Chapter 15 - The Wizards in Ponchos

They say you can get used to anything.

I'd heard that pain becomes bearable once you've experienced it, just as your threshold for stimulation rises. What bullshit.

Unable to bring myself to look at my left hand, which was pouring blood, I let it hang limp. With only my right hand usable and my rifle slung over my shoulder, I staggered along while several people glanced at me.

"Hhngh... ngh..."

"Why'd you have to shoot it, then?"

There was a reason Pastor Park Yo-han had decided to support me instead of monk Cheong-hwi.

It just fucking hurt. Maybe this was what it would feel like if your veins caught fire, scorching your shoulders and neck and heating the inside of your skull. It hurt so much that I broke into a cold sweat and groaned, until laughter started mixing in without my realizing it.

Remembering what alteration-type magic could do made those scorching veins boil in a different sense.

I could stop someone from moving just by looking at them? Magic that hurled fireballs and blasted things with lightning would be plenty useful—no, honestly, I desperately needed it—but this magic wasn't half bad either.

Except for the pounding heat in my head, neck, and beneath my left shoulder every time my heart beat.

"Heh heh heh..."

"Pastor, hasn't Mr. Baek Je-min gone crazy?"

"He shot his left hand. How could he be all right? Tsk."

At least Cheong-hwi's Mantra Recitation was keeping my mind intact.

Looking back, I could see what the magicians who'd survived this mess had in common. Their magic wasn't flashy, and looked unassuming, but its effects were actually pretty good.

Pastor Park Yo-han's Fatalistic Conviction. All his airy nonsense aside, it seemed to guarantee his own survival. Corporal Park Se-hyeok's heartbeat-listening magic seemed kind of crappy... but it was helping us stay alive, at least.

And I didn't have to look far for proof of Cheong-hwi's Mantra Recitation. It was holding together soldiers who would ordinarily have fled in panic, helping them escape.

Pastor Park Yo-han patted my shoulder and spoke with a sigh in his voice.

"We're alive thanks to you, Mr. Baek. Just hold yourself together a little longer, okay? The emergency exit light's right ahead."

He was right.

Perhaps my stage-two magic had really shocked the Amalgams. They weren't rashly approaching us.

Corporal Park Se-hyeok, straining his ears to hear heartbeats, nodded and readjusted his grip on his rifle.

"They're not coming. I mean, I think they're nearby, but..."

"Then that's good enough. I'll call. That bald fraud... Everyone, keep the monk safe. If Mr. Baek or the monk gets taken out here, consider us all dead."

After delivering that grim warning to the terrified soldiers, Pastor Park pulled his phone from the inside pocket of the jacket beneath his poncho and tried to make a call.

But perhaps because we were underground and surrounded by fog, all his phone produced was a ringing tone.

BRR-RR-RR...

Each time the ringtone echoed through the underground cavern, the soldiers' quiet breathing filtered out through their gas masks. Cheong-hwi had already removed his mask and was catching his breath with his palms pressed together. Still unable to face the blood covering my left hand, I kept looking at the green emergency exit light for no reason.

That was when Corporal Park Se-hyeok began breathing hard.

"I hear something."

"Those fucking monster bastards?"

"No. It's coming from beyond the exit light."

"Then we're fine."

Just as Pastor Park answered with a hint of irritation, the call finally connected.

"Quiet, everyone."

He deliberately turned the volume up a little, looked back at us, and winked. Then he cleared his throat.

"Ah, hello. This is Pastor Park Yo-han. Is this the commander of the military unit at Suwon Station?"

["Pastor, you're still alive? What about the survivors?"]

"Myself, the monk, Mr. Baek Je-min, and... a fellow named Park Se-hyeok. Four Operators, and eight soldiers. We can come up now, correct?"

["What about the Amalgams?"]

A momentary silence fell.

For the first time, I saw hesitation and uncertainty in Pastor Park's eyes.

He looked back at us through his filthy glasses, then answered in a slightly parched voice.

"They're pursuing us. If we can't come up, everyone here will die."

Silence followed for a while.

Shouts came through the phone, too distorted to make out, and loud noises sometimes drowned out the voices entirely.

After several seconds, the commander spoke again.

["The emergency shutter should be down. There should be an emergency escape door in it. We haven't sealed that door yet, so come out through there. You need to come out immediately. And..."]

"And?"

["The Armed Forces are taking emergency measures to establish a curtain of fire and prevent the Amalgams from spreading. Head toward the Suwon Station building. If you go anywhere else, we will fire indiscriminately."]

