Chapter 63 - A Campfire for Everyone

A hideout protected by rain ponchos coated with Blood of the Right Hand.

As a biting wind battered the windows, we discussed what to do with our newly acquired human-skin grimoire. Naturally, Pastor Park Yo-han and Shin Na-in, our two Christian nutjobs, objected most strongly.

"What's there to think about? It's an evil thing made of human skin. And Je-min says it's a gateway to devils, doesn't he? Burn it right now!"

"Dangling some trifling benefit before your eyes to tempt you is the devil's opening move. A bargain with the devil may look advantageous, but it invariably leads to ruin."

Hamza, on the other hand, had regained his composure but kept wavering in his judgment.

"It's dangerous. Extremely dangerous, but... the angel says it will be useful."

"Are you sure that's an angel? Has this Islam Boy already been bewitched?"

When Pastor Park Yo-han gave him a sharp, disapproving glare, Hamza frowned back and flared up.

"Don't question the angel Jibril!"

"Listen, you little punk! Why the hell does Gabriel become Jibril?!"

I had no time to bother with their squabbling.

When I glanced aside, Lee Se-jun gave a languid, uninterested yawn and added just one remark.

"If you use that, those disgusting cuneiform marks sprout all over your body. I'm not doing it."

For a strapping twenty-four-year-old guy with hair sprouting all over his body, he was surprisingly serious about skin care.

Of course, I agreed that we shouldn't use this cuneiform grimoire recklessly. Contracts and rituals involving transcendent beings were a classic example of ultra-high risk and low return.

Naturally, it wasn't all an outright scam. Mystical contracts like these generally promised something fucking incredible, and sometimes actually delivered.

The problem was that, under the law of equivalent exchange, the price the practitioner had to pay was just as great.

People tended to take transcendent beings lightly, thinking they'd have it made if they could just rip them off. They pictured talented mages talking devils and otherworldly beings into fraudulent contracts.

But we couldn't ignore how even those fairy-tale mages repeatedly stressed that certain conditions absolutely had to be obeyed, and followed the manual to the letter when performing the magical rituals needed for a contract.

Look closely at the little details you brushed past while caught up in a story's dopamine rush, and the implication was there: for God's sake, follow the proper procedures when signing a contract.

That was wisdom applicable to social life in general, not merely sorcery or occult matters.

I, Baek Je-min, had stepped into this fog in pursuit of the almighty power of magic, hoping to reach its mysteries. But I hadn't come with the petty expectation of gaining power without thought or cost.

I spoke up to quell the brewing dispute among the Supreme Mages.

"Let's refrain from rash attempts to destroy it and use it as merchandise to trade with the Seoul locals."

Every Supreme Mage reacted the same way to my sensible, cautious proposal.

"Baek Je-min? You?"

"Sorry? I must have misheard."

"Huh?"

"You, Je-min?"

They all stared at me with their eyes wide, making my face twist involuntarily.

Just what did these people think of Baek Je-min, the coolheaded archmage who advanced toward magic with caution, composure, and calm?

I clicked my tongue, tapping the cover of the cuneiform grimoire—this book supposedly made of human skin—with my index fingernail.

"First. If a grimoire like this really belongs to a devil or a comparable transcendent being, I think trying to destroy it is likely to attract their attention. It's a cliché. The person who destroys it could be hit with a horrific curse."

"Baek Je-min, that's what they want! It's a ploy to make you submit out of fear and leave their evil instrument in this world!"

Watching Pastor Park Yo-han fly into a rage made me hesitate a little, too.

Destroying the grimoire.

I didn't know about alteration-type mages, but doctrinal mages might gain something from destroying a grimoire like this. They drew power from religious worldviews humanity had believed in for ages. There was every possibility that defeating a grimoire, which was practically an invasion from another world, would strengthen them.

It was a reasonable possibility, but...

I remembered Kang A-reum's warning that doctrinal mages were the first to be targeted.

The other Supreme Mages hadn't been far away when she'd warned me, so they must have heard it too. Apparently, they weren't taking it as seriously as I'd expected.

