Chapter 112: We Come with Nothing, We Leave with Nothing

[Translator – Aren]

When I was young, I remember being completely obsessed with lucid dreaming.

You mean I could squeeze even more fun out of life by playing around in my dreams too? Anyone dreaming of an easy life would be tempted by that. Unfortunately, I had absolutely zero aptitude for lucid dreaming.

The problem was that I’d never had sleep paralysis in my life, never snored, and the moment I lay down, I slept like a rock.

So right now.

This suffocating heaviness I felt every time I twitched my fingers wasn't a hallucination.

Ugh, kgh.

Someone was gasping for breath.

It sounded like they’d been dunked headfirst into filthy water and hauled back out, breathing quite heavily.

At this point, I could’ve given him the nickname Seongnam Gasping Freak.

Seongnam Gasping Freak.

I came up with it myself, but damn, that was good…

"....Gahhhaaaah.”

My eyes opened.

There was something horrible crushed beneath me, but I couldn’t properly focus on it. The moment I inhaled and exhaled, panic came rushing in. It felt like needles were flowing through every capillary in place of blood.

The pain felt like thorns scraping along the insides of my blood vessels as they moved, and tears just streamed down my face. Words like magical backlash and price slipped off into one corner of my mind, leaving behind only the most primitive, crude vocabulary.

This fucking hurts.

But I couldn’t even say it out loud. Screams, thrashing, groans. Everything was blocked by the overwhelming pain.

I lay there weaker than a slug covered in salt, weaker than a dried-up maggot, doing nothing but gasping. I couldn’t breathe properly, and once that happened, even resentment disappeared. All that was left was misery.

Like that, my will and mind were completely seized by pain, leaving me unable to do anything.

Only after gasping for what felt like forever did I finally manage to sit up.

I had been sitting on top of a corpse, and I was injured too, so I kept losing my footing and had no choice but to get up slowly. Ssup, huff. I took a deep breath and realized one of my legs was broken.

But even more than that, excitement surged through me.

Backlash reduction through doping.

I’d tried it half as a gamble, half as a desperate last move, and it had worked.

Fortunately, Velcro Corporal’s head had been ground away first, so it seemed the tongue I tore out had been recognized as remains

But the limit was obvious too.

The only reason I was alive, breathing, and able to move right now was the doping.

I’d already felt firsthand that repeated doping shortened the duration.

The moment the doping ended, I would die of shock.

I needed physical abilities strong enough to overcome that.

Only then was I finally able to glance down.

I saw the remains of Velcro Corporal, brutally crushed since he had to bear my body weight as well. Dead.

If he could still move after that, his abilities would be more broken than my ability to stop time and walk vertically along an apartment wall.

I wasn’t exactly in normal shape either.

Normally I should’ve reeked of piss and filth, but instead the air was thick with the disgusting metallic stench of blood.

On my right hand, the exposed dermis beneath the peeled skin was tangled together with Velcro Corporal’s ground-up tongue, and my entire body, including the poncho, was slick with blood and bits of flesh.

I shook my hand hard, trying to fling off at least some of the clotted blood stuck to it.

And there, in the middle of Velcro Corporal's mangled remains, I saw a heart waiting for me, still throbbing with vivid magic symbols floating over it. The sight of that plump heart scrubbed my pain-addled brain squeaky clean with greed.

Unable to hide the way the corners of my mouth kept twitching upward, I fiddled with the bloodstained chin strap of my gas mask before finally bursting into laughter.

All that suffering was worth it.

Yeah. If a man puts in the work, he should get something out of it at least.

Ignoring the crushed bones, I lifted my foot to destroy the heart.

A glorious secret art that recognized 100% of the value of labor. This was why I loved magic!

"Heart-branch, Stage 2! Here I come!”

-Crunch!

I definitely meant to stomp right on it, but I actually missed slightly.

Still, I managed to crush it.

As the heart engraved with magic symbols collapsed, it turned into mist and disappeared with a hiss.

And the instant that mist seeped into my body, that boundless ocean of knowledge welcomed me once again.

I had been given a chance to examine the knowledge Velcro Corporal had possessed while he was alive.

