Chapter 49 - Seoul 2028

Once we woke up, none of us got back into our sleeping bags. Everyone was too busy wondering what that presence could possibly have been—the one with the brilliant yellow gaze that pierced and pushed aside the fog.

I was sorting through my thoughts about what sort of monster that gaze belonged to. If it had feet, there should at least have been some pounding, but I had sensed nothing of the kind. Only when I saw the fog being displaced did I realize something had approached.

Without realizing it, I had imagined it swimming through a deep sea on land, and that description was more plausible than I had thought. Something that certainly wasn't small had moved without producing any vibration or sound. There hadn't been any flapping of wings, either.

Then how the hell had it moved?

I didn't know. Neither did the other Supreme Mages.

One thing was certain: even the Seoul mages hid from that monster. Pastor Park Yo-han removed his glasses and rubbed his eyelids.

"Unless we can find a room aboveground with some seriously thick walls, we'd better behave ourselves and head underground."

"Agreed."

I wondered whether that unidentified monster was also why the Jangji Station survivors had been reluctant to venture aboveground.

We tried to go back to sleep, but of course sleep wouldn't come. More precisely, our eyelids kept drifting shut from exhaustion, while our minds remained wide awake.

Everyone leaned against the back of the barricade or a wall, eyes closed, doing nothing but breathing. Normally, Shin Na-in or Lee Se-jun would have been spouting nonsense and making at least a little noise, but this time was different.

Just as you know a flying blade will kill you if it hits, we needed to understand why we had felt that taking that gaze head-on would be the end of us.

I voiced a thought without really expecting an answer.

"Is that another unidentified species?"

Unexpectedly, Hamza answered. He was curled up with his eyes gently shut.

"I don't know. It's been about three months since the military pulled out of here, so it might have appeared in the meantime."

"True. It only took around four months for everything to end up like this. It's possible."

I had talked all sorts of shit about Seoul being another world or hell, but never had it felt as real as it did today.

Perhaps, somewhere deep down, I had still considered Seoul human territory. Seeing the concrete rubble left by the bombardment must have unconsciously reassured me that people had lived here, too.

Hmm. No, the bigger factor was probably that I had thought a draw was still possible.

The cordon's been breached? Monsters are spilling out? Sure, just reset the entire Korean Peninsula with nukes and we're done! That fiery little mindset had drawn a psychological line in the sand. It was okay if I failed. Everyone could just get nuked and fucking die.

But now, feeling the weight and chill of the lump of metal—the gun—cradled in my arms, a horrifying thought reared its head.

Could humanity hold out if there were monsters that wouldn't die even after being nuked?

Right now, nuclear weapons were humanity's last hope. Not in the sense of some ultimate weapon for the final battle, but as the ultimate test of whether humanity's physical force worked at all. The complacent expectation that launching nukes would end the crisis was keeping human civilization from collapsing in terror.

If the nukes wiped out every monster, that would be a happy ending. Sure, fifty million Koreans would be erased by nuclear heat, but the other 7.95 billion people would survive.

But if there were monsters that survived even that...

... We had to learn magic.

The magic script that had blazed inside my head when that gaze turned our way was still vivid.

Magic was a ladder that might reach omnipotence, and our only means of survival. The difference between mages and those who hadn't learned magic would only grow clearer with time.

I spent the time with my eyes closed, thinking these thoughts.

Wind slipping through the broken windows. Sleeping bags rustling as people shifted. Stomachs gurgling.

Then my eyelids began to tickle faintly. When I opened my eyes, I saw the pitch-black night fog taking on a slightly gray hue. We still couldn't properly see what was right in front of us, though.

"Anyone asleep?"

"No."

Lee Se-jun answered with a languid yawn, while Shin Na-in, looking a little better, adjusted his headset.

Everyone looked haggard, probably thanks to our ordeal in the middle of the night. There was one sure remedy for times like this. People wake right up when they have something to focus on, and we happened to have just the thing.

When I rummaged inside my clothes and pulled out the booklet I'd carefully brought along and a ballpoint pen, everyone gave me strange looks.

