-Detour
It was certainly a unique mana fluctuation.
Calm ripples, like concentric circles, still flowed out from Gil.
But when I observed more closely, those mana waves were not merely flowing outward; they were also drawing in the surrounding energy.
They were not pulling with any great force.
It was a flow that seemed to exchange energy gently, like waves rolling in and then receding.
‘It’s not especially powerful. But I can definitely feel mana waves, and they’re very unusual. What kind of trait is it?’
It seemed Gil was in the stage before awakening. Before long, he would likely transition into a mage.
I thought it might be dangerous to leave Gil alone in such a state.
If someone awakened to magic late without the protection of a mage family or organization, they could easily misuse magic and endanger those around them—or put themselves in danger.
‘He needs someone to watch over him and guide him. I should help him…….’
Suddenly, something hot surged up from the pit of my stomach.
I had never once thought that I could become someone who helped others.
Could I become someone like Father Bruno?
And yet now, the waves of mana energy inside my body were telling me that I was strong enough to help others.
“Thank you for the meal, Mage. I will never forget this kindness.”
At last, having finished eating, Gil put down his chopsticks and bowed his head to me.
“It was just some tangsuyuk. No need to call it a kindness.”
“It was the most delicious jjajangmyeon, jjampong, and tangsuyuk I’ve ever eaten in my life!”
As Gil spoke with childlike emphasis, a bright smile lingered on his cheeks. It was a smile filled with sincerity.
I had barely done anything, yet it felt as though I was being praised, and for no reason, I felt embarrassed. I asked in a deliberately blunt tone.
“Where are you going now?”
“I should go back to the underpass where I was staying.”
“What if more zombies that changed strangely like before show up? Aren’t you scared?”
“No. I’m fine. I wasn’t scared of the zombies earlier either. I was worried because they were running wild unlike usual, though.”
“Those zombies had a suspicious virus.”
“What? They were sick? That’s really strange. How do zombies get sick?”
Gil looked at me with a puzzled expression.
Perhaps because he had lived together with zombies, he seemed to know their ecology well.
“Have you felt anything strange in your body lately? Anything different from usual?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“Anyway, it doesn’t seem like the disease spread to you, but just in case, keep a close eye on yourself for the next few days.”
“I’m not worried. I feel perfectly fine.”
I had been checking whether Gil had been affected by the black mage, while at the same time asking to see if he was aware of his own mana waves.
Gil’s eyes showed that he truly was not worried about the virus at all. He also seemed unaware of his own mana waves.
In any case, Gil looked fine to me as well.
I did not know when, where, or how the black mage had altered the zombies, but it seemed he had used magic specialized only for zombies.
“Take this. Use this money to rent a motel room or something and stay there. And come find me in a few days. I’ll look for a suitable room for you to stay in by then.”
When I abruptly handed him money, Gil looked at me in shock.
“What? No. I’m all right. I can just stay under the bridge.”
“It’s not good to keep living on the streets. You should live like a person.”
“But……”
“When I was about your age, I lived like that too, and I received help from someone else. So don’t feel burdened.”
Gil accepted the money and, with his head lowered, said nothing for a long while.
I knew very well what thoughts were passing through his mind.
When you receive unexpected goodwill, it feels as though the world you have known until now is cracking apart, and your chest grows heavy with shock.
This child, too, must have suffered quite a bit before ending up homeless.
Whether because of his family or because of school.
That pain could not disappear in an instant, but unfamiliar kindness could create a small crack in it.
“You should go now. I have things to do. Anyway, I don’t care what you do with that money, so eat well, stay safe, and come back here around the day after tomorrow.”
“Yes. Mage, thank you so much.”
Gil bowed his head once more and rose from his seat. The sound of his footsteps as he left the house and went down the outdoor stairs was quite spirited.
“Mm. Did I do something similar……?”
In my previous life, the world around me had been nothing but darkness, but thanks to the help of one person, Father Bruno, I had been able to live like a human being.
Now, in this new world, I was trying to take on that role myself.
Suddenly, I wondered if this was the right thing to do.
After Samir ultimately took even Father Bruno from me, I had lived for nothing but revenge.
Even now, my only thought was that I had to find Samir and stop his evil deeds.
Perhaps I was letting my attention wander to unnecessary things, blurring the path I needed to take.
“Hoo……”
As I took a deep breath and raised my head, the white wall opposite me entered my sight.
There, beyond it, was the magical space I could open and enter at any time.
A perfectly peaceful space.
But I had left that place and returned to reality. Because I had things to do.
I possessed the vast power called magic. I had been given new conditions that would allow me to pursue him to the end and exact revenge.
‘I have power. I’m a mage. I’m not powerless like before.’
Now that I had been reborn as a new person called a mage, I did not want to charge forward blindly.
I did not want to take revenge like sprinting toward a cliff and throwing myself off.
Just as important as chasing after Samir and ending him was returning the self that had been twisted and polluted because of Samir back into the shape of a human being.
