Genius Wizard Hides His Sword Skills [EN]: Chapter 87

87. Angelos’ Temple

“Ugh!”

Drew stumbled and fell on his butt, startled by the black figure that suddenly appeared.

“D, did you guys just see that? I’m not the only one who saw it, right? Something just went by!”

The guy who had been so bold as to lead the way quickly ran behind us.

‘What was that?’

I couldn’t make out the exact shape, but I definitely saw a blurry figure with my own eyes.

If I was the only one who saw it, I would have liked to dismiss it as a hallucination.

“I saw it too.”

“……Me too.”

Admun and Angel’s concise answers followed, making me frown.

‘It wasn’t a hallucination.’

I had to acknowledge some kind of entity.

“Did anyone see the exact shape?”

The group shook their heads. As expected, they only saw a blurry figure.

“……Then, do Angel and the Young Master not know what that black thing was?”

Angel and I shook our heads at Admun’s question.

“T, then what is it? Was that a monster?”

Drew was horrified once again.

“I don’t know. If it were a monster, it wouldn’t just come near us.”

Hexa, the sixth district, wasn’t known for particularly strong monsters that could easily break through our combined energy.

“Besides, the monsters that live here aren’t black.”

“That’s right. This is where Magoils live. They’re much bigger.”

Magoils were enormous monsters, reaching over ten meters in height. They possessed great power to match, but they were also slow.

“T, then… are you saying it’s a ghost or something?”

Drew’s expression rapidly hardened at the conversation with Angel. The guy looked around.

But as if he had seen a mirage, the surroundings were only filled with fog.

“What are you going to do?”

Angel asked. I pondered for a moment.

“We can’t turn back now that we’ve come this far.”

I couldn’t turn back because of an uncertain existence. It was too disappointing to go back like this.

‘If we go just one more district, we’ll be able to find out what happened a thousand years ago.’

Angelos left a book in Hepta, the next district.

“I don’t know what it is, but let’s be careful and keep going.”

“Understood.”

We chose to move forward.

Originally, we could go to Hepta, the next district, with Angel’s skills. Even if something happened, we had no choice but to trust his abilities.

* * *

We had been walking for hours through a forest full of only gaunt trees, shrouded in fog.

“I just saw it again.”

Drew flinched. He seemed a little more used to the black figure that had been spotted several times already.

But its true form was still unrecognizable.

‘What the heck is it?’

[Indeed. It keeps loitering around annoyingly.]

It was an existence that made me tense.

‘There’s definitely something there.’

A blurry shape as if it had merged with the fog. It was loitering around as if it were a ghost.

“Hoo.”

Angel prepared to cast a spell every time. He was always prepared because he didn’t know what it was.

“Instead of that, should we attack it first next time it appears?”

“Are you sure you’ll be okay?”

“I don’t feel good, like I’m being watched. If it could beat us, wouldn’t it have attacked us first?”

The thing was loitering around as if it were watching us. I didn’t feel comfortable having such an existence next to us.

“Understood. I’ll attack it first next time……”

Angel hadn’t even finished speaking.

Whooong!

I suddenly felt a presence from behind. Angel hurriedly deployed mana.

Pazzzik!

Following his gesture, a bundle of lightning spread out behind him. Chain lightning was deployed over a wide area.

“Oh, no!”

All that followed was Angel’s regretful voice.

“T, there!”

The place where the thing reappeared after breaking through the lightning. Drew was pointing straight ahead.

Whooong!

But by the time I turned my head, the black figure was already disappearing, fleetingly. It was mocking us as it leisurely escaped.

“It’s fast.”

Even though it was a sudden magic deployment, the thing escaped Angel’s magic. I was even more curious about its identity.

Whooong!

I felt the presence again. It was still wandering around, as if it were teasing us.

Tududuk!

Dozens of earthen walls suddenly appeared on the left. It was a wall of earth that sprang up in succession according to Angel’s gesture.

This time, instead of directly attacking the thing, he was trying to limit its movement path. The black figure moved quickly.

Tududududuk!

The earthen walls that sprang up in succession were limiting the place where the unknown being could move.

‘That’s right!’

I quickly detonated the aura gathered at the tip of my toes.

Taat! Now that its path was limited, it was the perfect opportunity to cut it down.

‘What are you doing!’

Sreung!

I drew Fragarach [a mythical sword] and swung it instinctively at the same time.

As the aura-covered sword flashed.

‘Got it!’

Seogeok!

The moment I felt a strange sensation on my hand. It was the first time I had touched the unknown being.

“Ahhh!”

But the sound of lamentation followed. It was Drew’s voice from afar.

It was clear that I had cut it with my sword, but the thing had disappeared again.

‘……!’

Something had touched the sword, but nothing remained. It was truly a ghostly affair.

“I missed it again. I’m sorry.”

Angel lowered his head. Of course, it wasn’t his fault.

“No. It’s a really mysterious thing.”

Even at the moment of cutting it with the sword, I couldn’t properly recognize the shape of the thing. It felt like I had seen a mirage.