"What is it, Baek Je-min...? We don't have time to fool around."

"Let's hammer some magic script into our heads while the fog's thick. Everyone's so drained that I doubt we'd manage any proper reconnaissance anyway."

"Doesn't looking at that make you dizzy?"

The pastor remained unenthusiastic, but at least the other three were thinking along the same lines as me.

Lee Se-jun, who only had eyes for the perks, Shin Na-in, who wouldn't shut up about alteration-type holy-war arts, and even Hamza took the Magic Crash Course booklet, hoping to add at least one more branch of alteration-type magic to their repertoire.

We drew the magic script each of us knew and showed it to one another. Naturally, we threw up.

"Bleeuurgh..."

I failed to acquire the heart and ear branches.

Still, the side effects were definitely better than before. Looking at them outside Seoul had left me dizzy for thirty minutes, tormented by the sensation of needles poking into my brain. This time, all I did was bring up the little I'd eaten.

If I kept banging my head against this in thick fog, I felt like I could learn them. I really did, but...

Pastor Park Yo-han patted my shoulder and clicked his tongue.

"You noticed that monster before dawn, didn't you? It might be why the other monsters aren't coming here. Staying in one place is dangerous."

"Urp... Ah, shit. I think I'd be fine if I could just get the heart branch."

"Hey. This is only our third day. Aren't you trying to get too much for free after just three days?"

"Pastor, getting things for free is all the rage these days. If anything, we're traditionalists who actually put in the effort."

Just look at all the fiction set in worlds where bizarre phenomena like this happened.

The characters either had status windows or, failing that, once-in-an-age talent that let them level up just by breathing. Meanwhile, we Supreme Mages were painstakingly learning one stitch at a time, retching all the way.

Lee Se-jun and Shin Na-in agreed with this argument.

"Isn't it just like how exercise is hard?"

"Promising easy results is a favorite trick of devils. I like holy-war arts that grant strength through trials and suffering."

"You're all full of shit. What about Islam?"

"Bleeuurgh..."

The pastor seemed to wonder whether Hamza shared our opinion, but Hamza was still busy retching.

The three of us alteration-type users were fine. We'd long since figured out how to vomit without getting it on our mouths or clothes.

But Hamza, a doctrinal mage, was slumped over the barricade, heaving and gagging.

It was further proof that doctrinal mages had trouble learning alteration-type magic script.

Still, Hamza's dizziness turned out to be an unexpected bonus.

Normally, we would have gotten up immediately, packed, and moved on. But when we couldn't spare even one person to carry supplies, Hamza being down for the count forced us to rest. So we focused on getting ready while he recovered.

First came rolling up our sleeping bags and packing our things.

We also opened cans we'd found rummaging around the department store's seventh floor and made a meal of them. The lack of Spam or Richam was another disappointment.

People were always so busy frying them, but Spam and Richam tasted good straight from the can, too.

Of course, the others looked at me like I was strange.

The pastor raised his eyebrows as he ate from a can of tuna with chopsticks he'd wiped with a tissue.

"You eat ham like sashimi, too? You're eating something meant to be fried without cooking it."

"Seriously, there's nothing wrong with eating it as is."

"Well, it won't kill you, so I suppose not."

The pastor snapped back as though I were pathetic.

Honestly, I felt wronged, but I held my tongue rather than argue.

Ham tasted good uncooked... Was this how sashimi lovers felt whenever someone told them to eat their fucking fish grilled?

Meanwhile, Lee Se-jun placed a chopstickful of tuna on a hardtack biscuit and spoke matter-of-factly.

"Ham instead of tuna would taste good on this."

"Yeah. Wonder if there's any ham left somewhere."

It was an idle remark, but it made a surprisingly appealing side objective.

The primary reason I, Baek Je-min, had come to Seoul was to learn magic. The mission of stopping nukes from falling on the Korean Peninsula belonged to those soldiers over there. Honestly, at this point, I was starting to think a little nuking might be fine.

The problem was that foreign countries wouldn't be satisfied with just Seoul.

Only wipe out Seoul? Wouldn't it be better to go all out and blow away the whole Korean Peninsula? You're launching nukes anyway. Why not just scorch everything?

