Chapter 52 - A Bond over a Bowl of Ramyeon - Paid Chapters Begin

Until now, we had believed the fog created monsters.

We thought of it as a kind of field effect that interfered with modern weapons and common sense, making conditions ideal for monsters to hunt. And reasonably so. Humanity’s tactics and physical might, honed through repeated wars throughout history, were no joke.

World peace? Humanity probably hadn’t spent even a hundred years without war. Let’s not forget our friends in Africa and the Middle East count as human beings too.

Anyway, we had a twisted pride in humanity, which had fought war after war like venomous creatures battling in a jar. Nobody could beat us at war. Without that creepy fog, we could smash everything with firepower. That was the kind of human pride we had.

But now the Seoul mage Kang A-reum was telling us otherwise.

With her distinctly square jaw, she presented an entirely different view of the fog. She thumped her chest in frustration as she spoke.

"Have you ever felt something like a gaze sweeping through the fog?"

"A bright yellow gaze? That monster that seems to swim through the fog?"

"Swim... That’s a good way to put it."

She gave a bitter smile at my words, opened a notebook, and laid it on the hood of the car, tapping it with her index finger as though telling us to read it.

At that blatant gesture, we Supreme Mages exchanged glances. For a moment, we traded words through our eyes that needed no speaking. A brief, silent conversation passed between us, with no clear speakers.

Let’s look. Why? So you don’t want the information? This feels fishy. Isn’t it bullshit?

It seemed we would spend our whole lives exchanging glances without moving, so I, fearless as ever, decided to step up.

"Ow! Je-min, why did you suddenly push me in the back?"

"You take a look, Se-jun."

"Absolutely not!"

Lee Se-jun’s vehement resistance left me no choice but to inspect it myself. Kang A-reum watched us with her arms folded and a look of contempt, then snorted and shook her head.

"You boys are adorable."

"Let’s start with that bright yellow gaze and the fog."

That was the first thing I said after looking at the notebook.

It contained quite a few secrets and pieces of information I had never imagined. One was a rational inference about why the monsters appeared.

I pointed to that section and looked at her.

"Ordinary people mutate the moment they come into contact with that bright yellow gaze?"

"Yeah. It’s the strongest of the factors that cause mutation."

She met my gaze confidently and looked over the Supreme Mages. She knew her information was extremely special, and she was puffing herself up as though we ought to thank her for generously sharing it.

Shin Na-in was openly uncomfortable, and Lee Se-jun kept yawning, utterly uninterested. But the pastor and Hamza seemed to understand how valuable this information was and listened intently. Their eyes were sparkling.

Only after seeing that attention did she smile in satisfaction, place a hand on her hip, and strike a pose.

"Early on, or if people hadn’t gotten their facts straight, they would’ve assumed thinner fog made it easier to move around. They’d think it would make avoiding monsters easier. But that judgment was fundamentally wrong. They had the sequence backward."

Her explanation went like this.

Seoul mages disagreed about why all this had happened, but they shared one belief: whether the bright yellow gaze was a cause or a consequence, it was one of the most important factors behind mutation.

The bright yellow gaze.

Mutation began the moment someone was exposed to the gaze of the enormous things that had nested in various parts of Seoul. Apparently, these bright yellow gazes were active the night before the fog thinned. On days when the fog was thick, they stayed holed up in their nests and barely moved.

When the bright yellow gaze swept over a building, hiding anywhere inside did little good.

It pierced the fog, as well as human structures and obstacles.

Only those who had learned magic could avoid mutation even when the gaze hit them directly. They might suffer severe aftereffects or a brief bout of nausea, but at least infection or mutation would not begin. They could also conceal themselves and take cover from that gaze.

Ordinary people, however, mutated the moment they were exposed. Only the speed of progression differed; they were already carrying a monster inside them or destined to become one.

That was why most ordinary people had hidden underground. According to Kang A-reum, even mages generally stayed underground rather than on the surface unless they had a particular reason not to.

"We still haven’t fully worked out whether the fog thins because it moves, or whether it moves because it’s the night before the fog thins. We call that bright yellow gaze the Searchlight, or sometimes the Lighthouse."

"..."

