Chapter 53 - The Saved Shall Save

This was the route we Supreme Mages had settled on.

First, we would travel aboveground for as long as possible. Traveling along the subway tracks was relatively safe, but the enclosed space could make an ambush fatal. Besides, there were still plenty of monsters we knew nothing about. Better to stay aboveground, where magic could let us detect them from a distance or scout ahead, and prepare accordingly.

Second, following the Line Eight tracks all the way would inevitably bring us close to the nest of the bright yellow gaze A-reum had told us about.

The area around Lotte Tower, near Seokchon Lake, which the bright yellow gaze supposedly used as its nest, might be crawling with monsters or harbor other equally dangerous beings. The bright yellow gaze might sweep the surface, but the other monsters nearby could venture underground.

Saving time was important, too, but the bright yellow gaze and the area around its nest were an ultra-dangerous zone we weren't ready to handle.

The third reason was almost the same as the second, but with a slightly different twist.

Jamsil Station was the problem.

The Line Eight tracks inevitably led to Jamsil Station, and that troublesome station also served Line Two.

As someone from outside Seoul, I could only tilt my head in confusion. What was such a big deal about Line Two? If Shin Na-in hadn't explained after letting out a long breath through his gas mask, I might never have understood.

"Line Two is notorious for having the most passengers of any subway line in Seoul. The population density is enormous. And if it's even near that... vile monster's nest, the number of monsters will be beyond imagination."

"Wouldn't they have shelled the hell out of it?"

"That would be useless if they're packed into the subway station to escape the shelling. Even if they destroyed it with something like a bunker buster, they could pour out through other stations. Whatever the case, we can't dismiss the possibility of monsters swarming out around Jamsil Station."

I looked around at the others just to check, and the pastor and Hamza nodded, too.

"Line Two isn't fit for people to ride. It wasn't when I rode it."

"It's gotten a lot better. It is still pretty crowded."

Manly man Lee Se-jun volunteered his answer without even being asked.

"I wouldn't know."

"Figured you wouldn't."

We Supreme Mages wanted to explore and learn magic. We weren't lunatics who deliberately sought out unnecessary danger.

According to Na-in, Line Two would have been the most heavily used subway line in Seoul, a city of nearly ten million people. It was also near Gangnam, an already crowded area, and we had to consider the possibility that people had fled into the subway to escape the monsters when the critical threshold was breached.

Taking all of that into account, Jamsil Station was hell within hell.

Se-jun added a few words of his own.

"Some of the monsters did move out toward the front, but if you're asking whether their numbers have dropped enough for us to break through, I couldn't say. In fact, this would've been one of the places our military kept shelling. If they concentrated their firepower on defending the front instead, monsters might have filled the gap."

"Why do you suddenly seem smarter, Se-jun?"

"Je-min. I may not look it, but I served as a short-term staff sergeant."

We exchanged opinions like this now and then as we pushed through dense fog with visibility of no more than ten meters.

Monster ambushes? Not a chance.

We Supreme Mages were highly systematic magicians with a flexible talent for improvisation. Even in the middle of a conversation like this, the mood changed the instant Hamza's eyes snapped wide.

Hamza wiped the whitish moisture the fog had left on his gas-mask lenses with his fingertips and warned us.

"Danger."

By now, a single word was enough.

Whenever Hamza warned us, Na-in adjusted his headset, all his disgraceful nicknames stripped away until only the super detector remained. His eyes narrowed behind his gas-mask lenses, and he spoke in a firm, resolute voice.

"A sound like cloth fluttering in the wind... Three jellyfish."

"Guess they hunt even when the fog's thick."

Normally, I would have used Tongue, Stage One to bring out one hundred percent of Eye, Stage One, cleared the fog, lined up my sights, and carefully shot them down one by one.

I would have wasted precious ammunition—the Supreme Mages only had about two thousand rounds left—on pathetic trash mobs like those. In fact, Se-jun and the pastor were already aiming their muzzles skyward.

I, too, would have carefully tapped off shots with my short-barreled AR-15 and its red-dot sight.

Normally, that is.

"Everyone, hold it."

"Huh?"

The pastor's gaze was fierce. It said, What the hell is this bastard up to now?

"Baek Je-min, what kind of bullshit are you about to pull?"

"It's not bullshit. It's magic."

Jeong Na-ri, the inverted alteration-type mage who had fought us in the department store near Jangji Station, hadn't been able to use Tongue, Stage Two. My guess was that her level of awareness hadn't met the requirement.

Then how much awareness did using Tongue, Stage Two require?

