Chapter 62 - Reading Under Clear Skies

People who knew nothing might rejoice at the steadily thinning fog. At last, that goddamn fog was going away, and they could shoot all the monsters dead. If the fog appeared along with the monsters, it was only natural to assume that once it disappeared, the monsters could be defeated too.

But we Supreme Mages had come into contact with a local Seoul mage and learned of another possibility. What A-reum had told us was the exact opposite of the common sense we had taken for granted, and it wasn't easy to accept.

We had cause and effect reversed. The order was wrong.

According to A-reum, the monsters came first, and the fog followed. The fog was a blessing for mages and something that weakened monsters. The thinner it became, the stronger the monsters grew.

It sounded so absurd that even a local's firsthand account had left me skeptical. Apparently, the time had come to find out. Not that I particularly wanted to learn through experience.

April 19, 2028. 6:01 p.m.

Expedition, day five.

Visibility through the fog now exceeded three hundred meters. We stood beneath skies so clear that discussing fog density was practically meaningless.

Of course, on an ordinary day before the disaster, we would have made a fuss about how foggy even this was. But we were in Seoul, where an alien ecosystem had taken root.

Under those clear skies, we could see the true state of the city, which the fog had kept hidden until now.

We had turned back with the Han River right before us. The instant we stepped into an alley between the pharmacies, I spotted something running across the low rooftops. At the same time, I clearly heard pieces of slate and debris, broken by shellfire, falling to the ground.

CLATTER...

We Supreme Mages reacted very quickly. Before Hamza could warn us of danger, before Shin Na-in could say anything, everyone ducked behind fallen signs or into buildings with shattered windows.

I crawled into the ground floor of a building that looked like an ordinary low-rise apartment block. A precariously hanging sign with a red cross told me it was a church.

Apparently, some people had come here hoping for a miracle after the critical-threshold breach. Half-opened snack bags, crushed water bottles, crudely broken chairs and desks, and rotten blood splattered over the walls and floor were all plainly visible. Unfortunately, the miracle of resurrection didn't seem to have taken the form they had wanted.

Just then, I heard footsteps behind me. In that place where the bloodstains remained but the bodies had vanished, Hamza, who had followed me inside, pressed his index finger against his gas-mask filter in a shushing gesture.

"Shh."

Apparently, he'd grown so used to the mask that his finger went to its filter instead of his lips.

"Okay."

I did as he asked.

We hid behind the scattered chairs and broken desks and waited for the sounds outside to fade. With ammunition running low, we couldn't rashly pick a fight with an unidentified monster.

I was dying to test my new magic, but...

With the fog thinning this rapidly, I couldn't use it without thinking. I had to consider the backlash.

Besides, Cognitive Dissonance was far too reactive a form of magic. Ski Goggles, my more advanced predecessor in the magical arts, had demonstrated that in actual combat. If he'd been able to cast Cognitive Dissonance on an opponent, he would have had no reason not to. All he'd have needed was to make us think, Huh? But I fired my gun?

The name Cognitive Dissonance made it sound like some terribly academic, pedantic magic, but it was actually very intuitive and easy to understand.

This magic was about stubbornly insisting.

And the key was how far that insistence could reach.

According to the knowledge lodged in my head, Cognitive Dissonance, the third stage of overcoming and denial, only let me deny changes that had happened to my own body. Since even that magic hadn't erased the cuneiform covering Ski Goggles, it apparently couldn't overcome a contract enforced through ritual-type magic. His memories had shown me that outright.

So I decided to focus elsewhere. With the fog thinner than I had ever imagined, I used only Eye, Stage One to check for any red footprints heading our way.

Fortunately, the magical backlash was milder than it had been in Suwon. Before, the light had been so blinding that tears simply streamed from my eyes. Now they felt as though they'd been bone-dry for ten minutes. They were gritty, stingy, and itchy, but not unbearably so.

Was it because I'd advanced?

That was the only explanation I could think of.

Looking ten seconds into the future, I saw not a single red footprint approaching us. But the sounds gave me some idea of what was happening in Seoul as the fog thinned.

A piercing scream rang out. A youthful voice, belonging at most to a child in the upper elementary grades, cried out tearfully, scraping its throat raw.

