Chapter 55 - Mistaking Fully Armed Civilians

Seoul, no longer a human city, was an extreme environment.

We had to keep moving while watching every direction, never knowing when a monster might burst from the lazily drifting fog. We couldn't let our guard down for a moment. Like our prehistoric ancestors, we had to watch our surroundings to survive.

Until now, I'd casually called Seoul a hell or a realm of monsters, but even those descriptions missed the mark.

This was simply a different ecosystem.

Quite literally another world. An alien realm.

Instead of barking dogs, there were Amalgams uttering human moans. Instead of spiders, predatory spines lay in ambush, and instead of birds, Skin-jellyfish flew overhead. It was an exotic ecosystem where things born from humans lived out their lives, each occupying its own fitting ecological niche.

Some might look at these monsters and sense malice directed at humanity—as though they were deliberately vicious and sinister to desecrate the sanctity of the human body.

That was only natural. Faced with monsters that seemed to constantly test one's humanity, unconditional trust led straight to personal ruin.

Indeed, though neither the pastor nor Shin Na-in had said anything, both had grown noticeably quiet since seeing the Tadpole Bellies and lung trees. They must have felt righteous indignation deep down.

These monsters seemed incomprehensible, yet revealed intentions even humans could readily grasp.

They were thoroughly targeted in a way subtly different from incomprehensible, indescribable horror. That was why I felt hollow instead. Their ecology had gone beyond merely hating or loathing humans.

By then, we had crossed the field and arrived at what must once have been Olympic Park's parking lot.

It was full of abandoned vehicles with doors torn off and windows covered in hairline cracks. Brown bloodstains scattered throughout hinted at what had happened here.

I paused at a lone shoe flung beneath a dangling rear door. It was tiny, no more than 200 millimeters at most, and covered in mold, its mate nowhere to be found.

Looking at that moldy shoe reminded me of the Tadpole Bellies and left a bitter taste.

Then Hamza tapped his gas-mask filter to signal us.

"Danger. Everyone needs to hide."

The instant he gave the warning, he squeezed onto the seat of a car whose door had been torn away.

Everyone else acted immediately. Lee Se-jun followed Hamza into the back seat, while the pastor sank down with his back against a front door, concealing as much of himself as possible.

Shin Na-in crouched behind a large van. Caught up in the rush, I followed him, pressed close to it, and promptly dropped flat.

The rustling of our ponchos died away, leaving a strange silence.

"Jellyfish."

Clutching his headset, Na-in followed my example and dropped flat. He even took off his backpack and propped it against the van before crawling underneath.

As a self-proclaimed elegant cockroach, I followed suit, removed my backpack, and crawled under the van.

With only my face poking out, I raised my head slightly to look at the sky.

I intended to use eye or tongue magic if necessary.

But the moment I looked up, I realized how foolish that thought was.

Countless shadows rippled beyond the thin fog occupying Olympic Park, where visibility reached no farther than 200 meters. The sound of thick leather flapping in the wind battered my eardrums. This wasn't just one or two.

Their numbers far exceeded anything I'd imagined.

They cast another layer of shadow beneath the fog clouds already blocking the sunlight. Not dozens, but at least hundreds of Skin-jellyfish floated through the clouds, packing the sky above Olympic Park.

I hurriedly shoved my entire body under the vehicle.

Na-in happened to be looking my way, and our eyes met. I told him silently, 'There are fucking loads of them.' Of course, there was no way our super-detector Shin Na-in didn't know.

He raised his index finger, held it neatly in front of his gas-mask filter, and mimed shushing me.

Human voices and even breathing vanished.

We all deliberately began breathing as slowly as possible to avoid the distinctive sound of our gas masks. Soon, all that remained in the world was the alternating flap of thick leather and grotesque breaths exhaled through bubbling phlegm.

Had they noticed the shots when we'd killed the Tadpole Bellies? Or was it because the fog had suddenly, briefly grown denser?

We didn't know whether the monsters acted on instinct or had some sort of commander. They possessed intelligence as predators and hunters, but their relationships also seemed simply symbiotic, making it hard to tell.

So I hugged my rifle for no good reason.

