The Beginning After The End novel Chapter 156

Chapter 156

Chapter 156: A Lance’s Battle

“Where’s my mask?”

The witch’s hands fumbled over her face, still angled away from my line of sight.

“My mask. I need my mask,” she kept repeating as she realized her face was now bare. The witch tore away at her unruly black mane, clawing at her ponytails and using her undone hair as a curtain to cover her face. She kneeled on the ground, gathering the small shards of her shattered mask as she continued muttering.

I let out ragged breaths as I slowly inched away in fear of what she might do. I had used Static Void with Realmheart activated and in return, the tip of my sword was now gone.

The thatch of unruly black hair that fell over her face rustled as she began fitting together the broken pieces in a desperate attempt to make them whole. Suddenly, she clutched the pile she had so desperately gathered, clawing the ground along with it.

“My mask!” she screeched, gripping at the shards until her hands bled.

Watching the particles of mana congregating to form a murky green aura around her, I had no time think.

The faint purple particles of aether started vibrating as I activated Static Void once more. Ignoring my body’s protest, I rushed toward to strike the witch before the corroding aura completely enveloped her again.

With time stopped, I could close the gap without fearing that she would be able to react to me, but unlike my previous attempt, I wouldn’t be able to utilize the mana in the atmosphere—only the meager reserves I had left in my core.

Jagged vines of white crackled around the teal blade of my sword as I dashed toward the witch. With the spell considerably weaker than my previous attack, a sense of doubt began creeping up inside me.

I released the time-freezing mana art right as the flat tip of my sword buried itself in the green aura’s opening just above her left knee. The ever-familiar sensation of metal piercing through flesh was accompanied by the crackle of electricity spreading through the witch’s body. Yet the blood that leaked from her wound wasn’t the same red that came from her hand but rather a muddy green.

The site of where the wound should’ve been hissed as the murky green blood began congealing around Dawn’s Ballad.

As the witch raised her gaze from the ground, her thick wiry hair parted, she revealed to me what she had been so desperately trying to hide.

I tugged Dawn’s Ballad, wanting nothing more than to retreat. It wasn’t just her gnarled skin that looked more aged than the bark of the centuries-old trees surrounding us, or the two narrow slits between her sunken cheeks. It wasn’t even her thin leathery lips that were darker than her hair or her jagged teeth stained yellow.

It was her blood-curdling stare, radiating from the ghoulish pair of misshapen eyes, that filled me with a sense of dread. Unlike any monster or beast I’d faced since coming to this world, her dark hollow eyes that seemed like they had been gouged out and shoved back deep inside her skull made me wonder if this was the sort of demon that spawned from the depths of hell.

“Now that you’ve seen me in this state, I’m afraid that I can’t keep you as a pet,” she muttered, nearly whispering as she gripped my sword with one of her bloody hands.

I winced involuntarily as she spoke. My mind spun as I tried feebly to pull Dawn’s Ballad out of her grasp, trying to figure out what to do in this situation.

As I tore my gaze away from her terrifying stare, I watched in despair as her aura had nearly enveloped her whole body.

Unable to muster up the strength to trigger Static Void again, I looked down at my legs. I could still hear Lady Myre’s voice, warning me not to use Burst Step again. Glancing up, the murky green cloud slowly spread until only faint gaps the width of a feather were left.

I made my decision.

Letting go of my precious sword, I released a sharp breath to brace myself for the pain soon to come. Like the pistons of an engine in my old world, mana burst into specific muscles in progression with precise timing in the span of a millisecond, allowing my body to near-instantly flash from my original position.

I gritted through the mind-numbing pain that felt like the bones in my lower body were slowly smouldering inside a fire, and stabbed my hand through the faint chasm in her aura. Even with my hand coalesced with Absolute Zero, the deteriorating effects of her defenses seeped into my hand upon contact with her skin.

The witch let out a pained growl as she tried to pull herself away but my grip around her right arm stayed strong.

The flesh of my bare hand soon became painfully red as more and more layers of flesh began corroding. However, the effects of my spell showed signs that it was working. Her right arm, which had been gripping my sword impaled in her left thigh, turned a sickly dark color. Unlike frostbite that occured in nature, her arm began to freeze from where I was gripping her rather than from her fingers. She could no longer move her arm as the layers of skin and tissues had froze.

Before the effects of Absolute Zero could spread to her body, the witch cleaved down at her frozen arm with her other hand, tearing the limb completely from the shoulder.

A sharp, burning pain spread from my hand, reminding me of the injury I had sustained in exchange for her severed arm, which shattered like glass as I dropped it on the ground.

I wasn’t sure whether it was a good thing or not but looking down, the wound looked worse than it felt. Almost as if the skin on my left hand had been dipped in a batter of acid, yellow pus formed on the raw flesh of my hand, sending a surge of pain with even the slightest twitch.

Ripping off a piece of cloth at the end of my mantle, I gently wrapped it around my injured hand, keeping my jaw clenched through the entire process.

“How dare you!” the witch snarled. With a deranged fire in her hollow green eyes, she tore off chunks of her thick black hair to reveal a small stump just above her forehead.

“I am a Vritra! I’ll thoroughly make sure you feel the consequences of making a lady go through such... disgrace!” she screamed as she ripped off more of her mangled hair. “I’ll melt your limbs off and keep you as a trophy! I’ll cut off your tongue and feed you through a tube so you can only dream about dying!”

“Oh? You’ll have to at least be a scythe to even think about doing that,” I huffed, hoping she’d take the bait.

“A scythe? A scythe?” she howled, hobbling toward a nearby tree with Dawn’s Ballad still impaled in her left knee. “I’ll wipe that condescending woman off the face of Alacrya and take her place! Just because she’s a little attractive and her grunts fawn over her, she thinks she’s better than me? I’ll show her how degrading it is to be her retainer!”

Remembering how the witch had healed her hand earlier by submerging it inside a tree, I ignored the shrieks of protest from my legs and rushed to her.

She swung her only arm, releasing a gust of the smoke that’d nearly melted my lungs.

I activated Burst Step once more, dodging the poisonous smoke and closing the gap in a blink. Tendrils of black lightning coiled around my right arm. Rather than attempting to break through her corroding aura and risk mutilating another hand, I gripped the handle of my sword still embedded in her thigh. Acting as a conductor, the branches of electricity coiled down my sword into the witch’s body.

Her body immediately stiffened and jerked in a fit of convulsions from the current of lightning passing through her body. I could see her trying to fight back but I became hopeful as her hollow eyes reeled back.

Her head spasmed but there was still strength in her as her glossy eyes slowly came back into focus. The witch’s gnarled face cracked like dry soil as splotches of charred skin spread over her body.

Please, just die, I pleaded in my head as my decreasing mana reserves made me fear for the possibility of backlash.

Suddenly, I was wrenched back from the witch. As if I had been prodded by an iron brand, a searing pain radiated from my shoulder as I was sent tumbling back on the ground. Without looking back, I coated my hand in an icy aura and reached over my shoulder to pry off the fingers of mana she had conjured.

The witch was once again desperately trying to reach a nearby tree, just a few feet away, when I conjured an earthen wall.