-Submission
A gray energy came creeping over.
But at that level, it still couldn’t affect us.
I glared at Na Sanhaegyeong and expanded the ice wall even wider. Then I linked my freezing magic with spatial magic.
‘O void, be created! Freeze, O space!’
If Na Sanhaegyeong’s black magic flowed into the living creatures that had come out of the truck, all of them would turn into monsters. I had to stop the mind control first.
I also had to thoroughly block any magic like gravity magic from striking us again.
So I inserted a void between the place where Na Sanhaegyeong stood and us, then froze that space.
The waves of mana extending from my fingertips wove together the invisible space and froze it cold.
In an instant, a frozen void like a crevasse formed.
“My babies! Kill this human! Devour him without leaving a scrap!”
Na Sanhaegyeong flung both arms high and sent the condensed gray energy surging forward.
No—she tried to, but failed.
The gray energy that attempted to pass through the void I had created was caught in midair, unable to escape, and froze as it broke apart piece by piece. Soon, it vanished, leaving behind only traces like white frost.
“What is this now?”
Na Sanhaegyeong slowly took off her sunglasses. Then she arched her brows and studied the space before her intently.
“Ho! Not bad. Spatial magic, is it?”
Speaking as if impressed by me, she walked closer over the cracked road and stretched out her arm, generating another powerful vibration.
Clang!
One corner of the already-cracking ice wall shattered.
But beyond it was the frozen void.
Na Sanhaegyeong continued to unleash powerful vibrations, trying to step inside, but it was impossible.
No matter how many steps she took, her feet could not cross the void. Even the vibrations she created could not pass through it and froze as they were.
An empty space where there should have been nothing stood between Na Sanhaegyeong and me like a glacier, blocking her path.
“I said move! Get out of my way!”
Na Sanhaegyeong snapped in irritation and spread a heavy gray energy in every direction. The ice wall shattered with a crash, and the already precarious road split open further and sank down.
But she still could not cross the void.
“Ah! This is seriously pissing me off!”
Na Sanhaegyeong radiated heat, then turned around. As she took several rough steps away, vibrations spread through the area like waves.
In that brief gap, I quickly checked the situation behind me.
All kinds of reptiles were quietly crawling toward us.
Strangely, however, the lizardmen were instead standing still farther back. Some were even walking toward the forest beside the road.
It seemed they had already been mind-controlled before coming here, their souls emptied out. Since no new orders from Na Sanhaegyeong could reach them, they appeared to be drifting in a distracted state.
The reptiles released from the truck were far larger than ordinary ones and held mana within them.
But since Na Sanhaegyeong’s mind control wasn’t reaching them either, they were merely moving by instinct.
“Gil! Absorb the mana of the living creatures. Black magic can’t affect them right now, so it’ll be fine.”
“Yes!”
As if he had been waiting, Gil immediately extended the concentric rings of his mana waves. In no time, the rings reached the reptiles around us.
The mana of the living creatures was immediately absorbed into Gil. The snakes, lizards, iguanas, and even crocodiles became docile in an instant.
Through the communion of the concentric rings, they were now in a state no different from being under Gil’s control.
The problem was the four lizardmen.
When Gil’s concentric mana waves reached them, the lizardmen who had been wandering around blankly tilted their heads and showed interest in him.
‘Will it be all right?’
I wanted to watch a little longer, but suddenly my back grew hot, forcing me to turn back toward Na Sanhaegyeong.
“You insignificant bastard. Just because you know how to use a bit of magic, you think you’re the only great one in the world, don’t you? Let’s see if you can block this too. We black mages are different from you. We know humility. When our own power is not enough, we borrow the power of a greater being. To submit to a vast and mighty power—that is the path of glory!”
Na Sanhaegyeong stood with both arms spread wide, spewing what sounded like a grand speech.
Her embrace was filled with flames. Her eyes, now free of the sunglasses, were also burning red.
Looking closely, I saw flames surging up from the cracks in the road beneath her feet.
“O Earth Demon King! Descend upon me!”
Na Sanhaegyeong cried out loudly in a shrill voice.
Then the flames burned even more fiercely. As she flung both arms open, the fire spread to either side in waves.
‘Earth Demon King?’
When she said she would borrow the power of a greater being, I had briefly hoped she might summon Samir, but it seemed she was borrowing the power of a demon instead.
Of course. That was how it was originally. The source of black mages’ power came from demons of other dimensions.
I focused my mind and raised my mana.
For now, the flames still couldn’t cross the frozen void. But every time Na Sanhaegyeong swung her arms, the fire expanded up, down, and in every direction.
The void I had created was not an infinite space either.
“Mage-nim, I’ll send you Purifying Water!”
Cheon Danbi’s voice suddenly rang out. She tried to open the door and get out of the car, so I hurriedly stopped her.
“Don’t come out! It’s dangerous!”
“Okay. Then I’ll send it through the window!”
Then she abruptly stuck one arm out the car window. In Cheon Danbi’s hand was a glass bottle with its cap open.
When Cheon Danbi blew into it, silver droplets began to emerge from inside the bottle.