Even as I staggered around seeing everything in a delirious haze, I gritted my teeth and focused. I had to salvage even one piece of that precious knowledge before it got sucked down the drain of oblivion.

In this world of magic, where you couldn’t even plunder knowledge without the foundations needed to understand it, I knew far more now than I had when I killed the Dubai Sticky Witch.

If Velcro Corporal had ties to the 66 Society, then he had to know more.

But I couldn’t hold out for long.

An oppressive thirst came over me, like I’d been locked inside a dark, damp, sweltering basement, while blasphemous whispers I couldn’t properly make out murmured in my ears. I staggered and fell on my behind, but my head still felt like it was going to split apart.

My five senses twisted.

Nausea surged up.

Then, at the end of all that, neatly organized pieces of knowledge began embedding themselves densely into my mind like needles.

Spiritual Intuition, divine spark, a once-in-a-lifetime flash of insight…

Call it whatever you want.

The Ears-branch magic I had obtained was pulling out Velcro Corporal’s memories and turning that densely embedded knowledge into images for me to see.

Amid the flashing delirium, the storm of sensations, and the blasphemous whispers, I desperately focused on the vision inside my head.

[...Hyeongseop. Resent the people outside the blockade line, but there’s no need to hate them too much.]

The voice was so hoarse that I couldn’t guess the speaker’s age or sex.

Inside the dazzling vision produced by the delirium, someone walked calmly beneath the dim lights of a subway station.

-Click.

Velcro Corporal kept his head bowed.

Since I was only peeking through Velcro’s memories, I couldn’t really look around for myself, but could still figure things out from context.

Anyone walking around Seoul in dress shoes was insane.

I couldn’t tell whether they were dress shoes or boots, but judging by the clicking heels, this probably wasn’t someone who personally ran around on the front lines.

What Velcro Corporal felt here was confusion.

'You’re telling us not to hate the people who told us to die?'

That was pretty much the average Seoul wizard’s mindset.

How the hell were they supposed to develop any love for humanity when they didn’t have even a speck of the self-sacrificing spirit or altruism needed to think, ‘I’ll die so the people outside can live’? If someone had said all the Seoul wizards were going to kill themselves together for the sake of their families, everyone would’ve cried their eyes out for them.

The clicking heels continued regardless.

-Click, click.

Then Velcro Corporal slowly raised his head.

There was a strangely dressed man where Velcro Corporal was looking. At first I thought I had seen wrong, but no.

Prayer beads were wrapped around his right arm, his coat had something written all across the back in languages I couldn’t identify, and in his left hand he was rolling human eyeballs around as if they were marbles.

The burn scars briefly visible at his wrist told me who he was immediately.

Gangnam Thousand-Miles Eyes.

Gangnam Thousand-Miles Eyes stood at the far end of the subway platform with his back turned. Unlike at the dim lights illuminating the platform he was staring straight into the tracks, where not even a single ray of light reached. Noticing Velcro Corporal's gaze, Gangnam Thousand-Miles Eyes spoke without turning around.

[They’ve…fallen behind. They still think monsters and magic can be fought using the old ways. That belief is what keeps the non-wizards’ world standing, but it’s nothing more than a sandcastle. There are voices within the Society saying they need to be taught a painful lesson.]

Velcro Corporal asked through his thoughts.

I hate people beating around the bush, and my knees feel scraped up too, so hurry up and get to the point.

Gangnam Thousand-Miles Eyes gently stroked one small eyeball and answered.

[The side that wants to maintain the status quo. The side that wants to provoke a nuclear strike and have the Society seize control of the world. It’s evenly split.]

Velcro Corporal’s choice was obvious.

The latter.

[Same here. But the decision-makers absolutely have to be captured alive. We’re modern people who know how to forgive and reconcile, after all.]

-Squish—.

Gangnam Thousand-Miles Eyes spoke as he carefully, almost tenderly, pressed his nails into the eyeballs in his hand one after the other and popped them.

[If they can prostrate themselves before the Mimics and bow with their heads to the ground, then we should forgive them.]

