The Reborn Witch had a nice 'Tea Time' with the Dragon Queen today
Chapter 102: I Froze Hundreds of Androids to Save Them (My Dragon Wife Held My Hand)

Chapter 102: I Froze Hundreds of Androids to Save Them (My Dragon Wife Held My Hand)

"Adrei...I’ve seen many things in my adventures, but this..."

The Witch chortled in exasperation. "This is going a tad too far in my eyes."

The staff tightened, and claws stretched. The Witch and the Dragon were both on high alert against the mountains of corpses. The blue flame’s light remained the only solace, as the wide corridors enshrouded them with darkness, and they were surrounded by dead eyes glaring at them.

Atmospheric, almost like a horror game. The Witch’s step shuffled forward, the Dragon followed with flames at her fingertips, eyes darting in readiness.

They both knew. With these corpse mountains, the culprit behind them could only be closer than they could imagine.

One step, two steps...the Witch’s eyes scanned over. No <Color>.

Three steps, four steps...the Dragon’s nose twitched—no foul smell.

Five steps, six steps, seven steps...clink.

The Witch raised her staff at a corner with an ice blast.

Metals frozen, reddened glares stilled, and a hand poking out from the hill was glazed with with frosts.

An Automaton’s hand...it just dropped. The Witch narrowed her eyes, and her mana senses tickled her spine.

She glared back and shot an icicle over Adrei’s shoulder, straight to a forehead in mid-air.

An Android. The Witch and the Dragon’s ice and flame glittered alight.

The machine was flung aside into the corpses, twitching, alive. Her indifferent eyes scanned the Dragon and the Witch, the blue flame growing stronger to reflect the black shimmers of her long, white hair.

No mutters, no chants. The elven Android’s head swung off the icicle like a mad dog, then she bent her waist. A crunch, then a dash.

"Silent and..." The Witch raised an ice wall to block a fist. Crack, the Android’s hand groaned.

"Reckless." A kick came, and Andrei carried it.

"A <Drowned>." A subdued tone from the Dragon Queen, before her steaming claw swung through the air.

Thunk. The Android headbutted the claw with her eye. Oil stained the scale as she leaped, her teeth clattering open.

Yet with a scaled stab, the Android grasped. Her chest...has been drilled through, her <Core> within the Dragon’s palm.

"Rest well."

An unceremonious ending. No water’s spraying in delight, no machines laughing in geniunty. Just...hollowness, bitterness, and...relief.

The Android’s muddled mind cleared, the junk data...Undine’s Curse finally left her, as she barely muttered out.

"Th-thank you..."

The Dragon’s hand slipped before the Witch’s hand caught her, before settling her on the ground.

Unlike 556’s smile, this Android Elf’s lips were pursed, for words that had yet to be said, for journeys yet to be finished.

"As always..." The Witch sighed. "An anti-climactic, boring, unfunny end."

No final battles, no last struggle, just a husk desperately attacking others, desperately seeking to die.

Demond’s fingertip closed the Android’s eyes, her knees buckling against memories with Zero, memories of executing the <Drowned>.

A scaled hand rested on her shoulder. "Demond."

"...I know." Demond took a deep breath as she stood. "Focus. Focus..."

As if that would hypnotise her, she finally stood, until-

More clinks. More witnesses.

Demond gritted her teeth as she scoured.

One peeked from amongst a corpse mountain.

One slumped right behind them.

One twitched and clawed her eyes.

And many more surrounded them.

Was the girl a scout? No...

The Witch’s staff quivered. The <Drowned> knows no tactic. Only bloated chunks that they prayed to be gnashed out.

"Adrei. Buy me time."

Runed powers gathered. A <Tale> was readied to be started anew. The Dragon nodded.

One bolted, and a claw met her chest.

"A Winter’s Apocalypse. Forever alone. Forever unyielding."

Another reached for the staff. Adrei slapped the arm off, then impaled again.

"Hallow’s nest never cowered. Never regretted. Only sought a true end."

Winter’s cold blossomed. Snow swirled around the Witch.

Three Androids clung through the snows, before Adrei’s tail swept them away.

"May ruins not be their memories. And only fulfillments will sate their flaying tent."

Icefields cackled around the Witch before spreading. Now frosts marred and froze all the Androids, the mountains, and the corridor.

"So I rest here my prayer: for a New Winter’s dawn."

Ice shattered on the mountains, stone cackled under the sudden winter.

