Hermit Wizard

Superior or Inferior (8)

“The Blue Flower of Reinaforce.”

With the low murmurs of the alien race…

-Wheeeerrrrrk!

A blue flame swept the spot she had just been in. It burned in motion and shapes which were far from the physical laws of that world. The motion repeated as if a huge tongue was taking the floor.

Alice quickly dodged and rolled on the floor.

‘The magic of another world?’

Looking at the mobilized Mana size, it would’ve been possible to widen the attack range, but the flames swept and stopped. Alice could quickly see why, and the flames stopped right in front of the human wizards who fell on the floor.

She thought as she dodged hurriedly. The alien’s behavior of not killing humans was interpreted as only one thing in her mind. That alien was also trying to capture human wizards, but why?

“Why the hell are you bothering us?”

She shouted in anger, yet its answer was calm.

“The question isn’t for you… but for me. The Footprint of Seygrazos.”

It was a spell recited in a peaceful tone as if the conversation continued.

-Kwoong-kwoong!

“Eaaaaaarrgghhh!”

Alice screamed at the gravitational waves that pressed her lower body. The terrible pain climbed her spine. She managed to look down.

The invisible giant seemed to have trampled her. She could see that her whole thigh was crushed, and her muscles and bones were shattered.

“Ugh! Why is another world’s entity targeting the human wizards?!”

She bore the pain and shouted, and like a beast, her pupils gleamed. The tall alien responded by gathering Mana in his hands.

“Another question, huh? It will take some time for you to get used to it.”

“There is no right for another dimensional being to interfere with us!”

According to the gestures of the alien, the gravity that pressed her lower body became stronger.

“Kuaaaaarghhhh! You… you don’t even know what we’re doing!”

“I’m going to find that out from now on. The Chain of Thermios.”

A silver mist clumped along with his hand and flew in the shape of a long rope. However, Alice’s attempt to talk over and over again wasn’t simply to express her anger.

In the meantime, she sneaked out her potion bottle and poured it into her mouth.

-Whreeeeck!

Just before the foggy rope was wrapped entirely, her body shrunk as small as the nails. Simultaneously, she transformed her body and cut off her leg that became crushed by gravity.

-Thug! Thug!

“Hugh!”

She rolled on the floor with the power of her waist. She inhaled the recovery potion while enduring the pain that made her felt like she was about to faint.

That alien was far more powerful than she thought. The organization had to be deceived or must’ve misjudged due to limited information.

Moreover, what if it was true that Hessler and Noel were killed?

There was no way to confirm since the communication ring was dead. On the premise that it wasn’t a lie, there was no reason for her to continue her confrontation and take risks alone.

After organizing her thoughts, Alice exclaimed vigorously.

“Teleport!”

“…”

Stillness remained in the space.

“What?! Teleport! Teleport!”

The ring of space movement assigned to her had been reduced to fit the size of her body. There should be no effect on its function. Nevertheless, there was no response to the starter.

A huge shadow hung in front of Alice, who had become as small as the fingernail.

“The Little Melody of Adeligos.”

The air’s vibration started from his fingertip and was concentrated in a limited space. Sound waves were emitted within a conical area, just the right size to wrap around Alice’s smaller body.

The reaction came back immediately.

“Keaaaaaaarrghhh!”

The vibrating wave burst her eardrums. Blood oozed from both her ears, and she was struggling in pain. Alice held out for a few more seconds and eventually collapsed with a single scream.

“Phew. It’s the end with this.”

The alien picked up Alice’s body with two fingers. He then weaved her arms and regenerative legs into a liquid metal about the size of a bean and hardened them, then the Mana froze.

After putting her in the backpack, he looked at the wizards scattered on the floor. No one lost their breath; however, everyone was losing their mind or making a painful groan.

[How much time do we have left? Wouldn’t it be better to leave these guys alone?]

Yoon Min-joon, who wore the Fake God’s shell, shook his head in response to the coming will.

‘No, I’ve calculated everything. There’s plenty of time to clean this place up.’

