Chapter 100 - Breaking Through the Ceiling

Even when the world falls apart, people's everyday lives rarely change dramatically overnight.

The Supreme Mages were no exception.

Back in our private barracks, we Supreme Mages were staring gravely at our smartphone screens. The strangest pairing among us had to be Lee Se-jun and Go Ryeo-ha.

They were perched on a bunk, chatting quietly as they took turns looking at each other's phones.

"You don't use filters much, Ryeo-ha?"

"Hmm? Oh, I hardly ever take selfies, so I don't have much reason to use them. Even when I do take a selfie, I forget and just snap it~."

"Lots of food pictures, too. And some textbook photos."

"There's a picture of my bag after I organized it. Peace! Doesn't getting your bag all neat and tidy just make you feel good?"

Anyone watching would think Se-jun was trying to pick her up.

If I hadn't known his sordid truth, I would have thought him pathetic for chasing women while the world went down the toilet.

Part of me actually wished he were hitting on her.

But the cold, lucid reason of Archmage Baek Je-min saw exactly why Se-jun was talking to Go Ryeo-ha, whom he'd hated so much.

The truth was uglier and crueler.

It was precisely why Na-in had attached himself to the pastor early on and started fiddling with the Bible text-to-speech app.

If I hadn't been keeping watch in case Se-jun suddenly went off the rails, I would have gagged and turned my attention elsewhere long ago.

"Don't just look at my phone~. So, what do you read, Se-jun?"

"Here. These are the stories I've been enjoying lately."

Se-jun was learning.

He was keeping that glaring inferiority complex tightly under wraps as he talked to the girl he'd envied so bitterly.

"[I Became a Princess, but I'm Deliberately Streaming as a Virtual Idol]... Pfft, hehehe... Hahahaha! What kind of title is that? It tells you nothing about the story!"

"The protagonist turns into a beautiful girl one day and, out of all the possible careers, chooses livestreaming. Specifically, virtual streaming with a rigged avatar. It's mainly about the incidents and mishaps that follow."

"Oh! Is it more serious than it sounds? About struggling with identity, torn between a virtual self and a real self?"

"No. You read it looking forward to the moment the protagonist's photo leaks and the viewers, who assumed the person behind the avatar would look ordinary, freak out and say, 'Wait! The person inside is that pretty, too?'"

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

I couldn't take any more. I turned away.

I'd reached my vomiting threshold.

Life was too short even for good thoughts, beautiful sights, and pleasant words, and I'd just etched something utterly sordid into my memory.

That didn't mean I wanted to join the Jesus-freak duo making asses of themselves beside us.

Pastor Park Yo-han was lifting his glasses by one temple and sneaking a look at the smartphone screen Na-in was tapping.

"Pastor, the app is much better than I expected. Finding someone to outsource it to can't have been easy while you were planting a church."

"Hey, Shin Na-in. Where would I get the money for that? This is the age of AI. You ought to be able to make one little revised-Bible TTS app yourself. If we're going to drive out the electronic Satans, we have to give the electronic gospel front our all!"

That left me with only Hamza.

And Hamza's only option was me, Baek Je-min.

Our eyes naturally met. We gathered at the table we usually ate at and started with a sigh.

As the only two sane members of the Supreme Mages, we could do nothing but lament.

"Hamza, want to watch the news, at least?"

"Yes..."

While everyone else indulged in their own bullshit, only Hamza and I were witnessing a historic moment with a commitment to saving the nation and humanity in our hearts.

The ROK–U.S. Joint Command's standing had risen with Congress's authorization of war. At its pinnacle stood Marshal McKinsey, who had inherited most of the virtually defunct Korean government's military and was running it under American generals.

The Marshal McKinsey who appeared at the press conference looked vigorous and sturdy.

Whenever reporters bombarded him with pointed questions, he politely brushed them aside with brief answers about no comment, military secrets, and so on.

But anyone who'd actually met him would notice right away.

Hamza and I immediately saw that this wasn't the real Marshal McKinsey. This one's shoulders were much broader than the real man's.

"It's a double."

