Chapter 58 - Ski Goggles, the Weeble

If you asked who among us Supreme Mages was the most thoroughly prepared, the answer would probably be Hamza. While I checked the sorcery phone’s messages, he rummaged through his backpack for a USB cable and a power bank, then handed them to me.

“Je-min, here’s a power bank. Charge the sorcery phone.”

“Oh, thanks.”

The sorcery phone’s battery had dropped a little, as it happened. In this treacherous city, it was our only means of obtaining valuable information from the locals, so I had no choice but to keep an eye on its remaining charge. Normally, of course, we would already have left the church and hurried on. But there was a perfectly good reason I was still holding the phone and exchanging messages with A-reum.

April 19, 2028, 8:01 a.m.

We were holed up in the multipurpose room, listening to the vivid sounds outside the church. What kept us Supreme Mages trapped inside was far more terrifying than any monster’s moans or screams.

WHOOOOSH.

The sound of something cutting through the air reached us, muffled by the building’s outer walls. That distinctive, deafening roar of a fighter jet seemed to slice through clouds of fog rather than wind. Naturally, there was only one reason we were hearing fighter jets.

Almost simultaneously, the bombing began in earnest, shaking the ground and walls. The one saving grace was that all the ceiling’s fluorescent lights had broken long ago, so we didn’t have to worry about glass raining down.

I also heard a loud rattling burst and wondered what it was, until Se-jun explained.

“That’s a Vulcan cannon. They must be flying lower than I expected.”

“Don’t fighter jets just fire missiles these days?”

Pastor Park Yo-han answered my question while polishing his glasses with a troubled expression.

“There must be flying things interfering with the bombing.”

And so we had an opportunity to experience firsthand how strikes on the interior of Seoul were carried out, each cracking open a can for a quick meal to the accompaniment of successive air strikes and distant artillery. Using disposable forks or chopsticks, we practically slurped down our canned tuna. Se-jun drank every last drop of the oil, too.

Na-in, on the other hand, picked at his food while humming a hymn, every bit the by-the-book fellow he was.

“Se-jun, let’s eat properly. We must chew each mouthful thoroughly, so as not to waste the daily bread the Lord God has given us.”

“But I’m hungry.”

“Tsk.”

Meanwhile, Hamza was inspecting every inch of his can to see whether it was halal. An honorary Korean who ate pork and even drank soju was checking whether canned tuna was halal now? I was so dumbfounded that I asked him about it.

“Fish without scales are haram.”

“What about pork and soju?”

“They were offered without ill intent, they taste good, and I repent before Allah, so it’s all right. Soju isn’t liquor. It’s industrial alcohol, so there’s no problem.”

Apparently Hamza had standards of his own, though the pastor clicked his tongue at him.

“If that’s how you’re going to be, just come to church and have some grape juice.”

“Apostasy is an unforgivable sin. Even if I must repent for failing to observe all of Sharia, I must not abandon Allah.”

“Ha... I think even a Muslim would be fine if he believed in God.”

From an outsider’s perspective, Allah and God both seemed like terrifying deities, but I decided to keep my mouth shut. Christianity and Islam were probably different in the same way North and South Koreans were different. Anyway, I ate my canned tuna with a fork while waiting for A-reum’s message.

In the meantime, we Supreme Mages learned, through our trembling bodies, how the South Korean military conducted its bombardment.

First: the military’s artillery focused on devastating the outskirts and striking monsters massing at the front. Surprisingly, very few rounds reached the interior of Olympic Park. We hardly heard the distinctive whoosh of incoming shells; instead, explosions echoed far away.

Second: most of the bombing inside Seoul was carried out by fighter jets rather than artillery batteries. It hadn’t been anywhere near this intense even a day earlier. Apparently the deployment of UN troops and the advance of the United States Seventh Fleet had made a difference. South Korean and American air power practically dominated Seoul’s skies.

The roar of jets and explosions hit us harder than the monsters’ moans and screams. That said it all.

Third: the distinctive hornet buzz of drones was louder and more frequent than expected. Sometimes gunfire mingled with it, just as it had when they engaged the Skin-jellyfish swarm in Olympic Park. The pastor took note of that and offered a theory.

“The advance reconnaissance unit must have succeeded in setting up a Wi-Fi network. You need communications to operate drones, after all, don’t you?”

“Wow. That’s special forces for you.”

The five of us were barely managing to force our way through, while the special forces were heading up Line Three and installing a Wi-Fi network for drone operations along the way?

They certainly deserved the name. I’d heard American and South Korean special forces were conducting a joint operation. Apparently it was true.

“They’re probably installing the Wi-Fi network as they go along Line Three. Besides, that line has key locations like Yongsan and Nambu Bus Terminal. Those were where the last military units remaining in Seoul were stationed. Even if they’ve been looted, some infrastructure might remain, or there might be soldiers left. Most importantly, there’s a good chance they still have a proper power supply. Even with local survivor groups there, they’d be worth using as bases.”

Originally, the regular South Korean troops would have intended to head up Line Eight, where there were relatively fewer monsters and survivor groups, establishing a Wi-Fi network and bases. But after repeated disappearances depleted their manpower, they would have run into Jeong Na-ri, the Dubai Chewy Witch, at the Jangji Station department store and been stopped in their tracks.

