Chapter 532 - First contact (6) |
However, it seemed she had worried about her colleague's survival for nothing.
—Whooosh.
Soon after, a person appeared from one side of the desert. Moreover, the other party appeared suddenly with a technique that looked like [Spatial Teleportation], so no matter how one looked at it, he had to be a mage.
'Maybe it's because of the dyed hair. It's easy to recognize him once he appears.'
A man wearing a rare gray coat appeared in the middle of the desert today. It was the appearance of Kim Giryeo. But in his arms, he was currently carrying some sort of creature with a somewhat large chin and a slightly small physique... The way this white creature was being transported was a bit unique.
'Is that also a type of New Generation Alphaurin?'
Kim Giryeo was carefully supporting the body of the strange creature as if he were carrying a bride.
—_—
—_—
'He treated the colleague he interacted with emotionally like luggage, yet he carries that grotesque creature out so carefully...?'
Seonwoo Yeon thought it was a tragedy that she didn't have time to point out every single difference in his attitude. Meanwhile, Kang Changho understood this situation to some extent. A raccoon corpse. A rat corpse. Or things like that. This is how Alphaurins usually handle it when they acquire a precious biological specimen.
—Crackle.
It was white they were each lost in their own complex thoughts. A noise of something splitting echoed. This was the sound of an automated machine, pre-installed by the engineer, exerting its power. There existed dungeon-use machines that would track the owner's information and drill a hole on their own without the owner needing to infuse mana... Of course, this was a fairly surprising fact, but considering all the years Kang Changho had lived on Earth, it wasn't particularly strange.
—Riilip.
"Hey. By the way, have you seen an S-rank foreign hunter on the other floors?"
"That human has already been sent back using the passage B that formed on my side."
Since the part was where about had been resolved, there was no need to move sluggishly. Kang Changho put the Behemoths into his heavily modified [Item Box], took a few of the defeated enemy entities with him, and ran toward the torn space. Moreover, since Seonwoo Yeon had been waiting near the glowing green scratch on her own, their escape ended smoothly.
—Thud!
They were outside. The sound of car horns from afar. And the rows of skyscrapers. There had been a time when she felt suffocated by this gray scenery, but since the dungeons appeared, there was no scene more reassuring than this.
'Is the location a little different from where the others escaped first...? This is the seaside, isn't it? I don't see anyone around, either.'
Squeeze.
Seonwoo Yeon calculated in her head while holding the rescued E-rank child safely in her arms. Now that they had escaped the otherworld, she should be able to speak a few words freely.
"Hunter Giryeo..."
"Member of Assem..."
Just as the long-haired woman was about to utter her first sentence, the dyed-hair alien creature blurted out a word starting with "Assembly" at the same moment. Furthermore, before she could even express her doubt about this, Kang Changho intervened in the conversation.
"Wait, it seems everyone has a lot they want to say. I'm sorry, but how about we review my agenda first?"
Slither.
As the scar leading to the dungeon disappeared, Kang Changho began to lead the conversation.
"I've been so curious since earlier about the identity of that thing Kim Giryeo is carrying like a partner."
"This?"
"Is that, by any chance, one of those [Elite] training specimens?"
***
Now.
As you can tell from the existence of items mentioned in various situations, such as the [Thread] item that remembers the exact coordinates of a specific person, or the [Collapse Particle o] that acts as a type of passage remover. In fact, a Gate was something that could be manipulated in various ways if the explorer's will was distinct.
That was why I, as an Archmage, occasionally had doubts.
'In fact, there aren't many things in this world that are taken for granted. Most have reasons supporting them.'
Why do Gates sometimes cause errors? And why are such matters rarely corrected? If the people of the binary star system had evolved into some great transcendent beings over the past 3,000 years, such loopholes naturally shouldn't exist. Overwhelming terror. Or, if they applied stress, the evolution of mammals would be accelerated, so why leave behind so many holes that could be interpreted as human error?
'For a selfish species, these are movements that fail to secure real results.'
What followed was a purely logical result. As far as this Archmage could think, the errors the Gate had shown so far could never be judged as intentional.
'Piecing it together with the knowledge I have, this seems to have happened because "magic was automated." If you assume you open the Gates individually with personal tentacles, it gives me a headache just trying to ensure diversity, so I guess they just copied and used the feeding activity of Gismche.'
Moreover, judging by the fact that the enemy entities, the New Generation Alphaurins, ultimately failed to become "inscrutable"... there were many points that eased my mind before the battle.
"3,000 years, 3,000 years."
At first, I felt quite a bit of terror at the fact that such time had slipped away secretly. But thinking about it carefully, I had already endured more time than that while enslaved to slavery magic. Therefore, evaluating it with an old soul, 3,000 years is... a bit short for a culture to leap to a point where it can't be understood at all.
'The New Generation Alphaurins inventing the [Gate] technology... is only because they started development when magic theory had already reached the cutting edge.'
Perhaps the enemy, too, was being chased without a moment of leisure.
'It wasn't an achievement built solely by their tentacles from the start. So how could I just sit back and watch those b*stards invade?'
First, I'll explain in advance. I had arrived at this point after much deliberation.
'By the way, the space they settled in was decorated without any care.'
Black on the right. Black on the left. The floor seemed flat like the terrain often seen on Earth, but it was just simple, like public restroom tiles, so I wondered what the point was.
