-Training Is Possible Anytime, Anywhere
After ending my call with Cheon Danbi, I returned home in lighter spirits and, together with Gil, heated up some ready-made meals and handed them out to the dwarves in the two rooms.
Everyone must have been terribly hungry, because they fell upon the food in a frenzy.
‘That’s right. Hurry up and eat, and get your strength back. That way I can do what I need to do too.’
I thought this as I watched the dwarves stuff food into their mouths as if possessed.
If I didn’t want to hand the dwarves over to the Hall, but couldn’t keep hiding them in my house forever either, then the best option was to help them regain the strength of mind needed to resolve the problem themselves.
For that, they would have to recover physically first. Yes, that was what needed to happen.
Cheon Danbi had said she had an idea.
She said that while the underground workshop was fairly spacious, it wasn’t as if she could keep them locked up there indefinitely, and suggested we make use of the terrain near Neo Forest.
“So you’re saying we should send them back to the underground dwarf village, right?”
When I relayed what I had heard from Cheon Danbi to Gil, he asked again as if to confirm.
“Yeah. There’s only one entrance on the surface, but the underground dwarf village stretches out in every direction, so she says if we dig a tunnel from beneath the herb shop in the right place, it should connect to the village.”
“There aren’t any police inside the underground village?”
“Apparently not. They’ve set up a cordon at the outer entrance and the police are guarding it, but because of safety issues and all, they’ve pulled everyone out from the inside.”
“But would it be all right to send them back to that village? If the caves were distorted by space magic, then it wouldn’t be safe.”
“By now, the magic should have worn off. In any case, the dwarves themselves will decide. We’re only helping them.”
“Yes. That’s true.”
At any rate, this plan would only be possible once the dwarves came back to their senses. I hoped the potion Cheon Danbi was making would work.
Fortunately, being with Gil seemed to help the dwarves as well.
Gil kept trying to communicate with them without pause, and little by little, some of them began to respond.
“Th-thank…… you……”
Just now, a dwarf woman had looked at Gil and spoken haltingly.
“Please eat a lot. Once you eat and recover your strength, you’ll be all right in no time.”
Gil answered with a bright smile.
Then he spread out a powerful wave of mana.
Looking closely, it seemed Gil had been spreading concentric waves all this time, sending mana into the dwarves.
“Gil, you should eat something too. It’s fine to share your mana, but your own mana can’t run dry, can it?”
“I’m all right. I have plenty of mana.”
Only Gil could react like that. He had absorbed all the mana of that tentacle monster too. Not only that, but as long as there were even small motes of mana floating around nearby, Gil could absorb them and produce as much mana as he needed.
He was a mage with exceptional talent in many ways.
“Fine. Let’s put mana aside, but we’re still people, aren’t we? We need to eat to live, don’t we?”
“Yes. Haha. I’ll eat.”
When I spoke half-jokingly, only then did Gil reach for the food.
We filled our stomachs in moderation as well, and the dwarves polished off every last scrap without leaving anything behind.
After that, there was nothing in particular to do.
Gil continued pouring mana into the dwarves while trying to communicate with them, but I simply sat there blankly.
We had to wait at home until evening. Cheon Danbi had said she would send a truck here once it got dark. She said she would borrow a moving company’s box truck run by a dwarf she knew.
It seemed she had a lot of dwarves she had built friendships with in ordinary times.
Both Gil and Cheon Danbi were doing their utmost to help the dwarves, finding roles that only they could fulfill.
‘There are people who try to harm dwarves by pinning crimes on them that they didn’t commit, and then there are people like this, who try to help even when there’s nothing in it for them……’
I was merely assisting from the side.
Gil and Cheon Danbi’s kind hearts felt beautiful, but at the same time, sitting still and waiting made me feel as if the time was going to waste.
I wanted to hurry and test combining space magic with other forms of magic. I would have liked to enter the magic space, even briefly, and train, but that was out of the question. There were far too many eyes sitting there watching me.
‘I’m not going to Daejeon to fight right away, so training doesn’t have to be today. Surely I won’t end up facing Yashin tonight?’
To fight Yashin and win, it was absolutely necessary that I achieve a higher level of magic.
This time, after going down to Daejeon and looking into the mage situation, I intended to go all the way to Danyang and the surrounding area to take a look.
But even if I found Samir’s Magic Tower, I didn’t think I could attack it immediately.
I still wasn’t at a level where I could face several black mages like Samir and Yashin all at once.
Because I had happened to glimpse archmage-level magic today, even if only for a moment, I could recognize my current shortcomings all the more clearly.
I couldn’t repeat the same mistake I had made in my previous life.
‘Still, I saw Gil. I think I know now how to achieve a higher level of magic.’
That was why I was so impatient to train, but if I thought about it differently, training didn’t necessarily have to be done only inside the magic space.
After all, the place where battles would take place wasn’t inside the magic space, but outside.
Thinking that, I immediately steadied my breathing and turned my gaze inward, focusing within myself.
Whether twenty eyes were watching me or not, training was possible anytime, anywhere. It had to be.
* * *
As promised, we loaded the dwarves onto the moving truck Cheon Danbi had sent and went to the herb shop.
It was already dark, and unlike Itaewon, there were hardly any people near Neo Forest, so getting the dwarves into the herb shop wasn’t a problem.
“This way. You can go down here.”
