-Someone Else’s Territory
* * *
Yasin hesitated for a moment as he looked at the police and soldiers who had set up a perimeter and were standing guard.
‘It would be easier to get up if I went this way…….’
The police and soldiers were not only blocking the road; they had even cordoned off the surrounding forest. Unlike usual, they were holding guns in their hands.
There was no chance of passing through that point naturally. For one thing, there wasn’t a single person going in or out of there.
The place where the laboratory and factory had been was originally a dead end where the road stopped. There was no other route around.
Of course, now that the earth had shifted, the road had disappeared and the terrain had changed completely, so whether it was a dead end or not no longer meant anything.
In any case, to get there, it seemed he would have no choice but to make a long detour and descend through the mountains from Sobaeksan, or fly through the sky.
‘I suppose I’ll have to use magic to get there. I don’t want to waste mana on something like this, but there’s no helping it.’
He had devoured even that monstrous serpent and replenished his mana, only to spend it all trying to undo the sealing magic Oudin had placed on the underground test subjects. And he had failed in the end, at that.
He had only just managed to refill the mana he had spent that way. For some reason, unlike before, the speed at which his mana recovered had slowed.
Of course, there was also the method of killing all the police and soldiers over there and strolling through at his leisure, but that would still require him to expend mana.
Not only that, but if he killed people, things would get noisy again, and he had a feeling Samir would not like that. It was not something Samir had ordered him to do.
Yasin had already disobeyed Samir’s words more than once or twice. If he did it again, a bolt of fire might come crashing down on him.
‘Lord Samir tells me not to obsess only over the golden apples and the test subjects, and to just do what I’m told properly, but how can I?’
Yasin could not simply stand by and watch Kim Seonho steal the accomplishments he had achieved. Taking back what belonged to him was only natural.
But then that bastard Oudin had interfered, casting sealing magic, and Yasin had been forced to leave the mansion empty-handed.
“Where did that rat bastard Oudin hide himself? Where in the world did we miss each other?”
Yasin was certain Oudin had been right here when the earth had shifted earlier.
That was why he had to go and confirm it with his own two eyes. Oudin might still be there, or perhaps he had fallen below the canyon and died.
No one but that bastard Oudin would have found their way in there, and if the laboratory had not been discovered, there would have been no reason to destroy it.
It had been the Magic Tower’s laboratory, running usefully all this time.
Once the clinical trials for the golden apples were complete, it had even been equipped with a factory so they could produce them independently.
It was none other than Yasin who had built it.
‘Because of that rat bastard, even my laboratory and factory have all collapsed. Lord Samir couldn’t have done it on purpose. He must have had a reason to destroy them.’
Everything was that bastard Oudin’s fault. Killing him would not be enough to satisfy Yasin.
And yet, the man kept slipping through Yasin’s fingers.
Earlier that day, Yasin had come here because he had thought Oudin must have visited the laboratory.
If not here, then why else would he have come to Chungcheongbuk-do?
But at that time, there had been no trace of Oudin having come by.
‘No one came here. They say Oudin fought Lord Nasanhaegyeong in Jecheon.’
‘Lord Nasanhaegyeong was defeated and went missing. That’s why an order came down to find Lord Nasanhaegyeong.’
After hearing that from the black mages guarding the laboratory, Yasin headed for Jecheon.
‘Nasanhaegyeong. She acted so high and mighty all by herself, and yet how lacking she is……. Defeated by someone like Oudin and gone missing?’
Yasin had little interest in Nasanhaegyeong.
He had paid no attention to the stories that she was in charge of exchange with the black mages of mainland China, or that she was producing fresh monsters with the black magic she had trained in there.
He had always thought Nasanhaegyeong did not even reach the tips of his toes.
However, the fact that Samir had recently summoned Nasanhaegyeong back into the country did bother him a little.
It seemed to mean that Samir’s trust in him was cracking.
Yasin felt wronged.
‘Why won’t Lord Samir believe in me patiently? If he only waits, I will surely make his dream of eternal life come true.’
In any case, he had hurried to Jecheon for that reason, but the situation there had already been neatly dealt with, and no traces of either Oudin or Nasanhaegyeong remained at the scene.
While he was at it, he had gone to Chungjuho as well. They said Oudin had appeared there too and purified the lake before leaving.
But once again, he had arrived too late; he could find no trace of Oudin there either.
He had been on his way back to the laboratory in Danyang, wondering what to do next.
Far in the distance, at the foot of Sobaeksan—right around where the laboratory was located—he sensed an immense surge of mana manifesting.
It was an enormous upheaval of the earth. The vibrations carried far.
‘Destroying the laboratory?’
The mana he sensed was unmistakably gray energy.
As he drew a little closer, he even detected an infinite pentagonal magic circuit shining in clear golden light.
It was magic performed by Samir.
‘Is he finally trying to kill Oudin?’
That did not seem likely.
Samir had told Yasin not to kill Oudin. He had said he was watching him with interest, so leave him be.
Yasin had thought perhaps Samir had some separate intention.
Yasin did not want Oudin dead right away either. To recover the test subjects frozen solid and unable to move under sealing magic, he absolutely needed Oudin.
