Chapter 107 - Our Time

Me, Shin Na-in, and the pastor.

The three of us decided to wind through narrow alleys rather than take the main road. There was no grand reason for it—we had heard a loudspeaker coming from that direction.

Apparently, they had heard the fighting just now. A voice steeped in paranoid vigilance boomed through the loudspeaker, delivering a message that drove home what it meant to be on the very front line of the cordon.

[All civilians and straggling soldiers are to remain calm, stay clear of military personnel, and await inspection by a search team. This is a warning. Any civilians or straggling soldiers who approach military personnel without first undergoing inspection by a search team will be shot. That is all!]

I turned to glance at Na-in, and he nodded.

"They're surviving military personnel, all right."

The fog in Seongnam was so thin that it felt like a shallow layer of pale dust on the road.

Breathing in the smell of raw rubber inside our gas masks, the three of us decided to start by examining the traces left by the enemy ambushers. We couldn't waste Na-in's intelligence-gathering abilities: Ear, Stage Three, [Conversation of the Dead], and Eye, Stage One, [Past Sight].

Even a brain-dead dumbass like me knew that anyone who fought without information was an idiot. We Supreme Mages were still alive and fighting because, even when dragged into battles we didn't want, we never stopped gathering clues and observing.

We swept our feet through fog mixed with broken glass and concrete dust, making our way toward the bodies.

The alley where we'd been ambushed was about two lanes wide, with no centerline. Low-rise apartment buildings lined both sides, shops on the ground floor and homes above. We'd entered it after passing the armored vehicles abandoned on the main road, but even here, an armored vehicle or Humvee sat in the middle of the alley every so often.

As we searched the buildings, Na-in used [Past Sight] through Eye, Stage One, [Cognitive Expansion], to check for possible booby traps. I was still staggering from the aftereffects of using Eye, Stage Two, [Cognitive Distortion] at 100%, so I'd stepped back to distribute our suffering strategically.

Na-in quietly knelt, letting out a long, tense breath through his gas mask's filter as he looked around. Using his rifle as a walking stick, he wound its sling around his right hand and planted the stock on the ground while sweeping aside the pale dust and fog with his left.

After a moment, he stood and adjusted his grip on the rifle.

"All clear. Let's go."

"Weird bastards. They set an ambush but didn't bother with booby traps."

I was glad there weren't any, but it was still baffling. I'd heard stories about grenades rigged to tripwires, ready to go bang the instant you made a mistake.

The pastor took a short, labored breath before speaking.

"They might be saving their explosives. Or they never considered that the ambush could fail. Let's go look. We might find something."

That made sense. In a world with magic, it wasn't as though failing to use a few booby traps would kill you.

The first enemy corpse we found was beside the concrete railing of an apartment building's exterior stairs. Blood had streamed down the steps and was now congealing into a sticky mess.

The body hung over the railing like laundry, folded forward so we couldn't identify it. Not that I particularly wanted to touch it. Unless there were mage remains to be had, people generally didn't like touching other people's corpses.

The pastor and I naturally lowered ourselves and watched our surroundings. This battlefield was completely different from Seoul, where thick fog blanketed everything. If the enemy had anything resembling a sniper, we might get picked off without ever knowing what hit us. We couldn't cling to the same methods in a different environment.

Meanwhile, Na-in crouched on a step and gently closed his eyes.

The pastor and I sat side by side against the concrete railing of the exterior stairs, keeping watch. Na-in sat on a step with his eyes shut, beside the blood running from the corpse.

An odd silence settled over us for a moment. Then Na-in opened his eyes and broke it.

"He's an ordinary person."

"What?"

I grabbed the corpse's legs, pulled it toward me, and lowered it onto the stairs. A little rough, sure, but I considered showing tender affection to someone who'd mercilessly sprayed bullets at me a mental illness.

Of course, there were limits. I did carefully support his head so it wouldn't smash against the steps.

Holding him that way, I quickly inspected the body.

