-Cataclysm
“Right here? The secret cave?”
“Yeah. It was here. But there’s no way we can just go into the cave right now.”
I spoke, suppressing the memories of my previous life raging like a whirlwind through my head and the surging waves of emotion welling up from deep within my chest.
“We can’t. We can’t just barge in there and say we’ll check out the cave for a moment. Give it up. Let’s go somewhere else and interrogate him. Let’s rent a pension or something in a remote area.”
Cheon Danbi spoke as if trying to soothe me.
It was a rational and obvious thing to say.
Only after gauging the cave’s location did I finally realize that this right here was where the village had stood.
It was right around here. The place where the communal village of the Samir Sect, where I had lived in my previous life, had been. The place where all those terrible things had occurred.
The forest clearing and the cave had been the very place where Samir coiled its nest, both then and now. This time, instead of a sect communal village, they had built a suspicious laboratory and factory here.
We couldn’t just walk in there blindly.
Even so, I was constantly swept up by the urge to barge right in.
“Ah! The zombies are getting off the bus.”
Gil raised his hand and pointed forward as he spoke.
The zombies were slowly getting off the bus.
A person came out of the concrete building and was urging the zombies to hurry up and get off.
The man didn’t seem to have very strong magic, so he appeared to be an underling of a dark mage.
He didn’t seem to have noticed that we were here. He was focused solely on the zombies.
But had truly no one noticed our presence?
Just as the suspicion that perhaps we had been lured here began to rise—
Suddenly, there was movement from our car’s trunk.
The barrier was still working properly, so no sound leaked out, but I could feel that Nasan Haegyeong had woken up and was struggling.
“Damn! The dark mage in the trunk must have woken up! Of all places, here……”
Cheon Danbi turned around and spoke in alarm.
However, it might not be that he woke up here by bad luck, but rather that he woke up because we had come here.
Having returned to a place under Samir’s influence, a place filled with ashen energy, Nasan Haegyeong seemed to have finally come to his senses.
“He’s bound with binding chains, so he won’t be able to escape. The problem is that the dark mages here might sense Nasan Haegyeong’s magic.”
“Then let’s get out of here quickly. We have to run before they find out we came here.”
At my words, Cheon Danbi placed her hands on the steering wheel and spoke.
But when I didn’t answer her to do so, Cheon Danbi turned to me and spoke again.
“Mage! Surely you’re not thinking of storming that laboratory or whatever right now?”
I couldn’t readily answer.
I couldn’t clearly judge whether we should turn back and leave or storm the place before us.
The rational system in my head wasn’t working properly. The surging rage was clouding my eyes.
“Can’t we just barge in right now and sweep them all away?”
In the end, such words flowed from my mouth.
“What? Sweep them all away? But the scale isn’t small. We don’t even know how many dark mages there are. And there could be innocent people inside.”
Cheon Danbi said with wide eyes.
“That’s right. What about the zombies? The zombies are just not in their right minds because they’re being controlled by dark mages. If this really is a laboratory, we don’t know who else might have been dragged here.”
Gil also hurriedly expressed his opinion.
The fact that both of them were opposing my words so unlike themselves must mean that I had said something truly strange.
I took a deep breath and ran my palm over my face.
‘Get a hold of yourself.’
I closed my eyes for a moment and organized the magical energy waves within my body. Doing so, I let my emotions flow away.
As warmth flooded the space between my eyebrows, my head finally started working properly.
“Yeah. You’re right. Let’s get out of here for now.”
Just as I said that, the movement in the car trunk suddenly grew violent.
Then two men from the mountain lodge flung the door open and started running toward us.
It seemed Nasan Haegyeong had sent some kind of signal to announce his presence.
“Ah! People are coming this way!”
“Do you think they’ve noticed we’re here?”
“It seems Nasan Haegyeong sent a signal. Get the car moving, quick!”
Cheon Danbi stepped on the accelerator immediately.
But the path we had come on was a narrow mountain road, so we couldn’t go back in reverse. We had to turn the car around up ahead.
Because of that, the car had no choice but to advance toward the men running at us.
However, the men didn’t seem to be seeing our car through the invisibility magic. They were charging straight at the car.
If Cheon Danbi hadn’t quickly turned the car, they would have been hit.
“Where? Where is it?”
“I can hear the car engine.”
“Lord Nasan Haegyeong! Where are you?”
“Ugh! What the—?”
The two men stopped and looked around, then raised their arms and emitted ashen energy in all directions.
I thought they might be attacking, but they didn’t actually cast any spells. They just seemed to be communicating with Nasan Haegyeong.
Right in front of them, Cheon Danbi turned the car around and pulled away.
“That’s it! Let’s get out of here now!”
Cheon Danbi focused on driving, and Gil and I turned to look back. We had to be prepared because the dark mages might attack.
But then a strange sight entered our eyes.
The zombies who had gotten off the bus were heading toward the greenhouses. Unlike just moments ago, they were suddenly walking at an extremely fast pace.
“Huh? Why are the zombies doing that? Mage, look over there!”
Even without Gil’s words, I was keeping an eye on the zombies. Their movements were so strange that I took my eyes off the dark mages before us for a moment.
