Chapter 42 - Those Who Venture into Darkness

Of all us Supreme Mages, Pastor Park Yo-han showed the most interest in the phone graveyard. After checking dozens of phones one by one, he had discovered that a churchgoing family had been among the survivors. Perhaps that explained the greater tenderness in his gaze and manner as he looked at it.

While we spread out the blankets Hamza had brought, the pastor was once again arranging the phones nestled among candles whose wicks had burned away, leaving melted wax stuck to the floor. Not wanting to work, I took a few swallows from my canteen and approached him.

"What are you doing?"

"Praying."

"Uh, praying they'll be burned gently?"

"Praying for all of us."

Behind glasses that gave him a sly look, Pastor Park Yo-han's eyes were resolute. Apparently there were no exceptions to the basic doctrine that heaven's gates could not be opened to unbelievers. Still, the sorrow, compassion, and melancholy he felt as he slowly surveyed those shattered, filthy screens were unmistakable.

He scanned the phone graveyard again and again, speaking in a calm, subdued voice.

"I don't think the military and the government made the wrong decision. They did their best, too. Announcing the existence of these monsters would only have hastened the collapse. They did well. It was the right thing to do. Otherwise, we wouldn't have lasted until today."

He picked up a pink phone decorated with heart stickers. After wiping the dust from its screen a few times with his thumb, he noticed the fingerprints he was leaving, gave a hearty chuckle, and set it back down. The phone of a girl who must once have chattered so brightly settled into cold silence among spent candles and blackened screens.

"All I pray for is the courage not to cowardly turn away from my sins merely because I had no choice. For the honesty to acknowledge what I did wrong when the moment of judgment comes."

"How many people actually do that?"

"Listen, kid. You have to be able to do that to be the salt and light of the world. As a man of the cloth, I must be stricter than anyone else. With myself, too. Salt has to be salty to be worth anything."

With that, he turned to me and smirked.

"Baek Je-min. Don't throw away your chance to repent like these people did. Come to church already. I told you I'd make you head of the young adults' ministry, didn't I? Turn into a monster before you come, and you won't even have a chance to get into heaven."

"Won't heaven be full of people like Shin Na-in?"

"That's right."

I had no particular grievance against heaven, but if all my neighbors were variations on Shin Na-in, I'd certainly develop one.

I patted the pastor's shoulder and jerked my thumb behind me.

"If you're done praying, come help spread the blankets and get ready for night watch."

"This little shit won't give a man time to reflect."

Despite his grumbling, he turned away from the phone graveyard with difficulty.

It seemed to have shaken him more deeply than I'd expected. Perhaps he was comparing himself to the ear-branch mage who had led Jangji Station's survivors. Looking back at the phone graveyard in his stead, I found myself pondering a question.

When you realize the dreadful truth that people will become infected and degenerate into monsters, what can you do as their leader?

The mage at Jangji Station had made a somewhat more altruistic choice: herding the infected into the bathrooms and attempting to burn them to death. Whether out of guilt or paranoia about possibly being infected, the mage had burned along with them.

What, then, of selfish people?

Looking at the phone graveyard, I couldn't help grinning. If there were mages who killed others and themselves out of altruism, there would surely also be mages who killed everyone to survive out of selfishness. The moment of a magical showdown was drawing closer.

But my profound contemplation lost its force before Lee Se-jun and Shin Na-in's sharp voices.

"Je-min, stop goofing off and tell us when you're taking watch."

"Last shift."

"Don't give us that bullshit."

"Hah... You won't give a man time to reflect."

"Baek Je-min, don't use my words for that crap."

The competition over first and last watch was as fierce as ever, even here. My attempt to get sentimental and milk it for the fucking last shift had fallen apart far too easily. With my rifle slung over my shoulder, I joined the little cluster of Supreme Mages.

"You all know I'm getting old now, don't you? I need proper sleep. I'll take first watch."

"Pastor, quit fucking around. Let's settle this fairly with rock-paper-scissors and leave it to the Lord."

"Baek Je-min, you little bastard..."

Apparently feeling betrayed, Pastor Park Yo-han trembled with indignation as he stared at me. But there was no way I, Baek Je-min, would miss his attempt to play on our emotions. He thought he could gaze tenderly at the phone graveyard, get a little misty-eyed, and snap up first watch?

