Chapter 75 - The Two Are Troublemakers, but Cautious

We Supreme Mages worked to reestablish radio contact, with the ticking time bomb that was Go Ryeo-ha in tow.

Of course, it wasn't as though we could just flick the radio on and start talking.

Nor should we.

The Society of 66 had repeatedly demonstrated that it could eavesdrop even on military radio transmissions. Even a dumbass like me could tell that letting them listen to our conversations just because they already knew our location would be fucking stupid.

So I proposed splitting up, choosing people who could minimize the risk of the Society listening in, operate a military radio, and boost our luck.

"Ryeo-ha, Se-jun, Hamza, and Pastor, you stay here and work on restoring contact. Shin Na-in and I will go have a chat in the student union's basement cafeteria."

"What? Is that really necessary? I'm worried that meeting them in uniform will only upset them..."

It wasn't one of the Supreme Mages who immediately reacted. It was Go Ryeo-ha.

She looked around at us with the cowed eyes of a puppy caught in the rain, plainly worried. At first glance, she seemed worried about us, but that wasn't it.

Those eyes were afraid that her thin veil of madness might lift, forcing her to face the truth again.

And naturally, if Ryeo-ha swallowed the red pill, her fragile mind would be torn to shreds.

Once the reason she was barely preserving with that shallow madness collapsed, I doubted she would even be able to tell friend from foe.

We Supreme Mages could beat her, sure, but even if we won, it would cost us far too much.

Picking a fight without thinking and burning through all 300 rounds we had left, when we didn't even know how we were getting out, was something only the biggest of fucking morons would do. Rather than spend 300 bullets bringing Ryeo-ha back to her senses, I decided to keep feeding her the blue pill.

Some might think helping her regain her sanity mattered.

But my reason—the reason of archmage Baek Je-min—scoffed at such romantic notions.

Respectable senior mage and wonderfully generous teacher though she was, Go Ryeo-ha's precious sanity wasn't worth more than the safety of the Supreme Mages and 300 rounds of ammunition.

Hiding those thoughts, I put my gas mask back on and said,

"Still, we can't leave without even saying hello. I'm not going alone. Na-in is coming with me."

"I really should come too. They're very rough people. I'm worried."

"You need to stay here in case the radio breaks down, Ryeo-ha. None of us knows how to fix machinery."

"But!"

Her cry was almost a scream.

Her eyes had grown slightly bloodshot.

Only after all the Supreme Mages turned to look at her did she seem to realize that she'd behaved strangely. She faltered and backed away.

Dejected, she clasped her hands in front of her lower belly, fidgeting with her fingers as she bowed her head.

"... Can't you just stay here with me?"

Naturally, the pastor was the one who made a fuss over that.

He took a handkerchief from inside his clothes, lifted his glasses, and dabbed at the corners of his eyes.

Wondering what the hell he was doing, I realized he was wiping away tears that had already escaped.

Unable to hide his grief, he even began to sob silently.

"How much must such a young thing have suffered... This is all because we adults failed you. Oh dear. I'm a sinner before you too, Ryeo-ha. A sinner."

"Pastor. Would you say the same thing if it were Se-jun?"

"Baek Je-min. At least make a sensible comparison. Is Se-jun the same as Ryeo-ha? Young men are supposed to seek out hardship even if they have to pay for it!"

At that instant, Lee Se-jun's half-lidded gaze shifted from Ryeo-ha and bored straight into the back of the pastor's head.

It blazed with vengeance itself, but I didn't bother mentioning it.

That was when Shin Na-in approached and tapped my shoulder.

When I turned around, he tapped his headset with an index finger and tilted his head. A signal. I focused my mind to communicate with him telepathically.

'Why do you need to go to the student union basement yourself?'

Shin Na-in. When you spoke with the dead, you specifically mentioned 250 people.

But when Ryeo-ha first took us down there, no matter how hard I looked, I only saw a few dozen corpses. The rest might have been buried somewhere, but judging from her condition, she wouldn't have admitted they were dead.

Would she secretly bury the bodies somewhere in that state?

Ryeo-ha, who was putting fresh packs of instant rice in front of the corpses?

Even if she was offering the rice as food for the dead, the most fundamental question remains.

