Hermit Wizard

There was still another crystal left containing the rest of the memory since it couldn’t even eat that much. It was a cohesion of all memories that weren’t related to the previous words. There might be little information like Hessler’s personal history and hobbies. Where should I use that? If I just leave it, it would disappear.

I looked at Hessler while thinking about that. Blood vessels all over his body were swollen and convulsed. He screamed, but I couldn’t hear anything.

I didn’t know if Yodmo would have that ability. If I knew in advance, I would have asked it to torture him instead of doing it myself, even if it meant adding a contract.

‘Oh, come to think of it, do I have to torture Alice?’

“Hey, Yodmo. I have one suggestion.”

I pointed to Alice in the tank and asked its opinion.

=You want me to put the same pain that I gave him – to her, then stop it, then repeat?=

“Yeah. So, she gives me the information I want.”

If I kept that pain, she wouldn’t be able to answer properly, so I would need to turn it on/off like a switch.

=I refuse. It’s a hassle to inject my fluid again and again.=

Oh, right. It seemed that every time it changed the brain’s structure, it had to inject that fluid from the tip of its tongue.

=Moreover, think about how long I will be in this dimension if I did what you want.=

That was how Yodmo turned down my offer.

=Do you really need to interrogate the woman? Can you wait for the memories I have eaten to be digested?=

“I’m going to check both of their memories and compare them.”

There was no reason not to check the information in my hand. The amount of information they had might be different.

“You don’t have to eat her memories right now, right?”

=It is better to digest the memories I have already eaten and then extract them. It’s not efficient, and I have no intention of eating any more crystal now.=

That meant it was full. It would then be better to take out Alice’s memories after digestion had progressed to some extent.

I returned Yodmo to its original dimensions at its request. I would call again when it had enough time to digest the memory of the resurrection.

-Fluuush!

Alice came out of the tank according to my gesture. It was a bit like I was playing around until I called Yodmo again. The ball that floated in the air approached me and stopped moving while floating at the height of my chest.

A girl, in the size of a nail, opened her eyes.

I pondered for a moment. How did I put a drip needle there? I thought the needle would be similar to a vein’s size if it were the body size right now.

I made a restraint tool the size of a rice grain for Alice, but I couldn’t prepare a needle and an IV drip suitable for that child’s blood vessel size.

It was difficult for me to continue using recovery magic. There was also a method of soaking her in the elixir and then taking her out as if she were in a bathtub, but it wouldn’t be as effective as an intrabody injection. If I missed the right timing, I could kill her while torturing her.

Her body was too small to inject Quécarditon. The area was so small that precise control was impossible.

As they did with Hessler, they moved like razor blades inside the body. Separating the dermis and fat layer, removing the fat layer from the muscle layer, and peeling off the skin without a drop of blood was impossible.

Anyway, I was tired of seeing blood. Every time I offered a sacrifice to Dryflos, I was covered in blood.

Instead of revealing those worries, I greeted her quietly.

“Did you slept well?”

Alice answered.

“Here is…?”

It was an unexpectedly calm reaction. She was different from Hessler, who poured out curses as soon as he opened his eyes. Hadn’t she recognized the reality yet?

She looked down at her lower body with an unconstrained free neck. Her lower thighs, which my magic had shattered, were deliberately amputated without regeneration.

She looked at it and said, “So you cut them, huh.”

A tone like saying, you cut our hair. It was a pretty calm reaction to seeing the situation where both her legs were missing. It was in contrast to when she ran into me as if she had half lost her reason in Hun-neung. Her mental lid was let loose due to the pain of stigmatizing her face.

Alice looked around the basement, and her gaze stopped at Hessler, who fell to the floor and convulsed.

“What happened to him?”

“Ah, over there now.”

I flicked a finger to release the soundproofing magic. Hessler’s desperate screams rang in the air. Even after listening again, I couldn’t get used to it, so I frowned. I looked at Alice’s face, but there was no emotion.

Again, I shouldn’t judge by appearance. The long-living being was said to have lived even before the beginning of the Western calendar.

“Because he didn’t cooperate in providing information.”

She might’ve already finished grasping the situation. She looked up at me with an expressionless face.

Based on her Mana pattern, which was examined with God’s sense, the present small body was her original form. She was a human, but did her body become smaller as she crossed the wall? If so, it was the opposite of White Deer’s Elder Mago. She had changed that way under the influence of God, but what was the reason for that? There was no sign of divine power.

“Why are you bothering us?”

I smiled and responded, “I ask the question. Now, can you tell me too? Information on the Dragon’s resurrection you are planning. Everything else you know about your organization.”

For the first time, an expression appeared on Alice’s face. A little ridicule.

“The Dragon’s resurrection. Knowing that you must’ve brainwashed the apprentices to get keyword-level information, but Hessler doesn’t seem to be brainwashed after all, seeing you torture him that way. Is there a limit to your ability?”

I was referring to Hessler, “Unexpectedly, is he a loyal dog? Somehow, he won’t open his mouth. So now I’ve touched his sense of pain. It’s the limit of pain that his brain can perceive.”

Alice shook her head.

“For Hessler, no matter how much pain you inflict on him, he will not answer that question. No, he’s not supposed to. Even if he concluded that he would answer with his own thoughts and will, he couldn’t take it into action. He can never spit out information about the “Guardians of the Great Convention.”

I asked, paying attention to the expression ‘for Hessler’.

