Hermit Wizard

The Forgotten Race (5)

Garam then shut his mouth again and began concentrating; he continued this for a while. As far as I could tell, he picked a fellow sleeping in his village and accessed the dream-world to have a conversation. After some time, Garam opened his eyes. The conversation was over.

“I’ve told them everything that we’ve talked about here.”

Licking the blood off her long white fingers, Mrs. Pearl spoke.

“Ah…then, that’s it. Now, all we have to do is wait for an answer.”

I asked politely, “Do you have to go into someone’s dream to get the answer? Or do you sleep and just dream it?”

Garam shook his head, “I used the inconvenient method because it is the only technique I can use, but there are people who each race, so we will be contacted as soon as the conclusion is decided.”

“Garam has the best skill in dealing with dreams, but in fact, there are many ways to communicate words and thoughts, other than through dreams.”

“Then I want to ask you two a little as we wait for an answer.”

“What is it?” The boy stared at me with quiet eyes as if he were about to speak.

I asked what he was wondering about.

“You two…what are you guys?”

“You have heard so far, and now you’re asking? Who the hell are you then? I have never seen a human with strong powers and a strangely enormous soul like you. And what kind of being is in that doll? It’s an energy I’m encountering for the first time. I don’t know anything about it, except that it’s very old.” Garam looked at Parvache and me one after another.

I quietly threw a glance at Parvache, who was next to him. Earlier, we had a conversation openly while those two were listening. Still, before coming into the house, Parvache and I had been busy communicating through telepathy between the two of us.

“Well, I just…learned magic from Parvache here.”

[The reason Min-joon’s soul feels enormous is probably because of the magic I taught him.]

Certainly, my soul’s level had indeed been increased and expanded through magic training. Nevertheless, Garam tilted his head as if he could not understand the meaning.

“And Parvache… is the spirit I summoned from another world. Actually, I thought you guys might have come from another dimension. I haven’t seen anything like you until the Channel opened.”

Garam snorted with a honk and answered, “Different dimension? We are beings who have lived on this land for a long time; it is difficult to find the origin of our history.”

“…Is that so?”

“A long time ago before I was born, the spiritual mountains and lakes of this land were our territories. In those days, not many humans knew how to use their power, and some interacted with us. Until the evil dragon from another world appeared.”

Garam continued like he was going to grind his teeth.

“According to the post-war agreement, we were isolated from humans, and despite our indigenous species, we were driven off the continent, torn apart, and had to migrate to numerous islands. Jeju Island is one of them.”

“Because of that dragon?”

“Is there any other reason? The evil dragon proclaimed the entire continent as his territory, and we, who lost the war, left the land in exile.”

I had no choice but to ask a question after hearing it so far.

“A war? So, weren’t humans also involved?”

But why was there no such record in human history?

“Not at all. You, humans, are creatures that are too weak compared to the being beyond the wall like us. At that time, even human civilization was nothing. The war broke out beyond the realm of human perception.”

I still didn’t understand.

“If there has been an exchange in the past, why aren’t people aware of your existence?”

“It’s been too long since we’ve been unable to make any explicit contact under the agreement,” Garam responded, clearly unsettled with unpleasant feelings.

“You have forgotten our existence. The existence of races like us.”

***

After getting some rough information, I gave them a break. Originally, this house itself was a space where the landlord himself had no intention or preparation to receive any guests, so I suddenly had a little trouble creating two empty rooms.

These days, the inventory of materials had been drastically reduced, so the warehouse area on the 3rd floor, which had some empty space, had been narrowed down. I put a part of the kitchen and magic devices on the 1st floor to the 3rd floor and then built two new rooms on the 1st floor. If it were outside, it would be impossible for me to move it, but it would be possible in this house. It was more difficult to draw a picture of rearrangement as if it was a puzzle in itself, more difficult than moving the interior space.

I threw extra blankets into each room, and that seemed to be enough for those two. After the two of them closed the door, I sat on the sofa and turned on the TV. Pretending to look at the screen, I quietly began to generate magic. It was like watching a CCTV, but the clarity was incomparably clear, and the images of the two in the room filled my retinas.

Without closing my eyes, I adjusted the video to overlap with the visual landscape properly. And I shared my senses with Parvache and showed them. I quietly exchanged telepathy with Parvache. Unlike before, even if they were right next to us, they couldn’t hear this conversation. Based on the information I had just heard, I exchanged ideas with Parvache, organizing past events and speculations on the Truth-Seeker’s current situation in the past.

And we talked about what to do with them.

‘How can they be so vigilant?’

[You said they see your soul, right? They may know that you have no direct hostile intention. Anyway, you even explained the reason why you brought them so far, so even if they doubted it, they would have stopped to some extent.]

‘Anyway, I was surprised because it was easier than I thought.’

Actually, I didn’t bring them here to harm them. Judging from their behavior, I thought they would desperately need a place to eat and rest, but I didn’t know that they would be willing to follow me. It was as if they were waiting for someone to rescue them.

[It would be better to keep them like that until they are contacted.]

