Chapter 110 - Hell Communism

HOOF.

Breathing hard through my gas mask, I shifted my eyes to one side.

The large sign lying on the road bore several names.

Sushi Heaven, Ongi’s Snack Bar, Coin Karaoke—B1...

Seeing the signs with their countless names lying crushed and tangled together on the road sent a shiver down my spine. Rational pessimism began whispering predictions of a dark future.

The Republic of Korea had effectively fallen.

The days of checking my bank balance as I pulled open a snack bar’s door, scanning the menu to the tinkling of its bell, then clicking my tongue and grumbling about why a single roll of gimbap cost so much were over.

They would never return.

Both I and the Gangnam group’s Seoul mages huffing on the other side of the sign knew that all too painfully well.

Not only the ethics and morality that might prevent revenge, but the order and force to restrain it, had vanished.

Yet even as magic dominated the world, firearms were only becoming more firmly entrenched. For humans, convenience was king. Rather than spending a lifetime painstakingly practicing swordsmanship so you could swing a sword around with a lot of yelling, learning to click a trigger was the foundation of killing.

CLACK!

The sound of metal engaging broke the strange silence.

That was when the pastor’s voice rang out.

"Baek Je-min! Jump!"

RAT-TAT-TAT!!!

The pastor opened fire.

Without even looking back, I crouched and sprang like a camel cricket.

The hem of my poncho caught the wind first.

The doping was still in effect, letting me leap two stories high with only a short running start.

But I wouldn’t be a mage if I stopped there.

I could feel the boost gradually wearing off. Did repeated doses shorten its duration? One thing was certain: I needed to keep landing effective hits before it ran out.

My vision was already dimming.

My focus kept slipping, giving me the illusion that objects were splitting in two, as though I had developed a mild astigmatism I’d never had before. The side effects of [Cognitive Dissonance] at 100% were considerable. If it was this bad outside the fog even with doping drastically reducing the penalty... I might have gone blind if I’d used it without the boost.

Chilling.

And thrilling at the same time.

Magic was a reward system that gave you ten back when you put ten in. If the penalty was harsh, the reward was equally glorious.

I rolled my tongue inside my mouth.

Eye, Stage Three, [Cognitive Dissonance] at 100%.

TAP!

I fell onto the outer wall of a roadside building.

But the price was steep.

A sensation like my tongue being finely sliced came with pain so horrific that my thighs quivered and my legs gave out. I was in agony, and I knew perfectly well what happened when my legs went weak.

SSSS...

At least I learned something useful.

Anything “expelled” from my body was unaffected by [Cognitive Dissonance].

The moment I saw the wet streak running down my pants, tears streamed from the corners of my eyes, too. My tongue felt as though it had been julienned, and now I’d pissed myself because my legs had given out. The world was a cruel place.

"Fuhk."

I spat out a curse.

Pain beyond my limits rapidly washed the aggression and excitement from my mind, replacing them with fear. I couldn’t stay here long. These Seoul mages wouldn’t remain pinned down for long just because the pastor was pouring suppressive fire at them.

I decided not to rely on my trembling legs.

Individual combat drills—dragging myself around on my arms—were my specialty. I dropped prone in an instant and scuttled along the building’s exterior like an elegant cockroach. The birdlike bastard shouted.

"That motherfucker! Have you no shame?!"

First, I needed to regroup.

While the pastor fired, Shin Na-in would spread out, take up a position, and keep the enemy in check.

I, I needed to overcome the pain and pull myself together first.

Reaching a window in no time, I tapped the glass with my elbow, then slammed my rifle butt into it with all my strength. This was where Heart, Stage Two, [Improved Physical Abilities]—which I was sampling through doping—really shone.

CRASH!

Reversing gravity with [Cognitive Dissonance] at 100% was sweet.

I swept the shards from one side of the broken window frame with my rifle butt and hurled myself through, letting myself be sucked neatly inside. I squeezed my eyes shut and curled up, bracing for impact.

