Chapter 345 (1/2)

Act 6

Su-hyeun chatted with Ellid for a long time. He did the most of the talking, though, because Ellid wished to hear about his own people more than anything else.

Ellid asked, “What happened to the demonic creatures?”

Su-hyeun replied that they were all gone.

“Who was leading the dragon kind now?”

And Su-hyeun replied that the oldest surviving dragon, Blanc, was leading them now.

“Were they doing well?”

Indeed, they were, according to Su-hyeun.

After listening to all of Su-hyeun’s answers, Ellid brought him outside the shabby house.

“Grandpa!”

“Grandpaaa!”

When Ellid began walking on the street, several children ran up and clung to him.

They seemed to be around six, maybe seven, years old.

A total of five kids were in this group. The oldest of the lot, a boy about 10 years of age, bowed his head at Su-hyeun as a greeting.

“Aigoo, these kids. You are getting too heavy for me now. Huhuhu.”

“Grandpa, who is this uncle?”

“He’s my friend. You should all greet him. Now, now. You should say hello.”

“Hello.”

The other kids also bowed their heads belatedly.

After a brief round of greetings, Ellid walked past the group of kids. Su-hyeun walked alongside him and glanced back at the kids.

He asked, “Were they the kids you told me about earlier?”

“That’s right.”

“They are far younger than I expected.”

“They are good kids. It’s the same story for the other villagers. Although the current hardships have placed them on edge, their original nature is to be kind and considerate.”

While saying that, Ellid gently waved his hand and greeted the villagers passing by.

He continued to walk on the outskirts of the village like this and then drew a huge circle on the ground surrounding the village itself. The next thing he did was to inject magical energy into it.

Giiii-iiiing—

This circle acted as a medium, and the wall was generated once more.

Su-hyeun stared in amazement at the wall that instantly rose up to surround the village.

Bang, bang—

He lightly tapped on it with the back of his hand and felt the hardness of the structure.

“It’s not as hard as the previous one, but even then, it’ll still be very useful,” he thought.

Most monsters wouldn’t be able to break through this wall. Even if some did manage that, the wall would surely buy enough time for Ellid to sense something was amiss.

“As expected of the dragon emperor.”

“I really enjoy it when people praise me like that,” Ellid laughed.

Ellid relaxedly placed his hands behind his back and guffawed before snapping his fingers.

Right away, a huge wave of magical energy whipped all around Su-hyeun, but he didn’t respond and simply let it be.

Almost at the same time, the surrounding view changed.

The village itself had become a blurry little dot in the distance. In the blink of an eye, they had teleported several kilometers away.

“Alright, now. This is a good place for a conversation, don’t you think?”

“Well, yes. It’s not so bad. The weather is fair as well.”

“I’m relieved to hear you say that.”

Snap—

Crunch, creaaak—

Ellid snapped his fingers again, and several wooden branches rose up from the ground to transform into chairs. He sat down on one of them.

Su-hyeun stared in amazement at the wooden chairs. “You could do such things with magic?”

“Water and fire, wind and earth, and beyond that, even gravity and the powers of attraction and repulsion. Magic allows you to create something out of nothing or turn something into nothing. So, wooden chairs like this? It’s nothing special.”

He wasn’t wrong there.

For sure, this field of study called “magic” was so amazing that it even made bringing down a meteor from outer space possible.

The sole issue would be whether you’ve learned the subject in question or not.

“Magicians or wizards wouldn’t normally learn magic like this, after all.”

Using magic to create a tree and then turn that tree into a chair? Without a doubt, as far as utility and application were concerned, “magic” was more outstanding than any other fields Su-hyeun was aware of.

“What’s wrong? Do you want to learn?”

“Excuse me? You mean, magic?”

“That’s right. Well, it’s not all that tough to learn, you know? And from the look of things, fella, you seem to be quite proficient with magical energy already.”

Gya-ong—

Miru nodded to say that’s true.

Su-hyeun was flustered by that abrupt offer out of nowhere, but at the same time, he was hurriedly making some internal calculations.

“Well, the offer itself isn’t bad at all…”

In all honesty, learning magic from a dragon would be great from Su-hyeun’s perspective.

Su-hyeun had researched magic several times in the past. Even the Awakener Authority researched the field of magic and had achieved some success.

However, the results from all that research could only be classified as insignificant at best. Compared to a dragon, referred to as the progenitor of magic, or even to the archmages found in various worlds out there, the awakeners capable of using magic were only on the level of a low-ranking magician.

With the help of skills, one could exhibit power that is similar to magic, but it was still not possible to wield numerous different magic spells like real magicians.

“Are you going to teach me for free?”

“Of course not.”

As expected.

Ellid’s quick reply prompted a nod from Su-hyeun as if the latter had already foreseen it.

Although the offer to teach him how to use magic sounded really tempting, he realized that there had to be a reason for Ellid to make such an offer in the first place.

The creatures called dragons were rather calculative. Unlike humans who could sometimes act out of goodwill without expecting anything in return, dragons placed quite a heavy emphasis on the concept of giving and taking.

If a dragon was willing to give something first, then it must have perceived that there was something of equal value to receive in return.

Most of them would try to hide their real intentions just in case their calculations weren’t spot on. But then again, Ellid wasn’t the type to hide his intentions.

Su-hyeun asked, “What’s the condition?”

“I want you to become this village’s hero.”

“Hero”—a word Su-hyeun didn’t really like suddenly popped up. He hated it in all honesty.

However, it was also true that he wasn’t as miffed about it nowadays compared to the past.

And…

“Isn’t that price a little too much?”

Su-hyeun knew better than anyone what Ellid meant by the word “hero.”

“That’s a suitable price to pay if you want to learn magic from me.”

“Alright. I can handle that much.”

It was connected to the goal of this trial, anyway. What he needed to do remained the same, so he wouldn’t be losing out on anything if he got to learn magic on top of it.

“It’s not ‘that much,’ fella. You have no idea what kind of a bastard we’re dealing with.”

“No, I do know. Although it’s not the same creature, I know of a similar one.”

“You do know?”

“The demonic creature that showed up in your world, it’s called Fafnir in my home world.”