-Mother Body
The moonlight was bright, and the jellyfish filling the air were giving off a white glow, so I hadn’t thought it was all that dark while passing through the middle of the cemetery. But behind the cemetery, the shade of the forest cast everything into pitch-black darkness.
A dense coniferous forest spread along the foot of the mountain.
I slowly approached the woods, keeping watch on my surroundings.
Not only was the ashen energy growing stronger and stronger, the magic circuits in the shape of infinite pentagons were being detected more clearly as well.
I was walking through the darkness, but the full-color magic circuits visible through my golden vision shone dazzlingly bright.
‘Black mage, where are you?’
Strangely, I couldn’t sense any presence at all.
If that many magic circuits were being poured out, it meant magic was being used somewhere nearby, yet for some reason, I couldn’t pick up any trace of a person.
The number of jellyfish increased the farther I went. They were surging up from somewhere on the forest floor and taking to the air.
They flew chaotically in every direction, and many of them charged straight toward me. It was getting extremely annoying.
They couldn’t pierce or damage the barrier, but as their numbers grew, they began pressing against it.
‘At this rate, I won’t even be able to enter the forest.’
Now that I thought about it, there was no reason I couldn’t kill the jellyfish.
Even if I needed to take some back and analyze them, there were so many that I didn’t have to worry about samples.
The other mages must have already collected specimens.
In that case, I figured I should make my way forward while getting rid of the jellyfish as needed.
‘They said electric shocks don’t work, and they don’t burn in fire either, was it?’
Of course, ordinary electric shocks or fire were different in effect from lightning or flame magic created by a mage using mana.
There was a reason mages were needed when it came to dealing with bizarre life-forms.
But there was no need to go out of my way to test that. A more certain method came to mind.
Since the jellyfish were already trapped within the barrier, applying pressure to them should be enough.
I decided to use atmospheric magic.
‘Air pressure, rise. Drive the jellyfish up to the barrier.’
I drew up my mana and gathered it at my fingertips. Then I drew a round circle with both arms and extended them, using atmospheric pressure to push away the jellyfish nearest me first.
The jellyfish, clumped together and crushed into a single mass, were shoved upward.
Papapapapapat!
Kyaaaaaaat!
It was as if I could hear screams.
Of course, they weren’t real sounds, but the jellyfish’s chaotic writhing and movements felt incredibly noisy, just as Gil had said.
‘Go. All of you, go up.’
I continued to swing my arms, raising the air pressure as I advanced.
As I walked forward, the jellyfish drifting low to the ground were mercilessly shoved aside as if the Red Sea were parting, then shot upward like evaporating steam.
As they rose into the sky, the jellyfish collided and pushed against one another, flattening and compressing into white masses.
Kyaaaaaaat!
Shwaaaaaaat!
At last, the jellyfish that had been forced up to the point where the barrier was spread could find no more space to endure and were crushed to death on the spot.
A short while later, the dead jellyfish fluttered down like heavy snow.
‘As expected, this method works.’
I was pleased that atmospheric magic worked so easily, but it was strange that the jellyfish still hadn’t become aggressive even after all this.
On top of that, it was also odd that the black mage didn’t show himself despite the fact that I was interfering with his work.
I did not let down my guard. It wasn’t that the black mage had appeared and I simply failed to notice.
There was no presence at all.
‘Is the black mage not at the scene? Could he be casting magic remotely, like Yasin did last time?’
But even if he was using remote magic from far away, the lack of any reaction was still strange.
I was killing the magical life-forms he had created, and there was no response at all?
That wasn’t the behavior pattern of a black mage.
I drew up additional mana and began analyzing the magic circuits drifting in the area.
It didn’t take long for my question to be answered.
It happened when I entered the forest and reached the place where the ashen energy lay thickest, where the magic circuits overlapped and stretched outward, and where countless jellyfish were newly being generated and flying up.
Even though I was wrapped in a barrier, there was something so toxic in the air there that it stung.
On the dark forest floor, a red hole gaped open like burning lava.
I carefully approached it.
Everything stung so badly that I couldn’t tell whether it was my skin or my eyes, and the ground beneath my feet was slippery. In that instant, I hesitated and stopped.
Only then did I realize that the ground beneath my feet, which I had thought was the forest floor, was the body of a gigantic jellyfish.
‘The mother body?’
The squishy, flaccid body of a jellyfish covered roughly a hundred square meters of the forest floor.
Its body was pitch-black and amorphous, occupying the space between the trees as if flowing through them, and a red hole had opened at its center.
And from that very place, transparent baby jellyfish were endlessly surging up.
I quickly retreated.
The leg that had briefly stepped on the jellyfish’s body felt as if it were being numbly paralyzed.
Even after I stepped back, my leg wouldn’t move as I wanted, making my steps unsteady.
Ziiing, ziiing…
My head also felt hard, as if it had stiffened all at once, and grew heavy. A ringing sound echoed as pressure bore down on my mind.
‘It’s incredibly powerful. Even with the barrier, it’s this bad.’
However, the mother jellyfish did not launch any direct attack in particular.
It seemed to have no consciousness other than the purpose of producing baby jellyfish.