There are clearly too few bodies for 250 people.

I need to count them precisely and use my past sight to check how they were wiped out.

I'm taking you along specifically so you can use Ear, Stage Three to narrow down exactly when it happened.

'That makes sense. We were told it was two months ago, but too many details were suspicious. I was actually planning to ask for your help, since my past sight only reaches a few hours back, or a day at most even if I accept the backlash. Besides, being dead doesn't necessarily mean they'll tell the truth.'

You'd already considered that and were on your guard?

Inwardly, I marveled at his thoroughness.

Why hadn't someone who seemed so intellectual awakened hand magic?

The answer came immediately.

'Human memory and perception are easily distorted. That is why we must trust solely in the Lord God, rather than our paltry, insignificant experiences and senses. The Lord alone is the one true constant humanity can rely upon in this vain and wicked world, the immortal, everlasting, sole truth.'

Fuuucking hell.

I immediately stopped concentrating and cut off the telepathy.

Meanwhile, the pastor's fussing had done a great deal to soothe Ryeo-ha's instability.

"Baek Je-min, you see? I told you he's a candidate to lead our church's youth group. He isn't going just to say hello. At a time like this, he's going to urge them all the more strongly to believe in the Lord. The Lord's missionaries must spread the gospel even when others curse and beat them."

"Pastor... But..."

"Holding him back like this only makes things harder for Je-min, Ryeo-ha. Hmm? Of course we know how kindhearted you are. Oh, how can anyone have such a lovely heart!"

"Tch."

"S-Se-jun. Please stop. It's ugly to watch..."

Se-jun stood with his arms folded, glaring at the pastor and clicking his tongue, while Hamza tried to stop him. The sight made my head throb. I decided to get out of this insufferable place as quickly as possible.

"Anyway, we'll be back."

"I'll go help Je-min."

"Yes, you two go on. I'll take veeery good care of Ryeo-ha!"

And so Na-in and I left the laboratory, entrusting Operation Blue Pill to the shamelessly doting pastor.

As we climbed the stairs again, we spoke aloud this time.

"Let's go, Shin Na-in. You bastard who's too stupid to get hand magic—even Se-jun has it."

Having read my mind, Na-in calmly laid out his theory.

For all that he was a complete lunatic, one convenient thing about him was that he picked up information without my having to waste my breath explaining. Distasteful as that was, his sheer usefulness made it all the more irritating.

"Je-min. The Society of 66 won't have told Ryeo-ha everything. They may even have deliberately mixed in false information to prepare for a leak like this. Most of it is probably true, but the claim that aptitude for the hand branch depends on a practitioner's intellectual ability is likely false. Innate ability may be a requirement, but it won't be the whole story. Magic that symbolizes human intellect cannot possibly depend on innate ability alone."

"Then what?"

"Human intellect includes education. And an inquiring mind. I suspect the hand branch of the holy-war arts depends heavily on a practitioner's individual intellectual curiosity, in addition to humanity's innate intellectual ability. Having already realized the truth that is the Lord, I take no interest in wicked reasoning, which I suspect is why I haven't awakened the hand branch of the holy-war arts. There is decisive evidence supporting this."

I see... That was a fairly plausible, reasonable theory.

And since he claimed to have decisive evidence, I couldn't help perking up my ears.

As though reading my interest, Na-in spoke with a resolute look behind his gas mask lenses.

"It is impossible for my intellectual ability to be inferior to Se-jun's."

"Sure."

A holder of Hand, Stage Two.

From my perspective, with my superior intellect certified by magic itself, this was a contest between two equally unimpressive contenders.

* * *

The first basement level of the student union was as bleak as ever.

I lifted my poncho and first switched on the L-shaped flashlight clipped into my chest pocket.

CLICK.

After the mechanical click, the stark scene greeted us.

Tables abandoned in a corner. Thick dust on the floor, with footprints as distinct as tracks through snow. I could also clearly see packs of instant rice that hadn't gone sour, apparently replaced during Ryeo-ha's occasional visits, and flies swarming 100-gram convenience-store bags of kimchi.

Na-in and I walked among the bodies.

The other Supreme Mages had just been through, leaving a jumble of tracks, but Ryeo-ha was a woman, so her feet would presumably be smaller than the men's. With that in mind, I examined the dusty cafeteria floor and spotted some slightly smaller footprints.