At the same time, the delirium subsided. The vision ended.

And the knowledge sorted itself out.

Velcro Corporal's name was Bang Hyeongseop.

Inverted Alteration-type, Heart-branch, Stage 3. Inverted Alteration-type, Tongue-branch, Stage 1.

He was almost identical to the Dubai Sticky Witch, but Velcro Corporal used Inverted Heart-branch, Stage 1 [Perfect Absorption], and Stage 3, [Hierarchy Establishment], to overcome the nutritional drain that came with Heart-branch magic.

He carried pustules and tumors filled with Human Slime on his arms, then bit into them in desperate moments and gulped them down like raw eggs to replenish himself. Those monster bastards were so far beyond human common sense that they were just as absurdly rich in nutrients.

From their origins to their appearance to the risk of infection, they were disgusting in every possible way, but if you could eat them, they were merely future food.

To maximize the effects of Inverted Heart-branch, Stage 2, [Instant Evolution], Velcro Corporal developed tactics around using and firing the hardest and fastest-growing part of the human body. The fingernails. And rather than acting alone, he advocated moving in groups.

He knew far less about mysticism or the inner workings of the Society than the Dubai Sticky Witch, but that couldn’t be helped. He was a blockhead officer specialized entirely for combat.

His knowledge of body modification, though, was far beyond the Dubai Sticky Witch’s.

To numb his sense of pain, Velcro Corporal replaced most of the nerves throughout his body with Human Slime, making it so that instead of pain, the Human Slime inside him would vibrate in proportion to the impacts transmitted through his body.

That meant he had effectively given up on Eyes-branch magic entirely, since it used pain as its price. But ironically, the fact that he was willing to give up magic at all was highly regarded and earned him the trust of other wizards.

His knowledge was still a complete zero, regardless of how good he was at applying what he had.

Instead, he did know a little about Dogma-type magic and holy relics.

Once a Dogma-type wizard reached a certain level, they could imbue objects with a small portion of their abilities through symbolic items, and those objects were also treated as holy relics…

When I finally woke from all those hallucinations, I couldn’t help clicking my tongue.

"Tsk. Yeah, whatever.”

Even as I clicked my tongue in disappointment, I couldn’t hide the way my mouth kept twitching.

I mean, whatever.

Yeah. I got to Heart-branch, Stage 2. That’s enough.

"You dumbass bastard. Should’ve studied more, fuck!”

Still, with that, I had obtained Heart-branch, Stage 2, [Physical Enhancement].

I checked myself over and immediately knew I still wasn’t anywhere near Lee Sejun or Go Ryeoha’s level. I could hop around to reposition, sure, but if I tried to fight someone hand-to-hand, my body’s durability wouldn’t keep up.

I started walking, my steps making wet sounds.

Right. There was still one left.

Shin Nain had injured his leg and probably couldn’t get here right away, which meant only I, Baek Jemin, the Great Archmage reborn with Heart-branch, Stage 2, would get to gulp down Ears-branch, Stage 3. My heart pounding at the possibility of power-leveling, I entered the villa and climbed the stairs.

When I reached the 4th floor, I heard the pastor coughing through the wide-open doorway.

Overjoyed, I bounded up the stairs like some country mutt.

Of course, I kept losing my footing and slamming into the railing over and over, but I was too happy to care.

I spread both arms wide, ready to show off my magnificent achievement, my glorious victory.

Filled with joy and triumph, I stepped into view beyond the open doorway.

"Pastor!”

"Uwagh! Shit, what the hell?!”

-Bang!

We stared each other down for a moment.

When I looked up, there was a fresh bullet hole above me in the doorframe.

"What was that?”

"An accident, an accident. You little punk. If you walk around looking like that, people are going to shoot first and ask questions later. If some guy soaked in blood comes at you with both arms spread wide, of course you think he’s an Amalgam!”

Pastor Park Yohan’s protests came pouring out nonstop, so I decided to let it slide.

Sure, I was currently in an extremely, horribly serious condition, what with being half-blind and injured, but I let it slide.

