Chapter 57 - Magic Has Types, and Those Types Are

A wealthy, majestic church with glass exterior walls, built so tall its top was out of sight.

We holed up in its multipurpose room, made ourselves a temporary hideout, and spent some time on basic maintenance. I also changed the batteries in the tactical light I’d been working so hard, puffing dust out of its crevices as I went.

CLICK, CLICK.

Nothing wrong with the sound of the parts clicking into place. Leaving the tactical light switched off, I tucked it back into my chest pocket and looked around at my fellow Supreme Mages. Unfortunately, acquiring Ear Branch, Stage One had saddled me with the penalty of hearing people’s thoughts.

The silver lining was that my ear-branch magic was vastly inferior to Shin Na-in’s.

Why was that a good thing?

Experience had taught us that the more powerful the magic, the more severe its backlash. The fog helped reduce that backlash, but it was fairly thin in this multipurpose room. I estimated we’d be taking about seventy percent of the full effect.

This was where the difference between Na-in’s ear-branch magic and mine became unmistakable.

The difference lay in the details.

According to Na-in, his Ear Branch, Stage One let him hear everything: a person’s thoughts, their underlying subconscious, even their intentions. The performance gap between that and my Ear Branch, Stage One, which merely distinguished hostility from its absence, was enormous.

When all I heard from a hostile person was a babbling brook, Na-in could even pick up clues to their detailed plans for acting on that hostility.

After explaining that much, Na-in got to his feet and straightened his clothes. Though “clothes” amounted to nothing more than a rain poncho covered in stains and scattered flecks of blood.

“Your ear-branch holy-war arts seem to be inferior to mine, Je-min. Let’s discuss the details after I return from relieving myself.”

“I’ll come too. The water pipes here aren’t dangerous. Still, we need to go together.”

“Huh? Na-in, I want to come too. Give me a second.”

Once Na-in announced he was going to the bathroom, Hamza and Lee Se-jun scrambled up and began clearing the barricade.

Someone might get angry at us for recklessly splitting up in such dangerous surroundings just to take a dump, but we were the Supreme Mages. Supreme Mages rarely got to use a bathroom, so we had to empty ourselves when we could.

We couldn’t even piss in the bushes. If something like an Amalgam pounced while you were doing your business, you could end up becoming a monster with your pants down.

How unfair would that be? Not even a noble sacrifice, just becoming a monster in some stupid, pointless way.

We had to do everything we could to avoid danger.

Just then, Pastor Park Yo-han tilted his head at Se-jun.

“Se-jun, didn’t you erase your urge to excrete? Why’s a guy who doesn’t need to shit tagging along?”

Under the pastor’s puzzled gaze, Se-jun thumped his own chest, his eyes sparkling.

“I need to check whether it really won’t come out!”

“Ugh. Forget it. Just go already. I don’t even want to talk to you. Take your gun, at least.”

“Yes, sir.”

Thank goodness he listened to the pastor.

Na-in, Hamza, and Se-jun headed for the bathroom with firearms in tow.

Mercifully, the penalty for my ear-branch magic seemed to be as weak as the magic itself.

I wasn’t subjected to the disaster of hearing Se-jun’s fucking nonsense around the clock. I seemed to hear people’s thoughts only very occasionally, and I was genuinely relieved.

If I’d had to listen to Se-jun’s thoughts twenty-four hours a day, I might have gone mad and started spraying bullets.

A hairy, twenty-four-year-old Korean man, a former short-service staff sergeant, wishing he could become a girl who sucked on candy and was loved by everyone.

Having to hear that without a moment’s respite belonged firmly in the realm of ordeals and torture.

Quite obviously.

The pastor clicked his tongue, pitying Se-jun, who would be on his way to the bathroom beyond the closed door.

“Why’s Se-jun like that? He looks like he could total three hundred and fifty kilos on the big three lifts.”

“Maybe his testosterone has overflowed?”

“Overflowed?”

“I mean having too much can be worse than not having enough.”

“Right. Moderation is best in everything. Je-min, you really are young-adult ministry leader material.”

And so the Supreme Mages split into a trio heading to the bathroom and a pair consisting of the pastor and me.

By horror-movie conventions, the smaller group would now get attacked and everything would go to shit. But we Supreme Mages weren’t helpless horror-movie characters. We were super testosterone bros marching boldly into hell.

The gunfire proved it.

BANG-BANG-BANG!

Apparently, they’d run into a monster on their way to the bathroom. I hadn’t even heard any distinct footsteps, but even Hamza the coward seemed to have held his ground instead of fleeing.

The pastor and I considered going to help, then changed our minds.

The backpacks we’d left in the multipurpose room were weighing on us.