Around 250 to 260 millimeters.

An odd size for a woman's footprints, but we had to account for the fact that the combat boots were originally military issue. They were small compared with the average adult man dragged into military service.

Reading my thoughts and recognizing Ryeo-ha's tracks, Na-in immediately got to work.

Eye, Stage One's past sight, which could only look a few hours back, might seem useless, but any magic was only as good as the practitioner using it.

A little later, Na-in rubbed his eyes and pointed out the footprints one by one, identifying them more accurately.

"These are Ryeo-ha's footprints, not ours."

"Okay."

Once that initial identification was done, we followed only Ryeo-ha's tracks.

Now that we knew which were hers, the prominent difference between her footprints and ours became clear.

The amount of dust that had settled over them was different.

With little outside air entering the basement, a day's worth of dust didn't make a dramatic difference, but it was noticeable enough if you looked closely.

Identifying her tracks gave us some idea of the actual number of corpses.

Ryeo-ha had only attended to the bodies slumped against the cafeteria walls. She hadn't approached what must have been the kitchen. At the very least, these visible bodies had to be all the so-called survivors she recognized.

You might ask what the big deal was, but you'd be dead wrong.

For a fucking dim-witted, unqualified, high-school-graduate loser of an unemployed bum to survive in a brutally competitive society, he had to be able to read his boss and the people around him from tiny, subtle clues like these.

The reason we'd identified and followed Ryeo-ha's tracks was to establish the size of the survivor group she recognized.

"Ryeo-ha's madness and the time the thoughts left in these corpses believe it is—we can't guarantee either matches when everyone actually died."

"Of course."

After determining precisely how far her tracks extended and where she had moved, Na-in and I counted the corpses she was tending.

The result was fifty-eight.

To be sure, we'd shone the light over each body's skeletal frame, making certain to distinguish the children's bodies too.

It fell absurdly short of the 250 people Na-in had learned about by speaking with the dead.

We decided to go further.

Disgusting and nauseating though it was, we decided to search each corpse for a phone. Most would have dead batteries, but even one working phone could change things.

In modern twenty-first-century society, a phone was practically a person's identity. If we could determine when the phones had shut off, it would be easier to infer when everyone had died.

This was where Na-in's Ear, Stage Three came into its own.

"I'll ask when they last touched their phones. But their memories of dying are so strong that getting useful testimony will be difficult."

"Ask all fifty-eight. If all 250 died at the same time, their answers will definitely cluster around a particular period."

While Na-in used Ear, Stage Three to speak with them one by one, I handled the phone search.

With the tip of my bayonet, I lifted or cut away clothing stuck fast to rotting flesh. Desecrating corpses or whatever the fuck you wanted to call it, uncovering the truth of what had happened at Konkuk University mattered more.

I found about fourteen phones in decent condition and tried switching them on just in case, but most had dead batteries.

Still hoping, I set them aside and was checking for sorcery phones when Na-in finished his questioning with Ear, Stage Three. He let out a breath through his gas mask and spoke.

"I found two soldiers. They only admitted it when I asked leading questions."

"Anything noteworthy?"

"They remembered the date they joined. January 26."

About twenty days after the January 6 critical-threshold breach had left Seoul and northern Gyeonggi effectively abandoned.

I was damn curious how they'd survived, but there were more important things to address, so I put that off. Everyone had died sometime after January 26, at the earliest. What bothered me was that they hadn't found the soldiers' bodies when the pastor, with his [Soteriological Conviction], was there.

They hadn't found these bodies with the pastor and his unfairly favorable magic along, but Na-in and I had found them on our own.

This had to be a discovery or clue that endangered the Supreme Mages or worked against our survival.

Na-in apparently felt it too, because he seemed to have stopped digging any further.

"There probably weren't 250 from the start. We should treat that as their peak number."

"Conversely, they may have started with 250 and dwindled day by day."

That could mean Ryeo-ha had gradually lost her mind until only fifty-eight remained, or that everyone except those fifty-eight had vanished.

What was certain was that it would have taken time. Na-in and I both suspected there had been a substantial buildup after the soldiers arrived on January 26 before tensions boiled over.

