Chapter 90: Sacrificial Rite (4)
by AfuhfuihgsIanna didn’t answer the adjutant’s question.
It would be more accurate to say she couldn’t answer.
The adjutant’s hand was thrusting deep into Ianna’s throat.
“Your answer?”
Ianna was certain.
This time, her neck would fly.
Ianna glared at the adjutant with eyes full of contempt, hatred, and anger.
“…Why are you looking at me with such eyes?”
“Ugh, eughp…….”
Baalzebul, so despicably, acted out the adjutant’s appearance from when she was alive.
A mixture of helplessness, disgust, and fear.
Ianna could do nothing.
And.
“…That’s enough.”
Byeolmu-ri, the magical girl, appeared.
With an expression full of horror, she was deploying her Lemegeton and approaching Ianna.
“D-Don’t… come…….”
Ianna’s words were cut off there. Because Baalzebul, having taken the adjutant’s body, grinned from ear to ear and crushed Ianna’s neck.
Blue blood flowed out, soaking the floor. Ianna instantly lost consciousness.
Drip, drip
Her body, consumed by extreme fear and anger, was beyond Ianna’s control.
Ianna’s lower body was, at some point, thoroughly soaked with something.
“…Ah.”
Ianna, with one arm and leg gone, opened her eyes.
It would have been better if she had never woken up.
Ianna, blaming herself, tried to get up.
However.
Ianna, beginning to feel extreme, excruciating pain, couldn’t bring herself to get up.
“Ugh, ughh…….”
She groaned in agony, but there was no one in the hospital room.
The adjutant, who had always been with her, was likewise gone.
The adjutant’s absence.
Ianna shed shallow tears.
They were more genuine than any tears she had shed before.
It felt as if her heart would tear.
‘Because of me. Because I acted foolishly and unnecessarily. If only I hadn’t suggested leaving the Bureau. The adjutant wouldn’t have died.’
‘It’s more tragic than the future Aeweon showed me.’
Ianna couldn’t continue speaking.
A trial.
Ianna was blocked by an insurmountable trial.
It felt as if her heart would tear.
An emotion she thought had already disappeared when she lost countless comrades was stirring once more.
Ianna pounded her chest very hard with her one remaining arm.
‘It would have been better to die. It would have been much better if I had died. If only I hadn’t hesitated, if only I hadn’t been scared, the adjutant could have lived.’
‘It would have been much better to just be dragged away.’
“Ugh, ughhheuk… I’m sorry… I’m sorry… I’m sorry…….”
Ianna prostrated herself, her face a mess of tears, but that wouldn’t bring the adjutant back.
Ianna’s heart had shattered into pieces.
Along with the adjutant.
Creak
Hojoon, with a grim expression, entered the medical office.
It was far from the kind and gentle face he had shown until now.
Ianna instinctively felt a sense of unease.
“What have you done?”
“…Sorry.”
“Director, what on earth have you done?”
It was unlike Hojoon. Hojoon raised his voice and began to question Ianna.
“…An unidentified entity of that magnitude appeared, so why on earth. Did you not run away?”
“I’m sorry…….”
“Why did you go outside? It was an unnecessary sacrifice. Both of them.”
Ianna doubted her ears at Hojoon’s words.
“B-Both… of them……?”
Hojoon silently pushed up his glasses.
Then, he opened a tablet and began to play a recording from several hours ago.
Byeolmu-ri, the magical girl.
She.
“…was taken. Han Byeolhwa, that child, by them.”
It was a situation Ianna couldn’t endure with a sane mind.
“Ha, haha…….”
“Are you laughing?”
Ianna laughed without realizing it.
To Hojoon, it was a rather bizarre sight, but Ianna just laughed.
‘All because of me.’
Because she hesitated, Byeolmu-ri was taken. In her place.
‘It’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have existed. If I hadn’t been born in the first place, none of this would have happened.’
She regretted and regretted again.
Her pride as a magical girl was nowhere to be found anymore.
All that remained of Ianna were her legs, severed below the knees, one arm, and her small body and head.
“……You intended all of this.”
“What… do you mean…….”
