Hermit Wizard

115.The Second (2)

I replied, “It’s North Korea.”

“Oh, so the missile-shooting country is the North?”

“Yeah.”

What? Was the Channel open in North Korea?

However, the following words of the driver were different from my expectations.

“That’s how I distinguish the two countries. According to the news, the Channel was opened on the other side, not the country where the dictator fires missiles. So, in the end, it’s South Korea?”

My expression hardened as his words fell on my ears.

***

In a tranquil space, the will that reprimanded me knocked my mind.

[Are you really going to stop the Truth-Seeker’s resurrection even though you know the consequences?]

I raised my head. A long-haired young man sat in front of me. A blue tattoo on his white skin fluttered and slid as if it was dancing. He was looking at me with calm eyes.

“We’re done talking, Parvache.”

The figure looked close to his source. It was a dream.

The question he asked was familiar. It was the beginning of the nightmare I already had again and again.

[Didn’t you change your mind after hearing what Alice said?]

Considering that the small executive proudly declared that she would not give in, it didn’t take too long for her to collapse.

“It’s not like I’m killing all the people who live now anyway. It’s a story in the far future.”

[You have changed. You weren’t supposed to choose such a cruel method easily.]

“Is there a way to remain unchanged?”

I didn’t deny it.

“What will happen to me in the hands of the Truth-Seeker? You were the one who instilled that fear in me!”

I shouted at Parvache. His gaze sank calmly. It felt like yelling at a wall, and I was very annoyed.

“What you always said in my dreams before, why did it stop these days?”

I poured out those words.

“You have to run away and hide! You have to be prepared!”

I was imitating him, being sarcastic. The words Parvache said in my dreams repeated to me.

“Why don’t you say that in my dream anymore?”

[Min-joon, it’s because what was planted deep in your heart has disappeared.]

I clenched my fist tightly. Parvache stretched out his finger and pointed at his own body.

[Did I ever tell you this? The reason why I’m not a robot in your dream is that your soul unconsciously recognized me like this?]

He twisted his mouth.

[It wasn’t a lie. I just didn’t explain everything.]

Parvache’s words stuck into my skin like an awl.

[Why do I reveal my source in your dreams? Min-joon, you’ve seen a fragment of a mental body called ‘Parvache.’ The fragments that Parvache planted directly in your heart. Continue until the Silver Forest’s Truth-Seeker destroys it!]

Ah, I wanted to stretch my hands and cover his mouth, but he was out of my reach.

When the Truth-Seeker of Silver Forest made my true name, it looked deep into my heart. There it found a fragment of Parvache and destroyed it.

In the end, the one in front of me at that time…

“You are not a piece of Parvache!”

What had already been broken couldn’t appear before me. He easily accepted my questioning.

[Yes, there are no more fragments of Parvache left. Now I’m just a pure dream created by your consciousness. It is because of your memory that I am in this form. It’s just that. You’re talking to your consciousness right now. It’s just that you’re confirming the facts you’ve presumed or already confirmed in the form of Parvache.]

“Then get out of my sight right now!” I shouted.

[Min-joon, you have changed.]

“Shut up!”

[You are now weighing the future of humankind.]

“The future in two or three hundred years has nothing to do with me! I’m not even alive until then. Even if the ecosystem was destroyed, the existences that crossed the wall and the soulless life will remain on Earth…”

Parvache cut me off.

[Why don’t you ever assume that you’re crossing the wall?]

At that moment, it felt like my head was empty.

[Think of what the Silver Forest’s Truth-Seeker said. Your soul refused to evolve and tried to hide. Think carefully about the meaning.]

“Who the hell are you?”

I couldn’t wake up even though I knew it was a lucid dream.

That was my unconscious? That was my dream?

Parvache held a mock in his mouth.

[You took away other people’s dreams as you please, but it seems you can’t properly control your own dreams.]

‘Damn it, wake up! Now open your eyes!’