Even if we accepted that all 250 had committed mass suicide because, well... after what the military had done, it was conceivable, that much hatred would still have needed time to erupt.

Before hostility toward the surviving soldiers had taken hold among the group, there was no way all 250 would accept the extreme conclusion that everyone should die together because they couldn't tell who the soldiers were. Even granting that the small children effectively had no say, killing themselves together the moment the soldiers joined made no sense.

Regardless of how contrived or justified the mass suicide was, the key was how many days to allow for that hatred to build.

"Shin Na-in. They couldn't have given 250 people three meals a day, could they?"

"One meal a day would have been realistic. Unless they increased the rations to boost morale."

"And aside from Seoul being thick with fog, being underground would have made it difficult to keep track of time outside."

"They also had to conserve electricity. If we assume the generator only ran at limited times, they might have counted each cycle of starting it, charging their devices, and shutting it down as one day."

"Check."

"Yes."

It was truly aggravating and unpleasant, but hardly any Supreme Mage was as in sync with my thinking as Shin Na-in. Maybe Hamza came close?

Understanding what we needed to learn, Na-in resumed his tedious but essential questioning with Ear, Stage Three. Meanwhile, I idly fiddled with my bayonet and studied the piles of bodies.

At last, after persistent questioning, we began to narrow down precisely when everyone had died.

"I believe they ate at least ten meals after the soldiers joined, fifteen at most. I estimate the generator was started and shut down around eight to eleven times."

"Even assuming Ryeo-ha temporarily increased the rations to ease the survivors' opposition, accounting for the generator cycles gives us at least six days. Anything more would waste too many resources."

"Ryeo-ha herself said the Society stopped supplying them two months ago. Since today is April 22, two months ago would be around February. Given our estimate of at least six days after the surviving soldiers joined on January 26, that puts the deaths in early February."

"And even six days is pushing the lower limit. Allowing more room, it'd be around ten."

Na-in and I put our heads together and estimated when everyone had died.

Some six to ten days after January 26, 2028.

I decided to pick February 5, 2028.

"Do you have a basis for that, Je-min?"

"Just a guess."

I rolled my tongue around my mouth.

I was using Tongue, Stage One to adjust the performance of Eye, Stage One.

The past. February 5, 2028. Me.

Then, in place of my hazy left eye, my right eye showed me the past.

Apparently, my left eye couldn't see it because the side effects of Eye, Stage Three still hadn't worn off. I immediately closed it to avoid dizziness and concentrated on my past sight.

Everything around me was rewinding, like a video playing backward.

Two months.

As I rewound that span of time, an awful sensation rose inside me, as though eyelids were forming in every fold of my brain, their lashes scraping between the soft brain cells. A revolting urge surged through me to rip my skull open right then and pluck out every last hair caught between those folds.

But at the end of that discomfort, my right eye witnessed what had happened on February 5, 2028.

Not quite 250 people, but far more than fifty-eight, were gathered under dim lights, arguing fiercely. The fifty-eight who lay dead against the walls were alive and breathing in my past sight, their faces showing all manner of expressions.

Since this was mere past sight, normally I shouldn't have been able to hear their voices.

But as I watched their mouths move, my Ear, Stage One resonated, translating the thoughts in their minds into something like subtitles and cramming the conversation into my head.

It was a strange experience, understanding what they were saying without hearing a sound.

Like watching a silent film without even sound effects, while its script appeared written inside my head.

Children clung to their parents' trouser legs, looking up anxiously. The first to speak were people relying on thick padded jackets for warmth, voicing their worries with gaunt cheeks.

["Learn magic? You want us to go out into the fog? Are you insane?"]

The ones angered by that reaction were armed to some degree.

They had patched the tears in their padded jackets with layers of tape, carrying bloodstained crowbars or backpacks on their backs.

Occasionally, I saw something like a rigid splint taped to a left arm. Judging by the word [Durability] written on it, it was meant to function as a shield rather than simply treat an injury.

Their faces concealed as much as possible behind sunglasses or turtlenecks pulled over their mouths, the armed people snapped back.

["The Society of 66 is telling you. Learn magic. Learn it even if it kills you!"]

["What about the children? More importantly, do you even realize there are monsters in that fog? How is that any different from telling us to die!"]