The call ended with those words.

Flustered, the signalman tried to check the radio on his back, but Pastor Park clicked his tongue and stopped him.

"Forget it. It's no use. You think they'll answer in this mess? You all heard him. Let's go."

Our surviving group headed beyond the green exit light.

A desperate struggle to escape the underground, where fog condensed into dew. With glass crunching beneath our feet and breathing rasping through our gas masks, we reached the shutter standing firmly in our way.

But the moment Pastor Park confidently pushed his palm against the escape door, his voice wavered slightly.

"This won't budge."

"Oh, fuck."

Corporal Park Se-hyeok swore reflexively and headed for the door.

After pushing it with his palms several times without success, he slung his rifle over his shoulder and began slamming his body against it.

"Fuck, fuck!"

"Please don't panic. All of you soldiers, push together and open the door. It may be difficult alone, but together, you should be able to open it."

Without Cheong-hwi's calm suggestion, we might all have panicked right there.

Even Pastor Park was on the verge of panic. Hearing the monk's words, he took off his glasses, wiped his sweat-soaked face, then put them back on with a renewed gleam in his eyes.

"Whew. Yes. God protects me. Because I do not doubt salvation, I shall be saved..."

He soothed the soldiers again and readjusted his rifle.

"Mr. Baek, myself, and those two soldiers will keep watch. The rest of you push that door open. Beat it with your rifle butts if you have to."

"Me too?"

"You're the only one who can stop those monster bastards right now."

And so the four of us—me, with blood still streaming from my left hand, Pastor Park, and two spectacularly unlucky soldiers—found ourselves glaring into the fog-filled concourse.

This place, where countless people had once passed back and forth with expressionless faces, had become a purgatory on earth, stained with blood-red emergency lighting and shattered windows. I couldn't call it hell because I didn't have the courage to see what lay beneath rock bottom.

What if I called this a living hell and then an even worse hell showed up?

Linguistic deflation to prevent hell inflation. That was my own measure against throwing around too many new terms.

"That giggling, Mr. Baek... You've really lost it."

"Fuck, I shot my left hand. How could I not lose it?"

"You should've believed in God. If you'd believed in God, would you have needed to shoot your left hand? Believe in Him now, before it's too late."

"The priest bit the dust, though."

"That's because Catholicism is heresy! He believed in the pope, the Antichrist!"

Hearing that in everyday life, I would've thought he was insane. But down in this damp, dark underground space, it was so welcome it nearly brought me to tears.

Enough to make me briefly wonder whether I should just give God and Jesus a try, even if I was being conned.

If I weren't such a devoted descendant, so fond of my ancestors, I might have gone to church without caring whether those ancestors who'd never known God were burning in hellfire. I trusted that my ancestors would appreciate these profound sentiments of mine and forgive me, even though I hadn't set out ancestral offerings in ten years.

Meanwhile, the door they'd been pounding on burst open with a deafening crash.

Cheong-hwi looked back at us and shouted.

"It's open! Stay calm, and go one at a time!"

Park Se-hyeok was the first to step forward.

"I'm going out first!"

Honestly, rather than finding him selfish or nasty, I thought he'd held out a long time for someone like him.

He'd done his part and wanted to leave first. What could we say?

But the moment Park Se-hyeok volunteered to go first and pushed the door, a gale swept through the quiet underground concourse. Wind so powerful that it briefly drove the fog away into the red emergency lighting surged in like water pouring through a funnel.

Our wet ponchos flapped heavily and battered our bodies, and pale mist began clouding our gas-mask lenses.

Already soaked, we felt a chill in that wind.

But more overwhelming than any of that was the enormous roar of rotors hammering our ears.

The harsh helicopter roar, enough to trample cries for help in an instant, battered us along with the weight of our wet ponchos and pressed all the way down to the underground emergency shutter.

At that moment, loud static crackled from the signalman's radio.

Naturally, there was no chance of getting decent reception in these conditions. No one wanted to put down their rifle, so Pastor Park, who was relatively free, raised his phone again.

After several rings, the call connected.

"What's with the helicopter?"

["Initial suppression. Come out, now!"]

CLICK.

Pastor Park worked his lips, gripped the phone tightly, then shoved it back into his inside pocket.

"Mr. Baek."

"Ha, fuck."

I knew what he was about to say. Knowing made it shitty, and understanding made it even shittier.