Water molecules floated through the air. The glass bottle wasn’t even that large, yet silver droplets flowed out endlessly.
‘Purifying Water, seize the flames! Freeze them within the void!’
I gathered the mana I had raised and sent a fierce wave from my fingertips. I stirred up wind and sent the droplets of Purifying Water that Cheon Danbi had provided flying toward the flames Na Sanhaegyeong was spreading.
At the same time, I activated freezing magic.
Before I knew it, the flames had spread to both sides of the road and were reaching the forest. The droplets of Purifying Water riding the wind captured each bead of flame as it devoured the forest like a demonic beast.
In an instant, the red fire was fragmented into silver, then froze bluish and was sucked into the void.
“No! O Earth Demon King! Grant me greater power!”
Na Sanhaegyeong cried out as if screaming.
At that, the flames briefly blazed up fiercely.
It was as though her entire body were burning in a roaring blaze. It made me wonder how a human could possibly survive inside those flames.
But it lasted only a moment.
The wind rising from my fingertips one after another sent silver droplets of Purifying Water flying toward Na Sanhaegyeong, and before she could emit the flames, they broke down the gray energy and red fire one by one, captured them, and froze them.
Soon, the flames were torn apart and frozen.
Even Na Sanhaegyeong’s body, which had been wrapped in red fire, began turning bluish.
Now it was time to finish this.
I concentrated my mind to the utmost and gathered all my remaining mana.
‘Frozen void, turn yourself inside out!’
I intended to bind Na Sanhaegyeong with spatial magic.
At that moment, Na Sanhaegyeong was also making her final desperate struggle.
“O Earth Demon King! Burn!”
Flames flashed up from underground.
But as if they had been fake flames, they soon died away.
For an instant, space distorted, and the entire area seemed to twist. A brief, frost-white moment passed, as though empty space had exposed its inner flesh.
The void swiftly turned inside out and trapped Na Sanhaegyeong. Within that frozen space, Na Sanhaegyeong froze solid in one breath.
“Aaagh……!”
Na Sanhaegyeong’s scream seemed to ring out for a moment, but soon vanished without a trace. Even her scream had frozen.
A white mass, as if snowflake crystals had been joined together and carved into something enormous.
The human shape had already disappeared beneath the ice, and that thing was held within an unreal space.
Na Sanhaegyeong had been trapped in the frozen void.
“Is it done? It’s all over now, right?”
Before I could even let out a long breath, Cheon Danbi’s voice rang out. Without turning around, I nodded.
“It’s done. But there’s still one more thing.”
It felt as though my knees were about to give out.
I had burned through my mana to the very bottom by using freezing magic and spatial magic in succession, then linking and combining the two.
Even so, I scraped together what mana remained and activated magic once more.
‘Chains of Binding!’
I couldn’t maintain the frozen void, especially while it was turned inside out, forever. To do that, I would have to keep pouring an enormous amount of mana into it.
Na Sanhaegyeong was frozen solid, but she wasn’t dead. Her mind was stopped right now as well, but once the spatial magic was released, she would awaken.
So I wrapped Na Sanhaegyeong tightly in Chains of Binding, which could be maintained for a long time with relatively little mana.
“You attacked her with Purifying Water, so she won’t be able to generate mana for a while.”
Cheon Danbi, who had been watching what I was doing, added a word.
That was right. It wasn’t just freezing—it was freezing done with Purifying Water. So Na Sanhaegyeong had been purified after having every last bit of gray energy shaken out of her. We could be at ease for the time being.
If only even her soul could be purified.
“Mage-nim! Are you all right?”
Gil’s voice rang out. Only then did I look around.
Cheon Danbi was sitting inside the car with her head poking out the window, and Gil was standing behind the car.
“Yeah, I’m fine. How about you?”
“I absorbed all the mana from the living creatures. They’re all calm now. Thanks to you blocking the black mage, Mage-nim, the gray energy didn’t seep into them, so their mana was very pure.”
Gil answered with a bright expression.
Looking at him, Gil seemed full of energy. His complexion looked even better than usual.
Rather than a mage who had just finished a battle, he looked rosy and sparkling, like someone who had just finished a warm bath and even had a refreshing cup of sikhye afterward.
It made me feel unfairly wronged for no reason.
After all, my own face must have looked like a skull with all the life drained out of it.
“What should we do with them?”
Gil raised his hand and pointed to one side of the road as he asked. The reptiles were gathered there in clusters.
Just as Gil had said, they were all docile. Even the four lizardmen were standing still, simply gazing blankly this way.
“For now, load them back onto the truck like they were before.”
“Yes. Understood.”
Gil immediately extended the concentric rings of his mana waves toward the living creatures.
That was all he did, and yet the crocodiles, iguanas, snakes, and lizards all moved toward the truck on their own feet. Even the lizardmen walked silently toward the truck.
“Are you controlling their minds?”
“No. Rather than controlling them, I just spoke to them and asked.”
Gil answered as if it were nothing, but in truth, it was an incredible ability. To produce the same result as mind control through communion alone.
In any case, since he handled the living creatures that might have become monsters like pets, the cleanup was convenient.
But Gil’s abilities did not end there.