Yet Ski Goggles really had targeted our doctrinal mages, the pastor and Hamza, first. Was it truly coincidence that he'd approached them under concealment to swing an Amalgam head or a predatory spine at point-blank range?

It was hard to tell whether he'd made a tactical decision to eliminate the weaker fighters first, or whether there was some other reason doctrinal mages were targeted.

Under these circumstances, we had no idea what dangers destroying a grimoire might bring upon doctrinal mages. We had to gather at least a few more clues before acting—or, at the very least, find a way to destroy it safely without adverse effects.

Once I explained this view, the pastor and Shin Na-in, who had been opposing me unconditionally, looked quite different.

"Whew... Je-min. I thought the grimoire had already bewitched you."

"As befits a practitioner of the holy-war arts, Je-min, the Lord's Holy Spirit dwells within you, even if you are an unbeliever."

"Of course, we should read it, too."

"BAEK JE-MIN!!!"

I held out my palm and waved it from side to side to calm the pastor, who was already about to go berserk again, then calmly explained my second reason.

"Whether we can learn it is beside the point. We need to know if there are other spells for when we meet another ritual-type mage."

Ski Goggles had mainly used two incantations.

Having fought him face-to-face, I remembered them vividly. They sounded like meaningless babbling, but these incantations had allowed Ski Goggles, who had contracted with a transcendent being, to wield powerful magic.

1. Halu wi hungwiyasen.

It was a concealment spell. If we weren't aware of it, even Hamza's doctrinal magic—Guidance, Intuition, whatever that angel crap was—couldn't detect it.

If we hadn't improved our understanding of Ski Goggles enough to recognize him as an alteration-type mage who used concealment, detecting him would have been impossible.

I suspected that the less information was known about the practitioner, the stronger the concealment became.

Olnipial.

A spell for controlling familiars and summoning. More precisely, he'd used it to summon monsters already under his control. I hadn't confirmed whether it was actually used to bring them under control.

I merely suspected that was likely.

Judging by how he'd commanded monsters like extensions of his own body, even turning them into weapons, it looked as though he'd managed the risks of controlling familiars by subjugating ordinary people and forcibly turning them into monsters.

Capturing a living monster required a hunt. But capturing an unaltered civilian and soaking their head in Amalgam bodily fluids, or infecting their spine with a predatory spine's tail stinger, would give him a chance to increase his stock of familiars for free.

Those two spells alone were formidable. What if there were others?

What if this grimoire held a clue that could reveal the truth behind this crisis?

"Besides, there may be locals who want to learn ritual-type magic. We could be creating an enemy, but conversely, it would also be an opportunity to get things we need right now."

With these additional arguments, the other Supreme Mages started coming around. Even the two Christian nutjobs who'd objected most vehemently merely recited short prayers, no longer insisting we burn it immediately.

Still, we proceeded very cautiously.

The pastor took a Bible from his backpack and handed it to me.

"Baek Je-min. Put one hand on this Bible and swear that you will never be seduced by that grimoire."

"Will a few words really satisfy you?"

"Before all laws and writing, there was the Word. A covenant may look trivial, but it was the very beginning that held the providence of the world. There is a great difference between making even a verbal covenant and making none. That is the power of words."

And so, out of nowhere, I had to take an oath.

Naturally, they didn't let me read the grimoire right away. First, Shin Na-in, an Ear Branch, Stage Three mage, squeezed his eyes shut and attempted a conversation while everyone watched.

The aim was to speak with the human remnants that made up the grimoire and learn how to read it.

"Lord, please protect me."

His voice trembled slightly as he laid one hand on the grimoire and fell silent.

Ten seconds, thirty seconds, one minute...

Shin Na-in's hand trembled on the grimoire. So did his eyelids, and strands of hair damp with cold sweat clung lightly to his cheek. His lips grew bluer by the moment, enough to worry Hamza.

"He seems to be struggling."

"Hamza, we can tell just by looking. You don't need to say it."

