Chapter 90 - Prey That Hunts

May 7, 2028, 3:26 p.m.

I powered off my smartphone, unable to hide my sour mood. The realization that the Republic of Korea had fallen left me with a tangle of emotions.

The cordon had been breached near Anyang and Uiwang. It was unclear whether the area fell under the jurisdiction of Communist China—which had taken control of Incheon—and the Korean administration, or the ROK–U.S. Joint Command in Pyeongtaek. Both sides had deployed troops for the time being, but apparently the confusion had left reconnaissance and searches of the hills and woods inadequate.

Units were being hastily assembled to strike back. But Command's assessment that regular troops could not sustain the losses in areas already blanketed in fog was what had sent us Supreme Mages into action.

That's right. We Supreme Mages now had a crucial role in deciding the cordon's fate—and, beyond that, delaying the end of humanity by even a single second.

I'd once called it Hell Joseon, and I still resented plenty about it, but it was my country all the same. Who could have imagined it would fall not to the imperial ambitions of its neighbors, but to an outbreak of monsters?

Even the independence fighters resting in the National Cemetery would weep buckets at the injustice of it.

A fundamental doubt washed over me: could I really hold back this approaching end for even one second?

Yet even after everything spectacular and tumultuous that 2028 had brought, most people still hadn't grasped the reality.

The Republic of Korea was now a sort of vegetative patient. Not brain-dead, mind you—its head had been cut off, and blood was simply gushing out.

But because its arms and legs still moved, people mistook it for being alive.

One guy, pouting with his lips stuck out as if to ask why the country was finished when no nuke had fallen and the cordon hadn't been overrun, said,

"If everyone believes it's alive, then it's alive. That defeatist mindset is prohibited in wartime. Show some spirit, Je-min! You were such a stouthearted man when you were learning magic, and now you're making a fuss just because the country's wobbling a little!"

Lee Se-jun said this while loading a hefty machine gun into the helicopter. Watching him effortlessly carry over the cans of 5.56 mm ammunition all by himself made my tone turn more courteous and respectful than usual.

"Se-jun. The country isn't wobbling. I'm telling you, the cordon is being breached everywhere."

"Which is exactly why we have to step in. Isn't it!"

After hauling all the ammunition cans aboard, Se-jun climbed into the helicopter himself. That was when Shin Na-in, who had been waiting calmly inside with his eyes closed, asked without moving anything but his mouth,

"Why aren't you aboard yet, Je-min? We need to leave."

"Je-min! Let's go already!"

Despite their repeated urging, I couldn't help hesitating. I looked away and did nothing but smack my lips. It wasn't that I didn't understand the urgency. With everything being breached, I knew better than anyone that my illustrious self had to step in.

But listen.

Some pain you simply don't want to charge headlong into, no matter how certain the returns.

"I didn't put on a motion-sickness patch."

RUSTLE

Na-in shook a black plastic bag at me.

"My motion sickness is too bad for one bag."

RUSTLE, RUSTLE, RUSTLE...

Na-in rubbed the index and middle fingers holding the black bags together, separating the bags that had been layered over one another. There were a good three or four of them.

"I had Spam and kimchi fried rice. All that greasy food probably isn't going to sit well... Why not take Go-ryeo instead of me?"

Na-in's reply was immediate and merciless.

"Use Eye, Stage Three: Cognitive Dissonance."

"Ah..."

While I sat stunned by this bastard's suggestion that I risk blindness to erase my motion sickness, Se-jun seized the opportunity to deploy that age-old tactic: emotional blackmail.

"Je-min, stop fucking around and get in. You know you've delayed us another three minutes, right? If someone dies during those three minutes, it's your fault now."

"Fuck."

In the end, I had to haul myself into the helicopter, bracing for horrible motion sickness. Deciding even the rubber smell of a gas mask would be better, I pulled on my newly issued anti-fog mask. I hunched low, preparing for the deafening noise and vibration of takeoff.

Good thoughts, good thoughts, good thoughts...

For a while, I even squeezed my eyes shut, trying somehow to drive the thought of motion sickness out of my head.

Then a question occurred to me, born purely and simply of one hundred percent intellectual curiosity.

"If I slack off for three minutes, doesn't that mean more XP for me to shoot dead?"

"Je-min, what are you talking about after sleeping so soundly?"

"Huh?"