"Mom! Dad! Help me!"

Help me... Help me...

The child's screams bounced and echoed between shattered windows and empty alleys. Suddenly, I remembered climbing the hill behind my neighborhood as a child and shouting, "Yahoo!" We weren't even anywhere high, yet the child's voice kept repeating.

A decent person might have felt guilty. Someone with a strong sense of justice might already have rushed outside.

But we were the Supreme Mages.

We were the Supreme Mages who had so splendidly shot dead even the teratomas that lured people with babies' cries. We weren't about to be shaken by something as trivial as an elementary schooler's screams for help. Besides, everyone understood reality now.

The only people who could survive in Seoul were mages and the people clinging to them. At best, that screaming child was a Seoul mage. Far more likely, it was just a monster imitating a person.

This time, too, it was the latter.

After the screams of an elementary schooler who hadn't even reached puberty came the sounds of a young woman struggling, someone who sounded barely in her mid-twenties.

"Aagh! No!"

Then countless death cries overlapped.

Go away, sobs, Father, no, get off...

Amid the overlapping human clamor came the loud crashes of still-intact windows shattering and doors breaking. A truly optimistic, hopeful person might have wondered if survivors were hunting monsters.

But Hamza and I, trembling behind the desk, realized from the sounds that followed that this wasn't humans versus monsters.

"Huuurgh..."

From the city alleys revealed by the clearing fog came a leaking-air sound, clearer as the fog thinned. It wasn't a normal sigh, but the feeble voice of someone unable to make a proper sound because their lungs had been punctured.

That voice of leaking lungs trampled the overlapping cries.

CRUNCH.

It would have been nice if trampling had been the end of it. It wasn't.

Have you ever tossed a chicken bone stripped of meat to a tail-wagging dog in the countryside? I know some dog owners say you shouldn't give dogs chicken bones, but some of those yellow country mutts went crazy for them.

As a kid visiting my mother's family, I'd once tossed a fresh chicken bone to their yellow mutt. It had wagged its tail furiously, snapped up the bone, then promptly crunched it down, drooling all the while. I still vividly remembered the sound of chicken bone splintering between its teeth.

And now I was listening to that yellow mutt licking a chicken bone and crushing it between its teeth.

CRUNCH!

The little guy was really enjoying it.

CRUNCH, CRUNCH!

It seemed particularly fond of this enormous bone, turning it this way and that, crushing it between its teeth and sucking out every bit of marrow. Thank God I couldn't actually see it, cowering behind the desk as I was.

But sounds inevitably conjure images, so I desperately focused only on that childhood memory of tossing a chicken bone to the yellow country mutt.

SLURP, SLURP.

Thick saliva stripped the flesh clinging to the bone and coated the exposed surface.

SCRAPE, SCRUNCH.

Teeth struck something too hard and scraped as they slipped.

CRUNCH-CRUNCH-CRUNCH!

Then, finally, its jaws bore down on a spot soft enough for its teeth to sink into, crushing it and greedily devouring the marrow that flowed out. That was the yellow country mutt I was remembering.

But after finishing every last chicken bone, the mutt in my memory began looking up at me, licking its chops. As a child, I'd thought that gaze held nothing but anticipation. Here in the ruins of a collapsed church, it felt entirely different.

In the end, my desperate effort to remember the dog collapsed at the sobbing that followed the last crunch of bone.

"Hic... sob..."

The thing that had so meticulously chewed up every last fragment of bone began to weep.

Beyond this broken desk, beyond the shattered windows, over the desolate alley, the unidentified thing bounding across the apartment rooftops was quietly, mournfully sobbing.

A voice unable to make a proper sound, like a deflating balloon, grieved. It was licking something as it cried.

"Keh, kehk... sob..."

Even as it choked on something caught in its throat, the licking continued.

Feeling cold sweat trickle down my neck, I looked at Hamza beside me. He was already halfway to losing his mind. His face was white, his eyes squeezed shut, his legs tightly crossed and twisted.

He was so scared he was about to piss himself, but he was desperately clenching his bladder and urethra, afraid the unidentified monster would smell the piss and come for us. I understood. I'd already pissed myself ages ago, and even I needed to go again.