[When Garam stole your dreams, you were very angry, but how many people’s dreams have you taken so far? How about intervening freely in someone else’s dream? Don’t you have anything to say about intervening in Lee Seo-rin’s dream? How about Hwang Soo-rim and Kim Kyung-hwan?]

“I couldn’t help it because I had to live! Those three were fair deals. If I didn’t give the elixir, she’s dead. If Hwang Soo-rim and Kim Kyung-hwan were left as they were, they would’ve been dragged away by the ascetics!”

[Hwang Soo-rim and Kim Kyung-hwan! They are a representative example where their fate is twisted because of you. Should I say that they are fortunate that their limbs are fine? Better than other wizards in Hun-neung]

“I am the one who saved all the wizards and brought them out!”

[In any case, you were going to kill them too, weren’t you?]

“…”

I couldn’t respond.

[The reason you used Hun-neung as a stage was actually to consume trainees, right? Human wizards, after all, weren’t they some kind of insurance?]

Parvache whispered as if it were fun.

[You sacrificed the apprentices to slow down the gluttony of Kylgeniapros, but because of your personality, you needed a safety device. If you were delayed in overpowering the officers and your escape was close enough… you were going to sacrifice all 200 trainees, right? To buy more time.]

His sharp words kept pouring out.

[Wizards whose bodies are stained with Mana… A place where high-value human beings are gathered as sacrifices! It was hitting two birds with a stone that you made the barrier in Hun-neung.]

Even when I heard such words, I didn’t feel cheap guilt. I was just annoyed.

Something was weird. When I was awake, I felt no guilt. I thought that those emotional wrecks had completely disappeared after Yodmo ate my memory.

But why am I having that dream at that moment? Was it the suppressed unconscious? It was a scene where you suddenly intervene in your dreams, talk, and lecture about your ethics. It wasn’t even funny.

The feeling of discomfort flowed through my body.

Something was weird. Was that really a pure dream I’ve created?

“Who the hell are you? Why do you blame me for something I didn’t do? In the end, I saved all those trainees.”

I stared at Parvache, and he responded leisurely.

[Because I am a dream?]

“Why do you want to plant guilt on me? I’ve never had this kind of worry since that day. Why am I suddenly dreaming like this?”

Parvache smiled profoundly.

[It’s like you’re so scared that it doesn’t matter what happens to someone else. It’s ugly.]

“Then what am I supposed to do? You want me to sacrifice myself for hundreds of years’ worth of human beings? Why should I? Why not the other way around. Does the value of life depend on a majority vote?”

I huffed while talking.

“You told me all this fear in the first place!”

I couldn’t stand it, and I screamed. If Parvache was really my pure dream, all the fantasies that my memory created were useless, but I screamed nonetheless.

Soon the Parvache I made expanded its size and became a huge giant. Silver eyes were looking down at me from a distant height.

[You have to run away and hide! Be prepared!]

“Stop!”

It was no longer a fragment of Parvache to say that. He was mocking the words I just said.

[Yes, it was Parvache who planted the fear of the Truth-Seeker.]

There was a blue crack in my chest. It gradually turned into a circular dimensional portal. A light ring that almost covered my body. That was the size of my usual summons.

However, it doesn’t stop there.

“Ah… no!”

The giant standing in front of me was no longer Parvache. That night, a tall shadow was standing in front of me. The Truth-Seeker reached out to me. The Channel in my chest expanded more. It became an adult.

“No, no!”

I could hear Parvache’s will from somewhere.

[Is it familiar? The future that Parvache taught you.]

Suddenly, my body broke and crumbled. My ribs are pushed up, and my skull goes down according to the swelling Channel’s size. The spine was tense and eventually cut off. My body was being crushed to fit a circular channel expanding in the middle of my body.

“Ah… ah!”

My skin was stretched endlessly and eventually ripped off. My intestines were stretched out of my stomach, and it was dangling. Endocrine fluid flowed down my body, which had turned into a hoop.