"Hup!"

CRASH-BANG!

I landed on the door of a wardrobe standing against the wall. Its handle jabbed me in the side and hurt like hell, but since I was already screaming, it wasn’t particularly noticeable.

When I released [Cognitive Dissonance], my body flopped onto the floor.

"Urgh. Keh."

This wouldn’t do.

I tried to get up somehow, but my arms and legs were shaking. My legs, I could understand, but the trembling arms were unexpected. I didn’t know why until I handled the AR-15 in my hands.

On a hunch, I tried to move the selector with my finger, but it wouldn’t do what I wanted. Alarm bells rang in my head. The rapid deterioration of my eyesight had robbed me of depth perception.

I’d used Cognitive Dissonance too often.

Thanks to the doping, it would probably end at temporary vision loss, but I couldn’t use [Cognitive Dissonance] anymore. Still, being unable to use it and losing my depth perception didn’t render an archmage like me completely useless.

I rolled my already-dripping tongue around my mouth, savoring the disgusting metallic taste.

Target, kill, hostile mage, five minutes, route.

I hauled myself up under the weight of my heavy poncho and equipment.

The pastor and Shin Na-in would have formed a curtain of fire to suppress the enemies, so I concentrated on coordinating with him. Telepathy between Ear, Stage One users—another hidden gold mine.

With incredible abilities like these, a non-mage could never face a mage...

'Je-min, he’s closing in!!!'

CLANG!

My poncho flapped.

I lifted the rifle’s receiver, grabbed the barrel, and parried the long nails.

HOOF, HOOF.

Our breathing overlapped through our gas masks.

Corporal Velcro.

Hanging upside down above the window, he aimed the sharp tips of his long nails at me, scraping wildly at my rifle’s barrel. Each time his nails gouged the plastic or special alloy or whatever the barrel was made of, I backed away.

TAP!

Forced to plant my left foot behind my right at a right angle, I shoved the nails away with my rifle.

But like a salmon swimming up a waterfall, like a serpent climbing a tree, the nails slid back onto it with a sound of scraping away its surface.

SKRRRCH.

At that moment, without hesitation, I pushed the receiver with my right palm.

My left hand slid down from the barrel to grip it near the muzzle. I didn’t care about balance. With those nails bearing down on me, it was madness, but sometimes madness held the answer.

Around it went.

The rifle spun once atop Corporal Velcro’s nails.

Like a judoka executing a throw, I rotated the rifle over his five neatly gathered nails.

Corporal Velcro and I glared at each other, gauging our respective opportunities, and, as mages, willingly stepped into each other’s traps.

His nails extended in a smooth rush, growing impossibly long.

At the same time, my right hand seized the rifle’s wildly swinging sling and yanked it.

Look at those filthy nails. Gathered so prettily together.

Enough for a knee strike.

RRRIP!

The side of my poncho tore away. A chunk of its ancient Hebrew enchantment, already painted over in red, was sliced off.

CRACK!

The nails bent and snapped. It would be criminal for mere keratin to withstand the pressure of an AR-15 barrel and a knee enhanced by Heart, Stage Two.

The instant I saw the broken nails, I grabbed the rifle sling in my right hand without hesitation.

I pulled the rifle toward me and tucked it under my arm.

There was no time to aim.

Before I could assess the situation, I put my finger on the trigger.

Then I noticed something attached to Corporal Velcro’s chest.

A walkie-talkie. A shrill beep sounded from the military radio tucked into his belt, followed by that birdlike voice.

["Listen, listen."]

I pulled the trigger.

["Just land one shot!"]

BANG!

I fired without aiming.

I saw Corporal Velcro take the hit and fall from where he’d been hanging upside down at the window. He dropped like a black fly zapped by an electric swatter, which was somewhat reassuring.

Of course. If you were human, getting shot once ought to leave you incapacitated and bawling.

I’d meant to fire a wide spread to suppress him, but really, landing one shot was enough...