At last, the unidentified monster that had been busily licking something and sobbing broke into hoarse, wailing screams.

"Aagh, aaaagh..."

The loss of its humanity? Despair upon realizing what it had become?

I wished that were why it was screaming.

With human vocal cords, in a hoarse human voice, the unidentified monster sobbed out grief it could no longer contain. The echo shaking that nameless alley was neither a cry for help nor a plea to be killed.

"I'm. Hun. Gry."

Wailing like a human, the monster began moving again.

The sounds told me a great deal. I couldn't help imagining it hopping about, noisily stomping over the green urethane coating or slate that must have covered the apartment roofs. More screams and death cries overlapped with its footsteps.

Don't come here, run, what the hell are you, you've never done this before, honey, you're acting strange today...

I stayed put until the countless death cries and those loud, bounding footsteps receded, until I could no longer hear the leaking sobs at all.

A sharp ammonia stink rose beside me, but I didn't bother scolding Hamza. The situation had been far too urgent to demand the advanced technique of pissing a little at a time and letting it dry.

A few seconds after the unidentified monster vanished, I heard people approaching our location. Still no red footprints.

Only then did I peek out and see familiar faces: Pastor Park Yo-han, Shin Na-in, and Lee Se-jun.

The instant our eyes met, we made our decision. Not a word was spoken; our looks alone conveyed it.

With the fog this thin, we couldn't keep operating outside.

* * *

We Supreme Mages chose the third floor of the church building as our temporary hideout. The church occupied a gray-walled building resembling an ordinary low-rise apartment block, roughly four or five stories tall if you included the glass enclosure over the roof.

We ruled out the ground floor because it was too vulnerable to monsters entering, and the rooftop because it lay along the route of that bone-chewing monster we had only heard. The stairs seemed to be the only way in.

Unfortunately, we couldn't find a way underground. There was a shuttered entrance that we suspected might lead to a basement, but we had no idea when the monster might return.

Now wary of uttering even a single word, we avoided making any unnecessary noise and followed the pastor's nod farther into the building.

Indoor spaces were ideal habitats for predatory spines and blood nets, an Amalgam subspecies. Fortunately, amid all our misfortune, there were no predatory spines in this building. We could only speculate that it was because of the unidentified monster that had just been whining about its hunger in a human voice.

We climbed the stairs very slowly and carefully, checking our surroundings. Bayonet drawn, ready to swing at any moment, I endured the pain every ten seconds to scan the interior. Lee Se-jun kept shaking out his bloodstained fists for no particular reason.

With Hamza trembling helplessly, Na-in and the pastor helped me search, their rifles tucked beneath their arms. While I kept watch, the pastor would carefully turn a doorknob, insert his muzzle first, and wait.

I looked back at Hamza, hoping against hope, but it was no use. Eyes squeezed shut, he tried to say something, but all that emerged were ragged breaths.

"Hh, hh..."

"Yeah. Just breathe."

Mentally shattered, Hamza couldn't even warn us of danger. He was already doing his best just to pant silently, and we didn't push him.

Na-in also chose another method instead of speaking his detailed reports aloud. He stared at me, tapped his headset, and blinked. When I stared back, wondering what the fuck he was doing, he let out a deep sigh.

That was when he took the Magic Crash Course booklet from inside his clothes. He tapped his headset with it, then opened it to the page bearing the ear-branch magic seal and showed me.

Only then did I work out what he wanted and concentrate.

Ear, Stage One. Mind reading.

'Je-min, can you hear me?'

'I can.'

'Apparently, practitioners of the ear-branch holy-war arts can exchange secret conversations like this if they consider each other friendly. It also seems to require being at the same level. I think your advancement to Eye, Stage Three put you on the same level as me.'

Apparently, Na-in had been giving his own magic some serious thought. But the moment I heard that, I realized just how horrifying and vicious ear magic was.

Now... did its penalty mean I'd have to hear Na-in's inner voice as well as Se-jun's?

At least my ear magic wasn't very good, so I only heard them occasionally. I vowed never to focus on Na-in until we'd exchanged hand signals.