But if he followed his heart, he wanted to kill him ten times, a hundred times over.
And yet because of Oudin, his laboratory and factory were being destroyed again.
‘I’ll deal with this bastard right now……!’
As he hurried toward the site of the upheaval, a pure white light flashed for an instant. It was the same pure white light as the one at Neo Forest.
It had to be that sacred mage.
Yasin nearly lost his grip on the steering wheel. He barely managed to clutch it and pull the car over to the shoulder.
After taking several deep breaths and calming himself, he drove toward Danyang again.
After going round and round like that and arriving back here, this was the situation he found.
Hidden in the grass as he observed the state of the perimeter, Yasin at last drew up his mana and stirred the wind.
It was a wind of just the right strength, not enough to attract attention.
A wind strong enough to hide the traces left when he used kinetic magic to shake the forest as he passed through.
The next moment, Yasin, his figure concealed in black darkness, slipped into the dark forest as though flying.
The forest rustled and shook, but no one paid it any mind.
* * *
No—there was one person. None other than Nasanhaegyeong.
Nasanhaegyeong, who had awakened in the forest, had overcome the cold through the power of rage and was now descending toward the foot of the mountain.
When she woke, there had been no more tremors, so there was no need to flee farther up the mountain. She was curious about what in the world had happened.
‘What happened to the laboratory and the factory? The cave?’
To find out, she had to go down to that place.
Of course, even without confirming it with her own eyes, she could guess. There could be no human structure capable of withstanding an upheaval of that scale.
The cave must have collapsed and been buried as well.
It was only natural. The cave, above all, would have completely caved in and sunk, leaving no trace behind.
That must have been Samir’s purpose.
To think that bastard Oudin would dare go there.
Because she had been bound by chains of restraint, covered by a barrier, and locked in the trunk of a car while being transported, Nasanhaegyeong had no way of knowing how those bastards had found the place.
Inside the cave, there was a portal leading to the Magic Tower.
Samir had caused the upheaval so that Oudin would not see it.
Of course, the reason he had not simply collapsed the cave, but had instead unleashed such tremendous power that the entire area was overturned, was likely also to make an example of them.
‘Maybe he got sick of all that golden apple experimentation nonsense too. He might have grown tired of that old man Yasin.’
Thinking that somehow gave her strength. It felt as if mana was rapidly filling her body.
Nasanhaegyeong twisted her lips into a crooked smile.
‘Did that bastard Oudin die?’
She did not think so.
If Samir had intended to kill Oudin in the first place, he could have done so easily without causing an upheaval of the earth.
She could not understand why he kept trying to keep that man alive.
Besides, there had been that pure white light. That foreign energy that had seemed to melt her entire body with a single flash.
A radiant light that stood in complete opposition to gray energy. She had a strong feeling that it had saved Oudin.
Could that pure white light possibly have belonged to Oudin?
Just thinking about it made her body tremble on its own.
“No. It can’t be. There’s no way. I fought him myself. His skills were decent, but he isn’t that extraordinary a mage. I only lost because I underestimated him and let my guard down!”
Nasanhaegyeong desperately denied it.
As she walked down while thinking this and that, a strange sight suddenly unfolded before her eyes.
She could not hide her astonishment. An unfamiliar and mysterious forest had formed there. It was completely different from the forest of Sobaeksan she had been walking through until now.
A forest filled with enormous ferns and flowers brimming with mana. It was a forest created by magic.
It felt as though she had come not to some mountainside in Korea, but to an entirely different dimension.
“What is this? How can something like this……?”
Surely Samir’s magic had made the earth writhe, split, and overturn.
The mountain had collapsed and been overturned enough to completely change the terrain, so the trees, the grass, and all living things should have been buried in the soil and died.
Then what in the world was this vivid forest?
Nasanhaegyeong, who had expected only uneven piles of reddish soil and perilously split cracks in the earth to be waiting, stood with her mouth agape and looked around.
At first, Nasanhaegyeong suspected something had happened to her mind, and then she asked herself whether she had lost consciousness and awakened in another dimension.
‘No. This is definitely the right place, isn’t it? That must be around where the cave was. Who created a forest like this, and when?’
Nasanhaegyeong slowly approached while probing her surroundings.
Astonishingly, not a trace of gray energy remained. There was no trace of Samir.
Of course, neither the laboratory nor the factory, neither the black mages nor the zombies, nor the cave where the portal had been could be seen.
There was no one here, only a world of plants that looked like a primordial forest spreading out before her.
The alien sensation of having stepped into someone else’s territory soaked into her bones.
She stood there blankly, feeling as though she had lost her bearings.
Then, from somewhere, gray energy flowed in. It was so welcome. Nasanhaegyeong quickly began running toward it.
‘Is there a black mage who survived? Did Lord Samir leave a trace for me?’
A gentle wind was blowing. From below, the forest was shaking upward. It seemed someone was approaching this way.
Nasanhaegyeong, who had been running downhill, suddenly came to an abrupt stop.
Her delight vanished, and irritation began to rise stealthily in its place.
Because the person flying up through the darkness over there was Yasin.