-Whatever
I hurriedly checked the message on my communications device.
But contrary to my expectations, the message wasn’t about the jellyfish incident in Daejeon. It was news from Seoul.
[Large-scale blackout in progress. Power outages are recurring intermittently in multiple areas throughout Seoul. Presumed to be a black mage terrorist attack.]
‘The outages are recurring intermittently?’
It was hard to grasp the situation from the general alert alone, so I went into the Hall’s bulletin board and checked the posts that had been uploaded.
They said the blackouts occurring all over Seoul weren’t simply lasting for a while and then ending. Instead, the lights were flickering on and off here and there like the bulbs on a Christmas tree.
It seemed the black mage was playing around to show that they had seized control of the power grid.
Apparently, the problems hadn’t all been resolved during the last blackout.
In any case, they said chaotic situations were breaking out in Seoul because of it. Of course they were, when the electricity kept flickering on and off.
Traffic lights had gone haywire, causing traffic accidents one after another, and places like hospitals and police stations had reportedly gone on emergency alert.
And that wasn’t all. Taking advantage of the chaos, petty disturbances continued here and there.
Some people were looting marts for fun, and biohackers, thinking this was their chance, were apparently releasing mutant cats and pigeons again.
‘This is the kind of scene that’ll become everyday life once the calamity approaches.’
With a bitter heart, I recalled the memories of my previous life.
That was what the Days of Calamity had looked like. The world would gradually become a place of dog-eat-dog struggle.
But the disturbances happening now were still at a level the police could handle. They weren’t matters that required mobilizing mages as well.
As it turned out, the real problem lay elsewhere.
A new alarm sounded, and another message arrived.
[The arrested dwarves escaped during the blackout. All mages of the Hall are requested to focus on this matter.]
In other words, the dwarves from the underground village near Neo Forest—the ones Gang Yonghun and the Hall’s mages had arrested earlier in the afternoon—had escaped.
“Hah!”
A snort escaped me on its own.
I skimmed through the bulletin board again.
Even though the Hall’s mages had personally arrested them, it seemed they had locked the dwarves up not in the Hall, but in a police station detention cell.
If they had acknowledged that the dwarves had been affected by the black mage’s mental magic, they would have taken them to the Hall, but the mages had instead been trying to frame the dwarves as terrorists, so they couldn’t do that.
In the end, the mages couldn’t stand guard over them, and amid the chaos caused by the blackout, the dwarves escaped from the detention cell.
‘The Hall and the government schemed together, then got caught in their own trap and let the fish they’d caught slip away.’
Still, I wondered whether the dwarves had come back to their senses and fled. Or whether even their escape had been under the black mage’s control. That was what I was curious about.
“What a ridiculous thing to happen.”
After muttering to myself, I lifted my gaze.
Everyone in front of me was looking at me with questioning eyes. For now, I spoke quietly to Gil and Cheon Danbi beside me.
“It’s nothing serious. There’s been another blackout in Seoul, and because of that, the dwarves they’d arrested escaped.”
“What? Those dwarves?”
Cheon Danbi asked back in a low voice.
“Yeah. Let’s wrap things up here first and talk about that later.”
We had resolved the jellyfish incident anyway, so we were going to head back up to Seoul now, but I had no intention of chasing after the escaped dwarves to catch and lock them up again.
I remembered Gang Yonghun, who had looked at me as if mocking me back in the dwarf village when the alarm about the jellyfish incident sounded, telling me to hurry off and show what I could do.
A strange life-form had appeared, and it was clearly a black mage terrorist attack, yet they hadn’t sent all the mages down to Daejeon. They had left them there to arrest the dwarves.
And now they were telling me to come up to Seoul because they had let the dwarves get away.
I couldn’t care less.
‘It’s your mistake, so deal with it yourselves.’
I didn’t feel the slightest urge to hurry over.
No, in the first place, capturing and imprisoning the dwarves had been wrong.
Hearing that they had escaped made me think it was for the best. Though I was a little worried about the dwarves who had fled.
First, we had to finish the current clear.
“The news from Seoul isn’t anything major. A blackout happened, there are some minor disturbances, and they’ve issued a dispatch order to the mages.”
I said this to the police officers, who were craning their necks like ducklings and looking only at me.
“And as I said earlier, the clear here is now complete. A mother jellyfish had settled in that forest and was producing baby jellyfish. Our team dealt with the mother jellyfish.”
At that, the police officers cheered.
“That’s incredible!”
“Thank you, mages!”
“What a relief. You eliminated the mother jellyfish. No wonder I thought the jellyfish had stopped increasing. Then are the other places all right now too?”
One police officer asked. He seemed to be the person in charge here.
“Since the mother jellyfish is dead, they should be. We’ve dealt with all the jellyfish here, and as for the jellyfish remaining elsewhere, the mages there should be able to handle them. I’ll report to the Hall and inform them about the follow-up work.”
“Thank you very much. You’ve worked hard.”
“You’ve all worked hard as well. When I first heard the situation, I was told that jellyfish were flying in from Gyeryongsan, but that was incorrect information. In truth, this National Cemetery was the key area. You did well holding the guard here.”
When I said that, the police officers’ faces brightened all at once.
“You honor us too much. In truth, we didn’t accomplish anything. If the mages hadn’t come, we would have just been struggling helplessly.”
