Hermit Wizard

1. 1. 1. 1. Savior or Destroyer (9)

“Aren’t you tired?”

Walking along the ridge, I asked Mrs. Pearl, who was in a human being’s appearance, to hide her unique power as the being who crossed the wall. She shook her head in response.

After coming to that world, I tended to rest as much as possible if I had time to sleep, but looking back, Mrs. Pearl rarely slept. It was in contrast to Garam, who untimely returned to its original form and stretched on the mattress.

If she didn’t like the smell of blood and rotten flesh in the container that only she could feel, she could sleep outside with a sleeping bag, but Mrs. Pearl rarely did that.

She looked at me and answered the questions.

“Because I have a short sleep.”

I remembered a time when she and Garam stayed at my house. She was the first to find people wandering through the apartment complex all night, brainwashed by the Fake God. The reason she was able to find out that they were roaming until dawn, in other words, was that Mrs. Pearl also stayed up all night. I already knew the fact through the magic video record inside the house I lived in at that time.

“Is it a characteristic of Transcendentals based on foxes?”

“… Well, it doesn’t seem like that. There is no one to compare with, but I feel like that.”

She said while walking at my pace. We were moving slowly, unfolding countless anti-spells and disturbances so that we wouldn’t get caught in the detection barriers spread out in layers by the dragon. If we break one of the dreams and fly away, we can reach the nest in no time, but if we do that, we will be caught by the dragon at once.

“I think it’s important what kind of race they were before they crossed the wall. However, after crossing the wall, the experiences and thoughts and the abilities obtained by training afterward are just as important factors determining the Transcendentals’ traits as the original race itself.

She was lost in thought for a moment and continued.

“For example, the reason I turned into a body that barely sleeps is probably that there were times when I wasn’t getting enough sleep after actually crossing the wall. Having spent an absolutely short period of sleep, my body has evolved in a way that does not require sleep.”

A time when she wasn’t getting enough sleep? I asked while thinking about what kind of case it would be.

“Did you go through a war?”

She said she lived in the human world for a while before joining White Deer. If she had lived on the Korean peninsula, she might be involved in the war many times in history, and it might’ve been difficult to secure enough sleep time if it was a war zone.

Mrs. Pearl looked up at me and replied, “In my life, I have gone through human wars several times. I tend to hide rather than get caught in it. That wasn’t the reason.”

“Then?”

She hesitated for a moment, then replied.

“I have lost a precious ‘person.’”

“…”

I remembered some information about her after a long time. Yes, she said she was a widow.

She took something out of her arms.

“Can you see this?”

I couldn’t see it well, so I put Mana around my eyes. The one on her palm was like a very short, thin needle.

Maintaining the Mana circuit on my eyeballs, I asked.

“I don’t think it’s an artifact?”

It’s a thin piece of metal that is less than 1cm long with no energy. She looked down at what was in her hand and said.

“This was originally a brass coin.”

“…”

She continued.

“Whenever I’m overcome with deep night sorrow and emotion, I rolled the coin in my hand until the morning came. As I was clouded up at the reason, longing haunted me for many years. My heart was endlessly sad, and the heavens and the Earth were gloomy.”

Mrs. Pearl continued in a calm voice.

“Dawn has been really slow for a while. When there’s snow at the end of the eaves of a deep night, when a bird cries at night, when the shadow of a tree branch shakes in a lamplight when the wild beasts that were trembling deep in the mountains suddenly stop sounding, when the moonlight is cold on the window when the leaves in the darkness rustled, when the blankets rubbed my skin, when the footsteps of a traveler on the night broke the silence, I missed him every moment. The days of tears flowing through the bed every night made me hardly sleep.”

A deep emotion was mixed in her voice. It seemed like a story of a man, whom she had been with, died. She couldn’t sleep for a long time because of the suffering. Was that why it became a permanent habit?

“You seem to have suffered a lot.”

“When he was alive, there were certainly more joyful things than sad things, but when I recall those memories after he left, there was nothing more pitiful than that.”

After saying that, Mrs. Pearl continued her steps silently for a while. Did she got lost in her memories again while talking?