"Is that because of the Gangnam Clairvoyant?"

Once the AI subtitles started doing their job, we could follow the press conference.

["We've heard reports that you're currently facing a large-scale rebellion in Seongnam. Is that true?"]

["The soldiers in Seongnam have fought bravely and are merely asking for their due. Command plans to honor their requests for rest by gradually rotating them out and redeploying them to the rear."]

There are two broad kinds of censorship.

One cuts everything out and shuts it down so thoroughly that you can't even mention it. The other throws out bait to conceal what really matters. Apparently, the United States had chosen the latter this time.

To hide the truth about Unit 55, the private army commanded by the Society of 66, they'd dangled a plausible, convincing, sensational story: overworked soldiers in Seongnam were preparing a rebellion to demand rotation to the rear.

But Hamza and I knew how heavy the truth really was.

11:47 a.m., May 11, 2028.

All of us Supreme Mages had been ordered onto emergency standby.

Rather than deploy us immediately, the ROK–U.S. Joint Command had chosen to rain down artillery shells.

They believed shelling could break up most of the enemy forces. We were included in the reserves to deal with hostile mages who might nevertheless break through the curtain of fire.

We couldn't know everything happening in northern Seongnam.

But it was clear that the military which had cordoned off Seoul had once again weighed lives on a cruel scale and made a cold decision.

The Jesus-freak duo's softly drifting hymns and the fuss Ryeo-ha and Se-jun were making over stories from before the world went to shit all had a reason behind them. That was why I wasn't cussing them out.

Anyone could see it.

To face an unprecedented enemy like mages, you needed information.

You couldn't casually expend mages—scarce strategic and tactical assets—to obtain that information.

Besides, Seongnam had already been breached once. As a result, its soldiers had effectively been ordered to fight to the last man under the pretext of stopping the infection's spread.

What decision would Command make, then?

Somehow everyone would work together, stop everything, and keep things running without a hitch?

If the world were that much of a fairy tale, wouldn't the monsters be adorable, fluffy little rabbits?

When faced with a heartless decision, people inevitably ask how anyone could do such a thing and insist it can't be true.

But war is heartless by nature.

And now that this had been designated a war, they would avoid pointless sacrifices but compel meaningful ones.

If I were Marshal McKinsey—if I were that old man—this was the decision I'd make.

'Even if it costs us some blood, we must find out what magic these mages use.'

Not to pursue incredible magic, but to learn the capabilities of the enemies we had to face.

Feeling as though bitter bile were rising in my throat, I tapped at my innocent smartphone screen for no reason.

Hamza blinked, then spoke in a slightly dejected voice.

"Je-min, how about some news from Pakistan?"

"Want to look at Jeju Island instead? There's an uproar over them refusing refugees from the mainland."

Sometimes the truth is light, and sometimes it's heavy.

This time, it was simply heavy.

A wise person neither lets the truth overwhelm them nor turns away from it. They take it in stride with a laugh.

I was already prepared.

If Korean soldiers were going to grind away their lives to seize even one clue about the magic I wanted to know, I had absolutely no reason to stop them.

I'd reduce the burden and risk to my own life, acquire only the information, and obtain magic more safely.

Helping someone if I happened to run into them along the way—that was the limit of Baek Je-min's meddling.

* * *

8:25 a.m., May 12, 2028.

Our assignment as Supreme Mages had become identifying enemies and giving them nicknames.

We were still on emergency standby, but as the strongest mages currently outside the cordon, we had to be deployed cautiously.

At Reality Survival Command, we received all manner of photographs and records provided by Lieutenant General Royce, Lieutenant General Thatcher, and Major General Jeon Min-ho, then put our heads together to puzzle over and classify them.

Chaotic communications logs. Inconsistent testimony. Disjointed clues that sounded like a madman's ramblings.

It was far too cruel a demand for someone who broke all the pieces whenever he was told to solve a puzzle.

"Wow. How the hell am I supposed to connect this crap and turn it into useful information?"

And my colleagues weren't always helpful.

"Ahem. Baek Je-min and Shin Na-in can handle this. I need to go pray to the Lord."