When I came to my senses, we'd already left Pyeongtaek and were flying high above the ground. Through the window, a vast cityscape and mountains wedged into it here and there swept past directly below us. As I turned my gaze, the pilot in the cockpit casually raised his left hand for a brief moment.

Up went his thumb! Then the pilot returned straight to his duties.

His helmet hid his face, but that one cool, nonchalant thumbs-up explained everything. Na-in, who had been quietly humming with his headset on, grinned.

"When he heard how bad your motion sickness was, he took extra care with his flying. He's remarkably skilled."

"Wow. I never thought I'd ride a helicopter without getting sick."

I'd always assumed military vehicles just got you from point A to point B, whether your ass got smashed to pieces or not. Today had corrected that prejudice a little.

Meanwhile, Se-jun was carefully wiping down the machine gun resting on his lap. Only after studying it for some time did I recognize what it was.

"Isn't that a K3?"

"It's a K15. The new model."

"Same difference."

"Haaah. Je-min, please don't talk about guns anywhere."

Se-jun kept turning the thing over one-handed as he inspected it—a thing that made me grateful I was a rifleman.

There was something odd about the way he kept stroking that machine gun, with his K2 nowhere in sight. Come to think of it, he'd been going in and out of the armory instead of practicing marksmanship with me.

A suspicion made me ask.

"Don't tell me you're going to use a machine gun?"

"When I thought it through, my physical abilities have already improved dramatically thanks to heart-branch magic, haven't they? Having to eat a lot is a penalty I can live with. It occurred to me that sticking with an ordinary rifle would be a waste. Especially outside Seoul, where ammunition is readily available, there's no reason to hesitate."

His perfectly reasonable answer filled me with an indescribable sense that something was off.

"You sound less disgusting than you did in Seoul. Actually, you seem downright normal?"

"Je-min, I've always been perfectly normal."

Se-jun replied matter-of-factly, his brow furrowing. Na-in cut straight in.

"He's switched off Heart, Stage Three: Desire Substitution. It seems that when his urge to relieve himself returns, the increased need for approval drops back to normal."

CLAP, CLAP, CLAP...

I found myself applauding without thinking.

I see. Apparently magic wasn't entirely inflexible. If you could switch it on and off like an ON/OFF switch, that was a perfectly tolerable penalty.

Learning that Se-jun's growing repulsiveness was the dreadful cost of magic finally put my mind at ease.

For Se-jun, who was developing into Captain Korea, and for his future followers, I offered some heartfelt advice.

"Let's stop learning magic, Se-jun."

"Je-min, the life of a beautiful young girl is right here within reach. I can't give it up. I will be loved by everyone."

"How about a life as Captain Korea?"

"I don't want to be loved for my dedication. I want to be loved just for breathing."

Apparently that fucking disgusting desire to get everything for nothing was Se-jun's true nature, not his magic.

Just as I realized trash was still trash, the pilot and Na-in started jabbering away at each other. They weren't generals discussing anything, so I let it pass without much interest.

A little later, Na-in turned toward us and put on his gas mask.

HUFF, HUFF

After checking the filter with a few short breaths, he tapped his headset.

"We've arrived, apparently. Everyone, get your gas masks and weapons ready."

While Na-in pulled up his hood and Se-jun adjusted his gas mask, I looked down.

A large mountain stood a little way outside the city, with hills scattered around it like broken-off crumbs. Between them, fields being prepared for sowing and trees sprouting fresh green shoots mingled with scattered buildings.

Apart from the thick fog lying high enough to reach a person's lower back, nothing looked particularly unusual.

After circling once over the village, the helicopter began gradually descending, then left the village and hovered over the parking lot of a nearby gas station some distance away. Countless soldiers and vehicles were already moving to and fro there amid a din of shouting.

As the helicopter lowered its altitude and its tremendous rotor noise subsided, the voices outside became clearer. Flustered soldiers reflexively repeating orders, officers shouting in irritation, senior enlisted men snapping as they distributed magazines and checked head counts...

But when our helicopter landed safely, something else sounded most jarring to us Supreme Mages.

Soldiers wearing orange armbands hung with jingling dog tags were marching down the road in a crisply ordered formation. Ahead of them, civilians in padded jackets and vests shuffled along like prisoners, bowing submissively and stealing glances around them.

RATTLE!

The instant the rotors stopped, I was the first to throw open the helicopter door.

