-Dwarves
The dwarves packed into Gil’s room all wore blank expressions, as if their souls had been drained away.
They were unmistakably the dwarves from the underground dwarf village near Neo Forest. The very dwarves who had supposedly escaped from the detention center.
Perhaps the mental magic had not fully worn off yet, because they did not look normal. Fortunately, though, they were not screaming or showing any violence like they had when I saw them in the underground village.
“Gil, what is going on? Why are the dwarves here?”
When I asked, staring at Gil in astonishment, he looked flustered and apologized first.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t really have anywhere else to take them, so I brought them here. But this place is safe, isn’t it?”
Since our house had the protective barrier I had set up, it was true that it was safer than anywhere else.
But that was not what I had asked.
“What I mean is, how did you end up bringing the dwarves here?”
“Wait a moment. Before I tell you that……”
Gil cut himself off and stepped out of his room, glancing back once as if telling me to follow.
It seemed he wanted to show me something, so I followed him. The place he headed was none other than my own home.
“Mage-nim, I’m sorry. There are some here too……”
With a genuinely apologetic expression, Gil opened the front door to my place.
I understood at once why he looked so sorry. My room, too, was packed full of dwarves.
Only now did I realize why, even after looking around while passing through Itaewon, I had not seen a single escaped dwarf.
They had all come to our house.
Combining the ones in Gil’s room and the ones in mine, there seemed to be close to twenty of them.
“My room was too cramped to fit them all, so I borrowed yours too, Mage-nim. I’m sorry.”
“Right, I see. I told you not to say you’re sorry to me. Anyway, let’s go over there for a moment.”
For now, I closed the front door and took Gil over to the chairs on the rooftop.
Even if the dwarves were not in their right minds, it felt a little awkward to talk about them right in front of them.
“All right. Now tell me. Let’s hear how you brought that many dwarves home.”
“I went out to buy bread and saw people from the Biohacker organization dragging the dwarves away.”
“The Biohacker bastards? And then?”
“They were trying to load the dwarves into two vans and leave. I watched for a moment, and they were enforcers from the Biohacker organization. X wasn’t there. It was the guys under him.”
I wondered why the Biohacker bastards had suddenly popped up here.
With society already in chaos because of the black mage’s terrorism, the Biohackers had indeed been running wild with excitement.
They had even released strangely modified cats and pigeons, gene-edited into bizarre forms, onto the streets.
And now they were kidnapping dwarves too? Were they planning to use the dwarves as test subjects?
“At a glance, the dwarves didn’t look right in the head. If they got dragged off like that, who knew what else would happen to them? Those Biohacker bastards do every kind of experiment imaginable.”
As I listened to Gil, I also opened my communication device and entered the Hall bulletin board to look for news.
It seemed the Biohacker bastards really had been the ones behind the Itaewon report mentioned in the Hall message earlier. Apparently, they had reported that they had captured the dwarves and asked about the bounty.
The Hall seemed to have told them that there was no separate bounty, and that capturing the dwarves was work for mages, so they should wait quietly. At that, the Biohacker bastards had cut off contact.
‘They captured the dwarves aiming for a bounty, and when they heard there wasn’t one, they decided to take them away themselves.’
Since the news had mentioned the escaped dwarves along with the bounty placed on the search for the missing Ren, they must have naturally assumed there was a bounty on the dwarves too.
Suddenly, I wondered how the search of the Wolmido dwarf village where Ren had been staying had gone. One way or another, the dwarves had been suffering a lot lately.
“So how did you snatch the dwarves away from them?”
I raised my head and asked Gil.
“First, I crept up and punctured the vans’ tires. Then I broke the window on the driver’s side and poured black, spicy smoke into the car.”
“Smoke? You used elemental magic?”
“Yes. I created smoke that blocked their vision and made them unable to breathe for a short while, causing them to pass out. They collapsed right away.”
“How did you bring the dwarves here? There weren’t just one or two of them. There are so many.”
“I put a barrier around them first. I kept them within the range of my mana waves and guided them, and they followed me well.”
I thought that was only possible because it was Gil. The concentric circles of mana waves that were this child’s unique trait seemed to fundamentally include communication with other living beings.
Even so, it was impressive. To think he could guide dwarves whose minds had been eroded by the black mage’s mental magic according to his own will.
“You weren’t seen by any other mages or people?”
“I added a vision-blocking function to the barrier, so no one noticed.”
“Well done.”
I smiled broadly. I was proud of Gil.
Before I knew it, Gil had become a proper mage, able to use the necessary spells at the right moments without hesitation.
He had been absorbed in magic training for some time, but I had not expected him to become a mage capable of pulling his own weight so quickly.
The Gil who had once been surrounded and beaten by the Biohackers was gone. It was as if he had become an entirely different person from before.
