Hermit Wizard

The Forgotten Race (2)

I took a taxi to where the shock had occurred. It was an area close to the southernmost point of the barrier. I got out of the car, but there were only ordinary people who couldn’t even feel what happened around me.

‘Oh, it’s cold!’

I magically wrapped warmth around the thin padding I was wearing. The weather had become cooler than I thought. It seemed winter had begun its arrival while I was curled up inside the house.

“Now, where are you guys?”

I mumbled and made fun of my busy steps. While I was outside, I must identify it today. So, if it were a dangerous creature, I would have to get rid of it, as Parvache said. I didn’t know how intelligent it was. Still, it was an individual or group presumed to have the ability to hide. It occurred to me that if it tried to hurt people, I would kill it mercilessly. However, I didn’t think it was causing any trouble because there hadn’t been any such news yet.

I changed my mind. In three days, even if there were missing people, it may not have been in the news yet. I managed to speed up, gathering the motivation I didn’t have. I didn’t know why it knocked on other people’s barriers for several days, but I hoped it was friendly. I walked along the border outside the barrier and looked for traces. Earlier, it was a big decision to wander outside the barrier, but now it wasn’t like that anymore.

“Huh?”

‘How long has it been?‘

I found the clue when I passed near Mok-dong Elementary School. I could feel something foreign inside the playground. It was such a small wave that it would be difficult to find without being a very sensitive wizard. As I entered the playground, I could quickly see what was holding my nerves. It was already early evening, so the sunset was quietly falling on the empty playground where all the children had left school—just plain scenery.

But I noticed something like a hazy fog covering about half of the playground.

“Oh, look at this?”

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A barrier. I didn’t know exactly, but it seemed to be a kind of cognitive disturbance. People who hadn’t opened their Mana circuit wouldn’t be aware of this barrier. Still, they would spin around outside it without even realizing it if they tried to approach. Therefore, it was clear that no one could notice, even though the barrier occupied a large part of the playground.

“It must have tried to cover up its magic, but it couldn’t avoid my eyes.”

It was so skillful that it couldn’t be found even with a few wizards, but I caught it. Now it seemed certain that it was a civilized race. Where did it come from? Among the races with high-level magic from the Channel near Korea, the gray-eyed race from Hong Kong’s Channel, the anthropomorphic creature called Gramperi in their language, was the best.

However, I heard that it was impossible for them to leave China based on an agreement made with the Chinese government. Was this a different race?

I thought about it for a while before getting ready for battle. After being stuck in a shoebox for several months, I pulled out the military walker and prepared the spell to leap and dodge in advance. I didn’t know what kind of creature would be in it. I also activated the concealment artifact on my chest if it tried to do something wrong after seeing the Channel on my chest.

When I was ready, instead of destroying the real barrier, I decided to make a gap and dig into it. It seemed casual, but every time I took a step, a complex formula unfolded. And so naturally, I entered the fog of barriers.

-Woongwoong

Even though I broke in, the barrier didn’t even fluctuate. As soon as I entered the barrier, what I felt was a deep warmth. The weather outside was at the beginning of winter, but inside it was no different from early summer. I wiped the magical heat from the padding. It didn’t stop there, though, so I put on a little chill. It was pretty warm inside.

And what caught my eye were two figures squatting in front of a bonfire in the middle of the playground. I easily noticed that the bonfire burning next to them was the core of the barrier. I slowly approached, thinking that I wouldn’t touch that bonfire to avoid being exposed to the creatures if there were a battle.

And I was confused. Those two squatting in front of the fire were obviously human beings. They were staring at the bonfire calmly; it wasn’t clear whether they had noticed that I had entered. Both of them had hidden but unusual Mana. It was the first of its kind I had ever encountered. Wizards? Then, did they belong to the Korean government?

Or maybe they were wizards dispatched from another country? But they had achieved this level in six months? If that was true, they were more genius than I was. Oh, that’s right. Seeing them hiding like this, weren’t they spies who infiltrated Korea from another country? While I was distracted, did Earth’s civilization develop magical science enough to send wizards as spies to extract information? Or were the alien races in contact with foreign governments using something special?

Anyway, if they were really spies, I was getting caught up in a very bothersome job. I frowned automatically. Even if they had Mana, as long as they were human, there was no reason for them not to be able to penetrate my barriers. Perhaps these weren’t the ones who knocked on my barrier. Digging into a hidden entity, it seemed that I unintentionally discovered irrelevant people. Maybe they were just unrelated people who were going to bother me tremendously.