If combat was unavoidable, I would have to use tongue magic to sow as much confusion as possible. I was steeling myself for that, idly stroking the trigger, when it happened.

BZZZZ.

It sounded like a hornet.

I frowned, wondering whether this time we had a monster mutated into something like a hornet, but the transmission that followed changed my mind.

["...with Drone Command... survivor assistance..."]

We didn't have the fluorescent identification bands marking us as civilian Operators.

Even so, the loud, hornet-like buzz peculiar to drones was drilling straight into our ears beneath the van. Was this what the military's change to a survivor-assistance policy looked like?

Na-in and I looked at each other and decided to wait, unsure what would happen.

Before long, more hornet buzzes overlapped, followed by a thunder of gunfire.

RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT.

I heard countless cartridge cases striking the park's wet earth like a bombardment. Even from under the van, I could see Skin-jellyfish dropping one after another with wet splats.

They kept falling somewhere in Olympic Park, stretched limp like torn balloons.

That was when I realized.

How much ammunition could a drone possibly carry?

I hurriedly crawled out from under the van in a combat crawl and shouted,

"Let's get out of here! While the drones have their aggro!"

This wasn't the time to worry about a slightly scraped knee.

Watching the unprecedented, gloriously entertaining matchup of drones versus Skin-jellyfish live was all well and good, but with this much gunfire echoing through Olympic Park, more monsters were bound to converge. The other Supreme Mages realized it too and scrambled out of the vehicles.

"Aaagh!"

"Hamza, tell me if you're struggling. I'll drag you along!"

Se-jun and Hamza both sprang out like springs, ready to run.

The pastor stood as well, took his Bible from his backpack, and stroked its cover once.

Urgent as things were, I decided to regard it as a ritual for his doctrinal magic, [Soteriological Conviction]. He recited a brief line to steady himself again.

"As long as I believe in salvation, I shall be saved."

THUMP.

He put the Bible back in his backpack and adjusted his grip on his rifle.

"Let's go, Aphorism."

I grabbed Na-in's hand and pulled him out as he crawled, then nodded. We shouldered the backpacks we'd set down and followed the other Aphorism mages, who were already moving.

When we bravely faced a challenge, we were the Supreme Mages. When we slipped away without a soul noticing, we were Aphorism.

Right now, we were Aphorism.

I hauled Na-in to his feet and followed the other Aphorism mages as they turned their backs and ran. This time, we weren't cautiously walking and watching our surroundings.

Instead, I tilted my bouncing field of vision skyward and witnessed a sight I would never see again.

There were roughly eight drones.

They were bravely firing at hundreds of Skin-jellyfish. But their size apparently imposed unavoidable limitations: after a few dozen rounds, they merely clicked, pale smoke curling from their muzzles.

The drones had exhausted all their ammunition.

Seeing that, the Skin-jellyfish advanced on them, tentacles swaying. Unlike their usual slow drifting, they moved with incredible speed, like nets swooping over birds.

CHOMP!

One drone was swallowed by a Skin-jellyfish. Its propellers loudly chewed at the skin from inside.

GRRRR-RIP.

But once swallowed, its fate was sealed. The Skin-jellyfish and drone fell toward the ground as one, disappearing beyond the fog clouds that limited visibility to 200 meters.

That was the last thing I watched before turning away.

Now it was time to escape.

Footsteps pounding the cracked asphalt echoed without pause. As if that weren't enough, the recent roar of gunfire had awakened the sleeping city. Only then did I realize, to my surprise, how quiet and still Seoul had been until now.

TAP-TAP.

As my boot soles pushed off the asphalt, faint cries reached us from far away.

"Sob. Mom. There's no such monster. No. Get away."

Shattered voices drifted on the wind. Within a single sentence, the manner of speech, pitch, rhythm, and emotion changed—voices forcibly stitched together.

The only certainty was that those voices were racing toward the gunfire.

We ran with the gunfire behind us, turning away from the countless Tadpole Bellies and groves of lung trees still in Olympic Park.

TAP-TAP.

Whenever our boots passed over a drain, strange vibrations rose beneath our feet. After mind-scrambling auditory hallucinations battered our ears, that distinctive sound invariably pierced our minds.

