Hermit Wizard

1. 1. 1. 1. Savior or Destroyer (19)

I was in the dark.

The black curtain struck like a tsunami, but it was as calm as the surface of a lake. Turbulence and silence coexisted in contradiction, but none of them were properly distinguished.

There was an absence of color and shape. The darkness concealed and hid it all, making me fall into the swamp and thought in an unknown emotion. Was it okay like that? Was it as good as that?

The darkness answered me.

-Oh, I was wondering what kind of wicked guy it is. So, you’re a very unusual one.

I thought quietly, ‘Unusual one?’

Yes, everyone who met me said that, and most of them weren’t human. It turned out that there weren’t many humans I had ever met in the first place.

-I even allowed you to postpone the payment of the offering. Are you going to put it on hold until you’re done with this life? Did you think such a joke would work?

My feelings, sense of crisis, and judgment were trying to lose shape and collapse in the dark, so I whispered.

“I’m sorry, it was a shallow trick.”

-Yes, it was a shallow trick. Mortal. I’m sorry, so I’m here to get the offering right now.

I asked back.

‘I don’t even use the spell right now. How? This isn’t your altar. It’s not even your territory.’

-All places where darkness and night fell are my territory. Dreams also belong to my jurisdiction because there is a dream beyond the door that opens when you close your eyes, clear the world, and immerse yourself in consciousness. You didn’t even understand my existence and meaning properly. It’s different from what you understand with your head. You should be able to recognize me. How did you reach out to me and get the spell when you didn’t? Rather, why am I so familiar with you?

That was also just one of the unknown words about me.

I whispered in my heart, “I’m tired of it. Non-human beings who meet me, or the higher-level being who do not belong to the world I live in, all say those words. I’m unusual, weird, and interesting.”

Yet, as always, there was no evidence to be sure of who I was. Even if I doubt and reason, the answer was far away.

“So, what else did you see? What did you see inside me?”

-Because of that familiarity, I delayed the offering in your favor. But I have no intention of waiting for you to die.

Offering?

What was the offering I promised?

“Whatever it is, can you put it off any longer?”

-…

There was a brief silence in the dark. I guessed that time would lead to an undesirable ending, and it wouldn’t take long for the anger to transform the opponent’s favor into hostility. At that point, I held my breath and wait for the moment.

However…

The darkness conveyed a completely different will than I expected.

-… Hahaha. I see. Okay…

The other person observed me. It didn’t feel like a cognition through gaze, but it was as if it was savoring my entire existence since that darkness that I was locked in was the being that was talking to me.

-I even came to receive payments myself… but I never thought I’d make this decision…Yeah. Let’s stop. It’s enough.

“Why?” I had lost the sense of crisis and asked.

The darkness answered.

-This wasn’t the first time you’ve ever faced me.

I asked myself. Was it referring to the ceremony at the altar when I received the spell?

However, as I listened to the words that followed, I felt like it was talking about a different time than that.

-What else can I take from the scraps, residues, and fragments that have already lost the real self? How can I take the ego from someone who has already lost it?

I remembered the Dragon Emperor, who lost itself due to the spell and couldn’t even move. What the darkness was trying to take away from me at that moment was the same thing. It wasn’t just temporary concealment like when I used the spell, but permanently taking away my ego.

At that crucial moment, the opponent stopped acting and reversed the decision.

-Hmm?

It was then. Something like black smoke came out from deep inside me.

It wasn’t the first time I saw it. I experienced a phenomenon in the dream where a fake Parvache appeared. A huge mysterious memory existed and condensed in the memories of my childhood that Yodmo ate. It almost matched the darkness surrounding me and blended in like a saturation around me.

The phenomenon was so natural that I even thought of that. Was what Yodmo and I called black smoke, not the black gas and just a part of the night and darkness?

I talked to the darkness.

[Thank you for your generosity and forgiveness.]

-Why did you come out and say hello? You are also just a residue.

[You have helped me since ‘the beginning.’ I wanted to thank you in person.]

-… You seem to have a little memory left.

[I am the memory itself.]

-The memory of the Reclusive Soul. It’s not even funny. The most difficult thing is to seclude yourself, but you are also a very unusual and eccentric guy.

[It is thanks to you for lending me strength. Thank you for the kindness.]

-I don’t know if it was borrowed or stolen. The sign of gratitude that will be forgotten after waking up is cheap and meaningless. Yeah, since you’re using your powers, make sure you hide well. Keep secluded, hide, and forget yourself well.

[Yes. I will.]

The darkness seemed to be distracted from me, keeping its gaze on my existence, not drawing interest from me. It then said as if it suddenly thought of it.

-… Ah, yeah. The fragments of consciousness that informed you of my existence… will you leave it as it is? In any case, how about offering the spirit as a sacrifice to me? That might give you more power. The soul is weak, but the consciousness, that is, the ego that assembles the existence, is quite old, large, and savory.

I recalled some time ago. A descendant of Dalkerus, who possessed poor brainwashing ability with only twenty or so eyes, looked inside the spirit’s inner side with mental sensibility. He was overwhelmed by the size of the enormous world of mental images and spoke of astonishment. He said that it was so huge and distant that its depth was unknown.

