Chapter 65 - Crossing the Han River on Foot

SQUEAK, SQUEAK.

While I wiped the bolt assembly with an oily cloth, we Supreme Mages enjoyed a solemn, uneasy silence. Some scrubbed powder residue out of their barrels with cleaning rods, while others loaded rounds into magazines one by one. Apparently, Hamza had picked up most of the discarded magazines we'd neglected while tidying up.

Most had been abandoned, plastic and all, but what mattered was that Hamza had recovered at least some of them.

With the tip of his tongue poking out, Hamza painstakingly loaded each round, taking care not to pinch his fingers and repeatedly sighing in relief. Every click as a round settled into place seemed to satisfy him. He was even reciting prayers he didn't usually say.

"In the name of Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful. All praise belongs to Allah, Lord of all worlds..."

Listening closely, I found his pronunciation rather slurred. After that, I couldn't make it out, so I decided to assume he was praying.

CLICK.

While Hamza loaded rounds with a serious expression, praying for once, the rest of the Supreme Mages began talking. Pastor Park Yo-han was the one who raised the topic.

His hand had slipped while cleaning his gun, accidentally dropping the oily rag over his glasses. Irritated with it, he was taking out his glasses case.

"Tomorrow. If there's no fog tomorrow either, we could all be in danger. It seems the devils get stronger or more unpredictable when the fog thins."

The pastor flung the oily rag onto the floor with a smack, then rubbed his hands on his trousers, preparing to take out the lens cloth he kept carefully tucked inside his glasses case.

Lee Se-jun, Shin Na-in, and I answered him as we wiped our bolt assemblies and scrubbed residue from inside the barrels with cleaning rods.

"So?"

"We need to organize what we know and what we've figured out. Like how we reasoned through the Society of 66 and their passwords, and deduced the conflict between them and the government. Leaving everything to the Lord and making no judgments yourself isn't necessarily bad, but it doesn't help you survive. To establish a basis for our decisions, we need to organize the information we've gathered and put it to use."

I could never get used to hearing such rational, reasonable arguments from someone who seemed more of a fucking Bible-thumper than anyone else.

He might look perfectly sane right now, but this was the same pastor who had confidently declared that dinosaurs went extinct because they didn't go to church. Still, regardless of who was saying it, the argument was absolutely sound. I couldn't help nodding.

And so, under the pastor's supervision, we took some time to organize the information each of us had been interested in.

It was a break to maintain our guns, load our remaining rounds into empty magazines, and eat the canned food and hardtack we'd brought, boosting morale while lightening our packs.

We didn't need a radio or records to play upbeat music. Seoul was already dropping a livelier beat than anyone.

BOOM.

The shelling outside still hadn't stopped. Beyond the ponchos covering the windows, shells were falling somewhere only a few kilometers away, their blast pressure shaking the concrete.

All sorts of fighter jets and missiles crossed the sky, trailing thunderous roars as they kindled fires that wouldn't easily go out, burning the monsters pouring forth.

To survive, you at least had to be able to calmly eat while brushing off the dust occasionally showering down from overhead, and blow the dust off your gun.

Surviving in Seoul without any foundation to fall back on was as hard as ever. Nothing had changed except that Seoul's residents had grown more vicious in 2028, and the military was using the city for target practice.

Shin Na-in was the first to speak during our information review.

True to his usual crisp, disciplined manner, he was also the first to skillfully reassemble his gun. Click. After checking even the hinge, he hung his headset around his neck and spoke.

"I've considered ways to advance in the alteration-type holy-war arts, based on testimony and what we've personally experienced."

According to Shin Na-in, the preparations for advancing in alteration-type magic went as follows. Combining his ramblings with my own knowledge and deductions made for a much cleaner summary.

1. You can advance a stage by performing an occult ritual connected to the Society of 66.

However, such rituals required Anderson Mackenford: American tycoon, savior of Korea, and a man who couldn't use magic himself but was so engrossed in mysticism that he was even holding back public support for a nuclear strike.

You needed occult knowledge, infrastructure to procure the necessary offerings, and the financial backing to make it all possible. There were also restrictions such as performing rituals only at specific times to align with celestial bodies. Time, place, and resources were all severely limited.

