Chapter 73 - The Victory of Baek Je-min the Human

The hideout Go Ryeo-ha led us to wasn't far from the student union. After a short trek through the fog, a building about ten stories tall came into view. As someone who'd never had any reason to set foot in a university, I couldn't help frowning. Did they really need a building like that?

I'd been thinking this since our walk to the student union, but weren't universities pointlessly huge? All you did here was sit at a desk, open a textbook, and listen to a professor. It annoyed me how much space that somehow required.

This wasn't some inferiority complex over having only graduated high school. It was, you know... a reasonable argument from someone outside Seoul that they ought to manage their space better when land prices were already so high. With grounds this big, you'd need a bus just to get around campus.

As I grumbled inwardly, Ryeo-ha, who'd been marching briskly ahead, blinked and turned back with a bright little smile.

"Come to think of it, Mr. Soldiers, this must be your first time at Konkuk University! We're heading to the New Engineering Building!"

"The New Engineering Building?"

"I'm from the Division of Mechanical, Robotics, and Automotive Engineering. Third year!"

She put her hands on her waist and puffed out her chest, her eyes crinkling with pride.

Of course, there was one person who displayed a terrifying inferiority complex whenever she did that. The most vicious, most disastrous troll in the Supreme Mages, currently singled out as the most dangerous variable in Operation Blue Pill.

Lee Se-jun.

"Tch."

"Hmm? You there, Mr. Soldier. Did you have a question?"

"I said 'tch.'"

"Hey, now!"

I hurriedly waved a hand over Se-jun's gas mask and whispered, "Se-jun. Cut the bullshit and play along."

"You're taking that crazy bitch's side because she's pretty too, Je-min?"

"You—you absolute twisted little shit."

I generally avoided fistfights for fear I'd be the one getting beaten up, but I wanted to flick Se-jun in the forehead so fucking hard.

Luckily, before Ryeo-ha could take too much interest, the pastor's fussing saved us.

"Goodness. Our Ryeo-ha was a good student too! So where have you been staying here?"

"Oh, Pastor. I've moved everything I could—all the equipment and facilities—into the basement here. You said you needed military radio communications, right? There are radios the soldiers who joined us brought along, so you should be able to receive transmissions on those."

"You've done so well. So very well."

While the pastor grinned and showered Ryeo-ha with praise, we seized our chance. The other Supreme Mages dealing with the ticking time bomb under Operation Blue Pill—Na-in, Hamza, and I—immediately gathered to berate Se-jun.

"Se-jun, enough fucking around. She's been nice about being crazy. Let's be nice to her!"

"Even I haven't pointed a gun at you, despite hearing your thoughts twenty-four hours a day. Why can't you endure this?"

"The way you're treating Ryeo-ha is disgusting. Like the jealousy of a first wife whose husband has taken a concubine, or cats fighting over their owner's affection. That, that thing where cats fight... a catfight."

At that moment, unable to stomach that disgusting comparison, I flicked Hamza hard in the forehead.

SMACK!

"Ow! Je-min, why did you suddenly...?"

"You—you motherfucker. If you're going to make shitty comparisons like that, just shut up."

The very idea of a showdown between Go Ryeo-ha, who'd gone insane after losing every survivor, and Lee Se-jun, a hairy twenty-four-year-old former staff sergeant whose dream was to become a gender-swapped pretty girl, already made me want to puke. And he had to take it further with what? A catfight?

We were already suffering from the flaws in Hamza's doctrinal magic. After a comparison that horrible, my fist couldn't forgive him.

Na-in apparently felt the same way. His face twisted into a deep grimace as he gave Hamza a terrifying glare.

"If Je-min hadn't hit you, my rifle butt would have smashed you in the head."

"Thank you for hitting me with your hand, Je-min."

Se-jun, however, launched into an impassioned speech, as though he were the one being wronged.