"They sent special forces? What a joke. It doesn’t matter how talented someone in a reconnaissance unit is if they’ve been exposed to the gaze. Only mages have any chance of surviving in Seoul. Or ordinary people clinging to a mage. Unless those special forces soldiers were secretly mages or got advance information and hid underground, exposure to the gaze means there’ll be monsters wandering around in special forces uniforms."

Seoul’s rules were cruel, but simple and clear.

A mage? You live.

A non-mage? Die.

Could anywhere be more mage-friendly?

"How did you find out they weaken in the fog?"

"Every so often, there’s a period when the fog thins. About three days. The third day is the last, and the worst. On the third day, even mimic beasts stop trying their clumsy mimicry. With much better sight and hearing, they just charge in and start chasing ordinary people. Human slimes become much more active too. Think of a slug soaked in saltwater coming back to life."

"Hold on a moment."

I went back to consult the Supreme Mages.

The fact that she was handing over information so readily made me suspicious for no particular reason. And since she was the first friendly survivor we had met, it was difficult to cross-check anything.

"Do you think she’s telling the truth?"

"Hard to say. These are things I’d never considered. They’re so different from what we thought..."

The pastor smacked his lips and trailed off.

It seemed he was considering the possibility that this shocking, important information might not all be true.

Shin Na-in’s reaction was similar.

"Je-min. She’s an Ear Branch, Stage Two mage. If someone whose mind we cannot fully read offers us favors beyond what we paid for, she may be trying to steer our thinking. Above all, there is a rational reason to be wary of her words and question them."

"What is it?"

"She does not believe in the Lord. In other words, she cannot be as honest as a devout Christian."

Ugh. Fuck.

Rather than grab Na-in and argue with him, I decided to hear Se-jun and Hamza out. Se-jun spoke bluntly, looking utterly uninterested.

"We’re wearing the same gas masks, but one of us is a young guy and the other’s an old man? Hmph. I have no interest in that obnoxious woman."

"What can I do? I live young. What do you think, Hamza?"

"She isn’t dangerous. But I don’t know whether it’s true."

Fair enough. Hamza’s magic judged danger, so it might not be able to judge truth.

Still, now that we knew it wasn’t dangerous, I decided there was value in collecting an initial set of information we could cross-check with other survivors’ accounts. I opened my backpack, rummaged inside, and pulled out a bundle of military scrip.

"Here. Take this."

"What are these scraps of paper?"

She accepted the scrip for the moment, looking dubious.

"Do you think the won kept its value after Seoul went to hell? The last news I saw was that a circuit breaker had halted the stock market. To evacuate from the second cordon now, you need a ticket issued by the military, and this scrip gets you that. A hundred per person. You’d have to do a hundred days of manual labor to earn it, but we brought some to give friendly survivors."

"Really? It’s completely fucked? How badly?"

Apparently, telling her about the stock market’s circuit breaker didn’t quite bring it home. But I didn’t know any more either.

I looked around to see if anyone knew, and Hamza unnecessarily readjusted his backpack straps before answering.

"There hasn’t been any exchange-rate news since it passed three thousand won to the dollar. They won’t exchange won for dollars, so the actual rate is probably even more fucked."

"Does that mean we’re ruined?"

Faced with A-reum’s innocent question, I could only shrug.

There was an old saying that more was better. Since the exchange-rate number was bigger, maybe things weren’t as ruined as we thought?

Maybe the Republic of Korea was doing better than expected.

Now that I knew our homeland was safe and sound, there was no reason to hesitate. I began by explaining our circumstances.

"We’ll certainly listen carefully to what you’ve told us, but please understand that we need to be cautious too. We only recently came in from outside."

"Sigh... Fine. If everyone outside thinks the fog came first, I guess that makes sense. Well, we’re all going down together, so it’s not all bad."

In the end, we Supreme Mages decided to give it some time before accepting her information as truth. We felt we needed to cross-check it when we met other survivors.

Instead, we explained our goal of crossing the Han River and the route we had planned, then asked for her advice as a local.

Upon hearing that we wanted to cross the river, she nodded.

"Crossing the Han River. Mm-hmm."

"So we’re planning to head north along the Line Eight tracks."

"Are you insane?"

Looking stunned, she walked to the car’s trunk, took out a map, and laid it on the hood.

Her hands were clean, suggesting she took hygiene seriously for long-term survival. But the more important thing lay along the Line Eight tracks we had decided to follow.