2. The more monsters you hunt, and the stronger they are, the faster you awaken through magic script.

This was only a hypothesis, but the Supreme Mages had each unlocked another branch in just six days since arriving in Seoul.

Even if we attributed our stage advances to destroying mages' body parts—relics, or fetish objects—there had to be something to it, considering how virtually no mages outside Seoul used multiple branches.

I, Baek Je-min, was cited as evidence.

"Me? Why?"

"Because no one outside Seoul was as proactive about exterminating devils or taking risks as you, Mr. Baek."

"Na-in, shouldn't the artillerymen have learned magic first, then?"

"The holy-war arts are miracles in which cognition and understanding are extremely important. If artillerymen clearly recognized the beings they were killing, their awakening would accelerate. Conversely, if they merely followed orders and fired at coordinates without knowing what they were killing, I suspect that lack of cognition would prevent them from learning the holy-war arts."

Here, Shin Na-in offered his theory: monsters killed by stray bullets didn't count.

As Eye, Stage Three, [Cognitive Dissonance], used by Ski Goggles suggested, cognition and understanding were what mattered to a mage.

It might be different if artillerymen learned ear magic, detected targets at a distance, obtained their coordinates, and shelled them. But if they mindlessly shot things dead before even recognizing them, Shin Na-in thought they'd fail to farm experience points.

In short, fighting at close quarters within a certain distance yielded greater rewards. Assuming, of course, that killing monsters really did speed up leveling.

3. Hunt a more advanced mage of the same branch and destroy their corresponding body part—their fetish object—to advance.

This was knowledge I'd obtained when I killed the Dubai Chewy Witch.

Take this example. Normally, a heart-branch mage couldn't acquire the eye branch by killing an eye mage and destroying their eyes. But a Stage Two heart mage could kill a Stage Three heart mage and level up to Stage Three.

When leveling up, you could also acquire the slain mage's knowledge, but you gained nothing if you weren't of the same branch.

The only exceptions were acquisition through Inverted Alteration-Type Tongue, Stage One, [Predatory Plunder], and an ear mage peeking into the slain mage's memories and knowledge.

Shin Na-in added another theory here.

"We don't know whether Stage Two can defeat and acquire Stage Four. But considering how sharply the power and versatility of the holy-war arts rise with each stage, a Stage Two defeating a Stage Four seems unlikely. Besides, given that a lower-stage mage's magic loses effectiveness according to the gap in advancement, it would barely work at all."

Alteration-type magic was governed strictly by advancement.

The pastor had previously speculated that only doctrinal magic could overcome those differences in effectiveness and work at full strength.

This was when he finally broke his attentive silence.

"Type. Form, quite literally. Through the Seoul mage Kang A-reum, we've learned that magic has four broad forms: sorcery-type, ritual-type, doctrinal, and alteration-type. We may not know their essence, but their means of activation certainly seem different. Alteration-type and doctrinal magic have different rules, and combining them is difficult, too."

"Different rules for each type mean different compatibility?"

At my question, the pastor sighed as he finished cleaning his glasses.

"Alteration-type magic is too heretical. Too mystical. Arrogant. If it really is ultimately seeking the soul through a sixth branch, then it isn't magic that clergy devoted to sound, orthodox doctrine can handle. No, they mustn't handle it. It destroys their faith."

"But Father Jeong Yong-hwan used both."

"You idiot. That's why he got slurped right up! You said you shot him dead while he was gurgling away, didn't you?"

Hmm. For the first time in a while, I recalled the priest's dying cries, calling upon the Lord as an Amalgam dragged him away, caught in its teeth.

According to the pastor, combining doctrinal and alteration-type magic was possible in itself. Possible, but either both would weaken, or doctrinal magic would weaken catastrophically.

Unless circumstances demanded pursuing alteration-type magic despite weakening one's doctrinal magic, it seemed very difficult for clergy or anyone with strong faith to readily go through with it.

