Chapter 64 - When the Southeast Wind Blows

People always said Seoul was small, but I had never felt it as keenly as I did today.

Looking uneasy, Lee Se-jun lifted the poncho covering the window and peered outside. Just then, the roar of aircraft tearing across the sky shook the building. It did not stop at one or two flyovers.

Earth-shaking reports of guns and explosions battered our eardrums one after another. The moment Se-jun lowered the poncho serving as a curtain and turned around, we heard the distinctive whistles of shells slicing through the air, even from far away.

FWEEEE...

Long, long ago, our ancestors must have heard arrows flying toward their throats.

Sitting atop fortress walls built over decades, they would have eaten a rice ball with stained hands, thinking of people with names like Gaettong or Puljuk.

Hundreds of years later, we huddled beneath a concrete roof, listening to shells that might fall on our heads. Inside a reinforced-concrete structure erected in just a few years, we each ate from a can, ears pricked, with the black sorcery phone set down in our midst.

April 20, 2028, 10:13 a.m.

Expedition Day Six.

We were getting showered with concrete dust as we listened to artillery fire and bombing sweep across all of Seoul.

An anonymous sender had sent another video to the black sorcery phone, along with news explaining the massive bombardment and a few concise explanatory messages.

It was obvious to anyone who looked. The sorcery phone was relaying information from outside to the people left inside Seoul.

Pastor Park Yo-han pushed his sly-looking glasses up onto his head, then poured bottled water over his dusty hands to wash them as he spoke.

"Someone in here must be able to communicate with the outside. Well, we had communications before, so I suppose there's no reason they couldn't. We've got sorcery phones, too."

The faction operating the sorcery phones might be far more organized and systematic than we thought.

We still knew little about the balance of power inside Seoul, but we had to give serious thought to the two organizations whose existence had been hinted at. We suspected they had either united the Seoul mages or possessed comparably powerful influence.

The faction operating the sorcery phones.

And the name that had surfaced in Ski Goggles' memories: the Society of 66.

With his headset hanging around his neck, Shin Na-in offered the most plausible possibility.

"The sorcery-phone faction also mentioned code phrases like '66 for 7' and '55 for 66.' Those same elements appeared in the ritual you underwent, Je-min, and in the incantation from Ski Goggles' memories. Though the details differ."

The incantations were not all uniformly identical. But when we pieced together the fragments we had gathered so far, an outline slowly emerged.

The pastor, who had learned numerology through conversations with foreign mystics in Pyeongtaek, was the first to identify its shape.

"The incantations keep mentioning 66 for 7, and 55 to complete 66. That's significant when you consider that seven represents ascension or transcendence—the seven steps the Buddha supposedly took to attain liberation—and is a perfect number in numerology, symbolized in Christianity by the seven virtues or the seven deadly sins."

"This is boring and pedantic. Could you keep it simple, please?"

At my brief suggestion, the pastor narrowed his eyes and began glaring at me. But seeing the indifferent expressions on Hamza, Se-jun, and Na-in, who had no interest whatsoever in mysticism, he sighed and gave us an easily understood summary.

"Five is the number of humanity in Western numerology. As that sham monk said, it can also mean the five elements that make up a human being, called the five aggregates. That lines up with the five branches of alteration-type magic, too. The problem is six."

BOOM.

The building shook once, even though the shells were falling on the outskirts, far from here.

The shelling was intense enough to make even our church tremble a little. Amid the faint but distinct reports, like a club beating heavy cloth, we put our heads together to salvage even a single fragment of the truth.

Pastor Park Yo-han was doing the most thinking of all. With his left hand resting on his Bible, he pondered so hard that deep wrinkles formed around his eyes, then slowly continued.

"Islam Boy, Lee Se-jun, Shin Na-in, Baek Je-min. Do you remember the formal name for alteration-type magic?"

"Of course I do. Alteration-type holy-war arts."

"Well... what was it again? Anyone know?"