I was only staying upright thanks to the doping and Heart-branch, Stage 2, so a single bullet could’ve been dangerous. But I was incredibly merciful and fair, and the pastor was also the person who had to listen to me brag, so I graciously decided to forgive him.

Only then did I look around the pastor and spot Yellow-Bandage Straggler lying dead in a pool of blood.

He was riddled with holes, so it looked like the pastor had finished him off while I was up on the roof fighting Velcro for my life.

"Did this chatterbox bastard who kept going ‘Lissen,’ have any last words?”

"He died saying, ‘I can’t lissen.’ Honestly, to think someone could have such a  useful ability and still end up with a mindset like that. Lord, punish him for the sins he committed in life, but consider the desperate circumstances he was placed in…”

I walked over to the straggler’s corpse.

The pastor had already taken care of paying his respects to the dead, so I figured I’d take care of looting some spoils from him.

I drew my combat knife and carefully started slicing off Yellow-Bandage Straggler’s ear when the pastor came over at some point and clicked his tongue.

"Good grief. Baek Jemin, are you not even thinking about Nain being injured?”

"Pastor, people still eat the food after setting it out on the ancestral rites table, don’t they? Right?”

"Ancestral rites are idolatry. How are you going to bring up a bad example and insist it proves your point? And why are you talking about ancestral rites while cutting up a person?”

"Ah, aah! I’m cutting it wrong! The magic’s going to disappear!"

"Damn it. Fine, you lunatic. If our youth group leader wants to do it, then go ahead. Hurry up, cut it off, smash it, and let’s go.”

I examined the ear I had sliced clean off Yellow-Bandage Straggler.

I was dying to know what this bastard’s ability and backlash was.

After running my fingers over the Ears-branch magic symbol, I dropped it onto the floor and immediately raised my foot.

-Crunch!

"Ears-branch, Stage 3! Did I get it?!”

-Fsssssh.

The crushed ear turned into mist and seeped into my body, and once again the delirium and blasphemous whispers came for me.

The sensation of my five senses splitting away from my actual body made nausea automatically rise within me. The inside of my gas mask was so full of moisture that it felt like my face was underwater.

Then Yellow-Bandage’s memories appeared.

[S-Squad Leader. I can’t shoot. They… They’re civilians.]

[You fucking idiot. Shoot. Shoot!]

Ah…So it’s this kind of scenario?

Yellow-Bandage Straggler had been a soldier back when the situation was still known as a civil disturbance, stationed near a restricted-access zone within 50 meters of the fog’s visibility limit to maintain public order under a security martial-law order.

A fight had broken out among the soldiers over what to do with civilians who came running out of the fog begging to be saved.

As a corporal, Yellow-Bandage was defying his sergeant and insisting they had to rescue the civilians.

[Soldiers exist to protect the people. Squad Leader, get a grip!]

[I’m telling you, that thing isn’t one of those people. You haven’t been on rotating duty that long yet, have you? Hey, hey hey, Kim Jeil! What the hell are you doing going that close as a private first class?! Get the fuck back!]

[B-But the Corporal…]

Naturally, he got slurped right up.

Only after watching an Amalgam grab someone by the head and drag him into the fog did Yellow-Bandage finally understand reality. That day, the moment Yellow-Bandage came back from duty, his squad leader beat the living hell out of him.

[You fucking idiot. You got that private first class killed. What? Protect the people? Fuck off. You just didn’t want to pull the trigger.]

[Huugh, huff…]

[You're just a coward. If I had my way, I’d throw you into the fog too, but we don’t have enough people for the next shift, so I’m letting you off. This isn't a civil disturbance. There are no civilians. If something comes running out of that fog, you shoot it dead!]

[Huguuh…Huuff…]

[Fuck…Do you know the phone number of Private First Class Kim Jeil’s mother…? I’ll make the report. You go take a shower.]

This scenario was incredibly boring, and there wasn’t much useful information in it, so I skimmed over it.

Once the delirium and whispers settled down, the knowledge Yellow-Bandage had possessed finally sorted itself out.

Yellow-Bandage’s name was Jang Ilsu.

He was an Inverted Alteration-type, Ears-branch, Stage 3, and Inverted Alteration-type, Tongue-branch, Stage 1 wizard.