I climbed out first, followed by Na-in and Se-jun. When we turned to look, the atmosphere was a real spectacle. All the noise that had been heavily muffled by our altitude, the helicopter's interior, and our raised poncho hoods now seeped in with the wind.

JINGLE, JINGLE

The soldiers with the dog-tag armbands were coldly directing the awkwardly shuffling civilians, idly fingering their triggers as they did.

"Civilian Operators from southern Gyeonggi. Move it. Don't even think about running."

The man in a padded jacket and the woman in a shirt both looked to be in their mid-to-late twenties. They were very young, and their sharp eyes suggested fierce tempers, but they wilted before the armband wearers, who breathed through their gas masks and thrust gun barrels at them.

"B-but you have to give us guns!"

"Since you haven't purchased any weapons of your own, you'll be issued them immediately before deployment. Under the field deployment ordinance for civilian Operators, your lives are subject to decisions made on-site. Don't try getting smart with us."

"W-what happens if we don't comply?"

Just then, Na-in and Se-jun came up behind me to watch this highly entertaining spectacle too. They'd learned that standing in front of me and drawing more attention than I did could get them shot by me. Exactly the intelligence I'd expect of our Supreme Mages.

"Je-min. We should start by getting the field briefing."

"Shitpants, this is the good part. We can get the briefing later."

"Se-jun, people could die while we stand here for these few minutes."

"If a few minutes of us dawdling is enough for them to die, it's already too late. Let's pay our respects and watch this first, shall we?"

"..."

Like us Supreme Mages, the soldiers with the dog-tag armbands exchanged looks, then burst into friendly laughter. The soldier dealing with the two civilian Operators stared at the man and woman and pointed at his own eyes with his index and middle fingers.

"You said you're Eye, Stage One? The military isn't fucking stupid. We have ways to use uncooperative civilian Operators."

The female Operator gulped.

"If we put bullets in your legs and throw you in front of the monsters, you'll use your magic like mad just to stay alive. If we drag you around with us, you'll either die with us or live with us. You've had your rest. Let's move again."

As the soldiers guffawed, their dog tags jingling, the civilian Operators began walking again, thoroughly cowed. Only then could Se-jun and I tear our attention away.

"Fighting while pumping themselves full of drugs has fried those guys."

"Well, now we know civilian Operators aren't treated very well."

Na-in's face cycled between red and livid as he watched us, but we decided to ignore him. After all, to fulfill our noble mission of saving people, we first had to get the field briefing.

And so our trio strode confidently toward the commander issuing various instructions to his officers in front of the gas station.

The field commander was a major in a steel helmet. He was anxiously fiddling with his smartphone, too preoccupied to notice the sweat-soaked hair plastered to his cheeks. The sweat-marinated major tapped his foot repeatedly, then happened to look up. His face brightened at the sight of us.

"Are you Aphorism? Why are there only three of you?"

Did you hear that?

The field commander, a major who looked like he might be somebody's dad, saw us and immediately said the name Aphorism.

Using fucking Aphorism instead of Supreme Mages was a fatal flaw, but I wanted to give him bonus points for recognizing us first.

I regarded the sweat-marinated major fondly through my gas-mask lenses and nodded.

"Aphorism is an alias. Since Pyeongtaek Command needs us in a lot of places, we've decided to rotate in three-person teams. And now, the most important point."

"Yes?"

"In the field, we're called the Supreme Mages."

"Ah, yes..."

Failing to appreciate the precious knowledge he'd just acquired, the sweat-marinated major looked rather uncomfortable. Then he shook his head vigorously and changed tack.

"The Supreme Mages. Yes. I've heard you're the most useful and cooperative civilian Operators available to Pyeongtaek. And I hear you're all volunteers?"

I, Baek Je-min, the one responsible for the Supreme part, graciously yielded so my companions could have a chance to make an impression too.

Na-in answered this time with a gentle smile.

"Of course. There is no more worthy dedication than fighting in a time of tribulation. In the name of the Lord God."

"Standing by while my country is in danger would go against my sense of loyalty. Answering when the nation calls is only natural."

Those words alone brought tears to the major's eyes.

"My goodness... To think there were such fine people among the civilian Operators..."

"Hold on."

Sensing something alarming, I had to raise my palm.

"Fine people?"

Who?

Of course I, Baek Je-min, a genius unmatched through the ages, was also a fine person. But why was he using the plural instead of the singular?