That was Pastor Park Yo-han’s theory.

It struck me that the pastor was putting plenty of thought into this, too. If he weren’t a Bible-thumping pastor who proselytized at every opportunity and called the Catholic pope the Antichrist, he wouldn’t be a bad person. Seen that way, the world was fair.

That was when the sorcery phone buzzed again. I set down my tuna can and checked the screen.

[Me: wat’s ritual-type]

[Kang A-reum: Are you trying to act cute?]

[Me: typo]

[Kang A-reum: You’re a little different over messages than in person, huh?]

[Me: ?]

I’d left out one letter because typing was a pain, and now she thought I was flirting? I’d never imagined that the testosterone-fueled masculinity of Baek Je-min could be misunderstood like this.

But after four months in this harsh environment, apparently even this looked cute to A-reum. No harm in that, I figured, and let it slide. She proceeded to explain things very kindly. Perhaps she missed having a normal person she could actually talk to. Despite her square face and sturdy bulk, she was an exceedingly kind, warm woman.

[Kang A-reum: You really are first-timers, so I’m telling you this to keep you from dying pointless deaths somewhere. I’m only telling you things you can safely pass on to the soldiers outside, so don’t worry about me. This is common knowledge in Seoul.]

I shared A-reum’s messages with the Supreme Mages as soon as they arrived. Based on independent research and observations by survivors and people who knew a suspicious amount, Seoul mages divided magic into four broad types.

Sorcery-type. Ritual-type. Alteration-type. Doctrinal-type.

Their information and understanding of these types were far more detailed and important than anything we’d gained through months of slogging around outside Seoul. A-reum really did seem busy, though, because she only gave us a brief overview and an explanation of ritual-type magic.

[Kang A-reum: Looks like the army bastards outside Seoul stole what we know, but if they don’t even know about ritual-type, they really are fucking idiots. Listen carefully. Ritual-type magic means contracting with transcendent beings who regard humans as insignificant, and borrowing their power. Those people are so desperate to offer human sacrifices because the price of the contract is usually themselves. There’s a concept called contract progress. They say that the moment it reaches 100%, you meet a different kind of destruction depending on the being you contracted with.]

She added that ritual-type magic was the most mysterious, the most alien, and the most dangerous of all.

[Kang A-reum: You perform a ritual to make the contract, then additional rituals according to your contract progress increase the number of spells you can use. Someone like Ski Goggles should have about two spells. One of them is concealment. Don’t rush into a fight before you know all of them. And if you do encounter him, make sure you track him down and kill him. Stay alive, and let’s meet again later.]

[Me: thank you, A-reum]

[Page 4]

No reply came, but wouldn’t A-reum rank in the top ten percent of Seoul mages for decency? It even occurred to me that meeting her might have been thanks to [Soteriological Conviction], the doctrinal magic that stacked the odds in our favor. If Hamza sensed danger and helped us avoid it, the pastor brought us luck.

In other words, their magic was more useful outside combat than in it.

Before entering Seoul, I might have thought a damage-dealing ability would simply be better. But although this was only our fifth day living here, I was realizing that abilities useful solely in combat couldn’t keep us alive.

Detection and survival came first.

Life in Seoul was miserable without combat abilities, but combat abilities alone wouldn’t let you survive. Viewed that way, Hamza’s and the pastor’s magic might look plain and useless, but it was invaluable, helping us in all sorts of ways, whether we noticed or not.

The Supreme Mages nodded their agreement after I shared the information in those messages. The pastor was particularly relieved. He called it the Lord’s grace that some people retained their humanity even in this dreadful environment.

“Thank goodness there are still people with faith. Ritual-type, huh... These fellows really are undeniable heretics.”

“They’re the devil’s minions we warriors of the alteration-type holy-war arts must vanquish.”

Watching the pastor and Na-in burn with zeal filled me with despair, but I was used to it now. I’d realized that, in Seoul, lunatics shouting about cutting down heretic scum were better than useless hand-wringers trembling over how anyone could do that to another human being. It was a sad, painful realization.

Hamza, the Muslim, was the only relatively normal one. My fellow secularist Se-jun was even worse than the Bible-thumpers, so I had nowhere to turn. Was I really the only person I could trust?

With that thought, we stacked our empty cans in a corner and continued our preparations before leaving. We repeatedly loaded the magazines we’d scratched with a bayonet, coating the bullets with Blood of the Right Hand. Now that Se-jun had awakened hand magic too, our work went twice as fast.

Enduring the sting in our hands, we stocked two anti-monster magazines per person, gave Se-jun another three grenades, and confirmed that we had two grenades left. All the while, I kept checking the sorcery phone for any additional notifications.

It was afternoon by the time we left the glass-walled church. Na-in, who had been sitting quietly with his headset on and his eyes closed, spoke with his arms folded.

“The bombing’s over.”

He tapped his headset and smiled.

“The monsters seem to be continuing toward the front. Their sounds are moving away. Even the ones nearby.”

“That’s not good news. But it does mean this is the right time for us to move around inside Seoul.”

Se-jun shouldered his heavy backpack. The others hoisted theirs as well, rising with grunts of effort. I was no exception.