'Je-min, you’ve been subjected to suggestion.'

... Fucking hell.

I urgently thrust the muzzle out the window.

CLACK.

As the metal engaged, I looked down to see Corporal Velcro writhing on the ground, clutching his side. I, Baek Je-min, did not waste opportunities on halfhearted pity or hesitation.

I genuinely pulled the trigger the instant I saw him.

Selector on automatic.

["Listen, listen."]

I’d simply shred him.

["Spray them around for better results."]

RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!!!

Bullets rained down.

A car sagged as its tire deflated. Bullets struck a hood and threw sparks, while fragments of asphalt flew. Blood burst out, too.

A fair number of rounds struck Corporal Velcro as he writhed on the ground, creating a pool of blood.

The problem was that Corporal Velcro was a monster.

CLICK-CLICK-CLICK...

I pulled the trigger, but no bullets came out.

Only when the muzzle, fouled by powder residue and gas, merely groaned did I realize the magazine was empty.

Hot casings lay scattered near the window and around Corporal Velcro, giving off faint wisps of steam.

Corporal Velcro was wounded.

But he’d protected his vital points. Even while writhing, he’d twisted his body to shield himself with the tumorlike human-slime pustules growing on his right arm. The bullets should have gone straight through him, but he’d used those disgusting monsters to cushion the impact.

Realizing I was out of ammunition, Corporal Velcro raised his right arm.

I discarded my empty magazine, too.

CLICK.

My hands trembled slightly as I changed magazines. I considered using my body to slam down onto him, but close combat was Corporal Velcro’s range. More importantly, if he attacked with a human slime, it would suck away my precious experience points!

Corporal Velcro didn’t run, either.

Apparently, his injuries were still too severe for that.

Then he could fucking die.

Just as I was about to finish changing magazines, he raised his right hand.

For a moment, I wondered what he was doing.

"!"

His broken nails were growing back in an instant.

Unlike the nail blades growing from his forearm like shark fins, the nails on his actual fingers lengthened like the Monkey King’s staff, holding an unnaturally straight shape. Corporal Velcro curled and spread his fingers like some scissor-handed man, making a peculiar sound.

Not scissor blades, but nails striking one another.

The moment his gas mask tilted up toward me, his nails clacked like castanets.

CLACK-CLACK-CLACK.

But something had changed even more grotesquely than those long nails. The fingertips from which they grew had strangely deformed. Their outlines looked like separate breathing holes, swelling as though breathing on their own.

I was tracking a kill route with my enhanced Eye, Stage One, aiming along the eerie red beam of light, but...

My brain made an immediate decision.

I hurled myself backward.

CRASH-BANG!

As I landed noisily on my ass, the result of my decision arrived.

THUNK-THUNK!

Something flew like harpoons into the space where the windows had been.

Panting, I narrowed my eyes and saw what they were.

HOOF.

Nails embedded in the window frame.

Their roots quivered like arrows trembling in a target.

At that moment, loud gunfire sounded outside the window.

When I concentrated, Shin Na-in’s telepathy told me its source.

'Je-min, we’ve successfully flanked them. Yellow-Bandage is surrounded. The pastor and I will keep him from running his mouth.'

RAT-TAT, TAT-TAT...

The shots were intended to suppress rather than kill.

Instead of pouring out rounds indiscriminately, they fired intermittently to keep gnawing away at the enemy’s attention. I got up again, finished changing magazines, and pulled the charging handle.

CLACK.

I immediately aimed out the window, but, as expected, Corporal Velcro had already disappeared.

At least I could see where he’d vanished into an alley, trailing blood.

The Supreme Mages’ gunfire came from a short distance away.

Unlike the heavy, deafening artillery and gunfire coming from Sanseong Boulevard, Shin Na-in and the pastor fired only occasionally amid the profound silence, so I could distinguish their shots to some extent.

With a heave-ho, I jumped out the window.

THUD!

