Hermit Wizard

The Soul Flows High (1)

“I’m ready.”

In the studio on the lower floor without a window, the reverberation of my voice returned coldly. In front, there were twenty-nine bodies lying side by side. Some of the corpses collected from the beach in Yeong-jong Island some time ago had been burned, and that was what was left. In the meantime, the preservation magic was placed on them, so no further corrosion or damage occurred.

I glanced at Parvache.

“Let’s start.”

The robot nodded, and I closed my eyes. Enormous Mana was concentrated in my chest, and it extended through the junction of the Dimension connected across the Channel. The density of Mana was entirely different from when I opened a Channel to a random dimension.

Just before the Seed Channel was fully opened, an unfinished crack that could lead to any dimension absorbed the Mana. At the same time, the dimensional map stored in the unconscious was awakening. Compressed information shot like an arrow from the deepest sections of my mind to control Mana’s flow. Power began to pave the way.

In the chaos, where countless dimensions overlapped, the Channel moved to find the exact destination. As such, the spearhead of power, which found the Dimension, sensed my contractor and opened the door in front of it.

“…!”

I recited the spell. Through my soul and beyond the Channel, the promised language floated and conveyed the will to the other’s consciousness. Finally, I felt the other party in the contract agree to my call and step into the Channel which was opened before it.

-Ghooooooong!

As the contractor entered the door across the world, a long forefoot covered with black hair popped out from the Channel of my chest. It was a little longer than my waist height. It checked the floor several times with thin legs about as thick as bamboo, and its head was out of the Channel. Then it slowly took the rest of the feet and crossed over entirely.

Before long, the atypical animal pulled its entire body out of the Channel. It looked at me as I deactivated the Channel after the summoning.

=…Ah, already?=

I nodded my head. At first glance, the summoned creature looked like a wolf with a very long snout. However, where the upper and lower lips should be, a sharp beak grew, and its two ears were like palm tree leaves. They appeared to be of the same material used by insects to make cocoons. Compared to the size of the body, the legs were long and slender. Standing on the ground with all four legs, its height reached up to my eyes.

The name of this species was Yodmo, the latest successful summoning I signed.

“Then, according to the contract…”

I pointed to the body lying neatly on the floor.

“Eat their memories. All you have to do is give me the memory of the group they belonged to just before they died.”

Yodmo’s eyes were looking at me…unenthusiastically. I tried not to show confusion on my face and pondered the reasons for such a reaction.

Why? According to the knowledge I gained from Parvache, the race called Yodmo always suffered from hunger. Even when I first called it out to sign a contract and had a conversation through its soul, I could feel the urge of terrible gluttony that was deeply seated in its mind. However, the atmosphere I felt today was totally different. A bit of annoyance now stood in Yodmo’s eyes. What was the reason?

Despite its mood, Yodmo accepted my request according to the contract.

=…Good.=

It walked with its long, slender legs, making a slow, grunting noise, and stood in front of the nearest body. Its legs bent slightly, and its neck stretched, bringing its long snout in front of the corpse to sniff it.

“Will it be okay? I’ve preserved the body, but they were already dead for quite some time…”

=Let’s give it a try.=

Yodmo opened the tip of its snout slightly and stuck out its elongated, pale pink tongue like a snake. It moved its tongue by drawing a vertical line against the body’s philtrum with the tip of its slender tongue. The line was drawn by the tongue, which started in the middle of the body, passed through the nose, brow, and forehead, then turned around the body’s scalp and continued to the upper part of the head that touched the floor.

Yodmo left a fine line on the body’s head with the fluid collected at the tip of its tongue, then put its tongue back in its mouth and waited for a few seconds. And…

Geeck!

The head of the body, which had been left still on the floor, split from side to side with an intense sound. The cross-section of the broken skull was smooth as if cut masterfully with a knife. The place where Yodmo’s tongue passed created this elaborate crack. The brain was revealed through the open skull. At first glance, it was in poor condition. However, Yodmo didn’t mind and stuck its beak through the crack.

-Slurp slurp, slurp.

When I heard the creature suck the brain up, my expression distorted with unease. Yodmo moved slowly, never in a hurry. It opened all twenty-nine heads and ate all the brains present inside them. After the large meal, Yodmo approached me.