I couldn't believe I'd ended up in the clichéd role from a horror movie or creature feature: the guy who stayed behind until the end to blow himself up. I hated the world, but there was no other way, so I swallowed and drew a breath.

After heaving sighs for a moment, I grimaced at the burning sensation still traveling through every nerve in my body and spoke.

"If I get baptized now, will I go to heaven? I already got baptized at boot camp. Can I do it again?"

"What are you talking about? I'm staying with you to the end, so just keep those eyes wide open."

For a moment, I thought I understood a little of what comradeship and love for humanity meant.

If Pastor Park hadn't flown into a rage about worshipping Grandfather Dangun being idolatry and looked down on shamans, I might have privately considered him a friend. No, if he simply weren't someone who chanted 'Unbelievers to hell, believers in Jesus to heaven,' we might have been a little closer personally.

Come to think of it, if I was still remembering his faults in this situation, a really close relationship was probably out of the question.

Anyway, with Pastor Park and me provisionally taking the rear guard, the confusion subsided somewhat. The emergency door was barely wide enough for one person to squeeze through. You had to adjust your grip on your rifle just to pass.

Even that was utter chaos, with tremendous winds pressing against the shutter and whipping wet ponchos like lashes, combined with rotor noise that reduced anyone who wasn't screaming at the top of their lungs to silently moving lips.

The white mist on my gas-mask lenses condensed into droplets and ran down, only for my next exhalation to fog them up again. Over and over.

HUFF... HUFF...

This wouldn't do.

I undid my helmet strap, tore off my gas mask, and gulped for air.

My face was as drenched in sweat and moisture as the mask. Without even time to peel away the hair plastered to my head as if someone had dumped a bucket of water over me, I tried to fasten my helmet strap one-handed, then gave up.

I'd realized how difficult it was with only my trembling right hand.

Instead, I tucked the rifle beneath my right armpit, aimed into the underground beyond the swirling fog, and focused on steadying my breathing.

My left hand still hurt like death, but perhaps my brain, realizing I was actually about to die, was pumping out all sorts of chemicals. The pain seemed a little less intense.

When I mentioned that, Pastor Park looked at me gravely.

"Aren't your nerves dying?"

"Ugh, surely not."

My first thought wasn't something as ordinary as, What if the nerves die and I can't move my hand?

My stage-two magic's strength depended on the intensity of my pain. If the nerves died and I stopped feeling pain, wouldn't I be finished? That was my first worry.

Just to make sure, I lightly touched the wound with my right hand.

"Aagh! Agh! Aaaaagh... Fucking hell... Aagh..."

"Stop being a stupid fucking idiot and just stay still."

"Heh heh heh..."

I was laughing.

Because I felt that as long as I could feel this pain, as long as it continued, I could survive.

Meanwhile, apparently everyone had made it out safely. A hollow knocking came from outside.

Before I knew it, only Pastor Park and I remained underground.

Gasping for breath, I spoke to him.

"Go first."

"Mr. Baek."

"The sooner you go, the sooner I can get out."

"Ha. Ever thought of coming to church? I'll make you head of the young adults' ministry."

"Cut the bullshit and go."

His footsteps receded.

Again, the rotor roar and gale funneled through the gap, driving back the advancing fog.

The faint shaft of light leaking through the emergency door shone far more brilliantly than the underground emergency lighting or the green exit light. But it wasn't enough to drive away the silhouettes wavering among the swirling banks of fog beyond my dew-covered muzzle.

Unshaken even by that harsh rotor roar, fused vocal cords and a single joined breath opposed the wind outside like a wind instrument.

WOOOOOM...

Then the footprints where the fog scattered. Between those footprints from ten seconds in the future, I saw the end of someone I'd known.

Faces tangled like grotesque conjoined twins stared this way, as though they'd hardened halfway through melting. Like a chewy loaf of well-risen bread riddled with holes, eye sockets dotted the mass. Compound eyes rolled in different directions as it approached, fixed on the emergency shutter.

The arms and legs hanging below moved in a bizarre gait, kneeling, planting hands, or moving while bent outright to keep their strides aligned.

Among those bodies were limbs swinging limply.

A distinctive necklace of prayer beads told me one person's fate.

Madam Geulmun. Given that spirit sight provoked Amalgams' hostility, he seemed to have been their first target when the accident happened on the underground platform.

But what chilled me was the fate of the person hanging at the very front.

"Loord... Loord... Aaaah..."

The only voice splitting away from the fused vocal cords and joined breath. A desperate cry forced out as the mingled tongue split apart.