This was Seoul: an alien ecosystem where monsters or Seoul mages might descend on us at any moment. In a place that was no longer a human city, ordinary humans like us Supreme Mages were nothing but outsiders. The longer we stayed, the greater the danger.

April 19, 2028, 1:12 p.m.

Expedition day five.

The bombing had stopped. It was time to move again.

* * *

The corpses of a pack of Amalgams awaited us outside the glass-walled church. Apart from their heads, which had melted and fused together, their bodies were still human, making it look like the scene of a massacre. Had the monsters ignored the smell of their own kind’s corpses? Or had they fled in fear?

Either way, Na-in seemed to have been right.

When you walked through Seoul’s fog, you could hear monsters sobbing or sneering through human vocal cords. Even without deliberately using ear magic, those cries reached your eardrums, faint but unmistakable, like echoes in a cavern.

But on today’s outing, we heard none of that. The fog was fairly thick, too, with visibility of roughly fifty meters by my estimate. Thankfully, it felt like we could comfortably see about three blocks of road.

Normally, we would have smelled damp fog and musty mold, but thanks to the Stage Two [Purification] inscription inside our gas masks, there was a pleasantly fresh, dry scent of sunshine mixed in.

The monsters were gathering at the first cordon, the front line, and the fog was thick enough that we didn’t have to worry about magic backlash. On a day like this, everyone could wear a satisfied smile. Even cowardly Hamza sighed in relief. That said it all.

The thick fog relieved one of Pastor Park Yo-han’s worries, and for once he led us onward briskly.

“Come on. Best of Best. We’ve got a long way to go.”

And so we Supreme Mages formed up and advanced again.

A little farther north of the glass-walled church, we came across a subway station. According to the sign, it was Mongchontoseong Station. Being close to Jamsil, it still had quite a few monsters lingering around it.

Perhaps because fighter jets had bombed all morning and shells had fallen intermittently, the smell of burning kept drifting over from somewhere. If it could seep through gas masks enchanted with Hand, Stage Two, I couldn’t imagine how foul it really was.

I immediately challenged Na-in.

“You said all the monsters went to the front.”

“Normally there are about five times that many, Je-min.”

I activated only Eye, Stage One’s ten-second foresight, clearing away the fog to look. The sight was even worse. The Amalgams wandering around the intersection by the station all had dozens or hundreds of heads fused together.

Personally, I’d been classifying anything with ten human heads or fewer as a small Amalgam. I decided anything with fifty or more fused heads counted as medium. There were ten of those medium Amalgams now, along with fifty or sixty small ones that looked as though they’d spawned from them, roaming the intersection and crawling into abandoned vehicles to moan.

And that wasn’t all.

Fourteen Skin-jellyfish floated overhead, looking down at the Amalgams. Apparently the thick fog kept them from noticing us, so they were watching the human-looking Amalgams instead.

Well, I ought to grant their wish.

Having identified the floating Skin-jellyfish, I dismissed Eye, Stage One, lifted my gas mask, and stuck my tongue out.

Tongue, Stage Two. Explosion of desire.

Hunger began to gather in the eyes of the distorted faces that had been gazing indifferently down at the Amalgams. Their eyeballs grew bloodshot. Thick saliva dripped from the corners of mouths stretched open to scream, making the Skin-jellyfish’s hide gleam.

At last, unable to endure it, one fixed its eyes on a small Amalgam, spread its hide and tentacles, and plunged down.

SCHLUP!

The Skin-jellyfish swallowed the small Amalgam. Its many pairs of arms battered the jellyfish while its legs kicked and flailed, and it rolled across the ground. It was hard to tell whether the moans came from the Amalgam’s faces or the Skin-jellyfish’s.

At the same time, I felt a tingling burn in my tongue. Even so, I repeated the process on several more Skin-jellyfish without hesitation. The magic’s backlash arrived without fail.

SPURT!

I could never get used to the pain of the papillae on my tongue splitting and blood bursting out. Tears streamed down my face. I held back only the urge to bawl aloud and spat. Only after seeing the dark red blood cling to the ground did I draw my tongue back in and put on my gas mask.

Meanwhile, the Amalgams and Skin-jellyfish at the intersection were rolling around together quite companionably.

“Mommy, no, get off, aaaagh...”

The death cries that people devoured by Amalgams must have uttered in their final moments rang out again beneath the Skin-jellyfish’s hides.

The Skin-jellyfish wrapped their lip-suckered tentacles around the Amalgams’ bodies, trying to steal their faces. The medium Amalgams that hadn’t been swallowed let their faces flow downward, trying to take the jellyfish’s faces instead.

The sight of these monsters, with their repulsive remnants of human form, tangling together and trying to devour one another was a hell of ravenous hunger. Even the Supreme Mages’ legs were trembling. Se-jun fidgeted with the hand gripping his gun and started by swearing. The others were little different.

“Holy fuck...”

“Oh, Allah. That’s disgusting. I think it’s even worse than drinking straight soju.”

“Baek Je-min, it works wonderfully, but can’t you grit your teeth through the pain and get moving first? Spare a thought for us. While you recover, we have to listen to that even more vividly than through movie theater speakers.”