That was such a reasonable, entirely natural response that it was hard to argue against. If people abroad went through the list of monsters we'd encountered, they might start protesting to demand why nobody had launched the nukes yet.

Setting a modest goal like finding ham to improve our meals amid such extreme surroundings made me smile for no particular reason. Once the terror of imminent death faded, all that remained was a craving for a savory rice meal and ham.

Seeing me, a pale Hamza furrowed his brow.

"Je-min, why are you smiling?"

"Because I want ham."

I answered while spearing and chewing a piece of canned yellow peach.

I remembered the can of Spam First Lieutenant Shin Han-gi had given me before we came to Seoul, but decided to save it.

With outdoor activity this restricted, Spam was precious.

Therefore, I would eat it secretly, all by myself.

As I made that resolution, another vibration sounded.

BZZZ.

I pulled the dark navy phone from my pocket and showed it to the Supreme Mages.

"Look at this. I definitely turned it off, but it keeps switching itself on."

Having made it clear that this was absolutely not my fault, I raised the screen to check it.

Sure enough, another message of unknown origin arrived with a KA-TALK.

[Fog thin. Non-mage personnel strictly prohibited from outdoor activity. Beware of rooftops and the air above.]

When I showed them the message, the pastor was the first to make an astute observation.

"You said the fog reduces magical backlash, right? Then why can't people who aren't mages go outside?"

"The Seoul mages have been here for four months, so they clearly know far more than we do. But I doubt many of them are friendly. That's a problem."

Lee Se-jun scratched his beard and shrugged.

The messages were written on the assumption that Seoul mages would already know what they meant, making them difficult for outsiders to understand.

I'd thought only rural places were hostile to outsiders, but Seoul was no joke either.

Around then, heavy artillery blasts began to sound.

Fortunately, they weren't nearby. The bombardment was aimed south, in the direction we'd come from. Instead, strange groans and cries were flowing away along the roads like an ebbing tide.

Shin Na-in stared beyond the windows and nodded quietly.

"Looks like they've headed toward the front."

"Those frontline soldiers have it rough."

* * *

April 17, 2028, 7:35 a.m.

Day three of the expedition.

We gathered our gear, avoiding the dust raining from the ceiling as it shook with the bombardment. After putting on our gas masks and blowing hard to check their condition, we moved again. Our ultimate objective for now was to reach Konkuk University and contact the friendly mage called Go Ryeo-ha.

To do that, we had decided to alternate between traveling aboveground and underground, depending on the condition of the Line Eight tracks.

With the bombardment underway and monster groups on the move, we decided against venturing out rashly and searched the outlet mall connected to the department store instead. Apart from the electronics section, everything was either already looted or useless.

A few AA batteries were the sum of our haul.

Next, we consulted the department store directory and headed toward the subway.

As expected of a large department store, it was connected to the nearby station by an underground passage.

At Jangji Station, we hadn't investigated thoroughly after seeing that human slime, since we'd needed to go outside and assess conditions aboveground. Still, I thought being able to reach the subway station through the department store's underground passage would be very useful.

But that plan was scrapped the moment we approached the passage.

"Shh."

Hamza, who had been advancing quietly, raised a hand. He might not know the right answer, but he was amazingly good at identifying wrong ones. Him signaling before anything else was a very bad sign.

Rather than head underground, we waited near the entrance on the first floor for Shin Na-in to investigate.

Fortunately, our monster friends were kindly considerate enough to spare us the time Shin Na-in's Ear Branch, Stage Two detection might take. That peculiar, distinctive sound echoed up the first-floor stairs.

GURGLE, GURGLE, GURGLE...

A veeeery familiar sound.

The military called it the Amalgam subspecies Bloodcord Delta. We casually called it a blood net.

It devoured mages and controlled them like puppets to launch mental attacks.

That distinctive sound—the desperate attempt to speak through holes in the vocal cords, with the upper part of the lower jaw gone and the tongue dangling—was echoing through the underground space. Since it hadn't come up to the first floor, it seemed to have settled in below.

