Hermit Wizard

Hunting Time (5)

It was clear from the Mana I felt. It was an executive, and it seemed that the apprentices arrived before they even reached it.

What appeared in front of us was a man with strange makeup. The combination of colors, which was a mess even to me, was drawn like graffiti over his face.

He approached us leisurely. It was a light walk as if he were out on an outing. Mrs. Pearl and Seol quietly stepped forward and stood with me on their back.

The closer he got, the more I felt the wave of his Mana. It was an unfamiliar waveform that I had experienced once when flying here. I quickly know that that man was the wizard who had unfolded the detection barrier.

“Huh~.”

Apparently, he’s human, but was it his real body? It was impossible to know. He unpleasantly laughed as he looked at me wearing the shell of Fake God.

“How did you break through my barriers? And… what is it? How many eyes are there?”

He then puckered his lips. Looking closely, he had an unpleasantly red lipstick moped with it.

“Alien? Oh, wait, I think I’ve seen you somewhere…?”

He clapped instead of scratching his head for a moment.

“Right! You’re that guy…!”

He leaned his back and began to laugh like crazy.

“Kyahahahahaha! What is this? Why are you here? It’s amazing. Are you that guy? The bastard who kidnapped our apprentices in El Paso and bounced off!”

Yes, he recognized me right away, and I was glad. Had they seen the photos and videos?

I noticed that he touched the ring on his finger even though he was distracted by the barrier. Mana flowed faintly in a different way than before. Magical messages were delivered out of the base. He might be informing the organization of what he had witnessed there.

As planned, the suspects in the incident there that day had to be an alien race. To exclude the existence of human wizards who could do that much and the assumption itself.

“It’s going great. Is his soul really with us? How can I be so lucky?”

He kept grinning and laughing. It was a forced laugh in which there was a strange echo that wasn’t natural, and the twisted sound felt awkward.

“Anyway, when this was over, we would’ve had to search this country to find you! I’m not going to wander around with that stinky bitch Alice. I found you!”

While grinning, he approached us one step at a time. At that time…

-Rumble!

“Huh?”

Mrs. Pearl quickly swung her hand forward. A white straight line was drawn on the cement floor, and a flame barrier burned along the trajectory. He looked at the flame wall blocking the front and whistled.

“Oh, what is it? What a strange way to turn the spell.”

Regardless of the answer, Mrs. Pearl shouted sharply.

“Stay back! Before I burn all the skin on your face!”

The cheerful expression disappeared in an instant, and deep hostility shone in his eyes. The wizard then responded with a lazy tone.

“What are you talking about? Are these humans the wizards you brainwashed, Alien?”

As he reached out, six pink spheres the size of a bowling ball floated. They then went around him, drawing a breathtaking orbit.

It was obviously an artifact. The Mana around him was unusual. I wanted to warn the two, but the formation of the barrier was in full swing. I couldn’t move my lips even a little while processing the Mana of the residents.

“I don’t know what kind of magic you guys are combining with this hideous magic, but…”

At that moment, the six beads rotating around his body stopped moving.

“… it’s over once I cut it off before it’s finished.”

Mrs. Pearl bounced off before he even finished speaking. She noticed the spell the opponent was preparing.

She floated high in the sky and exuded her power. The air around us soared like a haze, and an incandescent flame that started flowing from her shoulders and forearms now circulated around her body. Like the feathers of a bird, the fluttering fire emitted devastating heat.

During her parabolic fall, her flames intensified and burned all her clothes. Fires entwined the naked body of a fox, which was turned into a human.

To her, who had turned into the incarnation of fire, the wizard’s eyes flashed and shouted.

“Revenging lightning! Stamping pressure! Necrosis breath!”

The Mana shook and fluctuated as he shouted a constant starter. The transfer was exercised by using the distorted laws of physics as a driving force. The first thing that struck was red lightning that stretched out like a sharp branch.

“Where?!”

Mrs. Pearl became a sphere of high heat and struck a magical trajectory as if hammering, drawing a ray of heat and shooting down the rooftop floor.

-Bang bang!

An eardrum-shaking reverberation. The cement and concrete floor melted and flowed. An enormous crater appeared near the impact.

Sitting on the floor, she couldn’t overcome her inertia, and she turned her body as if panicked. The tail of the lightning she tried to stop was stopped on the way. Outside the range of violence created by Mrs. Pearl, it breathtakingly stopped as if teasing her.

Lightning with a fixed target?

“Kyahahaha!”

The trajectory of lightning changed with his cheerful laughter. The lightning in a straight line turned at right angles as if laughing at her, then struck, bypassing her – To me, who was building a barrier defenselessly!

“Oh my!”

Mrs. Pearl hurriedly turned around, realizing that the target of lightning was me. But the wizard’s spell struck her with a breathtaking time gap. The formless power that followed immediately attacked Mrs. Pearl.

-Bang bang! Bang! Duaang!

Sensing it ahead, she soared in recoil, causing a fiery explosion over her skin. The floor of the building was hollowed out by her pressure where she had just been.

The yellow wind blew after her, but it was caught in the flames and disappeared. Meanwhile, the red lightning that flew at me…

-Wheeeckk!

