-Pteridophytes
A pure white light flashed, and everything stopped.
The convulsing space grew still, and the rumbling of the earth ceased. The deafening cracks and crashes gradually faded away as well.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
There were a few delayed sounds of trees, which had not yet found their place, toppling under gravity, and then silence descended.
Only then did I feel ready to open my mouth.
“Gil! Cheon Danbi! Are you okay?”
I hurriedly looked around and asked after my team members first.
“Uh…… I’m okay.”
“Is it over now?”
The two answered in trembling voices.
Cheon Danbi and Gil’s faces had gone white with fear, but they seemed relatively fine. It looked like they weren’t injured.
The car we were in was crumpled here and there, but thanks to the telekinetic magic and shield I had held on to until the end, it remained balanced, caught atop the fallen trees.
“Yeah. I think it’s over.”
“Whew…… Thank goodness.”
While the two of them caught their breath, I looked beyond the car window.
The ground was split apart and overturned. There was no trace of what it had looked like just moments ago.
The forest and the road were nowhere to be seen. The scene spread before my eyes looked as if we had crash-landed on the primordial Earth.
“What on earth just happened? Was it just an earthquake? No, right? This was the black mage’s doing, wasn’t it? How can magic this powerful even exist?”
“It really is incredible. The ground’s all split and flipped over.”
Cheon Danbi and Gil spoke as they looked around.
Both their voices were still trembling. Even so, it seemed they wanted to say something, anything. They probably wanted to confirm the fact that they were alive by opening their mouths and speaking.
It had not been that long, but while that chaos was unfolding, they must not have been able to speak, let alone think properly.
“It was probably the black mage’s doing.”
“Then where is the black mage? Is he still here?”
Cheon Danbi looked around with a frightened expression.
I was curious where the black mage was too, but there was something I was even more curious about.
‘What was that pure white light?’
The black mage who had caused this chaos had not stopped the vibration on his own.
The magic had clearly been canceled when that pure white light appeared.
By coincidence, when I raised a powerful will, the pure white light had flared up and stopped the crustal upheaval, but I had not caused that light.
Everything stopped before I could even convert my will into a magic circuit.
The pure white light had appeared at the same time as my will, but it had come from outside. Still, it seemed to have reacted to my will.
I was certain of it.
“Let’s get out carefully.”
I said as I opened the car door.
The door was slightly crumpled, so I had to apply force with kinetic magic before it would open.
“Will that be okay? What if the black mage is nearby?”
“Even if he is, he should have been neutralized. The afterglow of that pure white light is still lingering like this.”
I carefully stepped onto a tree trunk and got out of the car.
Although it was already the time of day when it should have grown dark, the surroundings were not dark.
The pure white light that had flashed brightly enough to blind me had faded, but its afterglow still remained, making the area bright enough.
It meant the magic of the pure white light was still exerting its influence.
“Is that so? Ah, but who caused that pure white light?”
“That’s what I’m wondering too. We’ll have to find out from now on.”
“It looked like the same thing that happened at Neo Forest. The pure white light, I mean. Could there be a divine mage here too?”
Gil’s deduction seemed reasonable, but none of us knew the answer, so we closed our mouths.
Instead, our gazes were stolen by the scene spread before us.
When I stepped onto the tree trunks and looked a little farther out, a truly horrific sight came into view. It was a scene that seemed deserving of the name the Day Earth Ended.
“My goodness! What are we supposed to do about all this? The forest has been completely ruined.”
Cheon Danbi said in sorrow. After looking around once, she even clicked her tongue. As a druid, she seemed to find the destruction of the forest painful.
“Do you think the people in that place we saw earlier are okay? The buildings have disappeared without a trace. But was this really the black mage’s doing? Not a natural phenomenon? This place was the black mages’ laboratory and factory, wasn’t it? They’d destroy their own space like this?”
Gil voiced his doubts, as if he could not understand it no matter how much he thought about it.
“Even so, it was probably the black mage’s doing. This terrain isn’t the kind where earthquakes would normally occur, and judging by the pattern of the tremors earlier and the destruction now, it’s different from an ordinary earthquake.”
I answered him.
“Then it really is incredible. To cause such a massive crustal upheaval. Just how much mana energy does he have?”
“He must have drawn on the mana of the universe. The mana of the earth or the forest, for example.”
“Rather than that, I think he gained mana energy by sacrificing the zombies. When the rumbling first started, the zombies jumped down into the cave. After that, the zombies jumped into the ravine right in front of us too. And each time, an earthquake happened.”
“Ah……! He killed the zombies and used their regenerative ability in reverse!”
In an instant, anger clouded Gil’s face.
Gil had understood immediately after hearing my words.
The black mage had reversed the zombies’ regenerative ability and mana energy and used them as a force of destruction.
By controlling their minds and making the zombies throw themselves into caves and ravines to commit suicide, he must have concentrated their mana into the ground.
Though the method and the targets were different, it was no different from what Samir had done in my previous life, offering children as sacrifices.
