a drawn-out battle would only end in defeat, overwhelmed by the chains’ terrible cold.
Caught in a dilemma.
‘Get a grip, you damn fool. Daelon is facing the witch allied with the evil god alone.’
Lucia bit her lip hard.
She wasn’t afraid to lose an arm.
A paladin’s life was one of constant struggle.
The endless cycle would eventually end with the fangs and claws of a beast.
And if she could contribute to defeating the Ash Witch, a threat to the continent—
‘What more glorious finale could there be?’
Crack!
Beneath her feet, the frozen ground split open.
The injured hound hesitated, retreating, while its companion growled greedily.
And at that moment—
Whine?
As if on cue, both hounds turned their heads toward the forest.
‘What… is that?’
A question arose in her mind.
But there was no time to ponder.
In the moment of decision, the tattoos around her eyes were already glowing.
And even for her, the time she could manifest the eye tattoos was only a matter of seconds.
As the power of the tattoos awakened, a clear energy seeped into her mind.
Exhale.
She breathed out slowly, repeatedly.
The amplified strength and senses, expanded by other tattoos, were vividly clear in her mind at this moment.
The tattoos around her eyes were among the rarest of the hundred types of holy tattoos within the paladin order.
They enhanced the brain with holy power, elevating the intricate and complex ability to perceive the world—a secret of the order.
Exhale.
In truth, the holy tattoos of the paladin order had their limits.
No matter how much strength and senses were enhanced, reaching a certain level required intelligence and will beyond the ordinary.
The eye tattoos were the order’s answer to overcoming that limit.
Due to the nature of directly infusing holy power into the brain, only those with a strong affinity for the tattoos could even consider engraving them.
Lucia Castachald was a prodigy, having engraved these special tattoos at the age of fifteen.
Clatter—
Hundreds of chains swayed menacingly, exuding a flow of cold.
The slipperiness of the frozen ground, the thumping of the hound’s two hearts.
The information absorbed by her heightened senses was like an ocean.
Under the awakened power of holy energy in her mind, all that information melded into a clear path for her sword and steps.
Clang—!
Her foot struck the ground.
Whoosh!
White flames blazed from her sword.
The paladin’s afterimage shot forward like an arrow, tracing the only path that could sever all the hellhound’s chains and destroy its two hearts.
And following in its wake was a long, straight line drawn by the white flame of her sword.
Crack—!
The cold forged by hell’s magic could not withstand the holy flames.
Chains fell away in pieces.
Two hearts burst, engulfed in the white flame.
Screech—!
Even its death cry was short-lived.
Lucia, having cleaved the massive hound in two, immediately kicked off the tree and changed direction.
Growl!
The other hound, realizing its companion’s death too late, turned to bite the paladin.
Slash—!
But her sword had already cleaved its body in half.
Thud—!
The two hellhound corpses fell simultaneously.
“Phew! Ha.”
Calming her throbbing head and pounding heart, Lucia took a deep breath.
She quickly turned her gaze to where the hounds had been looking.
The reaction of hell’s beasts meant something had happened to their summoner.
It signified a significant change in the battle between the witch and Daelon.
And then—
”…What?”
For a moment, she couldn’t believe her eyes.
In the ash-gray sky, shrouded by the witch’s magic, a single large hole had been torn open.
Rumble!
Thunder echoed from the hole in the sky.
The tremor in the air was so intense that even Lucia, standing far away, could feel it.
“What on earth is that…?”
Lucia stammered.
But the heavens did not wait for her to calm her startled heart.
The air trembled throughout the forest.
Holy power so intense it distorted the sky.
And crowning it all was a bolt of lightning that split the sky, reflected in her blue eyes.
“Damn.”
Daelon cursed, then flinched.
Surely the gods were watching. Was it okay to curse?
But then he realized, if they had returned the power to his holy sword, they must have been watching all his actions up to now.
So Daelon cursed once more.
“Cough! Damn it! Ugh!”
The ashen dust filled his mouth, nose, and lungs.
He couldn’t help but cough.
The lightning that struck the ground—no, the pillar of light that was more than just lightning—had created a crater over ten meters wide.
In the scene that looked as if a meteor had struck, everything was black except for Daelon, who held the holy sword.
In other words, everything had turned to ash.
With every slight movement, the black ash swirled around him, and Daelon waved his hand to clear it as he stepped out of the crater.
“Cough! Use it twice, and I’ll die of pneumonia.”