Not a chance.

Even if every god and Buddha in the world allowed it, this mere mortal, Baek Je-min, absolutely would not—not unless I got last watch.

* * *

April 16, 2028, 8:47 a.m.

What woke us at Jangji Station wasn't an alarm, but the brutal sound of shelling. Each explosion sent a heavy boom through the entire station, often shaking dust from gaps in the damaged ceiling panels. Stay here for days on end and our lungs would rot away. But we couldn't carelessly venture aboveground while the shelling continued.

Someone suggested making good use of the time by continuing along the Line 8 subway tracks, but I raised a thoroughly reasonable objection.

"The monsters aren't completely unintelligent. They're bound to be taking shelter while the shelling continues, whether in concrete ruins or underground. We killed nearly a hundred just traveling one stop from Bokjeong Station to Jangji Station. If we try forcing our way down the tracks while the bombardment's still going on, we'll run into more."

It was the same reason Seoul's survivors had used subway stations as shelters: to avoid exposure to shelling and monster attacks. At least in the outskirts, the monsters would hide inside buildings or underground to escape the bombardment. Hunting human survivors taking shelter there would probably be an added benefit.

Naturally, that would make the monsters much more densely concentrated than before. Just getting from Bokjeong Station to Jangji Station had cost us two grenades and two thirty-round magazines apiece for our alteration-type trio. We'd brought ten magazines each, and burned through two per person in a single day—even with the help of two grenades.

We'd brought a generous reserve of two eight-hundred-round ammunition cans, but we'd already used around 180 rounds on day one. Keep fighting at that rate, and we'd wind up swinging our guns like clubs, their empty shells no more useful than tin cans.

So I had no choice but to tap my temple with my index finger and spell out the problems one by one.

"Besides, between those freedom colony monsters and everything else, there's a good chance Seoul as a whole isn't the Seoul we knew anymore. Bokjeong to Jangji is on the outskirts, so the constant shelling has probably reduced the contamination somewhat. That would mean the contamination gets worse as we head toward central areas that have been shelled less. We've survived because we're exceptionally good at detecting and avoiding danger. That doesn't mean we're strong enough to hold out when we're forced into a fight."

Seeing the freedom colony—that flesh-colored slime—yesterday had convinced me. Seoul was no longer a human city. It was easier to think of it as another world, a concrete jungle teeming with monsters of every conceivable ecology from horror films and creature features.

Seoul was now a land of alien things, its ecosystem taken over by creatures born of humans but no longer human. Just as jungles were called green hells, Seoul had become a gray hell.

"At the very least, I think we should avoid traveling underground until the shelling stops and the monsters go back up to the surface or become active again. Our firepower is limited, and the Republic of Korea isn't a country where civilian gun ownership is legal, so finding ammunition locally will be difficult. If possible, everyone should learn at least Stage One hand-branch magic and equip themselves for close combat, or gather more local intelligence before moving cautiously. That would make us safer."

Then I looked around Jangji Station. We'd tidied up a little, but it was still a mess—evidence that no one else had made it down to the platform.

We Supreme Mages were supposed to be the follow-up reconnaissance party. The plan was for American and Korean special forces to scout ahead and clear a path, then regular soldiers who had volunteered or been dragged into this suicide mission would establish footholds. We civilian Operators would follow their route.

But something had gone wrong somewhere.

Gripping my rifle sling, I offered a theory.

"Maybe the advance teams trying to clear the route used surface roads rather than subway tunnels. Our alteration-type trio encountered two groups of monsters yesterday, at least forty in number—probably around a hundred. Sending nothing but grunts against monsters that densely packed would be a tall order. Even with the fog blocking visibility, they might have decided surface roads were better because armored vehicles and other vehicles could support them."

The Supreme Mages gave me strange looks when they heard my theory. Pastor Park Yo-han wasn't the only one: Lee Se-jun raised his eyebrows, Shin Na-in wore a satisfied smile, and Hamza even mimed applauding.

"Holy shit... Baek Je-min, what's gotten into you?"

"What do you mean?"

"You never struck me as this smart."

Now I knew just how fucking little that Bible-thumping pastor bastard thought of me.

Still, they apparently thought my points made sense. We agreed to spend some time regrouping in front of Jangji Station's phone graveyard, eating hardtack and washing it down with water from our canteens.