["What, you think we can't die? How long do we have to put up with people who can't even use magic sitting somewhere safe and eating our food?"]

["It's not something you can learn just because you want to. You saw the children throwing up and falling apart. Most of these people haven't eaten all day. If they throw up, they'll die of exhaustion. People will die!"]

The armed people answered those desperate cries coldly.

["If you can't learn it, you'll become monsters anyway, you fuckers."]

["R-Ryeo-ha. Do you think Ryeo-ha would stand for this?"]

["Go Ryeo-ha this, Go Ryeo-ha that... You know she fucking took soldiers in. Increasing the rations so we won't fight the soldiers—is that sane? What about telling us not to make anyone take off their hats so we can't identify the soldiers, all to keep us from fighting those precious soldiers? Is her head full of flowers?"]

["We won't stand a chance of surviving if we fight! We'll... we'll try too. Okay? Please..."]

["Hey. You soldier bastards, get out here. If you've got a conscience, show yourselves! You motherfuckers!"]

["They were only following orders. They're just kids. They're trapped here with us too!"]

["We have an ear mage. We know everything, you fucking soldier scum. We can put up with people in the same boat as us. But why the fuck should we keep you alive too? Why should we accept the bastards who shot our families and friends dead living and breathing in here? Stop hiding behind Go Ryeo-ha and come out and tell us yourselves!"]

I hadn't anticipated that, but at the same time, it was only to be expected.

This group had numbered 250. Ryeo-ha might have been its most powerful mage, but she couldn't have been its only one. And the other mages were fiercely opposed to taking in surviving soldiers.

The soldiers couldn't bring themselves to step forward.

They knew that if they were driven out, the monsters would hunt them again. Swallowing tears of guilt, yet crying because they wanted to live, they huddled among the crowd with their hats pulled down, weeping silently.

Then, at some point, the mages abruptly turned cold.

["Right. You're scared too. Rather than be eaten by monsters, you'd rather hide behind other people, hide behind Go Ryeo-ha, and pretend you're weak."]

["W-Why are you suddenly..."]

That was when someone incongruous appeared among the mages.

An elderly priest in black clerical clothing, murmuring prayers as he fingered his rosary beads. He straightened his white clerical collar, then stuck his tongue right out.

His words alone reached me as an actual voice, rather than a silent film's script.

Slightly hoarse and scratchy, yet dignified, composed, and full of gentle compassion, the old priest spoke with his words slightly blurred by his protruding tongue.

"Pleashed to meet you. I am Peter Kang of the Society of 66, formerly of the Catholic Archdiocese of Seoul."

["A p-priest?"]

"Yesh. In a situation where survival is difficult for anyone who is not a mage, I understand your desire to avoid suffering and your captivity to fear. Not everyone can shoulder the cross. Little lambs. Understanding your fear, I shall guide you so that you may safely knock upon the gates of Heaven."

Blood burst across the old priest's tongue, and a strange force erupted with it.

Having already destroyed the Dubai Chewy Witch's remains and acquired her knowledge, I recognized what the old priest—Peter Kang—was doing.

Inverted Alteration-Type Tongue, Stage Two.

[Explosion of Emotion].

The people who had been resisting so fiercely just moments earlier began to slump.

The anxious children nodded as though sleepy. Deep resignation filled the eyes of the ordinary non-mages, and their heads drooped. It seemed clear which emotion he had unleashed.

Despair.

Only after slowly surveying the people, so overcome by despair and resignation that they seemed ready to collapse, did Father Peter Kang draw his tongue back in and give a bitter smile.

"Rest easy, you poor little lambs. You are being murdered. Thus, even if you take neither food nor water, you will be able to enter the Lord's embrace. Amen."

Father Peter Kang made the sign of the cross. That was the last of it.

Together with the mages who had changed their allegiance, he led the mages out of the basement cafeteria.

Those left behind remained in the grip of despair, huddled against the walls, putting nothing more in their mouths.

Fifty-eight remained.

Every one an ordinary non-mage.

Deciding there was nothing more to see, I slowly closed my eyes.

A few seconds passed.

As I lay submerged in the darkness beneath my eyelids, Na-in's voice reached me.

"Did you find anything, Je-min?"