Name tag removed. White bandage around the left arm instead of an armband, with 55 written on it in blood. Gas mask on.

He matched the description of Unit 55 I'd heard from the American generals a few days ago, so it was hard to believe he was an ordinary person. Unit 55 used white bandages with 55 written in blood in place of armbands to distinguish friend from foe.

That was definitely what they'd said, wasn't it?

The pastor voiced my question for me.

"Na-in, what's going on?"

Pastor Park Yo-han fiddled needlessly with his gas mask's chin strap. Na-in stared at the corpse I was supporting, then slowly shook his head.

"They're soldiers who defected. They're deploying ordinary troops alongside the practitioners of holy-war arts to protect their actual fighting force."

"!"

At that instant, a belated realization flashed through my head.

Every member of Unit 55 was supposed to be a Stage One alteration-type mage, with ear mages making up most of each squad. Na-in had even explained the tactics they'd used in their earlier engagement with special forces: the ear mages served as both radiomen and riflemen, coordinating seamlessly.

In that case, there was no reason to loudly signal the troops to fire through an external speaker. As long as a single ear mage could communicate with their commander, the Yellow-Bandage Deserter, they could all receive the signal telepathically and act on it.

That would've made for a much more effective surprise attack...

I should've realized they had non-mage troops the moment Yellow-Bandage gave the firing signal.

In other words...

"So this bastard doesn't have any mage remains?"

"Baek Je-min, you little shit. There you go talking like the scum of the earth again. Put the body down before you speak."

SPLAT!

That was the sound of the back of the corpse's head sinking into the blood.

He'd defected and even shot at me, and the bastard hadn't dropped any mage remains, either. Still, considering he'd once busted his ass on the cordon, I set him down gently instead of throwing him off the stairs.

That was the extent of my love for humanity.

"Let's check the next corpse."

"Yes. It looks like there's a lot we need to learn."

"Boys, you need to learn to love your enemies, too. They may have been brothers and sisters who believed in the Lord."

We spent about an hour searching the alley and tending to the bodies. By tending to them, I mean laying them down and folding their hands together.

We couldn't even find traces of the ones torn apart by suicide drones.

In the end, we recovered five bodies. Three belonged to non-mage troops. Exactly one was a mage—the would-be machine gunner turned out to be a heart mage.

Yes, the same guy I'd shot first when he set up his bipod on a windowsill and tried to fire his machine gun.

The machine-gunning heart mage had been in a rented apartment full of abandoned furniture and an unpowered refrigerator. Energy-bar wrappers scattered near the balcony suggested he'd held out there for quite a while.

It was ridiculous that I had to tend to the body of someone I'd killed, but the pastor raised such hell that I had no choice.

"Je-min, death is the end. The instant a person dies, judgment passes into the Lord's hands. The living must show at least a minimum of respect, whatever sins that person committed in life. Understood?"

"I did show a minimum of respect."

Surely not mangling the corpses of people who'd tried to fill me with bullets put my character in the top ten percent. The pastor's standards were just too high.

Naturally, Na-in the yes-man reacted differently.

"Just as I'd expect of you, Pastor. Hearing you preach the attitude all believers in the true faith should embrace has enlightened me anew."

"That's our Na-in. Your spirit is awake."

"Kill them all, and God shall judge them. Amen."

"That's something those heretics who worship the pope and Mary said!!!"

The split in the Christian-freak duo invited the intervention of a wise mediator.

"Hold a trial. No need to tell us the verdict."

"Do you possess some special insight, Je-min?"

One solid metallic sound carried more weight than a hundred words.

CLICK.

As I slipped my finger inside the trigger guard and made to rest it lightly on the trigger, we Supreme Mages recovered our usual unity.

Na-in immediately began extracting information through Ear, Stage Three, [Conversation with the Dead], while the pastor and I searched cautiously and kept watch.

I adjusted my grip on my AR-15, looking over the closed bedroom doors.