Even though I had stepped on it, there was no change in its behavior.
I hurriedly scanned the area, but there was still no sign of the black mage.
‘He left it behind!’
The black mage wasn’t here.
He had left behind plenty of traces of magic circuits, but his actual body had already left this place long ago.
He had placed the mother jellyfish, a powerful magical life-form, here, left the rest of the work to it, and disappeared.
He had probably placed the mother here in the woods behind the cemetery to borrow the energy of death.
Dragging my heavy leg, I slowly circled around the mother jellyfish.
There was nothing special. It seemed I just had to destroy this.
Before destroying it, I once again analyzed the waves of the magic circuits drifting vividly in this place.
‘It really is mental magic. He was trying to control people’s minds.’
Once I stripped away the simple circuits that produced jellyfish, what remained were circuits for mental magic.
It was the part I had suspected from the beginning.
A bizarre life-form floating in the air without attacking people through poison.
I had suspected that the black mage’s purpose in spreading them was to disseminate mental magic.
And now I had confirmed the magic circuits.
However, I had not yet fully analyzed the structure of the magic circuits, so I couldn’t tell what kind of mental magic it was for.
Moreover, there had been no reports yet of people being affected by mental magic.
I opened the communication device on my wrist and checked the messages.
There was only talk that mages were arriving in Daejeon one after another and getting to work. There was nothing in particular about casualties.
‘Is it mental magic with a time lag or conditions attached?’
I was examining the structure of the magic circuits again when it happened.
Suddenly, a voice came from behind me.
“Mage!”
“We’re here.”
Startled, I quickly turned around and saw Gil and Cheon Danbi approaching me from the edge of the forest.
“Wait! Stop there! The toxicity has spread over here. Don’t come any closer.”
I spoke quickly while checking around them.
Fortunately, the two of them had not yet stepped onto the mother jellyfish’s body. Though they had been right on the verge of doing so.
As I told them, they immediately stopped walking.
“Toxicity? What’s over there?”
“Ah! This thing on the ground—is it a giant jellyfish?”
Cheon Danbi moved her head this way and that as she examined the surroundings, and Gil noticed it first and asked.
“That’s right. It’s a giant mother jellyfish. This thing has been continuously producing the jellyfish.”
When I told them, their eyes widened, and they carefully examined the forest floor. Then Cheon Danbi asked,
“Then what about the black mage?”
“The black mage isn’t here. It looks like he left only this behind. Since he set it up so it could automatically produce jellyfish, he wouldn’t have needed to stay here.”
Gil bent down, knelt, and examined the mother jellyfish, then reached out his hand, so I quickly warned him.
“Do not touch it! It has a toxin that paralyzes whatever part touches it. And I can see magic circuits that trigger mental magic, so be especially careful. Its mana is incredibly powerful. It’s strong enough to affect us even through the barrier.”
At my words, Gil hurriedly straightened up, and both of them took several more steps back.
“Mental magic? Then the reason the black mage released the jellyfish was to spread mental magic?”
“Looks that way.”
“Ah, then is the reason my head is getting heavier because of the mental magic? It feels like someone is hammering inside my skull.”
“Same here. Since coming here, my head has been buzzing like it’s about to split.”
Even though they hadn’t touched the mother jellyfish, Gil and Cheon Danbi seemed to be affected by its toxin as well.
“No. That’s the toxicity the mother jellyfish is emitting. If it were mental magic, it wouldn’t make you suffer through headaches or sounds—it would confuse your mind. But all of us are mentally clear, aren’t we?”
“Well, that’s true.”
“Then is it because we’re wrapped in barriers that the mental magic isn’t affecting us?”
Cheon Danbi asked, tilting her head.
“I don’t think that’s the only reason. The structural elements that trigger mental magic are clearly visible in the magic circuit structure, but it doesn’t seem to have activated yet. There are no reports of people being harmed, either.”
“That’s strange.”
“In any case, both of you, reinforce your barriers more firmly. We need to be careful. By the way, why did you two come here?”
Only then was I able to ask that.
“We finished searching the cemetery and came over. We didn’t find anything. But when we looked at the sky over here, jellyfish were falling from the air in heaps. So we came to see what was going on.”
“Me too. There was nothing special in the area I searched either. There were only soldiers and police. When I saw the falling jellyfish, I hurried over here.”
The two of them had already finished their searches.
Well, that made sense. I had spent time catching the jellyfish, and even after entering the forest, quite a bit of time had passed while I detected and analyzed things.
At any rate, there was nothing special in the other sections of the cemetery.
Then all that remained was to deal with this mother jellyfish.
“You’re saying there was nothing unusual. Then I’ll have to destroy this mother body now. You two, stay back.”
Even while we were talking, the mother jellyfish paid us no attention at all and continued only to produce baby jellyfish.
It was a magical life-form with a machine-like will.
Once this thing was destroyed, this situation should come to an end for the time being.
I had already memorized the magic circuits clearly. I could analyze them gradually later. Right now, I had to destroy this.
I looked at the red hole of the mother jellyfish, from which baby jellyfish were endlessly surging, and slowly drew up my mana.