-Heavenly Being
* * *
Nasan Haegyeong kept feeling her anger surge until she could hardly bear it.
The problem was that there was no one she could complain to, and no one she could take it out on.
‘Fine. I made a serious mistake. I was in the wrong, so it’s only natural that Lord Samir would punish me.’
Nasan Haegyeong could only let out one heavy sigh after another.
She had merely dozed off for a moment because watching the mage all night had been so unbearably tedious. And yet, in that brief instant, she had been bested by him.
She had clearly blocked his mana, so she could not fathom how he had known she was at the hotel.
On top of that, there was no trace whatsoever of anyone having entered the room. And yet, mental magic had been cast on her.
‘Just what kind of magic did he use, and how?’
It was sleep magic that induced deep, deep relaxation. Thanks to that, she had slept soundly until the afternoon. Just thinking about how long she might have stayed asleep if the messenger had not come made her cheeks burn.
“Hahaha. You certainly were sleeping well. I don’t think this is the time to be taking it so easy, though. Lord Samir’s firebolt has fallen.”
Even though that insolent little messenger bastard mocked Nasan Haegyeong like that, she could not snap back at him. It was because of the words “Lord Samir’s firebolt.”
“Huh? Why? What happened?”
That was all she managed to ask, barely peeling away the thick, clinging sleep.
“The Mage Oudin you were watching has already left this place and caused an incident. He wasted Lord Samir’s precious property.”
“What? Mage Oudin left this place?”
Nasan Haegyeong quickly ran detection magic over her own body, and only then did she realize that she had been under sleep magic.
A curse burst out of her on its own.
The messenger was looking down at her with a pitiful expression.
It was absurd. A mangy little anchovy of a bastard.
A worm of an errand boy who could not use a single proper spell dared look at Nasan Haegyeong with eyes like that?
Just thinking that he probably strutted around calling himself a dark mage made her want to snort in derision…
But in reality, instead of a snort, hot breaths blasted from her nostrils.
“This is a message from Lord Samir.”
When the messenger held out the letter, even that snorting vanished, and from Nasan Haegyeong’s mouth came only a sigh as deep as hell.
She took the letter and unfolded it, and a firebolt truly struck.
“Aaagh!”
Nasan Haegyeong screamed and collapsed sideways. A terrible pain swept through her in flashes, as if every last cell in her body were being burned to ash.
It was Samir’s punishment.
Of course it was. She deserved it.
But at the same time, a small sense of injustice rose in her.
‘Did that old bastard Yasin ever get hit with a firebolt like this?’
The one running around doing as he pleased was Yasin. And yet she had never heard that Yasin had been punished by Samir.
‘I only made a small mistake…’
But this was no time to wallow in self-pity.
Nasan Haegyeong quickly pushed herself up and read through Samir’s letter.
Samir was reprimanding Nasan Haegyeong’s arrogance and indolence. He expressed powerful dissatisfaction that she had failed to carry out the task entrusted to her.
Nasan Haegyeong’s mission had been to watch Oudin. But the man had slipped away.
“What does it mean that he wasted Lord Samir’s precious property?”
Nasan Haegyeong asked the messenger in a low, sunken voice. There were no details written in the letter, so she had no choice but to ask.
In the letter, Samir had only ordered Nasan Haegyeong to resume her mission at once.
“Chungju Lake has been cleaned up completely. The tentacle monster and all the little monster corpses have disappeared. According to the dark mages nearby, lightning struck the lake. Oudin must have done it. If the dark mages managing Chungju Lake find out this happened because Lady Nasan Haegyeong neglected her duty, they’re all going to make quite a fuss, don’t you think?”
That anchovy-like messenger bastard was smirking and acting superior again. A wretch who would not satisfy her even if she stuffed him in her mouth and chewed him up dared try to lecture her?
Nasan Haegyeong’s eyes blazed as she spat out each word with force.
“Get out of here this instant. Before I bring a firebolt down on you, hurry up and disappear from my sight!”
Only then did the messenger flee in terror.
Those trashy low-ranking dark mages truly all had one thing in common: none of them knew their place.
Nasan Haegyeong pointlessly breathed fire toward the door the messenger had run out through.
Even so, her anger did not subside.
‘Oudin! You made a fool of me twice? I’ll make sure to kill you with my own hands.’
At that moment, she remembered that Samir had found Oudin interesting and had ordered Nasan Haegyeong only to watch him.
That was absurd. Things would be different now. It should be fine to kill him. Even if it was not, she did not care. She could simply say she had made another mistake. All she had to do was endure one more firebolt.
‘Wait for me. I’m coming!’
Nasan Haegyeong gnashed her teeth and hurriedly left the hotel.
* * *
It took quite a while just to find a restaurant.
There were several restaurants by the lakeside, including spicy fish stew places and mandarin fish restaurants, but every single one was closed.
Considering the state of the lake until just moments ago, it was understandable.
Only after we went a little farther to the side of the national road did we find a restaurant that was open. It was a galbi place.
“Oh! Galbi, nice! I’d been wanting meat anyway because the smell of samgyeopsal kept lingering in front of my nose.”
Cheon Danbi brightened. Gil and I had no objections either, so we entered the galbi restaurant.
