Hermit Wizard
Chapter 48

Condition of Trust (3)

“The Raindrops of Dryflos!”

Bullets of compressed air, smaller than the grains of sand, poured out! There was the sound of the bullets tearing through the air as the shots were fired from my right hand without calculating the trajectory. I hit the desired target precisely.

-Boom

The right hand of the man holding the cell phone flew away. This prevented contact from being made. The scrap metal pieces, which were the cell phone a while ago, mixed with flesh and blood and lay shattered on the floor in the distance. There was a sign that the invisibility magic I was wearing was about to unravel. It was a reaction in which the body’s Mana exploded rapidly in a concealed state.

Parvache saw it and quickly telepathized.

[Just blowing that cell phone apart won’t make it end here!]

“I know!”

I was confused and thought of destroying the cell phone; it was different from what I practiced. Without thinking much, I used a frequently used magic spell. Parvache and I were already prepared to deal with a situation in which I encountered humans in a country or organization who tried to reveal my identity.

Firstly, creating a barrier to prevent what happens inside from being exposed to CCTV. The next thing was to deal with was communication. In addition to visible communication devices, there was a possibility that information was being collected by wiretaps and cameras hidden in clothing. Rather than analyzing and targeting all kinds of communication means and radio bands in the world, Parvache came up with a simpler solution.

No matter what kind of communicator they hide, it all works on electricity! I grabbed one of the keychain decorations from my backpack and threw them at the men as I infused it with Mana.

“Stay back!”

Garam and Mrs. Pearl jumped back as I gestured.

-Boom! Whiiirrrr!

As the artifact exploded, a white flash of electric shock hit the men according to the pre-drafted spell. I put such a loud light effect to prevent me from being captured on film while there was electricity surging through, but in fact, it was just enough to knock out an adult male. And it was a built-in magical pattern that broke down all electronic devices. I don’t know which country this half-wizard was sent from, but this had definitely cut off communication. The moment we were so sure, the invisibility magic surrounding us was completely unraveled. However, concerns about recording through electronic devices had already disappeared.

Just because I was free from the Truth-Seeker, I had no intention of showing off my face and ability in front of humankind. More attention and awareness than necessary would result in inconvenience and danger, and I wasn’t confident dealing with the human race alone. Furthermore, the exposure of hundreds of Channels to humanity on this planet wasn’t a matter of no consequences. Numerous alien races interact with humanity, formally or informally, and unidentified beings of other dimensions might be observing this world in secret while still hiding their appearance. I would get the attention of all of them.

Wouldn’t it be strange if a wizard grew up from a dimension where there was no magical knowledge and had a skill that couldn’t be explained logically? Wouldn’t it be weird if those people didn’t feel like digging up that secret?

However…

[They are not ordinary humans. They feel no pain!]

It was a very painful force, but they didn’t respond much! After trembling for a while, they started moving again as soon as the electricity dissipated. For the first time, the man who took out his cell phone, whose right hand exploded and had been stunned with electricity, wore no change of expression on his face. He turned and ran away without a moment’s hesitation, stopping by the barrier I had created. In the meantime, the other three rushed back and approached our nose. Why were they so fast?! That wasn’t normal human speed.

“Stop!”

At that moment, Mrs. Pearl jumped in the air and turned in her body, twisting into a new form. And it was only in time to say that something long and shiny in color came out of the wave-like surface almost at the same time.

-Burst!

A long tail covered with hair shimmered scratched the floor as if a match was drawn on the rough side of a matchbox. A curtain of fire, taller than a man’s height, burned along the trail of her lashing tail. Eventually, the fire curtain moved as if it had an ego to surround the three men. Thanks to that, I changed my spell’s target to the man who had already reached the barrier.

The man was madly knocking on the barrier with his hands and kicking with his feet. I think he played the role of the key informant while the other three were supposed to be the diversions. But that wasn’t a barrier to be broken. He hit the transparent wall in the air with his crushed right hand. The torn flesh, blood, and bone fragments stuck in the empty air like filth splattered on a clear glass window and flowed down disgustingly.

“The Chain of Thermios!”

Along with my shouts, a hazy fog stretched out like a long whip toward the man. The tip of the whip, approaching just in front of the man, suddenly split like an anemone, divided into dozens of strands, and wrapped around his body. Not only his limbs and torso – but several of them also forcibly dug into the man’s mouth.

By doing this, he wouldn’t be able to bite his tongue. Though if he kept biting this mist, which had a higher hardness than a fair amount of magic metal, his teeth might break. After suppressing one of them, I asked Mrs. Pearl. She looked unfamiliar as she had probably returned to her original body.

