Chapter 78 - Preparing to Escape

Once, Seoul, a metropolis home to nearly ten million people, had been a place where the boundary between day and night was blurred. Lights illuminated the streets, people could stroll to a convenience store without a second thought, and opening a delivery app on your phone brought up shops ready to deliver around the clock. That was Seoul.

For someone like me, who lived in a small provincial city in Gyeonggi Province, that had been the biggest surprise when I happened to visit a friend's home.

Nights in Seoul and nights in the provinces were worlds apart. In the provinces, the streetlights along deserted roads went out as early as ten. The cars roaming the roads dwindled until there were none, and even the obnoxious drunks trudged back home once midnight passed.

I still vividly remembered heading to Seoul Station to go home the following morning, greeted by the chill dew of dawn. I remembered settling into my train seat and resting my chin on my hand, gazing through the window at the high-rise buildings and the cars packing the roads.

The heart and head of the Republic of Korea. A lamp that never went out, and must never be allowed to go out.

Love it or hate it, the symbol of the Republic of Korea.

That was Seoul.

The fall of that great metropolis revealed itself in the division between day and night. Once the sun set, the city within the thick fog looked like the remnants of an underwater civilization sunk deep into a heavy, ice-cold abyss. The oppressive moisture and the dew running down my rain poncho conjured the illusion that I was breathing through gills.

HOO...

I let out a sigh that escaped through my gas-mask filter and headed down to the basement of the New Engineering Building. I had finished checking the time. I'd stayed alert just in case, but Go Ryeo-ha had been right about the area around Konkuk University's campus being safe. I could barely hear the monsters' groans and screams, and they weren't getting any closer.

The problem was the ticking time bomb worse than any monster.

When I returned to the laboratory, I found the Supreme Mages had pushed the equipment to one side and laid out their sleeping bags.

"At least wipe your faces with these wet wipes, everyone."

"Oh, thanks. You're always so well prepared, Hamza."

"Islam Boy is a real, what's the word... all-purpose worker."

Hamza was laboriously fishing wet wipes and the like out of his backpack and handing them around. Lee Se-jun thanked him sincerely while wiping his face. Shin Na-in accepted a wipe while praying silently. Pastor Park Yo-han smiled at what he apparently considered a compliment.

Na-in noticed me and opened his eyes to a squint.

"Je-min is back."

"Oh, Baek Je-min. How is it outside?"

"Safe. Just like Teacher said."

As I removed my gas mask and sighed, Ryeo-ha's voice came from the other side of the room.

"Honestly, my junior. Of course I'm keeping it safe with everyone nearby!"

"Are you really going to share a room with us?"

Including me, there were five guys with dicks here, yet she showed no intention of moving to another room. She had used the equipment and workbenches we'd moved aside as partitions, and was neatly gathering her belongings in her own separate space. Anyone would have thought she was getting ready to move.

The trouble was that her madness came and went. Sometimes common sense worked on her; sometimes it didn't. She blinked her large eyes at my question, then asked as though I was the strange one.

"Shouldn't we mages stay in the same place so nobody gets up to anything? This building is so big that splitting up would be dangerous if one of us ran into trouble alone."

"There's that old saying that boys and girls shouldn't sit together after age seven. I think you're being far too defenseless, Teacher."

"But I'm teaching you all sorts of things, and if I'm going to protect you and the others when you're in danger, I think this is the best arrangement..."

Go Ryeo-ha. This woman was no pushover. She must have known she was pretty back when the world was still normal.

She had the eyes of a puppy sitting beneath the eaves, drenched in rain, gazing brightly up at you. Now I understood why Se-jun was so doggedly grinding his teeth over her. Only someone who had grown up loved, and was certain that anyone could love them, could pull off that kind of coy charm.

Considering that I, Baek Je-min, had tried that look at twenty-two while asking Dad to buy me a new computer instead of getting a job, only to get the shit beaten out of me, her talent was truly overwhelming.

In fact, our pastor had fallen hook, line, and sinker for those eyes and become a complete yes-man.

"Hey! Baek Je-min! Don't you know it's a gentleman's duty to protect a lady? Huh? In this day and age, you can't just cling to that rule about boys and girls sitting apart. As a gentleman, eh? You need a gentleman's manners, too."

"Pastor."

If we were going to behave like gentlemen, shouldn't all of us leave? Apparently, his idea of a gentleman was a little different.

"Being willing to set aside your own views out of respect for the wishes and intentions of a young lady who's endured a hard, grueling life. Isn't that the true Christian spirit of service?"

The urge to snap back that it might not just be my views I needed to bend, but my dick too, was boiling up inside me.

