Hermit Wizard

Dragon’s Name (8)

In any case, I fiddled with the ring on my left hand to use it.

I reviewed the scenario in my head. I broke down the cave with the Ring of Flame Storm. As soon as it started, the shield was activated to secure space. While the opponent was buried in a pile of rocks, I summoned Ghur again and fled through the ground.

I slowly looked back. The magical lights dazzlingly illuminated everything around me. The floor in the corner of the vacant lot was filled with rocks that reached the knees.

The shape of the stone was smooth and perfect, and it couldn’t be said to have naturally occurred since it was stretched at regular intervals. It was unknown for its purpose, but it was probably a sight created by Dragons and ascetics.

The lower part of the rock, which was the root, was joined together with the same material’s stone floor without any gap. The ascetic seemed to have left things that couldn’t be moved without destroying them.

The scenery resembled a cemetery lined with tombstones.

As I walked, I noticed a man sitting on one of the rock spheres and staring at me. I made eye contact with him in tension.

With his upper body completely undressed, he was revealing his dark skin. There were many tattoos all over his body. It was a sequence of black figures of unknown meaning, a bizarre pattern created by connecting several tiny triangles in a straight line.

His dark hair was long and flowing down to the waist, depicting a flat look. His cold silver eyes met mine. What was seen in his eyes was deep boredom and emptiness, but underneath it, I felt another kind of dark emotion burning in the shade. The air sat down coldly, and the sensation of having a beast in front of my eyes touched my body.

I smelled terrible blood in his gaze. It was so disgusting that I had a headache. It was a remnant that must’ve accumulated over the years, killing and killing countless times again. That judgment was based on a more fundamental sensory system, not a sense of smell.

The silence hurt my skin. After a while, he opened his mouth again.

“Are you, an Ensi? Did humans come down to this desolate southern land and establish a country?”

He spat out a strange tone of voice. The voice was accompanied by the fishy sharpness of the metal and the extreme gravity of the leather.

What I heard in my ears was an unidentified language. The Dissolving Speech Bead in my arms interpreted his words, but the language’s true nature was unknown. As I passed through the two airports, I passed by people who spoke various foreign languages, and their words were sincerely interpreted to me.

However, none of the foreigners spoke such language. His language was also different from the Arabic spoken by native speakers around here.

“No, my memories are confusing. It’s strange. Why is Ensi wandering around this place alone? Have you been kicked out of your country? No, that’s not it. That’s not what’s important now…”

An expression came to his face for the first time. A feeling of great confusion. He squinted as if he couldn’t remember something, and he thought about it.

The man called me ‘Ensi.’ The Dissolving Speech Bead interpreted the word in three meanings and sent it to my mind. The first meaning was a monarch; the second meaning was a priest, and the third and final meaning…

Wizard.

He looked at me, raising his head as if his thoughts were a little clear.

“Ensi… I have to kill every Ensi.”

I pulled up my Mana.

“You are real. You’re not a fake Ensi who doesn’t have magic power but tricks the people to reign.”

His gaze was stuck like an arrow. At that point, I should’ve put magic on that face and ran away. Nevertheless, there was only one reason I was holding back.

I glanced at the magic lights floating in the air. That space, which wouldn’t have been lit for a long time, was whitening. The condensed darkness, driven and chased by the curtain of light, painted a shadow in every corner. My shadow was hanging on the floor like a tall leg because of the light source’s angle.

I turned my eyes and looked at the stone floor near where the man was sitting. The shadow of the round rock sphere was engraved, and there was no shadow of a man sitting anywhere.

“Why is there no one in the nest?”

The man put his hand on his forehead and continued his words.

“How much time has passed since we fell asleep?”

I couldn’t answer. There was no reference point for calculating the duration in his question.

The man muttered.

“It’s the first time I see it. It doesn’t resemble any local clothes.”

He stretched out his finger and asked me.

“Are your ancestor’s migrants from the north? Seeing the black hair, it seems like so. Is your ancestor’s hometown Ki-en-girl?”

I spoke quietly.

“Who are you?”

“I…”

He closed his eyes as if confused. He hesitated to answer for a moment, then said…

“I am one of my father’s first offspring. My existence’s reason and value are to kill Ensi and the people that crossed the wall out of this land.”

He shut his mouth for a moment and then looked at me with calmer eyes.

“Until just before I fell asleep, there were very few real Ensi in the land. In contrast, the number of powerless humans has grown tremendously. Father, who hated the noise, moved his nest. Because there are so many humans in the northern land surrounded by the river, we moved to the southern land where they do not live.”

When he referred to the southern land where no one lived, it seemed to meant Dubai. When on Earth in the past was he saying?

“Yes, I remember. There’s almost no Ensi left. Sometimes the only thing I could see was weak and unmatched things, but…”

He pointed at me again.