"Je-min, why are you looking at me when you ask? Do you know, Hamza?"

"Mine is doctrinal."

The pastor heaved a sigh amid the utter circus.

"I knew it. The formal name for alteration-type magic is self-alteration-type localized penetrative alteration activity. The part we need to focus on is 'self-alteration-type.'"

He, at least, had often spoken with mystics and officers back behind the lines. He explained that while the military and government had defined magic as localized penetrative alteration activity, the original distinction between doctrinal and alteration types had focused on whether the result came from faith or from the individual practitioner.

The pastor had brought up the military's administrative term, self-alteration-type magic, to lay the groundwork for his next explanation. He had formed his own hypothesis by combining my testimony and knowledge with everything we had seen and heard in Seoul.

"I don't know whether it's a sign that they were trying to phrase it clinically, or that they shared information with those Seoul mages before escaping the city, but there's a clue in 'self-alteration-type.'"

What Pastor Park Yo-han had pinpointed was the two ways alteration-type magic manifested.

Upright alteration-type. A system of occult arts that assigns the five elements believed to constitute humanity to five parts of the body, seeking to define what a human is.

Inverted alteration-type. A system of occult arts pursued on the premise that, by denying those five elements of humanity through five body parts, what remains at the end is true humanity.

Deciding that seven was code for ascension or transcendence, the pastor began substituting meanings in earnest.

"Let's take seven to mean ascension, and replace 55 with five branches and five stages of self-alteration-type magic. Those five branches and five stages share the same core, whether upright or inverted. What is humanity? What makes us call ourselves human? What will keep me human to the very end, even if I'm reduced to the flesh of a beast and confronted with blasphemous truths and monsters?"

According to his interpretation, the two manifestations of alteration-type magic were questions.

Upright alteration-type. Can I remain human if I preserve the five elements symbolizing humanity amid all manner of horrific truths and monsters?

Inverted alteration-type. Even if this flesh is defiled and I lose everything I considered my humanity, is there something that will keep me human?

"55 isn't just the number of humanity carelessly repeated twice. Twenty-five is the number of the seeker. And as the sham monk said, it also stands for the twenty-five forms of existence—the twenty-five kinds of beings in the cycle of rebirth across the three realms and six paths. From a numerological perspective, this code wasn't devised without thought."

The pastor offered a distinctly avant-garde, mystical interpretation.

"55 most likely means humanity, or human beings themselves. I think it's code for seekers: mages studying alteration-type magic."

"Then what about 66?"

"We don't have enough clues for 66 yet. But I mentioned three realms and six paths, didn't I? The places where beings in the Buddhist cycle of rebirth dwell. That's 36. It's also what you get when you multiply six by six. And you know the expression 'sixth sense,' don't you?"

Then he added, frowning in distaste,

"Six isn't the number of humanity. But it's also a number you must pass through to transcend. So six represents a realm humanity hasn't yet proven exists, but has no choice but to long for in order to ascend. Judging by how all the incantations we've found treat 55 as the foundation for 66."

I wondered why he was so displeased, but as soon as I heard what came next, even an outsider like me understood.

"I suspect 66 is... something equivalent to the soul, or free will."

"How dare those who claim to practice holy-war arts covet the soul, which belongs to the Lord's domain!"

For once, Na-in vented his fury with blazing eyes.

Whatever else they might tolerate, both the pastor and Na-in seemed to draw a firm line at invading the realm of souls.

Dealing with souls must remain the province of God, not mages. Before any question of possibility or impossibility, the very attempt was sinful and sacrilegious.

It was only an inference scraped together from fragmented clues, yet the pastor smacked his lips as though ashamed of having arrived at it himself. Na-in was positively ranting that the number 66 should be erased from the world.

Even so, the pastor did not stop interpreting the Society of 66's code phrases.

"To hunt heretics, you have to understand their logic."

Through those substitutions, we were able to guess the sentences the incantations had originally meant to convey.