Thanks to the witch’s curse, all his clothes had vanished, leaving not a scrap of fabric.
In the end, Dalen managed to scrape away a wide patch of moss outside the pit, wrapping it around his nose and mouth to finally breathe comfortably.
”…This is… ridiculous.”
A voice, barely clinging to life, reached his ears. Dalen turned his head.
In the center of the pit, a witch, her muscles and bones crushed and blackened, was staring at him.
Her heart had already stopped, and her lungs had ceased functioning. Yet, she clung to life through sheer magical force, a testament to her tenacity.
“What do you find so ridiculous?”
“That someone like you… managed to kill Golakap. And that the god of war, at such a critical juncture of fate, would choose a non-believer like you…”
“Don’t belittle someone else’s faith. I might look like this now, but in a past life, I was quite the churchgoer.”
”…What?”
The witch’s face twisted in confusion at his unexpected words. Her already torn and broken skin flaked away, revealing charred bones and flesh beneath.
Dalen descended into the pit, brandishing his holy sword. He pointed it at the witch’s neck.
“Then again, this isn’t the kind of talk you have with someone on their deathbed.”
“If you kill me, you’ll regret it, warrior of the gods. Do you know why?”
Dalen chuckled. What a joke. First, she calls him a non-believer, then a warrior of the gods. Make up your mind.
The witch didn’t wait for his response. She continued, “This forest is seeded with two thousand mandrake seeds. Five hundred have already matured, and a thousand are waiting to bloom. Killing me won’t stop them from growing.”
She paused, taking a painful breath, her mangled lips trembling as she spoke.
“And when the appointed day and hour come, all those mandrakes will uproot themselves and scream, turning Revivach into a city of death. Only by sparing me can you prevent that tragedy.”
She finished, breathing heavily, yet her expression was one of triumph. As if to say, “Can you still kill me now?”
Dalen muttered as he passed by her, “Mandrakes are sensitive to air.”
”…”
“The air and water in Revivach Forest are perfect for herbs to thrive.”
The witch narrowed her eyes slightly.
“Are you planning to poison the groundwater? Or set the forest on fire? Do you really think you can do that without the herbalists noticing, no matter how fast and stealthy you are?”
Dalen smirked. He planted his holy sword into the ground and raised his hands to the sky.
With the witch’s fall, all the spells in the forest were broken, and the ashen aura that had covered the sky dissipated.
Under the night sky, dotted with dark clouds, Dalen closed his eyes.
He felt the magical winds flowing through the forest, harnessing the heightened magic to seize them.
In his mind, he envisioned a sky ablaze with red heat, recalling the crimson sky he had seen beyond the realm of imagination. He chanted a short incantation.
“Ignel— Seltideo Lagreta.”
Rumble.
The sky began to change.
The black clouds slowly took on a red hue, and the intermittent thunder transformed into a strange melody.
Rumble, rumble.
The sound was like the wailing of a volcano on the verge of eruption.
As Dalen slowly lowered his hands, the red clouds that filled the sky began to rain fire over the entire forest.
“How… how could you… use the spell of the former Ignella Tower Master…?”
The witch’s jaw trembled. Dalen offered no explanation.
He simply raised the holy sword high and drew a smooth arc.
The witch’s head split in two, and the tenuous thread of life finally snapped.
“Phew.”
Dalen exhaled deeply, rolling his shoulders.
He had used his domain multiple times in the battle against the witch. It must have been over twenty times.
On top of that, he had endured the screams of the mandrakes and various spells, relying heavily on the power of dragon blood in this fight.
The result was a body that felt stiff and senses that had noticeably dulled.
Still, he had gained four ashen corpses, so it wasn’t a bad trade. Dalen naturally reached out to retrieve the bodies.
Rustle.
A sound came from behind him.
Dalen sharpened his dulled senses, turning with his holy sword at the ready.
And he faced—
“You, you…”
A paladin, eyes wide, clutching her sword tighter than ever.
With a trembling left hand, she raised her shield, half-covering her blue eyes.
Only then did Dalen look down at himself. His armor and clothes had been burned away, leaving his body exposed.
“Well, the fight was a bit intense,” Dalen said, scratching his chin.
At that, Lucia’s trembling lips parted, finally unleashing a string of colorful curses.
“What the hell do you mean, intense! What are you doing out here stark naked with that build! I’ll fetch you a scrap of cloth, so please cover yourself immediately!”