—Into the Lair
The provincial road was utterly deserted.
The car we were riding in glided along at a moderate speed.
Silence lay over the car. Perhaps sensing my troubled mood, Gil and Cheon Danbi remained quiet.
I took a deep breath. I must not let my memories consume me.
I might as well cultivate. I needed to use the travel time to raise my mana anyway.
Interrogating Nasan Haegyeong would not be easy. There was no way a black mage who served Samir would willingly tell us where the mage tower was.
The mark of the infinite pentagram signified eternal life, but it also meant eternal submission to Samir.
Yasin or another black mage could also appear and attack at any time. I had to prepare myself so that I could properly cast magic whenever necessary.
‘Hoo…….’
I straightened my back and closed my eyes. I focused my mind on my inhalations and exhalations so that stray thoughts could not intrude.
I concentrated my mana between my brows, then sent waves of it pulsing into every corner of my body.
The only sound was the gentle hum of the engine. All around us was still.
A cool breeze blew in through the open window and touched my face.
The waves of mana that extended to my fingertips and toes quietly awakened my senses, while my mind gradually emptied.
Before I knew it, I had sunk into a heavy unconsciousness.
Red flames billowed and swayed.
Murmuring voices grew louder and louder.
‘Samir! Son of God!’
‘Samir! Our divine incarnation!’
‘We offer this sacrifice. Grant us eternal life!’
Like a slap across the cheek of someone asleep, a memory from the depths of my unconscious suddenly surged beyond my tranquil concentration.
The memory of my previous life—which had shocked me when I realized I had completely forgotten it, as if I had become someone else—now returned with the clarity of something that had happened only yesterday.
The days when the people of the community living together in the mountain village of Danyang entered that cave at the foot of Sobaeksan were days of special rituals.
When a new life was born, or when the ritual to enter eternal life was performed.
No. Eternal life had always been a bright red lie. How could killing a child who had been lively and full of life only moments before and offering it as a sacrifice be called eternal life?
‘Mother. That’s not a sheep. It’s a person, isn’t it?’
‘The sacrifice is a sheep.’
‘No, it isn’t! That child isn’t a sheep!’
‘Shut your mouth. Do you want to become a sacrifice too?’
The painfully thick stench of blood mingled with the acrid smell of smoke. Blood so vividly red that it blinded the eyes.
The flames on the altar seared the color of that red blood even more deeply into my mind.
I was confused, dizzy, and in pain.
I could not believe a word the cult leader and the adults said.
‘Why is blood necessary to live forever? Why do we need sacrifices?’
Why did they have to kill a girl who had lived in the same village and offer her as a sacrifice?
Red blood splattered across the altar. The people smeared that blood on one another’s foreheads as they praised the cult leader.
But whether it was eternal life or anything else, I could not believe any promise of the future, nor did I desire one. Only questions seethed inside my head.
I was terribly lonely. I was alone—the only person who asked questions and felt anger.
“Umm…….”
A groan must have escaped my lips without my realizing it.
“Are you all right, Mage?”
Gil asked cautiously from beside me.
Only then did I open my eyes. I opened them and looked upon the reality before me.
I slowly inhaled, then exhaled.
“I’m fine. I was cultivating.”
I answered while looking back at Gil. I even managed a clumsy smile.
But in truth, I was not fine.
Even after opening my eyes and returning to the reality of this world, the memories in my unconscious had not receded.
The fear, helplessness, and rage I had felt back then had all been revived intact.
Now I could recall those memories with my eyes open.
The children of the cult were murdered one after another and offered as sacrifices.
I could feel in my bones that my turn would come before long.
My parents counted down the days, waiting for it as though they were anticipating a moment of glory.
And yet, strangely, my turn never seemed to arrive.
‘Will it be today? Tomorrow?’
Every day spent anxiously waiting for the day I would die was hell.
The longer they had to wait, the more my parents looked at me as if I were a bug.
‘A good-for-nothing wretch. A filthy, accursed thing. A cockroach. How could you fail to be chosen by the cult leader?’
My father cursed me, and my mother turned her face away from me.
Because I was a flawed being who could not be offered as a sacrifice for eternal life, they rejected me even as their child.
Of course, I had never waited for my turn to come. But I could not help thinking it strange that I alone was repeatedly excluded.
After killing all the village children one by one, the cult leader ordered the people of the cult to have new babies. Then, as soon as the newborns were delivered after ten months, he offered them as sacrifices without even cutting their umbilical cords.
Even while committing such horrific acts, Samir kept me alive.
As time passed, I grew more and more anxious. I became so tense that my blood seemed to dry up, until at some point I could hardly tell whether I had begun to feel as if I were waiting desperately for that day to arrive.
There was no doubt that Samir had enjoyed watching me in that state.
‘Oh Woojin, you will become the glory of our cult. I can see the bud of calamity within you. You will become a truly tremendous calamity. So you need not become a sacrifice. Grow up well, and become a calamity.’