“You mean the prohibition?”

I was guessing that there was a device in his mind.

“Hessler signed a contract of authority. Those who have signed the contract are subject to a strong mental ban.”

If it was a contract of authority, it was also signed between Parvache and me. When I was young, I made magic on the condition that ‘the mental body of authority was bound by toy’ unconsciously. It seemed that Hessler had magic that set a more detailed mental shackle.

“Is the Dragon the subject of the contract? But is he dead?”

“Before he died, he transferred the subject of the contract. A free helper could transfer that amount of magic but didn’t sign a contract of authority. Until the Dragon comes to life, the subject of authority contract is passed on to the helper.”

It felt good. She said everything.

“I don’t think you have that ban. You haven’t signed a contract of authority, have you?”

Alice shook her head, “I joined them only after the Dragon died. I’m not under anyone’s authority.”

“Then why are you moving with them?”

She looked at me without saying anything for a moment and said, “What you want is information?”

“It’s the third time now.”

“… What?”

“Don’t you remember what I said at the training center? The question is mine.”

At the same time as I said it, Alice’s left hand disappeared.

“Kyaaaaaaaaaaaaaahh!”

Her calm expression collapsed in an instant, responding quickly to the pain. No matter how long she had lived, was there a way to avoid agony? It was also possible that she might not have had such a pain in her life.

After I cut her hand, I waited, looking at the clock.

“Now, it’s been a minute.”

I healed the cut by using direct recovery magic. I couldn’t help it since I couldn’t plug in the IV drip.

A white light gathered where Alice’s hand was. It stopped bleeding without regenerating. Since she was small, there was a little blood on the floor. It was better.

“Ugh… kuuugh…!”

“Next time, it’s two minutes.”

As her pain disappeared, she raised her sweaty face and spat out curses, “You fucking bastard.”

“You shouldn’t think that I’ll cut this much next time just because I cut your left hand just now. There is a way to expand the cutting area.”

Deliberately cutting her hand was similar to shock therapy. It was because one limb was cut off at a time, and she was already missing two legs. I hoped that she might feel a little more pressure.

“What did I ask? Oh, right. Why do you work with the Guardians of the Great Convention? You don’t have a contract of authority, after all.”

Alice gritted her teeth. Her eyes were full of poison.

“… I made a deal with the helper I mentioned earlier. The price of helping is paid when the Dragon comes back to life.”

“What is the cost?”

“It was said that he would bring the kind of creatures that were similar to my people before I crossed the wall from another dimension and release them into this world. They’re already extinct on Earth.”

She wasn’t human, but I focused on keywords that were more important than Alice’s identity.

“If the Dragon comes back to life, you will get paid?”

“Because Dragon can communicate with the beings of other dimensions.”

It seemed to refer to the communication between the Truth-Seekers.

“So, you’re also sure of the Dragon’s resurrection. If he can’t be resurrected, you can’t get paid, right?”

“Resurrection is possible, and he has to be resurrected. That’s the right thing to do. For this world.”

“Why?”

She looked at me and said, “He’s a Truth-Seeker.”

“I know. So what?”

Alice distorted her face.

“In this world where the Truth-Seeker has died, countless Channels have been created. If it stays like this, all the souls will flow out to another dimension. Earth becomes a world in which life can’t be born. Only those who have crossed the wall of near-infinite life and low-level creatures without souls will remain. Humans who lead the civilization of this world will go extinct. Before that, we have to revive the Truth-Seeker.”

It was within the expected range. If so many channels were pierced and souls were spilled there, all of them could be taken someday. Are they trying to revive the Truth-Seeker to prevent that?

“You say the Truth-Seeker has a way to stop the outflow of souls?”

“He said he had a way to close the Channel.”

But…

“How long does it take?”

When did the disaster begin?

“How long does it take before all the souls of this world are gone? A year left? Or ten years?”

She shook her head.

“The Dragon expected two to three hundred years. After that amount of time, most animals in the world will be miscarried even if they conceive because there is no soul to dwell in that body.”

… What?

“Ha, Bahahaha!” I laughed without realizing it.

“Ah, what is it. Are you kidding me?”

“… What?”

I endure what I wanted to scream. Not 20, not 30, what? Two to three hundred years?

“Haha… What the…”

So, it had nothing to do with me, right?

Let’s say the Channels were closed, and I didn’t know how many people on Earth would be left in 200 years. We have 7 billion currently. Would it be over 10 billion? How many lives would the population conceive at that time?

If Alice’s words were true, that was the future without closing the Channel. After some point, all humans could no longer reproduce. The potential of humanity ends. Tens of billions of… perhaps even more, seeds of life that could’ve been born in the future, as well as the last direct descendants of humanity, would go extinct. That was the story, after all. It was just that much of a story.

I sent my will to Parvache.

‘Ah, what is it. It’s a story that has nothing to do with me.’

[… Min-joon.]

I made up my mind.

‘After all, the Truth-Seeker cannot be allowed to be resurrected. Even if we can’t close the Channels, that’s better.’

That was better even if the price was humankind’s extinction hundreds of years later or if most ecosystems besides humanity were destroyed.

That was a story hundreds of years from now.

‘Who knows. What if there’s a war before that? There is no guarantee that it will last a thousand and ten thousand years If I let it be.

The lives of tens of billions of humans and even more animals that would be born in the distant future…

The scales tilted easily.