Hermit Wizard
Chapter 72

Heart Fish (6)

The only way for me to kill a Heart Fish was by killing the host, after all. In the state of being parasitic, the Heart Fish would take on the properties of matter.

Then, to carry out the Truth-Seeker of Silver Forest’s request, the hosts of the Heart Fish parasites must be found, and their lives should be taken one by one.

… If it wasn’t for those tentacles.

[It’s really odd. What principle is used to stimulate the Heart Fish?]

‘I don’t know. Anyway, if I leave it as it is, it will start, right?’

Then…

-Gulp! Gulp!

The girl’s body twitched and the abnormalities began. The Truth-Seeker of Silver Forest said that tentacles couldn’t do anything about that. It means I had to deal with it.

I clicked my tongue.

“It wasn’t supposed to work just by covering her mouth.”

The reason I am trying to cover the kid’s mouth was not just to make it harder to hear her screams. I wondered if I could stop the eruption if I closed her mouth.

But the scene in front of me was telling me that it was my mistake. The girl’s eyes, nose, and mouth were overflowing with dark green mucus.

“Ectoplasm!”

A substance that the Heart Fish vomited again was the soul that was eaten. It was a defense mechanism that decomposed the non-material soul and converted it into anti-matter.

There were two reasons to spit out the swallowed soul again. When it created small amounts in advance to protect the eggs, and when it felt threatened and attacked the enemy as it is now.

[Min-joon!]

Parvache sharply shouted. But I was preparing in advance. I floated my body in the air with a floating spell. If I touched them, both my body and soul will be ragged.

My head hit the ceiling. The mucus filled up the floor in an instant, and it slumped and swelled under my feet.

‘Is this too much?’

It would have eaten only a part of her soul. That amount meant that the host’s soul is quite high. This little kid? Why?

‘Ah, I can’t settle it quietly.’

I saw the girl with tentacles wrapped around her, floating in the air, following me. Her eyes were still upside down, spouting mucus-like tears.

The ectoplasm flowed not only on her face and body but also on the entwined tentacles. I know they won’t damage the host’s body, but were those tentacles fine, too?

I adjusted the range and unleashed the magic.

“The Sigh of Melcos!”

A deep chill filled the room in an instant. Frost fell on the wallpaper, furniture, and the floor. The extremely low temperatures concentrated under my feet, and the ectoplasm swayed below froze for a while. But…

-Crack!

As if the surface of a frozen lake had cracked, the ice cracked. The mucus began to flutter and dance again.

-Whooooooooh!

It waved with a strange sound. An unpleasant green wave that was several times darker than green algae was like the vomit of a crazy drunk man who ate a lot of moss.

All sorts of things and blankets were swept away by the flow. The princess-like doll that was stained with dark green was turned over, and only the ankles floated.

‘The freeze doesn’t work. If it goes out of this room, all the people in this apartment are going to die.’

The wave formed an increasingly distinct shape with bubbles and swelled—the traces of the souls eaten before passing over to this world.

I frowned. ‘I can’t beat it up here.’

Besides the apartment residents, I also had limited magic that could be used in such a small room.

‘I have to pull her out.’

[How?]

Instead of answering, I chanted the spell.

“Tornado of Dryflos!”

The finely tuned and concentrated airflow smashed the wall!

-Whooong!

A huge amount of dust and debris splattered when the wall was breached, but it was swept out like a whirlwind.

I drew a picture of one wall facing the corridor in advance. Not only did the magic broke a layer of walls, but it also smashed the exterior walls of the apartment over the hall. Through the hole, I could see the night sky outside the building and the building next door.

And as the wild Mana was seethed, the invisibility magic surrounding my body broke.

After all, it doesn’t work as expected. When it comes to ectoplasm, I expected it to be the same size as the girl.

Therefore, that was the first plan of the countermeasure. After freezing the ectoplasm, I would open the Channel on my chest and connect it to any dimension. Then, I would slide in the lump of frozen mucus and close the Channel. The end.

However, unexpectedly, there were too many eruptions, and the power was too strong, so it doesn’t freeze.

In this case, it was ‘Plan B.’

You had to use firepower to destroy that completely.

‘I have to change my appearance.’

I chanted the spell, and my facial muscles twisted strangely. My size had also grown a little.

-Boom!

After the transformation, I took off my mask. It was no longer inevitable that the attention was focused on this incident. Instead of raising suspicions about what was behind it, it was better to throw a solid game.

And threw the traps as well.

I cast the same spell again, only lowering the pressure.

