Hermit Wizard

The Invitation of White Deer (2)

Kim Kyung-hwan recalled his life before entering the training center. He then checked again the thickness of the wall that was like the iron wall in his own heart, and he strengthened it even more.

‘Baek Woon-gyu is the same. He wouldn’t have had anything to do with me if I didn’t have my best talents. When they play with each other or when they are friends, they are busy breaking each other. Even if I look a little less than them, they will look down on me and laugh. Those jerks.’

He stared at the sudden rise of his heart and then shed it off.

‘Anyway, I will go further and higher. I don’t have to talk with these crappy guys.’

The people there had nothing but value as an audience who admired and envied him.

‘Just that’s good enough.’

To be honest, he wanted to talk to Baek Woon-gyu’s face right away.

“Don’t mess with me for nothing. It’s annoying.”

However, if he said so, it could lead to reports that he had a personality problem. Still, he wouldn’t be able to do it recklessly, and he didn’t want to wear a bad label.

He was the person who would be great. There would be a big difference between the records of ‘didn’t get along well with the trainees’ and ‘he spoke to the trainees at the level of insulting.’

He needed to manage his image. Later, when the government announced the wizard’s existence to the media, and when he began to show his performance, he would have an interview or something like that.

He couldn’t leave a dark history. Kim Kyung-hwan thought so.

“Why don’t you go home and get some fresh air?”

Basically, that training center had a system similar to the army. So, they stayed together, but there was a system similar to vacation. That was under the premise that even a family member who already knew the fact that he or she had been admitted must keep the details inside.

He heard that Baek Woon-gyu never went out after entering the training center.

“No. I have to work hard. Because I have my own goals.”

Instead of asking what the goal was, Kim Kyung-hwan answered half-heartedly.

“But you should go home once. Don’t you want to see your family?”

“Yeah.”

Baek Woon-gyu laughed like it was boring. Somehow, he thought that there was something different from Baek Woon-gyu’s facial expression, but Kim Kyung-hwan didn’t pay much attention.

The two broke up after a short greeting. Baek Woon-gyu was no longer the object of interest. He had been caught in the eye before, but the level difference had widened, and now just, well…

Soon, Kim Kyung-hwan’s head was filled with things to ask Eraser today. It didn’t take a few steps until his thoughts about Baek Woon-gyu completely disappeared.

***

One day between the late spring and the beginning of summer, I heard White Deer’s answer.

“It took disgustingly long.”

“Please understand. If the elders want to decide something…”

I heard too much about that.

“Then will the date be okay at this time?”

“Sure.”

That was how detailed adjustments were made.

I poured metal from the warehouse on the plate. That was the metal plate for Maek in my house. Some magical metals had unusually high weight and energy, so glass plates or plastic plates were easily broken and ruined.

Yusu and I were now trying to have a simple tea time. To be precise, I’m the only one drinking tea.

“By the way, are you still very busy?”

He asked while I was sitting at the kitchen table facing him as he examined my complexion. I nodded and smiled bitterly.

“I heard through Garam that the day and night of Master Yoon’s life changed, but I don’t think it’s just that much. I have good medicine, so that I will send it to you through Garam next time.”

I didn’t know how good the medicine would be, but it wouldn’t be as good as the elixir I made. Still, there was no need to refuse the gift, so I just answered.

“Thank you.”

Yusu smiled and poured a piece of metal from the plate into his mouth.

Maek’s diet was grasped a long time ago. In addition to ordinary iron and copper, a variety of magical metals were also being served. The number of precious metals received from White Deer was quite large, so these were prototypes made by mixing Mana.

Of course, there was still an enormous amount piled up, so to that extent.

“By the way, I’m sorry to have bothered you. I’m sure you’re here to tell me that. But you even accept my personal request.”

“Haha, isn’t Master Yoon my lifesaver? Saying it like that makes me feel shy. Just leave that word alone.”

Today’s prominent visit was to convey the intention of the elderly to invite me to White Deer. After hearing those words, they finally decided that they would accept my proposal, but he said they would like to discuss the details directly in White Deer.

I accepted the offer.

After talking, Yusu and I went to the tank on the lower floor.

I woke up the Fake God. That was to transplant memories related to ‘Truth-Seeker of Silver Forest’ extracted from the Ashpim Giants a few months ago.

The reason I pulled out this memory from them was to find information about Truth-Seeker. However, the Dell tribe didn’t know the information I wanted; namely, the keyword of Truth-Seeker’s resurrection and the Truth-Seeker of Silver Forest refused to answer. It was unlikely that Ashpims would know about it. So, I didn’t have to transplant it and left it alone.

The problem was that, as Yodmo said, memory crystals disappeared long after extraction. I couldn’t let go of my mind just in case. Was it okay to throw away the memory crystals that had already been extracted?

So, I awakened the Fake God while Yusu came today and implanted the memory. I got some unexpected information, but nothing I was aiming for.

The Fake God fell asleep again in the tank with some of Ashpim’s memories implanted. It felt like he had become a kind of external hard drive to me now.

“But fortunately, what we were concerned about didn’t happen. Even today, he didn’t try to commit suicide.”

I nodded at Yusu’s words．

The most worrying thing while transferring memories to the Fake God was when he committed suicide in confusion. He was originally a demon’s contractor who wouldn’t choose suicide no matter how much he suffered. Still, we couldn’t rule out the possibility that his knowledge would be obscured or overlooked due to a mix of memories.

