-Jellyfish
As I climbed the twisted stairs, I continued thinking about the opponents I would have to fight.
The Hall of Magic?
I didn’t want to believe that every mage belonging to the Hall was colluding with the black mages.
A few of them, like Gang Yonghun and Loki, were suspicious enough.
I couldn’t understand why the Hall would have joined hands with black mages.
Weren’t they, in truth, enemies? And it was also questionable whether the black mages they had colluded with belonged to Yashin or to Samir’s Magic Tower.
I had to find out. And if necessary, of course I would fight the Hall as well.
The government?
In this conspiracy concerning the dwarf district, the government couldn’t be free of blame either. At the very least, they must have been turning a blind eye while doing Vanaheim’s bidding.
And it wasn’t only this incident.
The Incheon Port explosion, and even the zombie commotion, were things that could not have happened unless the government was corrupt.
But the government was a vast organization. It felt wrong to suspect the entire government. And there was nothing tying me personally to it.
‘There’s no need to widen the scope too much. In any case, for now I need to solve the problem right in front of me. If I do that, the scope will narrow on its own, and I’ll eventually reach my ultimate target.’
Samir came to mind.
His dark face was drawn so clearly in my head, even his smell felt vivid, as if I were smelling it right beside me.
But since I had yet to face him in this world, the image I recalled was of him from the previous world.
‘He must exist here too, looking exactly the same.’
I was certain of it.
If not, there would be no reason I had been transferred to this world.
Samir remained my ultimate goal, unchanged.
‘Samir, I will catch you no matter what. I will never allow your black desires to bring calamity upon the world.’
Incidents had been crashing down on me without end, but I had never lost my direction. The direction I wanted to go was clear.
It was the path leading to Samir.
After moving my feet mechanically while lost deep in thought, we finally emerged outside.
Cheon Danbi let out a deep sigh.
“Whew…… This place is a mess too.”
The ground around the vanished Volva Restaurant was still rumbling.
The Hall mages had completely sealed off the area and were dragging away dazed dwarves bound in chains of mana.
“Now I’m getting angry all over again. What happened to the auntie?”
Cheon Danbi huffed as she stared at the Volva Restaurant, which had become an empty hole.
Since she had lived all this time building friendships with the dwarves, her feelings were bound to be far more complicated than mine.
“Let’s hurry and get out of here.”
“Yeah, let’s go. What’s the point of getting mad here?”
Cheon Danbi took a step forward.
We hurried back to the herb shop, made various preparations, and left to pick up Gil.
* * *
“Now that the three of us are in a car driving on the highway, it really feels like we’re going on a trip. Well, since we’re going to another region, I guess it is a trip, right?”
Gil said in an excited voice.
The car we were in had just gotten onto the highway.
But we still hadn’t left Seoul, and with rush hour approaching, the road was packed with cars, so it felt strange to say we were driving on the highway.
And yet even this seemed to be enough to make Gil excited.
“Let’s think of it as a trip until we arrive in Daejeon.”
I chuckled and replied lightly.
Hearing Gil say it, I did feel as though we were going on a bit of a trip.
Maybe Gil’s excitement beside me had rubbed off on me.
In truth, although a strange life-form had appeared, it wasn’t right in front of our eyes, and the world looked no different from usual.
Even though the news must have been reporting the appearance of the strange life-form, people were still living their everyday lives as before.
Well, not everyone lived with their ears glued to the news.
“It’s like a field trip, I guess. Don’t feel too burdened. Just think of it as going to observe a strange life-form. Though instead of being dead and in a museum, it’s alive and moving, so we’ll have to fight it.”
Cheon Danbi also replied as if making a silly joke.
She had been burning with anger until just a while ago, but now Cheon Danbi seemed to have regained some of her composure.
“A field trip. That sounds nice. But jellyfish flying through the air… Why would something like that appear?”
“A black mage must have released them on purpose.”
The reason we were having such a relaxed conversation wasn’t just because we hadn’t arrived in Daejeon yet.
According to the information we’d received after contacting the Hall, the strange life-forms that had appeared in Daejeon weren’t giant monsters, but a swarm of jellyfish.
However, since the jellyfish were flying through the air instead of being in the sea, they could only be called strange life-forms.
It was certainly a bizarre incident, but since the jellyfish were not yet attacking people, the news wasn’t clearly calling it black mage terrorism either.
“What was the black mage trying to do by releasing jellyfish into the air? They said they’re not attacking people and are just flying around, right?”
Gil’s question struck the heart of the matter.
If this was black mage terrorism, there had to be a purpose behind it.
Rather than simply thinking it was strange that jellyfish that should have been in the sea were floating through the air, we had to consider what that purpose was.
“Yeah. It is strange. There’s no way a swarm of jellyfish would be flying through the sky for no reason. On top of that, jellyfish are naturally poisonous creatures.”
Cheon Danbi replied, sinking into thought.
