Hermit Wizard

117.The Second (4)

Parvache and I came up to the rooftop.

-Gwooooong

Mana was flowing through my chest, and a blue light source rose around my body. I tried hard to shake off the scene in my dream.

‘That seed should never evolve into an adult,’ I pledged in my heart. The Truth-Seeker shouldn’t be resurrected. I had to stop it with the help of the being I called out at the moment.

I had finished negotiating with the other party across the Channel. That summoner didn’t want to come over to listen to the conditions but wanted to organize everything before coming over.

Suddenly, the door to the dimension opened, and the other party came over to that world.

“… Ah?”

There was a frigid voice on the roof of the apartment. I then saw an alien walking out.

There was a boy about half my height. Except for the red skin and the horns on the forehead, the appearance wasn’t very different from a human-type creature. One peculiar thing was that he gained a lot of weight.

‘If I push him lightly, he’s going to roll.’

I said quietly to Parvache with my will. At the same time, I closed the Channel.

The summoned alien looked around for a while, fluttering his chubby cheeks. His eyes looked nervous.

“W-where is this?”

Parvache interpreted his language. It was a race named ‘Roussin,’ and the civilization’s level in the inhabited world wasn’t very high.

The Roussin boy trembled, confused by the sudden change of circumstances. He then stretched his body as a sign of vigilance and threats.

“S-suddenly, a blue light appeared in front of my eyes. For some reason, I thought I had to walk in there.”

He pointed at me with hostility in his eyes.

“Who are you?! Are you a demon?! I’ll tell you in advance, but I don’t have a handful of Mana. Return me to where I belong right now, you demon!”

The boy energetically continued his words. His eyes looked fierce.

“The king of our country is a priest of Reinaforce. Let me go if you don’t want to see all this place burning with blue flames!”

I was sitting on a knee-high cement bench, looking at him while he was talking. I then threw a word in the language of Roussin.

“Hey, how long are you going to let him talk?”

“… What?”

Roussin didn’t understand and asked back, so I continued.

“Let’s not waste time on each other.”

“W-what are you talking about?!”

I said, ignoring Roussin’s reply.

“The person I signed with is ‘you,’ not this Roussin? Come out.”

“What the hell are you talking about? What is it about coming out…”

Roussin’s body, who had been talking so far, hardened. It didn’t even move as if the power was suddenly turned off. Its pupil cooled, and it became like a living, breathing corpse.

-Ghrrrrrk, Ghrrrrk.

A thread-like thing crawled out of the boy’s left eye. It looked like a thin brown thread with countless white hairs. It was pulling itself out from under the boy’s tear hill.

It was a creature that looked like a long, endlessly stretched leg of a spider with shaggy hair. The dark brown body, which was several meters long, took its place by wrapping Roussin’s body several times as if twisting.

And the host who had lost his consciousness, the Roussin, said with his vocal cords.

“I was checking the surroundings for a while. I was grasping through the senses of the host whether it was okay for me to reveal my body.”

The voice was the same, but the way he spoke was completely different from before. At that moment, that wasn’t the Roussin boy, but the parasite, that thread-like creature.

“Well, I’ve never been summoned outside before.”

It would be its own defense mechanism.

“The host has changed since the first time I summoned you, right? It wasn’t such a young guy.”

“The previous host became ill and unable to move.”

“So, you can penetrate the Roussin’s body, not a newborn baby?”

“It’s usually impossible, but this host is a body that was originally parasitized by another kind. It was possible because there was already a space in the brain to hold my body. I kicked that guy, and I took him away.”

Ah, I was convinced and nodded.

It wasn’t that red-skinned Roussin that I signed a contract and summoned. My contractor was a race called “Ii-Mere” who lived in Roussin’s body. A creature halfway between plants and animals.

“Then, according to the terms of the contract…”

I presented a small crystal to Ii-Mere.

“What must be spread is this tracking magic.”

“I got it.”

Ii-Mere answered with the host’s vocal cords.

