Chapter 98 - I'd Rather You Took My Life

I spent a long time laughing quietly in front of the Skin-tapeworm's corpse.

[Mutation Immunity], a privilege reserved for those who had learned all five branches.

The theme of upright alteration-type magic—placing the five elements symbolizing humanity in their respective parts of the human body—had more or less held true. Now I definitely had less reason to worry about being trapped alive inside a monster's flesh.

I was still lying facedown, choking with laughter, when a piercing shout came from the walkie-talkie that had been silent until now.

It was the frog lieutenant colonel's voice.

["... Aphorism, Aphorism! Respond!"]

This was so exhausting I could go insane.

My whole body felt as though it was boiling, but I braced my shaking arms against the floor and looked back. Hamza had put down the fire extinguisher and was picking up the walkie-talkie from the conference-room floor.

"Uh, uhh. Aphorism here."

["What happened? Why weren't you answering our calls?"]

"What? We had no signal."

["No, what the actual fuck... Whew. Aphorism, let's reestablish contact first."]

I kept my mouth firmly shut. If I opened it now, I would probably only cough.

While Go Ryeo-ha kept watch, looking around with tears still glistening in her eyes, I began to sense something wrong in the conversation between Hamza and the frog lieutenant colonel.

"We encountered hostiles starting on the first floor. There was a big fight on the third, too."

["But reconnaissance confirmed there was nothing there..."]

"Well, there was!"

At macho Hamza's furious shout, the frog lieutenant colonel flinched and backed down.

["Then why didn't you answer on the fifth floor?"]

"We had no signal the whole time, and no calls came through!"

["No... Aphorism, withdraw for now. You'll find everything in the communications logs. We were preparing an entry team because you hadn't come out."]

"You said you'd checked everything with thermal imaging, but they were all there!"

["Let's talk once you're out. Can you withdraw?"]

Hamza protested almost in tears, while the frog lieutenant colonel tried his best to calm him down.

Ordinary fools—the non-mage dregs who still believed humanity's science and technology could fully counter this danger—would start discussing optical equipment and whatnot. They would assume superior equipment and superior tactics could win.

But when my gaze happened to meet Go Ryeo-ha's, a former Seoul mage meeting an archmage of all five branches, we instinctively understood how the Skin-tapeworm had hidden itself and laughed hollowly.

Ryeo-ha blinked rapidly to hide her slightly bloodshot eyes and shook out her left hand.

"Impossible to resist. They didn't classify it that way for nothing, did they?"

"Fuck."

There was a reason the optical equipment and communications devices had all been useless.

I kept laughing hollowly as I glared at the Skin-tapeworm's corpse.

My body was burning up and I felt dizzy, as though I had the flu. But more overwhelming than that was the realization, brought home by this creature's existence, of just how precarious humanity's situation was.

People had a misconception.

They said they saw with their eyes.

Of course, that was true.

If you compressed the process of seeing with your eyes and perceiving with your brain to its absolute minimum, that was what you got.

Then what?

How would you see if something scrambled your brain?

"Hehehehe... hehe..."

I just fucking laughed.

The Skin-tapeworm disabled human senses by scrambling human perception—or, more precisely, the brain that had to process information. A monster that had stolen eye magic was a true nightmare.

It didn't matter how excellent the lenses you looked through were, how many pictures you took, whether you tried every one of your senses, sent drones to look, or frantically contacted one another to coordinate.

It was really happening, but because humans couldn't perceive it, it was no different from something that wasn't happening at all.

Everyone could be screaming for help, and the person right beside them would neither see nor hear them.

Unless you handed everything over to AI and had it shoot the thing dead fully automatically, this was an enemy a non-mage human brain simply couldn't fight.

How could you fight it when humans couldn't hear the detection equipment blaring danger alarms? How could you see it when every image, thermal or infrared, was automatically filtered out as information the human brain couldn't process?

That was why it was impossible to resist.

You could kill it by shooting it, but you couldn't shoot it, so you couldn't resist.

There probably weren't many monsters like this. But even one would reduce non-mages to nothing more than prey.

This was a danger on an entirely different level from the Dubai Chewy Witch or Ski Goggles.

I yanked my gas mask up and off in one motion, then spat out something hot that surged up my throat.

"Blech..."

SPLAT.

It was dark red blood.

Blood so hot it was boiling and bubbling.

I instinctively knew this was the penalty for [Mutation Immunity].

I dribbled bloodstained saliva as I stared at the hand-branch magic script covering the back of my hand, at the symbol that split across my skin and glowed red. Then I strained my eyes, searching for the eye-branch magic script the Skin-tapeworm had possessed.