“Pastor, this fucking hurts, you know?”

It felt like someone had scraped and sliced off the bumps on my tongue with a knife, then salted it. I was certain anyone who could move while enduring this was a monster.

Na-in pounded his own chest, as though he understood my pain. Despite how this fanatic acted, he apparently had remarkable empathy. He was looking straight at me now, shedding a few tears and grinding his teeth. That was terrible for his teeth, but apparently he had no room to worry about that.

“Je-min... I told you to warn me before you used it...!”

“How about praising me first for incapacitating dozens of monsters?”

Our Republic of Korea was a wonderful country. It would be even better if we developed a culture of praising people’s achievements first.

Naturally, none of the Supreme Mages could dismiss my attack. Whatever else they might say, it was my Tongue, Stage Two magic that let us safely cross the intersection above Mongchontoseong Station.

We pushed through thick fog with visibility under fifty meters, covering all directions with our muzzles, and passed the monster pack unharmed. Behind us, monsters tangled together and recited death cries like “Don’t,” “Help me,” and “No.” That was everyday life in Seoul. We’d have to get used to it.

Still facing forward, I offered just one word to the Supreme Mages awkwardly following me, unable to conceal their discomfort.

“Carried.”

“Fuck...”

A hundred-percent contribution. A hard carry by Archmage Baek Je-min.

I heard someone grumbling in the grip of an inferiority complex, but decided not to identify and call out the culprit. It was only natural for inferior people to envy their betters. Shouldn’t I be generous about it?

And so we proceeded safely for a while.

“Danger.”

Hamza warned us.

“Three heads.”

Na-in detected them.

“Okay.”

I used Eye, Stage One to trace back the red footprints showing ten seconds into the future and estimate their location, then unleashed their appetite with Tongue, Stage Two.

The urge to sleep was powerful too, but I specifically chose hunger because it readily made them kill their own kind. At best, sleepiness only put them into a deep sleep. Hunger made them attack each other in an attempt to eat one another, so I judged it excellent for reducing their numbers.

I also had good reasons not to choose the urge to reproduce or excrete. Amalgams probably didn’t have a proper metabolism. Who knew whether they might shit out small Amalgams? And since they reproduced through humans, a reproductive urge could make them more aggressive toward us instead. Above all, its greatest drawback was unpredictability.

Se-jun and the pastor, who couldn’t perform this sort of detection or incapacitation, stayed ready too. They remained tense, prepared to aim at any unexpected threat.

Our advance was easy. But a strange feeling made me tilt my head.

“Baek Je-min, what is it?”

“Something... Something’s weird.”

“What is?”

The pastor and Se-jun, uninvolved in detection, asked as though they were bored. I considered how to describe this odd sensation and picked the closest answer I could find.

“I’m tired? My feet feel a little heavy?”

“Isn’t that from fighting your way through the monsters? You’ve been using tongue magic nonstop, Baek Je-min.”

“Hmm. Maybe?”

The pastor’s reasonable deduction left me uncertain.

But I’d once heard that intuition was a kind of learned data pattern. Similar experiences accumulated through everyday life like a sort of big data, helping you feel déjà vu in similar circumstances.

Usually, when I felt this kind of intuition, it was just before I mindlessly put money into cryptocurrency because American stocks had gone up. That memory—the one that had kept me from going anywhere near crypto after one enormous loss. This peculiar intuition, presumably born from it, helped me make my decision.

I took out the sorcery phone and checked the time first.

“Current time: 1:34 p.m.”

TAP.

After putting the phone away, I grabbed a random bit of trash from inside my clothes and dropped it. It turned out to be a clump of lint. Without hesitation, I tore it free, tossed it to the ground, and resumed our advance.

Anyone who might criticize me for littering was currently rubbing faces with everyone else.

Fortunately, we encountered no monsters this time. Outside the area around the subway station, the main road was utterly deserted apart from abandoned vehicles. Apparently Na-in had been right about the monsters gathering at the front.

But my sense of déjà vu was growing stronger. Eventually, unable to bear it any longer, I raised a hand and stopped the Supreme Mages following me.

“Everyone, hold.”

“Why? Hamza and Na-in both seem fine.”

I could see Se-jun blinking behind his gas mask’s lenses. But Baek Je-min’s ominous intuition did not lightly overlook opportunities for the world to screw him over. I took out the sorcery phone again and checked the time.

“Current time: 2:01 p.m.”

I slowly turned around. The clump of lint I’d dropped was still clearly visible, despite the thick fog with its estimated fifty-meter visibility. It was eight of my strides away at most.

No matter how cautiously and slowly we were moving, something was wrong if we’d wasted twenty-six whole minutes walking just eight steps. As soon as I finished that thought, I saw Na-in’s eyes harden.

At that moment, Hamza started violently and scrambled into the middle of our group.

“Danger! Terrible danger!”

Swift and precise.

That was the Supreme Mages’ new motto. Without anyone needing to say a word, we formed a circle. Hamza crouched in the center, trembling, while Na-in, the pastor, Se-jun, and I surrounded him, raising our guns to cover every direction.

Then Na-in squeezed out words that sounded like a groan mixed with a sigh.

“The sound... The sound is different...”