“They’ll fall back on their own. If we lose all this, we’re dead anyway.”

“Yes, sir.”

I sent a silent message to Na-in, who might be listening.

‘Don’t think we’re heartless. Without bullets, we all die. You know that, right?’

Our supplies were precious. With the Seoul locals having some idea of how we operated, leaving our supplies unattended while we moved about would put them at high risk of being looted.

Every Supreme Mage was a valuable member of the team, but people couldn’t fight without eating or drinking.

Besides, plenty of people were sure to be eyeing our lead-branch magic—our guns and ammunition. Given the circumstances in Seoul and the Republic of Korea, I was certain the city was overflowing with Seoul mages who would drool at the sight of them.

Instead, I took out the sorcery phone and quietly watched its screen.

Gunshots had echoed through this wealthy, majestic church. Would the groups and survivors using sorcery phones immediately exchange information about them? That was what I wanted to find out.

The current time was 11:14 p.m., April 18, 2028.

After checking the time on the black sorcery phone’s screen, the pastor and I waited in silence for a while.

A few more shots rang out in the meantime.

BANG-BANG, BANG-BANG-BANG...

But the sorcery phone in my hand never vibrated. With even the phone silent, the only sounds in the multipurpose room were the pastor’s breathing and mine. We figured talking might make us miss the buzz of a notification.

Only after some time had passed did we hear footsteps pounding down the corridor.

BANG!

As expected, the people throwing open the door were our fellow Supreme Mages.

They must have been through a fight, but none of them were stained with blood. Droplets streamed down their rain ponchos, as though they’d washed off with the bathroom taps.

Outside Seoul, they would have made a huge fuss, raising every kind of hell about monsters jumping out at them and why we hadn’t come to help.

But this was Seoul.

There was nothing strange about inhuman things appearing in a city that no longer belonged to humanity.

If anything, we were the alien presence in Seoul’s ecosystem.

There was something else worth making a fuss about. I checked the sorcery phone’s screen for the time.

11:40 p.m.

I showed the screen to Na-in, Hamza, and Se-jun, waving my hand at them.

“Thirty-six minutes in the bathroom? What the hell? Constipated?”

“Je-min, would you believe me if I told you Na-in spent thirty minutes singing hymns and soothing his anal sphincter in the Lord’s name?”

“Oh, Allah. Na-in, that’s constipation.”

Se-jun and Hamza were making more of a fuss about Na-in’s bowel habits than the monsters.

Even while fussing, they neatly stacked benches in front of the door to rebuild the barricade. That was the professionalism of Supreme Mages for you. Na-in, meanwhile, smiled as if nothing were wrong and tapped his headset.

Shin Na-in, the shitter who’d occupied a bathroom stall for thirty minutes, squatted down and pulled a rolled-up sleeping bag from his backpack.

Grinning with bloodshot eyes, he said,

“Je-min. Considering what I’m subjected to, I believe the Lord will forgive me for spending thirty minutes singing hymns while expelling waste from my body.”

“Hmm.”

Faced with Na-in’s logical, reasonable rebuttal, I stole a glance at Se-jun’s back and shut my mouth.

The fact that I agreed with that bizarre fucking Christian fanatic filled me with profound humiliation and disgust. But the most terrifying part was Se-jun’s inner thoughts, which had created this psychological situation in the first place.

‘Ah, I want to get my body hair removed.’

I frowned at the penalty of Ear Branch, Stage One and shook my head.

That was when the pastor stepped in.

He’d been looking around at us as though we were pathetic, but when Na-in pulled out his sleeping bag, he approached with a leisurely yawn.

“Enough. Talk about the magic you’ve each acquired. We’ll go to sleep at midnight, get up a little later, and head out. It’s late anyway, so we might as well make sure we fully understand one another’s magic without any room for misunderstanding. That’s how we keep from faltering when it matters most.”

“Such thoughtful insight, Pastor. It’s best to make things clear while we have the time.”

As Na-in voiced his agreement, Se-jun and Hamza finished rebuilding the barricade and came over to sit with us.

“It is best to know this stuff for sure. We need to know our team’s capabilities before we can make any plans.”

“Yes. The angel says so too. We must prepare thoroughly. Anyway, Je-min, give me your right hand.”

“Huh?”

“I need to disinfect the wound.”

Only then did I remember that I’d cut my right hand with my bayonet.

Hamza pulled a first-aid kit from his backpack, rummaged out alcohol swabs, bandages, and Madecassol, and tended my right hand. That was when we discussed our magic.

“Ear magic at Stage Three does more than let me hear the death cries of the dead. It’s very limited, but I can converse with their voices.”

So said Na-in.

Apparently, he hadn’t spent thirty minutes holed up in the bathroom for nothing. He said there had been the voice of a murder victim in the stall beside his.