The Androids’ bodies remained unharmed but with frost stars on their skins, seeping deep into their <Core>. Data froze, memories froze, madness...froze...

Undine’s Curse. It was gilded with an embrace for hope, hope for a Winter like kids who witnessed snow for the first time.

The corridor’s shadow subsided, and only a glowing iceground remained.

And together, just like the labourers back in their pods where they were born, they all closed their eyes with contentment, away from all the endless nightmares.

The Witch weaved out the blue flames, which were no longer needed.

The eerie corridors and berserk Androids have been cleansed by her ice’s mercy, even the mountains of corpses all shattered into ice dust, yet a bitterness still swelled up in her eyes.

"Demond?"

A scaled fingertip poked at her cheek, before a hand snaked around from behind. The Witch sighed as she leaned back.

"Euthanisation is not on my job list today..." The Witch groaned.

"Do remember you can take a break under my protection." The Dragon hugged her tighter.

"Just...give me a smoke like usual."

"...mmm."

A smoke ashed out, the Witch parted her lips for the cigarette to settle in between them.

"Seems like this is the end of them."

The Witch puffed out a smoke as she glanced at the ’sleeping’ Androids. "I would have thought whoever’s behind this place had more defense mechanisms, guess I...overrestimated."

"It would seem not." The Dragon’s scales seethed. Operating a hidden temple with enough manas for the traps and automatons was no easy feat."

"Ah, then we had either the most sickening bastard scientist," the Witch glared forward. "Or something is not right here."

"Hm? Whatever could you mean?"

"Adrei, think about this for a second." The Witch plucked out her cigarette, another puffed smoke, another doubt. "Presuming there’s a way to control Android like the one outside, do you not think it is possible to..."

Demond stuttered, hesitant, afraid to ask as she left the Dragon’s embrace.

"...to halt the process of being <Drowned> in datas, and instead directly control them, right?"

"...yeah." The Witch snuggled her hat, hiding her furrow. "It is a theory, but presumably, Undine’s curse lies in its inevitable ’drowning’ against the Android’s processing power with more and more junk data."

"Those junk datas..." the Witch kneeled as she brushed aside one of the Android’s soft locks. "...had no meaning, no purposes. But if an Android’s mind is emptied, with only a simple order to follow...

"Ah..." The Dragon nodded. "Like an automaton without a <Core>, without a free will other than following orders, right?"

"...perhaps so." The Witch stood, took a deep breath before biting down on the cigarette, and before striding forward with steady steps.

"Let’s keep moving."

As always, truths are much crueller than imagination. The Dragon Queen’s shoulders slumped, before her scaled feet traced along the ice, glancing upon the witch’s resolute shadow.

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The icefield truly has frozen everything, as the purity of the ice path never left them, even when they stopped before the end of the corridor.

"Just a door, huh?"

The Witch’s palm glided over the ragged wood, before twisting the door handle.

Woods creaked, and the Witch’s frame huddled to herself. Adrei glanced after her wife’s shoulder in concern, before a slight jolt dilated her pupils.

More automatons’ parts lied around the rooms. Dissected. Mutilated. Some were melded into different forms as if to experiment with something.

The Witch remarked the glass pods standing among the wastes, broken with half-filled water.

Her eyes narrowed with mana senses. <Color> of golden, tremoring veins coiled around the room through the airs, particularly in the waters trickling down the pods.

She stepped in, staff raised with alert just like the Dragon’s claw.

"Seems this is the end."

The Witch stepped through the wasteland, even the purity of the ice failed to reach here, as if vapourised.

"Indeed we have."

A few more treadings, a few more glances. Then they stopped before something.

Dangling by pipes in the middle, a machine-like heart hammered, the Divinity’s <Color> pacing into it like bloods in blood vessals.

Below it lied a desk with an Android sitting, her purple hair sprawling beside an opened notebook.

The Witch gulped as she reached for it, frowning before flipping to the first page.

"Ah..."

She hummed in realisation, a sorrowful one. "As always, they didn’t give up, huh?"

Adrei frowned as she approached the Witch, before sighing upon reading. "It is only right for them to try."

"Even so...doing something that Zero has already given up on..." Demond forced out a chuckle. "Yeah...that girl would have definitely cried oils if she ever arrived here."

Undine’s abandoned temples, usually filled itself with treasures and promised only trials with implied stories hidden in the murals.

But now, only a story about futility remains here, again.

The journal reads unto them:

’Day 1: We have found a potential cure to the <Drowned>.’