“Tornado of Dryflos!”

Ectoplasm existed in a state that was best defined to be between matter and non-matter. In other words, it meant that my magic worked on it.

As it was weaker than before, there was no destructive power. A whirlwind swept the whole room. Then it poured everything that was inside, out of the apartment!

The enormous amount of slime remaining in the room and the lumps that were slowly flowing into the apartment hallway through the pierced wall were completely washed out by the strong wind I created.

-Wheeiiing!

Tied by the tentacles that stretched out above my hand, the girl’s body fluttered in the wind and swayed in the air. In the meantime, the ectoplasm that kept blowing out was caught by the wind and poured out.

I held the tentacle pouch in my hand and ran, standing in front of the hole in the outer wall. The girl, bounded by tentacles, floated in the air and followed me as I moved.

In that state, I looked up at the sky.

-Wheeeiiiing!

toys, dolls, books, and blankets flew above the night sky. Along with it, a lumpy, mucous ectoplasm floated upwards. From the point where the wind was exposed outdoors, the wind turned upward.

Eventually, the ectoplasm flowing out of the girl’s body stopped. The mucous matter rising in the far wind was gathered together and completed its transformation.

And I, with the appearance in my eyes, barely suppressed the rising discomfort.

Because it’s gross? That expression wasn’t enough. Rather than the disgust of the appearance imitated by the green mucus, it was more… what was it? Extreme reluctance to the existence itself.

The shape created by ectoplasm was a pair of giant wings that covered the sky.

‘The Channel located in the center of Silver Forest… Did the Heart Fishes eat the souls of those creatures in the world beyond that?’

[It’s possible if hundreds of thousands or millions of them attacked and ate it…]

The wings were wide and huge. It was like an eagle flying in the sky. Except that there was no torso.

‘It’s not real. It’s just imitated. That’s it…’

With the tentacle pocket in my hand, I threw myself out of the apartment’s exterior wall. A pile of tentacles with floating power and a girl tied to the end of it also flew with me.

It would appear that a person is tied to a pile of vines that stretched out of my hand from a distance.

-Wheeeeeck!

The wind was tearing my ears.

I soared along with a mass of mucus that was drifting high into the sky. As the flight distance increased, I felt the Mana slipped away like a bottomless pit.

But that doesn’t mean I could explode it on the ground where there were many apartment buildings. I couldn’t help it. I took out the ring in my left hand and held it.

[The shape is complete.]

Parvache said inside the backpack that I carried on my back. I looked up and transformed the ectoplasmic mass while being swept away by the tornado I created.

That was the ability to recapture the power of the soul that the Heart Fish had eaten and turned into ectoplasm. It might’ve been a small fraction of the original’s power, but that alone wouldn’t be easy to deal with simple magic.

“… It’s pretty real?”

As if hearing me, it spread its wings that took up most of its body.

Each feather has a sacred letter engraved on it. When the roots of the two wings met, there was a small, sideways, elongated muscle mass instead of the trunk.

It opened its lips and stuck out its tongue covered with blisters reminiscent of the back of a toad. The abnormal movement of bursting and rising again continued on the tongue. Each blister burst and screamed in praise of God.

‘… Which apostle of God would he be?’

[I don’t know.]

How the hell was that the dimension that the Heart Fish came from?

According to Silver Forest’s Truth-Seeker, the number of Heart Fish would have soared exponentially and eventually destroyed normal life. Then the Heart Fish left in the world ate up the apostles’ spirits on the ground after suffering from hunger.

Either the Heart Fish or apostle must have been the creation of a god who engulfed that dimension.

‘In the end, it’s the result of a team kill, that’s it.’

[Hmm… Was it a completely abandoned world?]

At that time, ectoplasm, which mimics the apostle, began to infuriate, and I heard the “words” ringing in my head.

=Listen to me/I have the duty of preaching the word of the Holy God/Believe in the distant blessings/Praise/By bowing down to Him/Get out of the pain of being repeated 100 billion times.=

It read the scriptures of God and said that it was served, just like when it was alive. The Heart Fish couldn’t even touch its mental barrier since it was a sacred imitation. It was just unpleasant.

‘Isn’t it pretty good? It also sends telepathy.’

It must have recognized me as I approached it closely, so it turned to me and started flapping its wings. The mucous bullets were coming from all over its body like a storm on me!

“The way it attacks has nothing to do with the apostles! It’s just ectoplasm!”

[I took advantage of it and borrowed only the power of the soul itself. There is no divine power of the apostles.]

