City of Witches

༺ Pleasant Daily Life (1) ༻

1.

‘Today’s a good day.’

In a certain alley, away from the bustling downtown, a tipsy male student laughed with a cigarette in his mouth.

“How the fuck did you pick her up? She was crazy stunning!”

Leaning against the stone wall, his friend casually lit a cigarette and shook his head.

Their tipsy state led them to laugh while telling each other inside jokes.

“I told you, this great Taehyun is smooth with the ladies!”

“There were three girls back there, it’s surprising how well it went.”

“So, who caught your eye the most?”

“The short-haired one on the right. What was her name again? Soyeon? Anyway, she stands out. It’s crazy to think how a quiet-looking girl like her gets wild in bed!”

It was a Friday night during the summer vacation.

When the student, Taehyun, was lounging around in his room, he got a call from his friend and rushed to a nightclub.

Before that, he spent half an hour fixing his hair and putting on the outfit he bought from a department store.

And all the effort he put in was totally worth it.

The quality of the girls he attracted, though he claimed that he wasn’t a smoker (to attract more of them), was outstanding.

Despite each of the girls having different tastes, the matchmaking went smoothly. As the night went on with their drinking games, physical contact became less uncomfortable for them.

“All because I set the mood properly.”

“The fuck? I tried my best to be a wingman for you. Don’t act like you did everything all by yourself.”

“Well, I guess you’re right about that.”

Using playful banter, smooth conversations and laughter, he effortlessly transitioned into the role of a mischievous male friend.

To proceed, he planned to spend a second round at a cocktail bar, create a subtly seductive atmosphere and move on to the final part of his plan; Bringing the girls home.

His achievement to seduce over forty girls just like this became something that he boasted often among his friends.

“Alright let’s head inside and have more fun. If we keep them waiting any longer, they might start complaining and go home instead.”

“Sure, let me finish this cigar first.”

While his friend smoked, he was fiddling with his phone. Suddenly, he felt the urge to urinate.

“Fuck, I gotta take a piss. Where’s the toilet?”

“Just do it here. No one’s here anyway, I’ll cover for you.”

“Let me know if anyone comes.”

He loosened his belt and walked through the narrow alley, feeling slightly unsteady.

Getting tipsy improved his mood considerably, but it made his body feel heavy.

In any case, he decided to do the deed in a secluded spot rather than finding an actual toilet.

As he stepped into the alley, a chill breeze greeted him.

“I haven’t even pissed yet, what a pain.”

Vaguely aiming toward the drain, he began to empty his bladder that was filled from him drinking beer.

“Where should we go for the second round, though?”

Leaning against the wall, he called out to his friend standing outside the alley.

But no response came.

“Oi, I asked you a question.”

He hadn’t walked too far from him, so he should be able to hear his voice.

The situation turned tense, and he tried to lighten it with a chuckle and a joke.

“Did you pass out or something? If you sleep here, you’ll wake up with a paralyzed face, you dumbass.”

Still, the only response he got was an unsettling silence.

Amidst the flowing stream of his urine, he sensed that something was off.

Currently, it was around 1 am. The night should still be bustling with activity even though it was Friday.

Even if he was a little away from the lively downtown, there should be some noises coming out from the small one-room apartment blocks nearby.

Drunken women crying, men causing ruckus, students making noises, he should be able to hear all of those sounds.

But instead, what he was facing was total silence, as if he was in a library.

Not even the usual sounds of cars or delivery bikes reached his ears.

More importantly, the strange atmosphere was so noticeable that even a drunk man like him could tell it.

“There’s some fucked up shit going on, huh?”

Unease started to creep up on him. The feeling overwhelmed him, even more than the foul stench coming up from the alley, but he forced a chuckle as he tried to reassure himself.

He felt a shiver run down his spine, but he attributed it to his alcohol-laden body acting up.

‘What? I’ve only been doing normal things so far!’

Alcohol, night-life, women, friends.

This was the prime of his life, as he lived intensely like a shooting star.

What he had been doing was only savoring that moment.

“Why aren’t you answering me, you piece of shit?!”

The normally bustling night streets were shrouded in silence, an odd and inexplicable phenomenon.

When he was about to return and stepped back to the alley he was in… that happened.

He stood there, dumbstruck, unable to move even an inch.

“…Aaa…”

Imagine this scenario. You had a friend, you messed around with him a few minutes ago while he browsed through a hotel booking app while smoking. Then suddenly when you weren’t looking, he got turned into something out of a haunted house.

A ridiculous situation, wasn’t it?

His friend’s body hung in the air, fifty centimeters above the ground, pierced by a crimson-red spear that seemed to pierce through his ribs, lungs, and maybe even heart.

Anyone would laugh at such a ridiculous situation, wouldn’t they?

“W-What the fuck is this—?!”

Taehyun’s gaze shifted towards his friend’s eyes, widened like gaping holes.

His friend’s mouth was half-opened, and a red tongue stuck out.

Red stains resembling blood flowed from his pierced chest, staining his clothes with its vivid color.

The same person who had been laughing and chatting just a moment ago now froze, contorted in a grotesque mask of horror.

Now, it was clearly impossible that his friend learned how to levitate in this short amount of time.

Which meant, there should be something that was holding his body up.

Taehyun tilted his head, and he finally saw what exactly was it that caused his friend to end up this way.

‘Is that… A cosplay? From an MMO? Lord of the Rings? Gundam? It looks like a knight…’

Those were the words that popped into his head as he took a glimpse of the towering, two-meter-tall suit of armor.