'There are no satanic devils inside. There were, but apparently they fled when they saw that bone-chewing devil earlier.'

'Won't they come back?'

'I don't know. But we can't risk moving now.'

'Agreed.'

Exchanging telepathy with Na-in was a thoroughly unpleasant, repulsive experience, but I couldn't deny its usefulness. Now that we could coordinate more closely, the risk of operating without Hamza's help was somewhat reduced.

At last we reached the third floor, where a dusty interior greeted us. A dusty room like this was actually better. Surely monsters wouldn't spend forever ambushing a place no people ever visited. Praying that was true, we immediately began preparing our hideout.

First, I transferred the bayonet to my left hand and sliced across my right palm again.

SHICK!

"Ah, fuck."

Something had gone wrong. Looking at the palm the blade had swept across, I couldn't stop my face from crumpling. Se-jun, who also had Hand, Stage One, glanced over and tilted his head.

"What's wrong, Je-min?"

"I cut too deep."

"... You're not even bleeding."

"Show a little sympathy."

I was in a situation where I had to slice my hand open to use Hand, Stage One, [Blood of the Right Hand]. Wasn't feeling sad the normal response? My delicate humanity and sensitivity were being damaged amid these coldhearted slabs of human concrete.

But then I remembered the urgency of our situation and gritted my teeth.

Yes. Baek Je-min, a real man, had learned another lesson. Actually doing something that looked cool didn't make you cool. Copying people who sliced their palms open and bled because they looked badass didn't make you badass. It made you a moron.

Everyone had a method that suited them.

Ignoring the mere pressure mark on my palm, where the blade had barely grazed it, I pricked my right index finger with the tip instead.

"Huhuh..."

"Baek Je-min, you crazy bastard. Why are you such a baby whenever you're not fighting?"

That Christ-nut pastor would never understand. The sorrow of a man so afraid of needles that he refused to get a flu shot every year when the seasons changed!

Anyway, I was bleeding, and that was enough. I immediately smeared blood all over my rain poncho, then put down the bayonet, pulled off my hood, and raised my gas mask.

"We need to smear blood on the ponchos and secure them over the windows. Everyone, take yours off."

Everyone responded quickly. With no proper curtains available, using our already filthy ponchos to cover the windows seemed reasonable. As soon as we Supreme Mages had smeared right-hand blood onto our ponchos, their hems torn or ragged, we held them up against the windows.

Without tacks or screws, we stuck bayonets into place to secure them instead. They looked ready to fall at any moment, but I managed to remedy that somewhat by using blood from my left hand to inscribe 'Secure' on the bayonets.

At least the third-floor windows were mostly intact, so there was less worry about drafts making the ponchos flap wildly.

While Se-jun and I added more right-hand blood to the ponchos and secured them, the pastor and Na-in carefully stacked dusty chairs and desks in front of the door without making a sound. Finally, Se-jun and I smeared our right-hand blood over the barricade.

Our temporary hideout was complete.

We were more exposed and vulnerable to attack than we would have been underground, but considering the power of Hand, Stage One's [Blood of the Right Hand], we should be able to hold out for a few days.

We fastened our gas masks around our upper arms like military-police armbands so we wouldn't lose them. Only after keeping loaded guns nearby, just in case, did we breathe a sigh of relief.

At last, we had time to discuss the knowledge we'd acquired and our spoils. Just then, the sorcery phone vibrated.

BZZZZ.

"Take a look."

"Yes, sir."

At the direction of the pastor, who looked several years older now, I picked up the sorcery phone. Anonymous messages greeted us.

[Fog density falling. Outdoor activity hopeless. Support unavailable. Hold out as long as possible.]

[Unusual military movements detected. Exercise caution.]

After everyone looked at the screen, a variety of reactions emerged. The pastor's worried voice came first.

"That monster earlier... Let's call it Cruncher. It's never been mentioned even once before. But it seems to eat Amalgams. You know those sounds Amalgams make to fool people? They were drowned out by Cruncher, then disappeared."

"I can't be certain, but I have reason to believe so. The devils called Amalgams are characterized by dissonance, whereas the devil you named Cruncher made a stomach-growling sound. As that growling grew louder, the dissonance dwindled, then stopped entirely. Apparently, it eats them, or at least kills them."