Chided by none other than Lee Se-jun, Hamza pouted and folded his arms.

Only after about three minutes did Shin Na-in open his eyes wide and hurriedly pull his hand off the grimoire.

He exhaled in feverish gasps like a sick patient, staggered with terrible dizziness, then crawled across the floor until he could lean his back against the wall.

"Hah, hah..."

He was suffering so much that I even held back my questions.

Eventually, Hamza couldn't bear to watch anymore and hurried over with a canteen. Shin Na-in weakly accepted it, swallowing the water one gulp at a time. Only after wetting his throat did he speak.

"Those hands."

"Hands?"

"Do not read with both hands. Turn the pages with one hand, and hold them in place with the prepared hands. Take care not to let the pages open on their own."

His lips quivered as he added,

"The owner of this book is not human."

"Got it."

So I just had to use the severed hands as bookmarks, right?

I prepared everything before anyone could stop me.

I took the neatly stacked severed hands out of Ski Goggles' backpack and piled them up, then steeled myself to open the cuneiform grimoire. I could feel the Supreme Mages watching with dread, but reassured them with a single remark.

"Every first step in this world comes with danger."

"But shouldn't a first step generally not be a nuclear launch button?"

This bastard Lee Se-jun had become a master at ruining the mood.

Ignoring him, I opened the grimoire. I turned the pages with my right hand while using my left to lift a severed hand and place it as a bookmark.

When I opened the heavy leather binding and turned the first page, an evocative sound reached my ears.

RUSTLE.

The page felt far warmer than I'd expected. A soft, warm sensation traveled up my fingers, as though I'd wrapped them in woolen cloth.

If you dunked woolen cloth into a bucket of damp, slightly sticky sweat and left it soaking, you'd probably get something that felt like the cuneiform grimoire's paper.

They said truly great books made you feel as though their paper and words were alive and breathing. The cuneiform grimoire was that sort of masterpiece.

HHH, HAAH.

It wasn't my breathing. Nor was it the Supreme Mages'.

The others had already backed well away and even picked up their guns in case something happened. It was the book breathing.

More precisely, the sound came from every page. Like a choir that had trained together since childhood until every pitch and beat matched perfectly, the entire book inhaled and exhaled.

HHH.

My right hand felt the paper swell slightly, as though its surface were becoming fuzzy.

HAAAAH...

Then, when it exhaled, it clung tight. The sensation, like plastic sticking to my skin and rubbing against it, sent chills crawling up my nerves. The peculiar moisture released with every breath even seemed to dampen the back of my hand.

The V-shaped cuneiform marks scattered irregularly across every page were no different.

This book was alive, breathing and pulsing. In place of a heart, the cuneiform marks, strewn haphazardly without a single proper line, shifted. With every pulse they trembled, repeatedly splitting into identical shapes and scattering, then joining together again.

Those marks were crawling toward my hand.

"!"

I hurriedly set down the severed hand I was using as a bookmark.

The cuneiform marks changed direction, turning away from the hand I'd used to turn the page and toward the severed hand holding it in place. This wasn't a book. The marks that should have been writing flowed slowly but unmistakably toward the severed hand, like thick sugar syrup.

At last, one cuneiform mark touched it.

Grotesque dark-red flesh filled one of the V-shaped grooves carved into the hand. Filling the groove completely, that dark-red flesh, which looked like skin cancer, was inscribing a new character on the pale hand.

I understood.

These severed hands were my time limit. Once they were filled, the marks would flow toward my own intact hands.

Only then did I notice my eyelid stinging. A trail of sweat was running down from my forehead.

I examined the grimoire, trying to salvage any information I could.

There wasn't a single language I understood in the grimoire, where V-shaped cuneiform marks poured and flowed down the pages. Instead, grotesque dark-red tumors merely blossomed in the grooves of the severed hand offered as a sacrifice. In V shapes.

My reason screamed that I needed to keep examining the grimoire, but my eyes kept flicking toward the sacrificial hand that marked my remaining time. Finally, unable to bear it any longer, I brought over all the other sacrificial hands and placed them on the pages.