“If that guy dies, it doesn’t just mean that the memory storage device disappears.”

I was wary of it since I didn’t know what principle the process behind recovering the soul of a dead contractor to the demons was.

“If he dies like that, as a result of a contract involving the power of Kaidemos… the Fake God’s soul would be summoned by the demon in another dimension. Even if he didn’t have a handful of Mana.”

I am suspicious that it would connect this dimension and the dimension of the demon.

Wouldn’t there be a kind of passage that borrows the power of God in the process of retrieving the soul? Then, as when the demon’s spirit was summoned, there would be a passage through which only souls could come and go.

Something different from Channels.

“I am worried that the demon might infiltrate the soul into this dimension by taking advantage of the open passage. When the summon was lifted, it would have returned to its original body, but it won’t feel good about me.”

Of course, there was no basis for that hypothesis.

Yusu nodded.

“Wouldn’t it be nice to keep it as it is now so that the alien never dies?”

It was just as Yusu said. It was safe to keep taking it out and putting it in a solution without risking it as it had been. I think it was right to keep him in that state and tied the soul together.

“That way, we won’t be able to interrogate using memory crystals at all. Hence, that time, I thought about it a bit. Should I just throw away those memories…”

“Anyway, it’s obvious that he’s still breathing, but the soul of that alien is not going anywhere right now, and it is well attached to the body. There was no sign of a soul passing over from another world.”

I nodded.

I asked Yusu to observe it so that he could find it in advance if the soul of the demon came over.

“Can’t you just suggest not to kill himself?”

“It is impossible to suggest more than this.”

“Hmmm… it went like this in the end.”

“It can’t be helped.”

Yusu’s eyes, who nodded, reached one place.

“By the way… did you bring in a new pet while I haven’t heard from you for a while? Probably from the world over there.”

My gaze followed where Yusu looked, then the one crawling on the living room floor stopped walking and turned to us.

The main body was a pocket smaller than my fist. From there, dozens of bronze tentacles protrude. Some acted as legs and some as hands. At first glance, it looked like a large legged spider.

That guy looked at us and blinked its eyes.

“Well… that’s it.”

Yusu was surprised to hear that it was a separate entity from the Truth-Seeker of the other world.

“Then you mean that it is the Truth-Seeker’s child after all?”

Yusu and the inhabitants of White Deer now knew the concept of Truth-Seekers. The ‘god’ they asked the question had never given them detailed answers to the principles of dimension and the Truth-Seeker so far.

But, through my explanation, they knew roughly what the Truth-Seeker was and that the dead Dragon was originally the Truth-Seeker of this world.

“No, it says it’s not its offspring again.”

As Yusu and I caught our eyes, the tentacle pocket also took its eyes off us and started walking again. It approached the veranda, opened the door by itself, swam like an octopus swimming in the sea, crossed the threshold, and closed the door again.

It looked like it’s going to sunbathe. That guy liked to look out the window while receiving the sunlight. I left it because it couldn’t be seen from the outside anyway.

After briefly explaining the tentacle pocket, I asked Yusu.

“Can you see its soul?”

Yusu nodded his head.

“Yeah.”

It seemed that the Truth-Seeker’s saying that there was a soul wasn’t a lie.

“How is it? Is that soul, the soul that has crossed the wall?”

Yusu shook his head firmly.

“It’s not a high-level, and of course, it didn’t cross the wall. It’s just an ordinary mortal soul.”

That was the part I was curious about. When beings who cross the wall gave birth to offspring, they were said to be born with an already evolved soul. So, what about Truth-Seekers? Could they reproduce? If they gave birth to offspring, would that soul be born as a Truth-Seeker?

It seemed that what dwells in that tentacle was an ordinary mortal soul that hadn’t even evolved in the first stage. Was it perhaps because they were not normal offspring? But if it wasn’t a descendant, how was that tentacle to be defined?

My head was complicated.

I thought about the Truth-Seeker of Silver Forest for a long time, and then I asked Yusu what I thought of.

“Oh yeah, Yusu. Do you keep performing rituals these days?”

“Of course.”

Currently, I also knew what the memorial service meant. It was said to be a ritual to ask questions and received answers from the God they served.

However, when I heard it, it seemed that God didn’t answer the question that was so important that I wondered why they were doing the memorial service. It didn’t even tell them that the Dragon was a Truth-Seeker.

“Do you still ask questions about the Dragon’s identity these days?”

“I don’t. Because now we know what Truth-Seekers are.”

I asked without expecting much. I guess they had already tried it.

The fact that some seek Dragons’ resurrection had already been conveyed to White Deer through Yusu. That was a threat that they couldn’t ignore. There must’ve been an attempt to obtain information through God.

“As for the question of the resurrection of the Dragon, have you already asked God? About how that would be possible.”

I recalled a scene where I met Silver Forest’s Truth-Seeker a while ago.

***

=There is currently no Truth-Seeker who can answer how the Dragon died. =

Instead of the cosmic providence that the Truth-Seeker’s death implied, I asked again if it could answer specifically the death of the ‘Dragon.’ The Silver Forest’s Truth-Seeker answered.

I actually expected it. It said it didn’t know the reason at the first meeting, and it still seemed the same as it did after some time.

=There is no way to know what happened to him after leaving A-Verdag in a dimension that a single Channel couldn’t penetrate. He doesn’t seem to have had interactions with other Truth-Seekers. =

“… Yeah.”

=But maybe I can share my guess. =