The zombies were hopping and jumping behind the greenhouses—that is, toward where the cave was, though it wasn’t visible from here. Like that, they disappeared one by one.
“The zombies are disappearing!”
That was when the car trunk rattled and suddenly popped open in an instant. Suddenly, the rear window was blocked.
I quickly opened the car window and stuck my head out to look behind.
“There! Lord Nasan Haegyeong!”
“Attack the car! Even if we can’t see it, the car is right there!”
The two dark mages shouted as they ran. The threads of magic they extended reached all the way to our car.
Thick ashen energy billowed up around the open trunk. It was the magic Nasan Haegyeong was emitting.
The dark mages couldn’t see our car with their eyes, but they were gauging the car’s position from the ashen energy Nasan Haegyeong was emanating.
“What do we do? Nasan Haegyeong got out!”
“Gil! You attack the dark mages in the back. Throw flame magic or whatever! I’ll take care of Nasan Haegyeong.”
“Yes!”
Nasan Haegyeong was truly formidable. He was emitting magic even through the binding chains I had him wrapped in.
But he hadn’t been able to completely undo the binding chains.
I extended my magic and reinforced the binding magic on Nasan Haegyeong.
‘Bind him tightly!’
And then I closed the trunk again with psychokinesis.
In the meantime, Gil cast flame magic to block the road behind our car. From the other side, the dark mages were cursing and spraying water with elemental magic.
They must not be great dark mages, but underlings. Their magic was incredibly clumsy.
Still, they had perseverance and persistently followed our car.
I wanted to shake them off quickly, but it was a narrow mountain road, so even Cheon Danbi couldn’t speed up.
“Ah! The front is blocked! Zombies are blocking the road!”
Cheon Danbi shouted. And she hit the brakes.
Just as I was hurriedly trying to turn my head forward, suddenly, a tremendous rumbling of the earth resounded.
Kwa-kwa-kwang!
Heaven and earth shook.
The forest rattled and birds flew up all at once. The car shook like a candle flame before the wind.
The ground heaved. A creaking sound was heard from somewhere.
I quickly looked around in all directions. It was like an earthquake. But this was Paleozoic terrain, a region where earthquakes couldn’t occur.
This had to be a dark mage using gravity magic or spatial magic.
When I cast my gaze forward, I spotted the zombies Cheon Danbi had mentioned.
I don’t know where they had appeared from, but the zombies that had been swarming to block the road had fallen here and there from the vibration just now.
“What is this? Did a dark mage cast a spell?”
“Probably. Keep a close watch on all sides.”
“No! Why are those zombies……!”
The zombies that had fallen suddenly rose and started hopping and jumping into the valley beside the road.
They ran and leaped in unison like puppets being controlled. As if they had no survival instinct whatsoever.
“No!”
Gil tried to open the car door and get out. He must have been trying somehow to stop the zombies.
But Gil couldn’t get out of the car. Because at that moment, an even greater earth-shaking occurred than before.
Kukukukukukuku-kung!
Space quaked and the ground split.
My ears went numb. Creaking sounds came from all directions, but this time I couldn’t even hear them properly.
The car swayed as if it had fallen into water. Those of us inside were tossed around madly, bumping into everything.
A monstrous vibration tossed us around so violently that even the multiple protective barriers wrapped around the car were useless.
Then soon I felt the car being warped and it tilted precariously.
The road was splitting apart with loud cracks. The front of the car was falling into one of those fissures.
“Everyone, get a grip!”
I shouted and hastily executed psychokinesis.
I had to stop the car we were in from falling into the split fissure. I tried to lift the front of the car with psychokinesis, set it straight, and then move it to a safe place.
But finding a safe place was difficult. The road had split in half and then split horizontally and vertically again. The forest soil collapsed as if a landslide had occurred. Trees tilted with groaning sounds.
‘Thick trees! Between those thick trees over there!’
I gathered magic to the best of my ability and cast a spell. I moved our car so that it was lodged between thick trees in the forest.
Creak! Creak!
The trees were uprooted. But because they fell tangled up with each other, at least we wouldn’t fall completely into the fissure in the ground.
The car still shook like crazy.
It was hard to stay fully conscious.
Engulfed by the sensation that the space all around was being completely jumbled, I barely maintained psychokinesis with stubborn persistence.
Kwa-kwa-kwang! Kwa-kwa-kwang!
The earth-shaking continued. The forest was overturned and disappeared. The ground shot up toward the sky, and bedrock suddenly surged into view and then vanished.
‘If this was done by magic, it truly is tremendous magic.’
I was thinking that through my chaotically vibrating head.
Whether it was spatial magic or gravity magic, sustaining it at this scale and for this long was something no ordinary mage could do.
It was truly causing a cataclysmic upheaval.
‘Samir?’
In that instant, rage filled my chest. Along with it, a strong resolve arose. A fiery will to confront it, to no longer submit to Samir’s destructive power, blazed up.
Right then, a pure white light flashed. An intense light, enough to blind the eyes, enveloped the surroundings completely.
Soon, the earth-shaking stopped.