After that, the silence settled down for a while. All I could hear was the silent footsteps. Her expression, looking forward, was full of sadness. Even though she lived for a long time, the wounds in her heart couldn’t have healed easily.

I quietly scratched my chin and suddenly thought of something. Come to think of it… There was Yodmo. A summon that could sort and process only desired memories.

I asked Mrs. Pearl a well-intentioned question.

“If it’s so hard, would you like to erase the memories of that old lover? Only related memories can be sorted and erased. Originally, it’s a brain-cut method, but it may remain intact if you pay more for it. That’s why I got my memories taken…”

I couldn’t help but shut up since I was so surprised. After hearing the words, Mrs. Pearl’s face was distorted like a demon.

She replied as she clenched his teeth.

“… Yoon, the joke is too much.”

I wasn’t kidding.

“… Ah yeah. I’m sorry.”

Mrs. Pearl spoke coldly.

“Now, the only contact between him and me is the memories left to me. That’s why these memories are so precious to me.”

I remembered her overreacting whenever I erased the dragon’s memory. She had always been farther away than necessary.

Was the memory of the old lover who had already died so important? Even if that memory hurt her heart? I couldn’t understand at all. If a tumor were causing the pain, cutting it out would be the best treatment.

“My root is a fox.”

Mrs. Pearl said as if she was throwing away.

“After all, there were no children between him and me. I know now that it wasn’t a matter of crossing the wall or not.”

She then started to contemplate again.

“The only thing left to me, in the end, is the memory of him.”

“…”

By the time she finished speaking, I was no longer concentrating on the sentences she spat out in her mouth. I couldn’t respond to Mrs. Pearl because I was paying attention to the other side.

“… Huh?”

Mrs. Pearl’s face hardened when she noticed the situation late.

“This?!”

It wasn’t because I ignored her, and that I couldn’t concentrate on what Mrs. Pearl said. It was because the chunks of meaning that were conveyed in a different way, not spoken language, were stimulating my brain in a very intense form.

I muttered quietly.

“That’s the will.”

Mrs. Pearl asked with a puzzled face.

“A conversation through the mind used by Elder?”

A voice was mixed with confused emotions.

“But can this be called conversation?”

I couldn’t easily answer her questions.

It was an intense mental wave that struck the two of us in that space currently. I quickly noticed that it was telepathy, a kind of the will, often used between Parvache and me.

Telepathy was a conversation through the mind that had distinct forms and rules that could be replaced in most cases one-on-one with language. There was a difference in that there was no sound and wearing an intuitive, emotional color that didn’t require analogy. Still, in terms of conveying meaning, it’s very similar to verbal language.

But at that moment, this was different.

“… I didn’t expect anything like this.”

Bleak laughter came out.

The mental waves emanated from the other person in the woods were sending the will in a form that I wasn’t familiar with. It wasn’t a mere telegram.

If it were Parvache, it would’ve conveyed its will to me in that way.

[There is no intention to attack, so stay there.]

However, the other person I could guess roughly was sending an image directly to my brain. If Parvache’s will was 2D, that mental wave should be called 3D.

There was no same order as the words were arranged in the collective meaning of connecting images. Instead, coordinates were pointing to the concept.

I recognized the other person’s will by substituting them into a three-dimensional space.

The outermost part of the will, the first lump of meaning that touches my mind, conveyed to me the meaning of ‘I will not attack.’ It contained the sincerity that was revealed by releasing a very small part of mental barriers, and because of that, I was able to stay in place instead of running away. I could understand that it placed that concept on the outermost part of its will to restrain my extreme reactions.

“… It’s tremendous.”

Instead of simply accepting the will passively, I could actively dig into it and explore its meaning. It felt like entering a toy house made of thoughts and opening the door from room to room.

Mrs. Pearl, who was experiencing the same experience, lamented.

“Oh my God!”

Going deeper than the original concept, I checked the opponent’s threat through the image. The image of the most dramatic destruction it had created in its life was divided into five scenes and reproduced in my brain. As if I were connected to the homepage wearing the clothes of wills, the image that pressed the play button flowed first, and the scene that I wanted to play first was played.