“How can Ensi, who has such mighty power as you remain? How have you not been caught up to now, even with a high-class soul? No matter how deep you hide, it’s unusual that father couldn’t find someone like you.”

Instead of answering back to him, I asked.

“What Ensi you are talking about? Do you mean someone who uses magic?”

“Yes, Ensi is a man who can handle magic. When I was born, the northern countries were ruled by real Ensi. Later on, the number of Ensi decreased, and those without magic tricked and ruled the people by pretending to use magic.”

“Originally, the wizards ruled the country?”

It was a story I had never heard of.

“Yeah. The human people feared and worshiped Ensi’s transcendent power. Ensi made good use of their fear and named ordinary magic the power of God. The ignorant people believed it. The Ensi called themselves God’s agents and became kings and priests who ruled the country.”

He continued his words.

“When the number of countries that Ensi created became difficult to count with ten fingers, Father made us.”

“Father?”

“We are His first offspring. The first swords that carry on the will of the great being.”

His eyes shone dimly.

“We killed and killed again. The Ensi, who were threatened with their lives, mobilized the people to start a war. In the meantime, countless numbers of non-Ensi died, but there was no other choice.”

“Why did you have to kill the wizard?”

“It’s not about killing. The purpose is what to do after killing. Our mission was to kill Ensi and retrieve the soul. Ensi’s soul must not be returned to the ring of reincarnation.”

He told the same story as Hessler and Alice’s memories. I was able to gauge the identity of existence in front of my eyes.

“How many people did you kill?”

“Countless! It wasn’t hard to kill ordinary human beings. Killing Ensi wasn’t that difficult either. Even if they use magic, they haven’t evolved yet. The hardest thing was to fight and kill those who have already evolved and crossed the wall. Oh… yeah. I remember.”

He frowned.

“Whether their origin was human or not, the beings who crossed the wall were so strong. We have died countless times. Father resurrected us who had died several times… and eventually abandoned.”

A bitter smile fell along his lips.

“There was a limit to us who was made by the fragments of Father’s flesh. We were our father’s first swords but soon became abandoned swords. Father eventually changed the way he built his troops.”

“By signing a contract of authority with a living creature that already exists?”

“Yes, so you already know. Are such detailed stories being passed on to humans?”

No, it wasn’t being passed down at all. I scratched my chin.

After all, the man in front of me… was the first-generation ascetic of the Dragon.

At that time, he must’ve killed the wizards and retrieved the souls, and I thought he also fought with beings who crossed the wall. However, it seemed to have been abandoned by the Dragon after some time due to poor performance.

Eventually, the Dragon changed the way he made the ascetics. He captured the existence who had already crossed the wall or forced the evolution of the existence that couldn’t cross the wall and signed a contract of authority. Even though he managed to prevent humans from crossing the wall in the future, he had no choice but to forge the swords in his hand.

The authority that made such a contract seemed much stronger than the imperfect creatures he created artificially.

Consequently, his choice was wise. In the end, the human wizard in that world was almost seedless. The Dragon won the war against the beings who crossed all the walls around the world. The transcendent survivors who barely saved their lives were cast out of the continent. The Dragon had long reigned in that world.

“But why is this nest empty?”

He went back to his initial question.

“Did he move the nest? Did the fight against the transcendents become so fierce?”

He then clenched his teeth.

“Those who have no chance of reincarnation even after dying. Are you still not giving up and against Father? Would you like to die so quickly and become prey to the divinity?”

He moved his mouth and talked. No, he seemed to be talking, but I could see that his vocal cords didn’t make any sound in my ears as I observed longer.

The force created by the man vibrated the air in a particular pattern. It was the power of the pure will that reached its limit, the telekinetic power. He resonated the atmosphere with telekinetic power to make the sound as if speaking.

There was a reason to use that method. Currently, the man didn’t have a vocal chord to make his voice.

I could see him before my eyes, but he was an illusion without substance. Ironically, just because he was an illusion, it didn’t mean he didn’t exist. It was just that its existence wasn’t based on matter.

I told the confused man.

“What was your last memory?”

“… The appearance of Father looking at us. The memory of the day he abandoned us.”

He covered his face with both hands.

“We are all buried in the ground. And very, very, many years have passed.”

“How long has it been?”

“I can’t tell. Eternal years passed in the dark. It’s been so long that all the bodies Father made are rotten and decayed and finally turned into dust.”

Yes, the man’s body went back to dirt a long time ago. What remained there was a mental body created by a combination of strong will and soul with magic. It was the result of the soul not being absorbed by the ring of reincarnation even after the body died. Instead of the material body, the cohesion of the mind functioned as the house of the soul.

Ghosts might not be very different from the man in front of me, given the basic concepts.

Honestly, I didn’t expect that situation. I didn’t know there was such a thing on the trash I was trying to sneak.

-Wriggle…

A bronze tentacle full of desire and appetite took a ready position on my left chest with my signal.