“Will it take some time to sort them?”

=It’s already done.=

Yodmo chewed and spat out an opaque bead. It didn’t fall to the floor but floated in the air, hovering around its mouth.

=Out of 29 memories, only information on the group that they belonged to until the time of their death was sorted and put together. Most of them belonged to several duplication groups, but the places where they truly felt a belonging were all the same. But the problem…=

Yodmo continued speaking, striking the bead with the tip of its nose.

=There are memories damaged over time after death, but it looks like something was caught in magic. Due to its influence, some parts were volatilized at the time of death. The remaining memories are not complete.=

“I guessed that already.”

That’s why we had to destroy the spells while they were alive. It was best to destroy the spells before they died, then press the Fake God to make them confess with his power. If the Fake God didn’t obey my threats, then I could have signed a contract with Yodmo and pulled out all of its memories alive.

Unlike the Fake God, Yodmo could extract memories from dead creatures. However, the power seemed to be less effective than when targeting living and thinking creatures. Still, using this bead would reveal more information than the Fake God found. Yodmos were real specialists when it came to retrieving memories.

“Then…the first request ends here. Return to your original Dimension…”

=Wait a minute.=

“Well?”

Was there anything else? The Yodmo looked at me for a moment with its unmotivated eyes, then teased his mouth and again spat out another opaque bead. This time, the size was much larger.

=All memories except for the memories that were classified earlier. It contains both superficial and unconscious memories. This is from the 29, too.=

“What, you don’t need it?”

Yodmo quietly nodded its head.

“…I don’t mind it, but originally, the terms of the contract were that I would take the memories that I wanted, and you eat the rest for each call, right?”

=It was.=

Yodmo responded drowsily. This was a little strange, no matter how much I looked at it. A race called Yodmo was the superior entity that crystallized and consumed memory. For them to be satisfied, they must eat the enormous memories of beings that had lived for a very long time, and this race didn’t have the power to deal with such a long-lived species.

Therefore, they mainly hunt for lower-level beings who were weaker than themselves and ate away their memories. Even if they eat the memories for such a short time, it is said that they didn’t always grow full. That was why most Yodmos were always starving and suffered from hunger that was close to madness. This Yodmo contracted with me was no different. Until the moment when the first contract was signed.

=…In fact, even though you didn’t ask for a few days, I was trying to get the first request on the very day of the contract.=

Yes, it was a few days ago that I signed the contract with this Yodmo. After signing the contract, I asked for a few days before making the first request. This was because it took time to restore the deviated corpses to their normal state by applying the preservation magic.

=Usually, it doesn’t feel like I eat anything even though I ate the memories of a human-like you for several years.

“…”

On the day I first called it, Yodmo demanded two kinds of prices from me. One was the price for the act of signing a contract with itself, the superior being. The other was the price that I had to pay every time I called out and requested. What Yodmo, who first appeared in the world, requested as a price for a contract…was my memory as the summoner, as Parvache expected. This was like a kind of ritual procedure.

And the discussion about what memories to pay in return had already been done with Parvache. I didn’t want to categorize the memories to hand over. For example, if I say take only useless memories, the standard was unclear. If Yodmo randomly classified and passed the memories that shouldn’t be lost, there was a risk of affecting the magic.

So, we decided to set the period in which the memory was accumulated and agreed to cut it. Losing memory after meeting Parvache was dangerous. It went without saying any more about the memories of learning magic. So, I decided to give Yodmo all the memories from birth to the year I met Parvache, the year I was seven, in return. This memory’s scope included memories that I could consciously access and those that had sunk in the deep swamp of oblivion in the subconscious.

That memory was too short, so Yodmo looked unpleasant (at first, he asked for more than 20 years of memory!) Still, I convinced it that it was a third of my life so far, and it barely signed the contract. As a result, I now had no memories of until the age of 7 in my mind. Before summoning the Yodmo, I made a record in advance. Of all the memories until the age of seven, everything that could have been remembered was documented before summoning the Yodmo. Maybe later, something difficult might arise because of the memory loss.