Once we replaced the numbers, it became clear. A strange meaning was plainly visible in words we had vaguely sensed something in, but which had remained nebulous until now.

Without realizing it, I was speaking the substituted sentence aloud.

The incantation used in the ritual I had once performed with monk Cheong-hwi. Replacing its numbers produced something plausible.

"A soul for ascension, humanity to complete the soul, two sets of five fingers dreaming of humanity."

In alteration-type magic, the hands symbolized human intellect.

Human intellect dreams of humanity.

That was the sense of the peculiar sentence we had produced.

Se-jun rolled his eyes about in thought, then gestured as he spoke.

"Then the incantation Ski Goggles received would become, 'A soul for ascension, humanity to complete the soul, a pair of eyes gazing in hopes of understanding humanity'? Is that right?"

We could more or less see the pattern.

In alteration-type magic, the eyes symbolized human cognition. That incantation would mean, 'Human cognition gazes in hopes of understanding humanity.'

Then wouldn't the other incantations carry similar nuances?

The pastor nodded.

"Considering he was reciting these incantations from the outset, that sham monk Cheong-hwi was probably a member of the Society of 66, or in contact with them, even back in Suwon. And when you consider how the military sent in black-clad special forces the moment he disappeared, and started talking about 'defection' while treating us with suspicion, doesn't a picture begin to emerge?"

He idly flexed the fingers of his left hand on the Bible, then lowered his glasses from his head.

"It seems the military and government are in conflict with the Society of 66, a secret society that's coiled up inside Seoul. And since the Society of 66 most likely controls the sorcery phones, we should assume most Seoul mages have ties to them. If there's a reason the government and military haven't properly grasped all the information we've discovered in less than a week here, that would be it."

"Could the Society of 66 be responsible for this whole disaster?"

Se-jun asked with a gravity I had never seen from him, his expression rigidly serious.

It was hard to tell because he usually babbled about becoming a cute girl through a sex change, and was a coward who fussed over pointless details. But strip away most of his personality, and he was a man's man: an orphan on basic livelihood assistance who had volunteered to repay his debt to the nation.

In other words, he had enough of a chivalrous streak to feel righteous anger if someone was responsible for the monsters overrunning Seoul.

Moved to see this side of Se-jun again after so long, the pastor nodded.

"I don't know if they're responsible, but they're the most likely to know the truth. The problem is, they're also likely to be hostile to the outside. And their knowledge of mysticism will be ahead of ours."

"But if the Society of 66 is a society of mages, why don't they tell people it's dangerous when the fog thins? Everyone's put at risk."

Hamza's question was perfectly reasonable and sensible.

Hamza might be a coward, but in matters like this, he was a Muslim migrant worker with his moral and ethical compass firmly in place, which made it hard to simply hate him. The rest of us Supreme Mages, our brains somewhat damaged, looked away or twisted our lips, avoiding an answer.

Only Na-in gave a friendly smile. Putting his headset back on, he spoke gently.

"Because the devil's servants don't want everyone to survive."

"What?"

"Once the fog thins and the monsters are unleashed, once the soldiers waging the Lord's holy war collapse, the devils will find it easier to move about as well. The righteous submit to God's will, while the wicked wish to drag others into death with them, charging at the innocent with bodies burning in hellfire."

Realizing that vengeance, too, could be a conviction, Hamza hung his head, his face darkening.

My thinking was a little different, but not far removed.

The Society of 66 was an organization centered around mages, and whatever its ultimate goal, it wanted the cordon to collapse as a means to that end. It seemed to want the monsters and fog to sweep across at least the entire Korean Peninsula, rather than remain a localized crisis confined to Seoul.

The Society of 66 could have shared information about the fog, the monsters that emerged when it thinned, and the unidentified species.

But it hadn't.

The vengeance harbored by the Seoul mages who likely belonged to the Society of 66 made that outcome easy enough to predict. The Dubai Chewy Witch, Ski Goggles—even Kang A-reum, the older woman who had been friendliest to us—regarded the military as trash.