"You've all been bewitched by her looks. We're short on drinking water, and maintaining hygiene is difficult to begin with. But look at her. How do you think she stays that beautiful without makeup? She's obviously maximizing the impact of her first impression to induce soldiers carrying firearms, or other threatening men, to act friendly without even realizing it. This isn't paranoia. Keeping your guard up and your distance from a woman like that is only natural!"

He was absolutely right. The pastor was the strange one, grinning at a woman who was obviously out of her mind, while Se-jun was making a rational, reasonable argument for remaining cautious. If not for the penalty of my Stage One ear magic—if I hadn't known his motive for spouting all that—I would simply have marveled at this unexpected side of him.

While the pastor enjoyed the unfair advantages of [Soteriological Conviction], I emphasized the importance of Operation Blue Pill once again.

"Se-jun. You're not wrong."

"Je-min...! You understand!"

"But we wouldn't fight her even if we were in perfect condition. First, we're low on ammunition. Second, we still don't know what magic she has. Third, she's the only mage we've met who's actually had contact with the Society of 66. Fourth, she's the reason the military sent us here."

I held up four fingers in front of his gas-mask lenses, telling him to face reality.

"Say we kill her here and somehow miraculously get out. The military asks whether we met Go Ryeo-ha. We tell them we killed her because she'd gone crazy. How do you think they'll react? Huh?"

"Wouldn't they just think she'd gone crazy?"

"No. We were supposed to work with the military, but we disappear for over a week, then turn up having killed Go Ryeo-ha—practically the only person who responded helpfully and amicably to their radio calls—and escaped. They'll suspect we've defected to the Society of 66 or committed some equivalent betrayal. If they've got functioning fucking brains!"

Even a dumbass like me could reach that conclusion in an instant, yet he was pulling all this shit without seeing it. The frustration was driving me insane. No, he definitely knew. He was blinding himself to it because he simply didn't like her. I decided to blame his narrow-mindedness rather than insult his intelligence.

"Se-jun. Huh? That's life. Let's just live, okay? Some people struggle through life, and some get everything handed to them."

"Hah... Je-min... It's so unfair..."

"It's unfair for me too, so let's both put up with it."

The sheer injustice of being stuck persuading Se-jun brought a few tears to my eyes.

That little disturbance outside the New Engineering Building rapidly drained my mental energy, but Se-jun finally conceded, making Operation Blue Pill exponentially more secure. As he nodded dejectedly, Ryeo-ha looked our way and gave us a gentle wave.

"Gentlemen! Let's go inside now!"

"Yes, coming."

We formed up again and followed her down the emergency stairs into the basement. That was when the pastor, who'd been keeping her occupied, slowed to walk with us.

"Hey. Baek Je-min, Shin Na-in, Lee Se-jun, and Islam Boy. You're young men seeing a woman for the first time in a week. Why are you all acting like eunuchs? What are you whispering about?"

His eyebrows twisted naturally, while his innocent eyes seemed to know nothing. Slight wrinkles around his eyes aside, and despite my prejudice that he was a narrow-minded religious fanatic, he'd shown a surprising amount of intelligence. What if he'd already guessed Ryeo-ha's strange mental state? Hoping to share information calmly, I asked just in case.

"Are you method acting, by any chance?"

"Acting? What acting? Did you find something strange here?"

"No, nothing."

This god-bothering bastard was just riding the coattails of his luck magic, [Soteriological Conviction]. I looked at Na-in just in case, and the telepathic reply was something else.

'He genuinely has no idea.'

Not a clue?

'Yes. Not a clue. To him, Ryeo-ha is simply a bright young student bravely protecting people.'

That might have been true about two months ago. What a shame. If he'd come here two months earlier, he could have talked to that Go Ryeo-ha.

Still, her underground hideout looked cleaner than I'd expected. After leading us downstairs, she pointed to a basement full of all manner of equipment and machinery, her eyes crinkling in a smile.

"Ta-da! This is where I stay."

"Ryeo-ha, what was this place originally? There's so much here. I'm not very good with technical things. Tell me about it."

"A laboratory. There was so much equipment and machinery that was difficult to move, so I ended up staying here."