I absolutely had to get Heart, Stage Two. Losing it after having it would feel awful. Admiring myself as I stood and dusted myself off, I discreetly covered my urine-soaked pants with my poncho.

Then I sent Shin Na-in a telepathic message.

'I think Velcro’s headed your way. He’s making up for his lack of range by shooting nails. He uses his gun less than I expected, though?'

A moment later, Shin Na-in replied.

'Yellow-Bandage is deliberately leaking information. He seems to believe it’s true himself, but I don’t know whether it really is.'

What kind of idiotic bullshit was that?

Adjusting my grip on my rifle, I followed the blood trail. Corporal Velcro’s blood was easy to identify. Naturally—no one else around here could possibly walk around after taking that many fucking bullets.

I strode onward.

As I walked through the chaos of bodies, casings, bullet marks, and bloodstains, a dense buzzing like the wings of giant hornets began sounding behind me. I knew what it was from the sound alone. Drones. Apparently, Drone Command had heard about the engagement and was flooding the area with them.

I couldn’t be late.

I broke into a run, both pursuing Corporal Velcro and heading to join Shin Na-in and the pastor. Since the doping was wearing off and I didn’t know when it would end, I decided against hopping across rooftops.

My pain and my body mattered more than anything else in the world, so safety first.

Still, it took a little time.

I’d wondered whether Corporal Velcro might attack, but surprisingly, he seemed to have withdrawn without much trouble. He was no easy opponent. Whether or not he knew I was doping, he’d recognized my ability and switched to stalling rather than recklessly engaging me.

But their fate was sealed.

The closer I got to the gunfire, the more relaxed I felt.

After all, I’d seen the drones filling the sky. Just looking up from the alley, I could count a good thirty or so. Seeing the armed quadcopters and suicide drones shaped like crudely molded fish-shaped pastries constantly flying around, I laughed inwardly.

It was over.

I, the archmage Baek Je-min, wasn’t the arrogant type, but there was no way out of this.

All I could do was hope they left some remains.

At the end of the alley, I saw Shin Na-in and the pastor facing the enemy across a building. On the roof of a low-rise apartment building, they were signaling to me by waving dirty clothes taken from a laundry line.

'Je-min, join us!'

The doping was almost over.

With a pang of regret, I sprang upward and kicked off the wall to climb.

TAP-TAP-TAP!

By the time I reached the rooftop railing, the doping had almost completely faded. Bullets flew at me as if timed for that instant, but my [Bulletproof] poncho stopped them, leaving them to thump against me.

Naturally, they still hurt.

Testosterone man Baek Je-min squeezed out every ounce of strength to hold back his screams.

Then I dropped prone and joined Shin Na-in and the pastor, who had brought over a table to use as cover.

"Huaaagh! Hagh! Aaagh!"

"Je-min, there’s a strange smell coming from you."

"Baek Je-min, are you exaggerating again?"

These fucking bastards. Try getting shot yourselves.

If you didn’t scream after being struck by a lead bullet made solely to kill people, how the fuck were you even human?

I delivered this logical, rational protest.

"Boohoo... Waaah... Mommy..."

"Je-min, Je-min! Get a grip and stand by!"

"Stand by for fucking what?! It hurts like hell!"

If my body had been in working order, I would have punched Shin Na-in right in the face.

Then he looked down at me with wavering eyes.

Through his gas-mask lenses, fear and a shuddering awe mingled in his gaze.

"They say the Gangnam Clairvoyant is going to intervene."

"...!"

I’d never been to university, but I moved like the top student taking the front-row seat before a lecture.

I scuttled behind cover, pulled up my gas mask, wiped my tears with the end of my sleeve, and pricked up my ears. The pastor clicked his tongue at me, but with a more pressing matter at hand, he let it pass.

His voice, too, trembled with worry inside his gas mask.

"Ear, Stage Four, you said. If what Na-in heard is true, then Yellow-Bandage and Velcro showed themselves on the assumption that the Gangnam Clairvoyant would intervene..."