Cheon Danbi slid open a cupboard packed with medicinal herbs. Behind it, a staircase leading downward revealed itself.
“Maybe because it’s a druid’s workshop, but this is quite secretive, isn’t it?”
When I said that, Cheon Danbi gave a light snort.
“I just made the most efficient use of a narrow space, that’s all.”
But the farther we went underground, the more surprising it became.
The basement was much deeper than I had expected, and Cheon Danbi’s workshop was extremely spacious. It seemed to be three or four times the size of the herb shop above.
“Wait. This is way bigger than the ground floor. Doesn’t this mean you’re intruding under someone else’s house? Do the neighbors not say anything about this?”
As I looked around the underground workshop after going down first, I muttered, and Cheon Danbi, who had followed after me, answered.
“They would if the people next door knew. But they probably don’t. This is near Neo Forest, so people don’t just go digging basements carelessly. If they made a mistake and touched tree roots stretching out from Neo Forest, it would be a disaster. Of course, I’m a druid, so that won’t happen to me.”
“Then what about the dwarf village? How did they build an entire village down there?”
“Dwarves are experts at digging caves to begin with. They built their village while neatly avoiding everything they needed to avoid. That’s why the village’s shape twists and turns, and why it stretches out in every direction.”
I was about to ask how, then, they intended to dig a tunnel from this basement to that village, but we could no longer continue our conversation.
That was because the surroundings suddenly grew noisy.
When the dwarves who had arrived at the workshop first saw the dwarves Gil was leading down, they cheered and ran toward them.
Seeing them now, it seemed the dwarves here had already come back to their senses.
Families and neighbors who had been scattered and were now reunited embraced one another, asking after each other and rejoicing.
“Huh? They’ve all come back to their senses?”
I asked Cheon Danbi quietly.
“Yeah. As expected, the problem was that their life force had been depleted. When I fed them the potion I made, their minds returned almost immediately. I still can’t say their bodies and minds have fully recovered, but they’re fine now.”
“That’s good. We should hurry and give those people the potion too.”
“We should.”
Cheon Danbi gathered the potions she had prepared in advance and approached the newly arrived dwarves. Then she handed the potions to Gil.
“Gil, hurry and hand these out to the dwarves. Tell them to drink them all in one go.”
“Yes. I will.”
The dwarves who still hadn’t come back to their senses had only stood there blankly even when their families and neighbors came up to them in joy, but strangely enough, they obediently listened to Gil.
There were also quite a few dwarves who had half-regained their senses thanks to Gil steadily sending mana into them.
Everyone received a potion and drank it. After they were made to sit for a little while, sharpness quickly returned to the dwarves’ eyes. They had come back to themselves.
“That really is impressive. Our druid’s skill, I mean.”
When I praised her, Cheon Danbi grew smug.
“Of course. Naturally. Are you saying you didn’t know I was amazing until now?”
“I knew from long ago. I’m just admiring it all over again.”
“Thanks.”
We exchanged pointless banter and laughed as we looked at each other.
“Now then, I’ll leave this place to the amazing druid and go off to work, if that’s all right?”
“Where are you going? What work do you have to do today?”
When I tried to brush myself off and leave, Cheon Danbi quickly grabbed onto me.
“I’m thinking of going back to Daejeon. I heard a mage incident broke out there.”
“A mage incident? What’s that?”
I briefly told Cheon Danbi about what I had seen on the Hall bulletin board. Then I went back onto the Hall bulletin board to see if anything new had been updated.
“First of all…… there’s still no news that they’ve found the dwarves. Only talk about going to Itaewon and Incheon and coming up empty-handed. It seems everyone is hiding well somewhere.”
“That’s a relief. But how did they make it all the way to Incheon? In such a weakened state, both mentally and physically?”
“I don’t know. In any case, there’s the Wolmido dwarf district in Incheon, so maybe the dwarves there are helping them?”
I said that while thinking of Yantu. If it was the people of the Wolmido dwarf district, I felt sure they would take care of things properly on their own.
“So what do they say about Daejeon?”
Cheon Danbi asked.
“I really should go down there. It looks like the commotion has grown bigger. They say people claiming to have newly awakened are refusing the mages’ control.”
“A sudden surge in people awakening? What on earth is going on?”
“I think they haven’t awakened, but have been exposed to a black mage’s mind magic. Seeing as the people who claim to have newly awakened are concentrated in the areas where the jellyfish appeared, there’s no doubt about it.”
“Aha! So that was it?”
Cheon Danbi nodded emphatically, then asked me again.
“Are you taking Gil too?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Then I’ll go too. We’re a team, aren’t we?”
Cheon Danbi lifted her chin like a child and spoke as if throwing a tantrum.
“You’re going too? Then what about this place?”
I asked, indicating the gathered dwarves with my gaze.
“Everyone’s come back to their senses now. They’ll take care of it themselves. I talked to a few people earlier, and they said they think they know how to dig the tunnel. They’re making plans now. Is there any need for me to stay here? I just need to lend them the basement.”
Hearing Cheon Danbi’s words, I thought she was right.
We had done our part. We had helped them recover and brought them here, so now the dwarves could open the way on their own.
Besides, digging tunnels was their specialty to begin with.
When I looked back, the basement was already filled with vitality. The dwarves had come back to life.
“Fine. Then let’s do our work.”
“Okay! To Daejeon!”