Each of the monster's flat segments had a mouth in its center, toothless and strung with a web of capillaries.

All except one.

Only the segment I assumed to be its main body lacked a mouth. Instead, it consisted of wrinkled, grayish-white layers, as though the folds of a human brain had been spread flat into drawing paper. Covered in sticky, tough meninges, the main body used human brains as its own ganglia, stealing and exploiting their innate intelligence.

There was no way monsters like this could pop up just because a Skin-jellyfish ate one mage.

However bizarre these things were, nothing had ever emerged with capabilities like this right away. Not unless it was something fundamentally different from birth, like the Lighthouse or the eel. My guess was that this one had crossed over from Seoul when the fog flooded out.

Maybe it had gorged itself on mages and ordinary people alike in Seoul, fattened up, and come all the way down to Anyang.

It was speculation, but learning even a little about this fucking monster's ecology would make it easier to fight.

At the same time, I hoped that reclaiming the eye script it had stolen might finally unlock Eye Stage Four.

Somehow, I dragged my trembling body over and began lifting the Skin-tapeworm's flesh with the tip of my knife.

The moment I found it, I plunged the knife down without hesitation.

THUNK!

The sensation of cutting through the sticky, tough amniotic membrane traveled up my hand to my shoulder. That did it.

With this, I, Baek Je-min, would become a true and proper archmage of Eye Stage Four...!

...

"... What?"

"Junior, what's wrong?"

"No... I'm not leveling up."

"What?"

I explained everything to Ryeo-ha.

I told her I'd fought on the instinctive realization that the privilege for all five branches was [Mutation Immunity], and cut the Skin-tapeworm down before it could pull anything else.

As an alteration-type mage herself, she knew the basic rules.

Normally, when you advanced in alteration-type magic by destroying a practitioner's remains or performing a ritual, it drilled the knowledge into you like a star instructor.

I had thought reclaiming a monster's magic script might level me up, too.

After all, it definitely unlocked other branches.

That was how I'd acquired the hand and heart branches, so it was only natural to expect Eye Branch, Stage Four this time.

Besides, alteration-type magic wasn't fussy.

Do you know how to use this level of magic? No? I'll teach you anyway. It was a teacher as benevolent as Maitreya Buddha, firing the knowledge straight into your brain!

But even though I'd destroyed the monster's eye script, no fog hissed out, and the script didn't disappear.

Thinking I'd cut it wrong, I slashed it several more times, but the eye script remained. Instead, it avoided the area I'd hacked apart and surfaced on another segment of the Skin-tapeworm.

What? Was it still alive?

As I gulped and hurriedly backed away, Ryeo-ha clenched her fist and planted her left hand on her hip.

"Junior. I think I know."

"Know what? Tell me, Ryeo-ha."

She might be a Four-Tiger Sword scanner, but if she could give me a clear answer now, I was ready to honor her as my teacher once again.

She pulled back her poncho hood, shaking her long ponytail.

"All mysticism comes with a definite price. You know about equivalent exchange, right?"

"Well, sure..."

"Wouldn't a little fever be too small a price for [Mutation Immunity]?"

At that moment, the world stopped.

My world.

I hadn't even used magic, but my brain gave up on thinking.

Because I realized that thinking any further would lead to a horrific conclusion.

But the rational mind of Archmage Baek Je-min insisted that the same tragedy must never happen again, forcing me to identify the cause.

The true penalty for [Mutation Immunity].

I began trembling, not from chills or fever, but from its terrible weight.

No way.

No way...

Because it had prevented a mutation... charging me for each use...!

"It sucked up my EXP!!!!"

* * *

...

Dark and soft.

I lay there languidly.

...

My body was stretched out, sunk into a soft mattress.

My eardrums were finally getting a good rest, too, and my eyelids were comfortably closed.

That was when an unwelcome visitor arrived.

SLAP SLAP SLAP SLAP SLAP...

I could hear someone smacking a lump of meat with satisfying force.

I assumed they were pounding a hamburger patty or something and let it go, but as time passed, the sound grew clearer.

WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!

Something slicing through the air and striking flesh.

The skill was comparable to my father's, back when he wielded a switch as though he meant to split my calves open. Did I have two fathers under heaven? It had already been decades since my father put down the switch...

"Huh, huh, huh, huh, huh..."

Someone was exhaling in short bursts, making a strange noise with each breath.

What kind of loser deliberately made such hideous noises beside someone sleeping peacefully? It was annoying, but this comfort felt too good, so I pretended not to notice.