"Past Seokchon Lake, to Lotte Tower."

"Wow. I hear it’s a Seoul landmark. We’ll get to see one."

For once, Se-jun smiled faintly in delight, only to hear a bolt from the blue.

"Lotte Tower is the bright yellow gaze’s nest."

* * *

April 17, 2028, 6:24 p.m.

We Supreme Mages decided to spend the day at Kang A-reum’s hideout. She was a friendly local survivor, a rare find, and safe hideouts were few and far between.

We also needed somewhere we could regroup with peace of mind. There could hardly have been a better time or place.

In this merciless Seoul, where closing your eyes could get your head slurped away, hospitality like this was hard to come by. And Hamza’s background as a Pakistani medical student shone here.

Though his specialty was surgery, he was better than your average quack.

He had brought something the rest of us Supreme Mages hadn’t even considered. From his backpack, he took out an item every woman trapped in Seoul would have missed. The moment A-reum saw it, she choked up. I could see her affection for Hamza soar.

"Sanitary pads? You brought these?"

"Women live in Seoul too. In an isolated place where you can’t travel freely, any survivors would need good-quality sanitary pads. I’ll give them to you for free, as proof that we’re friends."

"You’re really good guys. You don’t see many like you in Seoul..."

The other four of us had taken off our gas masks and disassembled our guns. We watched while diligently cleaning powder residue with cleaning rods, marveling at Hamza’s preparedness.

Even the pastor, though his lips stuck out in a sulky pout, praised that preparedness itself.

"Looks like our Muslim brought more supplies than I thought. Whether I should be glad that we’ve unexpectedly gotten better results than we hoped, or not..."

"Do you need that much preparation and consideration to get a girlfriend?"

As I reflected remorsefully on my lifelong singlehood, Na-in clicked his tongue and shook his head.

"If you’d done it, Je-min, you’d have started in prison. After awakening your holy-war arts, you would’ve been hauled out on a plea deal and drafted to the first cordon as a specialist soldier."

"No luck in love for me. None at all."

Even as I spoke flippantly, I didn’t forget the most important task. To improve our firepower against monsters, we would mark one magazine with tape or a pen, then buff every round loaded into it.

I took out my bayonet, squeezed my eyes shut, and very carefully pricked my right index finger before smearing blood on each bullet.

The sting traveled up from my fingertip and raised goosebumps, but I endured it. This was our secret weapon for killing monsters in one shot. Once the bullets were buffed, I loaded them into the magazine one by one.

Meanwhile, we also discussed our route.

"Following the tracks takes us past Seokchon Lake to Lotte Tower. We’d be approaching the place where the bright yellow gaze supposedly nests. Should we stick to that route?"

"There are definite advantages and disadvantages."

For once, Se-jun offered a plausible opinion.

"The advantage is that we’d be moving near the bright yellow gaze’s nest, so we wouldn’t have to worry about other hostile mages. Considering the various abilities we still don’t know about, that would be a significant benefit. I’m sure everyone knows the disadvantage."

"Honestly, people are just as dangerous. It must be hard to keep your faith in a place like this."

Assembling his K2 through muscle memory, the pastor raised a stained hand.

"But with that monster in mind, we should consider a detour. I won’t say we gain nothing from fighting monsters, but it’s inherently a considerable risk, and it uses up quite a bit of ammunition. The gains are small, too."

Around then, Na-in finished assembling his gun, checked the chamber with a clack, and joined in.

He examined the map A-reum had lent us, pointing to various spots with his finger held just above the paper so he wouldn’t get soot or stains on it.

"Looking at this, we could turn right at the next station, Garak Market, and detour toward Olympic Park. However, we wouldn’t be able to use Jamsil Bridge, the shortest route we had planned, and would have to use Olympic-daero instead. It looks like we’ll need to take a bit of a detour, Pastor."

"Wasting time isn’t good either, but we have no choice. All we can do is pray that the Lord protects us."

Our route was provisionally adjusted.

We would turn right at the huge intersection of Songpa-daero and Yangjae-daero and head toward Olympic Park.

The plan was for me to use Tongue, Stage One and Eye, Stage One to check our location through clairvoyance and keep us on course. We would use side streets to avoid Skin-jellyfish swarms as necessary, while sticking mostly to main roads to minimize fatigue.