“Didn’t you prove that a new, powerful threat exists? The global magical girl command organization has, as of this hour, halted the purge. The purge of magical girls, that is. Are you satisfied now?”
“I, I… know nothing…….”
“Yes, you wouldn’t know anything. You always tried to get away like that, Teacher. Always, always, it was like that.”
Ianna despaired.
She could only despair and despair again.
“What are you planning to do now? Will you seize control of the Bureau with the magical girls at your back? By sacrificing my daughter? Are you satisfied now?”
“N-No…….”
“…I see. Revenge. You have every right to take revenge. However, that should have been limited to me personally. Why… why on earth… my daughter…….”
Hojoon’s face began to distort.
‘…Yes.’
‘Even in the original story, Hojoon cherished Byeolmu-ri greatly. It was the same in the future I saw through Aeweon.’
Ianna finally realized what she had done.
‘Because of that damn fear of pain, because of the fear of suffering, I turned my back on Byeolmu-ri and Hojoon.
Everything I had tried to protect had gone awry and become twisted.’
‘If only I were given one more chance.’
‘This time, I’m sure I can do it right.’
“I’m sorry… I’m sorry… I-I’ll do… everything… I can… I, I… will… save… Byeolhwa…….”
“…I won’t expect anything. Whatever comes out of your mouth, it’s all lies.”
“…I’m sorry.”
She was genuinely sorry to Hojoon.
Because Ianna, could do nothing.
“Ugh, ughh…….”
“Stand up straight, Janwol. You trashy btch. You handed Byeolmu-ri over to them. Even though you knew full well what would happen to her.”
“Ah…….”
The magical girls’ torment of Ianna intensified.
There were no magical girls particularly close to Byeolmu-ri, but by the same token, there were no magical girls who disliked Byeolmu-ri either.
Ianna can no longer move properly.
Because Hojoon did not assign an adjutant to Ianna.
Ianna, with great difficulty, walked and walked, relying on a single crutch.
It was because of the instinct ingrained in her body.
A primal human instinct.
Ianna hadn’t eaten anything for three days already.
“Why don’t you just die? Why are you trying so desperately to live?”
“I, I…….”
She wanted to die too. She definitely wanted to die, but she couldn’t give up yet. Because there was one way to save Byeolmu-ri.
Ianna wanted to meet Hojoon.
She wanted to confess the plans of those bstards that she had heard.
However.
Crack!
A magical girl’s power is hundreds, thousands of times greater than Ianna’s.
It was only natural for something like a crutch to break.
Ianna soon ended up sprawled on the Bureau’s corridor floor.
Following Hojoon’s order not to kill her, they merely gently stomped on her head.
Ianna, her white hair trampled haphazardly and covered in filth, nevertheless began to crawl forward.
When the magical girls, dumbfounded by such a sight, moved away from Ianna.
“Ugh, uook…….”
Ianna vomited blue blood.
Extreme, excruciating pain accompanied it.
However.
Ianna couldn’t die from just this.
It was because of the restraints Baalzebul had placed on her.
‘Ianna’s soul’ was bound to a ‘body that was already as good as dead.’
Now she was in a state where she couldn’t even die recklessly.
Ianna just smiled faintly.
Cursing her own foolishness for bringing all this upon herself.
To somehow save the captured Byeolmu-ri, and to see the people she had tried to protect smile brightly.
She moved and moved, but….
It seemed she had reached her limit.
Her remaining arm and leg trembled violently.
She felt extreme muscle pain.
Why?
Ianna couldn’t understand the reason.
‘Just a little further.’
‘If I go just a little, a little further, I’ll reach Hojoon.’
Of course, that was all in Ianna’s imagination.
In reality, for Ianna to reach Hojoon, she had to crawl much further, and for much longer.
Ianna, her strength depleted, soon felt her energy draining from her body.
Very peacefully.
She fell asleep in that state.
It wasn’t a sleep she would never wake from.
She would surely wake up in half a day, no, a day at most.
But what was certain was.
When Ianna woke up the next day, there was no one around her.
She was just lying alone, sprawled on the Bureau’s corridor.
No one stood by Ianna’s side.
Not a single person extended a hand to Ianna.
Ianna genuinely realized that she was truly alone.
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