Chapter 5. Conviction and Reality (6)
Chapter 5. Conviction and Reality (6)
Still, they didn't send the Goblins back.
There was talk going around that Goblins seemed to use some kind of language of their own, but the problem was that Goblin vocalization differed quite a lot from human speech.
A person could imitate it if they really tried, but separating out the words and fitting them into our language to translate would take forever.
So we decided to simply operate a lot of reconnaissance assets.
We sent up drones, and the Wizards used Observation Magic so they could keep checking the situation at the very front while we were moving.
On top of that, just walking would cause serious problems in a lot of ways.
The place was maintained because there was much to be gained beyond the Gate, but the reason it hadn't been developed farther out was the dense forest nearby.
There was certainly enough space between the trees for people to move around, but building anything and keeping people stationed there cost too much in manpower and money. So this Gate was basically kept open for the purpose of extracting special ore from a nearby mine.
Even so, the road was too rough for anything with wheels. Even a motorcycle could get caught on vines or something and cause a truly serious problem.
......But it wasn't as if this was the first or second time the far side of a Gate had been a dense forest.
Earthlings had their own way of applying Magic, and they knew how to graft technology onto it.
What came out of that was the hover bike.
Some places called it a witch's broomstick or whatever, but it basically looked like a wheel-less off-road motorcycle.
"Haha, it's been a while since I've ridden one of these."
"You—you have ridden one before, right? You have a license, right?"
"Don't worry. There's absolutely no way you'll die."
How could I not worry?
Every vehicle I'd seen up to now had basically had wheels. Even airplanes.
"If you can't trust my reflexes, well, nothing I can do about that...... but you weren't thinking of walking, were you? Hey, don't tell me our Saintess Candidate is too scared to even ride on the back of a motorcycle?"
"......."
At those words, I glared at Ria and strapped a helmet onto my head.
And then I fastened the chin strap.
Ria looked at me, let out a little snicker, and got onto the motorcycle.
Well, it looked like a motorcycle, but it was basically a device that ran on Magic. It was quite expensive, and it was hard to operate unless you were an association of this size.
Maybe because it had been built with long-distance travel in mind, there was a cargo rack on the back too.
Ria's sword was sheathed in a scabbard mounted on the front so she could draw it immediately when needed, and I had loaded my shield onto the back but kept my pistol in a holster under my arm.
In case we had to fight while riding the motorcycle.
"Get on the back."
Ria said.
"......."
With a thoroughly reluctant heart, I got onto the back seat. At least there was no shortage of space even on a motorcycle, which was a relief.
I reached out and carefully took hold of Ria's waist.
"Hey, that's not where you—"
"Huh?"
"......."
Ria went quiet for a moment, then said,
"Never mind, just hold on tight. That's probably better."
"Huh? What do you mean? Is there a separate grab handle or something?"
But Ria didn't answer and instead looked at the lead Hunter.
She checked once more that everyone in the group had mounted their motorcycles. The Wizards were mostly riding in the back seats, like me.
Well, they had to use Observation Magic, after all.
No one looked scared. Even Lee Si-yoon and Han Yu-ri were the same.
Glaria was riding behind another female Hunter with a slightly dissatisfied expression, and—that one thing was a little funny—
"Kyaap!?"
While I was briefly lost in thought, I felt my body lurch forward.
I'd heard electric cars could have incredibly short 0–100 km/h times, but this zero-gravity motorcycle was even more extreme.
Without realizing it, I squeezed my arms tight. Embarrassingly enough, Ria's body felt strangely soft and warm in that situation.
She didn't seem to mind much even when my chest pressed against her back.
......For some reason, the fact that I seemed to be the only one bothered by it made me oddly annoyed.
*
In terms of distance, we'd gone about five kilometers when a group of Goblins appeared ahead of us again.
As we approached at very high speed, the Goblins all raised their hands to their heads, hunched over, and trembled.
It seemed the Goblins we'd captured really had been the vanguard.
Even among the vanguard, some had already been injured by Mana. Their situation must have been so dire that they had to send even the wounded ahead to scout.
Most of the remaining Goblins were in far worse shape.
An individual that looked very old, lying covered with a straw mat. And individuals with long hair whose faces looked a little gentler than the fierce-looking Goblins I'd seen...... Hm.
It was a bit awkward to say this in this situation, but those Goblins were probably female. How should I put it—the vibe was, well, they were definitely Goblins. Green skin, black hair.
But, well. How should I put it.
Ya...... no, to put it nicely, they looked like the female customization option you could choose when there was a Goblin race in a Korean MMORPG. Yeah. Let's just leave the description at that.
A female Dwarf character in some online RPG I'd seen before had that kind of feel too—no, let's stop thinking about this. If I kept going deeper, I felt like my mood would get weird in various ways.
The number of individuals was around fifty. Our numbers were around thirty, so they weren't enough to overwhelm us. Almost all of them were those presumed-female individuals, and the rest were so badly injured they couldn't even stand. Some bared their teeth as if to protect the group from us, but most of them looked quite young.