Seol, who flew like the wind, blocked my view with his back. He was wise enough to believe what I told him. He received the thunderbolt with his body as if he had no fear at a safe distance that wouldn’t affect the barrier’s core.

The lightning which had been changing its orbit stopped turning again. But in response to the approach of Seol, it extinguished with a roaring sound.

-Crumbs!

Seol, who looked like a middle-aged man, wore an artifact on his neck. The artifact I created shone brightly. The necklace, which I didn’t know from which era it came from, emitted Mana. The spreading lightning was extinguished, leaving only an afterimage of light.

At the same time, I heard something crack.

-Crack!

I knew without having to look that one of the rubies on the necklace shattered. Meanwhile, there was no burn mark on Seol’s body.

It was one with the item. I counted inwardly and kept hastening my spell.

“… What?”

Witnessing the sudden disappearance of lightning, the wizard made a suspicious look. Mrs. Pearl ran back at the same time. The flames that had faded for a moment flashed like lumens and covered her naked body. It slid back with the power of the spell.

“Did the necrotic’s breath burn in flames? Even so, that lightning…”

His self-talk didn’t last long due to Mrs. Pearl quickly approaching and narrowing the distance. Flames flew in every breath of her as her eyes flashed scarlet.

Mrs. Pearl ran at full speed. Her entire body disappeared for a moment as if eaten by a pillar of scarlet flame. She was going to crash into the wizard!

-Bang bang bang!

“Tsk…!”

Seol clicked his tongue while watching the scene of the crash.

Three spheres gathered in front of his chest as if protecting him and built an intangible shield. The flame that had penetrated like an awl left only debris after the crash. It was a pretty quick spell completion.

Before the clash’s aftermath disappeared, the remaining pink spheres that had fallen behind were engulfed in light. As if she had a hunch, Mrs. Pearl quickly moved back.

“Brutal shadow!”

Seemingly scratched by a giant beast, four black afterimages passed by where she was previously standing. Mrs. Pearl bounced close. There was a black mark on the floor along her path.

The wizard didn’t stop there. By the time Mrs. Pearl just landed on the ground, he was already preparing the next magic. The spheres made the shield move out of its original position, creating and rotating a ring on his left wrist. He seemed to be aiming at her, and then his fingertips pointed at me again!

“Silent scaffold!”

The invisible blade of enormous Mana turned to me.

It was Seol that first moved his body before I even realized it. When I noticed the movement of Mana, he was already running in front of me. It was a phenomenal reaction rate.

Before the blade reached the bounds of the barrier core, he put Mana around his body and bumped into it. No matter how strong the Mana was, it was a shock that would leave a lot of damage. But…

-Clink!

-Crack!

There was a cracking sound in the air, and his magic was extinguished. Counting in my mind, I realize that that was the second one.

That person looked at Seol again and muttered as if it was absurd.

“Again? What is that artifact?”

His eyes were filled with a light of suspicion.

“It couldn’t be a human’s work. However, if you were a wizard who could make something like that, why were you caught by the U.S. government? You don’t have to brainwash people like that…”

-Rumble!

The wizard couldn’t end his words. While he looked away, Mrs. Pearl was already gathering power behind him. Not only was she burning herself in the form of a perfect flame, but she was preparing to advance with fireballs floating in the air around her. At first glance, the number exceeded thirty.

The wizard clenched his teeth and spoke.

“… You’re freaking me out.”

She started running again. While a giant pillar of fire in the shape of a human was rushing in, small flames flocked like a meteor and poured out, moving forward and backward.

Just before the meteor shower hit the wizard, six beads floating around the man’s body were gathered in front of his eyes as before, then crashed against it again!

-Bang bang bang bang bang bang!

-Hwrrrrrk!

Flashing explosions and immense heat covered the rooftop. Flames and smoke spread randomly.

It was a big explosion that could transmit heat to the back of the shield created by Seol.

Seol stopped all the sparks that bounced in all directions like the remains of a shooting star while I worked hard to keep my mind’s concentration from being broken and formed the barrier. Due to the aftermath of the crash, the entire building shook.

Even though the shattered flames obscured my view, I still saw what happened beyond. There were two opposing Manas. I realized that what he had made was six-layered defensive magic.

Now, just a little more. Just a little more here!

“Ah really… It’s annoying! Bitch, if you keep doing this… I can’t kill you?!”

He swore the words that didn’t fit back and forth. He survived even under the attack. But that time, it seemed that the intense heat couldn’t be stopped even with his shield.

He was laughing, breathing in, and exhaling wildly. His face was distorted like a devil.

The wizard’s appearance after the flash disappeared was ugly. His eyebrows were all burnt out, and the makeup on his face was strangely shaped and melted like purple and gray soup.

It brushed roughly his chest hair that caught in the fire and burned like filament with his palm. As if to had stimulated his temper, his eyes were bloodshot, and he recollects his Mana.

“This rotten bitch… I was going to use your body efficiently, but I changed my mind. I’ll hold you bitch alive so that later, you’ll think, ‘Oh, fuck! Why did I wake up that morning and walk around there instead of hanging myself!’ I’ll let you know that human lives are much tougher than you think. You will realize the mystery of nature, you motherfucker!”