I could guess why this enormous department store had no proper group of survivors, and why there had been only one Seoul mage.

With aboveground movement restricted by shelling and monster hordes, mediocre mages and survivors couldn't get past a blood net. The soldiers who'd made it into the department store near Jangji Station had probably noticed it, too, and forced their way along the surface instead.

We could fight it, but it was fucking annoying and dangerous.

When I looked back at Lee Se-jun and Shin Na-in, they immediately abandoned the idea, apparently thinking the same thing.

Only the pastor and Hamza, who had never actually seen one, looked puzzled.

"Bad enough to make our best of the best retreat?"

"It does seem dangerous... but is it too much for the three of you?"

Those taunts scratched at the Supreme Mages' pride, but we weren't taking the bait.

Unless it definitely had magic script, it wasn't a monster I wanted to go out of my way to fight.

"It uses mage corpses as puppets to attack your mind. I don't know why, but it jams drones, too. I don't think we need to take that risk just to get to Jangji Station underground."

"Ah... All we can do is hope they weren't good people. You shouldn't pray too often for the fires of hell to cool down."

"Why not?"

I thought it would be great if hellfire cooled into a nice hot sauna, but the pastor and Shin Na-in thought differently.

"Sinners are thrown in there to suffer. What's the point if it's lukewarm? We need harsh punishment!"

"That is the proper Christian attitude. They are being given ample opportunity right now. Though that Antichrist pope is pretending otherwise!"

It wasn't easy to move until we were certain the bombardment wouldn't come our way.

With time to spare, we visited the pile of burned corpses to pay our respects. We didn't forget to clean our guns while we were at it.

We brushed away the powder residue left by firing and yawned at length in front of the soldiers' bodies.

It was 10:11 a.m. when we judged that the artillery blasts were coming only from far away.

After offering a brief prayer for the burned bodies, the pastor adjusted his rifle sling.

"Let's go."

We stepped into place.

Without anyone needing to say a word, we formed up. Our formation had already proved its worth. We left the department store at Jangji Station without hesitation.

Our footsteps trampled over the heavy artillery blasts and distant screams as we advanced into the gray clouds of fog.

Only then did I understand what thin fog meant.

It had been hard to tell inside the dark building, but once outside, the greatly improved visibility was immediately apparent. Before, even ten meters had been a stretch, sometimes shrinking to around five. Today, visibility seemed to be about two hundred meters.

We could even see traffic lights several blocks away.

Lee Se-jun looked around, marveling despite himself.

"People really do need to live somewhere clear."

Walking through fog with two hundred meters of visibility felt wonderfully liberating. Hamza was the one who threw cold water on that feeling.

Just as I was inwardly agreeing with Se-jun, Hamza calmly told us the truth.

"Se-jun, you've been gaslit. This isn't clear."

"If we can see way better than yesterday, it's clear enough."

Still, I could feel everyone relaxing a little.

This was certainly much better than the dense fog in which we could barely see a thing.

So much so that I couldn't understand the message on the dark navy phone telling non-mages not to go outside.

If anything, it made sense for people without magic to do more when the fog was thin, yet the message said the exact opposite.

Had the mages deliberately invented that rule to wield power over ordinary civilians? As uncertain speculations bubbled up, we advanced along the road covered in shell craters and collapsed concrete rubble.

That was when we heard the sound of a giant hornet.

Looking up, I saw a drone flying noisily overhead.

The pastor's delighted voice came from behind me as soon as he spotted it.

"Oh. Looks like the military hasn't forgotten us yet."

The great age of AI and drones.

We looked up at the sky, clearer than it had been in some time, and watched the drone's valiant flight, cheering it on. Until something black came fluttering out of the fog, that is.

It was still too far away to see clearly, but something like a black plastic bag was fluttering through the sky.

It was quite large, though. If we could see it that clearly despite the distance and its crumpled appearance, it couldn't be the size of an ordinary plastic bag. I figured it had to be at least as big as a hundred-liter municipal trash bag.

If that had been all, I would have assumed something just happened to be floating through the sky.

But there weren't just one or two.