It was an opposite reaction to when the Maek faced the spirit. Its soul was weak and couldn’t be easily seen since it was likely to break at any moment.

I stopped thinking and responded firmly.

[I can’t do that.]

-Why is it?

[It… is like me. It is a pitiful and poor being who ruined everything with a wrong choice at the last minute. It is easier to count what it hasn’t lost than what it has lost. I can’t put it in misery anymore.]

I said that while crying. Tears flowed silently in the dark. The darkness, which ate all the traces of the hot drops and the waves, was silently staring.

-Hahaha. It’s fun. Yes, I’ll see how long you can go this way. How will you or the spirit, the desperate beings holding on to the end of destruction, continue to exist.

The darkness left by those words began to recede slowly.

***

“Humph! Cough! Cough!”

I opened my eyes while coughing. After coming out of my clothes, Maru, sitting on my chest, flinched and moved its body. It then quickly found its original place and covered my bare skin.

“Ehem! Cough!”

The cough continued as if I was choked. What is it? I think I had a long dream, but I can’t remember it well.

“… Huh? Eraser?”

Hwang Soo-rim’s expression looking at me was strangely distorted. Mrs. Pearl, who rarely opened her mouth inside the container, asked me.

“Did you have had a bad dream?”

I sat blankly for a moment without understanding the meaning of the question, and then because of the unfamiliar feeling, I swept my cheeks with the back of my hand, and a moist liquid came out.

“… What is this?”

I thought it was strange.

How long had it been since I cried, even in my dream?

“… Ah, what is it? This…”

I got up from my seat, erasing the marks on my cheeks. Maru, which got inside the hoodie, rang the air and asked.

“… Reclusive, cry, why?”

“I don’t know, Dude.”

I tried to keep my head straight. Seeing the container descending, it seemed that it had almost reached its destination.

I thought while wiping my eyes.

In the past, there have been several times when I woke up crying after having a nightmare. As I entered puberty, my head grew thick, and I started to understand what my destiny really was.

Currently, it was different from that time. I opened my eyes, but I couldn’t find any lingering emotions buried in my dream.

It felt as if someone else came into my body while I was sleeping and cried and then left.

[… Min-joon?]

Parvache approached me and asked about my condition. The mental wave became so weak that I could hardly notice it.

I looked at the spirit trapped in Parvache, who will soon get its current ego destroyed.

As soon as I thought about that, some unfamiliar emotions began to roll around in my heart. It spread its wings very dimly and faintly and fluttered somewhere deep.

I muttered.

Yeah. I thought the reason I called you was that we were so similar to each other, not only in the reason the present ego was created but also because the ego that was created was unstable.

Maybe I needed a friend who would feel the greatest affinity with me even though it was obvious that I would forget the reason again right after calling you.

[… What does that mean?]

Still, its will was too weak. Apart from mental waves’ intensity, I asked back since I didn’t understand what it’s talking about.

“About what?”

[You just said that it was the reason for calling me. Did you mean the moment you summoned me?]

“… What are you talking about? I have no memory of when I summoned you. You guessed it would be magic unfolded unconsciously.”

Parvache repeated the same words a few times to me, who kept wiping my tears, but I couldn’t understand the meaning. I didn’t remember telling him by delivering will out of my mind.

Parvache was about to pass on to its next ego, and its mental power had weakened a lot. Probably because of that, it was an illusion that couldn’t exist normally. When it came to human beings, was it called hallucination?

After repeating each other’s words that didn’t match a few more times, I heard the container sitting on the ground with a thump. At that moment, our conversation stopped.

***

=We arrived. =

The Summon who flew with a container told me with its will. It was converted into a unit of time familiar to me and delivered to my mind.

=1 hour and 19 minutes.=

It was a measure of how long the pet flew that time.

I glanced at Garam, who hadn’t come to his sense yet. Originally, I borrowed Garam’s hand to pay this Summoner’s price due to the division of roles. Since he was in that condition, I had to prepare it myself. The time would be right in about an hour and 19 minutes.

I opened the container door and stepped out. Ramumings who lived in the village gathered together, strangled their heads, and laid face down in front of the container as if they were paying respect.

“Here. Take it.”

I looked up at the Summoner sitting on the container. It was a strange creature whose brain and wings occupied more than 90% of its body. Several of the dozens of wings were tied to the container, and then the remaining wings were used to flap and flew all the way here.

Among the species that could fly with objects of that size, that kind was chosen because the desired price was the most economical. When moving outside of the Dragon’s search magic area, the fastest way was for the whole party to fly, so it was the species that was summoned when moving.

-Woooong!

I picked a few dreams from the Maek’s Copper I was holding, combined them, and pushed them into the Summoner’s brain. Those were obscene dreams that I purposely collected before I came over there. I edited the running time of the dream to be played like a video in the head of that kind to be roughly 1 hour and 19 minutes. It was a trading condition to provide the video for the time it was summoned.