While singing hymns to concentrate, he had used Ear Branch, Stage Three to converse with that voice and see how much information he could extract. As bowel habits went, it was about the worst possible.

But as a mage, his attitude was remarkable and worthy of respect.

Never losing his passion for magic, even in the bathroom—truly befitting a member of the Supreme Mages. Despite his countless character flaws, I decided to acknowledge Na-in as a mage.

Here was what Na-in had learned about the dead person whose voice he’d spoken with through Ear, Stage Three.

The voice had belonged to a mother who hid in a men’s bathroom stall, only to be hunted by a predatory spine and die of shock from unbearable pain. However, because she’d been overwhelmed by terror and despair when she died, normal conversation was impossible. He’d had to use leading questions to get answers.

Besides, couldn’t the voice itself be a monster’s trap?

After confirming that the fog in the bathroom was dense, Na-in accepted the burden and used his Eye, Stage One: past sight. Looking several hours into the past, he only trusted the voice after seeing the discarded host’s corpse slumped in the neighboring stall.

This was the truth that emerged.

“The mother who was infected by a predatory spine in the bathroom, served as its host, and was then killed died during the critical-threshold breach. During that breach—on January sixth, when the mobilization order was issued—people all over Seoul tried to escape... But with the cordon still incomplete, the military units remaining in Seoul prevented them from evacuating.”

The dead woman’s voice was confused and frightened. In despair over losing her child in the chaos and hiding alone in a bathroom, she spoke incoherently, but Na-in had somehow pieced together the fragmented information.

Amid the confusion of thick fog and emerging monsters, the military units seemed to have already prepared to block the main roads.

We’d only had a vague idea of how they’d prevented evacuation. Their methods struck us as far more meticulous than we’d imagined.

The moment the military recognized the critical-threshold breach, they moved desperately to block the major roads leading out of Seoul and create traffic jams.

They physically obstructed roads by blowing up nearby buildings and toppling them, or restricted vehicle movement by using explosives to rupture water pipes and flood certain low-lying areas.

Then, apparently, they fired nonstop at anyone who disobeyed military orders and tried to escape.

At the time, various religious facilities throughout Seoul tried to shelter people amid that living hell. Whether they’d ordinarily been called cults or orthodox faiths, the realization had set in that people needed to band together to survive.

Naturally, mimic beasts were mixed in among the refugees.

Amalgams, predatory spines, human slimes, blood nets, Skin-jellyfish, teratomas, Tadpole Bellies, and Lung Trees...

That was how the locals who’d sought refuge in religious facilities without proper weapons or decent equipment had ended up. The only survivors were those who’d been extraordinarily lucky or somehow managed to live through the chaos.

It was a grim topic, but Na-in himself dismissed the voices of the dead as echoes.

“The voices of the dead I can hear are remnants of those who experienced powerful emotions or regrets at the moment of death. She attended church, so her soul will have gone to heaven. There’s no reason it would remain in this world.”

“That’s right. Amen. Lord, take into Your care this sheep of Yours who trembled in fear.”

The discussion ended with the pastor’s short prayer, but it had shown us that Na-in’s Ear, Stage Three was excellent for detection and gathering information.

It resembled psychometry, but being able to converse with the dead to some extent and hear about their experiences and knowledge definitely felt like necromancy. Of course, saying “necromancy” aloud to the bastard who went on about holy-war arts seemed likely to start a fight, so I kept that thought to myself.

It had become an unspoken rule among us Supreme Mages.

Se-jun was next. Surprisingly, his Hand Branch, Stage One wasn’t all that different from mine.

No, that was poorly phrased. It was exactly the same.

“So when you bleed from your right hand, it coats your strikes too?”

“Yes. Earlier, I bit my right hand until it bled, then punched one, and it burst apart.”

“Se-jun is strong. I feel like I won’t die if I stay with him.”

If even Hamza was making a fuss while bandaging my hand, it must have been impressive.

The combination of Hand, Stage One and Upright Heart, Stage Three had made Se-jun the ultimate close-combat fighter. While I had to fuck around enhancing my eye magic with tongue magic, all Se-jun had to do was bite his hand, bleed, and swing his fists to crush monsters.

A naturally powerful heart-branch mage who could fire a two-kilogram oversized revolver one-handed without even dislocating his shoulder from the recoil had now become Bloody Fist Lee Se-jun.

I desperately hid my envy and ground my teeth inwardly.

Lee. Se. Jun.

Seeing how brilliantly he’d built his magic tree through his magical achievements, he was starting to look dangerous.

This guy was a truly terrifying rival who threatened my attainment of archmage status.

... This wouldn’t do.

I, Baek Je-min.