I didn't know about sorcery-type magic, but I thought ritual-type magic itself could be combined with doctrinal or alteration-type magic. Ski Goggles had already demonstrated that ritual-type and alteration-type magic were compatible, after all.

That concluded our discussion of alteration-type magic. Even if we wanted to discuss it further, we lacked the clues or knowledge to speculate beyond that.

Instead, we began discussing our most immediate practical problem. This time, Lee Se-jun, cleaning his gun seriously for once, raised the subject.

"The Dubai Chewy Witch... Damn it. What the hell kind of nickname is that? If that department-store Seoul mage really belongs to the Society of 66, military frequencies themselves are unsafe."

He absently rubbed his coarse beard, looking troubled, as though remembering the soldiers we'd cremated.

"She made the walkie-talkie ring at will, too. We have to assume the existing military frequencies are compromised. Even if we acquire a radio or communications device using those frequencies, it'll be difficult. No, for the military's sake, I don't think we should even try."

"Eavesdropping. Dangerous."

CLICK.

Hamza spoke, squinting as he loaded rounds.

"Seoul mages already know outside information. Very likely they can listen in on transmissions through military radios and communications equipment, too. A-and before we left, in the tent, they showed they can harm people if they know their faces and names."

"That Clairvoyant who was supposed to be in Gangnam?"

"Yes."

His eyes remained fixed on the magazine and rounds, and he spoke while concentrating with all his might on not pinching his hand.

"Don't know what Seoul mages plan. We... we'll only have one chance to send information by radio."

"Isn't what we've learned already valuable enough?"

His expression darkened at my question.

"If that isn't enough, they'll break through."

"Where?"

"Everywhere."

"That's your opinion?"

"The angel thought so, too."

Knowing what Hamza's doctrinal magic, [Angel's Intuition], was, none of the Supreme Mages could readily make a decision.

The Society of 66 knew about the outside world through some means, whether their precious sorcery-type magic or something else. And now that we'd confirmed the existence of the Dubai Chewy Witch, who would already have sucked soldiers' and officers' brains right out with Predatory Plunder, some military secrets had likely leaked.

If we attempted contact and passed on information under these circumstances, we might catch the Society of 66 off guard once. But afterward, they would take measures to disable that frequency or the communications themselves. Even a fucking moron like me could follow that chain of cause and effect.

We might have to push all the way through to Line Three, where there would be a Wi-Fi network for drone operations. But that meant breaking through Gangnam, where the most dangerous Seoul mage, Clairvoyant, was based.

Either option was insane.

So, setting aside the fact that the Supreme Mages currently had no military communications equipment, even if we did, we'd only have one chance to send information outside. And Hamza's warning implied that unless we transmitted the most critical information in that one chance, we'd be doomed.

Using the sorcery phone for this was, of course, forbidden.

Even Lee Se-jun, whose brain probably didn't have a single wrinkle, was wary of it.

"The Society of 66 most likely distributes the sorcery phones in the first place. It's practically certain. Maybe they have some way of tracking them to estimate their locations."

"Is that why they could find us so easily?"

That made me hesitate a little, wondering whether I should throw the sorcery phone away. I thought I understood why the Society of 66 distributed them: they supplied information that helped people survive, making them practically essential items.

If, in exchange, the society learned the locations of survivors carrying sorcery phones, its influence among those survivors would be nearly absolute.

The problem was that the information we received was too valuable—enough to make me willing to accept the fatal vulnerability of having our location exposed.

The ordinary smartphones we'd brought were currently switched off and left unused because the base stations had been withdrawn.

Then the pastor put his freshly cleaned glasses back on and spoke.

"What's it called? We live in an age of satellite internet. Why do you think information about this crisis still trickled out when the fog covered everything and there were no base stations to make contact?"

"You mean Starlink."

Shin Na-in's gaze sharpened as he chimed in. The pastor nodded, too.

"I used to do pioneering ministry, remember? In remote mountain areas and isolated places, sometimes the internet still doesn't work properly. I heard there was a service that let you get online anywhere, so I looked into it, but it was rather expensive. Still, among Seoul's ten million residents, surely some bought a setup back before things got truly serious, when the military and police were jointly suppressing unrest and all that?"

