Ch.261Do You Remember How Many ○ You’ve Eaten So Far?

The echoing explosion made the water’s surface tremble, shaking the entire waterway as if it might collapse.

People on the surface must be thinking an earthquake had struck.

My battle with Isabella was tearing apart everything in sight.

The blue-silver blade, golden radiance, deep green edge, and darkness of dark mana shattered as they collided.

Mana lamps caught in the sword pressure burst into fragments, while blade-tipped legs dug into walls, carving cracks.

Neither I nor that woman had our feet touching the ground very often.

It was a battle of repeated leaps and collisions, using walls, ceilings, and even waterway pillars as footholds.

Isabella’s spider-like auxiliary legs and the tentacles of Karma of Murder controlled by Hersella crushed and regenerated each other repeatedly, darting through the narrow underground alleyways as if they were home.

[Haha, isn’t this fun! Even for me, such a chaotic battle is a first!]

Hersella laughed loudly, clearly enjoying herself.

Well, most battlefields she’d fought on were likely plains suitable for cavalry. Fighting in such narrow underground spaces must be a first for her.

I had no time to respond. If I had that luxury, I’d throw out another taunt instead.

“Close your crotch! I can’t breathe because of the stench!”

“Wouldn’t it be better to get used to it? You’ll have to lick it like a dog later!”

Insect legs poured down like rain.

As I threw myself sideways to dodge, crimson tentacles extended toward the pillar.

“Then put some butter on it first!”

The Karma of Murder tentacles coiled around the pillar like a snake, yanking my body toward it.

The power of Karma, strengthened since our last battle.

This power now not only attacked but eliminated the risks of leaping, enabling three-dimensional spatial combat.

“It would rot instantly even if you did!”

I stepped vertically on the pillar and leaped toward her, thrusting my sword.

A blue-silver flash shot like a meteor. The pillar that had served as my foothold exploded into pieces.

“Such language from a little girl who hasn’t even grown her down yet.”

In response, Isabella’s legs thrust their sharp claws toward me.

[How dare you thrust your feet at me!]

The power of Karma wrapped around my body burst forth like a blooming flower bud.

The whirling blades of Karma penetrated the carapace, severing the insect legs.

For an instant, Isabella’s upper body was exposed.

“Must be nice having so many, grandma!”

Just as Isabella tried to regenerate her legs,

my Oath Blade shot forward, piercing through her head.

—-

The blade penetrated between her eyebrows, drilling through the back of her head.

Against an ordinary enemy, this would have been more than enough to end the fight.

But.

“…Are you finished?”

Despite her condition, Isabella calmly muttered.

This wasn’t her resurrection power activating. Her flesh, corrupted by dark mana, could withstand even a wound that penetrated her skull.

“No, far from it!”

I hadn’t even started yet.

I twisted and stirred the blade I was gripping like digging through a sand pit.

Her skull was roughly ground away, turning the witch’s brain into a pulp as if thrown into a blender.

“Grueeeek…”

Her pitch-black eyes rolled back, trembling and shedding tears, while foam leaked through her sharp teeth.

Her brain, mashed like a scrambled egg, flowed out through her nostrils.

The witch’s brainless body slumped to the floor.

Her body convulsed as if electrocuted. Her legs jumped and trembled like they were dancing.

“How is it? Isn’t it ecstatic, like your brain is melting?”

“I… don’t… know? You’ll… find out… when you… experience it?”

My instinct sent a warning.

From behind me, the insect legs that had somehow regained control were approaching, trying to grab me.

…She’s recovering faster than I thought.

I extended Karma tentacles toward the ceiling, pulling myself up like climbing a rope.

The insect legs embraced empty air, having lost their target.

This makes only the second time.

It seems the approach of inflicting severe wounds and consecutively ending her life won’t work.

She does slow down a bit when severely injured… but once she’s killed outright, she resurrects instantly and counterattacks.

“…What strange regeneration. It doesn’t respond to small wounds, yet instantly recovers from injuries that should be fatal.”

Lacy, who had been looking for an opening to intervene, muttered with a frown as she observed.

I hadn’t explained Isabella’s power to the others. It would be strange if I knew it in detail.

So I had no choice but to show them like this.

“It’s not regeneration. It feels like she definitely dies, but recovers and returns instantly. It’s more like resurrection.”

I also threw in some advice that seemed to come from experience.

“Resurrection…! No matter how much of a witch she is, such a thing shouldn’t be possible so easily…”

“…She’s transferring it.”

Ophelia continued.

Her eyes, mysteriously glowing with prismatic colors, glared at Isabella as she rose again.

Ophelia van Sigmillus’s unique talent, Mana Sight.

Her magical eyes, capable of detecting the flow of both mana and dark mana—opposing yet similar energies—analyzed Isabella’s power and its principles.

“I’m certain. That dark mana flow is similar to curse techniques that transfer diseases or impurities. And the way a faint piece of dark mana flies somewhere each time she resurrects. So that… seems like she’s transferring her death to someone.”

…Accurate analysis. As expected, you’re properly repaying me for helping you compete with your sister!