The body in the black cassock, bare forearms exposed, still struggled, trying to claw at its own face. The problem was that, apart from the mouth and tongue joined like conjoined twins, none of its features remained.

Father Jeong Yong-hwan's eyes, nose, and forehead had already melted into those faces, undulating without even becoming compound eyes.

That groaning echo, unaware he'd already lost his face, made his body thrash as he tore and clawed at the monster's melted faces to find his own... But all his nails scraped away were the monster's melted faces and flesh.

Beyond terror, the sight left me feeling hollow.

"I prayed I'd put a bullet between your eyes, and you went and got rid of that spot altogether."

Then, without hesitation, I hurled myself toward the now-vacant emergency door.

* * *

BANG!

As I shoved the slab of metal with my speed and body weight, I heard the monster's cries.

"Mom!"

"Could a monster like this really exist?"

"Uhhh..."

"No, I don't want this!"

I had to run.

But the surface I emerged onto was far harsher than I'd expected.

"Hah, hah..."

The helicopter was flying much lower than I'd imagined.

The resulting gale was so enormous I wondered if it might dry our wet ponchos in moments. It drove away the fog, but the searchlight's blinding glare brought tears streaming from my eyes instead.

A shrill ringing in my ears made me stagger.

But one primal instinct remained.

The monsters that would be pursuing me from behind made me forget all my pain and hesitation and run.

["Get out, get out!"]

Without knowing where the amplified voice was coming from, I readjusted my rifle and lowered myself almost to a crawl, tears streaming down my face. My left hand wouldn't move properly, so I thrust my left arm forward regardless of whether my forearm got scraped, braced the stock against my right side, and ran like mad.

My gait was bad enough that someone could've mocked me as a cripple, but this wasn't the time to worry about looking good.

THUD.

The sound of a mass striking the shutter, powerful enough to momentarily silence even the helicopter's rotors, ran down my spine.

A painful, tingling pulse, strong enough to hurt my heart, flowed through the arteries of my trembling legs and kept them moving when they wanted to collapse.

But by the time I reached the top of the stairs, fog moisture glistening on my face, I heard the military loudspeaker amid the mad wailing of sirens.

["All survivors, assemble at the Suwon Station building! Anyone heading elsewhere will be shot!"]

But ahead of me, beyond the relatively thin fog, parked buses blocked my path.

Behind the buses, the other soldiers, Pastor Park, and Cheong-hwi were already waiting, praying as though preparing for a final communion.

I awkwardly half-crawled, half-ran over and asked urgently.

"Where's Park Se-hyeok, that grumbler?"

A gesture answered before words did.

A masked soldier pointed beyond the fog. Apparently he'd tried to flee into an alley by the shops: Park Se-hyeok lay sprawled on the road, bleeding and twitching.

"Ugh, ngh... grhh..."

It might sound cruel, but after seeing Father Jeong's fate, I thought a few holes in the lungs might be preferable.

Pastor Park and Cheong-hwi, both panting, had removed a fallen soldier's gas mask and were slapping his cheeks and shouting at him.

"Hey! You! Close your eyes here and you're dead! And it won't be a peaceful death!"

"You still have things to do, my friend. Are you already intending to close your eyes?"

"Hey! You survived down there, and now you're planning to die as soon as you're out? You've got to reach heaven!"

I approached, desperately trying to steady my breathing.

"We have to run."

"Baek Je-min! You bastard... Our honorary young adults' ministry leader is still alive after all!"

"Those fuckers are about to pour out of the underground. Seeing us leave must've tipped them off that the seal isn't complete yet. They showed themselves openly even while I was glaring at them."

At that moment, something reverberated with a terrifying force that nearly stopped my heart.

My insides began trembling before my ears registered the sound. I imagined this was what hearing the earth rumble before an earthquake would feel like.

When I belatedly looked up, flames were flashing in the sky.

Soon, sharp rattling sounds scattered my attention, followed by the sound of concrete breaking, the kind you'd hear on a construction site.

KA-KA-KA-BOOM...

Thunder rolled through the swirling fog.

The result was devastating. The sound of stone shattering everywhere struck the bus bodies and echoed, and human voices meant nothing at all.

As my ears grew muffled, Pastor Park and Cheong-hwi desperately slapped the soldiers and hauled them to their feet.

They were surely shouting something at the top of their lungs, but all I saw were moving mouths. I couldn't hear a single voice.

Instead, only the ringing piercing my skull grew clear.