Honestly, all three of us were skeptical.

The Gangnam Clairvoyant did possess remote curse-killing, but we thought it couldn’t save Yellow-Bandage and Velcro when they were surrounded like this.

Glancing up at the sky, I saw drones flying past without bothering us on the roof, apparently having recognized us as the Supreme Mages. Shin Na-in had identified the enemy building for them by waving clothes and pointing his muzzle at it.

The quadcopters that had initially been searching the area saw his signal, and soon came back leading a swarm with a deafening buzz.

Their target was the third floor of the apartment building where Yellow-Bandage and Velcro had hidden.

Unable to call in immediate artillery fire, they clearly intended to devastate it with suicide drones and ordinary armed drones instead. Before we knew it, we were buried in a hornet buzz more intense than the artillery, making clear just how fiercely the military wanted this.

Even at a glance, there had to be over a hundred drones.

They kept darting in and circling, tightening their ring around the area. Even though that made an accurate count difficult, I could see a hundred. And as if that weren’t enough, special forces would be moving out of sight while every sort of reconnaissance asset watched northern Seongnam.

My apologies to the troops probably playing monster defense on Sanseong Boulevard, but the real battlefield was this apartment building at the end of a little alley.

Then Yellow-Bandage’s birdlike voice sounded.

["You lot. Don’t you understand that the age of non-mages is over?"]

DING—♪

It was a strange chord.

Shin Na-in, the pastor, and I turned to one another, our eyes wide.

"Na-in, Baek Je-min. Did you hear that?"

"Yes."

"Something sort of like a piano."

DING, DI-DING—♪

The drone swarm was so loud it drowned out even the artillery. Despite being right next to one another, we had to shout to make ourselves understood. We wouldn’t have distinguished Yellow-Bandage’s voice, either, without his megaphone or speaker.

Yet these strange notes reached us clearly.

There was something jarringly wrong about it, as though an enormous, magnificent orchestra were playing a trivial children’s song like a lullaby. A vast, bizarre harmony in which the boundaries between instruments collapsed, as though fingers plucking strings were striking wind instruments, and percussion instruments were being pressed by vibrations in the air.

I was tilting my head, wondering what on earth this was, when I happened to glance aside and noticed something wrong with Shin Na-in.

"Shin Na-in?"

"..."

His pupils were dilated. His eyes shook wildly. A strand of hair soaked in cold sweat poked down into a corner of his gas-mask lens. The breathing coming through his filter raged like a storm.

HOOF, HUH, HOOF, HUH.

Noticing his condition, the pastor approached Shin Na-in and gripped his shoulders.

"Shin Na-in. What’s wrong?"

"Music... music...!"

As an ear mage, Shin Na-in was always in poor shape, but this was particularly bad.

The pastor frowned and turned to me.

"Baek Je-min, something’s wrong. I have a bad feeling."

"It’s always been like that. Why bring it up now..."

No.

Even a man’s man like Baek Je-min felt a chill.

I realized this strange harmony wasn’t remotely normal. It wasn’t my ears hearing it. Like artillery shaking the ground and vibrating your organs, the performance was so immense that it shook my entire body, producing something closer to an auditory hallucination.

["We all swore an oath. The moment we overcame the shells, the moment we beat that oh-so-great military, we’d shove every last one of them into mimic beasts’ heads. We’d make the bastards who pushed us into hell experience the same thing!"]

My heart thumped.

The pentagram engraved on it screamed a warning.

Then something impossible happened.

It felt as though the faintest wisp of wind had brushed across the whole sky above Seongnam.

But the three Supreme Mages knew it wasn’t wind.

It was an overwhelmingly vast performance.

The “music of the spheres,” embodying the movement of celestial bodies and the fate that could be divined from those movements.

The sounds of planets orbiting—sounds humans could never ordinarily hear, nor gain anything from hearing—were being grotesquely distorted, music brought down to the level of human-devised scales.

