City of Witches

Several weeks had passed since Siwoo went back to the modern world.

His life during that time period could be summarized into a single sentence.

Like the emperor of China, he kept on ordering a bunch of food, to the point that his table legs were about to break down.

On average, he ate five meals a day.

Given that he no longer needed to sleep and possessed a body that could digest and consume food without any health concerns, he’d order meals whenever he felt a slight pang of hunger.

If he were a normal human, his toilet would’ve been clogged up more times than he could count.

“Today’s menu is the usual.”

After struggling a little because of his overeating, he sluggishly got up and made his way to his bedroom, which also served as his study.

For this room, he hired an interior designer to set it up. One side of the wall was covered in corkboard, while the other side in whiteboard. Parts of the wall that didn’t get decorated as such had a built-in shelf for storing all his documents.

The place resembled the lab he used to frequent often back in the day.

He faced the whiteboard while holding a water-based marker.

“Alright, let’s have some fun today.”

What he was preparing so diligently for was magic research.

In truth, the reason why he started all this wasn’t solely because of that.

He was trying to review the essence of singularities, the subject he majored in and conducted research on back in the day. In particular, the essential singularities that earned him his master’s degree at a young age.

Since his diligently written thesis disappeared into thin air, he thought that this would be a good thing to do to pass time.

But, to his surprise, he found himself at a loss.

He couldn’t think about anything.

When he tried to get the meaning behind the symbols, the directional nature of a series of equations, and the identification of crucial formulas, he was able to get rough outlines of them. However, he couldn’t get the most important aspect of them all; the ‘flow.’

This wasn’t caused by a slump or a decline in talent because of his five year hiatus.

It was clearly a strange phenomenon, as if his brain adamantly refused to think in that particular direction.

Then, he thought of a possibility.

He remembered that he had suffered a severe brain injury.

Even though he was pretty much fully recovered already, it wasn’t surprising that something like this happened to his brain as an aftereffect.

However, he didn’t get discouraged by it and instead he found another way to pass time.

Perhaps because of all the things he had been through, he became able to control his emotions better and prevented himself from panicking.

He then pondered, trying to look for the extent of the damage he suffered from the aftereffects. Then he recalled that he didn’t find any issues when he applied math to use magic.

Indeed, it really was a strange phenomenon.

‘Maybe my brain got reconstructed solely for the sake of researching magic?’

“Hmm… Does this go here? No, that’s too simple…”

With his hand on his chin, he let out a mutter as he filled the whiteboard with his scribbles.

On it, a massive magic circle had already been drawn. What Siwoo had been doing was writing the symbols and equations to feel the circuits, creating new formulas like solving a fill-in-the-blank quiz.

He retrieved the re-established magic from his mind and organized it into an easy-to-read format.

“How many elements got mixed up in this?”

Siwoo took off his eyepatch, squinted his left eye and looked at the magic circle he had been roughly designing over the course of a week.

By merely glancing at it with his newly acquired left eye, the magic circle transformed into a three-dimensional structure, like what he had seen in Ain.

His left eye was able to discern even the subtle flow of unwanted mana. That was part of the reason why he covered it most of the time as using it for a long period of time would only tire him out quickly.

In any case, as he had roughly guessed, his brand consisted of five different magic that were intertwined as one.

The first one was the fruit of his research, his own self-essence magic, the Dimension Shift.

Then, there was also the Law of Shadows, the magic he obtained from the Egg of Gnosis he got after killing the Homunculus.

“I understand what’s going on up to this point, but…”

That left the three whole magic that he couldn’t figure out at all.

Those magic would come to his mind without him needing to consciously recall them, as if he had known them for a long time.

But, he didn’t know when did he get them, which made him feel frustrated more than anything.

“…Let’s just try it out then.”

He knew that there was a limit to what one can do without a practical experiment.

After all, even genius composers would still need to play what they had composed to create a masterpiece.

The only reason why he hadn’t been doing so was because he didn’t want anyone in this world to find out that he could use magic.

“Hmmm…”

He took out a certain music box that was moving without making any sound.

Having received detailed instructions from Odile, he had a basic understanding of the function of three levers attached next to the music box’s gears.

“It’s supposed to be like this, I think?”

From what Odile had told him, by gently pulling and releasing the second lever while tightly winding its spring, it would perfectly disguise the wave of mana emanating around it.

However, the mana consumption was quite significant. He also needed to rewind the spring once an hour to keep it going, making him wish that there was a better way to do all this.

“Bloom.”

After acquiring a visual confirmation of the concealment barrier, he finally dared to use his magic.

He didn’t need to do much.

It was enough as long as he could activate the unknown magic circles.

The accumulated mana stacked within his brand and flowed through his hand, emitting a brilliant golden glow.

He closed his eyes slowly as he tried to vaguely envision the magic circle’s shape. So far, he didn’t know how the magic circle would manifest.

Then, he let his mana flow through the circuits spread throughout his body.

Next, he distributed it to where it wanted to flow, without obstructing its path.

One transmutation, three transformations and three developments.

The mana gradually clustered during the transmutation process, taking on a physical form, akin to a thin thread.

Next, the transformation process. The threads of mana were arranged vertically, one by one.

As everything intertwined, it created a long, ribbon-like form.

“What the fuck?”

At that moment, Siwoo realized the magic’s true nature.

The self-essence magic of Ea Sadalmelik, the same magic he had once confronted in the past.