But not everyone appreciated the importance of drinking water. Watching Lee Se-jun wolf down food and gulp his water, Shin Na-in reminded him of that precious fact.

"Se-jun, conserve your water. If you drink it all, you'll have to go to the bathrooms and turn on a tap."

"Pfft! Gah, ack!"

Remembering the flesh-colored slime—the freedom colony—Se-jun struggled to swallow even as he choked. After a few dry coughs, he began tipping his canteen more cautiously.

And so we passed the time eating and drinking in front of the phone graveyard, venturing into relatively dense fog to try learning the magic script, and examining the records on the remaining phones.

The shelling stopped at 1:31 p.m.

I was tapping away at a dark navy phone's screen with a bored expression when dust stopped falling through the station. But the strange phenomenon occurred not in the station or aboveground, but on the phone.

Just as I was about to set it down, thinking the bombardment seemed to have stopped, a familiar yet chilling sound softly echoed throughout the station.

KA-TALK.

Everyone froze. I cautiously lowered my gaze to the screen. The dark navy phone was glowing brightly.

KA-TALK.

Instinctively, I looked at Hamza. He had stopped folding the blankets. His face went deathly pale and he shook his head, then tilted it in confusion. Apparently it was dangerous, at least.

I looked at the others. Since it was a phone rather than a person, Shin Na-in apparently couldn't read its mind. I saw him frown and quietly run a hand over his rifle. Lee Se-jun was busy hiccuping and pounding his chest. Only Pastor Park Yo-han spoke, after a short sigh.

"Check it. We need information. Even if it means taking a risk."

Most of the phones in the graveyard were locked. But the Jangji Station mage's phone and this dark navy one were unlocked. I didn't know whether their owners had simply been lax about security or had some other reason. What was certain was that this allowed us to check messages arriving on a phone with neither mobile data nor Wi-Fi.

Two swipes of my thumb, and I could read the KakaoTalk messages on the screen.

[Soldiers spotted in Seoul's Songpa District.]

That was the first message.

Apparently someone had found the troops sent to reconnoiter Seoul. Had they found us? Or was this related to the soldiers who had abruptly vanished at Bokjeong Station? There were too many possibilities to jump to a conclusion, so I checked the next message.

[Dense fog. Easy to operate outside.]

The second message was much simpler and seemed unremarkable—so much so that you had to chew it over carefully to notice anything odd. I showed everyone both messages to share the information, and we Supreme Mages focused on the second.

The pastor rested his chin on his hand in deep thought, while Shin Na-in gestured gently as he replied.

"It's easy to operate outside when the fog's thick?"

"Could it be a survivor group made up entirely or mostly of mages?"

"You said the backlash from magic lessens as the fog gets thicker, right? Then that could certainly explain it..."

"Ordinary people would have a hard time surviving either way."

Lee Se-jun's final remark summed up our conclusion. We didn't know how much the fog affected monsters, but at the very least, thinner fog would improve their visibility, too. It seemed this bizarre environment actually offered better odds of survival in dense fog, where magic could be used freely.

But the most important information lay elsewhere. The messages on this dark navy phone had enormous implications. Like the mysterious mage who had forced communications to continue at the Seongnam command tent until the power cable was cut, Seoul's mages apparently had some means of communicating without mobile data or Wi-Fi.

If so, that wasn't good news.

We checked once more that all our personal phones were off, then decided to take the dark navy phone with us, too. The number 1 marking the messages as unread had already disappeared. Yet we couldn't identify the sender: their profile contained nothing but a single period.

As cautious, consummate professionals who checked even extinguished embers, we Supreme Mages made our decision.

"According to the friendly survivor named Go Ryeo-ha, most of Seoul's mages have gone mad. Truly altruistic people like the mage at Jangji Station will have killed themselves long ago. If the sender has some idea where the phone owners are, and knows soldiers have advanced into Seoul's outskirts, they'll come after us immediately."

"There's also a very real possibility that the alteration-type holy-war arts include something like psychometry. We don't know its limits, but at the very least, we mustn't let this dark navy phone that received the messages fall into their hands easily."

That discussion led to the question of whether we should destroy the phone graveyard as well. Lee Se-jun and Hamza hesitated at the possibility that even the graveyard would have to be destroyed to keep us safe.