‘Right. Once they are inside the barrier, I am a little reluctant to put them outside my sight. I don’t think they’re the ones who are going to get me into trouble, but I can’t trust them 100%. I’ll have to think a little more about how to persuade and make them stay inside the house.’

[It is the worst idea to imprison them forcefully. It would be better to make them want to stay on their own. At least while these guys have something to do with the Channel.]

As long as they were in this house, they couldn’t escape my eyes. It was also impossible to leave the house unless I allowed it. Even though it was embarrassing to say with my mouth, this house was the best magic fortress on Earth that could prevent external invasion. It was completely controlled by my will, so it seemed like a dungeon in a video game when you looked inside. Every environment was an optimal space to show more than 100% of my abilities.

What if they used force to get away from me? I had the confidence to overpower them outside, but it was impossible to beat me in this house. Well, again, it wasn’t that I had bad intentions. It was just that I couldn’t unconditionally trust their purpose and intentions. I had just met them for the first time today.

‘Ah, I’m trying to live quietly without doing anything for a while, but why aren’t they leaving me alone?!’

[You really are unlucky. Muahahaha.]

Parvache’s unpleasant laugh echoed in my mind.

***

Langley City, Virginia, United States.

Simon Van de Camp, who was called to the eighth floor after a long time, was quite annoyed. It wasn’t the first or second time that the company treated employees like him unkindly, but this time it was a little too much. He had no choice but to be upset as he lightheartedly attended a meeting that he thought was only preliminary before the official mission. The first examiner persistently asked Simon whether he currently had a religion or whether he had ever held faith in the past.

Due to work’s nature, even employees themselves were less sensitive to personal information exposure. However, after being asked four times in a row whether he had been to church, he thought it was a bit too much. If Simon himself had been working for an ordinary company, he could judge it as a discriminatory act and file a complaint about violating federal citizenship laws.

“Have you ever attended a group prayer or religious retreat even if it isn’t a specific religious facility, Mr. Van de Camp?”

“…No, I haven’t.”

Simon responded, feeling the limit of his patience. He had been an atheist since he was young. He has already testified to the examiner repeatedly, and he had never attended any religious groups or meetings. The examiner, who had been asking similar questions all this time, finished the interview after more than two hours. He covered the file as if he was about to get up. The examiner threw a question to him, as if it were a passing conversation, with his gaze fixed on the tip of his hand, organizing his briefcase.

“By the way, what do you think of the dimensional door? The commonly-called Channel that has been appearing for nearly half a year now? You know, some religious people seem to interpret it as God’s withdrawal from the fallen modern humanity.”

Simon responded as usual, with a strong suspicion that this question would eventually determine the interview’s outcome.

“It seems like I’m talking about it for the second thousandth time, but I don’t believe in the existence of God…”

At this point, both he and the examiner laughed bitterly.

“…So, I have nothing to say about their opinions. But even if God exists, isn’t it too complicated for a way to punish humans? If I were a god, I would do it by simply dropping a meteorite. Instead of doing this kind of hard work.”

Simon didn’t know if he liked his answer, but as a result, he received a new mission with a plane ticket to El Paso exactly two weeks later. As always, it was one-sided and sudden. When he remembered his father’s words, who died while working for the same company, it seems that it was better than in the past.

Arriving in a taxi in the basement of an ordinary-looking building outside El Paso, a large space like a playground greeted him. It was one of the typical forms of the safe house. As soon as the middle-aged branch manager met Simon, his eyes widened a little as soon as he saw him, then he smiled and gave a greeting.

“Nice to meet you, Agent Van de Camp. You really look like your father.”

“Did you work with my father?”

“He was my boss when I was a freshman. He was really worthy of respect. I would be proud to have such a father.”

“He’s my hero.”

After saying hello, the branch manager appointed Simon to a manager named Jeffrey. Simon, who Jeffrey guided, passed through an additional security facility inside the house and arrived in the quarantine area. He was finally confronted with the sight he had prepared his heart for on the plane. Beyond the glass wall, he saw a room like an ordinary motel. The being, sitting cross-legged on the recliner and operating the TV remote control, was wearing a plain gray hooded sweatshirt and jeans.

However, the face, which should have an ordinary pair of eyes for an average person, had more than twenty large and small eyes attached. Among them, half of the eyes, which were open, constantly moved around the room, in addition to the TV they were facing. He recalled the contents of the mission instruction and asked Jeffrey.

“Is that guy right now aware of the requirement, even just some parts of it?”

He shook his head.

“No. He doesn’t know yet.”

Simon muttered, retrieving the contents of the document.

“An example of a race that appeared on the Channel touched or caused friction with a third non-human race. Or did it say that you want to know about the cases of alien races who haven’t been identified?”

Simon pulled out a document containing the information he wanted from the bag he was holding. It was a document containing data from a very peculiar Channel. An incident that met both conditions he presented occurred. Simon slowly read the title of the paper.

“An Analysis Report on Channel Occurrences Near Mapo Bridge, Seoul…”