He took the miniaturized container out of the backpack and restored it to a size that that space could afford.

‘Hmm. If they overlap, they all can go in somehow.’

With the magic of increasing muscle strength and increasing movement speed, he moved as fast as the wind.

-Wheesh! Wheesh!

As soon as his hand moved, he began throwing injured wizards into the container. It would be nice if there were a strong enough telekinetic power to control all of those people at once. He lamented in his heart.

Yoon Min-joon knew through the sense of God. The non-wizard personnel remaining in the Hun-neung had already been annihilated.

As a result, only those who could use magic survived among the personnel residing in that large base.

‘Should I say that they survived because they had the wizard talent? Or that they suffered this misfortune because they had the wizard talent?’

Although he was the person who induced that incident to take place there that day, Yoon Min-joon thought that he couldn’t help it since it was only a matter of time. One day, the ‘Guardians of the Great Convention’ would eventually raid that place and retrieve the wizards.

[At least in this place today… it must be said that they survived because they were wizards.]

Yoon Min-joon responded profoundly while moving his body at an invisible speed.

‘For humankind, the wizard talent must be close to an element of superiority. It helped them survive, didn’t it?’

A man in his thirties, who was groaning and trembling, was thrown into the container, and Yoon Min-joon continued his thought. He heard the sound of the body overlapping and breaking, but he couldn’t afford to pay attention so far.

[But, since they’re wizards, there’s also a risk they’re stuck with. Including those who attacked today.]

‘Hmm… let’s just make sure these guys don’t end up in danger.’

They would move forward with the executives captured that day as clues.

[By the way, Min-joon, are you sure we got the time? Do we have to save everyone? It doesn’t help anyway…]

‘No! It’s almost certain that everyone will die while staying here. I can’t leave them.’

He cut it firmly with his will, and then he conveyed his.

‘I know my mentality. If I leave these many people unattended even though I can save them, I will continue to feel guilty. I can’t do that for my mental health.’

Parvache was silent for a moment and then answered Yoon Min-joon’s will.

[… After all, the motive to save these humans… is to prevent your mental suffering…]

He didn’t respond and focused on his physical labor. After a short time, he finished all the work, and he stood at the door of the container. In the meantime, the dirt and blood spilled by the trainees were collected on the container’s bottom.

Min-joon frowned and mumbled, “… I’ll have a hard time cleaning that again.”

He closed the door and shrank the container again. After putting it in the backpack, he then moved out.

“It’s starting soon.”

[Yeah.]

“I’m glad Hwang Soo-rim did well as what she was told to do. Thanks to that, we bought some time. I looked around the base for the last inspection yesterday, and there wasn’t much to do.”

[Anyway, it’s a great talent. She’s not as good as you, Min-joon, but in general, if you say ‘genius wizard,’ that girl would be a suitable target.]

“Right. It’s incomparable to a guy like Kim Kyung-hwan. He’s not a bad level here overall, but when I compare it to Hwang Soo-rim, he’s infinitely inferior.”

Hwang Soo-rim’s immersion in the past few weeks was a simple task, but it was a work that needed a sense since it was creating countless numbers of elaborated Mana patterns.

To paraphrase it, it was a work that repeated the same act for a long time, such as putting tiles on the floor for a long time, but you need to be skilled when you put them on, and in that case, you even made elaborated tiles yourself, so the sense was essential.

In other words, it wasn’t something Kim Kyung-hwan could do.

Yoon Min-joon could’ve secretly infiltrated the base directly using hidden magic, but it was work that would take about a week, even if he did it quickly.

“Thanks to her, I was able to entrust this task in my place. I didn’t think about it until here, but I saved my hand because I found an unexpected place to use it.”

[I agree with that.]

Yoon Min-joon nodded and stepped outside.

***

-Slap! Slap!

Hwang Soo-rim’s palm slapped his cheek as smoke rose and the smell of thick flowing blood permeated in the air.

“Hey! This bastard!”

Kim Kyung-hwan was awakened, lamented in a faint consciousness. All of that reminded him of a scene.