I could not tell whether he meant those words sincerely or was simply taunting me. But one thing was certain: the cult leader Samir was insane.
At last, when I turned seventeen, I set fire to the community village and escaped.
Fierce flames rose into the air. They blazed furiously. Ashen energy rolled everywhere.
It was my fire, but Samir poured oil into it, and the village burned until it was reduced entirely to ash.
“Should I open the windows a little more? Is it stuffy? Are you hot?”
Cheon Danbi glanced at the rearview mirror as she spoke.
How did I look to them? I must still have seemed strange.
“Yeah, sure. Let’s do that.”
I answered quickly, then let out a long breath.
“Hoo…….”
I was no longer alone. Gil and Cheon Danbi were beside me. I felt sorry, realizing that I must have been worrying them without meaning to.
This was no time for me to be like this. Rather than floundering in the memories of my previous life, I had to find the Samir of this world as soon as possible.
I had to stop him here, so that he could not repeat the calamity he had brought upon the previous world.
Fortunately, this world had granted me the great power of magical ability. I had a duty to use that power to prevent the world’s destruction.
I inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly, making the mana waves throughout my body resonate with the waves of the universe.
When I inhaled deeply once more and slowly exhaled, my keenly honed senses suddenly detected an ashen energy.
This was not smoke contained within a memory. It was real.
“Mage! It looks like a black mage is following us. I don’t know where, but…….”
Gil, who had apparently sensed the ashen energy as well, spoke while glancing around in every direction.
“There! Up ahead!”
Cheon Danbi shouted.
The owner of the ashen energy was racing toward us from the road ahead. A black sedan approached at high speed.
I immediately extended a detection spell, but the distance was still too great for me to see who was inside.
I activated my golden vision. Then I saw the person riding in the car.
It was Yasin. He had finally appeared before us.
“It’s Yasin.”
When I said this, I saw Cheon Danbi tense up.
“Yasin finally showed up? What do we do? Should I stop the car? There’s nowhere to hide.”
“No. Just keep going at our current speed. I cast an invisibility spell on the car, so Yasin might not be able to see us.”
“Oh, right! We have the invisibility spell. Got it. So we can just pass him by?”
“Yes. There aren’t any turnoffs, and we can’t exactly jump into a field. Besides, it’s better to pass by naturally than to make any sudden movements.”
“Okay.”
Cheon Danbi calmly continued driving.
The black sedan drew nearer at a furious speed.
Soon, the two cars passed each other.
As they went by, neither Cheon Danbi nor Gil dared to look to the side. They kept their eyes fixed straight ahead.
Of course, I looked back.
Yasin was driving hurriedly, like a man who had somewhere urgent to be.
At first, I thought he had recognized our car and was speeding toward us, but that was not the case.
When we passed each other, I saw that he had not noticed our car at all. He was too preoccupied with driving onward. He did not even turn his head in our direction.
The invisibility spell had worked perfectly.
A little while later, Yasin’s car disappeared completely from view behind us.
“Hoo…… He really didn’t recognize us and just drove on!”
“He must not have been coming after us from the beginning.”
“Even if he couldn’t see our car because of the invisibility spell, he must still have been on his way to capture me.”
Everyone offered their own comment.
“That makes sense. Still, since he drove so hard in the opposite direction without even knowing we were here, he won’t be able to chase us for a while.”
Gil spoke cheerfully. He seemed pleased that we had shaken off Yasin.
“Right. We’ve bought ourselves some time.”
I was bound to run into Yasin again sooner or later. But we had no reason to meet him urgently. He was the one in a hurry.
He must have been desperate to retrieve the experimental subjects sealed beneath the mansion. But that was Yasin’s problem. As long as I avoided meeting him and did not let him take them, that was enough. We could leave him wandering around a little longer.
“Wait. Yasin was in Seoul before he came down here, wasn’t he? Why was he coming from that direction?”
Cheon Danbi asked a significant question.
Yasin must have come down looking for me after hearing that I was going to Chungcheongbuk-do.
But the direction from which Yasin had just come was the direction of Danyang, where we were heading now.
He had not come directly down from Seoul, nor was he coming from Daejeon.
“That’s a good question. Why did he come from the direction of Danyang? Out of all the places in Chungcheongbuk-do, why did he stop in Danyang of all places?”
When I turned the question back on her, Gil answered cautiously.
“Could it be because the black mages’ mage tower is in Danyang?”
“That seems likely, doesn’t it? I only said I was going to Chungcheongbuk-do, but the fact that Yasin went to Danyang first must mean there’s an important place there.”
“Ooh! Then that means we’re heading straight into the lair of the demons?”
Cheon Danbi spoke brightly, then whistled several times. She seemed to be doing it deliberately to ease her tension.
“Yes. We’ll be entering Danyang soon, so let’s not let our guard down. We’re stepping into the black mages’ headquarters.”
At my words, I saw Cheon Danbi and Gil’s shoulders tense once more.
I wanted to tell them to relax, but I could not. Just as Cheon Danbi had said, we were heading into the demons’ lair.