GURGLE, GURGLE...

The final fate of mages roamed the sewers underground. A choir missing the tops of their heads sang with faces reduced to drooping tongues and lower jaws, expelling breath through useless vocal cords.

We passed a building that must once have been a museum and hurried onto the road. The moment we stepped into the thick fog, the meaningless chorus was demoted into human language and etched into my mind.

GURGLE, GURGLE...

The entire sewer beneath our feet vibrated. Desperate resignation and despair reached my mind: if we closed our ears, they would make our whole bodies vibrate so we would know. It was a song heard not through vibrating eardrums, but through our entire bodies.

It was a prophecy desperately recited by the devoured for those still struggling.

["Eternity. We stand before eternity."]

FLAP-FLAP-FLAP.

Countless shadows fell behind us as we disappeared into the thick fog. A swarm of Skin-jellyfish. No longer mere hundreds. Thousands of shadows filled the entire fog cloud.

They were watching our backs as we ran. Their leisurely drifting was a trap. Where the fog was thin, they swooped down in an instant like hawks, like eagles.

Only after throwing ourselves into dense fog with less than ten meters of visibility did we shake off those unpleasant gazes.

But the unsettling prophecy reverberated through our whole bodies to the very end.

["Our end is not an end, but the beginning of an endless eternity."]

In thick fog, you can't even see the people traveling with you.

Using Eye, Stage One to see ten seconds into the future, I looked at the red footprints in the fog. Then I wondered whether my eyes had finally gone insane.

Everything was red.

As though blood were pouring everywhere, red footprints packed every direction—front, back, left, right, above, and below.

I hesitated only briefly.

I slung my rifle over my shoulder, drew my bayonet with my left hand, and pressed it to my right. A shallow cut across my palm stung, but this wasn't the time to care about that shit.

Then I rolled my tongue inside my mouth.

Evasion, fatal injury, five minutes, route, me.

Tongue, Stage One: language demotion, bringing magic meant for humans to 100 percent performance. I used it on Eye, Stage One. In a situation where the risk of friendly fire made even shooting difficult, ironically, my right hand was all I could trust.

I wrapped that right hand around the bayonet.

The blade digging into my palm stung viciously, sent a chill into my bones, then brought a burning sensation like blazing fire.

But watching the red footprints stretch, watching the magnificent sight of fog swirling away, I couldn't let each small thing sway me.

Those unable to endure pain died and became monsters. Only those who reveled in their own pain survived.

Using my right hand as a sheath, I drew the bayonet again.

The bayonet covered in blood from my right hand looked chilling, but it was even more chilling to monsters. Ducking along the places where the fog cleared, where my safety was assured, I swung it with all my strength.

It was a haphazard swing, but lethal to a monster approaching without thinking.

Within ten meters, an Amalgam smiled with its stacked compound eyes and stretched its unified mouth into a long split. Five faces on one body. It had deliberately elongated its shapeless faces to hide behind a tree.

But the instant our eyes met and it saw the blood on the bayonet, its expression twisted.

Despite knowing a human body bound by physical laws couldn't overcome inertia, despite having already launched itself, it tried to contort its faces to avoid the blade. It was pointless.

The instant the blade touched the Amalgam, I felt a strange sensation.

It was like acorn jelly or soft coagulated blood. Like cutting freshly warmed acorn jelly and blood curd into chunks with chopsticks. Softer than expected, yet with more texture than expected, the sensation of it being sliced traveled through my fingers.

Amalgams had to lose their bodily fluids to die. The armed forces' actual tactical doctrine likewise called for killing them by making them spill those fluids. Guns were tools that made it easy.

But right now, I was cutting its bodily fluids out.

It was similar to, yet different from, different blood types meeting, clotting, and sticking together.

Hand magic, Stage One. The instant the blood from my right hand touched the monster's soft skin and bodily fluids—

Only its skin and fluids set like jelly, mercilessly sliced away by my haphazard swing.

Only then did I fully understand Hand Branch, Stage One.

Upright Alteration-Type Hand Branch, Stage One. [Blood of the Right Hand].