Keep the rifle tucked against my body, ready to fire. Stay ready to bite my tongue and activate Eye, Stage Two, [Cognitive Distortion]. Blink to check my eyes.

All three checks passed.

My eyes felt a little dry, but perhaps thanks to my increased mastery, the penalty had definitely lessened compared with the way tears used to pour down my face.

With almost no fog here, this would do.

Leaving Na-in busy talking to the corpse, I beckoned to the pastor.

"My eyes are starting to recover, so let's check the other rooms and any lockers inside. I'll check for danger. You stay behind me, act as a totem, and cover me."

"What's this 'totem' nonsense? Sounds idolatrous. Just call me a cross."

"Haaah."

Fuck it. I'll let him win.

"Come along, Mr. Cross."

"Okay."

No red footprints appeared in [Future Sight: Ten Seconds Ahead], accessed through Eye, Stage One, [Cognitive Expansion].

Na-in hadn't mentioned any monsters, either, but after encountering that insane Skin-tapeworm in Anyang, I couldn't afford to let my guard down. Our opponents weren't monsters or a non-mage army. They were mages, just like me.

I didn't want to do something as idiotic as getting careless around mages.

I approached the tightly shut bedroom door with extreme caution.

SLAP!

First, I pressed my back flat against the wall beside the door, not in front of it. Instructor Song Smith had drilled it into me that standing in front of a door was absolutely insane.

From there, my cautious efforts continued.

I inspected the handle thoroughly before pulling it, tapped it with my rifle stock in case something activated on contact with a hand, knocked on the door for good measure, and cautiously offered a greeting.

"Anyone home?"

"Je-min, what are you doing?"

"Shh."

I could see the pastor's face growing redder by the moment, but a life was at stake. I thought it was wrong to approach saving lives carelessly.

Especially when the life at stake wasn't someone else's, but mine. All the more reason to be careful.

These days, if you died doing something reckless, you'd end up a thirty-second laugh dispenser on YouTube Shorts.

But the pastor clicked his tongue at my caution and grabbed the handle.

"Enough. Move aside. I can't stand watching this, you coward."

"Oh dear, you really don't have to."

Despite my vigorous protest, he turned the handle and flung the door open.

It was an old bedroom that looked like a one-room rental, the sort that should've reeked of mold and stale dust. Apparently, it hadn't been ventilated properly; dampness had settled into mold on the wallpaper.

A crumpled blanket lay on the floor. A desk occupied one corner of the tiny room, with writing implements and notebooks abandoned in a jumble.

I checked the wallpaper for possible bloodstains, but I wasn't skilled enough to distinguish them from all that mold. I could have done it with Eye, Stage One, strengthened by Tongue, Stage One, but I didn't want to waste my precious pain on that.

Information mattered, sure, but information had grades, too.

Since it wasn't immediately important, I decided to look for useful records among the scraps of paper on the desk instead. Thanks to the pastor opening the door for me, searching inside was much easier.

"Why does this little shit do perfectly well, then turn into an imbecile over the strangest things?"

"I can hear you, Pastor."

"You're supposed to. I don't talk behind people's backs."

"Then just compliment me."

Not talking behind people's backs was a given. It wasn't a reason for him to act so shamelessly.

Letting the pastor's curses about what a complete son of a bitch I was go in one ear and out the other, I cleared away dried-up ballpoint pens and pencils with broken leads. Seeing such antiquated writing tools used in the smartphone era gave me a rough idea of the survivor's situation.

They probably hadn't been in a position to use a phone.

The Gangnam Clairvoyant had begun trying to breach the cordon a few days ago, but Seongnam had been the front line long before that. With ten million Seoul residents being shot down, evacuating Seongnam's residents had probably been put off day after day.

I suspected the owner had been a Gyeonggi resident stranded in northern Seongnam.

The notebooks had yellowed and were full of complex equations and English vocabulary, apparently remnants of past studies. Useful in peacetime, perhaps, but reduced to utterly useless knowledge in a situation like this.