Was the pastor so fucking withered that he couldn't understand the plight of young men forced to stay with a woman while resting somewhere safe after fighting like hell for over a week?

I, Baek Je-min, wasn't a log devoid of desire! I was a human holding out through cold reason and an unwavering devotion to the Way!

"Ahem! Hm! Ahem!"

The sudden throat-clearing came from Na-in. He cast narrow-eyed glances at me, Ryeo-ha, and the pastor, then clicked his tongue.

"Pastor. Je-min doesn't attend church, so unlike our devout brothers, he cannot easily cast off the devil's whispers in his heart."

"Hm? Na-in, what are you suddenly going on about... Aha. Tsk, tsk, tsk."

The pastor scanned me from head to toe with a look of pitying contempt, clicked his tongue, and shooed me away.

"Fine. You go outside, you punk. Good grief."

I'd never been so wronged in my life.

"Pastor, let me make this clear: I'm not the weird one. Hey, Hamza. Come outside with me. You're normal."

"I'm fine. Ryeo-ha isn't my type."

Hamza, the Supreme Mage I'd expected to understand me best, firmly drew the line. I felt betrayed, but a moment later, the look in his eyes made me understand. Even now, he wanted to bolt if he could. There was no way he'd embrace the bomb that was Go Ryeo-ha and go up in flames.

"What about you, Na-in?"

"You may make light of a church member's vows, Je-min, but I have resolved to remain chaste until marriage."

"And you, Pastor!"

"Baek Je-min... You're embarrassing yourself, you punk. How could I harbor lust for a girl who's like a daughter to me? Out! Take your things. Come back when you've cooled down."

"Je-min, aren't you going to ask me?"

I let out a deep sigh, forced to appreciate just how peculiar the Supreme Mages were. It was right for me to back down here.

As the lone two-eyed man among the one-eyed, I had to follow the majority like a civilized citizen of a democracy, however unfair it was. Knowing that I was right and everyone else was wrong was enough.

And getting away from Ryeo-ha wouldn't hurt. I grabbed my backpack and decided to sleep in the room beside the laboratory that had been used for storage.

"Je-min, you have to ask me too!"

"Shut the fuck up."

Se-jun's need for validation seemed to grow stronger by the day. Was it a penalty of Heart, Stage Three magic? The longer he replaced his desires with magic, the stronger the rebound?

Having offered that reasonable hypothesis, I quickly began packing my things. Then I heard something like a bolt from the blue.

"It would be dangerous for you to go out alone, my junior, so I'll come with you."

"Oh dear, what are you saying, Ryeo-ha? We're doing this because this fellow has impure thoughts."

"No. Someone needs to stand watch, don't they? You must all be exhausted after coming so far, so I should do it, since I'm still full of energy. Besides, I don't feel right sending my junior off alone. He calls me Teacher, after all. I want to take better care of him."

She proudly straightened her chest, wearing a pleased, beaming smile. Some people's hearts might have fluttered at the sight, but Na-in's warning suddenly came back to me.

["Madmen are mad precisely because they cannot make that kind of objective value judgment."]

...

I immediately raised my palm to stop her.

"Enough."

What reason could I give to fend off that shallow yet relentless madness? I needed a reason everyone would accept. Something that would keep anyone from interfering with my time alone—or at least ensure Ryeo-ha never came near me.

In this urgent situation, I desperately needed an unassailable reason that would silence every argument and excuse...

I squeezed my eyes shut and asked myself: Baek Je-min. How much of yourself are you willing to sacrifice to become an archmage?

Now, the answer came aloud.

"I'm going out to drain some pus from my lower half."

* * *

April 23, 2028, 8:43 a.m.

Expedition Day Nine.

Se-jun took charge of communications with the outside. Combat officer or not, he'd been in the military more recently than any of us, so he was used to military radios and knew the most about how the military worked.

We began trying to make contact once more than thirty minutes had passed after the shelling. Naturally, that meant climbing to the tenth-floor rooftop and repeating the same pointless task. That tin can of a 999K still had plenty of trouble transmitting and receiving, even after I'd enchanted it with [Best].

BEEP-BEEP-BEEP!

Whenever the loud signal sounded, Se-jun invariably picked up the handset to communicate.

["Konkuk, this is Seongnam. Report survivor status. Over."]

"Seongnam, this is Konkuk. Roger. All survivors in good condition. Over."

["This is Seongnam. Send your list of required supplies. Over."]

"This is Konkuk. Severe ammunition expenditure. Require over two thousand rounds. First-aid medications. High-calorie combat rations and convenience foods. Request airdrop of water-purification tablets. Over."

["Roger. Poor visibility prevents a precision drop. Request your understanding. Drop scheduled within two days. Good luck. Over."]