The Seoul mages wanted the other forty million Koreans to fall into hell alongside them.

Perhaps even the other 7.95 billion humans who had escaped the crisis.

The shelling now raining down marked the lighting of the fuse for an all-out confrontation.

If the military had even a vague awareness of the Society of 66, if it knew that collapsing the cordon was one of their goals, it could not hesitate.

This was the military that had sealed Seoul off by every brutal means available to save forty million people. It had staked everything on the cordon, sacrificing ten million lives, the nation's future, the government's legitimacy and morality, and even the judgment of posterity.

It was a desperate struggle to avert the catastrophic outcome of nationwide infection or a nuclear baptism of the Korean Peninsula.

And now there was a secret organization trying to bring down the Seoul cordon—and they were supposed to let the local residents, who were likely involved, survive?

No iron-blooded superhuman who could disregard sunk costs existed in this world.

The Republic of Korea of 2028 had already sacrificed far too much.

That was when the sorcery phone vibrated again.

BZZZ.

We stopped speculating about the Society of 66 and looked at the screen beneath the concrete roof shedding dust on us.

Someone anonymous was sending more news to the sorcery phone.

[Transmission complete.]

It was an assortment of foreign news reports.

English, French, Japanese, Chinese... Countless foreign correspondents stood near the Seoul cordon, in front of positions pouring out shells, wearing headsets and clutching microphones.

Edited shots alternated between foreign reporters shouting silently amid the smoke and noise of the bombardment. Finally, a Korean reporter appeared.

[Approximately four months have passed since the outbreak of the series of infections ravaging Seoul. The ROK–U.S. Joint Command has adopted a policy of eliminating the anomalous entities pouring out through Seoul's outskirts, making unrestricted use of incendiary, chemical, and white phosphorus munitions previously limited over fears that seasonal winds would make their spread uncontrollable. According to leaked information, the number of shells fired over the past three days already amounts to fifty percent of the wartime stockpile. The objective is to secure the cordon by once again completely devastating the entirety of Seoul's outskirts.]

Over the reporter's shoulder, soldiers in CBRN protective suits could be seen carrying shells without pause.

Some ran across the position with flamethrowers on their backs, alongside soldiers carrying shotguns and rifles. Their breathing through gas masks was loud enough to be picked up by the reporter's microphone some distance away.

BOOM.

At the same moment the guns fired, the church we were hiding in shook.

It was a coincidence, but watching soldiers on the screen crouch with their ears covered beside a self-propelled gun belching smoke and gunpowder residue, I couldn't help feeling that we were living through the same moment.

[According to a military official who requested anonymity, conditions on the front have deteriorated to the point that the use of these atomic, biological, and chemical weapons is unavoidable. With previously unidentified entities now pouring out as well, the South Korean military is barely holding on with air support from the U.S. Seventh Fleet. The Chinese People's Liberation Army stationed on Ganghwa Island is also advising the military, police, and civilian vigilante groups remaining around Incheon to withdraw to urban Incheon and the western islands.]

[South Korean military casualties are currently rising steeply. As the number of martial-law troops stationed in rear-area cities decreases, civilian speculation is also growing that they are being redeployed to the cordon. The anonymous official declined to answer questions on this matter.]

[Some speculate that this explains the unusually swift resolution to deploy UN forces and the dispatch of a U.S. carrier strike group. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Defense estimates casualties among South Korean troops maintaining the Seoul cordon at more than thirty thousand...]

That was the end of the video on the sorcery phone.

The anonymous message, however, added another warning.

[No signs of fog density recovering. Outdoor activity hopeless. Remain thoroughly concealed.]

A heavy silence descended.

While everyone idly rubbed their chins or closed their eyes, timid Hamza was the first to rise and head toward the window, wanting to look outside where the countless reports of bombing and artillery were coming from.