The Hunters exchanged glances, looking a little bewildered.
"......."
Glaria wore a complicated expression.
I didn't bother trying to ask what she was thinking here. It would only complicate my feelings while working for no reason.
"First, let's go up to that point ahead."
"There's nothing that clearly visible yet......."
Han Yu-ri said that, but we all knew we still had to check.
There was no plan to leave Hunters behind here. If we did, contact might be cut off, or our numbers might drop too low and put us in danger.
However, we contacted headquarters in advance to report our location, and then all together, watching our rear, we advanced farther.
And then.
"Wait, wait a moment."
As I hugged Ria's stomach a little tighter and spoke, Ria gave a slight shiver and stopped.
The Hunters who had been riding around us as if escorting us also stopped.
"Why, did you find something strange?"
The Wizards who had been using Observation Magic tilted their heads too.
As far as I could see, and as far as they could see, there was nothing particularly visible in the space stretching out ahead—
"......Ah."
But there were a few other people who reacted like me.
It hadn't been visible while we were moving, but now that we were standing still, something different could be seen.
......They'd said new species of Magical Creatures were detected by their Mana, hadn't they.
I got off the motorcycle.
The ground was a little damp and soft, so it didn't hurt or anything.
Up until I reached out and scooped up some dirt, nothing seemed wrong.
I tried infusing just a tiny bit of Holy Power into that dirt.
Fsssh. Something that had been “soaking” the dirt vanished as if evaporating. The dirt instantly dried out, crumbled into sand, and scattered.
Everything ahead of us—the entire area—was contaminated with an enormous amount of Mana.
"......Good heavens."
Han Yu-ri murmured.
"......I think I understand why they were running away."
I said that and dusted off my hands. What remained like fine sand scattered and sprinkled white over the damp ground.
And that sand was quickly dyed by Mana again, becoming indistinguishable.
Glaria placed her hand on a growing tree. It hadn't completely died and crumbled away yet, but parts of the tree pattered down like scraps of tissue that had been soaked in water and then dried.
Everything ahead of us was dead land.
Mana had been creeping down through the land little by little, slowly enough that we could not easily notice. By the time the Hunter Association noticed it had reached the territory they occupied, it might already have been too late.
Mana was, in itself, a kind of phenomenon. A Gate might look at first glance like it was splitting two worlds apart, but in reality it was a single passage through which even air and liquid could freely pass.
So sometimes, even when no monsters crossed over from beyond a Gate, the mere opening of the Gate caused a catastrophe.
......Mana encroached even on the land beyond the Gate.
It must have drained the life from Earth's creatures, which had no particular resistance to Mana, in an instant.
Someone was already contacting headquarters. People's gazes gathered on me.
I scooped up the ground once more.
And I quietly stared down at the dirt overflowing with Mana.
Ria came over beside me and quietly observed the dirt as well.
Ria didn't say anything to me, but I had something I needed to say.
"This isn't the end."
"Huh?"
Ria's eyes went round as she looked at me.
The gazes of the nearby Hunters turned toward me. Glaria's gaze too.
"This is just a phenomenon. A precursor to something."
Right. I'd read about it in the novel.
There were people who thought of the Gates themselves as God's power. And there were people who thought that God had bestowed that power "upon themselves."
I didn't know their exact purpose.
But.
That was why there were people who wanted the existence known as the Saintess.
"......."
I looked up at the sky.
Up there, something seemed to be looking down this way.
"Good heavens."
It wasn't certain yet, but I felt like puzzle pieces that had been tossed around carelessly were, just a little, clumsily fitting together.
If, in the first place, opening that Gate was—someone's power.
If, in the first place, the very fact that Gates had begun appearing was the result of some purpose.
If even closing a Gate was, in truth, nothing more than a temporary stopgap humanity could manage—
"Ah."
My head throbbed.
Ria came toward me with a slightly startled expression.
And while she was supporting my arm a little,
"W-wait!"
One of the Wizards who had still been keeping watch shouted.
"Over there, something's visible! Something's bubbling up......."
And soon, that expression became a dumbfounded one.
"......A Mana Mass?"
No, it wasn't simply that. That thing.
It wasn't just clumped together—
"Ria."
I called Ria.
"We have to block it."
Right. We had to block it.
"That thing" was something that had to be blocked.
A novel needs a crisis. And usually, that crisis can't simply be a single incident.
A massive event that encompasses the entire content of a novel. Some kind of power that absolutely must be fought off and stopped.
That kind of thing was necessary.
So we had to block it.
Because if we didn't block it, someday it would surely invade our world. Ignoring and shattering even the power that closed Gates or anything else.
Was it lucky or unlucky that we encountered it while its plan was still incomplete?
......If there was a reason the Being Above had dropped me into this world.
Maybe it was for this moment, I thought.