The Channel was eventually completed in the form of an adult about 10 meters. My body became a meat ornament that wrapped around the rim of the Channel.

Even at that point, I was alive. My head, attached to the top of the Channel, couldn’t be stretched to both sides. So, my skull and skin were all worn out. Two eyes rested on a nerve pile, each with a different focus. The lungs flattened to the distorted chest, didn’t lose their movement.

The Truth-Seeker reached out to me like that. The giant’s big hand grabbed me and lifted it. As the ‘border’ moves, the Channel moved with it.

I thought of Yodmo’s words even in extreme pain. If you count the Truth-Seeker as a god, did you say that I was a symbol of the cult?

As the light of my last reason was fading out, I saw the Truth-Seeker. The black mist shook like a shadow. His mouth was smiling.

***

“Cough!”

I opened my eyes. The sheets were all wet with sweat.

“Sigh…”

It was that dream again. Damn it!

When did it start? Yeah, I thought it was the day I interrogated Hessler and Alice.

I checked the watch. My God, I slept for more than twelve hours. I arrived in Korea yesterday and fell asleep as soon as I entered the house. It seemed that fatigue accumulated without my knowing.

I had to eat something.

“Ugh…”

I woke up after doing some stretching while sitting on the bed. I opened the door to get out to the living room, and…

“Huh?”

I found something crouching in front of an open door.

“What are you doing here?”

It was sitting in a circle in front of the threshold of the living room side of the door. The color of its body was changed to a slightly grayer color than the original bronze color. From what I had experienced so far, gray was a sign of dissatisfaction with something.

“Oh, sorry. I locked the door because I was tired.”

This guy seemed to be at least as intelligent as a human child. It’s free to open and close the door. While I was sleeping, I slept with a magically sealed door in case it would interfere with my sleep because when I locked it with a padlock, it kept finding the key and opens it.

He approached me while moving his muggy body.

-Shhhhrrrrrk

Of the dozens of tentacles that had sprung out of the body, only a few of them extended upwards and reached me. It resembled a gesture as if a person was offering a handshake.

“Hmm.”

I stretched out my left hand in the habit. Four strands of tentacles touched the tip of my finger, and the length gradually increased. They drew a spiral and wrapped it around as it climbed up my left arm. It had a cool touch.

It looked at my arm persistently while it hadn’t seen me for a while, as if it had to know what had happened. Silver eyes without eyelids stared at me.

Come to think of it, Parvache’s eyes that I saw in my dream were silver like that. It was almost the same. No, I couldn’t say it was the exact same color. I remembered the nightmare I had just had, so I frowned without my knowledge.

-Shhhhrrrrrk!

It stopped moving its tentacles as if it felt my body tense. It then lifted the end of one strand to form a hook. It mimicked the shape of a question mark.

“No, I thought about something else for a second.”

The guy who checked my answer kept moving again. He was currently hanging on my arm and lifting his body. His whole body was raised to my upper body’s height and attached to my skin.

Dozens of strands of tentacles wrapped around the top of the bare skin seemed to tie up a net instead of clothes. The body was at the center as usual, just above my left side. It seemed to like my heartbeat and body temperature. The color of his body has returned to its original bronze color.

“Parvache.”

I came out into the living room and called it.

[Wouldn’t it be better to sleep more?]

A robot was walking toward me.

“This is enough.”

I poured a glass of water and sat on the table. Parvache said, looking at the guy seated around my upper body.

[He kept waiting at the door while you were sleeping.]

“Are you hungry?”

When I asked to my chest, it wriggled its tentacle twice as a sign of negativity.

“It’s not like that.”

Come to think of it. I hadn’t seen it eat anything other than Heart Fish and spiritual body. I didn’t think it drank a sip of water, too.

Putting that thought aside for a moment, I told Parvache.

“Parvache, I have something to ask.”