What I had in my hand was a small crystal ball. It was filled with magic, complete with a kind of artifact. It also had tracking magic based on information about the Dragon’s body fragment and his real name.

The plans Hessler and Alice knew were very simple. Even after leaving the body, the Truth-Seeker’s soul, the Dragon, wasn’t affected by the ring of reincarnation, the Channel leading to a higher level, or the power of the divine being. As soon as the previous body died, the Dragon’s soul moved freely to a place no one knew and fell asleep.

The ascetics didn’t know where the Dragon’s soul was hidden, and they planned to wait, rebuilding his body until he was resurrected. The ‘second’ body of the Dragon would replace the old body that became a wreck for some reason.

There are two ways to prevent the resurrection of the Dragon. To destroy the Dragon’s second body or to get his soul.

However, the first method had its limitations.

‘If we destroy the body that the ascetics are making, it will only buy us some time if they try to make it again. Once successful, they will raise their alertness, so we have to cleanly destroy the organization at the first attempt.’

[That’s right.]

‘It is better to find the Dragon’s soul and use tricks. Even the ascetics don’t know where the soul is, so it’s less likely that my movements will be detected.’

So, I created magic to find the Dragon’s soul. The effect could be expected since the subject of the search was limited. However, there was one task that needed to be solved.

It was unknown where the soul was hiding on that planet. The reason why the tracking magic I made when I was a child failed was that there was no information on the target to be detected. Additionally, the range was also limited to the city where I lived.

I wanted to scan that whole planet to avoid the same failure. But it’s hard for me to spread magic all over the Earth.

So, instead of me, Ii-Mere, would help to ‘spray’ the magic.

The end body of the parasite that came out of Roussin’s body suddenly began to swell. It gradually increased in size and made a sphere the size of my fist. It was the shape of a flower’s peak just before it bloomed in the early dawn.

“To enchant these cysts…”

I reached out in front of my pocket. At the same time, I glanced at the Roussin, who had lost control of his body to Ii-Mere. When I first summoned him into that world, his body was very chubby, but as soon as Ii-Mere made a cyst, his body lost weight little by little. The nutrients stored by the body were being taken away in an instant.

I extracted the magic from the crystal ball and transferred it to the cyst of Ii-Mere. That would serve as the foot to spread my magic all over the entire planet.

“Then, I will spread it.”

Ii-Mere’s slender body soared up for a long time. Like a snake stretching its body, the parasite’s end that had the cyst was lifted toward the sky.

The cyst began to change shape. Several cracks were formed horizontally in the pocket and spread out in several branches as if flowers were blooming. It was the spore mass of Ii-Mere that had emerged in it, then…

-Hweeeeeeekk!

Countless, enchanted spores began to spread out into the sky.

The colorless flow covered the sky. Magical substances that were invisible to ordinary eyes rose and floated in the high sky as I ordered.

There was no reason to float the spores up to that height. Wandering around the world at a moderate altitude, it approached in response to hormones, fetal substances, and the peculiar smell of newborns.

It clung to the newborn’s head.

The brain of Roussin, who was just born, wasn’t completely protected by the skull. The crown was only covered with a thin film. Ii-Mere’s spores sat down on the boneless part of the head of Roussin and invaded through the pores and parasites in the brain. Without the host noticing, it manipulated his actions and thoughts throughout his life.

“That’s so fast. It’s already out of my sight.”

Spores ascending to the high sky beyond my eyes would soon spread throughout that planet at a rate that normal physical laws couldn’t explain. It would spread the search magic over the stratosphere.

It also consumed a great deal of energy for Ii-Mere to spray spores. The Roussin’s body, whose control had been taken over, gradually dried up and became a living mummy.

After some time, Ii-Mere told me.

“Now, all the spores spread. If the size of this world is the size you told me, a day or two would be enough to cover it all up. They will stay at the altitude you dictate, and they will continue to project the magic you have enchanted onto this world.”