Five sacrifices remaining.

Just in case, I pulled my right hand away and bit it to draw blood. I wanted to see whether Hand, Stage One, [Blood of the Right Hand], could control it.

Touching the book with my bloodied right hand did have an effect.

[Blood of the Right Hand], magic that enforced humanity's notion of common sense, had at least a minimal effect even on this grimoire that must have come from an alien world. Some of the flowing V-shaped cuneiform marks stopped moving.

Then they shattered, breaking down into tiny pixel-like dots that began arranging themselves in a regular pattern.

My eyes flick toward the sacrifices.

Four sacrifices remaining.

The severed hand whose grooves had been completely filled by cuneiform became covered in tumors and began writhing, then stuck fast to the page in a sticky mass.

Everyone was horrified at the sight of a hand melting into the grimoire's paper. But I desperately averted my eyes, intent on learning the knowledge it held.

What I needed to watch was the writing that would emerge from those dots.

Ready to use Tongue, Stage One, [Demotion], if necessary, I opened my eyes wide.

Three sacrifices remaining.

At last, meaningful words and sentences appeared.

But they were both the answer I'd wanted and one I hadn't particularly expected.

To make certain, though, I decided to speak the grimoire's sentences aloud.

Two sacrifices remaining.

This was not originally a human language.

This book did not belong to a human. It hadn't been written for humans; it was an altar prepared to offer humans as sacrifices.

Nevertheless, Hand, Stage One, [Blood of the Right Hand], had forced humanity's common sense upon it, and through Tongue, Stage One, [Demotion], it was now ready to be voiced in human language.

From the perspective of the grimoire and its owner, there could hardly be a more horrific blasphemy.

Tongue, Stage One, [Demotion].

"Spells. Concealment. Familiar control. False Fog."

One sacrifice remaining.

I understood what this grimoire—what its owner—was saying.

Realizing that I was reading the grimoire, its owner was speaking to me in language that would be demoted to humanity's own.

The shattered cuneiform whispered.

"This contract is absolutely fair. Even now, you are being saved through this book."

After reading that sentence, I hurriedly pulled my hand away.

Then I tucked it inside my sleeve so it wouldn't touch the book and slapped the book shut with the sleeve.

The sacrificial hands had vanished without a trace. All five had been sucked dry and turned into paper.

Then someone approached and tapped my shoulder.

"Je-min, here's a bottle of water."

It was Hamza.

Only when I reached out to take the bottle he offered did I realize my hands were shaking too badly to hold even a single object properly. My hands were pale from lack of sunlight, sure, but never this pale.

Even after I barely managed to take the bottle, my hand shook so hard that the water sloshed noisily inside. I had to settle for pressing the bottle to my face and feeling the coolness of the water.

And I reached a conclusion.

"Let's burn it."

This was something humanity could not handle.

* * *

8:14 p.m., April 19, 2028.

Expedition day five.

With the lighter Hamza had brought, we were enjoying our first campfire in a while.

As the fog cleared and Seoul's skies brightened, the temperature plummeted as though a late spring cold snap had arrived. We needed to keep warm. And burning was the best way to dispose of a dangerous object while we were at it.

We did have to open a window slightly to let the smoke escape, but oddly enough, Hamza didn't consider that dangerous.

"The angel says it's all right."

"I can't hear anything, either. Are the monsters afraid of flames?"

"They certainly are."

Come to think of it, the South Korean military had also thought monsters would be vulnerable to liquid nitrogen or fire.

Liquid nitrogen was damn hard to acquire and carry around, but fire might be feasible enough.

In particular, when the military had used flamethrowers to burn a crowd of refugees that monsters had infiltrated, the monsters had writhed in pain and struggled to approach.

Meanwhile, Lee Se-jun stood ten paces back from the burning grimoire, picking at some canned food.

"All animals are afraid of fire."

"Humanity mastered fire and became the lord of all creation, while these beasts were born using humans as raw material and fear fire. Either way, these monsters' intent to profane humanity's sanctity remains unchanged."