The pastor seemed so fond of Ryeo-ha, who was like a daughter to him, that he clung to her like a doting fool. She appeared delighted by his attention, smiling brightly and chattering about every little detail. Thanks to that, the rest of us Supreme Mages could freely inspect the interior.

First, I looked for the lighting. One LED light, set very dim. With electricity so precious, that was the natural choice for conserving its battery.

Around it were a drill press like the ones I'd seen in factories, a welding machine, and toolboxes on the floor, all giving off a strong metallic smell. Some workbenches were being used to hold household items or hang wet laundry. With no power to run the equipment properly, I suspected it had essentially been abandoned.

In one corner lay a makeshift mattress of haphazardly bundled cloth and curtains, with spare masks strewn in front of a cracked mirror. On the workbench in the farthest corner, crushed water bottles, empty cans, and torn military ration wrappers had been discarded carelessly. Tied plastic bags were stacked neatly nearby.

Fortunately, the lack of any trace of feces in the lab made it clear she'd paid proper attention to hygiene. Crazy as she was, she at least seemed to have long-term survival as her goal and was actively working toward it.

What interested me most, however, was a workbench that looked distinctly out of step with modern science. Unlike the others, which were either illuminated by artificial light or abandoned in shadow, it had a candle burning dimly at its edge, secured with melted wax. On closer inspection, half an aluminum can served as its holder. Ryeo-ha seemed much more meticulous and cautious than I'd expected.

Following the candlelight with my gaze, I saw several objects: a plastic bag containing a tiny amount of yellowish powder, a glass mortar stained dark red inside, scissors and small scraps of leather, and untidily placed spools of thread in five colors—blue, red, yellow, white, and black. They were so out of place that I wondered what they were doing in an engineering laboratory.

Then I noticed something covered with thick cloth beyond the workbench holding those odd objects and the candle. My movement made the flame flicker, throwing the shadows sharply aside and revealing it. I'd only glimpsed its outline when Se-jun spoke with a rush of breath through his gas mask.

"It's a 999K. A radio."

"Soldiers made it all the way here?"

"Yes, it looks that way."

As he spoke, he raised his index finger toward a spot oddly obscured by the candle's shadows. Annoyingly, it was thanks to Se-jun, who turned vicious at the sight of a beautiful woman, that we realized what we'd missed. Beyond the lab's workbenches and scattered equipment, combat uniforms had been neatly arranged in a blind spot we'd have struggled to find without switching on proper lights and searching every inch. The absence of any bodies concerned me, though.

"Na-in. Think you can talk through those uniforms with your Ear, Stage Three?"

"That would be difficult. They're not corpses."

I, Archmage Baek Je-min, quickly put my mind to work. Hostility toward soldiers was the default attitude among people in Seoul. Yet Ryeo-ha had obtained a military radio somewhere and stored it separately in this underground lab, with the soldiers' combat uniforms neatly set to one side.

If she'd intended to loot them, there was no reason to covet the uniforms of soldiers who'd lost control inside Seoul, however short she was on clothes. Civilian hostility toward the military was no joke. Wearing clothes that would get you killed on sight was insane.

That raised an odd point. Hadn't the military outside the blockade judged Ryeo-ha the person most likely to be friendly toward them? She really was clearly different from Dubai Chewy Witch or Ski Goggles, who'd shouted for us to die the moment they saw our uniforms. Even insane, she didn't immediately attack soldiers with lethal force.

My thoughts increasingly turned toward the possibility that she'd cooperated with the military in a limited capacity. With surviving soldiers inside Seoul, that is. Even so, if she'd been the group's de facto leader, she couldn't have ignored the objections of its civilian survivors. Given her repeated remarks about our ponchos and combat uniforms, perhaps she'd witnessed a similar situation while the survivors were alive.

"Tsk."