'If I had been the owner of the Gate, I would have set this deep space at least as beautifully as the sea.'
Since I entered through the passage opened by the engineer, it was likely the exact same time Kang Changho had entered. In any case, I had entered the dungeon at some point. And I met these guys right before my eyes.
[—?]
Screeech.
As I tore through space and appeared, the monsters with ash-colored cuticles turned their heads one by one. However, I didn't expect to encounter such an old-fashioned situation in the process.
'Ah! This feels like a scene Earthlings should never see.'
A tall person is lying on a silver bed mainly used for operating tables, etc. And strange-looking monsters are huddled around him?
[—]
_—_
Truly, it is the center of a picture-perfect human experiment... This was the alien behavioral pattern that mammals of a certain planet often imagined. In any case, I faced the alien creature that was fiddling with the nameless S-rank. That is the point of our first encounter.
[What is that?]
[Human.]
[Mammal?]
But the reason I hardened my expression wasn't just because I discovered a human experiment. Since I had already roughly predicted through the monster information generated in the dungeon in advance that humans would be captured.
'If I leave this as it is, the negative prejudice against aliens will only get stronger!'
I was practically a representative of planetary migrants, in a way. Therefore, I had no choice but to act hurriedly, if only to protect the image of a stranger.
[What a surprise]
[What]
No questions asked. At this point, where not a single word of conversation had flowed, I immediately took out a "golem." But the golem that responded to this call wasn't that meager snake I usually took around.
'I lent the small one to the engineer, who lacks combat ability.'
What emerged from this infinite darkness, where everything was pitch black, was a mechanical beast of such stature that no one could mistake it for a snake.
'I thought I would have forgotten it since it's been a long time since I handled it, but surprisingly, as I started operating it, the old sense returned.'
An ancient deep-sea creature whose vision has degenerated. A dragon. As it stretched its long, limbless body, it revealed a height reaching the 2nd or 3rd floor of an Earth building.
—Snap!
Since the steel monster was smuggled in safely, I immediately initiated the first action. I moved the golem I had summoned and swallowed the citizen who had been on the cold operating table whole.
[It eats the Earthling?]
—Chomp, chomp.
The dragon had been modified with a food-pouch part from the beginning to be used when rescuing humans like this.
'From now on, the mages will be too busy clashing with each other. I can't keep chasing after and protecting an outsider, so for now, this is for the best.'
Then, I had handled the part that bothered me the most. Since I had brought out a powerful fighting tool called a golem, there was no longer any need to hesitate and hide my identity.
[Insubordination.]
I attempted to communicate with them with magic I had prepared in advance.
[No bad deeds, insubordination.]
[Everyone, if you insubordinate, we won't fight.]
Anyway, what a friendly suggestion this was? As I used an incantation related to expressing intent so it would clearly reach the New Era Alphaurins, they all seemed startled for a moment.
[The beast speaks...]
[My god! How can a mammal speak such a high-level language?]
[Very disgusting.]
However, if a conversation doesn't go well at once, is that even an Alphaurin?
'The expression is too much.'
Sulk.
Even though I came out on a business trip to this dangerous zone, I gave them a chance for peace negotiations once.
—Shhh.
However, what returned from the other side was a bombardment spell that would only see in a siege battle.
—Whooosh!
They fired an attack targeting the golem. Since I had observed the traces of the magic casting in advance, it wasn't difficult to avoid it, but if it had been a direct hit, that expensive invention would have been broken.
'They're not easy on me.'
As expected, those people from that magic planet were aggressive, cruel, and surprisingly, I couldn't find any trace of compassion, which is one of the means to distinguish high-level creatures from beasts. So, my resolve was set.
'Since I was caught trying to experiment on humans without authorization anyway, it ends from that part.'
As the New Generation Alphaurins first shouted, the current skin of this body was disgustingly opaque. Moreover, since I will spend the rest of my life on Earth in this state, I had no choice but to confront the invaders, if only to fulfill my selfishness of wanting to converse even one more day with the neighbor I've come to like.
—Click.
As soon as he set his psychological direction, a brutal sound rang out from the 'dragon'.
—Whoosh!
[Uh-oh!]
[Fire!]
What followed was a fire-attribute attack spewed out by the dragon while dodging the shelling.
'If it were a trained Jeong Haseong... he might be able to easily defeat one mass-produced soldier?'
Marine creatures accustomed to swimming are usually weak to combustion phenomena. I set a fire to create distance and racked my brain to deal with the Alphaurins in the deep part before my eyes.
'Thanks to the [Dungeon Observation Telescope] designed by Kang Changho, I could know the appearance of the elite class in advance.'
First. According to the information collected in advance, one individual among the enemy forces with an exceptionally high amount of mana was supposed to stand out. However, what kind of extreme modification this elite entity had gone through, at the moment I entered, it was mixed with commoners and in a state where its identity couldn't be distinguished.
'A total of 8 mages... This is a bit worrying, could it be that I have to fight while worrying about damaging the enemy's internal organs from the start?'
But as I thought upon entering this dungeon, the other side wasn't completely free, either. Alphaurins. Why were my descendants, who were evaluated to have reached the pinnacle of magic theory, so bizarrely weak? I set out on the battle in earnest to clearly resolve the suspicions I had felt while living on Earth.