Once the first appeared, other things like enormous plastic bags emerged from the fog, fluttering leisurely. Realizing something was wrong, we quietly slipped behind obstacles along the road without anyone needing to say a word.

We ducked and crawled under a pile of collapsed building rubble to keep watching the sky.

BZZZZZ.

The drone's valiant hornet buzz continued for a while. Until a strange sound suddenly overwhelmed it.

CHOMP!

The hornet buzz became muffled, then something heavy fell to the ground. Unable to tell what had happened from sound alone, I looked at Hamza and Shin Na-in. Their results weren't very good, perhaps because the thin fog weakened magical backlash.

"I think it might be dangerous..."

Hamza's doctrinal magic had become even vaguer.

"For now, it seems to be a monster."

"For now?"

"I can't hear it clearly, but it doesn't sound human."

Shin Na-in's Ear Branch, Stage Two ability to hear monsters was clearly lacking in detail.

In the end, the safest way to find out what it was would be to use Tongue, Stage One to get one hundred percent out of Eye, Stage One.

One minute. Past. Road. Road near the Jangji Station department store.

The magical backlash arrived without fail.

The taste-bud papillae on my tongue split open all at once, so abruptly that I imagined hearing a hiss. The wounds had barely healed before reopening, bringing tears to my eyes.

My eyes were fucking dry and prickly, as though someone were gently rubbing them with shriveled plastic or a sponge. That somehow made it even more nauseating.

But the instant I saw what my eyes showed me, I briefly forgot even the pain.

What had attacked the drone was a monster.

It floated through the sky like a jellyfish, trailing extremely fine, thin tentacles. The moment something touched them, it pounced and wrapped around it like a cloth. They seemed to move in groups, but their sizes varied.

With behavior like that, it seemed like a thoroughly ordinary monster.

Its appearance was a little more ambitious, though, as with every monster infesting Seoul.

It was a jellyfish made of slightly translucent human skin. Eyeballs were attached to the skin, and the tips of hands and feet protruded from it. The mingled hides of countless people undulated through the air like a jellyfish.

The victims' faces were plastered all over its surface, stretched or crumpled. Some eye sockets were empty, but others still held their eyeballs.

Those eyeballs rolled ceaselessly whenever the jellyfish shifted position, scanning below and to either side. Then they spotted a valiant drone. The moment the drone touched a tentacle, the jellyfish lunged and wrapped around it like a cloth.

Devoured, the drone fell.

The fallen jellyfish writhed, swelling and shrinking repeatedly. Then, realizing its catch wasn't human, it began limply spitting it out.

The faces plastered over its skin merely rolled their eyes, their expressions screaming or contorted.

With that, the jellyfish returned to its group, and my magic ended.

Naturally, my stomach wasn't strong enough to see that shit and remain unaffected, so I first pulled up my gas mask.

"Bleurgh!"

Retch long enough and you learn a few tricks. Short and sharp—one good heave! After throwing up, I rinsed my mouth from my canteen and spat again. Then I soothed my stomach with lukewarm water warmed by my body and looked at the Supreme Mages, who were pestering me with enthusiasm.

The pastor and Lee Se-jun were the most impatient.

"What did you see? Baek Je-min, what kind of monster is it?"

"Je-min, don't keep it to yourself. Hurry up and tell us!"

I let out a long breath.

Only Shin Na-in, who had already read my thoughts and gathered what had happened, watched me calmly. Hamza seemed to have guessed the danger and was quietly rattling off a prayer.

I was beginning to worry about the fate of the advance reconnaissance unit.

Was this really a place where being special forces was enough to survive?

How should I describe that monster?

After a very long deliberation, I summed it up in a single word.

"Skin-jellyfish."

Before dawn on April 17, 2028, we encountered something enormous that cast a brilliant yellow gaze.

And at 10:28 a.m. on April 17, 2028, day three of the expedition, we encountered a group of previously unknown creatures belonging to an unidentified species, provisionally dubbed skin-jellyfish.

Skin-jellyfish were monsters made of human skin that swam, undulating, through thin clouds of fog before lunging in an instant to swallow their prey.