"It's dangerous. But I'm not really sure what's dangerous..."

"Ehehe... I can't really tell who's who from the photos. I only went around the Konkuk University area."

Useless fucking bastards. Yet, paradoxically, the otherwise useless Se-jun came into his own in this crisis.

"They'll only have unsupported infantry anyway. They'll never get through. However little you think of the Republic of Korea's military, it has one of the world's most powerful artillery forces. The units stationed in Seongnam may be exhausted, but they've gained combat experience under the harshest conditions imaginable. Even with our magic, breaking through wouldn't be easy."

Fortunately, the Supreme Mages had Shin Na-in, a Stage Three ear mage unrivaled in detection and gathering information.

He'd been looking down at a drone photograph of a survivor for some time.

The survivor had the typical look of a Seoul mage.

A thick padded jacket that allowed plenty of movement, sweatpants, sneakers, and a bloodstained length of rebar being dragged along.

Na-in stared at the photograph, sipped coffee from his tumbler, and frowned.

"They've laid hands on the devil's power. And it's not as though they lack a means of breaking through."

"Magic? Come on, how great can magic really be? It doesn't seem that amazing, and no matter how impressive the Gangnam Clairvoyant is, against the military..."

"They have drones."

The instant Se-jun decisively folded his arms and puffed himself up, Na-in answered.

"Their tactic is to have hard-to-kill mages draw the military's reconnaissance and firepower onto themselves, while drones inflict the actual damage."

Major General Jeon Min-ho's eyebrows twitched. He planted both hands on the table and leaned down.

For the moment, I just listened.

The fact that they had drones was surprising enough. The insane plan to use them to breach the cordon was another surprise.

True to his profession, Jeon Min-ho pointed out the gaps in Na-in's explanation.

"But explosives must be in extremely short supply in Seoul. Chemical munitions have already been dropped on northern Seongnam, and there can't be many practitioners of localized penetrative alteration activity like Miss Go Ryeo-ha, capable of Hand Branch, Stage Four: Material Transformation. How could they breach the cordon with that quantity?"

Rather than an interrogation denying the facts, however, his question sounded more like a conviction that there must be something else.

Na-in removed his headset and nodded, his expression cold and stiff.

"Drone bombardment doesn't require explosives."

"What do you..."

At that moment, I snapped my fingers to draw everyone's attention.

SNAP!

Just as intended.

"Je-min?"

"Je-min, Na-in is saying something important."

I hadn't stolen their attention for nothing.

Faced with this perfect opportunity to farm attention, my brain was working like crazy.

Above all, my pride couldn't tolerate Na-in hogging the spotlight.

An idea flashed through my mind.

The answer lay in our fight with Ski Goggles.

"Monsters."

Na-in looked at me with an inscrutable gleam in his eyes.

We both thought the other was a piece of shit. I could plainly see him experiencing that peculiar irritation which surged when someone like that actually understood you.

"Hang a monster from a drone and crash it into people to drop the thing on them. That's a bombing run."

The clues connected explosively in my head.

Ski Goggles coating a skewer in Amalgam bodily fluids, attaching a predatory spine to his arm and using it like a whip-sword.

Some Seoul mages had demonstrated how they could exploit monsters' lethality to humans, subdue them, and use them as weapons instead.

These bastards had already been casually stealing and using military radios, too.

And the special forces had installed Wi-Fi along Line Three to operate drones while scouting inside Seoul, then retreated and left it there...

The infrastructure for operating drones was already in place.

But however neatly the clues fit, one thing—just one—was missing.

It was why Pastor Park Yo-han shook his head with an unimpressed expression.

"Sounds plausible... And considering Na-in's magic, it has to be right... But, honestly. Where are they getting the drones? Can those Seoul bastards just whip them up? The people outside the cordon should be better at making drones. I wonder if the Society of 66 is targeting Na-in specifically and feeding him useless information."

"The Society of 66 does have hand-branch mages, but even if they mobilized everyone who can use Sorcery-type magic, they couldn't make enough drone-like devices to meet their needs. Of course, they could prepare them for one decisive strike."