Surely he wasn't including this fanatical, shit-stained Jesus-freak bastard and this approval-hungry monster who never shut up about turning into a girl?

The sweat-marinated major answered with a sniffle.

"Being volunteer civilian Operators already puts you in the top ten percent. The other ninety percent were all forcibly conscripted."

* * *

The place we Supreme Mages had been dispatched to was a small mountain village north of Uiwang Rest Area. Despite being in the mountains, it wasn't far from the city, so you could call it an outlying suburb. But entering by a narrow road and finding dense trees and fields stretching before you was enough to give it a thoroughly rural feel.

That terrain also made deploying troops considerably more difficult.

As Na-in, Se-jun, and I walked, conversations between grim-faced officers passed us like a panorama.

"What about the ones that escaped into the mountains?"

"A search battalion with specialist soldiers attached is looking for them."

"Amal... Are they mimic beasts?"

"It's difficult to scout inside the village. There do seem to be people alive in there, but..."

Yet the instant those people heard our footsteps, they invariably turned without thinking, widened their eyes, and slowly backed away.

CLICK

I rubbed my fingers over the sleek metal of my custom AR-15, which had cost so much military scrip that Captain Kim Ho-un had complained about it.

The weighty feel of the metal against my hand seemed to embody the results of our well-spent week. Even if I hadn't fully internalized it yet, a mature tension was rising in a corner of my heart—a tension that knew how to accept fear as natural.

As we advanced in gas masks and ponchos enchanted with ancient Hebrew, each carrying a hefty firearm, I could feel that we'd changed.

We really had changed.

I could feel that our fate had shifted from one in which a single monster would have sent us trembling into flight or hiding.

HOOF

A breath escaped through my gas-mask filter as the fog began rising above my thighs. One by one, the soldiers lingering or blocking our path received radio calls and stepped aside.

The radio chatter leaking out carried fragments about where we Supreme Mages stood.

["Under the ROK–U.S. Joint Command..."]

["...the most efficient force available on the cordon."]

Na-in still insisted on his K2. He'd decided it was better to use a familiar gun than one he wasn't accustomed to.

Se-jun's footsteps, meanwhile, were a little heavier than ours. With an ammunition can hanging at his waist, he held his K15 machine gun in one hand and connected its ammunition belt as he trudged along.

STEP, STEP, STEP

Wherever our three sets of overlapping footsteps passed, questions invariably remained.

But. Even so. Why? At the end of the day...

"'There are only three of them,' they're saying."

Na-in tapped his headset, then turned toward Se-jun and me with a grin. He was kindly sharing what he'd heard in the soldiers' minds.

I chuckled at that and recalled the shooting techniques Instructor Song Smith had taught me. Se-jun finished connecting the belt, shut the cover, and gripped his machine gun.

At the village entrance, before the fields and narrow road stretching between the mountains, we were sinking into fog that reached our chests.

But our grips on our guns never slackened.

We strode boldly into the fog everyone else was scrambling to flee or contain. Imagining what sort of behavior the monsters sculpted from human flesh would show us today, I steeled my resolve.

Then a baby's cries began echoing through the mountain valley to welcome us.

WAAH, WAAH, WAAH...

The moment I heard those cries, I asked the other two without turning around,

"Nobody here is a good person, right?"

CLICK

Na-in and Se-jun both answered by running their hands over their weapons.

WAAH, WAAH...

Following the narrow path beside an irrigation channel toward the village entrance where the baby's cries rang out mournfully, we found the fog had risen to our chins.

SOB, SOB

That was when a woman's muffled sobbing mingled with the baby's cries.

I glanced at Na-in. With his eyes gently closed, he said briefly,

"It's a person."

He added a one-line assessment.

"But shooting her dead would be kinder."

"Hmm. I think I get the picture."

Se-jun answered matter-of-factly.

Following the crying, the three of us formed up, raising our muzzles toward the sobbing baby and woman.

Na-in handled detection, I handled improvisation and support, and Se-jun provided firepower.

We couldn't go around in a pack of six on every expedition. To confront the approaching end, we needed more resources and knowledge. To earn more rewards, we first had to learn to deploy our teams flexibly.

This would be our opportunity.

Once, we had been helpless beings who could do nothing but wait to be hunted.

"Babies. Multiple."

Most of humanity was still nothing more than prey.

"What about the woman crying?"

"It seems similar to the Tadpole Belly case."

But we Supreme Mages hunt the things that hunted us.