-Confrontation
Flames bursting and scattering like fireworks, flames pouring down like a rain of blossoms.
But their true nature was hellish pain.
Screams echoed in every direction.
Except for our team, protected by spatial magic, everyone was writhing in agony.
From the smell of brimstone in the air, it was a rain of firebolts from the Demon Realm.
A terrible pain must have been sweeping through them, as if every last cell in their bodies were burning away one by one.
They were not actually on fire, so they would not die, but it made them leap and thrash in extreme agony, as if they had been set ablaze from head to toe.
‘O vast light, sweep away the firebolts of the Demon Realm!’
I hurriedly raised my intent and activated a wave of pure white light.
Immediately, pure white light spread out in every direction like ripples.
The light swallowed the darkness of the Demon Realm in an instant. Soon, the crimson flames that had been pouring down firebolts vanished without a trace.
The pure white light ended the illusory pain in a single stroke.
Then the screams gradually died down, and people cautiously straightened their bodies, looked around, and slowly rose to their feet.
“Is it over?”
“What on earth was that just now?”
“How strange. Now that I look, I’m not burned at all.”
“That dazzling light must have healed us.”
People examined themselves and each other, murmuring in confusion.
My team members were looking at me with expressions of relief.
I was relieved as well. It was the moment I confirmed the power of the pure white light once again.
With the light, I had been able to eliminate Samir’s terror without delay, all at once.
But this rain of firebolts seemed to have been something Samir had done to draw my attention, rather than to kill people.
Soon after, a confrontation with Samir awaited me.
[Oudin! How dare you!]
At that moment, a voice reached my ears.
No. This was not a voice coming through my ears, but a sound transmission. And it was clear who was speaking to me.
A voice I could never forget.
I slowly turned my gaze toward the Magic Tower.
Samir was at the center of the Magic Tower. He stood on a balcony, looking down at me.
Though black energy was wrapped all around him, this time I could see him with perfect clarity.
Samir’s figure, his face, even his eyes blazing with rage.
[Do you intend to keep interfering with my work until the bitter end and stand against me!]
Samir’s voice rang thunderously inside my head.
His voice and face were exactly the same as Samir from my previous life, but the impression he gave off was quite different.
The dark mage Samir possessed energy far more dangerous than Cult Leader Samir, and he was formed of pitch-black, pure evil.
If Cult Leader Samir had at least outwardly worn the guise of faith and pretended not to be evil, Samir, the master of the Magic Tower, was evil itself and made no attempt whatsoever to hide that he was evil.
But I, too, was not the same person I had been in my previous life.
A viscous scent of fear flowed from Samir.
A fear slowly rose in me, as if drawing any closer would plunge me into a bottomless black pit.
My head throbbed and spun as if a poisonous herb with an unbearably strong scent had been shoved into my nose.
Indescribable confusion came crashing in.
Before the sickeningly intense aura of fear, I felt a helplessness as if my body would melt down to the bone.
This savage pressure was likely what had made him the master of the Magic Tower.
And yet, right now, I was overjoyed.
The fact that I was finally facing Samir, the fact that I had met again the one who had been the purpose of my previous life, the fact that he recognized me and was furious with me—it made me so happy that it felt as if my soul were soaring into the sky.
Far from fear, it was as though a chorus filled with exultation was ringing in my ears.
So I was smiling. With a bright smile, I answered him by sound transmission.
[Samir, we finally meet? Why were you hiding so thoroughly? Why were you hiding in the background and doing nothing but manipulating things? Yes, that’s right. I’m going to stop everything you do until the very end. Do you understand now?]
Then the black energy wrapped around Samir grew even denser.
He was enraged. A good sign.
It meant Samir acknowledged me as an adversary. If he did not, he would not be so furious.
Then again, if he had intended to ignore me from the start, he would not have shown himself. It meant he could not ignore me.
[You wretch who will rot in the Demon Realm until even your final shred of intent decays! A thing like you dares! Do you think I will fail to walk my grand path because of a mere threat from the likes of you!]
The more loudly he blustered, the more my guess solidified into certainty.
Even after I had washed away all of the firebolts just now, why had he not attacked me immediately?
Samir was hesitating.
I had no doubt it was because of the pure white light.
Just as Yashin had suffered in Neo Forest, just as the tectonic upheaval Samir had caused in Danyang Forest had been devoured, the pure white light was surely fatal to dark mages.
Could Samir be thinking that all the pure white light manifested earlier had also been my doing?
It was a misunderstanding, but a welcome one.
Samir continued to send me his rage through sound transmission, boiling violently like brimstone fire.
[That will never happen! I will make certain you crawl through the mire. I will reveal to the whole world where you came from and what that power of yours is, the one that works such shallow wonders! Do not dream of stopping me with petty tricks!]
In the end, he was only running his mouth. A sign of powerlessness.
There was, however, one thing he said that bothered me.