Without hesitation, I rolled my tongue inside my mouth.

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

The fog cleared, marking places where red footprints overlapped. Wherever the fog swirled and obscured my view, no monsters would come. Wherever it cleared to reveal the scene, monsters would approach.

I fired first at the places helpfully marked with red footprints.

RAT-TAT-TAT!

Along with the sound of falling cartridge cases, a monster rolled onto the ground. An Amalgam. Three faces, one body. It hadn’t eaten as much as I’d expected.

The instant the gunfire began, the other three covered their respective directions and positions, kneeling or adjusting their firing stances as they pulled their triggers. Amid gunfire and swirling brass, monsters dropped without uttering a single scream.

The pack consisted only of Amalgams and predatory spines.

Fortunately, we Supreme Mages had already killed at least a hundred of those. Amalgams that split their heads to multiply might be a different matter, but however nimble and fast predatory spines were, they had limitations in open terrain like this.

Because I was here: Baek Je-min, the Stage Two Eye archmage.

Hunting Amalgams was easy for all of us now. If something looked human in the thick fog, shoot its legs or torso to stop it, then shoot the fallen thing’s head to spill its fluids.

But the agile predatory spines moved too quickly for our muzzles to follow. So when I, Baek Je-min, gently scraped my aching tongue with my front teeth to savor its pain...

Alteration-Type Eye, Stage Two.

My pain lasts longer than any other time.

The predatory spines charging over to pull whatever bullshit they had in mind stopped dead and stiffened. An immobilized predatory spine was merely a hideous target. The moment Ear Mage Na-in noticed me using magic, he picked off the motionless spines one by one with uncannily textbook shooting form.

THUD. THUD...

Again and again came the sound of skulls being crushed or pierced by bullets. From the thick fog, the monsters surged relentlessly, aiming straight at us. But their numbers amounted to only eleven Amalgams and seven predatory spines.

The engagement ended quickly.

Our ammunition consumption, however, had actually increased. Se-jun removed his magazine and examined it with an uneasy look, tilting his head.

“That’s strange. Why did I use an entire magazine to kill so few?”

The pastor raised his eyebrows and turned to us at Se-jun’s remark. Something seemed to trouble him.

“I don’t know. I think I fired as usual. What about you, Je-min and Na-in? Same for you?”

“Yes. I also felt the monsters were faster than usual.”

Unlike Na-in, who answered promptly, I raised a question.

“There’s something strange about the predatory spines.”

“Hm?”

“They normally lurk in ambush, attack indoors where they have places to cling to, or travel along thick cables and walls. They hardly ever come out into open areas.”

“Now that you mention it...”

Apparently they’d all felt a similar unease but hesitated because they couldn’t identify it. Solving a mystery required courage. Without hesitation, I approached a predatory spine with a bullet lodged in its skull. Naturally, my finger remained on the trigger.

Prepared to bite my tongue and activate Eye, Stage Two if necessary, I approached the corpse and found something I hadn’t been able to see properly from a distance. The others didn’t follow me. They stayed well back and watched to see what I was doing.

These cowards. How could they ever reach the mysteries of magic like that? Our mindsets were fundamentally different.

“Je-min, did you find something?”

“I found something.”

Answering Na-in, I knelt to inspect it more closely. I reached out with my left hand and touched what looked like bumpy boils on the back of the predatory spine’s head. Only then did I realize they were incised markings.

I remembered something we’d briefly covered in history class. Hadn’t they called it the first writing, carved into clay tablets?

Cuneiform.

I searched my memory, wondering whether predatory spines had always had this on their heads. Come to think of it, these bastards thrashed like crazy as they died unless you properly blew apart their skulls. Since they might be playing dead, I usually kept my distance. This was the first time I’d approached one so closely.

At that moment, something strange happened to the corpse. Almost immediately after I touched the cuneiform, it crumbled like ash. Its scant flesh and muscles snapped apart like thoroughly rotten rope. Just as I thought bone fragments were sticking to my hand, the whole thing collapsed into ash and scattered into the fog.

Watching from a distance, Hamza was so startled that he overcame his fear enough to shout something idiotic.

“Huh? Huh?”

“Baek Je-min, what was that? Your right-hand magic?”

“No. This is my left hand...”

Na-in was next, emboldened by that. He approached other Amalgams and predatory spines to inspect them and found the same cuneiform. Without fail, the corpses whose markings were discovered turned to ash, crumbled, and vanished into the fog.

“The Amalgams have cuneiform on the nape connecting their heads and bodies, and in the middle of their backs. The predatory spines have it on the backs of their skulls. Unlike the other monsters we’ve seen, they also disappear without leaving corpses.”

“We haven’t properly inspected monster corpses until now, true. But this is the first I’ve heard of cuneiform.”

As the pastor rested his chin on his hand in thought, Na-in added another clue.

“Above all, their sounds are different.”

“Sounds?”

“The sounds inside monsters’ minds usually have distinctive qualities... Amalgams sound like discordant noise, for example, and predatory spines sound like fingernails scraping a chalkboard. But these demons didn’t. They sounded like calm, quiet classical music, which made it all the more ominous.”

