-Disappear
Something was tapping against my forehead.
I barely managed to lift my endlessly heavy eyelids and opened my eyes.
A pitch-black shape came into view. Round faces, with four eyes between them.
They were crows.
[Oudin, snap out of it.]
[Hurry up and wake up!]
The crows sent voice transmissions.
Only then did my mind jolt awake. I pushed myself up from where I had been lying on the dirt floor.
It was terribly dark before my eyes. I couldn’t see properly, so I had to light up my golden vision and look around.
I was in a forest reduced to chaos. Broken branches and leaves were scattered everywhere, and all the undergrowth had been completely wrecked.
And a little way behind me, Han Dosu and Thor lay collapsed.
The scene was quite a mess, but it was still, with nothing moving. There was no great wind, no swirling swamp, and no trace of any magical energy.
‘That’s right! The pure white light!’
As I searched my memory for how things had ended up like this, I remembered the pure white light.
Yasin had attempted his final attack, and just as I countered with climate transformation magic, a pure white light had suddenly appeared.
After that, I remembered nothing.
It seemed we had lost consciousness for a moment and collapsed.
Now the pure white light was nowhere to be seen, and the forest was merely sunk in pitch-black darkness as before.
“What happened to Yasin?”
I hurriedly looked up at the large tree where Yasin had been hiding.
The once immensely imposing tree had been completely ruined.
After being tormented by all kinds of magic, it had broken, split, suffocated, and withered, barely standing like a dead tree that had perished centuries ago.
There was no longer even a place left there to hide.
Not only was there no sign of Yasin, I couldn’t feel any mana waves indicating that he was in the vicinity.
[Yasin disappeared.]
A crow said.
“Disappeared? But when did you guys get here?”
I asked, turning to the crows.
[From earlier. We were looking around the forest from the north, but when we saw a battle happening here, we came this way.]
“You watched us fighting Yasin?”
[We did. Since three mages were fighting against Yasin, we were watching the fight at ease.]
[Of course, we couldn’t see Yasin.]
[But we did hear that bizarre voice.]
Since they were crows, they must have been looking down from somewhere high up. I hoped, just in case, that these guys might know where Yasin had gone.
“So where did Yasin go? Did you see him run away?”
[We didn’t see that. We lost consciousness too and only woke up a little while ago.]
[Could Yasin even have escaped?]
“You lost consciousness too when the pure white light appeared?”
[Yeah. We did.]
[What on earth was that pure white light?]
That was what I wanted to ask.
I had hoped the crows might have seen or known something, but it seemed they too had been helpless against the pure white light.
“I don’t know either. We entered the forest to investigate that, but before we could properly look into it, we ran into Yasin, fought him, and ended up like this. So when you woke up, Yasin was already gone?”
[He was gone. There wasn’t a single trace.]
[Only the three of you were collapsed, and everything was quiet, just like now. The pure white light had disappeared too.]
The pure white light had disappeared, and Yasin had vanished without a trace.
He was not lying collapsed like us, nor had he died and left behind a corpse.
He had vanished as if by magic.
When I examined the area with detection magic, all that lay scattered everywhere were infinite pentagonal magic circuits with broken corners.
But that did not mean Yasin was here. They were merely traces of the magic he had activated.
‘They definitely said the pure white light stopped Yasin’s bombing terror attack……’
So I had thought that whatever its true identity was, it must be someone standing on the opposite side from Yasin.
But this time, when the pure white light appeared, Yasin disappeared.
Had the pure white light perhaps helped Yasin go missing? Or had it swallowed Yasin whole?
That was something I would have to investigate from now on.
I looked back at Han Dosu and Thor. The two were still lying where they had fallen, unconscious.
Thinking that I should wake them, I started toward them, but then Cheon Danbi and Gil suddenly came to mind.
The two of them had probably entered this forest as well. Cheon Danbi had said she would.
They might even have been somewhere not far from here.
If so, Cheon Danbi and Gil might also have lost consciousness and collapsed because of the pure white light.
What was even more serious was the possibility that they might have run into Yasin.
I quickly took out my phone and checked it. But there was no signal.
I couldn’t tell whether it was because we had come deep into the forest, or because the pure white light had knocked it out.
I said to the crows,
“You guys know Gil, right? The kid you met at my house. Hurry and search the forest for Gil. He’ll be with a woman. If they were around here, the two of them might have collapsed too.”
[Uh, okay.]
[Gil came here too? How did he get in?]
[But you don’t know where he is right now?]
[He wasn’t in the north where we were earlier……]
“He came separately from me. He probably snuck in. So look for him quietly. If he’s collapsed, wake him up, and if you can, get him out of this forest.”
[Got it. We’ll look for him.]
[Even if he’s collapsed, we’ll wake him up and lead him out, so don’t worry.]
There was no way I could not worry. There was still no guarantee this forest was safe. Yasin’s whereabouts were unknown.
But I couldn’t go searching for Cheon Danbi and Gil right now. There were two people collapsed here as well.
Only after the crows flew up and disappeared did I wake Han Dosu and Thor.