Ryeo-ha, who knew the most about the Society's internal affairs, backed the pastor's opinion.

In the end, all our discussion yielded no answer. We settled for giving a simple nickname to the Seoul mage in the photograph who'd leaked this information to us.

"Sporty Rebar. Dragging that rebar around means there's definitely something to it."

"Where did 'sporty' come from?"

"Sneakers and sweatpants. It's sporty."

The pastor's naming sense was on full display.

Jeon Min-ho sweated profusely as he explained our conversation to Lieutenant Generals Royce and Thatcher. The drone discussion evidently bothered him. It was certainly too chilling a possibility to ignore, and a threat well worth considering.

Then, at 2:46 a.m. on May 13, 2028.

BEEEEEP! BEEEEEP!

I opened my eyes to the eerie blare of an emergency alert in the dead of night.

Instantly wide awake, I snatched up the phone I'd left on the locker beside my bunk.

"The world's like this and they're still sending emergency alerts?"

If this wasn't a disaster big enough to justify that alarm, I was seriously going to find the cell tower and shoot—

[2:44 a.m. Collapse of Seongnam cordon imminent.]

[2:45 a.m. Namhansanseong Entrance Station breached.]

Empty wagons make the most noise. The real thing only needs one sentence.

Half out of my mind, I changed clothes, equipped the full set—rain poncho, gun, and gas mask—and rushed toward Command. From the commotion around me, the other Supreme Mages were clearly awake, too.

The moment I ran out of the barracks, I heard a siren shaking the entire camp.

A siren wailing in short, broken bursts.

An air-raid warning.

Under a night sky densely studded with stars, lights were blooming across the dark camp.

That was when I felt someone beside me as I pounded down the road.

I glanced over. Se-jun was rapidly checking his phone. He'd only been a lowly staff sergeant, but he'd been a military NCO nonetheless. I figured his soldierly attitude and bearing might have helped him quietly build connections within the camp, so I cut straight to the point.

"What... what hap..."

Even with Heart Stage One boosting my stamina, talking while running was still too much. Fuck.

"Drones."

Amid overlapping frantic shouts and footsteps, Se-jun narrowed his eyes and showed me the screen bouncing with his stride.

"Made in China, apparently."

"That's so... fucking obvious..."

No.

On second thought, no.

Sure, the circumstantial evidence was fucking obvious. But if they insisted stock released before the crisis had somehow found its way in, there wasn't much anyone could do.

The harder I breathed, the clearer my head became.

I knew how radically the world had changed, yet I'd made the mistake of failing to connect that change to one particular thing.

The events the news had covered endlessly.

The Chinese People's Liberation Army entering Ganghwa Island and taking control of Incheon's administration. A new administrative head elected by vote. The establishment of the ROK–China Combined Command and its absorption of isolated troops in northern Gyeonggi. The parade of former PLA volunteer troops in Anyang, a joint security area...

I'd overlooked far too much of what I'd only seen in the news and never truly felt because it hadn't directly affected me.

A new struggle for hegemony.

As I ran toward Command, practically foaming at the mouth, I realized it.

China was currently bankrolling the Seoul mages.

More than a few possible motives came to mind.

But only one mattered most.

Knowledge of magic?

With the main U.S. fleet set to be stationed here and a massive troop deployment planned, could the desire for magic outweigh China's strategic nightmare: the expansion of American military-government influence on the Korean Peninsula?

More importantly, there was something China had demanded relentlessly since the crisis began.

Something it had been forced to abandon when seasonal winds stood in the way and international opinion turned against it.

Merely contemplating that possibility made me feel both dizzy and electrified.

It was so fucking thrilling that laughter burst out of me.

"Hohoho, hahahahahaha!"

"Je-min? Have you lost your mind?"

"Hahahahaha!!!"

Nukes.

China was building a pretext because it simply wanted to launch nukes.

It just wanted to wipe the whole fucking mess away.

The fact that China wanted to launch nukes filled me with both fear and elation.

Of course, it was still speculation. But the mere possibility that it might be true made me feel as though my brain were melting.