“So that’s clearly different from the previous monsters. If what you say is right, Na-in, didn’t someone set these things to work? Like heretic scum commanding demons.”

Hamza interjected then. Given his usual obsession with safety, these alien clues apparently prompted an intuitive guess.

“I think it’s that r-ritual-type magic. Normally, when monsters are dangerous, the angel tells me right away.”

“Yes. Hamza’s magic isn’t working properly either. Even if Islam doesn’t have much pull, it’s strange, considering how well it’s worked until now. Baek Je-min, Shin Na-in, take another look while thinking about that ritual-type mage. Ski Goggles, was it?”

The pastor’s concerns were justified. Until now, it had only been suspicion, but at this point I was almost certain. I couldn’t think of anything besides eye magic that could make our movements sluggish. The question was where he was watching from...

Once you knew an enemy existed, finding him was easy. I rolled my tongue inside my mouth.

Target, Ski Goggles mage, three minutes, me.

If he was an eye mage, he would be watching from afar through binoculars while playing his tricks. If I could clear the fog and pinpoint his position, we would win.

Thinking that, I looked around. The fog rapidly swirled and cleared, beginning to indicate where Ski Goggles was. As the greatness of eye magic shone once again, my gaze locked onto one spot.

The fog cleared. Where my gaze stopped stood Hamza, trembling and trusting us absolutely.

“Je-min?”

Ski Goggles.

He was insane.

He wasn’t watching through binoculars from afar. He was approaching with a limp predatory spine in his hand, charging without hesitation from behind Hamza, beyond his shoulder.

He really was insane. A fucking eye mage wasn’t scouting from a distance—he was charging straight in...!

“Lord!”

Na-in was the one who acted. While I briefly froze, he heard the sound in my mind and aimed over Hamza’s shoulder without hesitation.

There were no ordinary men here. Shin Na-in was a Supreme Mage who didn’t worry about friendly fire when a Muslim was involved.

The moment he pulled the trigger, before Hamza’s face could even turn white, an earsplitting footfall rang out simultaneously. Bullets sprayed. And behind Hamza, I saw Se-jun flying through the air with his heavy backpack still on, launching a kick.

I hurriedly adjusted my gun and rolled my tongue inside my mouth.

Target, kill, Ski Goggles, five minutes, me.

Now, if the fog would just clear...

“!”

The clearing fog swirled back in. Within it, Ski Goggles’ movements changed strangely as he charged toward Hamza.

As though he’d already anticipated the hastily sprayed bullets, he ducked behind Hamza to avoid them. He awkwardly sidestepped Se-jun’s kick, evading it as if by coincidence.

Red footprints appeared through the barely thinned fog, but their limitations were obvious. Footprints that should have indicated my target kept appearing all around him. I could see at least three or four routes simultaneously. The moment I aimed my muzzle at one, the footprints I targeted vanished and new ones appeared instead. No matter how many times I tried, the result was the same.

As Na-in tried to keep firing, Ski Goggles moved strangely around Hamza as though using him as a pillar, narrowly dodging Se-jun’s punches and kicks.

WHOOSH!

Se-jun’s punches sounded almost like an air-shredding grinder, but Ski Goggles paid them no mind. He swung the predatory spine without hesitation.

Still, Se-jun was a heart mage, whatever his shortcomings. If I couldn’t shoot the bastard dead, I could leave him to Se-jun. Our opponent was using Eye, Stage One to foresee the future and evade us.

I shouted inwardly.

'Fatso, don’t shoot! Pin him down!'

Whenever Ski Goggles awkwardly dodged around Hamza on the fog-covered road, my muzzle followed. My index finger rested on the trigger, but I didn’t fire. Instead, I steadied my breathing so I could shoot at any moment, keeping him in my red-dot sight and moving only the muzzle. Catching on to my intention, Na-in likewise stopped forcing shots and began simply tracking him.

If the red footprints vanished the moment I aimed, I would keep aiming. Having confirmed Ski Goggles had three or four routes, I left whichever one Na-in covered alone and aimed at another, erasing two sets of footprints at a time.

I caught a glimpse of Hamza stammering with a deathly pale face, but this wasn’t the time to deal with that. Our efforts gave Se-jun time.

In the meantime, he gripped a sharp part of his gun with his right hand to draw blood, then spread it evenly over his fist. Having attained Hand, Stage One and Heart, Stage Three, the human tank Lee Se-jun sneered first at Ski Goggles as the man tried to gain distance.

“I’ll show you the resolve of a man with a dream.”

A bee sting.

Se-jun moved too quickly to be considered an ordinary person. Na-in and I had been erasing red-footprint routes one at a time by aiming. But the moment Se-jun closed in on Ski Goggles, swinging his fists, three escape routes vanished at once.

Good. This would do. Shoot when only one route remained, and that would be one enemy down. With Eye, Stage Three so tantalizingly close, I moistened my dry lips with my tongue.

Then Ski Goggles began swinging the predatory spine. Its limp spinal tail whipped through the air with each swing. A real man might have punched it aside, but Se-jun was a chickenshit bastard and couldn’t do that.

“Aaagh!?”

Ordinary old Se-jun, afraid of being cut by a blade, recoiled in alarm. Fortunately, he did throw his right fist as he backed away, smashing the predatory spine’s tail in a single blow. Hit by his bloody fist, the monster literally shattered—with an explosive sound.