It was the same ribbon that had mercilessly torn his body apart.

“Why do I have this?”

As he opened his eyes again, a single strand of ribbon that was capable to trigger a traumatic experience on him was floating in front of his face.

But, compared to what Ea had used in the past, there was a noticeable difference in this ribbon.

It was made of the particles of shadow that he had possessed instead of the usual threads of magic. Thanks to that, the ribbon had a dark and ominous color.

Another astonishing thing about it was that even though the magic should be unfamiliar to him, the ribbon moved freely around him as if it was a part of his body.

His control of its movement was so precise that he even thought he could use it to jerk his own dick off.

‘I won’t actually do that though.’

In any case, he had no recollection of what had happened while he was unconscious.

Even when he looked for an answer using his vast knowledge of magic, he failed to find one.

“…Let’s think about this later.”

In the end, he decided to do the more important thing; checking the other circles that he possessed.

After he secured the ribbon, he proceeded to slowly inspect the other circles.

He managed to discern the identity of one of the remaining two circles relatively easily.

When he focused his mana on it, a familiar space revealed itself.

It was the place within Ain that he visited when he recovered his memories.

The same dark space where he found a lot of stairs and doors.

Each of them seemed to govern over certain ‘memories.’

As for the last magic circle, unfortunately, despite him pouring a considerable effort to inspect it, he couldn’t get anything from it.

It wasn’t the matter of him lacking mana or concentration. He was just unable to pinpoint its form.

He surmised that he’d need to break down and organize the closely interwoven magic first before he could analyze it.

-Beep beep beep

At that moment, his phone started to ring. He, who had been standing while scribbling on the whiteboard for some time, finally set down his marker.

“It’s time to eat.”

He made a promise to himself.

Once every four hours.

Regardless of circumstances, he’d eat five meals a day.

Taking into account the time it took to prepare the food, he started to schedule everything to fulfill that promise.

He used so much of his brain power for it to the point that it felt like his head was on fire.

After that was done, he decided to take a stroll outside and take a breather.

He put on a windbreaker, ordered a bunch of delivery orders and set off into the streets.

There were all kinds of restaurants nearby, perhaps because of the university and various dormitories near his house.

Still, not all of those restaurants were good.

“Let’s head to that famed street today.”

The famed street he referred to was a certain street across his apartment. A street filled with a hub of entertainment and restaurants.

As he went down the stairs, he rummaged through his clothes to grab his cigarettes, but all he could find was an empty pack.

“Guess I have to buy some on the way.”

This was one of the benefits of living in a residential officetel.

On the second floor of the officetel, they provided various facilities, including cafes. There was also a convenience store on the first floor, so he didn’t need to go far away to buy what he needed.

“An afri-cola please. Oh, and a lighter, please.”

He went straight to the counter and caught a glimpse of the part-time worker.

Siwoo wasn’t someone who’d gawk at women openly like Takasho, but it was for him to resist when the other party was someone so charming that she’d be able to bewitch both genders.

Maybe because it was Sinchon, but even the part-timers were dressed stylishly.

She had long hair without bangs.

It had a dark khaki color and slightly dark mint color highlight.

She wore a unisex clothes that fit her naturally. It was as if the clothes were specifically tailored for her.

Though, if her charm was only up to this point, Siwoo wouldn’t have trouble to think that she was probably just a college student that had a heavy interest in fashion and forgot about her afterwards.

But, the part-timer’s beauty wasn’t all that.

She was objectively stunning, not because she was his type or anything.

Her emerald green eyes shone beneath her dark double eyelids. She had a well-defined nose and voluptuous breasts that protruded out of her work vest.

Coupled with that and the strangely familiar atmosphere she exuded, she could easily hold her own against the witches in Gehenna.

If she were to say that she wanted to become a model, various agencies would line up to take her under them. That was why Siwoo couldn’t understand why she was working at a place like this.

“That will be five thousand won.”

But not everything was perfect, her attitude was quite haughty despite her pretty appearance.

She wasn’t exactly passionate about her job either.

Her phone didn’t leave her hand and she never even took a glance at the customers. All she did was fiddling with her phone with one hand while processing the customer’s payment with her free hand.

“Well, with that kind of face, she won’t be getting fired anytime soon.”

As he lit a cigarette, the part-timer had already stopped lingering in his mind.

For today, he had already mapped out which restaurant he wanted to visit while taking his stroll.

The street he was in was like a steep mountain range. Once he got to the top, his destination came into view.

“Huh?”

At that moment, he furrowed his brow.

Initially, he wondered if his eyes were playing tricks on him because he was only using one of them.

But, the dark, unclear thing that was hanging and crawling on the department store billboard in the distance looked way too real for him.

It was too far away from where he was, so he couldn’t tell what exactly it was. But the fact that he could see it from there meant that the thing was exceptionally huge.

Siwoo quickened his pace.

He wanted to see what exactly it was.

When he reached the department store and looked at the billboard again…

He found nothing out of ordinary there.

The people on the street also went on with their lives as if nothing had happened.

Siwoo narrowed his eyes.

“…I wasn’t just seeing things, though.”

After all, he saw it way too clearly.

Suddenly, he felt a shiver run down his spine.

He quickly took out the music box from his pocket, turning up the concealment barrier to its maximum level before putting it back in.

In the end, he decided to stop wandering around due to the unsettling feeling he got. After he bought thirty packages of crabs, he made his way back home.