That was Pastor Park Yo-han, taking Lee Se-jun's shitty remark and interpreting it like a Christian shithead.

Still, everyone sighed with relief.

Pastor Park Yo-han, who'd led the charge to burn the grimoire, was positively beaming with confidence. Fitting, since he'd personally taken the lighter and set the thing ablaze.

"Evil bastards like these always follow the same pattern. They rage at you to run, threatening to torment you horribly. But people with true faith never submit to that. Because they know the almighty Lord will save them at the final moment!"

"At least we managed to identify three spells."

Shin Na-in spoke through a mouthful as he calmly ate canned yellow peaches.

"Now that we know there's a spell called False Fog, we can be on guard against the devil's servants luring us into a trap."

"That means Islam Boy's magic has become more effective. Islam Boy, don't be scared. Shout for Allah, or just believe in Jesus."

"You're the strange ones for not being scared. I'm normal."

Amid Hamza's indignant protests, we finally enjoyed a peaceful rest.

We sat around the campfire burning the grimoire, eating hardtack and canned food and drinking bottled water. Everyone was exhausted from five days of forced marches, and we needed to boost our morale properly before the big event of crossing the Han River.

Even I secretly opened a can of Spam I'd been saving.

"We'll meet that girl Go Ryeo-ha and get information. Hmm. Should we help her escape?"

Everyone answered my thoughtless question just as thoughtlessly.

"As the pastor speculated, escaping might have been possible if we'd originally arrived with the military, but I think it would be difficult now."

"Can't she just live here? The Seoul mages seem to be doing fine."

"Is this Lee Se-jun kid a psychopath?"

"If we get valuable information, shouldn't we... at least help evacuate her to Gangnam or another hideout?"

At least Hamza offered a reasonably plausible opinion.

He meant that Go Ryeo-ha would likely demand relocation somewhere safer in exchange for information. If she'd heard about the Supreme Mages' exploits, she'd be getting an escort of five mages. Hamza surmised that this might be a good deal even among Seoul mages.

The problem was that it sounded too plausible.

I had no choice but to consider it very seriously.

"The Supreme Mages aren't very good at protecting people."

Having given it some thought, I, the manly Baek Je-min, the very embodiment of objective self-assessment, had reached a conclusion.

We were good at revenge, but apparently not at bringing people back alive and intact.

* * *

4:12 a.m., April 20, 2028.

The early hours of expedition day six.

I hadn't woken up because I was tense or because monsters were running wild.

BZZZ.

The sorcery phone was vibrating nonstop.

BZZZ. BZZZ.

It went off so much that everyone woke up rubbing their eyes.

"What is it, Baek Je-min?"

"Je-min, I told you to turn it off!"

Never mind that the sorcery phone was a piece of shit that turned itself on whenever it pleased. I was completely occupied with examining the messages and videos it had received.

This was no time to worry about the other Supreme Mages.

[Video transmission complete.]

[News Anchor: As April 20 approaches, the nationwide armed uprising has entered a temporary lull following a forceful crackdown by martial-law troops and mediation by the United Nations. The ROK–U.S. Joint Command in Pyeongtaek has emphasized cooperation with United Nations forces to bring the crisis to an end, drawing attention to the recent thinning of the fog over Seoul.]

[News Anchor: Commander McKeen, who leads the ROK–U.S. Joint Command in Pyeongtaek, has declared that the receding anomalous fog—the primary cause of the sharp decline in South Korean military combat effectiveness—and shifts in seasonal winds will provide an opportunity to authorize the use of previously restricted weapons. He says this will minimize South Korean military casualties and allow forces to hold the front line. Meanwhile, civilian observers predict that this tactical change will leave survivors with little hope of returning safely...]

It was the news.

News had been delivered as a message through the sorcery phone.

Then an anonymous message arrived.

[Authorization to use incendiary, white phosphorus, and biological and chemical munitions confirmed.]

[If purification devices or CBRN equipment are insufficient, request support from nearby sources wherever possible. Supply support will resume when fog density recovers.]