Good thing I'd learned magic early. The times were moving toward the Republic of Korea becoming a magical superpower.

Just as I was thinking that, I found a notebook whose ink was comparatively fresher.

When I picked it up, the pastor stopped cursing and sidled over to peer over my shoulder.

"Find something?"

"Let's take a look."

* * *

April 23.

The cordon finally broke.

They say they drove the monsters back again, but anyone who believes that is a fucking idiot.

They've been putting off the evacuation for months now.

Everyone shuts their doors, observes curfew, and avoids meeting people without even being told by the military.

I'm lonely.

But I don't want to become a monster.

This is worse than COVID.

I want to have fun.

April 26.

I found a note under the front door. The secret it revealed was so shocking that I decided to write it down separately.

I don't know if it's true, but I need to vent, and there's nowhere to do it, so I'm writing instead.

They knew, apparently.

Apparently, all the National Assembly members ran away knowing those monster bastards were coming, and the president who went to Incheon is a body double. Nobody even knows where the real one went.

Is this a fucking country?

Powerless bastards like me get eaten trying to stop monsters, while all the higher-ups run away?

And after all that, they call me a criminal if I don't join the military.

May 1.

Military police knocked on my door.

They left for now, but fuck, I'm scared shitless.

Fucking hell.

I've seen what those monster bastards are like. Who'd be insane enough to join the military?

Who's going to fight? I've seen everyone at the top run away while the others fight and get blown apart. Who the hell's going to fight?

The guys guarding the cordon?

So what?

That doesn't mean I have to do it too, fuck...

May 2.

Someone reported me

fuckfuckfuck...

I want to live too

Mom

* * *

"Tsk."

The pastor, who'd been reading over my shoulder, was the first to click his tongue.

"You have to fulfill your duty to defend the nation. A young man running away and hiding when his country's in crisis. Reading this makes me realize Se-jun isn't such a bad person after all. He has principles."

"You're usually harsher on him than anyone else."

"I told Se-jun how to rid his heart of weakness, but he won't listen. Acting that way while refusing to come to church means he's possessed by Satan, plain and simple."

I carefully gathered the record, straightened it, and decided to tuck it into my ration pocket.

The pastor was angry at the cowardice of a young man who'd refused the mobilization order, but I'd noticed something entirely different. A very serious problem. The most important detail, easily missed at a glance, had caught my eye.

"Pastor, I think the Gangnam Clairvoyant's people spread this rumor."

"Rumor?"

"That the president in Incheon is a body double."

True or not, it made me wonder what exactly the Gangnam Clairvoyant and the group serving under him were trying to achieve.

The Gangnam Clairvoyant could kill depending on his level of awareness of the target. If he'd wanted the real president dead, the president would've already been killed by our enemy.

If the president in Incheon was a fake, the Clairvoyant had killed the real one himself and was pretending not to know. If the president really had gone to Incheon, the Clairvoyant was choosing not to kill him.

Was there something besides revenge?

Come to think of it, why demand that the decision-makers be handed over when he could kill them himself?

Was he actually insane?

As one question led to another, the pastor patted my shoulder.

"Je-min. Hm? Why agonize over it? We all heard the Gangnam Clairvoyant's voice. Na-in did, too."

"Oh."

"Just ask Na-in. It's a clue, right? If you've packed it away, let's go see him. He might be waiting for us."

We had Shin Na-in, the super intelligence-gathering machine.

Shin Na-in.

He couldn't cast flashy killing spells like Fireball or Chain Lightning, but his utility and convenience were phenomenal. Whatever his countless off-putting traits and defective personality, he was so versatile and useful that we couldn't throw him away. The crazy bastard held us hostage with sheer performance.

The pastor and I searched the draft dodger's hideout once more for any other clues, but there was nothing else to find.

If there were further clues, they'd be in the heart mage's memories.

When we returned to the balcony, Na-in had finished [Conversation with the Dead]. He sat astride the heart mage with his headset on, bobbing his head and humming a hymn through his gas mask's filter. Noticing us, he lowered the headset around his neck and shared what he'd learned.