‘In the end, am I going to end up like this?’

“Huh? Are you awake? Seriously.”

Kim Kyung-hwan was crying silently as he heard Hwang Soo-rim’s absurd voice. A suppressed sound came out of his mouth.

Pain awakened the memory he had buried deep in his brain. He was trying to forget the past himself. It was less than a semester after his enrollment, but that day was his last day of school.

Some guys beat him up on the classroom floor. His other friends only watched from a distance, but none of them came forward. No one ran to the teacher’s office. Even those who hung out with him for the first month after enrollment avoided him since they were frightened in making eye contact. It was unbelievable. Everything… was unbelievable.

He crouched on the floor, fists and kicks poured over him. Kim Kyung-hwan imagined whenever he was hit like that. As I saw in the book, I wished I had a superpower. I wished I could use magic. My imagination continued. I was going to throw a fireball at the head of that kid who was kicking my stomach. His head would burst and burn like a watermelon, and then the other guys would run away, crying and raging. I wouldn’t miss anything.

The bastard who spat on my face that morning would kneel and beg me to save him, but I wouldn’t forgive him. I would grab his neck and electrify him. I would beat him until he peed in his pants, and the smoke would be fluttering like roast pork.

I would kill them all. Kill them all… kill them all!

Kim Kyung-hwan became a superhuman in such a fantasy, and it happened often. If he ran away into his imagination, he could endure a little bit. However, that day he was forced to be pulled out of the world in his head.

The person who always led the bullying giggled. He looked down at his swollen face and whispered, “Hey, let’s do something fun today.”

One grabbed his leg, and the other pulled his arms behind his back. Kim Kyung-hwan twisted his body, knowing something unusual would happen, but he couldn’t get out.

The leader approached Kim Kyung-hwan, whose limbs were tied, and roughly lowered his pants. With fishy laughter, he said, “Fuck, it’s so dirty. Let’s burn all this.”

He took the lighter out of his pocket and brought it to Kim Kyung-hwan.

That day was Kim Kyung-hwan’s last day of school.

The attacker went to school confidently, and Kim Kyung-hwan, who refused to go to school, was stuck in the house.

He lived as a socially withdrawn loner for several years. He deprecated himself and hid.

‘It was because I wasn’t good enough. I was weak because I was like that.’

It was the awakening of miraculous power that brought him out of the world.

From that day on, he thought that his own life had changed. He had the intention to get revenge, but he tried hard to suppress it. He would succeed and become the chosen one whom all people in the world were envious and jealous of.

‘I wasn’t the beaten one anymore. I was no longer weak. I wasn’t weak, so you couldn’t beat me again.’

Still… what was that now? Why was he like that again?!

Physical pain distracted his illusion and brought him back to reality.

“Hey, you bastard! Hurry up and get up!”

He felt the pain diminished with the light that hung around his body.

Hwang Soo-rim used her remaining Mana to heal Kim Kyung-hwan. It wasn’t enough to cure him completely, but it was enough to restore his bodily functions to some extent. Kim Kyung-hwan opened his eyes and…

“Kyaaaaaah! Huh, what else is that?!”

Hwang Soo-rim screamed sharply. Kim Kyung-hwan followed her gaze with his dim eyes, and there…

“Hic… hic… hic!”

Seeing the unexpected scene, Kim Kyung-hwan started having hiccups.

Numerous corpses fell on the floor while knives were stuck on them.

That wasn’t all… The bodies were gradually twisted, distorted, and began to be absorbed toward the center. The scene looked as if the dagger stuck in the chest was eating the whole body.

“Hic, hic!”

Kim Kyung-hwan raised his body while crawling. Hwang Soo-rim grabbed the nape of his neck and pulled him up.

“We’re going to be like that in a little while! We need to get out of here. Hurry up and run!”

The despair and self-help that messed up Kim Kyung-hwan’s head quickly disappeared in front of the life crisis. Not knowing what to run away from, he arose. He stumbled and wiped away his tears.

The two started running again.