"The Society of 66 could have used it to get outside information... Right. Come to think of it, that existed."

Lee Se-jun nodded as though this had never occurred to him.

But Starlink's existence forced Shin Na-in and me to consider a more ominous possibility.

"I understand private individuals can use Starlink. Yet information about the fog and unidentified species still didn't spread outside. It bothers me that there was almost no information from inside Seoul."

"What's certain is that the military is losing the information advantage."

When I added that to Shin Na-in's words, the pastor gave a bitter smile.

"It's obvious. The Society of 66 is the one helping people survive in Seoul right now. Either they have Seoul's survivors firmly under their thumb, or they've secured most of the Starlink equipment."

"Will our contact at Konkuk University, Go Ryeo-ha, help us?"

"At least she was friendly toward our military when we last spoke, so she probably hasn't been recruited by the Society of 66. That one girl, Go Ryeo-ha, at least."

The moment we heard the pastor's words, we Supreme Mages grasped their hidden meaning and slowly finished eating. Forks and spoons repeatedly rattled and scraped against cans.

No group could always agree one hundred percent.

If we were wary of the Society of 66's influence, that gave us another reason to cross the Han River and reach Konkuk University quickly.

* * *

April 21, 2028, 4:13 a.m.

Expedition Day Seven.

The sun hadn't risen yet.

There was no sign of the gaze monster, either. If it had moved, the sorcery phone would have gone wild, so apparently we could feel safe about that for today, at least.

But as shelling and bombing continued steadily through the night, we Supreme Mages rose one by one, wiped our faces with damp cloths, and prepared ourselves.

THUDDUDDUD...

The footsteps were tremendous. They powered across the cracked, filthy asphalt as though sprinting an entire marathon. At the same time, faint voices overlapped beyond the window.

"Daddy, where are you going?" "Our Ye-ryeong's touch feels so good." "Kissy-kiss..."

I looked at our human detector, Shin Na-in.

"Heads."

He spoke with sleepy eyes as he blew into his gas-mask filter to check its condition.

"They've gotten faster. Clearly. The strong ones are twice as fast as in the fog."

None of us bothered arguing with him. Instead, before taking back the ponchos covering the windows, we checked our packs and our guns' chambers, mentally reviewing one another's weapons and magic.

"Islam Boy. How many rounds left?"

"S-seven hundred sixty..."

We'd used more than I'd thought.

I reached for a magazine, then flipped it over and tossed it to the pastor.

SMACK!

He caught it like an expert at catch, turned it this way and that, and gauged its weight in his hand before slipping it straight into his magazine pouch.

Empty food cans and crushed water bottles. Disposable plastic spoons and forks shiny with saliva. Urine stains dirtying the building's walls, and traces of feces covered with soiled cloth.

What might be our final traces in this world were garbage.

I gazed at that trash, then lifted my gas mask, with [Purification] written inside its rubber, and let out a deep breath. Once I put it on, the world was veiled behind slightly scratched lenses.

HOOOOH...

The distinctive sound of gas-mask breathing escaped. As I tightened the straps, strands of hair stuck out.

After putting the mask on properly and finishing my checks with a few forceful breaths, I picked up my gun and turned it over in my hands. Apparently already having no intention of using his K2C1, Lee Se-jun was examining a fucking enormous revolver instead.

When our eyes met through our gas-mask lenses, he put it in his holster.

His rifle had gone to Hamza. I didn't expect Hamza to shoot well, but it would at least help settle his nerves a little.

And so we spent our time preparing in silence, listening until dawn to shelling, bombing, and the groans and screams of monsters that had grown stranger and stronger.

Then a familiar voice sounded in my head.

["Son, what are you doing?"]

It was an auditory hallucination.

Everyone in the world probably remembered their mother's voice at a moment like this.

["What the hell do you mean, archmage, you brat!"]

I also recalled what Dad would have shouted on the other end of the call I'd hung up.

Hallucinations of things I'd never heard, yet felt as though I had.

Even Lee Se-jun, who'd grown up an orphan, was solemnly closing his eyes and turning over his memories, as though hearing similar voices now. The pastor, Hamza, and Shin Na-in, too.