Apparently this bastard had actually studied magic to some extent, because the information he gave me was much more satisfying.

Organizing the knowledge now lodged in my head, it went like this.

The Alteration-type magic system was magic open to all humans.

Incantation-type magic required not only specialized occult knowledge but also a certain degree of spiritual sensitivity. Ritual-type magic required being chosen by or making a contract with transcendent beings. Dogma-type magic required unwavering faith in a particular worldview. Altertion-type magic, by contrast, was apparently very equal.

But depending on your aptitude, the amount of experience points required to break through each Stage was different.

Even someone with absolutely terrible talent could learn it. There was just no telling how long it would take. In theory, it was magic that every human being in the world could learn.

To shrink that experience point requirement, you could study mystical knowledge and deepen your understanding of magic, repeatedly engage in actions that improve your aptitude, or use another human as a sacrifice in a ritual offering and steal their aptitude.

Alteration-type wizards could also conduct master-disciple rituals with non-wizards who had yet to awaken magic, or with low-level wizards whose abilities were still weak.

The 66 Society currently monopolized this ritual. Alteration-type wizards who became masters through master-disciple relationships within the Society could unilaterally transfer the price of their own magic onto their disciples.

That also told me Yellow-Bandage's abilities and backlash.

Inverted Alteration-type, Ears-branch magic could be summarized like this.

Stage 1. Suggestion. Implants a suggestion in the target, but anything too absurd simply won’t work. The price is that you must place one suggestion on yourself as well.

Stage 2. Hypnosis. Twists one piece of the target’s common sense. The price is that you have to forget one piece of your own common sense as well.

Stage 3. Reason Collapse. Twists all of the target’s reasoning, making them act impulsively or reach the wrong conclusion. The price is that all of your own desires are temporarily paralyzed.

And because Yellow-Bandage couldn’t handle the penalties, he only used Inverted Ears-branch, Stage 1.

The last thing I learned was…

...your Stage always went up exactly 1 level at a time.

What was Ears-branch, Stage 2 again? Hearing monster voices?

Thinking about Shin Nain writhing around from it already sounded damn awful…

When I finished sorting through the knowledge and opened my eyes again, the pastor was sighing as he looked around.

"Life, seriously. I don’t even know how things ended up like this.”

"Pastor, let’s go. Someone’ll come transport us, right?”

"Yeah. We can sort out what you learned later. Nain comes first. And…after the uproar we caused, somebody better come evacuate us. Baek Jemin, looking at you, I’m amazed you’re not already in a hospital ward.”

The pastor and I left the corpses behind and headed for the rooftop of the villa where Shin Nain was waiting.

When we climbed the stairs, Shin Nain was deliberately taking deep breaths with his leg propped up on the railing. He even had both hands tucked behind his head like someone lounging on a beach chair on vacation.

"What are you doing?”

"If I want to lose less blood, I need to keep my leg above my heart.”

"Pastor, is that actually right?”

"How in the world should I know? If I knew that, I'd be a doctor. Don’t put me on the spot asking stuff like that.”

Shin Nain was alive.

Judging by the way he was still spouting bullshit, the bastard had one hell of a long life ahead of him.

I let out a deep breath for some reason and looked around. A gust of wind came at just the right moment, making the hem of my poncho flutter, while the synchronized footsteps of soldiers approached through the alleys beneath the crackle of loud radio chatter.

"The soldiers are coming.”

Shin Nain closed his exhausted eyes.

"Haah. I seriously don’t know how my life ended up like this.”

The pastor dropped onto his behind and pulled up his gas mask.

And I, Baek Jemin, stood there blankly staring at the sky before flopping backward onto the rooftop. For a Great Archmage who had become a Heart-branch, Stage 2 wizard, the green plastic surface didn’t hurt all that much.

"How many people did I take down by myself?”

"Including those two, you probably handled close to 20 on your own.”

"Wow!"

Hearing Shin Nain chime in made it finally feel real.

I slowly closed my eyes, the corners of my mouth twitching upward.

"I’m going to be on the news.”

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