Listening to the military's supply transmission in front of the 999K, Se-jun and I finally sighed in relief.

"That should give us some breathing room on ammunition for now."

"Don't you need to tell them what caliber?"

"Your AR-15 uses 5.56 mm, and the rest of us use K2-series rifles, which also take 5.56 mm. There's really no need. This is why standardized supplies are the best."

"What about yours? Don't you need rounds for that fucking huge revolver?"

"It's not like that's the only thing I'll be firing."

Se-jun said he planned to start shooting again once the ammunition arrived. Crushing monsters with his blood fist wasn't a particularly pleasant experience, he said. I agreed: avoiding close combat with monsters whenever possible was certainly the better choice.

And when I fought by distorting time with Stage Two eye magic at 100%, shooting would be more lethal than going out of my way to slash things myself.

"If we're done, let's go coat the remaining three hundred rounds in blood."

"Aw, isn't that going to give us metal poisoning?"

We headed down the stairs, carrying the radio.

It bore mentioning that there was a good reason Se-jun and I had paired up, and that he wasn't going on about gender transformation. When we descended ten floors and returned to the basement, the people who met my eyes looked awkward or downright contemptuous. Only the pastor laughed heartily, finding something terribly amusing.

The corners of his mouth twitched roguishly as he spoke.

"Hey. Baek Je-min the Wanker. Did you pray for that sin you committed against God, you punk? You know masturbation is a sin, right?"

What I'd lost was the title of archmage. But knowing this was the equivalent exchange spoken of in mysticism, I could smile humbly.

Maintaining my smile and silence, I joined Se-jun in unloading the loaded magazines, cutting my right hand with a knife, and coating the rounds one by one. Sitting across from each other, we silently focused on making ammunition specifically for killing monsters with Hand, Stage One, [Blood of the Right Hand].

"Je-min."

"Yeah."

"You and I seem to have a tough time in life."

"Seems that way."

People weren't always nothing but bastards. Se-jun and I worked in silence, feeling an odd sense of kinship.

Then Ryeo-ha sidled over, subtly showing us her right hand.

"Um... my junior. And your friend. I'll help too."

...

When neither of us said anything, she went to a workbench, wiped a knife clean with the antibacterial wet wipes Hamza had brought, and came to sit beside us. She made a shallow cut in her right hand and began applying [Blood of the Right Hand] to the rounds we hadn't treated yet.

Me, Go Ryeo-ha, Lee Se-jun.

We stayed like that for a while.

"Ahaha... My junior, your friend. Excuse me for a moment."

While she went to the bathroom with an awkward smile, Se-jun stared at me.

"Je-min. I think she's sunk her teeth into you."

Go Ryeo-ha. No pushover. Could I not shake her off even with the title of Wanker?

I began to feel a sense of duty to evacuate her to the military outside as soon as possible. A duty to get her out and foist her onto some competent therapist, thereby saving her life.

We spent the rest of the day inspecting our equipment and renewing the enchantments on gear treated with [Blood of the Right Hand] or [Blood of the Left Hand].

The noteworthy event came the following day.

April 24, 2028, 11:31 a.m.

Expedition Day Ten.

The roar of aircraft reached us, overlaid with the sound of autocannon fire. Amid tearing flesh and screams from the vocal cords of humanlike monsters, the rooftop 999K relayed a military transmission.

["Konkuk, this is Seongnam. No acknowledgment necessary. Drop complete. Over."]

Listening to the aircraft grow more distant, Se-jun and I stood on the rooftop and stared at each other.

"So where did they drop it?"

"I think we're supposed to find it ourselves."

"Hmm."

Now this felt more like our military. Still, it wasn't incomprehensible. With monsters running rampant in the fog, they had to drop it from above clouds several kilometers high, unable to see the ground. The reality was that they couldn't know where it would land.

It wasn't as if we'd requested one or two items, either. We'd asked for more than two thousand rounds, so the package must have been rather heavy. They couldn't do something as insane as fly low over a fogbound city, so it made sense that telling us the exact drop point would be difficult. They might also have realized other survivor groups in Seoul were listening in.

In any case, we couldn't let two thousand rounds go to waste, so we put together a search party: me, Se-jun, and the pastor. Hamza and Na-in would stay behind with Ryeo-ha.

Hamza evidently hated the idea of staying with her so much that he called me aside and even clutched my trouser leg.

"Je-min, I won't tease you about being a wanker, so please take me too...! I prayed to Allah!"

"I've been to Catholic churches, Protestant churches, and Buddhist temples, but never a mosque. Allah won't help."