=… Good. Very good.=

That summon came from a kind where most of the body had degenerated, leaving only the brain and wings. All its natural enemies have disappeared too. In that race, the biggest amusement played in the brain was the satisfaction of watching the breeding scenes of the aliens from strange worlds.

=Then I will go back…=

“No, wait a minute!”

Instead of opening the Channel in my chest immediately, I had put the summon on standby. Considering the business there, we had another place to go as fast as we could.

Instead of waiting for Garam to recover, I planned to come to see the Root Stone. It was a place where dragons had a strict boundary, so we couldn’t fly to its center, but we had to fly as much as possible to the surrounding area.

I looked at the Ramumings gathered in the village.

“Parvache, please…”

Parvache conveyed my will to the Ramumings gathered in the square. I said I wanted to make a deal since we needed two types of metal to feed Garam and asked what Ramumings wanted in return.

Thinking of us as dragons, they refused at first. However, Parvache explained that we weren’t dragons, and only after Ramuming, who had moved with us, helped the people believed the truth.

I didn’t need to create a hostile relationship, but I wasn’t going to lie or made another trouble by exploiting instead of a fair deal.

The old Ramumings representing the village hesitated for a long time and then asked one thing.

“Great people… I heard the words of this child whose life was saved. Are you saying that you can use such noble magic when you’re not truly a dragon?”

I frowned since I roughly guessed what would be going on.

“Ask me what you want.”

Through the interpretation, the words of the old Ramuming continued.

“Can you share even a little bit of wisdom so that our magic can evolve further at the present stage?”

I asked Parvache.

“Why magic?”

Parvache, who was talking to the old Ramuming, interpreted it to me.

[They are avoiding explicit mentions and references… but they seem to think that it’s a tremendous opportunity to change the future of their kind. They seem to be conscious of the dragon, the ruler. Even if it takes a long time, they seem to be thinking of the possibility of secretly building up strength.]

It appeared that the group wasn’t completely desperate to live as a slave to the dragon.

I know the circumstances, but of course, I refused. There was no time to sat and taught them magic at that moment. It was a bit cold-hearted, but just because they started learning magic currently, it was unclear whether the day they would escape the control of dragons would come.

Still, I said I would consider it if there were any artifacts they needed.

The Ramuming replied with a darkened complexion.

“I know it’s an excessive request, but could you please give us some time to discuss? Of course, we will offer the metals you need right now.”

In the first place, they didn’t seem to be against us. They decided to provide the metal first and then deliver their request later. It seemed that some discussion was needed internally. They considered it a tremendous opportunity, and for that reason, it was a situation that required careful judgment.

Seeing that the metal was given first, they realized that it wasn’t a situation to worry about getting stabbed in the back. They didn’t seem to be worried that we would rob them by force in any case.

It was such desperate psychology that they were afraid of us, but they wanted to push in somehow.

After a while, the residents brought pieces of minerals in front of our container, piled them up, and then stepped back. After confirming that Garam started to eat it, I ordered the Summon to fly up with only Parvache and Mrs. Pearl.

***

To reach the Root Stone, we had to go back the way we came. It was near the Dragon Emperor’s nest, after all.

We flew to the point where the detection magic couldn’t catch us and then sent the Summon back. I felt that the magic barrier around there was weakened as a whole, perhaps since the Dragon Emperor had become incapacitated. Nevertheless, I had already been caught once, so I moved with caution.

“The barrier is pretty weak. It’s much easier to move than the last time when we went to the center of the nest.”

[… Ah. I see.]

Parvache’s reaction slowed a little. As time passed, its mental power was getting weaker and weaker.

Mrs. Pearl looked around and said.

“Maybe that is the Root Stone, right?”

I saw a rectangular monument far away. It was an alien landscape that didn’t match the surrounding natural environment at all.

“It is bigger than I thought.”

Since it was a wide-open plain, the object came into the eye clearly from beyond the horizon. We kept moving forward, keeping the hidden magic to avoid any danger.

The more we walked, the more we were amazed at the size of the object.

“… That’s actually quite a distance right now, isn’t it? Still…”

“Yes, but why does it look so big?”

At first, I wondered if I had lost my sense of distance. As we approached, the huge square pillar boasted overwhelming majesty.

“It’s almost like a mountain?”

The Root Stone stood on the ground and stretched upright like a standing pillar. The closer we approached, the more we learned. The fact that the material of that object was closer to metal than stone, and the surface wasn’t smooth, but some unknown patterns were engraved. Given its regularity, it was definitely a kind of language.

“… Parvache?”

At times like that, there was no other place to rely on. Parvache glared at the pattern for a moment and answered.

“… Nothing can be found in Akashic Records.”

All the languages ​​of the world were recorded in Akashic Records. That was because it was one of the information systems shared by most people in civilization. In most cases, the language had the lowest level of reading.

Nevertheless, there were two reasons why a language system couldn’t be found in the Akashic Records.

One. The case where the Apostle of Purbagios had never appeared in the world where the language was spoken. That means that the world wasn’t recorded on Akashic Records in the first place.

Two. The case where the information was originally recorded in Akashic Records, but the record was deleted or upgraded by a being or beings with enough power to interfere with it.

Which of them was the phenomenon at that moment?

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