We knew the approaching monsters were three Skin-jellyfish. I knew what Skin-jellyfish were and what they looked like. And with Eye, Stage One alone, I could work backward from their red footprints to determine their positions.

Without help from Tongue, Stage One, it was only precognition with a ten-second time lag. But put another way, I could estimate where those red footprints had been ten seconds earlier—in other words, the monsters' current positions.

Besides, the fog was quite thick.

There was no reason at all to hesitate.

Alteration-Type Eye, Stage One.

My eyes ached a little, but the backlash was well within my tolerance.

At the same time, the fog swirled away, revealing several patches clearly. Red footprints approached, bouncing along the clouds of fog as though using them as stepping stones.

They weren't moving fast, but they would definitely be right in front of us in ten seconds.

Until now, I'd been too busy keeping those red footprints from getting close.

I'd focused only on firing first, timing my shots for when the owners of those footprints would line up in front of my muzzle ten seconds later. In other words, I'd been limited in how I applied my magic.

But now that I had some breathing room, I could use that time-lagged precognition, which showed me only ten seconds into the future, to estimate the monsters' present locations.

Assuming it took me roughly four or five seconds to think and work out their positions, I couldn't pinpoint them with absolute accuracy.

But I could at least make a predictive shot.

Whining and lamenting that my precognition only showed me ten seconds ahead would be utterly third-rate. In this esoteric system called alteration-type magic, which accepted pain alone as payment, properly allocating the pain a caster could bear was a skill in itself.

A predictive shot was enough. I shifted my eyes to work out where the red footprints had come from.

Above the intersection. These monsters apparently drifted around, waiting mainly over places people could easily pass through, or ambushing them from behind rooftops.

They were beasts. I was human.

If I understood their habits, I could win.

It was the perfect opportunity to test the power of Tongue, Stage Two.

I slung my rifle over my shoulder, quickly lifted my gas mask with my left hand, and stuck my tongue out.

Upright Alteration-Type Tongue, Stage Two.

Explosion of desire—appetite.

Naturally, since my targeting wasn't precise and this was Tongue, Stage Two, backlash struck despite the dense fog. For a brief instant, it felt as though the taste-bud papillae on my tongue were boiling.

Then blood spurted.

SPURT!

The fishy, metallic taste of blood soaked my tongue. A raw, stinging pain lingered at its tip, and I felt blood dripping from it.

But even as my eyes grew bloodshot, they didn't close.

I refused to close them because I wanted to see what happened to the pale shapes beyond the fog. Tears welled up from the pain, but what I truly couldn't bear was missing the result of the magic I'd wrought.

A true miracle of equivalent exchange. Unlike everything else, which demanded bone-grinding pain merely to grant a chance.

Magic was an almighty power that willingly gave as much as the bone you ground away. And once again, it met my expectations.

One of the three fluttering shapes approaching us twitched.

One set of red footprints shook chaotically, then disappeared. Or seemed to disappear. When I widened my eyes again, clearing the fog to look beyond it, the red footprints were stamped onto the other monsters of its kind.

With its appetite exploding and hunger consuming it, the Skin-jellyfish had no patience left.

Hunger was a force that compelled humans to become beasts. That agonizing pain, which had made people in history's great famines cry out that they wanted to live even if it meant eating their own children, subdued even a monster's nature.

The warped faces forming the Skin-jellyfish all pursed their mouths and cried out as if screaming.

Its sucker lips drooled in unison, ready to wrap around anything they could reach.

And right now, another unsuspecting Skin-jellyfish was closer than we were—and we could fight back. The moment the kinship shared between monsters faced magical hunger, the monster howled.

It howled as that kinship shattered, but spread its skin toward another monster of its own kind to sate its hunger.

SLURP!

Another set of red footprints vanished.

Unable to endure its immediate hunger, the Skin-jellyfish attacked another Skin-jellyfish. The other struggled to survive, but being attacked first put it at a disadvantage.

SPLAT.

The two Skin-jellyfish tangled together. As they struggled to devour each other, I learned how Skin-jellyfish fed.

This monster pushed its skin into a human's mouth, assimilating the internal organs with its own skin. It dissolved and ate all the organs, consumed everything that could rot, effectively preserved the body like a taxidermy specimen, then merged it with its skin to grow larger.

Watching them tumble back and forth as they tried to force their warped, screaming faces into each other's mouths was like watching a wildlife documentary. The fact that these monsters came from human bodies made the scene all the more grotesque.

Then the remaining, unaffected one made a different choice in the face of this cannibalism.