Judging from the way they had fallen, they seemed completely out cold, but when I woke them, they got up quickly enough.
I lit a magical flame and examined them. Just like me, there was nothing wrong with their bodies.
“Ugh. Did we lose consciousness?”
“What happened? Ah! The pure white light!”
“Where is that bastard Yasin?”
As soon as Han Dosu and Thor woke up, they reacted exactly the same way I had.
At first, they were bewildered, then soon remembered the pure white light and hurriedly looked around for Yasin.
“It seems everyone lost consciousness the moment the pure white light appeared. And Yasin has vanished without a trace. There’s nothing left of him.”
Even as I said this, Thor seemed unable to believe that Yasin had disappeared. He ran to the large tree, circled beneath it, and swung his hammer through the air.
If I hadn’t been told beforehand that the hammer was a detection magic tool, I would have thought he was fighting empty space.
“At the very least, he doesn’t seem to be here alive. I can’t feel any mana waves at all.”
At last, Thor withdrew his hammer and spoke. Then he lit a magical flame and swept his gaze all around.
“I told you, he disappeared. I already scanned the place too.”
“No, but if he’s dead, there should at least be a corpse, shouldn’t there? Did he die while using concealment magic, so we just can’t see him?”
“That makes no sense. If he died, the concealment magic would have been undone.”
“Well, that’s true.”
Thor seemed so unwilling to believe that Yasin had disappeared that he was doubting something he obviously knew.
But in the end, he had no choice but to believe it. Nothing was detected, and no corpse appeared.
“What on earth is that pure white light?”
“Who knows. We all lost consciousness…… I don’t remember anything.”
Thor asked, and I answered. Both the question and the answer were nothing but powerless.
Regarding the pure white light, the most important mystery and one of the reasons we had entered the forest, we knew nothing at all, as blank as a clean sheet of paper.
“Now then, let us resume the investigation.”
Han Dosu spoke calmly. He too must have been disappointed that we had lost Yasin and fallen victim to the pure white light, but he did not show it.
“This is the most important point, but since we don’t know where Yasin went and he may still remain in this forest, we’ll spread out and investigate as before. If anything happens, send a signal immediately. And if I send a signal, regroup here.”
Han Dosu gave the order.
“Understood.”
“Okay. Let’s do this!”
We immediately split up in three directions.
As if the battle with Yasin and the fact that we had lost consciousness from the pure white light had never happened, we returned to square one and began investigating again.
I took the east, as before.
I pushed through the thick undergrowth and moved forward. It was a dark, deep forest where, after only a few steps, we could no longer see one another.
Magical flames were of no use either. Blocked by the dense trees and brush, the light did not reach anyone else’s eyes.
Unless we shot up a signal flame, each of us had to move forward into our own share of darkness.
It was while I was searching through the forest like that.
“Oudin.”
I heard a soft voice calling me, as if whispering.
I quickly looked around, and saw a human face peeking out between dangling vines.
“Cheon Danbi?”
“Yeah. It’s me. We’re here. You’re alone right now, right?”
I strode over in that direction. As I drew closer, I saw Cheon Danbi and Gil hiding behind the vines, crouched low.
“I’m alone. You can come out.”
At that, the two of them stood and walked forward. A crow sat on each of Gil’s shoulders.
“Mr. Mage!”
“So you were here. Nothing happened?”
“No.”
As I had asked, it seemed the crows had quickly found Cheon Danbi and Gil. But for some reason, instead of leading them out of the forest, they were giving off the air of having joined up with them.
Gil and the crows looked as if they were one inseparable unit.
“We were fine. Nothing happened except the crows finding Gil and flying over. They said these crows are ones you raise, Mr. Mage?”
“That’s right. They’re my crows.”
“I didn’t know. I didn’t realize you were someone who communed with animals too, Mr. Mage…… But earlier, it looked like there was a battle going on over there. Did the black mage appear? There was a whirlwind and lightning, and it was a complete mess. You weren’t hurt, were you?”
Cheon Danbi asked only about the battle and did not ask about the pure white light. From that, it seemed the two of them had not been affected by the pure white light.
“Yasin appeared. He must have been hiding in the forest. So we were fighting him, but then the pure white light suddenly appeared. But were you two all right?”
“Us? We were fine. There was a battle going on over there, so we moved north to avoid it.”
“That’s not what I mean. Did you lose consciousness or collapse because of the pure white light?”
“Because of the pure white light? No. That didn’t happen. While we were walking through the forest, a pure white light suddenly flared up. It got so bright I thought I’d go blind, so we sat down here for a moment. That was all.”
In other words, they had not fainted.
If so, it seemed clear that the pure white light had targeted only Yasin and the mages.
Was it because we had been fighting while destroying the sacred forest?
The thought crossed my mind that perhaps the true identity of the pure white light was the divinity emitted by Neo Forest itself.
“Does Neo Forest perhaps have the ability to protect itself?”
I asked Cheon Danbi.
I needed a new perspective. As a druid, Cheon Danbi seemed likely to have a fresh viewpoint different from that of a mage.
“Huh? What do you mean?”
Cheon Danbi opened her eyes wide and asked me back.