Once my thoughts reached that point, regret washed over me. Recalling the bodies leaning against the walls in the student union's basement cafeteria, shriveled like mummies, I couldn't help clicking my tongue inwardly. To know for certain, we'd have to find clues in that cafeteria-turned-tomb. I felt truly sorry for the dead, but I was beginning to see a need to disturb their eternal rest.

If there had been a separate group of surviving soldiers on the Konkuk University campus, the quality and quantity of information we could obtain would change. The critical-threshold breach. In other words, those soldiers' bodies were clues that could testify to what had happened before January 6, and what monsters and threats had appeared on January 6 itself, the day the military units stationed in Seoul were being annihilated.

I'd only been using it in combat, but with support from Tongue, Stage One, I too could modify Eye, Stage One to use past sight. If I handled past sight here while Na-in spoke to the bodies, we could establish the facts.

There were exactly two problems. First, looking months into the past would mean tremendous magical backlash. To reduce that backlash and get the greatest results from the fewest attempts, we'd have to pinpoint more precisely when the survivors had all died.

Second, we'd be touching Ryeo-ha's red pill.

"Absolutely not."

"I know."

Even after Na-in's firm reply, I couldn't help clicking my tongue in disappointment. For now, a guess at how she'd obtained her combat boots and acquired the military radio was enough. I took the Supreme Mages with me and resumed Operation Blue Pill.

Hamza looked uncomfortable, Se-jun grumbled about how unfair the world was, and Na-in kept heaving sighs. Not remotely reassuring. Trusting these companions to handle things would be madness. I'd have to keep my wits firmly about me to survive. With that resolve, all of us Supreme Mages joined the pastor and Ryeo-ha.

"Ryeo-ha, let's start making productive use of our time."

"Ahaha. Of course! But wouldn't it be better to take off your gas masks? We ought to see each other's faces while we talk."

"Of course, of course! I'd forgotten."

Before I could answer, the pastor was the first to remove his gas mask.

Keeping mine on in this atmosphere could make things turn awkward, so I took it off without hesitation too. Despite my mixed feelings, the pastor was all smiles, even clapping his hands. What was he so happy about?

"What do you think? This is Baek Je-min, who was a candidate for our church's youth-group leader. Give him a haircut, put some toner and lotion on him, have him open his eyes wide and hold his face at a flattering forty-five-degree angle, then make him keep his lips firmly shut so he doesn't spout nonsense and stand there blankly—he's a fairly good-looking lad."

"Pastor, that's an awful lot of steps for saying I'm handsome."

"Ahaha..."

Seeing Ryeo-ha laugh awkwardly made me sigh. Just as expected. My inner self was more substantial than my looks, so of course she'd react that way when he told me to strip away my inner charm. Anyway, I ignored his nonsense and got down to business.

"Ryeo-ha. We're Aphorism, a group of civilian Operators consisting of two doctrinal types and three alteration types."

"Huh? What's gotten into you? You're not calling us the Supreme Mages..."

"We're Aphorism."

Aphorism handled the shitty jobs. The Supreme Mages enjoyed only the fucking awesome ones. I'd established that rule for myself.

"We were deeply impressed by the magic you demonstrated. We'd like to begin by sharing our respective levels of attainment and knowledge. Would that be all right with you?"

"Huh? Aren't people usually curious about the Society of 66? The soldiers were."

"We're civilians, so that's a lower priority for us. Right now, survival matters most."

"That's true. Hmm... But people inside Seoul don't usually go around telling others their levels, you know? Even when they do, they usually lie, or keep their mouths firmly shut unless they really trust the other person. I suppose you didn't know, since you're from outside!"

"Is there a reason for..."

There was. A whole fucking lot of them. Destroying the remains of a mage at a higher level than you made you level up. Anyone moral enough to refuse when their immediate survival was at stake would have died long ago. Understanding at once, I nodded quietly.

"All right. Shall I go first, then?"

"No. I really like you soldiers. Hehe."

"Oh! Did you hear that? She likes us! Ha! Our Aphorism might finally get a woman among us!"