This time, I wanted to live as a proper human being.
‘It’s fine if I take a little detour. In the end, I’ll get it done.’
* * *
The next morning, I woke up late and headed to Incheon.
Tracking Ren had to begin in Incheon, and chasing the black mage also had to start again from Incheon Port.
For now, the old black mage who had caused the Incheon Port explosion was the only link leading to Samir.
As I rode the subway, I reviewed the information about Ren once more.
I had finished examining all the materials Han Da-in had provided the night before. I carefully looked through the contents of the document envelope.
Ren’s movements before her disappearance were simple. After entering Korea, the only places Ren had gone back and forth between were the accommodations provided by Vanaheim and the hospital also operated by Vanaheim.
A week ago, Ren had headed from the hospital to her lodging and then suddenly vanished.
‘When I met her in Chinatown, it hadn’t been long since she disappeared.’
The note written by Ren’s father was a brief description of his daughter.
Height: 160 centimeters. A thin build. Not very talkative, with a cautious personality. And the clothes she had been wearing at the time of her disappearance. That was all.
It was not particularly helpful information.
According to the identity documents, Ren’s father’s name was “Dawan.” No photograph was attached. There was no information about her mother.
‘Did her mother die?’
The information Vanaheim had prepared was poor beyond belief. It felt as though they had intentionally given me only the bare minimum.
But even so, finding Ren should not be difficult. Since I had her hair and clothing, tracing her tracks with detection magic was close to a mechanical task.
Of course, there was a limit to the range of detection magic, so if I did not know where to begin, it would be daunting. But I knew part of Ren’s movements.
I only needed to spread out my detection from Chinatown.
‘There’s no doubt. Vanaheim knew I had met Ren and asked me to take this job because of that.’
How they knew, and why they had hidden that fact while still giving me the request, were both mysteries.
Perhaps they thought I was helping Ren hide.
Was that why they had paid such a large request fee, as if asking me to sell her out for money?
The fee Han Da-in handed me was a considerable sum.
‘Why did Ren run away in the first place? Was it really because of a conflict with her father?’
Ren’s green fingernails came to mind. Even though she had undergone plastic surgery to become humanoid, they remained like a shackle of her species.
In this world, biological modification was an entirely legal technology. Vanaheim was a company that had grown into a large corporation by developing and selling that legal technology.
But who could guarantee that illegal things were not taking place behind the scenes, in places like a research institute?
Perhaps because it was a case connected to lizard humans, strange experiments kept coming to mind in my imagination.
‘Let’s not get ahead of myself.’
I decided to think about it after finding Ren first. Once I found Ren, I would naturally come to know.
* * *
“What? Mage? What brings you here……?”
The Chinese restaurant had replaced the glass door that had been broken last time and was now clean and tidy.
Perhaps a customer had just left, because Huang Ga was clearing a table. The moment he saw me, he flinched in surprise and stepped backward.
“One japchae rice.”
“What? Ah! Yes…… One japchae rice here!”
It seemed they were properly open for business today. I could see people working in the kitchen. There were no other customers in the dining hall.
After placing the order with the kitchen, Huang Ga held a rag and needlessly kept wiping the table beside me as he loitered around.
It seemed he could not bring himself to come close, but neither could he move far away.
“Shall we talk for a moment?”
“Mage, what’s going on? Why are you here again? Did you come to collect tribute from us?”
At Huang Ga’s words, I could not help but chuckle. In the eyes of someone from an underground organization, I must have looked like a higher-ranking thug.
If I said I had come to collect tribute, he seemed ready to hand me another bundle of cash.
“What are you talking about? I just came in to eat while passing by.”
“Passing by? What brought you to Chinatown?”
“I heard a rumor, so I came to check it out.”
“A rumor? What rumor?”
I had been spreading out detection magic even before entering this place, but the reason I had come into the Chinese restaurant was not only to detect Ren’s traces.
I intended to test the extent of Chinatown’s organization’s information network.
Though it had not been much, Huang Ga had been the first person to tell me about Samir’s Magic Tower.
That meant there was some kind of information flow.
But it would not be very wise to question Huang Ga about Samir again.
Information could also flow in the opposite direction.
There was no need to widely publicize the fact that I was searching for Samir. Even last time, my reaction had been a little too excessive, enough for Huang Ga to show interest.
This time, I intended to approach indirectly.
“I heard that the Incheon Port explosion and the smuggling of the orcs were the work of Samir’s Magic Tower?”
When I said this casually, Huang Ga’s eyes widened, and he lowered his voice as he asked,
“Who said that?”
“I told you, it’s a rumor I heard. It came to me through several places, so I don’t know the exact source either.”
I deliberately released uncertain information. It was like casting a net.
That the Incheon Port incident was connected to Samir was merely my own guess, but I needed to spread a rumor and see if I could confirm the truth.
I hoped the Chinatown organization would step up and play that role.
Huang Ga swallowed hard and shuddered.