With the additional testimony from Na-in's Ear, Stage Two monster mind reading, everyone could only recoil. Even Hamza, who had barely pulled himself together, was aghast.

"The monsters aren't all on the same side? Were they just ignoring each other because there was too much prey before, and now that it's running out, they're targeting each other?"

"Most likely."

Na-in's calm voice only made it feel more unreal. This was the same guy who'd talked about their sense of kinship when we'd killed a predatory spine in the Suwon Station bathroom. That contradictory testimony told me the monsters' definition of their own kind was far narrower than I'd thought.

"I guess Amalgams only consider other Amalgams their own kind, and predatory spines only consider other predatory spines theirs."

"Ugh. That's so much more disgusting..."

Se-jun mimed retching and shook his head.

Right. We'd talked about how this wasn't a human city anymore, but I'd at least thought of it as a city of monsters. Yet today, after witnessing monsters eating and being eaten without my using Tongue, Stage Two's explosion of desire—appetite—I felt that even 'city of monsters' was too narrow a view.

This was, quite literally, an alien ecosystem unlike our reality.

The timing of Cruncher's appearance was also too curious to dismiss any connection to the thinning fog. But we had no further evidence to draw on concerning a monster we hadn't even properly seen. Uneasy as we were, we had to move on to another subject.

Ski Goggles' backpack.

The high-level mage had worn a triangular sling backpack for ease of movement. There hadn't been much inside, but anyone could have told at a glance that it contained valuable loot. There was a book densely covered in cuneiform.

Its V-shaped cuneiform marks ran counterclockwise, switching lines in a dizzying pattern. The instant Na-in saw the book, he grimaced, then covered his mouth and began gagging.

"Urgh, blegh!"

"Hey, something's wrong with that thing. Put it away for now."

As our super-detector, Na-in had a strange credibility in matters like this. If he suddenly started puking out of nowhere, something was up. Without hesitation, we put the cuneiform book back in the backpack.

Then we noticed the shriveled hands.

No joke. Actual hands.

Human hands, painstakingly covered with cuneiform carved in orderly patterns by something sharp, were neatly arranged inside. Even Se-jun was surprised enough by the tidiness to express admiration.

"He really kept things organized. Is that because he's from Seoul? I've never seen human hands stacked so prettily."

"Not everyone from Seoul is tidy. Our high-level mage just lived neatly."

"Listen to this bullshit. Baek Je-min! Lee Se-jun! You're rummaging through the backpack of a guy who cut off people's hands and gouged them up, and you're talking about tidiness? Get a grip!"

Whoops.

Apparently, my humble belief that everyone had something to teach us had disappointed the narrow-minded Christ-nut pastor. Regretting the high-level mage's end, I let out a belated sigh.

If he'd thought we were civilians rather than soldiers, or if we'd at least talked to clear up the misunderstanding, couldn't we have built a friendly, mutually beneficial relationship?

I'd killed him with the mindset of reaching Eye, Stage Three first and worrying about the rest later. Now that I'd reached it, I felt a pang of regret.

"Je-min, want to be burned at the stake for heresy? Talk to a guy who cuts off human hands and contracts with devils? Are you insane?"

Sadly, it was only natural for a Christ-nut to criticize my cultured belief that dialogue should come before fighting. This was exactly why people called them Christ-nuts.

Meanwhile, Na-in had settled his nausea. He approached, pale-faced, and gestured toward the backpack.

"That. That book."

"Huh?"

"It's human skin."

Without anyone needing to say a word, we stared at one another, mouths agape.

A cuneiform book made of human skin.

It was unmistakably a grimoire. I usually dismissed Cthulhu as that guy who got hit by a steamship and died, but encountering a similar sort of grimoire in the flesh carried an entirely different weight.

Looking down again at the cuneiform grimoire nestled carefully in Ski Goggles' backpack, I could only recoil, eyes wide. I could only tremble, covering my gaping mouth with both hands.

Grimoires really existed.

The most conclusive proof had been established right here, right now.

Since it had come of its own accord to someone with talent as fucking incredible as mine, this was a genuine grimoire.