BANG!

Bone pulverized by one punch mingled with the fog clouds. But we’d lost our chance. The routes formed by red footprints had already multiplied beyond counting. Na-in and I couldn’t erase them all merely by aiming.

I considered simply trusting Se-jun’s durability and firing, but decided against it. If Se-jun were wounded and incapacitated while Ski Goggles played his tricks, we would struggle to keep the man in check.

Without hesitation, Ski Goggles hurled himself backward and vanished into the fog. Visibility: fifty meters. He’d fled beyond that.

Just as I wondered whether we’d let him escape, Na-in shouted firmly.

“He’s realized Baek Je-min is an eye mage. He intends to kill him no matter what to avoid being tracked. The fight isn’t over!”

Of course. Eye mages could easily track their opponents, so killing one you encountered as an enemy was rational.

That meant me?

“Se-jun, come back for now. Your bloody fist is fucking powerful.”

“Ha... What a coward. Swinging a blade in a fistfight.”

“Muslim, stay beside me for now. My magic will improve your chances of survival.”

“Yes, yes. I’ll trust the Jesus freak for now.”

Se-jun strode back toward us, looking disappointed. At least we now knew his bloody fist was overwhelmingly effective against monsters. He could probably dispense with his gun and just punch them. Hamza was with the pastor too, which was relatively reassuring.

At that moment, as though rebuking my complacency, Na-in shouted.

“Sky! Monsters!”

Na-in only spoke that briefly and clearly when the situation was urgent. As the eye mage, I should handle the sky here. Jellyfish bastards were trash mobs that tore apart after a few bullets, so I was about to aim my muzzle upward with a little less urgency.

Then I saw it. A sight I would have missed if I’d raised my gun quickly.

At the very moment the pastor turned his head to nag Hamza, while Hamza stood hunched before him, pale-faced and gasping for breath, Ski Goggles was charging toward them from beyond their shoulders. In his right hand was a head torn from an Amalgam.

I was slow compared with a favorable situation. Besides, Ski Goggles was an eye mage too. The bastard wore those goggles deliberately to hide where he was looking. Even so, our gazes met.

My opponent had Alteration-Type Eye, Stage Three. His level exceeded mine. At this rate, I would be the one taken down.

So I prepared myself for pain. I rolled my tongue inside my mouth. This time, it wasn’t for Eye, Stage One’s future sight.

Target, stop, Ski Goggles, two minutes.

And thus my pain lasts longer and is more absolute than any other time...

CRUNCH!

My teeth crushed and chewed the flesh of my tongue. At the same moment, my gaze collided with Ski Goggles’. Our magic collided too.

This pain was on an entirely different level. It was like dripping candle wax onto my eyeballs, drop by drop. The hot melted wax scorched their surface, then cooled and hardened to hurt them once more. That was how much it hurt.

Even with my tongue bitten hard, I couldn’t suppress a scream, and my mouth opened of its own accord. Unable to speak, I squeezed my lungs to rasp against my vocal cords.

But it hurt too much to scream. To somehow preserve my tear-blurred vision, I let the tears pour out while groaning like an animal. I didn’t hold them back; I let them stream so they wouldn’t gather on my eyelids.

“Aaagh...”

It fucking hurt.

“Hnnngh...”

It felt like teeth were chewing my eyeballs to pieces.

“Hnnngh... Huhuhuh...”

My body collapsed first. I stared wide-eyed, sobbing quietly like an animal, but my mind, seared by pain, grew ever clearer.

Eye, Stage Two forced time distorted by one’s own perception upon the opponent. Ski Goggles and I were now imposing our own time on each other. While the entire scene froze, only our gazes met and clashed.

My instincts told me. My sixth sense whispered the price of defeat with terrible secrecy.

The loser would pay a dreadful price. Someone of a lower level than their opponent would pay an even more dreadful one.

Seconds, minutes, hours...

As the concept of time disintegrated, I kept Ski Goggles in view despite my closing eyelids and tear-blurred vision. Only my eyes and mind were free.

At the end of that long yet short confrontation, unbearable pain surged over me. It felt as though hundreds of needles were stabbing my eyeballs at once. Unable to endure any longer, I closed my eyes. At last, I was freed from shattered time, and realized that my animal groans had actually been my mind’s screams.

“Aagh... Aaaagh...”

When it hurt this fucking much, you couldn’t even scream. I staggered backward, weeping.

Ski Goggles. Was that bastard all right? No—were my eyes all right?

My legs trembled, and I collapsed to the ground. Even so, I forced my eyes open. Flashes and glare gouged into them. I hadn’t lost my sight. Thankfully, I was still all right. Since blurry outlines were taking shape, this must be temporary.

But I couldn’t relax. I was a hundred percent certain: without the reinforcement from tongue magic, both eyes would have gone blind. I didn’t even know who had won.

Still, Ski Goggles had clearly suffered a reaction too. The man who had been charging forward now backed away, whining like an injured dog.

Only then did Hamza and the pastor turn around. Apparently shocked out of their wits, they awkwardly stumbled backward and fell. Before either could scream, Se-jun and Na-in moved.