I blew the Mana into the ring in my hand.

-Wooong!

A translucent shield appeared around me. Thanks to pulling the tentacle pile as close as possible to the body, the girl, all the tentacle stems, and I came inside. On top of it, green masses pour, bump, and explode. But I didn’t care and focused on narrowing the distance further.

While holding me in check with a storm of slime, the soul that was left on the Green Apostle continued to act faithfully.

=To fall asleep by His side/ to be obedient/ to worship under your name/ to praise/ to ‘The Mist of Metallic Gray.’=

It was the true name of a familiar god.

‘It was Thermios.’

Approaching the right distance, I held the ring and aimed. In the meantime, the flapping of the wings became strong, and the mucus that collided and clipped on the shield increased.

And, the moment I grasp a stable trajectory, I didn’t need a starter. I didn’t even have to put in a shout.

“… It would take more than a month to make this again.”

I just muttered bitterly and opened my hand, holding the ring. A thread of Mana was now marked in the center of the slime apostle’s body. The ring flew along the trajectory.

The ring, which flew into the air in no time, hid in the darkness of the night sky.

I reversed the direction of the flying magic and got as far away from the mucus as possible. I put the pocket under my armpit and covered my ears with both hands. As the position changed, the tentacles touched my bare neck—a soul touch. The Truth-Seeker of Silver Forest was a transformative animal, after all.

I glanced at the girl bound by tentacles. That might have burst her eardrums. I needed to close her ears somehow.

-Slurp.

‘Huh?’

At that moment, two smaller, thinner tentacles sprouted from the tentacles that tied the kid. It was similar to the scene that the Truth-Seeker of Silver Forest showed in front of me. It also created a pile of tentacles in this pocket in the same way as the huge tentacles on its body.

Two thin tentacles, which had sprung up, blocked the girl’s ears naturally.

‘Huh, what is it. Did this guy have intelligence? Did it do what I told it to do?’

[What did you tell it? Did you send telepathy to the tentacle now…?]

‘… No. Come to think of it, I just thought about it in my mind. How can it get such a good timing?’

However, my thoughts couldn’t continue anymore.

In the night sky above the apartment complex, a storm-like raging sun rose.

-Krrrrrrrr!

The intense heat scratched the atmosphere. At the moment, a blinding light flashed, and then a glowing heatwave covered the sky. It lit up the darkness as if it was daytime.

-Wheeeing!

“Ugh!”

The craze affected our flight. My body shook violently, but I managed to keep my balance. Even though the shield was absorbing a considerable amount of heat, a hot wind came in.

The artifact that I had just exploded wasn’t just magic that caused huge explosions. What if the explosion blows it all up? In the meantime, I had to live first, right? Considering that, it was the Mana that was stored together in the ring. Physical defense and magic defense barrier equivalent to the ninth system. Once activated, the artifact would persist even after it disappears.

And what happened up there right now was the same level of explosion magic. I focused my Mana on my eyes. Violent fireworks embroidered the sky.

“That’s how my 350 million worth of material goes up in the air.”

[… It’s money. You just need to dispose of the stuff you got from White Deer.]

Yes, it’s money. Among the ingredients, only those that could’ve been bought with money are worth it. I was thinking about the labor and my time for what I can’t get with cash.

Still, that was the best if I wanted to burn those big chunks all at once. I didn’t want people to gather because the battle got longer. The flying magic was consuming a lot of Mana as well. It’s safety first.

I put magic around my eyes and observed the center of the explosion. The mucus was swept away and burst in it, then gradually burned and disappeared. After a while, I could see that it exploded and evaporated.

Then…

I slowed down the fall speed and observed the girl. Let’s do it!

-Wheeeck!

One of the thick tentacles surrounding the girl fluttered in the air for an instant. A rough and hostile movement that was completely different from when it blocked the little kid’s ears a while ago. Then, it made a ring shape as if holding something transparent.

‘Caught it!’

When it felt its ectoplasm disappeared, the Heart Fish felt anxious and tried to run away from its host.

The inside of the O-shaped ring made by the tentacles in the air begins to turn bronze. Looking closely, thousands of tentacles, which were thinner than needles and hair, were eroding inside. a scene of microvascular growth

The coral-like tentacles that infiltrated the body of the Heart Fish they had snatched soon created a shape.

Looking at it, I was convinced of one thing.

‘Is the body of the Truth-Seeker of Silver Forest able to access a spiritual being?’

If it were possible for the Heart Fish, souls would be likely, too.