For this moment, everyone stopped moving and fell silent, as though by prior agreement.

BZZZZ.

The sorcery phone vibrated. I lifted the black phone and saw an anonymous message.

[Fog density has not recovered. Outdoor activity hopeless.]

But that message wasn't the only thing I saw.

April 21, 2028, 7:01 a.m.

Expedition Day Seven.

Light began seeping around the edges of the ponchos covering the windows.

Without anyone needing to say a word, we pulled out the bayonets stuck in the window, caught the falling ponchos, and put them on without hesitation.

Beneath the clear, pale sky, we could see thick smoke rising in the distance, faintly burning fires, broken windows, and desolate low-rise buildings and apartment complexes without a soul in them.

And finally, hordes of monsters racing like mad along alleys, roads, and green urethane-coated rooftops, crying out as though in delight.

Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands...

Perhaps the full ten million who'd lived in Seoul were charging toward the city's outskirts, where the shells were falling. Some shapes were familiar; others I'd never seen before.

The things the fog had concealed were moving even more vigorously in the sunlight.

At that moment, I realized with painful clarity that the sun hadn't risen to save humanity. Fog still billowed around Lotte Tower, where the gaze monster was, but the pounding of monsters' feet against buildings was too ominous for that alone to reassure us.

We probably hadn't been discovered because they were busy heading out of Seoul, and above all because we'd ducked out of sight the instant sunlight came in.

Almost flat on our stomachs, we Supreme Mages looked into one another's eyes. Every last one of us had trembling hands, as though terrified.

We weren't possessed of some heroic sense of duty, hiding beneath a concrete roof under those racing hordes of monsters.

Our grips tightened.

Everyone clutched a weapon, whether a gun or a bayonet. Mine was a bayonet.

At that moment, without saying it aloud, we recited the Supreme Mages' motto to ourselves.

"Hun. Gry."

When Cruncher's cry reached us, I pressed myself flat against the floor and recited inwardly.

'We are madness against madness.'

When I heard a fighter jet's roar swallowed by filthy flesh, followed by the sound of it crashing, I closed my eyes and recited.

'Absurdity against absurdity.'

As autocannon fire tore through cursed flesh, and the shelling and bombing intensified again, I opened my eyes and spoke aloud for the first time.

"To stop hell from seeping in, we march into hell."

At that moment, we rose to our feet. With the barricade already cleared away, we kicked at the door, desperately fighting to overcome our fear.

BANG!

The door flew open under the kick, and we immediately formed up. We raced down the dusty stairs lit by seeping sunlight, descending to ground level.

Beyond the glass doors, no longer hidden by fog, brilliant sunshine shone upon us. Instinctively, we raised our hands to block it.

Only after several seconds, once we realized it wasn't the gaze, could we move again.

Lee Se-jun took the rear. After fiddling with the grip of the fucking huge revolver in his holster, he lifted his gas mask and bit into his right hand, creating a blood-covered fist.

Holding Se-jun's K2C1, Hamza awkwardly aimed around us. Inside his gas mask, sweat ran near his prominent eye sockets.

The pastor clasped the cross necklace at his neck and recited a prayer. Then, without hesitation, he shouldered his rifle with much better form than before, tapped Hamza's shoulder, and signaled him to follow.

Shin Na-in put on his headset and began singing a hymn—a wordless tune, hummed under his breath.

Only after checking all of them did I, Baek Je-min, cut my right hand with the bayonet's blade.

SLICE!

I'd cut a little too hard.

Yet I found myself reassured by the sight of [Blood of the Right Hand] coating the blade.

Taking the bayonet in my right hand again, I steeled myself to use my left-hand staff as well.

I refrained from biting my tongue, since I needed it for tongue magic. Now that there was no fog, I had to manage the pain of magic's backlash strategically.

A day without fog.

The hordes of monsters rejoicing in the sunlight hadn't noticed us yet.

But it was only a matter of time.

HOOOOH...

The moment the distinctive sound of gas-mask breathing spread among the Supreme Mages, I stopped hesitating.

"Let's go."

I'd take the very front.