‘Ha. It’s really like a ghost.’

[What is it? I didn’t see it properly either.]

‘It was a bit alien.’

Clearly, the sensation was transmitted to my fingertips through the sword. I had cut down countless beings, but it was the first time I had felt such a sensation.

Even after waiting in the same spot for several minutes.

“Is it not coming anymore?”

Perhaps it was because I had chanted so many spells in advance and prepared for it. The thing didn’t reappear.

“It seems to have left.”

“Okay. We can’t stop, so let’s go.”

We started walking again. We were heading towards the end of the Hexa district.

* * *

“Is it already the next district?”

Drew’s eyes widened. Before we knew it, the fog that had been filling the area had disappeared, and a snowy mountain was welcoming us in front.

The sixth district was unusually shorter than the other districts.

“Yeah. This is Hepta.”

A snow-covered mountain. This was our final destination and the seventh district where Angelos’ temple was located.

“It seems that thing has disappeared now.”

Angel looked back and guarded until the end. The black figure of something had not appeared since then.

“Well, it’s a relief if it just left.”

I was a little worried, but there was no particular damage. I quickly moved to the Hepta district.

We had only taken a few more steps.

Whooooooong!

A fierce blizzard was blowing.

“Ugh, it’s cold!”

Drew rubbed his arms and shivered.

Uwoong!

I opened Illimita’s subspace [a personal storage dimension] above my wrist. When I took out the bracelet from there and handed it out, the guy finally regained a peaceful expression.

“Phew. I’m alive.”

It was an item that Angel had asked Andy to prepare in advance. It was an artifact with warming magic, so it was good for maintaining body temperature.

“Where is the temple?”

I had been to the Hepta district, but I had never been to Angelos’ temple. It was a temple built after I died, so I couldn’t know its location.

“I’ll lead the way.”

Angel went ahead, cutting through the blizzard. Our footprints followed his footprints.

“By the way, what kind of monsters usually come out here?”

Drew had been asking about monsters every time we moved to a new district.

“Yetis live here. They’re quite large and have a lot of magical power.”

“……Yetis?”

The guy’s expression darkened rapidly. It was one of the monsters that was so notorious that Drew had heard of it.

‘They were quite famous.’

They not only ate adventurers indiscriminately, but also occasionally went to other districts to hunt other monsters.

They just enjoyed killing, so they mutilated the bodies to the point where it was difficult to recognize them.

They were yetis recorded in all kinds of books because of their cruelty.

“Ugh, but they won’t come to us, right?”

“Yeah. Still, with our energy, yetis won’t be able to come. They’re smarter than other monsters. They never attack those who are stronger than them.”

“Umm. I see. Well, that’s why you brought me here.”

Drew seemed a little relieved then.

“There’s a footprint that seems to belong to them over there.”

Angel gestured to the right. Huge footprints were imprinted on the accumulated snow. A footprint as big as an adult man’s height was left behind.

“Hmm. It seems like they were wandering around here until just now.”

The footprints had not disappeared even in the rough snow, so I could tell that they had stayed here relatively recently.

“It seems that they left just now because of the energy.”

They must have moved to another place because they felt a stronger energy approaching. It was a good sign that they could feel our energy well.

“Well, anyway, it doesn’t matter as long as we don’t run into them.”

Drew and Admun couldn’t take their eyes off the footprints of those guys. It was natural that they were curious because it was a trace of an existence they had only heard of in legends.

“How much further do we have to go to the temple?”

“We’re almost there. It’s not far from the entrance. If we just go over this hill, we’ll see it.”

We moved slowly because of the accumulated snow. We had only just passed the first hill, but it seemed like we had already arrived.

‘Angelos. He didn’t go far.’

It wouldn’t have been easy for him to go deep through the yetis.

After a while, when we reached the top of the hill, we could see structures that didn’t quite fit in with the snowy mountains.

“It seems to be that place.”

Stone carvings that looked like the site of a temple. Although it was broken here and there, a huge stone building was located in the middle of the snowy mountain.

“Yes. That’s right, but……”

However, Angel’s brow furrowed.

“What’s wrong?”

“Something’s wrong. The temple wasn’t that damaged when I came last time.”

“What? Did the yetis touch it in the meantime?”

But Angel shook his head.

“It’s a temple with a blind magic [magic that conceals something from being detected] cast on it to deceive the yetis. They can’t recognize it because they’re ignorant of magic.”

Something was definitely wrong. As Angel said, yetis were not monsters that used magic well.

‘Well, if the yetis had touched it, they would have destroyed everything.’

If they had recognized it, the temple would have been nowhere to be found.

“……And those decorations weren’t originally there.”

Angel’s fingertip pointed to a place. Shiny black stones were decorated here and there at the entrance of the temple. Black jewels that didn’t match the temple.

“Then who touched it?”

Angel’s face gradually hardened at the sight.

“……How dare someone touch the temple!”

The leader of the Outer Sect Society who followed Angelos. Just as anger was filling his face.

Puk! Puuk!

Something was popping out of the snowfield. Dozens of fingers began to pop out around us.