Chapter: 367
Thud—
A sword was thrust into Auria’s body.
Drops of blood dripped down along the embedded blade.
The sensation was drastically different from when only her arm had been severed, clearly signaling to Yoon Si-woo that this was a decisive blow to end the battle.
“Hah… ugh…”
The sound of blood dripping mixed with Yoon Si-woo’s rough breathing, echoing softly around him.
His breaths were tinged with urgency and pain.
It wasn’t due to the agony of squeezing his breath to the limit while recklessly cutting down demonic beasts in pursuit of Auria.
It was because he had seen it.
The heads of those Auria had touched flying off.
And right before she struck,
“…Scarlet, let go!!”
He had seen her hand clutching the neck of the girl who stood in front of Auria.
“Get your hand off her…!!!”
Yoon Si-woo violently pried Auria’s hand away from the girl’s neck and pulled her into his embrace as if to rescue her from Auria.
Then, checking the girl’s face up close again, his expression twisted further.
He had hoped that what he saw during the battle was just an illusion, but what stood before him was undoubtedly Scarlet.
Despair hit him.
The thought that she would become like the decapitated corpses scattered around.
“Aah…!!”
Disheartened, Yoon Si-woo cried out, hugging Scarlet tightly and squeezing his eyes shut.
And then,
“…Yoon, Si-woo?”
A voice came from his embrace, causing Yoon Si-woo to open his now-unclosed eyes.
What he saw was Scarlet’s face, looking somewhat confused as if asking why he was doing this.
His worry wasn’t necessary.
Scarlet was safe.
“…Hah.”
Yoon Si-woo felt a wave of relief so powerful he almost collapsed right there, pulling Scarlet in for another tight hug.
“…Um, this is suffocating.”
Scarlet, fidgeting as if uncomfortable and trying to wriggle out, drew Yoon Si-woo’s glare.
To be honest, he wanted to scold her right there.
What on earth was she doing here?
Hadn’t he told her to stay still in the room earlier?
But right now, he had to deal with something that still needed finishing.
“…Hah, for now, you’re safe, so that’s what matters.”
Glancing up at the enormous mass of miasma floating in the sky, Yoon Si-woo let out a small sigh and released his hold on Scarlet.
Then, she gracefully floated down, flapping the fiery wings on her back.
Yoon Si-woo realized that it was those wings that had allowed her to come this far, clucking his tongue lightly.
He promised himself to have a word with that demonic beast later, inwardly wishing to do so as he shifted his gaze.
There, standing was Auria.
“…Huh, ugh.”
Auria lay on the ground, a sword embedded in her body, groaning softly.
She looked so weak, hardly reminiscent of the witch who had been rampaging even after losing an arm.
It was obvious she could no longer resist; Yoon Si-woo slowly approached, looking down at her with a cold voice.
“Hey, conditions of the wager. I said if you can’t escape anymore and get caught, it’s a win for us, right? From what I see, you seem to be in no condition to escape.”
That was to imply she should give up and concede defeat.
Hearing that, Auria stopped her groans, gazed up at Yoon Si-woo, and with a weary smile replied,
“Hah, I honestly didn’t think I’d get caught…. Well, no matter how I try, I can’t argue in this situation. Yes, I’m completely caught. The wager is your victory.”
Auria raised her palm slightly, as if to indicate surrender, confessing her defeat.
With that response,
“…”
Yoon Si-woo felt an odd sense of dissonance.
Wasn’t she acknowledging it a bit too easily?
Could this be the same witch who had orchestrated countless schemes, causing pain to so many?
An inexplicable sense of discomfort and unpleasant discord gnawed at him.
He instinctively fiddled with the sword in his grip, exhaled softly, and finally sheathed it.
Yes, after all, the enemy before him was in no position to resist any longer.
The most important thing right now was to resolve the current situation.
Yoon Si-woo broached the subject of the wager’s prize with Auria.
“Do you remember? The loser of the wager had to grant one request from the winner.”
“…Keh. Yes, we did agree on that.”
“Since you lost, we who won need you to grant us a request.”
At his words, Auria seemed to have anticipated this, raising her gaze toward the mass of miasma hovering in the sky.
“…What you want is obviously to get rid of that miasma, right?”
“…Yes. Either destroy it, or if that’s impossible, move it far enough away so it won’t affect the city. That’s what we want.”
“…Right, that’s understandable. After all, you wouldn’t have any options left other than asking me to solve it.”
Auria said this while gazing upward.
She was looking at the black sun, which had replaced the sun in the sky, embodying the end she had prepared to obliterate this world.
And then she chuckled softly.
“But what if I can’t?”
“…What?”
At that moment, a dull sound of impact resonated from somewhere.
“…?!”
Yoon Si-woo quickly turned his head toward the source of the sound.
It came from high in the distant sky.
Looking up, Yoon Si-woo realized.
He had no choice but to realize.
The black sun, which had been simply floating in the sky just a moment ago, this massive mass of miasma was—
“…! It’s falling…?!”
Slowly, it started to plummet toward the city.
“Hey…! Didn’t you hear what I just said?! Hurry and do something about that!”
Seeing the mass of miasma drop, Yoon Si-woo grabbed Auria by the collar and shouted.
He urged her to act immediately.
Yet Auria merely responded with a sly grin.
Yoon Si-woo couldn’t comprehend her actions.
She was the one who had entered into a contract with him.
Hadn’t she even told the truth when they made the contract earlier?
So why, how could she say something different now?
“What’s with this girl…! You made a—”
“Really, how naive you are.”
At that moment, Auria interrupted Yoon Si-woo’s words with a laugh.