Said full plate armor was excessively decorated and painted in a striking shade of red.

Countless red eyes flickered within its helmet’s dark interior, fixing their gazes on him.

An unsettling, arachnid-like gaze reflected from the metallic surface.

It was an emotionless stare that treated him like a prey.

At that moment, the urgency of the situation finally dawned on him.

This was all real.

He couldn’t brush this off with a hollow laugh.

There weren’t any hidden cameras nearby.

“Sa… Sa…”

He tried to call for help, but only a wheezing sound escaped his throat, as if his windpipe had been soldered shut with lead.

Despite him looking around desperately, there was no one in sight to aid him.

‘Run. Just, run away!’

Clinging onto such a futile hope, he attempted to flee.

But then, a searing pain seeped into his chest.

He didn’t even get to see how it unfolded.

Before he realized it, a red spear had pierced his chest.

His friend, who had been impaled like a skewer, was now writhing on the ground, half of his upper body torn apart, resembling nothing more than discarded trash.

That was the last memory he had before Taehyun met his demise.

2.

Having swiftly slain its lured prey, the Homunculus withdrew its spear.

No trace of the hunt remained, as if it never happened.

The lifeless bodies, stripped of their existence and ties to the world, turned to ashes, leaving only blood stains on the asphalt.

And the knight remained devoid of any emotion or attachment to the scene.

From its inception, ‘it’ was never designed to harbor emotions.

It only has one single purpose for existing; To exterminate those who sought its legacy.

To sustain its own existence, it hunted and slaughtered witches to devour their mana.

When that proved insufficient, it resorted to ambushing humans, consuming their ‘ties’ to convert into mana for replenishing its power.

For centuries, it had been repeating these mundane activities, following mechanical algorithms.

If there was something different in its mundane activities, it was that it managed to acquire some tricks over time from all the trial and error it did when it executed a series of actions.

After finishing its simple meal, the Red Knight contemplated its situation.

Because it wasn’t satisfied.

It was still hungry.

At this rate, it couldn’t fully repair all the damage it took from all the consecutive battles it underwent.

Against its most formidable adversary among the countless witches it had faced throughout the century, the pink-haired witch.

With a single strike, she could cleave mountains, with a touch she could unleash earthquakes and she could endure the distortions caused by Red Branch’s power with ease.

No matter how the Red Knight tried to hide using the Red Branch, the pink witch would inevitably appear before him.

Based on its experiences and logical circuits, if it were to confront the pink witch, the confrontation would eventually lead to its defeat.

Yet, it had always remained devoid of any emotions.

It approached all of its problems mechanically, considering various methods to find solutions.

But, first and foremost, it required more mana. More humans it needed to devour.

Currently, it only had a fraction of mana it needed.

If it were to encounter the pink witch in this state, it’d be unable to fight properly or escape unscathed.

In fact, its condition was quite dire as if it were to try and hunt other witches in this condition, it couldn’t ensure its victory at all.

The only viable targets if it were to hunt something were the apprentice witches, those who hadn’t fully became witches yet.

And that was why…

It chose the last resort that came to its mind.

‘Devour more… Humans…’

It calculated the amount of mana that it could obtain by ending a single human life.

And came to the conclusion that it needed around 4,000 people to devour.

Only then would it regain enough power to hunt witches.

-Tap, tap

Suddenly, the sound of something treading through a sticky pool of blood echoed in the air.

It resembled that of a reptilan’s footsteps.

Hearing this, the Red Knight turned its head around.

Beneath the dim street light…

There was a witch, standing on the blood that hadn’t dried yet.

She adorned an elegant black dress, just like mourning clothes.

With her raven-black hair and emerald green eyes…

Her appearance aligned with the standards a witch normally had. To put it simply, she was ‘beautiful.’

However, her beauty had a flaw.

The fact that one side of her face contorted grotesquely, divided by a line drawn down the center.

Resembling a burn or melted mass of flesh caused by chemicals.

However, that wasn’t important to the Homunculus.

The fact that she had infiltrated this barrier undetected and managed to catch up to it mattered more.

And there was also the fact that it realized how powerful she was. She wasn’t someone it could handle at its present state.

It didn’t even consider escaping as it aimed its Red Branch at her.

After all, it knew that seizing opportunities during a confrontation before actually escaping had a higher likelihood of success compared to attempting a clumsy escape.

“Are you hungry?”

But the witch ignored its aggression, and spoke in a calm tone.

Her sudden kindness caused the Red Knight’s movements to halt abruptly, as it couldn’t decipher her intentions.

This was the first time it had encountered such a situation, so it couldn’t come up with a decision quickly.

“It seems you’re really hungry.”

Meanwhile, the witch took a step closer to the Red Knight.

She stepped into the distance where it could freely deliver a decisive blow with its spear.

Given how careless the witch’s movements were, as if it never anticipated that it would attack her…

The Red Knight saw a possibility for it to win.

And so, it tried to. Aiming its spear at her heart instinctively, it tried to bring her down… Only for its whole body to stop abruptly like a rusty machine.

Its body became fixed in place, as if tightly bound by an unseen force.

Despite its best efforts, utilizing all its physical, magical, and the Red Branch’s power, it still couldn’t move even an inch.

Meanwhile the witch steadily approached it, undeterred by its condition, offering something in her hands.

A heart. It was throbbing and squirming, as if it was freshly extracted from a living being.

“Want to give this a taste?”

Fanart of the Red Knight