A man who’d lived by loyalty alone. But with Se-jun threatening me like this, I had no choice.

From this day on, I vowed to actively obstruct his progress to Stage Four.

It was coincidence that my eyes met Na-in’s just then.

But the contempt that filled his gaze was no coincidence at all.

“Tsk.”

While Na-in clicked his tongue, the pastor removed the glasses that gave him such an intimidating look and put them in their case.

“That’s a pretty substantial power-up. Je-min’s is a little disappointing, but at least ordinary people won’t be able to fool him. We’ve got ways to fight without relying on guns now, so that’s one less worry. Tomorrow, we’ll leave the church and get moving again.”

Pastor Park Yo-han rubbed the wrinkles around his eyes and sighed.

“There’s another subway station nearby. We need to recover our strength and push through quickly. I have a feeling the monsters will swarm us.”

* * *

For the first time in a while, I tossed and turned before falling asleep.

I couldn’t help it. The greatest dream of my life—becoming an archmage—was in danger of being snatched away by Se-jun, who merely wanted to turn into a pretty girl.

But exhaustion always brought sound sleep.

True to my parents’ assessment that I slept like a corpse once I was out, I slept beautifully. When I woke, the whole world started looking brighter again.

Right. So what if Se-jun became Bloody Fist? So what if he reached Stage Four first?

If I threatened to stab him in the back should he reach Stage Four before me, he wouldn’t dare aspire to it.

With a solution in hand, a cheerful smile spread across my face.

I groggily sat up and stretched, while the sorcery phone in my pocket kept buzzing loudly.

Only then did I notice the other Supreme Mages were already awake.

They’d all dragged themselves up and were glaring at me for no good reason.

“Wow, Je-min. That thing’s been vibrating for over ten minutes, and you still didn’t wake up?”

“Baek Je-min. If your phone vibrates for ten minutes, please get up.”

As the pastor and Na-in grumbled, I soothed them quietly with a refreshed smile.

“Let’s all adopt a positive mindset. I woke up in just ten minutes. What a blessing!”

“Bullshit.”

I didn’t understand why people who believed in a God they’d never seen were so harsh on me for waking up in just ten minutes.

I took out the sorcery phone and checked its screen.

7:31 a.m., April 19, 2028.

For someone who used to get up at two in the afternoon while unemployed, this was a miracle morning. But the truly miraculous part was who’d sent the messages that kept setting the sorcery phone off.

Nothing was stranger than receiving instant messages in Seoul’s Songpa District, where there were no cell towers or Wi-Fi.

[Kang A-reum: Those five military survivors who went into a church. That’s you guys, right?]

“Looks like the people in Seoul are mistaking us for soldiers.”

“Good grief. Does dressing properly make everyone an army grunt these days?”

The pastor grumbled as he inspected his gas mask.

The others seemed to feel much the same, idly fiddling with their guns.

In 2028, it was common sense that a trip to Seoul required, at minimum, our level of armament. Common sense.

Lamenting the prejudices of Seoul’s fashion-challenged residents, I scrolled down the long list of messages on the sorcery phone.

[Kang A-reum: I’m the only one who knows you’re using the Jangji Station mage’s phone. I belong to a group, but they’re mostly uninterested in you, okay? Still, there’s one guy who’s started tracking you. He’s well known.]

[Kang A-reum: I’m giving you this information because I know you’re not bad people, even if you’re a little weird. Be careful if you run into him.]

There was an image attached at the end.

It was a photograph of a man. It seemed to have been taken from a distance with a zoom lens; the focus was slightly shaky and his outline blurry. Even so, the man in the photograph was looking directly at the camera lens.

Of course, I couldn’t fully make out the look in his eyes.

He wore a thick, long gray padded coat, ragged jeans and work boots of the sort you might use on a construction job that provided room and board, a black face mask covering everything but his eyes, and ski goggles.

I assumed he was a man because his shoulders were far broader than an average woman’s. Height, maybe 178 centimeters? His clothes were so bulky that I couldn’t guess his weight.

Bundled up that tightly, I’d have thought he’d be too sweaty to move, but somehow he managed.

Thinking that, I scrolled down and found information about him.

[Kang A-reum: His nickname is Ski Goggles. Estimated magic level: Upright Alteration-Type Eye, Stage Three. He’s a ritual-type mage.]

[Kang A-reum: His ritual-type magic is thought to be concealment. I don’t know what thing he contracted with, but he offers human body parts as tribute. He’s known for only ambushing ordinary people under a mage’s protection. Looks like he saw your low magic levels and decided to come after you. Almost nothing is known about ritual-type mages.]

My first response was to frown.

“Ritual-type?”

Doctrinal-type and alteration-type weren’t the only kinds of magic?