“Can you adjust this flame to be a little smaller?”

The flames covered the three men’s bodies, making them invisible. To use the magic chain, I must first see the target with my own eyes. The moment Mrs. Pearl opened her long snout and revealed her fangs to answer my question, a roar broke out from inside the veil of fire!

“Kaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrhhhh!”

Now that they were back to their senses, those men were screaming in an otherworldly manner. The men clinging to the flame curtain, reached out and tried to approach. However, that flame curtain was blocking them, acting as a physical barrier.

“T-Those crazy things!” Garam clicked his tongue in astonishment.

Perhaps because their body was in contact with the flames, all three could now be seen. Their flesh melted, and even when all of their clothes and hair had burned, they constantly stretched and stirred their arms to approach us. However, the flames didn’t allow them to advance, as if they were opaque, orange-tempered glass.

“Kaaaaaaaaarrrrrghhhh!”

A man with his eyelids crinkled like a burnt plastic bag stared at me with empty pupils. As if tearing me apart would be his wish for a lifetime, without this flame between us, he would immediately run into me. Just a few more seconds like this would kill them. Before that…!

“The Chain of Thermios!”

As soon as the chain of fog, like the one that arrested the man who knocked on the barrier, caught the bodies of the three men, Mrs. Pearl vanquished her flame as if it never really appeared. Now, a chain of fog stretched out of my left hand wrapped around the four men. Their whole bodies were shaking with fear and resistance. According to the original scenario, the right thing to do was leave quickly and interrogate them at the workshop on my house’s lower floors. Still, the condition of those three was too serious.

I was afraid they were going to die while moving.

“I have never heard of such a story from elders…what the hell did dragons do to humans while our people were away from the land? I don’t know how much the soul has fallen to manipulate the mind by erasing the fear and pain of death.”

Garam muttered, looking down at the men scattered on the floor. Then he stretched his nose towards them and continued.

“After all, there is no trace of any dreams. They’re still thoroughly brainwashed.”

“…I don’t know what the traces of the dream are, but after all this is over, we should talk.”

“Talk? About what?”

I sharpened my teeth while looking at Garam, who was shamelessly looking at me as if he didn’t know what I was talking about. He looked like an animal called Maek, but I felt like I could read that expression for some reason. Was there something wrong? A look that seemed to be asking me back. Ah, this pig elephant cub! You’ve been looking into all of my dreams! I would have to revise the contract again as soon as I get this done. We just signed it today, but it doesn’t matter! Thinking that collecting dreams without mutual consent should be stated as hostile acts, I reached out to the men who fell to the floor.

“Ah… Yoon. I didn’t think they’d try to fight the pain of the fire. You’re going to interrogate them, but it turned this way…”

Because of the fire invoked, three out of four were injured to the point that it was difficult to obtain information. Because of that, Mrs. Pearl’s two pointed ears were drooping as if she blamed herself for being reckless.

“No. I didn’t even expect them to be like this.”

I answered back and gathered Mana in my hand.

[You are going to heal them?]

“Wouldn’t you like to leave a mouth to testify? If we leave them like this, they will all die.”

In my decade with Parvache, we had a singular goal – My Safety. I thought I could maintain my safety just by maintaining a lifestyle embedded within the barriers I had built. Although the types of barriers were a little different, the magic taught by Parvache was effective for the Truth-Seekers as well. I thought there was no other race that could easily neutralize my magic barrier.

Mok-dong’s barrier was a double-edged sword that I and different races could recognize at the moment of contact, but it had been thought of and maintained as the minimum barrier. It was the primary shield for when suddenly, one day, Caracas’s demons or the Flame Horn Serpent of Cairo struck.

There was also confidence in the concealment that it would be difficult to recognize the existence of the barrier unless there was direct contact with the alien races. Human beings, of course, would never recognize it. But I had to admit that it was a short thought.

[No, I’m not saying to cure them…instead of using too much Mana to revive them completely, try treating it only enough to avoid immediate death. There is something I want to experiment with.]

“…Yeah, I got it.”

It was brainwashing – to blindly rush toward the goal even though the whole body was on fire. It was impossible to think that the person who orchestrated this was an inhabitant of this world. I had cleared all the hypotheses that these were simply wizards trained by human hands. There was the influence of strange magic on these poor souls. I didn’t know what their goal was in the first place, but the fact that these guys were running around here proved my failure.

Who the hell was it?