This magic forced human common sense upon monsters.

An amorphous monster that defied human common sense was forcibly imprisoned within that framework, made to die in the form humans desired.

Divine order and sovereignty—the true meaning contained in the right side, which humanity had regarded as the correct direction—was humanity's ancient subjective belief in how the world ought to be.

Blood of the Right Hand was that belief manifested as magic through a body part.

That was why it activated through the right hand, imbued with the prejudice that it was the proper hand.

Thus, the right hand became the hand that killed monsters.

Because it symbolized the order humanity desired and considered right, it vanquished the absurdities humanity did not want.

SLICE!

The stacked compound eyes flew through the air in severed pieces.

My right hand's blood would seep into the cut surfaces and spread throughout the monster's body.

Perhaps the Amalgam knew that too. Its faces all stared blankly at me, seeming both incredulous and furious. The single mouth joined beneath its mingled faces gaped, spilling screams and moans.

But even without being an ear mage, I could tell what emotion lay behind all those reactions.

Fear.

Monsters that didn't fear guns feared a bloodstained blade. A single slash was enough.

Leaving the doomed Amalgam behind, I ran into the fog again. Fortunately, Na-in hadn't lost me and followed faithfully. The uninterrupted gunshots and falling cartridge cases behind me were proof.

That pants-shitting fanatic bastard was lucky as hell.

After all, he was sticking right behind the archmage Baek Je-min.

HUUFF.

After drawing and releasing a deep breath through my gas mask, I held out my bleeding right hand like a talisman to stop the monsters still charging us. Now that I knew its blood was lethal to them, there was no reason to hesitate.

"Stop!"

The fog cleared further. I heard the charging monsters' footsteps tangle together.

That was when a rifle settled onto my right shoulder.

The crazy bastard Shin Na-in was trying to use someone else's shoulder as a tripod. I wasn't even wearing earplugs. Wondering whether he intended to make me deaf, I was about to turn when he spoke.

"Je-min, I'll cover the others."

Ah, fuck.

I suddenly found myself lowering my stance and becoming the tripod he wanted.

Each gunshot felt like it was tearing my eardrums apart. It was as though my ears' hearing function had simply been deleted. I felt every shot and every hot casing rolling down my poncho, damp with fog droplets.

I walked like that, holding out my bleeding right hand like a shield to make the monsters hesitate.

Using my right shoulder as a rest, Na-in began carefully firing one shot at a time.

My ears were so muffled that even the gunshots sounded dull.

I had no way to tell whether he was hitting anything or firing at random. My aching eyes were busy finding safe ground with Stage One at 100 percent. Then he pulled back his rifle, tapped my side, and shouted,

"Changing magazines!"

Where the fog swirled, danger. Where it cleared, safety.

Once I understood that, responding was easy. I swung my bloodstained bayonet where fog seeped in, and where the blade couldn't reach, I held out my right hand. Not every swing sliced up a monster.

The Amalgams were clever.

Whenever I looked about to swing, they immediately backed off. I could tell from the fog clearing and the faint shadows beyond it.

When they tried to surround us outright, I held out my right hand and made one side hesitate.

After changing magazines, Na-in quickly deduced that monsters lay wherever I swung my bayonet or extended my right hand. He fired toward their hearts as he'd been trained, focusing on disabling rather than killing.

Using my shoulder as a tripod again, of course.

It was fucking awful, but I let it slide because we needed to survive.

That was how we kept pushing through the fog.

At last, the moment a familiar cross appeared beyond the fog, other gunshots rang out.

"Baek Je-min! Shin Na-in! Over here!"

"Aaaagh! There's fucking loads of them!"

It was the pastor and Se-jun.

Guessing roughly where the monsters pursuing us were, they bought us time with pointed fire. It came just as the blood on my right hand was beginning to scab.

Na-in and I dashed behind them in one burst.

Then Hamza tossed each of us a loaded magazine from his backpack.

"Change your magazines!"

THUMP.

Apparently, Hamza was good at playing catch too. Only then could I sheath my bayonet and grip my rifle again. My right hand stung around it, but it was do or die now.

I removed the magazine and estimated the ammunition left inside.