“Hup!”

Na-in aimed his muzzle and prepared to fire. Se-jun swung his bloody fist and was already charging right up to the man.

Under ordinary circumstances, he would have died right there. But befitting a Stage Three eye mage, Ski Goggles recovered faster than I did. The moment his gaze turned to Se-jun, Se-jun’s lightning-fast movements became slower than a grub’s. Even a sloth would have been faster.

I raised my gun too, but the aftermath of the pain lingered. My hands and feet shook as though I had tremors, and my muzzle wavered wildly. I considered using eye magic, but it was utterly impossible. If I used it again now, I really would go blind.

Not yet.

“Uhhhh...?”

“Lee Se-jun, what are you doing!!!”

The pastor’s frustrated shout was useless. Unlike the trembling Hamza, he aimed his gun, but when Ski Goggles brought both of them into view, they slowed down just the same.

“Huuuurrrryyy aaand shoooot hiiim...”

But our real man Na-in was different.

RAT-TAT-TAT!!!!

Ski Goggles’ body tilted. Acrid gun smoke rose from Na-in’s muzzle. He let out his carefully controlled breath and spoke.

“Devil, return to hell.”

I steeled myself too. Losing both eyes would be insane, but one would be acceptable. Wasn’t Odin, that badass mage, one-eyed?

I rolled my tattered tongue inside my mouth again.

Target, kill, monsters, one minute, route.

My eye magic helpfully indicated aiming points, even accounting for my trembling hands. Perhaps it knew I was struggling to shoulder the gun, because the number of red footprints was unusual. Still, pouring a curtain of fire into the jellyfish diving from the sky would suffice.

RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!

As cartridge cases poured out, Skin-jellyfish splattered down as well. What an avant-garde spectacle. I’d never imagined I would see skin balloons plastered with human faces flailing as they rained onto a road in my lifetime.

That finished the Skin-jellyfish familiars plunging from the sky. It should have finished them.

But one red footprint remained in my vision. The Amalgam head Ski Goggles had been carrying. Gooseflesh rose over me.

My Eye, Stage One didn’t show me living things. It showed me moving things. And red footprints were appearing, aimed at the back of Se-jun as he dragged the fallen Hamza and pastor away.

I naturally aimed my gun. The instant I rested it on my knees while sitting where I’d fallen, my shaking hands and arms settled into cold stillness. I saw Se-jun blinking inside his gas mask, directly in front of my muzzle.

“Je-min?”

“Get down.”

Thank goodness Se-jun was a coward. The moment he heard that, he flung aside Hamza and the pastor, whom he’d been dragging, and threw himself flat.

That let me find the person hidden behind him. Ski Goggles. This lunatic was running forward to swing the Amalgam head.

Only then did I hear the spell he was chanting for concealment—how a language that should have been impossible for human speech sounded when expressed through human pronunciation.

“Halu sen hongshyasen.”

Sounds meaningless in every human language. But while Ski Goggles chanted them, they became a spell. Of course, being concealed didn’t mean he could dodge lead.

Without hesitation, I pulled the trigger at his bloodstained long gray padded coat.

BANG.

Ski Goggles crumpled.

BANG-BANG.

I heard him coughing.

Belly, side, thigh. No one survived hits like that. Normally, he should have struggled with blood loss and died. But Ski Goggles had survived Na-in’s bullets, moved, and then been shot by me. He had some trick.

That was why I stared at him and watched his reaction.

I couldn’t feel the gaze of Ski Goggles, who had fallen to his knees. Apparently he’d closed his eyes behind the goggles. And the moment he did, he stood up again.

As soon as his body recovered, before we could fire again, he flung away the Amalgam head. This bizarre mage pulled a rod from the backpack on his back. It was an iron spike of the sort used as a tent stake. Using the loop for attaching cord as a pommel, he wrapped bandages tightly around the shaft and gripped it.

“You sons of bitches.”

Ski Goggles’ voice was utterly hoarse. A man’s voice, sounding ruined by too much smoking and drinking, reached us as a mumble through his face mask. And now he was angrily addressing our stunned group.

“My contract progress has gone up by at least fifteen percent because of you.”

Se-jun gaped in horror as he crawled away. Hamza and the pastor, wriggling along behind him, reacted much the same.

“What...? Why isn’t he dead after being shot?”

“A jinn. It’s a jinn. Allah!”

“W-why won’t you die? You fiend! Off to hell with you!”

The reason Ski Goggles couldn’t charge us immediately was Na-in and me. We both silently kept our guns trained on him. Na-in had heard my deductions as a fellow eye mage, so we maintained the standoff. We couldn’t aim directly at his head. He would move according to a future in which he protected his head at all costs.

It was also a judgment I’d reached because I understood what trick he had used.

Upright Alteration-Type Eye, Stage Three was [Cognitive Dissonance]. By rejecting what had happened to his body, he made his injuries cease to have happened.

“That’s insane.”

Shock? Fear?

The weak man who had trembled in pain was no longer here. The omnipotent power that would be mine—a fragment of it was now throwing a tantrum and defying me.

What I felt now was rapture.

At the thought of crushing Ski Goggles’ eyeballs and taking that power for myself!