That wasn’t wrong. In fact, until we arrived, the police and soldiers hadn’t been able to kill even a single jellyfish.
But in a situation where not a single mage from the Daejeon area had come because this wasn’t a residential district, simply enduring while doing everything they could was enough to say they had fulfilled their role.
“Not at all. You played your part well.”
When I told them that once more, broad smiles spread across the police officers’ faces.
“Thank you so much for saying that.”
“It’s truly an honor.”
“Please tell me your name, mage. From now on, I’m going to be your fan.”
Oh dear. Their reaction was even more enthusiastic than I’d expected.
Left with no choice, I told them my name, and the police officers repeatedly said it was an honor as they asked to shake my hand.
After that wave of excitement passed, I opened my mouth again.
“I’ll have to leave the cleanup of the site to you. Please burn all the corpses of the jellyfish swarm, including the body of the mother jellyfish. They’ve lost their mana now, so they should burn.”
“Don’t worry. We police and soldiers will take care of the cleanup.”
Even though all the dirty work remained as it was, they answered vigorously.
Before leaving the National Cemetery, I uploaded a detailed report about the operation here to the Hall’s bulletin board on the communications network. I also informed them of how to deal with the remaining jellyfish and dispose of the bodies.
It would have been proper to call a Hall executive and report directly, but I didn’t feel like going that far.
I had already lost a certain degree of trust in the Hall.
I wasn’t even a mage affiliated with the Hall, so there was no need for me to offer them loyalty.
I had completed the clear, saved Daejeon, and finished submitting a written report on it. I had done everything I needed to do.
All that remained was the clear reward.
“That’s enough. Let’s get out of here.”
We headed toward the parking lot.
“Ah, but where did the crows go?”
Only now did I remember and ask.
“They flew off earlier. They said there were too many jellyfish here and they couldn’t stand it anymore. They said they’d look around the other areas.”
Gil answered.
A sigh escaped me on its own at the thought that I had entrusted the role of messengers to those guys.
I looked anew at Gil and Cheon Danbi. Unlike the crows, the two of them had done their parts well without fear. They were reliable team members.
Well, when I thought about it, the crows had done their part too. They were the ones who had told us that jellyfish were being generated at the National Cemetery.
Without that information, we would have wandered around the city of Daejeon for quite some time.
‘Fine. You did play your roles too. It’s just that you then disappeared on your own without even telling me. Such free spirits you are.’
I spoke inwardly to the crows who weren’t even beside me, then chuckled to myself.
“Shall we head back to Seoul now?”
After getting into the car and taking the wheel, I turned back toward Gil and asked.
“Yes. Let’s go quickly.”
Gil answered without hesitation.
It was his first time in his life leaving Seoul, yet he didn’t seem at all regretful that he had come all the way down to Daejeon only to do a clear and leave.
He really had no greed whatsoever.
Of course, we did have to return to Seoul. I had no intention of going after the dwarves, but there was something I had to do tomorrow.
I had to go to the house of Vanaheim’s chairman.
I had no intention of missing what might be an opportunity to face the chairman.
But there was no need to go straight to Seoul right away.
First, I needed to eat. After scraping my mana down to the bottom, I was terribly hungry.
“We should eat before we go. We’ll get a hefty reward for today’s clear, so let’s have something good. Look up where the best restaurants in Daejeon are.”
At that, Cheon Danbi answered immediately, as if she had been waiting.
“I know a good place in Daejeon. Let’s go there.”
“Really? Where?”
“Um… wait a second. I’ll look up the address. The name is Hanbat Restaurant.”
“Is it a Korean restaurant? What’s their main dish?”
“I don’t know. To be honest, I don’t even know whether it’s a good restaurant or not. It’s a restaurant run by the mother of a mage who’s a regular at the medicinal herb shop. She always told me to make sure to stop by if I ever came to Daejeon. Anyway, let’s go check it out.”
Only then did Cheon Danbi confess the truth and grin.
“You’re saying that regular is a mage from the Daejeon area? Perfect. Let’s go to that restaurant. Since we came down to the provinces anyway, it’d be good to meet a local mage too. Contact them and tell them to come to the restaurant.”
I readily agreed.
The good restaurant wasn’t the important part. Food in Seoul or Daejeon would be more or less the same, but opportunities to meet regional mages weren’t common.
“Okay! Then I’ll contact them.”
Cheon Danbi immediately took out her phone. Then, as if remembering something, she added,
“Ah, right. I told you before that I’d heard a rumor about there being a Magic Tower somewhere in Chungcheongbuk-do, didn’t I? This mage is the one who told me that.”
My heart began pounding.
As expected, coming down to Chungcheong-do had been worth it.
Among the mages of the provinces, far from central power, there were often relationships and information networks of their own.
Within them, there could be pearls that had yet to be processed.
‘Coming down to Daejeon brought me one step closer to Samir, just as I expected. Maybe I might even be able to obtain information about the black mage who released the jellyfish.’
In the magic circuit I had detected at the National Cemetery, Samir’s symbol—the endlessly drawn pentagon—had become even clearer.
I was taking one step closer to him. Just thinking about it made my heart race.
And when I went further and imagined destroying Samir’s Magic Tower with my own hands, all the blood from both my lives boiled up at once.