Because of that, I was convinced that the one who had caused the crustal upheaval was Samir.
‘This, too, may have simply been one experiment.’
At first, I had thought Samir had discovered us and attacked, but now I wondered if that might not be the case.
To begin with, Samir might not even have been here. It seemed possible he had only controlled things from afar.
The experiment being conducted here may have ended, and he may have used the zombies for one final experiment while destroying the place.
I did not know how many people had been inside the buildings, but he would have thought it fine to bury a few minions along with everything else. That was Samir’s way.
What was certain was that the building here had not been the Magic Tower.
“Huh? The car trunk is open! Na Sanhaegyeong is gone! Did the door open during the earthquake earlier and he fell out somewhere?”
Cheon Danbi, who had been checking the back, shouted.
I had kept the car balanced with telekinetic magic, so I did not think he had fallen out. The car had not flipped over either.
Na Sanhaegyeong had probably escaped amid the tremors. How had he undone the chains of restraint?
While black magic was wreaking havoc across the area, the gray energy may have grown so abundant that Na Sanhaegyeong regained his strength.
“Looks like he ran away.”
“Then what do we do?”
“What do you mean, what do we do? If he ran, that’s the end of it.”
It was a little regrettable that we had lost Na Sanhaegyeong, but it was not a major problem.
We had not taken him hostage on purpose from the beginning; it had just happened by chance.
We had intended to interrogate him and find out the location of the Magic Tower or information about its interior, but in truth, a black mage of Na Sanhaegyeong’s level would not have obediently coughed up information. We probably would have had to torture him rather than interrogate him.
It had not been something I was particularly eager to do anyway.
“Let’s quickly look around before it gets dark and find a way down.”
“That would be best. It’s already getting darker.”
Gil climbed onto a large rock and was extending concentric circles of mana waves to search the surroundings.
I also hurriedly stretched out detection magic and collected magic circuits.
First, I sensed the gray energy rising like a haze. It was ascending into the sky as if evaporating like mist after rain.
‘It’s very clear.’
Countless magic circuits were drifting within the gray energy. The traces were so clear there was no need for a separate analysis.
They were infinite pentagons shining in a very vivid golden light. They were unmistakably Samir’s.
However, they were cracked and shattered here and there. It must have been the aftermath of the pure white light.
Countless golden infinite pentagons were rising into the sky along with the gray energy.
If they had remained in complete form, it would have been a sight that inspired terror even now.
“Did you find traces of the magic circuits?”
I asked Gil.
“Yes. I did find them, but I’m not sure what they are. They’re golden fragments. I think I’ll have to collect them and analyze them later.”
“Okay.”
Just then, Cheon Danbi, who had gone down a little way, shouted.
“Look over here! My goodness! Plants are growing up!”
When I turned to look, Cheon Danbi was staring down into a deep crack in the ground.
Plants were growing? I could not understand what she meant.
It had only just happened that even thick trees had been uprooted and overturned. Was she saying there were plants that had survived?
“What do you mean? Plants are growing?”
Gil and I approached Cheon Danbi.
“Look. You can see plants coming up down there, right?”
When I examined the crack in the ground that Cheon Danbi was pointing at, plants really were growing up.
In other words, they were shooting up in real time.
It was strange and astonishing.
“Wow! They really are. What is going on? The plants are growing at high speed.”
Needless to say, it was not natural.
Plants were growing from a place that had only moments ago been split, flipped over, and collapsed by crustal upheaval. And at a frightening speed.
This was magic. Then who on earth was doing it?
I swept the surroundings with detection magic.
“Now that I look, they’re fern-like pteridophytes. They said this place had Paleozoic terrain, right? Maybe that’s why Paleozoic plants are growing.”
Cheon Danbi said.
When I turned my gaze back toward the plants, incredibly, they had already grown high enough to touch with our hands.
She had called them fern-like pteridophytes, but they were not the size of ordinary bracken found in our country. They were growing much larger than that.
Considering how they had reached our feet in an instant, it seemed more fitting to call them gigantic.
“It’s not just here! They’re growing up from every direction!”
Gil shouted.
We all looked around together.
Just as Gil had said, plants were growing from the cracks in the ground in every direction.
In the darkening landscape of destruction, bright pale green was shooting up as if someone had switched on a light.
As expected, mana could be felt from the pteridophytes. They were plants being grown by magic.
‘Who is it? Where are they?’
It seemed likely that the mage who had caused the pure white light was also making these plants grow.
And I had a feeling that he was the very divine mage who had caused the pure white light at Neo Forest.
“Wow! At this rate, it’ll become a forest in no time.”
“Seriously. It really is like magic.”
“It is magic. Someone is growing these plants with magic.”
“True. It must be magic. There’s no way they could grow this quickly otherwise. But who is it? Where are they?”
“That pure white light earlier too—it seems like it’s the divine mage who left traces at Neo Forest. Where could they be?”
Gil and Cheon Danbi talked in delighted voices as they looked around.
I was continuing to search as well.
But I could not find the presence of the mage who had caused this astonishing magic.