EEEEEE...

And yet there was one thing.

I could hear the monsters' cries clearly.

The cries escaping as their mass crushed and buckled the metal were far more human than I'd expected, and all the more grotesque for it.

"Mom!"

That was when the ringing faded enough for the loudspeaker to reach me.

["The helicopter's nearly out of ammunition! Survivors, run!"]

The neatly parked buses were both barriers and obstacles.

The buses lined up in orderly rows at the transfer center shielded us from the military's indiscriminate fire, but making our way through streets blocked by buses in the fog wasn't as easy as we'd expected.

And whenever we tried to stray even slightly, a brilliant white light aimed at us from beyond the fog, accompanied by a shout.

"Major routes are sealed. Come this way and we'll shoot!"

"We're survivors!"

"We'll shoot!"

The military seemed to have deployed what few armored vehicles it had to block the main roads, with searchlights and machine guns ready.

I could tell from faint voices in the distance saying things like 'change the ammunition belt' and 'check identification bands.' Naturally, from our perspective, there was no way not to curse.

"Fucking life..."

"We will be saved. All you have to do is get through the gaps between the buses. It looks like troops are deployed at Suwon Station, so just run well enough. They said the helicopter's holding back the monsters chasing us, didn't they? Right?"

Pastor Park soothed the soldiers and patted their shoulders.

But even his hands were visibly trembling a little. Cheong-hwi used the sharp edge of his rifle muzzle to tear a strip from the hem of his robes, then approached and wrapped my left hand.

"It seems this is all I can do for you, my friend."

"Not at all. Everyone did their best."

"Heh... Does doing one's best spare one from resentment? You say that out of consideration for me."

Our group hid behind a bus for a moment to catch our breath.

About fifteen seconds.

It was a very short time, but enough to exchange a few words and throw off our gas masks.

All the surviving soldiers looked about my age or younger. Their faces, glistening with sweat and moisture, hair plastered down, held a mixture of emptiness and the desperate desire to live.

At that moment, without thinking, I took the Magic Crash Course booklet from inside my clothes.

I could already feel the makeshift bandage growing heavy with blood, but I turned the pages with my right hand, not caring if they tore, trying to see the next magical character.

Stage one: recollection. Expansion of the objects of cognition.

Stage two: grief. The power to force my pain-distorted cognition onto a target within my sight.

Magic promised me a definite advantage in exchange for a terrible price. Even studying with bone-grinding effort couldn't guarantee results one hundred percent, but alteration-type magic felt as though, if I ground away my bones, it would truly grant power in proportion to the area ground away.

Then...

If I could offer more here, how incredible could my magic become?

Curiosity and yearning as intense as my pain whispered to me. Magic is honest. Magic grows stronger the more it hurts. It will grow stronger the more you offer...

Pastor Park's voice broke my reverie.

"Mr. Baek, run!"

I tucked the Magic Crash Course booklet back inside my clothes, gulped a breath, and sprinted with the rifle beneath my arm.

I ran first and thought later.

It was several seconds before I realized the helicopter was leaving.

["Fire, fire! Shoot anything that moves!"]

As the loudspeaker rang out, the brilliant white lights beyond the fog spat flames.

I pissed myself a little at that monstrous gunfire.

Fortunately, I was already soaked with fog and sweat, so it didn't show in the slightest. But others met far more serious ends.

Bullets pinging off bus bodies and ricocheting from the concrete hammered at my heart even harder.

I ran like mad and ducked behind a bus wheel, only to see the despairing expression of a soldier following me, struggling for breath.

Human flesh wasn't designed to withstand heavy machine-gun rounds. Machine-gun rounds existed to mow people down.

In an instant, a dozen or so rounds literally swept away the soldier's upper body and flank. He fell with a wet thud and simply stared blankly at his own blood flowing out.

Then his gaze stopped.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck..."

As someone muttered, the monsters' cries rang out amid the hail of gunfire.

The sight of tangled limbs moving bizarrely where we'd been, where we'd passed, and through the gaps beneath the buses burned itself into my mind.

"Run, run!"

Probably Pastor Park.

We ran like mad again. The monsters' pursuit intensified, as did the hail of bullets pouring in from every direction. And the buses weren't as sturdy as we'd thought.

Realizing the Amalgams were running under cover of the buses, the Armed Forces bravely accepted collateral damage and began pouring fire into them.

Needless to say, there were preemptive strikes in the process.

PING, PING-PING! PING-PING-PING!