In the final image, the most recent attempt to invade that dimension, seeing a group of demons trapped in a counter-anti-magic barrier and melting into the opponent’s breath, I realized its level of power. The video also contained sincerity beyond the mental barrier. I quietly weighed my power and thought.

If I go head-to-head, I might lose.

It was incomparable to those whom we had encountered in the world so far. I was confident that we had penetrated quite cleverly, but currently, I could understand how it noticed our approach. In terms of magic, the strength and skill levels were different.

In the next room of the image, there was the opponent’s suggestion. In the world of will, it spoke to me in a human form. The fake ego created by its consciousness and the reaction created by my thinking skills communicated.

We both ended the negotiations, and instead of running away, I accepted the other’s offer.

The whole process was done in seconds. Instead of whispering and explaining in the long stream of consciousness, the opponent has finished the process of listing all the meanings and number of cases it wanted to convey, demonstrating the authenticity of force and its level, and persuading.

It was a truly effective use of its will.

I looked over the bush and said.

“I understand everything, so come out.”

From beyond the darkness, the human form came silently. Its limbs were moving abnormally, sliding in the air without even moving.

Mrs. Pearl and I looked at the other person who showed up. It had red hair and red eyes. Except for the strange sense of color, the appearance was close to a human-type creature. By district standards, he was a man in his mid-20s.

However, it was only the appearance. Did he do that on purpose because he knew his opponents were humans?

The red-haired dragon, which turned into a human figure, delivered me a mental wave. That time, it was Parvache’s way, which I was familiar with.

=You adapt more easily than I thought, huh? It must be a method of communication that is unfamiliar to humans.=

I nodded quietly without answering.

=Because I think it will take longer if I explain it interactively like now. Well, I think you understand everything, so I’ll start the ‘mediation.’=

The man raised his strength without an expression. I felt foreign energy rising between the iron-walled Mana that surrounded him. It was the divine power of some god who had no relationship with me.

A unit also made up of his self-introduction in the room of the concept made with consciousness. In less than a few seconds, he ended up introducing himself in subtle detail.

‘The ‘mediation’ he wants to do right now is the power he receives in return for serving a god.’ I muttered quietly inside.

I didn’t think that the Dragon Emperor of that world was a priest with divine power.

=Now, look over here.=

In a human male’s mask, the Dragon Emperor, the old dragon we, unfortunately, targeted that time, sent mental waves.

We gazed into Dragon Emperor’s eyes under his guidance. It was originally red irises, but suddenly it turned into black, gray eyes.

I soon noticed what the phenomenon meant. The Dragon Emperor made a brief ‘exchange’ between his two eyes and those of another priest serving the same God. With the power of God, the exchange could be realized even if the other person wasn’t there or in that world.

“…”

As I looked at the dark gray eyes of an unknown priest who would be in the third dimension at that moment, my body stiffened. My eyes, with the magic circuit open, quickly captured the small form.

“This…”

The priest who was in a ‘deal’ with the Dragon Emperor appeared to be standing in front of a very powerful entity in that world. The other-dimensional priest’s dark gray irises, which appeared on the Dragon Emperor’s eyeball, reflected a certain existence like a mirror, and the shape wasn’t unfamiliar to me.

The other-dimensional priest who was staring, the other person engraved on the iris, was smiling with a bizarre face, showing a thin body like a peeled bark.

I spat out her name in a repressed voice.

“Gramiel!”

The Truth-Seeker evolved from the Space Ghost. She, with her true name ‘Shadow Thorn,’ the Absolute who should be clearing up her wounds on her dimension after being forcibly expelled from the Earth, was now looking at me from the eyes of the Dragon Emperor.

While I was in confusion, the Dragon Emperor spat out dry will. It wasn’t me that the mental wave was aimed at.

=Is this human? Yes, that’s right. This made the deal. Um… the voice? All right, let’s exchange it for a while.=

The Dragon Emperor opened his lips the next moment, and an unfamiliar voice ran out of his mouth. It was surprisingly a language I could understand.

“… It’s troublesome, and you even make me use this method. Hello? The child with a dazzlingly powerful soul. Long time no see? It’s a pleasure to make your whole body tremble.”