As I approached them step by step, they raised their heads and looked toward me as if they were aware of my existence. But…why didn’t they seem surprised? The two got up from their seats calmly without any hurry.

Contrary to my expectation, the boy, who seemed to be a little more than ten years old, spoke to me. He was wearing a dirty Korean traditional outer top, clothes, and a white cloth conch around his forehead. Perhaps his forehead was hurt. There was a red bloodstain on the cloth. The kid looked at me with a calm look and opened his mouth.

“I didn’t know I was going to see an elderly in a big city like this.”

Elderly? Me? Was he talking about me? No, even looking at the age difference, I think it would only be about ten years apart. And although I had been a little bit out of sorts these days, I’m not that much older in appearance.

“I don’t know what race of elder you are, but I greet you first as the duty of the younger ones. I am the son of a man named Hamun who originally lived in Swan and now settle in White Deer; my name is Garam.“

The boy’s long-explained voice, which might be my misunderstanding, was mixed with some annoyance even though he was very polite. What was this guy? Furthermore, I didn’t understand what he said in the first place, whether he was annoying or not. The boy turned his head and introduced the person standing next to him, not caring that I didn’t respond to him when I was dumbfounded.

‘Oh my, that lady came out in fewer clothes than I did on this cold day.’

Her age seemed to be the same as mine. Around twenty? Even though she had a pretty face, it was so dirty that I could roughly guess when she last washed. In this weather, she wore only a white short-sleeved tee as a top and black training pants made of thin material. She was likely to catch a cold after walking outside the barrier for a few minutes. What’s more, she was barefoot.

“She is…reluctant to be called by her name because of certain circumstances. She has wandered around the land since she was young, and now she has settled in White Deer.”

When the introduction of herself was over, the woman bowed her head. Her expression showed signs of nervousness.

“Hail Elder, well met.”

What was that unusual language? Hail Elder, well met? I wasn’t an idiot either, and by this point, I could see that they weren’t ordinary human wizards. To dismiss it as just an anachronistic setting, the way they covered up their Mana and their unique magic stood out too much. Did they come from another dimension?

Even if I tried hard to deduce their identity, I couldn’t figure out why they said such strange words and why they spoke Korean so well. My head was about to grind, but the woman insisted.

“…If you don’t mind, you can rest here.”

As soon as her speech fell, I could clearly see that the boy’s eyebrows were distorted very slightly. As expected, he seemed to think that this situation was very annoying. However, the woman threw her gaze at the boy, and soon the boy nodded so that I knew that some sort of telepathy was going between them. And he chimed in, looking at me.

“…Yes, it is cold. If you are not in a hurry, let’s get some heat. I will improve my dreams with my little tricks. It would be embarrassing to say, but I wonder if I could borrow some of the wisdom of the elderly.”

Despite some mixed feelings of disapproval, a color of resignation came out of his voice. I thought about it for a moment, then nodded. I still didn’t know their way of talking, and I didn’t understand all of that, but I think they were the right people to talk to. They didn’t seem like an ignorant race that would run into me, bite me, and rampage right away, as I first expected.

I squatted down on the dirt floor. Only then did the boy and girl sit down. It looked like they really treated me as elderly.

“She used to live on land as you did, but she doesn’t know much about the deep land because she only went to the village of humans that aren’t far from the sea.”

The woman nodded silently as if responding to the boy’s words. I glanced at the kid to keep talking.

“Presumably, you seem to have spent many years in the human city. Humans’ odor is so strong that it is impossible to guess what kind of race you are, Elder. Things are getting better now, but I’m afraid to dare to ask questions about how hard you must have suffered before.”

“…”

The little boy spoke as if he understood my silence as an affirmative.

“That’s why you have such a powerful soul. Elder, I would like to ask you who has overcome the long and hard times on land. As you’ve been close to humans for a long time, I’m just wondering if you know what’s going on between humans.”

I don’t know what it was, but I knew for sure that they misunderstood me. However, I wasn’t sure where to correct this misunderstanding. As I hesitated, the little boy pointed at the cloth tied to his wounded forehead.

“When I try to approach the crack in space, I can’t reach it anymore because something extremely strong is blocking it. At first, I didn’t even notice that there was a barrier, so three days ago, I ran at full speed with this woman on my back, and I hit my head so hard that it left this scar.”

So, you were the culprits!

“I’m so stupid…oh, sorry. Anyway, I know that humans have begun to gain strength since the wicked one disappeared, but the barrier is too much to see.”

“…What do you mean a wicked one?” I asked him.

“It’s about the mean Dragon. Was there another one like that in this land?”

‘…What?’