Perhaps deciding that eating its own kind was better than targeting us, it lunged at the Skin-jellyfish gripped by magical hunger.

SLURP!

And with that, the last red footprints vanished, too.

The Skin-jellyfish rolled around on the road, trying to eat each other. Their tentacles lashed incessantly as their suckers, formed from opening and closing human lips, battered one another's skin.

After watching the scene, I gathered saliva and spat out the blood.

PTUI.

When I put my gas mask back on, everyone reacted differently.

The pastor seemed dumbfounded by the shapes suddenly tangling together in the fog.

"Je-min. What did you do?"

"Upright Alteration-Type Tongue, Stage Two. I used explosion of desire to make their appetites explode, and that's what happened."

"That's a terrifying power. Don't use it carelessly."

Hamza turned away, his face deathly pale, while Se-jun gave me a thumbs-up without knowing exactly what had happened.

"Allah, protect me."

"Je-min, that's incredibly handy."

Only then did I hear a strange sound.

BLEURGH, UURGH...

Na-in had pulled up his gas mask and was retching. After throwing up what he'd eaten, he unhesitatingly tipped his canteen to wet his hand and repeatedly wiped his mouth. Only after gargling, too, did he put his gas mask back on.

"Je-min. Please tell me before you use Tongue, Stage Two of the alteration-type holy-war arts."

"What were the monsters saying?"

For once, Na-in didn't tell me right away.

Instead, he merely ground his teeth as he adjusted his gas mask.

"Make sure you unlock the ear branch someday."

Fortunately, I was an eye-, tongue-, and hand-branch mage. Whatever Na-in had heard, I could rest easy knowing I wouldn't hear it until much later.

I readjusted my grip on my rifle and aimed at the three monsters tangled together on the road, attacking each other.

"Anyway, I'll be taking the experience points."

"You actually believe that rumor about earning experience points by killing monsters?"

At the pastor's incredulous tone, I burst out laughing and pulled the trigger.

BANG, BA-BANG...

As the pleasant sound of falling cartridge cases reached my ears, I waved the muzzle to disperse the gunsmoke and answered.

"It feels good."

I was going to kill them anyway, and it supposedly benefited me. Wasn't believing it the best option?

I stroked my rifle once, then gestured beyond the fog with my chin.

"Three bullets for three monsters. I've made a satisfying equivalent exchange. Why would I dislike a rumor saying I get a bonus on top?"

Needless to say, from that point onward, we Supreme Mages became more varied in our responses.

With the usefulness of upright Alteration-Type Tongue, Stage Two proven, something resembling stealth became possible.

We might have been strolling as though on an outing, but Seoul was by no means land meant for humans. As we walked through fog with visibility of no more than ten meters, familiar noises and ominous, unfamiliar ones often overlapped in a discordant chorus.

The clicking of switches, water dripping from faucets that weren't fully closed, strange moans like a starving person squeezing out a groan with the last of their strength, wind passing through broken windows and sounding like human screams...

Sound wasn't all there was to Seoul.

Seoul was smell, too.

As we ventured farther in, foul odors reached my nose, telling me what had happened over the past four months.

Seoul was blanketed in the stench of sewage leaking from pipes beneath cracked asphalt, the faint, chilling smell of decomposing corpses, the unpleasantly sweet stink of rotten meat, and damp, clammy mildew.

It was a good thing I'd written [Purification] in blood inside our gas masks.

With gas-mask filters and even Purification inscribed through Hand, Stage Two's enchantment, those smells still reached my nose. I couldn't begin to imagine how horrible they really were.

Seoul felt different to the touch, too.

You might wonder how I could feel anything through a rain poncho, combat uniform, boots, and gas mask, but I really could. As the distinctive smell of raw rubber brought Seoul's odors with it, I felt the changed city through the soles of my boots, all through my body.

It was damp and clammy. Dew covered practically everything. Not clear, clean dew waiting for morning, but dew fishier than blood, saltier than tears, and more stinging than a wound.

Sometimes, where enough had collected, our footsteps splashed as though through shallow puddles. The farther we went toward central Seoul, the more dew gathered on our ponchos.

Even a slightly rough movement of an arm sent the droplets pattering down.

Walking through a place like this, I couldn't help doubting Kang A-reum's words. All the more so because so much of the firepower modern weapons boasted depended on visibility.

Was the fog really meant to benefit humans?

The other Supreme Mages must have been thinking the same thing, because conversation dropped off sharply. It wasn't something we could judge rashly.

My position was a little more conciliatory.

I thought the fog was indeed meant for magic, but that didn't mean it looked after ordinary non-mages, too.