Of course, this grand journey demanded sacrifices from me, Baek Je-min.

I had to buff one magazine per person with blood from my right hand. The sting of metal touching the wound made me worry I might get an infection from it. If I lay groaning with an infection, maybe I could take it easy and just gobble up magical knowledge.

Unfortunately, born into my parents’ abundant love, I, Baek Je-min, had never suffered even an ordinary cold or flu.

But my sacrifices didn’t end there.

To enchant everyone’s gas masks with Hand Branch, Stage Two, I had to prick my left index finger with the bayonet too. I squeezed my eyes shut and touched the point to it several times. I could feel their gazes growing cold.

Se-jun, who usually got a fair amount of criticism from me, looked particularly annoyed.

"Just prick it already. Why are you such a coward in everyday life?"

"To think my precious left hand has to be stabbed by this crude bayonet."

My precious magic staff, with Eye, Stage Two memorized in it, subjected to something so petty...

Lamenting all the while, I had no choice but to prick my left hand to improve my allies’ survival odds and convenience.

A prick. A sting.

The sensation brought tears to my eyes—not from pain, but sorrow...!

With blood from my left hand, I inscribed [Purification] on everyone’s gas mask. We didn’t know what toxic environments we might encounter, and I decided we couldn’t rely on filters alone.

We would try learning new magic script once the fog thickened again and we found a hideout.

I had a feeling I would soon be able to learn another symbol.

When I mentioned that feeling, everyone initially treated me like a lunatic. Only A-reum, who had carefully packed away Hamza’s sanitary pads, agreed as she organized the trunk.

"There’s a rumor that killing more monsters speeds up the awakening of magic seals, like experience points. There’s a good chance it’s just someone stirring people up to kill monsters, but fewer monsters can’t hurt."

"Seoul’s an insanely generous farming spot, isn’t it???"

Kill a mage stronger than me and get a free level-up. Kill mobs and level up too.

Was this actually a paradise for mages?

Why turn down such a great place and insist on escaping? When the fog was thick, I could blast away with magic and slaughter monsters.

A-reum watched me, then asked the other Supreme Mages around her,

"Is your young friend always like this?"

"He came here because he wanted to learn magic."

At Se-jun’s matter-of-fact reply, she looked at me and sighed deeply.

"You’d have learned inverted alteration-type magic if you’d been in Seoul."

* * *

April 18, 2028, 5:48 a.m.

The sun had risen. We could tell because the fog clouds were gray.

Having shared piping-hot Spam ramyeon for dinner for the first time in ages, our faces were filled with more ambition than usual. With those swollen faces, we gave our teeth a quick brushing with salt, then put on our gas masks.

It was time to part.

Though nobody said it, everyone was packing their things. Even A-reum.

"Why are you packing too?"

"My sorcery phone has made it possible to pinpoint my location, so I have to move. People in Seoul need at least two hideouts now. If an inverted alteration-type mage comes and attacks, it’s all over."

The underground parking garage’s shutter opened.

Seoul was submerged in thick fog again. Visibility: ten meters. It was thick enough that magic would work without trouble today. Right on cue, the dark navy phone vibrated and delivered a message.

[Dense fog. Outdoor activity easy.]

As I finished checking it and put it back in my chest pocket, A-reum approached me alone and whispered.

"Hey. The pastor and the foreign worker use doctrinal magic, right?"

"..."

"Make sure the doctrinal mages are careful. Doctrinal magic is different from alteration-type magic. That makes them more likely to be targeted. I don’t really know why either, so just be careful."

With those words, she headed back into the garage.

I didn’t know whether it was valuable information or merely an attempt to influence us, but she was a local survivor we had finally met. Having shared ramyeon with her, I didn’t want to part without a word, so I waved.

"Let’s meet again alive."

"Sure."

Without turning around, she waved goodbye and disappeared back behind the garage shutter. The descending shutter separated us once more.

It was only natural. The Supreme Mages had to cross the Han River, and Kang A-reum had to escape Seoul.

The Supreme Mages watched me return from saying goodbye without any particular comment.

Only the pastor gave me a determined look from behind his gas-mask lenses.

"Let’s go."

"Yes, sir."

We were the Supreme Mages.

With every step into the fog, it became clearer where we were headed.

We marched toward the truth.

Though some would call it hell.