Then things gradually grew clearer and sharper.

My compressed skin protested with tenderness. The bruises where I'd been hit screamed in pain. Only now did I realize my eyelids weren't heavy because I was comfortable, but because I was fucking sore and exhausted.

My eyes snapped open.

The moment they did, I found a clean ceiling and Hamza with his hand raised.

"Hriyaaah!"

Hamza was shouting.

"Hododododok!!!"

He was beating the absolute shit out of my chest with knife-hand chops.

Making his own sound effects with his mouth.

I was making sound effects along with him.

"Huh, huh, huh... Hah!"

I was the one puffing out those short breaths every time Hamza chopped my chest.

"Hey. You fucker. What are you doing?"

"Oh? Je-min! You're awake!?"

My vision spun. I closed my eyes briefly and took a deep breath, then pieced together the situation.

This was a temporary military ward in Anyang. Apparently, I'd been transferred to an annex near the hospital's main building. Outside the window, the sun was sinking toward the horizon, lingering at its edge.

It seemed I'd briefly passed out.

That was enough.

Now that I understood the situation, I didn't hesitate.

I lunged out with my right hand and grabbed Hamza by the turban.

"Why did I faint? And why are you pounding a patient like a hamburger patty?"

"Calm down first. And you're not a patient, Je-min. A military doctor checked you earlier and said you're healthy as fuck."

"Haaah... Hamza. There's such a thing as a sense of loss! Loss!"

Hamza explained very kindly.

The horrible truth about the mechanics of [Mutation Immunity], the five-branch privilege, had made me pass out. The mere suspicion that it resisted mutation by consuming the EXP I'd painstakingly saved up had knocked me flat.

Rather than haul my freshly unconscious body around, Ryeo-ha and Hamza had calmly maintained radio contact and waited for the troops to enter. Drone observation had resumed, and now 150 soldiers with eighteen drones were continuing to search and clear the main hospital building.

Fortunately, the once-dense fog had almost entirely lifted.

Monsters grew stronger when the fog disappeared, but conversely, disappearing fog usually meant their numbers had plummeted. The fog surrounding the main building had cleared enough that everything was now visible to the naked eye. They had also made contact with survivors who'd evacuated up near the rooftop floor.

"Our part is over. But the commander ordered us not to share the detailed course of our fight with that monster—the Skin-tapeworm you named."

"Ordered?"

"He also said it was a personal request, from one human being to another."

Only then did I release Hamza's turban and fall back onto the bed.

THUMP!

With my head resting on the soft pillow, all sorts of thoughts came to me.

Ordinary fools would have asked where Ryeo-ha had gone first, but something else mattered right now.

"What are they doing with the magic script on that monster bastard we killed?"

"Incineration is standard procedure, but since they found magic script, they're moving it with some kind of unmanned robot and putting it under our Supreme Mages' ownership for now. This monster has so many unusual features that they plan to study it. As soon as the report reached Command, Mr. Anderson started arranging another visit."

"Anderson?"

I racked my brain, wondering who the hell that bastard was.

"Anderson Mackenford. Our sponsor."

"Ahh. You mean that kind, virtuous guardian of the Republic of Korea and the Korean people?"

A modern-day Wanli Emperor, lobbying the U.S. Congress to spare us a baptism of nuclear bombs because he wanted to siphon off magic.

I wanted to learn the eye script myself, but with [Mutation Immunity] sucking up my EXP, I couldn't learn it right away, which left the problem of storage. Even for someone who dreamed of becoming an archmage, living with that fucking monster corpse was no easy prospect.

Rather than that, I figured it might be better to hand it over to Mr. Anderson, make our sponsor laugh with delight, and get even more generous support in the bargain.

Above all, Anderson Mackenford had more occult knowledge, which would allow for a variety of interpretations and theories about the pentagram inscribed on my heart.

I'd considered asking our hack pastor, too, but although his theories sounded plausible, they had the inherent limitation of being made up of too much speculation and too little evidence. Besides, they were way too Jesus-freakish.

Wouldn't he stare wide-eyed at the pentagram on my heart and call it Satanism?

He might even bring a branding iron to put a cross on my heart instead.

As these idle thoughts drifted through my head, my distant sense of reality gradually returned.

Looking out the window at muzzle flashes beneath the fading sunlight, listening to the racket of radio traffic mixed with gunfire, I spoke.

"Hamza."

"Yes?"

"A mirror, please."

Finally examining the back of my hand closely, I found the magic script still there.

In the form of healed scars, fresh skin having filled them in during that short time.