He would reveal where I came from?
Did Samir also possess memories of his previous life? Did he remember me from that life?
Suddenly, I felt as though the ground beneath my feet had dropped away and my balance had collapsed.
The tip of my nose stung as if my mind were filled with acrid smoke. Terrible pain and confusion surged in.
I was dizzy. Everything grew distant.
No… I was sick of it.
All of this was nothing more than illusory fear. You cannot do anything to me.
I drew up pure white light from the very center of my heart.
Light wrapped around me. I roared.
[Samir! You should be the one to show yourself to the whole world. But I will not let you destroy the world as you please. I will stop you. I will stop you without fail. You do not know me, Samir! But I know very well who you are!]
At that moment, Samir flinched.
I saw it clearly. I saw him flinch through the black energy growing dark and dense.
But soon, the balcony of the Magic Tower filled with pitch-black energy, and gradually nothing could be seen.
Black energy was overlapping throughout the entire space of the Magic Tower like murky fog.
Even as pure white light flowed out from me, that place only deepened into an abyss-like darkness.
At last, the space of the Magic Tower itself slipped away from sight.
Samir had vanished. He had fled to avoid me.
“Wizard! What’s wrong?”
“What is it? Is there something else?”
“There doesn’t seem to be anything there, so what is Wizard Oudin looking at?”
“Wizard Oudin! Are you all right?”
“It looks like the terror attack is all over now…”
Suddenly, as if a dam had burst, the sounds and information around me rushed in all at once.
A ringing came to my ears for a moment, then disappeared, and at last the sounds became clear and the surrounding scenery entered my sight.
The faces of my team members, worried and curious. I could see a few mages as well.
There were more people on the street now, and cars were passing back and forth. The cars were avoiding only the area around me.
While I was confronting Samir, it seemed my soul had briefly slipped away into a narrow universe where only he and I existed.
“I asked what’s wrong. Do you see something strange?”
Cheon Danbi was asking me repeatedly.
To the others, Samir and the Magic Tower would not have been visible, nor would they have heard the sound transmission, so it must have looked as if I was standing there alone with my eyes wide open.
“No. It’s all right now. I was watching the Magic Tower.”
“It’s not another terror attack, is it?”
“Not right away.”
Only then did my team members let out sighs of relief.
“Is it really over? That’s a relief.”
“Then let’s move over there now. We’re in the middle of the road.”
“Ah, right. Let’s go.”
As we walked toward the sidewalk, the people gathered there applauded and cheered.
“It’s Team Oudin!”
“Wizard, thank you! We survived thanks to you.”
“I thought I was going to die so many times, but I lived. Thank you!”
“Hero Wizard Oudin, you’re the best!”
Among them were some who called the team members by name.
“Wizard Gil, thank you for saving us!”
“We recovered thanks to the vitality from Ren and Cheon Danbi!”
It seemed my team members had become famous now, too.
The ones who had gone close to people, saved them, and infused them with vitality were my team members. I had merely been responsible for the overall strategy from a distance.
So it was only natural that the people who had survived felt a more special gratitude toward Gil, Ren, and Cheon Danbi.
The faces of my team members brightened as they belatedly received thanks.
“Wizard, you worked hard.”
After we pushed through the crowd and reached a slightly quieter place, Yu Jaeseon spoke to me, having followed us at some point.
“If not for you, Wizard Oudin, many people would have been sacrificed. Thank you, truly.”
“Everyone worked hard. But have you confirmed the number of casualties?”
“Yes. Twelve mages, and ten elves and dwarves disappeared as well. They… can’t come back, can they?”
Yu Jaeseon asked, though he already knew the answer.
They were the ones swept up by the whirlwind at the beginning and sucked into the red spatial rift.
They had already been annihilated. There was no way for them to return.
“That’s right. They cannot come back.”
“I thought so. Still, because you responded so quickly, Wizard, we were able to save far more people.”
If we had failed to stop it, hundreds or thousands would have been dragged into the air in an instant and met their deaths. Fortunately, we had saved them.
But that did not make the weight of those who had been sacrificed any lighter.
“We need to attack the Magic Tower soon. We have to strike it directly.”
Yu Jaeseon looked slightly surprised at my words.
“Attack the Magic Tower? Yes, of course we must. But you don’t mean to attack it right now, do you?”
“Of course not. But even if we don’t strike immediately, we need to hurry the investigation. Only then can we make a plan.”
“Understood. Then I’ll put together an investigation team.”
“Please gather mages who specialize in detection magic or spatial magic.”
“I will.”
It was not something we could put off forever.
I could set out to investigate on my own, but if possible, we needed to gather mages and have them view the Magic Tower’s space in advance. Only then would we be able to attack it together.
Of course, I needed to make plans of my own as well.
First, I also needed to enter the magic space and train in spatial magic.
Perhaps reading my desire to return home quickly, Yu Jaeseon said,
“You should go home now.”