Along with a rasping voice so abrasive that its age and gender were impossible to guess.

—"Causal Arrangement."

Only mages could hear it.

The portent of change.

—"Malfunction."

There were no impressive visual effects.

No deafening explosion or shock wave erupted.

Yet the drones filling the sky tilted and began dropping like mosquitoes sprayed with insecticide, like poisoned flies. Not one or two. Every single drone that had been charging in so fiercely moments before was falling, without exception.

CLATTER.

At first, I merely blinked at the drones tumbling lifelessly into the alley.

I wondered whether the aftereffects of [Cognitive Dissonance] had given me actual cognitive dissonance. Then I instinctively checked my rifle. On a hunch, I removed the magazine and found a round improperly seated in exactly the right position to cause a jam.

Seeing me inspect my magazine, Shin Na-in and the pastor removed theirs with trembling hands.

All of them were the same.

If we’d fired without thinking, a round would have been crushed or caught, jamming the weapon.

At that moment, as if we’d planned it, the three Supreme Mages reinserted our magazines and aimed without hesitation at the apartment building where Yellow-Bandage and Velcro were hiding.

CLACK!

The Yellow-Bandage Routed Soldier and Corporal Velcro were on the roof.

Wearing a torn poncho, Yellow-Bandage was picking up a drone that had fallen onto the roof and clicking his tongue. Judging by the blood running down his left arm, his wound hadn’t healed. He wouldn’t have much accuracy if he fired.

But the shock of what we had just witnessed and felt had yet to fade.

We didn’t fire immediately because we feared that impossible magic might still be in effect.

Then Corporal Velcro stepped in front of Yellow-Bandage as though volunteering to be a human shield, blocking our line of fire while clacking his long nails together.

CLACK-CLACK-CLACK...

At that moment, Yellow-Bandage spoke from behind Velcro, where he was inspecting the drone.

"You’re not some great saints, either. Doesn’t it feel unfair? Why us, of all people? Why is only the Republic of Korea, only Seoul, fucked like this while everyone in other countries gets to live just fine? We’re dying trying to hold back the flood of monsters, but Japan, China, the United States, Europe... Hell, you don’t even need to look that far. People behind the cordon are slurping ramen and spouting bullshit about human rights, aren’t they? They’ll say all the morally correct things about quarantining everyone individually and saving whoever can be saved."

"..."

"Why should only we suffer? Why only me? If I’d wanted to join the military, I wouldn’t complain. You think I had some grand sense of duty? They dragged me into the military, told me to hold the line, and I did. But when I tried to run because I wanted to live, they called me a mass murderer!"

THUD.

Yellow-Bandage threw the drone away.

Hearing that bullshit didn’t give me a headache, so it wasn’t magic.

Yellow-Bandage and Velcro stood back-to-back, glaring at us as they adjusted their grips on their guns.

Velcro held his in his left hand, Yellow-Bandage in his right.

CLACK.

Two Seoul mages and three Supreme Mages aimed at one another.

The brief standoff was no invitation to talk.

We immediately pulled our triggers at each other.

RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!!!

Bullets ricocheted off the railing. Their accuracy was abysmal, since they were shooting one-handed, but a bullet could still kill us, so we had no choice but to take cover, too. We poked out only our muzzles and took turns firing. Amid the standoff, I met Shin Na-in’s and the pastor’s eyes.

We had to run.

We couldn’t hold out long!

Keeping low, we immediately sprinted for the stairs. The last I saw of Velcro, he was hopping toward another building’s roof. Yellow-Bandage was retreating inside to avoid sniper fire.

TAP-TAP, TAP...

Only the lonely sound of footsteps descending the stairs remained.

And faintly, somewhere, a birdlike voice poured out its anguish over a military radio.

["The hell I saw, the monsters I saw, everything I saw and felt! Everyone has to share it. I can’t be the only one who feels this hell!!!"]