Holes punched through the bus all over, and with its tires punctured too, it tilted slightly with a grotesque metallic noise.

The bus body swept by concentrated fire coughed fog instead of blood. A soldier unfortunate enough to shelter behind it was shot through the neck and died instantly.

Or was he fortunate?

Glancing at his corpse, I kept up as best I could.

But the Amalgams were far more persistent and unpredictable than we'd imagined.

"AAAAAAAAAGH!!!"

The moment their fused vocal cords played a scream like a heavy wind instrument, the gunfire briefly stopped. Untrained humans could only stop breathing before that chilling scream, which hummed and shook the earth.

Then countless footsteps overlapped, and the buses rocked with a squelching sound.

Only then did I turn and see the fog dispersing to leave footprints.

Despite the tears streaming from my throbbing headache, burning eyes, and the gunshot wound in my left hand, those footprints remained unmistakably clear.

"It's climbing onto the buses and splitting apart!"

I'd done my part.

I ran again with the rifle tucked beneath my arm. The soldiers recovered from the scream and resumed firing, and I heard bodies falling with wet thuds.

My heart had felt ready to burst long ago. The people running with me had long since scattered amid the hail of fire, the Amalgams' pursuit, and the swirling fog.

I ran toward the muzzle flashes, following those flickering lights, but the ominous sounds of buses tilting pursued me.

I had no choice but to turn.

Not out of curiosity. To drive them off.

"Aagh! Agh! Aaaagh!"

BANG, BA-BANG! BANG!

Along with my screams, I pulled the trigger again and again.

It was point firing with the rifle tucked beneath my arm, not even properly shouldered. My accuracy was crap.

The bullets mostly bounced off buses or flew through empty air, but the monsters with their melting, conjoined faces seemed frightened simply because I was looking at them. They lowered themselves and lay flat atop the buses.

At that moment, machine-gun fire swept over the buses.

THUD-THUD-THUD...

The sound of flesh bursting seemed holier than the hymns at the chapel where I'd gotten hamburgers in boot camp.

Feeling the heat of my muzzle, I ran again. There wasn't even time to readjust my grip.

I ran toward the soldiers faintly visible beyond the fog, tears streaming down my face.

But a hopeless premonition struck me.

Among the scattering fog, footprints from ten seconds in the future were overtaking me.

At this rate, they'd catch me.

"Survivor confirmed, survivor confirmed!"

"It's chasing him!"

At last I could hear the soldiers' voices, almost screams.

I'd fought through this fucking hell and was finally reaching somewhere I could live...

And I had to meet the same end as Father Jeong just because I was slow?

I clenched my teeth.

Running with the rifle hugged against me, I adjusted the selector.

Then I grabbed the barrel near the muzzle, still hot, with my left hand.

Contradictory pain, cold and hot, seared my left hand. But it was all or nothing.

"Survivor, get down!"

Following someone's command, I threw myself down.

Then, as I'd resolved, I twisted around and landed on my backside.

There was a monster that seemed to have hundreds of human faces fused together, opening its mouths as it floundered on grotesquely twisted and bent human limbs.

Perhaps because hundreds of faces had melted together, it had not one long, torn mouth but several irregular slits, teeth packed together like zip seals.

The monster rolled its countless compound eyes to look at me. Seeing me, it flicked five or six tongues as though delighted.

Its tangled faces wore faint smiles around their eyes, ready to pour down onto me.

At that moment, I aimed the muzzle and opened my mouth.

"AAAAAAAAAGH!!!"

I'd never heard shell casings bounce off the ground so close before.

Every time a bright flash cut through the fog, I felt my left hand burning.

Acrid gunsmoke replaced the vanishing fog, and the pain crushed my head, forcing tears out. I held my eyes wide open so the tears wouldn't blur my sight and kept pulling the trigger.

As the barrel's heat scorched my hand, my pain grew more intense.

Alteration-type magic — eye branch, stage two.

My pain stretches longer than any moment I've ever known...

"It... it stopped!"

"Fire! Fire!"

BRR-RR-RR-RR!

The machine guns all spat fire at the monster's head.

The monster, which had seemed absolute, began groaning and collapsing under the machine-gun barrage.

It had come too far in. Before it could split, heavy bullets battered its swollen mass, tearing it apart and dismantling it.

Only then could I finally close my eyelids again, tears streaming down my face.

A single blink to end the nightmare and the pain.

Blink.

At that moment, the monster collapsed with a howl.