After ordering a generous amount of pork galbi, I casually spoke to the owner as he was setting the table.
“Chungju Lake is this beautiful, but there don’t seem to be many tourists around. I came here knowing it was famous.”
“Exactly. These days, tourists have completely stopped coming. It’s no joke. Everyone running a business here is going under.”
The male owner waved his hand as he answered. His face immediately became mournful, and his sincerity was evident.
“Why is that? Did something happen to the lake?”
“It’s because of the rumors. Oh dear, I suppose you guests haven’t heard them. I shouldn’t spoil your trip for no reason…”
The owner hastily brought up the rumors, then glanced at us and swallowed his words.
“It’s all right. If there are rumors, I’d like to know. What kind of rumors?”
“They say a monster lives in Chungju Lake. No, I mean, surely there isn’t an actual monster living there. If there were, there would have been chaos already, but that hasn’t happened. A few times before, columns of water did shoot up, but, well, that must have just been a natural phenomenon.”
Perhaps because of his business, the man was speaking very cautiously. It seemed I needed to prod him a little.
“A monster? If there really is one, I’d like to see it. Have you ever seen it yourself?”
“Oh dear, no, I haven’t. If we’d seen a monster, would we be here calmly running our business? We would have run away long ago.”
Though he said that, the man somehow looked restless. Judging by his expression, he half believed what he was saying and half did not.
“I see. That’s a shame. Then have you perhaps seen any suspicious mages around Chungju Lake? Or seen anyone using magic?”
“No. I haven’t.”
The way he hastily cut the matter off made him even more suspicious. But the man seemed afraid of something.
Pretending to be tourists and asking like this did not seem likely to get us a proper answer. I decided to change strategies.
“In truth, we are not tourists. We are mages from Seoul.”
As I said that, I showed him the Hall’s communication device on my wrist. It was still the most convenient way to prove my identity as a mage.
The owner stared at it with wide eyes, wondering what it was, then found the logo of the Hall of Magic and started in surprise before lowering his head.
“Oh my, you were mages of the Hall of Magic? I failed to recognize you. I’m sorry. Please understand. It’s only because I’m an ignorant country bumpkin.”
The man bent his waist in half and bowed repeatedly.
I took hold of his arm and pulled him upright.
“It’s all right. You just need to answer the questions I ask from now on.”
In the eyes of the owner, now standing upright, there was a faint trace of fear. Seeing that, I could tell how ordinary people thought of Hall mages.
They regarded them like untouchable heavenly beings. But rather than respecting them for it, they feared them.
I felt that something was wrong. It seemed they did not feel that mages, born with special abilities, were beings who protected and defended ordinary people.
It was probably the result of what Hall mages had shown them until now.
During relatively peaceful times when no disaster had struck, Hall mages had enjoyed only their privileges without doing much of anything.
“Huh? Now that I look at you? You’re the mage who was on the internet yesterday, aren’t you? The one who was active in Daejeon, right?”
Once I revealed that I was a mage, perhaps my face looked different to him, because the owner recognized me.
But the man’s expression had brightened quite a bit compared to just before.
“That’s right. You saw it?”
“Yes, yes. Of course I did. They said you were the mage who solved everything, starting from that jellyfish incident last time… Oh my, thank you. Please solve the problem at our Chungju Lake too. I beg you.”
His attitude changed completely. He was even showing expectation. There was a plea in him, asking to be saved from the monsters that were throwing their lives into chaos.
“Don’t worry. Chungju Lake should be fine now. We just cleaned it all up a little while ago.”
Cheon Danbi chimed in from beside me.
“What? Is that true? Thank you. Thank you so much.”
“We dealt with the monster and the rotten corpses in the lake, but that may not be the end of it. This will only be resolved once we put an end to the dark mages who caused this.”
I cut off his premature thanks as I spoke.
The owner’s complexion darkened again. He was definitely afraid of the dark mages. He knew of their existence.
“So I’ll ask again. Have you ever seen dark mages around Chungju Lake?”
“An ignorant fool like me wouldn’t have any way of telling whether someone I saw was an ordinary mage or a dark mage, but I have come across people doing suspicious things.”
Only now did a story worth hearing begin to flow from the man’s mouth.
“Please tell me in detail.”
“In the middle of the night, I ran into people dumping black things into the lake. A few of my neighbors and I saw them while taking a walk, so we went up and demanded to know what they were doing. Then they suddenly fired flame magic at us and ran away.”
It seemed he had seen dark mages dumping the corpses of their test subjects into the lake.
“They fired flame magic? Were you hurt?”
“No. Fortunately, we were some distance away, so it didn’t reach us. It was a small fireball. I think they were only trying to scare us. But you’re not supposed to use magic on ordinary people, are you?”
The owner cautiously voiced his complaint.
A sigh came out of me on its own.
I did not think the dark mages had fired a small fireball out of concern for the residents confronting them. They were probably people whose ability amounted to no more than that.
‘It looks like there aren’t only dark mages on Yasin’s level, but plenty of underlings too.’
The problem was that even though such people were running rampant in the area, neither the central government nor the Hall was properly responding.
It must have been through such neglect that a Magic Tower had been able to form in the provinces.
“Have you perhaps heard any rumors about a Magic Tower as well?”
I threw out the question directly.