On a hunch, I took off my uniform jacket and pulled down my shirt. It was the same there. A star-shaped scar remained in the center of my chest. When I felt my earlobe, I found something bumpy.

Then I looked in the mirror Hamza handed me and sighed.

"Not inscribed on my eyeballs, then. Whew."

"Why do you sound disappointed?"

"I'd have won every staring contest. One hundred percent."

If magic script had been engraved in my eyes, even a martial-arts champion would gag the instant they met my gaze.

Just then, the ward door burst open and a lively-looking Ryeo-ha appeared.

Her right hand was wrapped thickly in bandages.

"I heard voices while I was walking down the hall. You're awake, Junior!"

"Yeah, well. Apparently so."

I glared at her, wondering whether widening my eyes might make the eye script appear, but nothing happened.

She chuckled and casually waved her bandaged right hand.

"Are you worried about me? These are the cuts I made to use magic, remember?"

On another hunch, I raised the back of my hand into her line of sight, but that was useless, too.

Was the scar form some sort of inactive state? Worried that even my magic might be sealed, I hastily braced myself for the pain and tried eye magic.

"Aaargh! Motherfucker..."

It worked.

I could see the future.

Using it without fog hurt just as much as ever.

Apparently, this was simply something like a cooldown for [Mutation Immunity], or the scars left by its activation.

Ryeo-ha laughed merrily as she watched me.

"What are you doing all by yourself, Junior?"

"Go back and make gear. Because I really want to kill you, Ryeo-ha."

Should I steal her hand magic? Couldn't I do it with a surprise attack? She had both hand and heart magic, so why not take both?

A truly pathetic, inhuman, unconscionable impulse.

With iron reason, I soothed my battered body and mind with positive thoughts.

Positive thoughts, positive thoughts...

My heart settled, and at last a smile formed on my lips.

Killing Ryeo-ha here just to get the hand and heart magic that would be mine anyway a little sooner would be a loss.

Keeping her alive for a long, long time as a blood tank and gear-crafting machine, using hand magic on my behalf—that was the choice of a true mage.

A mage wasn't someone who strove to obtain things faster, but someone who strove to go farther.

Omnipotence was bestowed not on the impatient, but on the worthy.

With my anger calmed, I turned to Hamza and Ryeo-ha and finally delivered my conclusion.

"Let's get carried by gear."

* * *

May 8, 2028. 8:13 p.m.

The sun had set.

When we arrived by helicopter, the soldiers greeted us with punctilious salutes.

Their hands snapped up.

Then Major General Jeon Min-ho hurried out from among them, saluted, and offered a handshake.

"Aphorism, I've received the report. We will never forget your achievement in killing an unidentified species without suffering any casualties."

I was ready to glare if he asked us to give a report here as well, but he read the room and stepped aside.

We were all so exhausted we felt ready to die.

Meanwhile, the three members of Team B, who had arrived before us and were perched on nearby ammunition crates, were grinning away.

"Baek Je-min, your face looks so gaunt. Was it rough for Islam Boy and Ryeo-ha, too?"

Pastor Park Yo-han's lips twitched as he stroked his gun.

He was concerned, but successfully thinning out monsters without me seemed to have given him confidence.

"Je-min! I unlocked tongue magic, too. Wow. It's really true that you advance when you kill a monster and look at magic script in the fog!"

Lee Se-jun tactlessly stuck his tongue out, now legitimately entitled to do so as a tongue mage himself, so I raised my muzzle.

CLICK.

His tongue slipped right back in.

Finally, Shin Na-in, who had been looking smug in his headset, glanced our way. His smile faded, and he tapped the gas mask resting on his knees.

TAP TAP.

"Another devil with a grotesque form, I take it."

Ryeo-ha and Hamza started complaining before I could.

"Yes. A monster called the Transparent Veil. I'd only heard rumors, but seeing it in person made me understand why it's impossible to resist."

"I-I'm never going in again."

I didn't even have the strength to speak. I settled my gun sling over my shoulder and let out a deep sigh, watching the soldiers return to their posts.

"Hoooo..."

Hand the corpse over to Anderson Mackenford and extract occult knowledge, offerings for mystical purposes, and information or deductions about relevant rituals. Get financial and material support. Use my military scrip to have my gun checked, and the optical equipment... I still needed to bring it, so bring it.

Later, I'd also have to whine at Command to hand over useful enchanted gear from other countries or here in Korea.

So much to do.

But the thing I needed to do right now concerned Shin Na-in.

"Na-in, want to just run as a duo?"

"No. Amen."