Chapter 61 - Today's Weather: Clear

As we Supreme Mages crossed the bridge, we noticed a distinct change.

The fog was beginning to thin.

At some point, visibility had increased from less than a hundred meters to two hundred. Traffic lights and road signs that had vanished without a trace at even a modest distance began to emerge, however dimly, through the fog.

Before the crisis, we would have welcomed the change. As mages, however, we could only grow tense.

I could see Pastor Park Yo-han and Shin Na-in, our designated shooters, keeping an anxious watch on the sky. Hamza seemed more nervous than usual too; his breathing through his gas mask had grown a little ragged.

HUFF. HUFF.

Noticing Hamza's breathing, the pastor let his shoulders relax and spoke.

"Let's keep calm. The sun's still up."

"Yes, sir."

"You too, Islam Boy. Stick close."

"Huff... Y-yes."

Every so often, water or something thick and sticky squelched underfoot, but we Supreme Mages were manly men who couldn't be bothered with such unpleasant sensations.

We did, however, possess the sensitivity to gaze at the desolate streets and grow melancholy.

Immediately after crossing the bridge through the thinning fog above the flowing river, we happened to see a schoolyard without a single sign of life.

Where a three-way junction and an intersection lay one after another, we Supreme Mages spotted a school building. Though the fog had thinned, visibility was still only about two hundred meters, so we couldn't inspect the entire grounds.

But as we walked slowly along the sound barrier separating the schoolyard from the road, we could see a name that had broken away in fragments.

Lee Se-jun stood motionless for a moment, staring at the school building, where only the words “Middle School” remained. For no particular reason, he kept opening and clenching his fists.

"It was a middle school."

"Islam Boy, Na-in. Check it out."

Hamza shook his head, his face so pale that it showed even through his gas mask's lenses.

Shin Na-in tapped his headset with an index finger, then turned away without hesitation.

"It's dangerous."

"I can hear babies crying."

The sound Shin Na-in described was so familiar that it was easy to identify.

"Teratomas?"

"Probably."

"Come to think of it, what the hell is a teratoma, anyway?"

Only when Pastor Park Yo-han blinked and asked did it occur to me.

Thinking back, neither the pastor nor Hamza had ever seen a teratoma in person, since they'd been living the easy life in the rear. I'd expected the monsters we encountered in Olympic Park to be teratomas, but they turned out to be something else, and the situation had been too urgent for a proper explanation.

But we still weren't somewhere safe.

We stood in fog with visibility of two hundred meters or less, without any cover or concealment.

"I'll explain when we take our next break. Let's go."

I knew plenty of older people described middle schoolers as babies. It was ironic that they'd become babies of darkness in reality.

And so we passed the middle school, where only teratomas remained.

The school gate was all that remained to recall the children who had once run to school in gym clothes or uniforms. Where middle schoolers would have chattered noisily, only a chill, eerie stillness of fog remained.

None of us Supreme Mages made a point of offering a farewell to those traces of the children.

Only after everyone had passed the school gate and Lee Se-jun alone remained at the rear did a sniffling voice reach my ears.

"I take refuge in Amitabha Buddha. May Allah or Jesus have mercy on them."

To the right of the sidewalk we were following, across the road and its centerline, we could make out the hazy shapes of an apartment complex.

The farther we went, the more signs of looting and chaos appeared.

Shop windows along the street had been smashed into ugly gaps through which the wind blew freely. On towering piles of trash, bloodstains had browned until all that remained was a dusting of dried blood.

The strangest thing was the complete absence of human corpses.

I didn't know whether the monsters were putting the bodies to thorough use or the survivors were. Either way, we couldn't even judge the danger by the corpses, so we had to use magic despite the thin fog.

Eventually, the moment I saw that every window in a row of tightly packed pharmacies across the street had been shattered, I stopped and raised a hand.

"Let's check before we move on."

At the head of the group, I would occasionally stop before intersections or alleys crowded with too many buildings to ensure everyone's safety. I used Eye, Stage One magic to detect moving threats.

This time was no different.

While I checked for red footprints appearing in the fog with Eye, Stage One, Hamza and Shin Na-in each did their part.

"It's all right... for now."

"There are monsters nearby, but they're some distance away. They don't seem to have noticed us or be approaching. It sounds like spines lying in ambush, waiting for prey. I can hear sounds like nails scraping a chalkboard."

"Good. Forward again."

We lived in an age when you had to test even a stone bridge before crossing it.

Especially in Seoul, where closing your eyes could cost you not just your face but your entire body, careless optimism was a perfect way to get torn to death. The changes to our plans and precautions for encountering packs of monsters were also a major factor.

Having to conserve ammunition made us all the more cautious.

For small groups of monsters, we used Tongue, Stage Two's explosion of desire to make them slaughter one another. Whenever possible, we stayed concealed behind cover and waited for the monsters to pass.

Fortunately, we didn't have to fight anything directly as we walked among the roadside pharmacies, where only shattered windows and scorched, warped wreckage remained.

There were clearly fewer monsters.

We'd braced ourselves for most of the population of a city of ten million to have become monsters, but their density and numbers were far lower than our pessimistic expectations. We knew why there were fewer packs in central Seoul than we'd anticipated.

We could really feel that the packs had been moving toward the front lines—the outskirts of Seoul—for the past several days.

The information Shin Na-in had kept detecting with his ear-branch magic had proved true.

But facts like that were useless to a terrified Hamza.