"I've uncovered Yellow-Bandage's tactics."

According to Na-in, Unit 55 wasn't using walkie-talkies and other communication devices merely because of its non-mage troops.

The key lay with the Yellow-Bandage Deserter himself, an Inverted Ear, Stage Three mage.

"The Yellow-Bandage demon pretends to leak information deliberately, getting his opponents to listen and guiding their actions. I suspect that's why he doesn't set booby traps and actively deploys non-mage troops. Being able to direct your opponents' movements however you please would be overwhelming."

"Guide them how?"

"He apparently implants suggestions such as, 'I should take cover there against the ambush,' 'I should throw myself to the right when bullets come,' or 'There must be an ambush here.' He seems capable of distinguishing friend from foe, but this heart practitioner also had a strong suggestion implanted to throw himself right when bullets came."

"Aha."

Unfortunately for the heart mage, he'd been shot dead in slowed time before he could throw himself right.

A plan was always perfect. Until you got your ass kicked.

TAP, TAP.

Na-in tapped his poncho-covered head with his index finger, the corners of his eyes crinkling in a smile behind his gas mask's lenses.

"However, an upright ear-branch practitioner can detect someone's intentions even through communication devices. That's why Yellow-Bandage used vehicles containing human slimes as a kind of jamming system. But that also means the locations where he can spring ambushes are fixed. And now that we've shown him Je-min's [Cognitive Distortion] at 100% defeating his schemes, he'll be wary of launching a rash surprise attack."

Hearing that, the pastor drew his brows together in displeasure.

"Then you're saying Yellow-Bandage guided me into hiding behind that armored vehicle?"

"I can't tell. But considering doctrinal holy-war arts aren't constrained by stages of mastery, I suspect that even if he did guide you, your doctrinal magic may have turned it to our advantage."

As usual, Na-in had learned a great deal.

Se-jun would've just yawned, Ryeo-ha would've whined, and Hamza would've trembled. This lunatic sat on a corpse singing and rattling off information.

I couldn't stand it any longer and called him out.

"Hey, I get it. Now get off the corpse."

"If you've awakened spiritually and wish to respect even these people, Je-min, then certainly."

"You'll damage the remains."

How dare he dirty the fleshy packaging around those precious remains with his ass.

If even a single hair got on the magic script etched into that heart, I'd kill Na-in and steal his ear magic. Then I realized what extracting the heart would actually involve, and my face twisted into a grimace.

"Life sure is cruel. I've never even wrung a chicken's neck."

The pastor looked uneasily between me and the heart mage's corpse, then scowled.

"Je-min. Those remains are a lower stage than you anyway. Couldn't you just leave them inside?"

"I have to test it at least once."

"Then just stab it!"

"What if that only makes a cut?"

I recalled the rules governing mage remains.

Destroying the remains of a mage with higher mastery than mine let me plunder that mastery.

Ear mages could glimpse a mage's memories when destroying their remains.

All mages could plunder another's knowledge by destroying their remains. But I could only access it if I had the foundation to understand it.

Then what happened if I destroyed the remains of a mage with lower mastery?

To find out, I stripped the heart mage's upper body, drew my bayonet, and aimed its tip. I left his gas mask on because I couldn't bear to look at his face.

I offered some kind words to the heart mage, who would've already crossed the river of the dead.

"Think of this as divine punishment after death for trying to shred me with a machine gun, and open that chest nice and wide."

"Lunatic."

By now, I'd almost feel lonely without the pastor's running commentary.

A short while later, amid an assortment of ASMR—bones scraping and cracking, flesh tearing, muscles snapping—a blood-soaked heart emerged. Sure enough, heart-branch magic script was etched into it, emitting an uncanny light.

The pastor and Na-in had long since turned away.

"If you're going to do it, hurry up and get rid of it."

"Je-min, I haven't unlocked the heart branch yet. Looking at it makes me dizzy."