It was incredibly convenient how she could arrive at the correct answer with just a hint.

“-An interesting speculation. You could be a playwright.”

Isabella, who had already resurrected, smiled enigmatically as she charged.

She kicked off the wall and jumped to the ceiling, like an inverted spider.

Her charging momentum was incredibly violent.

– Buuuung!

The irritating sound of wings. The newly born insect monsters followed her, all flying in at once.

“What, flustered because I’m right?”

I ran toward Isabella, leaving Lacy and Ophelia behind.

“Death transference… if the activation condition is losing one’s life first, who would be the target?”

From the tip of Lacy’s cross spear aimed at the monsters, a beam of pure white light erupted, shattering the monsters to dust.

“I don’t know. But if it’s a power that can avoid death, it’s as important as life itself. She’d want to secure as many sacrifices as possible before anything else… so wouldn’t the answer lie in what that woman does most diligently?”

Ophelia’s wind blades tore through the insects that had dodged the light beams.

“What you do most diligently would be rolling around with men, wouldn’t it?”

Swinging my sword toward Isabella, I casually spoke the answer.

“Well, who knows? I might tell you if you ask in a whisper? In bed, that is.”

Pretending not to know when she’s already been exposed.

She probably didn’t expect her mechanism to be figured out after just two resurrections.

“I’d rather not catch syphilis!”

“How rude. It’s much cleaner than your mouth?”

The mantis’s forelegs, which had somehow grown to four, swung like scissors toward me.

“Such childish tricks!”

In terms of speed and power, they’re nothing compared to Valenstein’s sword!

I dodged the blade aiming for my waist with a high jump, and swung Durandal and Frosting to tear apart the other two forelegs.

I’ve become faster and stronger than before.

Now, such attacks were meaningless.

Following that, I extended my left hand toward the ceiling that had come close to my crown, digging my nails into it.

‘Spike pillar toward the ceiling!’

[Like this?]

From my left hand gripping the ceiling, the power of Karma extended like a shadow.

“Your imagination is poor. I’ve seen that before.”

Isabella dropped her body from the ceiling.

Indeed, she must have been watching when I fought Valenstein. She knew the exact range of the spike pillar.

The range from back then.

– Shunk!

A red stake, twice as long and one and a half times thicker than before, penetrated Isabella’s crotch.

“Kyaah…!”

The spike burrowed between her legs, tearing through her internal organs and protruding between her ribs.

Her uterus and small intestine were tangled at the pointed tip of the skewer.

“Ha, did your old eyes fail to see properly?”

Two, three spikes extended in succession, firmly fixing Isabella’s body as they embedded in her entire body.

“Ahah… now that I’m impaled, it’s thicker than I thought? You’ll be popular with women… but it’s not enough to make me climax. Is this all?”

“Why? Too wide to feel it going in?”

I charged in and swung Frosting’s claws.

Five cursed fangs tore Isabella’s body apart, while the Karma tentacles transformed into blades from stakes, shredding her insides.

The witch’s body, instantly turned into raw meat, splashed into the water, dyeing the groundwater red.

“This is quite nice, I’m completely soaked… is it because you’re a virgin? You don’t know how to tease, just charging in recklessly.”

With a splash of water, a drenched Isabella leaped onto the water’s surface.

This was her third resurrection. So far, things were going smoothly.

—-

The battle, too prolonged to be called a preliminary skirmish.

By now, the surroundings had completely turned to ruins.

Over a dozen pillars were destroyed, and the waterway floor, excavated like a mine, was filled with enough flesh and entrails for more than twenty people, pooled like stew and emitting a strange smell.

In other words, I had killed Isabella more than twenty times.

“Still want to keep coming? Even with a monkey’s brain, you should realize by now this is pointless… well, this is enjoyable entertainment too. The longer the teasing, the greater the pleasure afterward.”

Isabella, looking exactly the same as when we started, calmly smiled while caressing her naked body.

—-

Netherworld Escort.

Indeed, it was a power that couldn’t be broken by direct methods.

No matter what injury she sustained, once activated, all wounds disappeared without a trace.

Even when Lacy’s holy fire burned her entire body, though she screamed, the flames vanished the moment she resurrected.

But trying to incapacitate her without killing her wasn’t easy either.

I tried cutting off her limbs and weakening her by spreading curses with Frosting, and indeed, after that much damage, she couldn’t move properly.

…For a while.

The solution Isabella took as soon as she felt her body becoming paralyzed was very simple.

Self-destruction.

The witch’s belly suddenly swelled, then her entire body exploded like a firecracker.

Bone fragments and carapace shards swept the surroundings like shotgun pellets, still embedded here and there in the corridor.

—-

Anyway, I don’t know how many times she can do this…

If we stick to killing her until she dies for good, we might exhaust ourselves first.

“Hey, you pretentious slut. How many men did you roll around with to have endless spare lives?”

“Well… about eight thousand, perhaps…?”

What, eight thousand?

A number that left me speechless.

Even a mop has its limits. This is a complete public toilet.