All thirty rounds were still there.

Since I didn't need a replacement, I tossed the spare to Na-in. He caught it deftly and smoothly finished reloading. I reinserted my own magazine.

CLICK-CLACK.

I rolled my tongue inside my mouth again.

Target, kill, monster, five minutes, route, me.

Fog instantly swirled into places that had been clear, while red footprints stretched out densely from where it had been thick.

With that, we Supreme Mages fired together, again and again.

Against Amalgams bursting from dense fog clouds, shooting their legs was more effective than trying to kill them with headshots. Making them tangle and fall stopped their advance. Once we'd built a living barricade, shooting the heads of those trying to climb over it was more reliable.

Sometimes those attempting to cross tripped on tiles that happened to be separated or on depressions in the asphalt road.

That was the effect of [Soteriological Conviction].

Whenever a fallen monster tried to rise, whoever had the most breathing room aimed and made it spill its fluids, without needing to be told.

CLATTER-RATTLE!

Cartridge cases cascaded down the steps before the church's main entrance.

I lost count of how many times we changed magazines. At some point, the monsters drew so close that I was on the verge of having to draw my bayonet again.

But we survived.

Just before the last Amalgam split apart, it looked up at me and mimed sobbing. Among its mingled faces, a woman's half-face that looked like a newly enrolled college freshman shed tears and struggled to move the unified mouth.

"I-I can still cry... I. I... I'm still alive..."

I glanced at Na-in, and he shook his head.

Whether it was truly a human personality no longer mattered to him. I aimed my rifle. As the mingled faces all smiled, only the freshman's half-face burst into tears.

This time, I pulled the trigger without hesitation.

BANG-BANG, BANG...

Only after the final shot echoed did it finally end.

We looked at one another in front of the church entrance. There seemed to be easily hundreds of spent cases scattered beneath us.

HUUFF. HUUFF.

Amid our labored breaths, the pastor knocked on the church's front door.

"Let's rest a bit before we go. Islam, no monsters inside, right?"

"There are about two spines."

"Je-min, make quick work of them."

"Yes."

There was no need even to answer.

Eye, Stage One was still in effect.

I hadn't made the foolish mistake of setting too short a duration in an emergency, so the two predatory spines hanging from the cross inside the church burst apart with one shot each.

Barely managing to sit on a bench, we finally pulled up our gas masks and exposed our faces.

Every one of us was drenched in sweat.

That was when the dark navy sorcery phone vibrated.

BZZZZ.

Before my heated barrel had even cooled, I took the phone from inside my clothes and checked the message.

[Five military survivors who stirred up Olympic Park heading north.]

"Military?"

Were there other survivors besides us?

The other Supreme Mages had similar thoughts when I showed them the message.

"The special forces that supposedly went in ahead of us?"

"Olympic Park was fucking insane. So there were five other people besides us who fought their way through it."

"I'm scared. They might be frightening people."

As the pastor, Se-jun, and Hamza offered their respective opinions, Na-in wiped his sweat-soaked face with his left hand and quietly voiced his own view.

"I think they mean us."

"Huh?"

We Supreme Mages looked at one another.

Then we could only tilt our heads in puzzlement.

There were fully armed civilians wearing ponchos, carrying guns, gas masks, and military packs, but no soldiers anywhere you looked.

Na-in sighed wearily and said,

"If they're mistaking us for soldiers, they'll be hostile, since the devil's spawn in Seoul hate the military."

"So this message on the sorcery phone..."

I put the phone back in my pocket as I answered him.

"Means the hunt has begun."

"That's right, Je-min."

"Simple enough."

It had been difficult to distinguish friendly survivors among the locals, so this was just wonderful.

A xianxia novel I'd read for a change came to mind. There was a saying they used all the time.

The well-intentioned do not come; those who come are not well-intentioned.

Good people don't go out of their way to seek you out. Those who do aren't good.

Therefore, if they insisted on coming when we didn't want them, we could kill them.

I suddenly turned toward the cross inside the church.

The crucified figure of Jesus looked especially forlorn today, so as someone baptized in the military, I decided to offer a prayer.

Lord, a few more bastards are heading up.