Na-in, Se-jun, Hamza, and I must all have clenched our teeth at once. Pastor, that's not a woman to brighten up the group. That's a bright red bomb...

But as the person tasked with spraying that bomb blue, as the leader of Operation Blue Pill, I forced down what I wanted to shout. Sometimes truth was more beautiful and valuable when locked away in ignorance.

"I'll go first. I, Go Ryeo-ha, have Upright Alteration-Type Hand Branch, Stage Four, and Upright Alteration-Type Heart Branch, Stage Two. According to the Society of 66, I also have spirit sight, a form of doctrinal magic shamans possess, and I can use sorcery-type magic taught to me by the Society."

"What?"

When I asked again, wondering whether I'd misheard, she put a hand proudly against her chest and cleared her throat.

"Heheh. Of course, my doctrinal spirit sight weakened a lot when I learned alteration-type magic, but even if I can't tell what kind of monster something is, I can still tell whether it's a monster. Besides, when I use spirit sight, the monsters target me first, which makes protecting people easier. Oh, you must have been curious about these gloves too!"

"Yes. We were."

"These are called Fire Marquis Hands. They're gloves that borrow fire energy and metal energy from the Way of the Five Elements, along with the power of the True Lord of Fire Virtue, to launch beads or stones that have been rounded smooth. When guns and ammunition are scarce, they let you make ranged attacks through mudras, albeit with limitations. Naturally, they consume cinnabar and my blood..."

GRRRIND!

Teeth ground audibly. Operation Blue Pill had reached its most dangerous moment. That was when Se-jun placed a hand on my shoulder and whispered urgently.

"Je-min, calm down. You said some people struggle through life and some get everything handed to them."

"But... fuck... how..."

I could only glare with bloodshot eyes at Ryeo-ha as she chattered away, eyes gently closed in self-satisfaction. What? She carried the doctrinal magic [Spirit Sight] because she'd inherited spirit power from a shaman's bloodline? And spirit sight wasn't enough—she also had Upright Alteration-Type Hand Branch, Stage Four, Heart Branch, Stage Two, and sorcery-type magic? She used spirit sight to draw monster aggro and hunt them?

This... this...

Born with a magic spoon in her mouth!

"Urgh, ugh..."

"Je-min!"

Feeling a dizzying tightness in the back of my neck, I suddenly began stumbling backward. Dizziness washed over me.

Was this how the cultivators of the lower realm felt as they looked up at immortals born with lofty attainments simply because they'd been born in the upper realm? It was so fucking unfair. So fucking unfair!

Even I, who'd endured that little shit Se-jun's vicious behavior and blather about becoming a gender-swapped pretty girl, could only cough blood in the face of this absolute disparity.

A moment of utter crisis. Had the rational mind of Archmage Baek Je-min not whispered to me then, I would have exploded with jealousy.

'Je-min. Get a grip. Only third-rate losers let inferiority consume them with jealousy. You've just gained an incredibly precious opportunity. A chance to learn about Hand, Stage Four—that level of attainment.'

'Sorcery-type magic. A truth you'd never have reached as a high-school-graduate loser living outside. Are you going to give up your chance to reach this truth, this almighty power, over mere jealousy? Is that all you amount to?'

'Baek Je-min. Was your dream of becoming an archmage something that couldn't even overcome a little jealousy?!'

CRUNCH!

Biting my lower lip, I overcame my own ugliness. Baek Je-min the human had now conquered jealousy, the mightiest of inner demons, and stood before Go Ryeo-ha.

"Master!"

"By combining thread in the five cardinal colors with cinnabar... Huh?"

"I'll take you as my master!"

I knelt and bowed low, ready to offer the ritual of nine bows. Only an amateur lamented someone else's magical silver spoon. I, Baek Je-min, was now prepared to bow my head to a woman far younger than me.

"Please... please teach me magic!!!"

If this too was suffering for the sake of magic, I would endure it. My shame, my dignity, my social standing... If I could reach magic before a nuclear fireball erased the path to it, I would gladly cast them all aside!