‘I really should start treating Gil properly as a mage in his own right now, shouldn’t I?’
For some reason, my heart swelled with pride.
“Um, Mage-nim. I know I’m not supposed to use magic against ordinary people, but I couldn’t help it. I only knocked them out for a little while, so it should be all right, shouldn’t it?”
Gil spoke cautiously. At times like this, he seemed like nothing more than an innocent boy.
I answered in a slightly teasing tone.
“Well, you already attacked them with magic as much as you could, and on top of that, you even secretly brought home the dwarves the Hall mages are searching for. Isn’t it a little late to be asking that now?”
“I suppose it is.”
“So what do you think of the dwarves’ condition?”
“Their life force is extremely weak. Both their bodies and their minds.”
Gil looked distressed.
He had not originally known those dwarves, but just as he had with the zombies, he seemed to be concerned about them.
“Let’s go inside.”
Having grasped the general situation, I went into the house and observed the dwarves for a while.
When I examined them with detection magic, I did not sense any special mana waves. I could only faintly feel the mana the dwarves originally possessed. Even that had become so thin that it was almost undetectable.
They might have been controlled by the black mage’s mental magic at first, but now the connection seemed to have been severed. Still, their minds had not returned.
As Gil said, the dwarves seemed to have grown weak in life force overall. They were not being controlled by mental magic, but even their own will to live seemed to have vanished; I could not sense it.
“We should at least try feeding them something.”
When I muttered that, Gil nodded vigorously beside me.
“That’s right. They seemed very hungry. Should I go out and buy some food?”
“No. I’ll go. You stay here and watch the dwarves.”
“Yes. Thank you.”
“Nothing to thank me for.”
I simply thought it would be better for Gil, who was more skilled than I was at communicating with living beings, to remain. Though for the moment, the dwarves did not seem to have enough strength left to communicate with anyone.
I slung on a large backpack and went to the mart. After looking around briefly, I swept up foods that could be heated and eaten easily. With twenty mouths to feed, even a single meal’s worth of food was no joke.
As I paid and came out, I thought,
‘I can’t keep them with me forever. What should I do with them?’
I had been planning to go to Daejeon as early as this evening. But I could not leave the dwarves at home like that.
Nor could I hand them over to the Hall. Gil would not accept that. Of course, I did not want to either.
While I was thinking this and that, Cheon Danbi called.
“You called at just the right time.”
When I answered the phone by welcoming her immediately, Cheon Danbi seemed surprised.
[Huh? What’s this? You’re actually glad to hear from me.]
“When have I ever not been glad? More importantly, have you heard anything about the dwarves today?”
Out of urgency, I asked right away. In truth, I had been thinking of asking Cheon Danbi to take in the dwarves at my house for a while.
[Why? What is it? I wondered why you were welcoming me so warmly. Did something happen with the dwarves?]
“Well, the thing is, my house is full of dwarves right now. The escaped dwarves, I mean. Gil snatched them away from the Biohackers and brought them home.”
In the end, I confessed first. At that, Cheon Danbi burst out laughing.
[Really? Haha. What in the world. I knew Gil and I were on the same wavelength.]
“What do you mean?”
[I also brought some dwarves to my shop. Just in case, I went around the neighborhood and searched every corner, and I found dwarves crouching in the parking lot of an auto repair shop. So I brought them to my shop.]
“To your shop? That place is completely visible from outside. Will it be all right?”
I had wondered where all the dwarves the Hall mages were searching so hard for had disappeared to, and it seemed everyone had been hiding them like this.
[Ah! Mage-nim, you haven’t been inside my workshop, have you? I have a workshop underground. Simple work I just do in the shop, but when I’m making potions and things in large quantities, it’s difficult to do it there. They’re safe in the basement here, so don’t worry. But how are the dwarves over there?]
“They’re all dazed. I used mana detection, and the effect of the mental magic is gone, but maybe there are aftereffects. In any case, all the vitality seems to have drained out of their bodies and minds. I thought I should at least feed them something, so I’m out buying food right now.”
[The mental magic has been lifted, then? That’s a relief. I actually called because I was curious about that. I wanted you to come and examine them. If the mental magic has been lifted, then all we need to do now is replenish their life force. I’m preparing that. I’m making a whole pot of potion right now.]
In other words, her shop had a safe underground workshop, and Cheon Danbi was even making potions to replenish their life force. It seemed things had worked out well.
“Is the basement there spacious?”
[Why? Do you want to bring the dwarves at your house here too?]
“I can’t keep watch over them forever. I have a lot of things to do. What do you think? Can I bring them there?”
[Sure. Bring them here. I actually have an idea.]
Cheon Danbi answered in a secretive tone.