After signing the contract and losing my memory, I first opened my laptop and checked the files. And I encountered an unfamiliar childhood record. It must have been a document I wrote, but I couldn’t believe what I thought about writing this document. All of the past events described in this document felt like someone else’s life. Yodmo’s power was so sophisticated that I still had memories of writing this file. Still, no memories of the memories I would have had in my head as I typed the document. Not only the memories accumulated until the age of 7 were deleted, but all the memories that had come to mind after the age of 7 were deleted.

Yodmo spoke, looking at me with obsidian-like eyes.

=If I look at the object, I can see how much memory it is. At first glance, you had about 20 years of memory. Combining the conscious memory and the unconscious memory.=

It was saying something similar to what the Fake God told me.

=What I ate out of your memories…it was definitely only about six years. So, I waited for the first request. Expecting how many humans would have been prepared. Since you signed a contract with me, I hoped you would prepare for two or three hundred if you had common sense.=

“…”

=But…things gradually changed over time.=

“What does that mean?”

Yodmo said, pushing the crystal with its nose.

=Anyway, I’ll give you all the memories of 29 humans. I will not eat this.=

“Yodmo refuses to eat?”

=Yes. I didn’t know I was going to say this. It’s my first time feeling it since I was born, but…=

Yodmo looked at me.

=I’m so full right now.=

* * *

Yodmo was…full?

Parvache and I were staring at it, dumbfounded. Looking at us, Yodmo continued.

=I obviously cut your memories up to 7 years old, crystallized them, and swallowed them. It usually takes a few minutes to digest. I checked the size with my own eyes.=

Tapping the bead of memory the size of my fist floating around its mouth, it added.

=The size that crystallized your memory is far less than this bead. It was tiny and insignificant.=

It made a groaning sound, expressing subtle feelings that seemed to be half mixed with satisfaction and dissatisfaction.

=But while the crystal was being digested in my stomach, something strange happened. Even now, the phenomenon of The Vial of Adelegos is occurring.=

Yodmo cited the divine relic, which collected and stored sounds of all dimensions. The vial was said to have created rivers and streams where sound flows in A-Verdag because the bottle’s size didn’t meet God’s greed.

=In the process of digesting the tiny crystal, memories of unknown identity are continually being released and filling my stomach. Your childhood memories are already digested and over. This is a memory like a black fog that I cannot interpret. It looks like it was compressed and embedded in a size smaller than dust in the deep bottom of your memories before the age of 7 years. It seems like it’s recovering the original size while I digest it. However, even if I digest this, there is no end.=

Then Yodmo said, pointing at me.

=I knew you were a unique human. Opening doors to multiple dimensions, bringing in an entity like me, and signing a contract, it seems that there was a side effect, right? This enormous amount of inexplicable memory is probably not yours. The fact that memories that are not yours are piled up at the bottom of your mind is a phenomenon that I saw only in high-level wizards a long time ago…anyway, I am very full, thanks to that.=

I couldn’t understand Yodmo’s words well. Since it said it was so large, I thought that the dimensional map under the unconsciousness was judged as memory, and some of it was taken, but it seems that wasn’t the case. I checked the map when I summoned it a while ago, but there were no signs of damage. Most of all, the map was implanted into me after I met Parvache. There was no reason to have dimensional maps mixed with memories before the age of seven.

Yodmo looked at me before continuing.

=Since you often sign contracts of souls with superior beings, their compressed memories have likely flowed into your subconscious. It can’t be your real memory, can it?=

Hmm? That was also a bit strange. I started the summoning after meeting Parvache. How did the memories of the superiors’ blend into my memories before the age of 7? Yodmo signaled me to reopen the Channel without worrying about my upset expression.

There were many more questions I would have liked to ask, but Yodmo had done all of his work, so I had to follow the other person’s intentions according to the contract. And the Yodmo was hoping to go back right away. I opened the Channel on my chest, and Yodmo looked back at me as if it had something on its mind while trying to get into it.

=Thanks to that, I learned the feeling of being full. Even if it were a memory shared by a superior person, it would be over if I digested it for a few more days, but it would be better to give compensation.=

Perhaps because it was reluctant to be penalized because the contract was interpreted as unfair, Yodmo stopped its steps going back. Then it cuts off part of its ear without touching it. In the inner wing-like ear of an insect, one of the numerous branches was cut off and slowly flew to me. I held it in my hand.

=Ask the spirit who advises you what it is for.=

With those words left behind, Yodmo returned to its original Dimension.