Anyway, there were reasons for our selection. My blind eye was gradually recovering, restoring my depth perception, so I no longer had trouble getting around. Se-jun needed to carry the supplies, and the pastor would help with the search as a sort of good-luck totem.

Thanks to that, we found the dropped supplies, which we'd never have located without luck. Beyond the light fog, with visibility of about two hundred meters, we spotted a heavy metal crate bobbing on the lake alongside an enormous parachute.

"Wow, those crazy bastards dropped it in the lake."

"It certainly stands out."

"Good grief. There's only one person who can haul that over here."

Naturally, the pastor and I turned our eyes on one man.

Lee Se-jun.

He might be obnoxious and a pain in the ass in all sorts of ways, but he was an all-purpose talent useful in any situation.

A little later, Se-jun dragged the metal crate over to us, stark naked.

"Hah, hoo... You aren't seriously telling me to drag this all the way down to that basement we're staying in, are you?"

"Check whether the waterproofing held, then just leave it in front of the building."

"Je-min and I will split your clothes and equipment between us."

Splitting the things Se-jun normally carried was a much better option than lifting a metal crate that must have weighed several hundred kilograms.

With Se-jun's outstanding contribution, we successfully recovered the airdrop and decided to inspect the ammunition first. The Supreme Mages brought the items into the laboratory one at a time to check their condition, taking particular care to see whether the rounds were wet.

"Thanks to the waterproof coating and the cushioning inside, a lot of the contents are fine, even if the packaging is crap."

Still shirtless, Se-jun heaved the lid open and examined the ammunition. As a former staff sergeant, he apparently recognized things at a glance, unlike us actual civilians.

The ammunition crate held four metal ammunition cans. Since our country's K2 used 5.56 mm rounds, each can should contain eight hundred. That meant they'd generously sent around 3,200 rounds, rather than the two thousand we'd requested.

Na-in carried one of the cans over to Se-jun.

"This one won't do. The moisture control in this can wasn't adequate."

"The ammunition isn't all in perfect condition. Did they rush stock out of storage?"

As Se-jun stroked his beard in thought, the pastor nodded, his expression turning quite serious.

"Over the past week we've been here, the monsters have been heading toward Seoul's outskirts. They must be using up ammunition even faster. And the skies are teeming with monsters, too. There can only be so many windows to get through all that and bring us supplies. Let's be thankful for what we have—to the Lord, and to our soldiers who must be working so hard."

While most of the Supreme Mages inspected the equipment and supplies, I listened to the information about unidentified species that Ryeo-ha had promised to share.

"The mages in Seoul broadly divide monsters into two categories. Those you can resist, and those you can't. The former includes things like mimic beasts and autonomously driven spinal entities. The latter includes things like the gaze monster nesting in Lotte Tower."

"Are any of the latter known, Teacher?"

"There are some, though what we know barely rises above superstition. That's why they're unidentified species."

She told me about monsters considered legends or ghost stories even among Seoul's mages.

First: the Transparent Veil.

It settled gently like a thin, broad curtain. Because it was so thin and transparent, its victims didn't even realize a monster was devouring them before they were sucked dry in an instant, leaving not a trace.

Hearing that, I suspected it might be a subspecies of Skin-jellyfish. Its behavior seemed similar. Considering that the Amalgam also had a subspecies called Pigmole under the peculiar designation Bloodcord Delta, it seemed plausible. Could a Skin-jellyfish that ate a mage become this monster?

It was quite an intriguing hypothesis.

"The second is a voice crying that it's hungry."

"Oh."

According to her explanation, the crying, hungry voice monster was quite the horror story. Just as the fog seemed to thin and sunlight began to shine, a voice could be heard roaming freely through the city's alleys. Though it constantly ate something, it remained hungry, devouring anything it judged edible.

It was a human voice, yet at the same time, it was not.

It relentlessly tracked down and pursued anyone who heard it. Always soaked with saliva and tears, it sobbed with an insatiable hunger, devouring those who listened to its lament and making them sob along with it.

"Most have only heard it. They say no mage has actually seen it, since nobody goes out when the fog is thin or gone. Have you heard it, perhaps?"

"No. What we saw was Cruncher."

"Cruncher? What a cute name!"

"Right?"

Our Cruncher was a good kid who knew to slow down when we fed it, so it was clearly different from the fucker in that horror story. Besides, it had taken a bomb plunging from the sky and gone to the afterlife, so we'd never meet it again.

Even horror stories were really nothing more than urban legends that had to disappear once they got hit by a bomb.

And so, at last, the moment arrived.

April 25, 2028, 9:01 a.m.

Expedition Day Eleven.

We Supreme Mages had finished every preparation for our journey to foist the bomb named Go Ryeo-ha onto the Armed Forces.