"I know, I know. What can I do? I'm the only five-branch archmage here."

The Christian-freak duo's willingness to let me have the heart warmed the atmosphere.

This was why I hadn't brought Se-jun or Ryeo-ha. Our Supreme Mages' heart mages were already strong enough.

What if those two bastards smashed a low-level heart and still leveled up?

Archmage Baek Je-min, overcome by jealousy, might have to cling to a dead companion's corpse, sobbing as he destroyed their remains.

To prevent such a tragedy, I had to gobble up the EXP and knowledge.

Me!

"Please, Heart, Stage Two!"

CRUNCH!

When I crushed it underfoot, the heart dispersed into fog with a hiss. The fog flowed straight into my body.

For a moment, I thought I might level up...

But there was none of alteration-type magic's characteristic crash-course education, hammering knowledge directly into my brain.

Instead, the memories of Unit 55's heart mage unfolded before me—a scene I could glimpse because I was an ear mage.

A damp, clammy underground passage.

A barricade of Amalgam and predatory blue-spider corpses, fused and tangled together with human slimes.

Within the subway passage protected by that grotesque barricade, a strange, solemn ritual was taking place.

Under dim fluorescent lights, soldiers knelt on one knee, rifles laid before them, heads bowed as they listened reverently. Every one of them held a bayonet in the left hand and raised the right, ready to cut it on the blade.

A familiar figure stood before them. Someone I'd once become acquainted with through magic at Konkuk University.

Father Peter Kang.

The priest, with his gentle face and tender gaze, walked among the dozens of kneeling soldiers, laying a hand on each as he spoke.

["66 for 7, 55 for 66, humans for 55."]

The Society of 66's password.

The soldiers who received Father Peter Kang's touch bowed their heads even deeper and cried out firmly.

["5 above 4. We who believe in 5 are human."]

After laying hands on each of them once, he reversed direction and began again in the opposite order.

It was then that the priest's hand settled on the heart mage's head.

["What do you never wish to lose?"]

As Father Peter Kang's voice descended upon him, the heart mage heard his own pounding heart.

Cognition, intellect, adaptation, fate, life...

["What do you desire most?"]

Eyes, hands, tongue, ears, heart.

The heart mage chose the heart.

Father Peter Kang answered with a smile in his voice.

["July 23."]

In the memory, the heart mage dipped his head in a reverent, solemn nod.

I could sense at least a little of the countless emotions swirling through the heart mage's mind.

Anger, despair, resignation, sorrow, hope, ecstasy.

Those seemingly natural emotions were directed somewhere wholly unexpected.

The Unit 55 heart mage despised, hated, and feared Father Peter Kang.

'Fucking monster.'

Only then did I notice the other soldiers.

Most followed as if entranced, but a few obeyed with reluctant expressions. Yet despite his reluctance, despite how bitterly he resented the man, the heart mage did not reject Father Peter Kang.

'But...'

The heart mage slowly lowered his gaze again and closed his eyes.

'Better than being trapped in a monster's body for eternity. Of course it is. Fuck...'

The memory ended.

Had it shown me that because it was his most intense memory? Or because it was the information I most wanted to know?

Back in reality, the sweat soaking the inside of my gas mask was driving me mad. Unable to bear it, I tried to claw the chin strap loose, then gave up and let out a ragged, hitching breath.

"Je-min?"

I raised a hand to put the pastor's concern to rest.

Good thing he hadn't voiced it yet. Na-in, who'd heard the voice inside my mind, was staring at me with rigid eyes, too.

I wondered whether to tell the pastor, then changed my mind.

We were still infiltrating. Keep quiet for now.

Distracting him with something irrelevant could spell disaster.

"It's nothing. Just airsickness."

"You're getting airsick an hour after riding the helicopter?"

"Ever been airsick, Pastor? This is how mine works."

"What a load of bullshit. If there's nothing else, let's go. Doesn't look like you advanced, either."

The pastor clicked his tongue and turned away.

Thank goodness.