I nodded. Ii-Mere’s spores were capable of being controlled by the parent body. Instead of manipulating them in real-time, it was about putting some sort of algorithm into them before spraying. This setting is for spreading spores according to the environment of the host’s area.

Since the spores sprayed today are set to be faithful to the role of a magical medium, they will only move at high altitudes and will not find the host to parasitize.

I can feel the tracking magic I created spreading worldwide according to the spore’s movement. If I wait a few days like this, the results will come out.

“Well, then, the price of the contract?”

Ii-Mere urged me with Roussin’s mouth. I brought out the black plastic bag I had prepared, which is the same as my body’s size. It’s a size enough to hold even one dead body.

“Are the creatures inside?”

I nodded. Inside the plastic bag, I could hear countless small things moving constantly.

Before summoning Ii-Mere, I touched its soul through contract magic. It demanded something I didn’t expect in exchange for the summons.

In the dimension where Ii-Mere currently lived, in the world where Roussins were civilized, a rapid change of weather had been taking place those days. As the weather was getting hotter, the livestock breeding and survival rates, which Roussins previously maintained, decreased, and Roussins were suffering from food shortages.

As the host race’s situation worsened, the world’s Ii-Mere also felt a sense of crisis and looked for a way to overcome this situation.

“What is the name of this creature?”

Ii-Mere and I communicated for quite a long time before the summons. Thus, in terms of nutrition and taste, I succeeded in finding a creature on Earth that could perfectly match Roussins’ taste. It was also a creature with excellent vitality that could adapt well to the environment of that dimension.

I replied the name of the creature that Ii-Mere asked for as an alternative to end the food shortage of Roussin, which could become the new staple food of the Roussins in the future.

“It’s called cockroach.”

“Hmm, I see.”

Ii-Mere moved the host’s body and lifted the pouch that I put out.

“By the way, considering the food shortage, your host was in good nutrition. Now, he’s skinny just because you used all the nutrients.”

Ii-Mere responded as if it were natural.

“He’s the host of my nest, but of course, I took his body after checking his social position and rank. I’m not even a freshly created spore. This guy is a direct descendant of Roussin, who rules the largest group in the world. He’ll never starve himself.”

Come to think of it, he said something about the king.

“You mean a prince?”

“Yes.”

That was why he gained bulky weight, and even when he was brought into such a strange environment, he was swaying over the king.

“Then it will be easier to domesticate the cockroaches.”

“Yes, it would be more efficient to persuade them with the mouth of this host than an ordinary Roussin to suddenly bring in an unheard-of creature and ask to raise it. Regarding the creature’s source, he can roughly say that they have received the protection of Reinaforce. It is civilization and a race that can overcome all loopholes in logic with that one word.”

Ii-Mere continued. “Due to his achievements, perhaps there’s a high possibility that he’ll succeed to the throne in the future.”

I nodded.

“Then it would be easier to control the Roussin’s society, right?”

“No matter who ascends to the throne, that Roussin will be a parasitic host for our people anyway.

“Ah, is it a world that works that way?”

There was no emotion in the eyes of Roussin, who had been eaten away by Ii-Mere. He looked at me quietly and said, “For a long time, we have been managing the Roussin. We taught them how to make a fire, helped them to understand the concept of the wheel, and helped them create numbers and letters.”

It said calmly.

“There were several crises. Although the number of Roussin’s population rapidly declined due to predatory species from other continents, we, who have already evolved to suit the existing host, haven’t been able to switch to another species. Somehow, we had to induce them to win the war with predators. Just in time, the apostle of Reinaforce came to the world.”

I could expect the words to follow. Did he say that the royalty was a priest?

“We moved the tribe by controlling the head. We led them across the desert to meet the apostles and created the first priest, and then, he gained such divine power that he managed to win the War of the Species. There were so many other difficulties.”

It continued calmly.

“They will overcome the food crisis this time because we will lead that way.”

Ii-Mere returned to its original dimension, leaving those words.