When I opened my eyes again, I was back in reality.

Before the bodies of fifty-eight people who had starved to death against the walls.

"I found a mage from the Society of 66."

Father Peter Kang.

A Society of 66 mage who retained his human form despite using inverted alteration-type tongue magic. But that wasn't all I'd seen. This past sight had laid bare the conflicts that groups within Seoul had faced.

In famine-stricken Seoul, learning magic script was dangerous: failure meant immediate exhaustion.

That helped explain why ordinary non-mages still remained. Essentially, most Seoul mages were hard-bitten bastards who had learned magic prepared to die of exhaustion in the process.

It had never even occurred to me.

Yet belatedly, I realized it was only natural. At last, I understood where the Seoul mages' ingrained hostility came from.

These were people who had risked exhaustion and starvation, and lost family or acquaintances to the military blockade, before awakening magic.

Add to that a sense of victimhood combined with an elitism that looked down on ordinary non-mages.

I could tell that my understanding of the group known as the Seoul mages had fundamentally changed.

Perhaps Na-in had read my thoughts too. He was so appalled that he couldn't speak for a moment.

Seemingly realizing what Father Peter Kang had done, he spoke with his brow fiercely furrowed.

"A shepherd must never give up, no matter the circumstances."

"It might be more merciful than dying of exhaustion trying to learn magic, or ending up eaten by monsters."

"Je-min. That is a very, very misguided understanding of faith. When we return, let's pray together with the laying on of hands."

"What a blessing I'm not a Christian nutjob. I've got no intention of doing any of that laying-on-of-hands shit."

I turned to Na-in and said,

"Let's go back."

* * *

April 22, 2028. 6:18 p.m.

Even after Na-in and I returned, we couldn't immediately resume radio contact.

If Ryeo-ha hadn't explained, we wouldn't have known why.

"Right now, the military only transmits in the morning, before the shelling. It feels more like an announcement... But if we want to communicate without the Society of 66 overhearing, we'll have to turn that timing to our advantage. Among Seoul's survivors, it's taboo because it's practically the same as giving the military your coordinates."

"My goodness. You're so clever, Ryeo-ha!"

The pastor's blue-pill operation was enjoying tremendous success.

Meanwhile, Na-in and I shared what we'd learned with the other Supreme Mages.

The Society of 66, whose vague trail we had followed until now.

For the first time, we had identified one of its mages.

Even Se-jun nodded reluctantly and praised our discovery.

"Just learning that this phantom of an organization actually has substance is a huge gain."

Hamza nodded too, but his [Angel's Intuition] warned him that this was dangerous.

"But... it's dangerous. The Society of 66 surpasses us in many aspects of magic. Sooner or later, they'll realize we're onto them."

But Na-in and I knew it had to be done.

"Knowing that He would suffer, the Lord nevertheless shouldered the cross and made His way to Golgotha. For us, who seek to follow Him, turning away for fear of evil would disqualify us as holy warriors."

"And now the military has one more reason to rescue us."

Glancing at Ryeo-ha and the pastor chattering away in front of the radio, I said,

"It's not like we're calling it quits once we're out of Seoul, right? The Supreme Mages will have plenty to do even after we leave."

The Supreme Mages cleared their throats, groaned, or hummed happily at that, but none objected.

Fighting wasn't everything.

The Supreme Mages had to be supreme in every respect.

And so, April 23, 2028. 7:46 a.m.

Expedition Day Eight.

Familiar static began to emerge as Se-jun turned the radio's dial.

When a weary voice announcing the shelling sounded through the crackling noise, I, Baek Je-min, strode up behind Ryeo-ha, Na-in, the pastor, Hamza, and Se-jun, who were clustered around the radio.

I tapped Se-jun's shoulder and said,

"Se-jun. Send a transmission."

"Yes, sir. Let's see. Current time, 0748 hours. Vicinity of 37 degrees north, 127 degrees east. We are Aphorism, civilian Operators deployed on reconnaissance inside Seoul. I repeat. Transmitting at 0748 hours from the vicinity of 37 degrees north, 127 degrees east. This is Aphorism, civilian Operators deployed on the first reconnaissance mission into Seoul..."

The radio transmission that would get us out of Seoul had begun.