"These people didn't even leave bodies behind..."

"The angel is silent. It's hard to tell whether this will be all right."

That was when I found the answer.

"Let's give them back."

And so we Supreme Mages threw the phones that had been laid to rest in the graveyard into the bathroom entrance. Before the body and phone of the Jangji Station mage who had burned to death by their own hand, the traces of people met the monsters those people had become.

The flesh-colored slime extended its hideous pseudopods and felt around the phones, broken by the impact of our throws, like a person fumbling for their phone with their eyes closed in a dark room. To the flesh-colored slime called a freedom colony, smartphones ought to have been unfamiliar, tasteless objects. They weren't things it could swallow and eat.

Even so, they fiddled with the phones. Pale human eyes rolling around the edges like the eyes of shellfish stared at the phones touching their pseudopods. Before long, pseudopods of various sizes stretched out and covered the broken phones. The hideous appendages that had probed the gaps between the bathroom tiles gripped the hard, cold devices and drew them into their bodies.

We all knew.

That monster was no longer human. According to Shin Na-in, a freedom colony was merely a monster formed from a human soul shattered into tens of trillions of pieces.

Yet this monster, born of a soul fragmented into tens of trillions of pieces and violated, was drawing in the object it had spent the most time touching in its life, even as it suffered from nothing but hunger.

As the broken phones sank into the freedom colony, between white rippling patterns and opaque flesh-colored matter, the pale human eyes stopped looking outward. Gazing into themselves, the freedom colonies slowly slithered back into the bathrooms and disappeared.

Watching them, I asked Shin Na-in,

"What'd they say?"

"They're hungry."

"Guess being hungry doesn't stop them fiddling with their phones."

We Supreme Mages turned away again. There was no need for a long speech. We'd returned the lost belongings to their owners, and now we were heading back into Seoul, following the fog leaking through gaps in the emergency shutter.

We put our gas masks back on, pulled up our poncho hoods, checked our firearms, and steadied our breathing. Then we opened the emergency shutter's access door leading to the surface.

Thick fog already blanketed everything. Visibility looked to be less than ten meters. Even Lee Se-jun, Hamza, Shin Na-in, and the pastor, right in front of me, were hazy shapes. So we climbed the stairs with careful steps.

But around the time we began to feel wind instead of the damp, stagnant underground air, we spotted a beam of light cutting through the fog. Our steps naturally followed it back toward its source.

HOO.

Someone let out a deep breath. Goosebumps prickled my skin. With good reason: at the end of that beam stood a deuce-and-a-half, the sort of military truck you saw everywhere in the army. One machine-gun-mounted Humvee and two military trucks sat there, forlorn.

This time, though, some traces of people seemed to remain. Just as I was about to knock on the driver's window, the pastor tapped my shoulder and pointed at the ground. Clear footprints were pressed into dirt that had spilled through cracks in the asphalt road shattered by shelling. I was just about to kneel for a closer look when—

RAT-TAT-TAT...

Gunfire. Every one of us Supreme Mages looked toward the sound. The thick fog prevented us from seeing properly, but since we'd come out of Jangji Station's Exit 3, we could roughly place its source.

The department store.

I recalled the Jangji Station mage's records, which had speculated that the shelling was deliberately missing the department store. Had the soldiers entered it?

At that moment, a groan like a scream escaped the vehicle's radio.

["... Hostile survivors spotted..."]

The voice came with harsh breathing. Judging by the gasping, its owner's life would soon end.

["Localized... localized... Fuck, a mage bastard..."]

Our eyes meet through our gas-mask lenses.

Disappearing soldiers. Survivor groups we can barely find. Dense fog. Cryptic messages. New monsters that could appear at any moment.

And mages.

We are pressing forward to unravel the unprecedented disaster and mystery that descended upon humanity in 2028.

Feeling a thrilling shiver of exhilaration and joy at that fact, anticipating the countless forms of magic we would encounter along the way, I spoke in a trembling voice.

"Let's go."

HOO.

My breath escaped through the gas-mask filter. We stepped into the swirling fog, gripping our guns, staring wide-eyed with fear and excitement. We intend to explore a place that is no longer a human city.

Day two of the expedition.

We are heading toward the department store where we heard the gunfire.