He lifted the poncho covering the window and gazed beyond it.

High-rises struck by shells toppled as they spewed debris. Houses shed fragments under the vibrations, their walls becoming covered in hairline cracks. Fragments from who knew where struck windows and abandoned cars with a loud metallic clatter.

But it was not those destructive sights and sounds that had drawn Hamza's attention.

I rose awkwardly and approached him from behind. He turned toward me. He was terrified, but still all right. Though shaken, he looked at me with eyes hardened by his single-minded determination to survive, then silently pointed somewhere.

His finger indicated the roof of a low-rise apartment building coated in green urethane. Torn rags fluttered there on a clothesline.

Then, in a fleeting moment when the explosions briefly eased and the din subsided, Hamza spoke quietly.

"It's a southeast wind."

I patted his shoulder to make him step back, then grabbed the ragged edge of the poncho.

The shelling was still far enough away that the glass was intact. But since there was no telling when it might shatter, I bit lightly into my left hand.

It was to enchant it with Stage Two of the art, [Blood of the Left Hand].

I rubbed my bloody left hand against the glass with a squeak, inscribing a word.

[Sturdy].

I didn't know whether it would work properly, but it was better than doing nothing.

After checking the word I had written in blood, I shifted my gaze slightly. Beyond the glass, the things I had been avoiding welcomed me. Far away, beyond the cleared fog, I could see the fragments flung up by explosions and the tremors in fine detail.

There was almost no fog visible. Was visibility about a kilometer?

And amid the sounds of structures crumbling and collapsing, artillery fire, the roar of fighters traveling faster than sound, and bombing, horrible screams rang out.

Even through this chaos, I could distinctly hear the groans of things engulfed in flames, burning to death.

I couldn't see it yet, but I knew. From the places we had passed through, silent death was rolling toward us, and flames that would not readily go out were beginning to burn.

I lowered the poncho to cover the window again and returned to my spot.

Everyone wore a sour expression as they faced this new turn of events. I dropped heavily to the floor with a laugh.

"We don't have any communications equipment, do we?"

April 20, 2028, 11:16 a.m.

Expedition Day Six.

Beneath a clear sky, we wait for death riding up on the southeast wind.

Under the smoke screen of white phosphorus rising solely to kill, we have no choice but to face another hellfire falling to burn away the hell that is a monster's flesh.

If we do nothing but wait, that is.

None of us Supreme Mages said it aloud, but we could more or less guess. To defeat the flood of monsters, an apocalyptic host easily numbering in the millions, the military would unleash every kind of weapon without a moment's hesitation. Perhaps it would even start fingering the nuclear button.

Whatever it thought of the special forces, it would assume we had failed.

We Supreme Mages knew exactly one way to correct the military's misjudgment: relay the information and the truth through communications equipment held by a friendly group we could currently reach in Seoul.

The sorcery phones belonged to the Society of 66. Since they wanted the cordon to collapse, they would notice and interfere if we tried to pass the information on.

That left only one way.

The Supreme Mages looked at one another.

Hamza trembled and started to shake his head, but realizing he could not lie about his own magic, he clenched his lower lip.

Na-in hummed and bobbed his head, apparently delighted about something.

Se-jun, finally seeing a lead, abandoned his usual nonsense and fiddled with his gun sling, his expression serious.

Pastor Park Yo-han put his Bible back into his backpack and let out a deep sigh.

Right now, I feel a thrill before this trial to overcome death and destruction.

With no telling when the fog would return, there was a far better option than waiting for biological or chemical gas, white phosphorus, or incendiary flames to come riding up on the southeast wind.

With communications down, there was one route to survival that would let us contact the military.

Wasn't a friendly group of local survivors waiting for us across the Han River, at Konkuk University?

"Let's wait until tomorrow, then break through."

When there is no fog, when the southeast wind blows.

At that moment the other Seoul mages would never dare imagine.

That is when we cross the Han River.