To me, the fog wasn't for everyone. It was a blessing only for those who had awakened to magic and were ready to advance through it.

The other Supreme Mages also had to acknowledge that the fog was useful to mages, at least.

The message '[Dense fog. Outdoor activity easy.]' pointed to an uncomfortable truth. Modern non-mages regarded fog as an enemy, but to mages, it was a blessing, a defensive wall, and the product of a miracle.

Whenever Hamza warned of danger as we walked along the road and Na-in detected the sounds of monsters, I immediately opened my eyes to examine our surroundings.

"Danger."

"Ten heads. No spines coming. Four jellyfish."

"They haven't noticed us. They're heading toward the gunshots from earlier."

The fog concealed everyone.

Monsters and humans alike, equally. As long as we could use magic, the fog was humanity's home ground. We gladly decided to take advantage of it.

The pastor made his decision as soon as he heard our reports.

"Let's avoid a fight. If we kill every single monster, we'll never get out of Seoul. We need to accomplish our objective first."

SPLASH, SPLASH.

We crouched low and moved on, avoiding the monsters.

Seoul's population might have declined, but its reputation as a city of ten million wasn't for nothing. In a city that had housed at least nine million people, monsters would be overflowing just as surely as it had produced so many mages.

We hadn't come to put lead into every one of the millions of Seoul residents reduced to monsters and grant them salvation.

The Supreme Mages' objectives were strictly to acquire magical knowledge and rescue friendly local survivors.

So...

We wouldn't listen to the anguished screams of people trapped, still self-aware, inside monstrous bodies.

All we could offer those caught at the beginning of an eternity was an undated promise of salvation: that someday, we would put a bullet in them and kill them.

* * *

April 18, 2028, 11:45 a.m.

Fighting monsters, making them tangle together before shooting them, or avoiding them entirely had repeatedly eaten into our travel time.

But at last, the forest of apartment buildings dimly filling our surroundings came to an end. I looked around just in case, but saw no red footprints.

Instead, amid the swirling fog, which had thinned slightly, I could make out a wide-open stretch of level ground in the distance.

That was when Hamza reported difficulty and Na-in complained of pain.

"Uh...? I-I can't really tell."

"The sounds are all over the place... There are monsters. They're there... but I can't make out the details."

The effects of the thinning fog hit immediately.

Did the fog's density vary by area? Once again, we faced a choice.

Would we detour toward thicker fog, or quickly head north along the edge of Olympic Park, where the fog was thinning? With little prospect of easily finding another survivor group, we couldn't afford to wait long.

After all, considering the monsters that had moved in response to just a few gunshots, the longer we stayed in one place, the greater the danger would grow.

That was when Se-jun stepped forward.

"Let's break through quickly. Normally, we should set up at least one hideout ourselves, but with practically all the Seoul locals being hostile neutrals, it'll be difficult for newcomers like us to secure one. We need to get supplies quickly and push through as fast as possible. Toward somewhere with a clear objective. At least joining up with that local survivor, Go Ryeo-ha, who we know will be friendly, has plenty of advantages."

Surprisingly, he had a point.

With no idea where the military's support had gone, all the Supreme Mages could do, paradoxically, was advance with fighting spirit. Trying a reverse charge now would only mean fighting the monster hordes gathered near the front.

Besides...

There was still so much I didn't know.

Seoul had magic, knowledge about magic, and an environment where I could learn magic—all right here. I hated the fact that I had to leave...!

For a moment, I understood, just a tiny bit, how those lunatics who said studying was the most fun thing in the world felt.

"... All right."

I heard the pastor let out a short breath through his gas-mask filter.

"Everyone, let's try our hardest to reach the Han River today. If Olympic Park is still intact, take a good look at it. You might never get to see it again."

CLACK.

Everyone readjusted their grip on their guns and followed the pastor's orders.

We would keep heading north along the road near Olympic Park. It was the most realistic plan, and the choice most befitting the Supreme Mages.

Then children's laughter drifted along the roadside.

Along with a blinking yellow traffic light, the sound of children laughing and chattering reached our ears like a radio broadcast.

"Hahaha... Hehehe... Heh heh heh..."

Every laugh was clear and cheerful. Mixed among them was the sulky crying of a child who sounded as though they'd gotten hurt playing with a friend.

I saw the pastor flinch slightly.

A subspecies of teratoma? Raising my guard to its highest level, I remembered Na-in's advice, which had once freed me from a mental attack.

Now it was my turn to save the pastor.

"Pastor. You're not that good a person."

"What the fuck are you talking about?"