The moment we established it was safe and picked up the pace again, he spoke in a timid voice.

"Um... what if we went back for a while? We'll be in trouble if we run out of bullets."

"Hamza. We've been saying for days that the monsters are heading toward the front. If we turn back now, we'll run into all those packs gathered there. Won't we be fucked if we use up all our bullets fighting through them?"

Even as I gave Hamza shit, I felt deeply displeased.

It bothered me all the more because I knew his doctrinal magic, Angel's Intuition, only judged whether something was dangerous.

Going farther in was dangerous, and being outside was dangerous too. This bastard had clearly brought it up simply because he wanted to leave.

He'd even been a medical student back in Pakistan.

There was no way someone like Hamza didn't know what would happen if we made a U-turn and retraced our steps while the monsters were massing at the front on the outskirts instead of central Seoul.

We were short on bullets, so we'd use up all our bullets fighting through the monsters blocking our retreat in order to resupply?

We wouldn't learn any magic, we'd waste our ammunition, and we'd fail our mission—but we'd be gambling everything on the possibility of escaping Seoul.

The pastor, at least, came to Hamza's defense.

"It's because we've strayed so far from the original plan."

He fiddled idly with his gas mask filter, exhaled briefly, and shook the dew from his rain poncho.

"Originally, we were supposed to cooperate with the other troops, ride in vehicles with the non-mage infantry boys, secure bases, and advance step by step. Then all the boys suddenly disappeared. I still don't know what kind of monster it was."

"We really should have turned back then..."

"If we'd turned back, wouldn't it have delayed our entry into Seoul by ages? That was right when the monsters were pouring into the front lines on the outskirts."

Lee Se-jun was the one who quieted Hamza's fretting.

Even while guarding our rear, he made a point of patting Hamza on the shoulder to reassure him.

Shin Na-in and I didn't bother saying anything aloud. We merely exchanged glances and shrugged. For all his many defects, we often agreed on matters concerning the group, so however unpleasant it was, I accepted it.

What we agreed on was why this pitifully understrength suicide mission had been launched.

Now I understood why the South Korean military had sent in American and South Korean special forces, along with regular South Korean troops to secure bases, under the name of the first advance reconnaissance unit—and then hastily assembled a follow-up force including us as the second reconnaissance unit.

It was a guess, but almost certainly true.

The South Korean military had fought Seoul mages before.

The military mages known as specialist soldiers had probably served not only to detect monsters but also to direct military firepower against Seoul mages attempting to escape.

People still slow on the uptake might ask why we couldn't just receive regular supplies, build walls bit by bit, and survive. But now that I'd killed two Seoul mages, I knew.

Both the South Korean military and the Seoul mages knew the fog was spreading.

Then why were the Seoul mages driving monsters all the way toward the cordon?

The military was probably still getting cause and effect wrong, but even with the order reversed, the correlation remained.

According to our older friend Kang A-reum, a Seoul mage, when monsters spread, the fog follows.

The fact as the military understood it: when fog spreads, monsters appear.

The Seoul mages knew fog appeared wherever monsters were, so they concentrated on spreading monsters. The military, on the other hand, believed monsters appeared wherever fog did. Unless they identified the cause, they'd keep losing ground by a narrow margin.

The fatal problem for the military was that they likely didn't know how the Seoul mages spread the fog.

I didn't know how those mages guided and lured the monsters, but they clearly seemed to have some means of doing it.

The first advance reconnaissance unit—the special forces contingent that had probably taken Line Three—might have learned this. Not that knowing would turn an unfavorable fight into a favorable one.

In the fog, modern firearms were hampered by limited visibility. Only mages received the fog's blessing and could fight more efficiently.

The Seoul mages didn't even have to sacrifice themselves to breach the cordon.

As long as they could keep directing monsters toward the front, the modern military would slowly be worn down.

This was a deathmatch.

A deathmatch in which the Seoul mages grew stronger at a vastly, overwhelmingly faster rate.

The rule of this fight was so simple and clear that it would instead provoke resentment among non-mages.

-Only mages get the chance to fight back and survive.

I let go of my irritation and anger toward Hamza and decided to soothe him calmly.

"Stop regretting things and keep moving. Hamza, you came in here because you'd die even if you ran, remember?"

"Sniff... Seoul is so hard..."

"Isn't living away from home always like that?"

Moved by the warm friendship of his fellow Supreme Mages, Hamza was finally able to overcome his fear.

"Yes... The angel is telling me to go forward too."

This bastard. He really had just wanted to run because he was scared.

Anyway, with Hamza's fretting settled, we Supreme Mages could keep pressing ahead.

That was where the problem arose.

Visibility in the fog: up to three hundred meters. The fog had grown far too thin.

As a result, we could now see a broad open area and a large building to the left of the road. To the right, beyond the roadside trees, was what looked like an apartment complex. There wasn't a single suitable alley or hiding place all the way to the vicinity of the bridge across the Han River.

Shin Na-in's gaze hardened, and he made a quick decision.

"Let's go back to those pharmacies with the broken windows."

"Did you hear something?"

"There are too many. We need to wait for thick fog."

He didn't have to say what there were too many of.

April 19, 2028, 5:47 p.m.

Expedition, day five.

We had no choice but to turn back from what might have been the very doorstep of the Han River.

Cold sweat trickled down my spine as we searched for a cramped, easily defended place to hide. The fog's continued thinning was not a good sign.

Even if the South Korean troops outside might consider it a golden opportunity.