“Or are you not naive, but overconfident in your abilities? Just because you have the ability to see through lies?”
“…How do you know that!”
“I told you earlier, right? It was me who told Lily, the Witch of Lust, to plant minions in the city.”
The child had become the material to create what was now floating above.
With a sly smile, Auria continued speaking to Yoon Si-woo.
“I knew this because Lily told me. While your ability can see through lies, it has vulnerabilities. If the speaker doesn’t think they are lying, you can’t recognize it, right?”
Just as Yoon Si-woo failed to see that the Dolos Family had been manipulated by the Witch of Lust.
“So when I said I might grant your wish if you defeat me, it also means that I might not grant your wish, which doesn’t count as a lie. And in truth, you didn’t realize I meant that.”
“Ugh…!!”
Yoon Si-woo realized Auria had manipulated him, taking advantage of her ability’s loopholes, and his expression soured.
However, he wasn’t foolish enough to completely lower his guard against the enemy based merely on this.
He had retained his suspicion for a crucial reason.
“But when we made the contract, you clearly stated that if you lost, you would grant our wish! At the time of the agreement, you weren’t lying—how could…!”
This was because he hadn’t sensed any dishonesty from her when they made the deal.
Yoon Si-woo trusted not Auria, but the power of the contract that would take everything from the witch if violated.
“Aha, that’s why I called you naive.”
Yet because of this,
“A contract? I can simply break it whenever I want.”
Yoon Si-woo had been used.
“While you were sincere about making the deal, after that, whether or not you’d keep it is my freedom, right? So I broke it. You didn’t realize that you believed that if you defeated me, you could solve this situation. Ahahaha!”
He never imagined a madman would not uphold a contract concerning something so important.
“You… if you do that…!”
Yoon Si-woo trembled with the shock of Auria casually breaking the contract more than the bewilderment of being deceived.
But Auria simply laughed, as if to say, “So what?”
“I know, I’ll lose all my abilities. I knew that and still broke it.”
Although unexpected circumstances led to breaking a contract before this one, that truly didn’t matter.
Auria chuckled, looking up at the sky.
“Do you know how it was suspended up there like before? I used my abilities to fix it below with a barrier.”
No, now she was looking at the falling mass of miasma.
“What happens if, in that state, the ability that was holding it disappears?”
And at that question, Yoon Si-woo gasped.
He finally understood Auria’s true intentions in proposing such a wager earlier.
The victory or defeat of the bet didn’t matter to her at all.
After all,
“I told you from the start, right? The end of this world was predetermined.”
The outcome would be the same nevertheless.
Yoon Si-woo bit his lip hard, realizing he had been dancing in Auria’s palm from beginning to end.
Then, he finally threw the question that had lingered until the very end.
“…Why? Why go to such lengths for this?”
“Hmm, you want to know?”
Auria, having received the question, glanced around at Yoon Si-woo and the other heroes.
Then, with a smile that suggested she was delighted by it all, she answered.
“Because I wanted to see that expression.”
The expression of having hope snatched away right in front of them, that look of emptiness.
Faced with this final twist they could not fathom, the heroes could only feel despondent.
“Hehe, haha! Ahahahahahaha!”
And with the expression she sought, Auria burst into boisterous laughter, executing her plan.
She was in the middle of her laughter.
“Ahaha— ugh?!”
Blood spurted from the laughing Auria’s mouth.
Suddenly, a surge of indescribable pain hit her all at once.
“What…?”
Auria felt a pain that was incomparably greater than that caused by the sword piercing her body, puzzled, but soon realized the cause.
“Ugh, huh… Is this because I lost my powers, and I’m taking something else now?”
That pain was the price of breaking the contract.
Having lost all her abilities from the first infraction of the contract only to breach it again led her to lose everything that was meant to be sacred under the contract.
Blood, life, perhaps even her soul.
Slowly, significant parts of Auria began to seep away.
Yet rather than lamenting in madness as would be expected under such pain,
“Ugh, ha ha!!”
Auria instead burst into laughter.
Every ‘end’ comes only once.
Yet among those ‘ends,’ there surely exist more valuable ones.
And what had just come to Auria was what she had only ever imagined.
“This is my ‘end’….”
It was her final moment of existence.
With death looming over her, Auria collapsed onto the ground and looked up at the sky.
Above her, the end prepared to obliterate the world was descending directly upon her head.
Originally, she wanted to witness the sight of the world’s end.
Yet if she could take the world along with her own ‘end’ as a companion,
Would there be a more dramatic conclusion than this?
Would there be a happier ending than this?
“How luxurious this ‘end’ is….”
With that thought, Auria opened her arms to embrace the death falling from the sky, welcoming the ‘end’ that came to her.
And at that moment, feeling an overwhelming ecstasy that could offset the agony of her soul evaporating,
“Best, ya…”
With a blissful smile, she met her ‘end’ in the ecstasy of salvation.
The witch Auria, who had thrown the world into crisis, finally drew her last breath.
“Damn it, what about the evacuation of the citizens…!!”
“We’re evacuating everyone to the outskirts of the city, but…!”
“Damn it, damn it…!!”
However, even after her death, the embodiment of malice she had prepared to obliterate the world remained, plunging the heroes into despair.
Although they had evacuated the citizens, they knew it held little significance.
None could possibly stand against the calamitous end falling from above.
“It’s over….”
“It’s wrong now….”
And just when everyone had lost hope and began to hang their heads one by one,
“Hey, look over there….”
“…What is that?”
People noticed.
Someone still looking up at the sky without bowing down to despair.
“……”
Underneath the falling end,
There was a girl enveloped in wings of flame.
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