“They might just not be attacking yet. Maybe something has already begun while we’re on our way.”
I said.
“There haven’t been any more messages from the command center, right?”
“Not yet.”
“There’s nothing online yet about the jellyfish attacking people either.”
It seemed Cheon Danbi had already searched on her phone.
“Then let’s think about it some more. What’s the black mage’s goal?”
“Maybe they’re covering the sky and will burst all at once?”
“Maybe. If so, what are they waiting for?”
We were already talking as though it were an established fact that this was the work of a black mage.
Even if the news was avoiding the word terrorism to reassure people, we couldn’t think that way.
Jellyfish flying through the air was clearly an incident.
It couldn’t be imagined as a natural mutation. If so, it was black mage terrorism.
“Maybe because we’re far away, I can’t feel anything.”
Gil murmured. At that, Cheon Danbi lightly hit Gil and replied.
“Of course not. Do you know how far it is from here to Daejeon? If you could already feel the mana waves of the jellyfish, you’d be a monster.”
“Is that so? Haha.”
We all laughed together.
“Anyway, thank you so much for bringing me along too. Jellyfish flying through the sky—how amazing is that? I really want to see them.”
As expected, just as I had thought, Gil wanted to see the strange life-form with their own eyes. They were brimming with anticipation.
‘Yeah. This really is a field trip for Gil.’
The atmosphere inside our car heading toward Daejeon was that comfortable.
For a while, we all fell silent, each lost in our own thoughts. I once again went over the information I had received from the command center.
They said the swarm of jellyfish had flown in from Gyeryongsan.
Fortunately, most of the jellyfish were currently floating not in the middle of Daejeon, but in the relatively quiet area of Yuseong.
However, since they were flying through the air, there was always the danger that they could move anywhere at any time.
They could head into downtown Daejeon, or they could move toward Sejong City, which was not far from there.
Since the government complex was in Sejong City, they said everyone was on high alert.
‘Does that mean the black mage who caused this situation, at least, isn’t colluding with the government side?’
That was the thought I had when I received the information.
The fact that someone in the Hall and the government had likely conspired with black mages was still bothering me.
They said that at the scene, not only the military and police, but also mages from the Daejeon area had been dispatched first and were controlling the situation.
There wasn’t much the soldiers and police could do. At most, they were preventing nearby residents from coming out of their buildings.
The mages had tried to jointly raise wind magic and drive the jellyfish toward Gyeryongsan, but it hadn’t worked.
So for now, they were only preparing mana barriers to keep them from falling downward.
Because there were so many jellyfish, the local mages alone couldn’t handle them, so an emergency had been declared. But in any case, there had been no major damage so far.
Since quite a few mages, not just us, were currently heading to Daejeon, it seemed that resolving the situation wouldn’t be a major problem.
“Huh? We’re almost there now.”
Cheon Danbi said after reading a sign. We were passing Hoedeok Junction.
From there, Yuseong was close.
“Mm…… I can feel it now. A strange wave is spread out over a wide area.”
Gil said, straightening their posture.
From the moment we entered Yuseong, the atmosphere was completely different from before.
The world, darkened by evening, already had a grayish hue, but apart from that darkness, I could feel an ashen aura spread over a vast area.
“Yeah. You can feel the ashen aura, right?”
I asked. But Gil’s answer was unexpected.
“More than that, it feels really noisy. It’s like the jellyfish are all chattering together.”
“You can hear sounds?”
Cheon Danbi asked back.
Had Cheon Danbi still not known that Gil could converse with other living creatures?
“No. It’s not a sound I hear with my ears. It just feels like I can hear it.”
“Ah, so it’s like thought transmission. I didn’t know you could hear that kind of thing. Mages usually don’t have that ability……”
“Really? Mage Oudin knows how to hear it too.”
At Gil’s words, Cheon Danbi opened her eyes wide and turned to look at me.
“Really?”
Was that rare for mages?
Thinking about it, that ability did seem more suited to a druid.
But I could do it. Not only could I hear the thought transmissions the crows sent, last time I had even heard the echo within the tentacle monster’s mind.
For a moment, I wondered where that ability had come from.
Just then, something tapped on the driver’s-side window.
The car had just exited the highway and entered the city, stopping at a traffic light.
When I turned to look, it was the crows.
Had they heard the voice in my heart? The moment I thought about the crows, they came looking for me as if they had been waiting.
“Oh? It’s the crows.”
Gil greeted them first.
When I opened the window, the crows instantly flew into the car and swiftly perched on Gil’s shoulders, one on each side.
As if that spot had now become their rightful place.
“It’s been a while. Where have you been and what have you been doing all this time?”
Gil spoke to the crows in a friendly manner.
The crows answered.
[We were inspecting the world, as always.]
[We were searching for the black mage who disappeared from Neo Forest. We went all over, far and wide.]
“You were searching for Yashin? So did you find any traces?”
This time, I immediately asked the crows.