Chapter 31: A Hell Without Flames

[Translator – Aren]

The sound of machinery clicking into place illuminated the path ahead of us.

-Click.

I pulled back my poncho and switched on the flashlight tucked inside my chest pocket, revealing the bleak scene in full. I was impressed that Korean construction had managed to survive the relentless artillery bombardments. And I was equally surprised by how lived-in the place still felt.

Crushed plastic bottles, empty tin cans with their lids peeled back, and trash scattered all over the floor.

Deacon Min Hyungjun of the Taeguk Jesus Brigade arrived a step behind us Supreme Archmages and clicked his tongue. Unlike us, the Taeguk Jesus Brigade wasn’t wearing gas masks or ponchos, so his grimacing face was on full display.

Pretending to pinch his nose, he shook his head.

"Judging by the smell, some of it’s gone bad. Looks like refugees really were here.”

Meanwhile, Lee Sejun tightened his grip on his rifle and dropped to one knee to examine the discarded trash before tilting his head.

Talking to himself loud enough for everyone else to hear.

"Did they scatter this stuff on purpose so they’d hear intruders coming? If they were trying to stay hidden, you’d think they’d clean up after themselves…”

Either way, we had about 23 minutes left.

Three identified species that already had established countermeasures and eleven unidentified species were known to be roaming Seoul. Sticking around any longer than necessary wasn’t a great idea. As much as I liked magic, I didn’t want to spend my day fighting monsters nonstop.

Normally, splitting up is the kind of thing that would get people killed in horror movies. But we were kind of pressed for time. We needed to find something and get the hell out of here. If we happened to uncover a clue about magic along the way, even better. 

Though I wasn’t optimistic enough to expect it.

With that in mind, I suggested we search separately. 

Deacon Min Hyungjun brushed back a strand of hair and gave me a worried look.

"Your group’s only got 3 people. Are you sure about this? It might be safer to divide everyone evenly.”

"Yeah, but everyone on our side uses Alteration-type magic.”

"Alteration? Ah, those special fights from the Lord. Hmm…If Nain’s with you, you’ll probably be fine.”

And so our Supreme Archmage trio split off from the Taeguck Jesus Brigade.

They continued searching the first floor. Once we’d divided the work at the entrance, moving forward became much easier. 

The only thing that bothered me was Shin Nain.

He kept muttering prayers under his breath. Judging by the way his eyes were unfocused, he looked like his sanity was hanging by a thread. I snapped my fingers in front of his face to pull him back to reality.

"Hey. Shitmaster. Stay with us. Tell me what you’re hearing.”

"...Jemin-ssi, Sejun-ssi- Something’s wrong. I can still hear the babies crying…”

Without realizing it, Shin Nain tightened his grip on his rifle. He swallowed hard.

"I feel like we have to protect them. Like, protecting the babies is the most natural thing in the world.”

"Isn’t that normal?”

Lee Sejun answered with a bored expression. Only then did Shin Nain’s eyes widen.

"Children of heathens are not meant to be protected. They’re meant to be enlightened and brought to repentance. Those babies could be bastards born of heretics! Not lambs, but goats! Bloodlines of Satan and his demons! I’ll try to guide them, because we’re commanded to love even our enemies, but they aren’t people I’d protect without expecting anything in return.”

"..."

"And yet I want to protect them. Something is wrong.”

After listening to Shin Nain’s passionate rant, Lee Sejun looked back and forth between the two of us.

His eyes wavered like he was about to cry. Eventually, they settled on me.

"Jemin-ssi, what do you think?”

"It’s a mad world.”

-Huff.

I exhaled softly through the gas mask filter, activated Alteration-type Eyes-branch Stage 1 magic, and took the lead into the ruins.

Sure, Shin Nain’s personality and a whole lot of his fantastic tendencies were annoying as well. But if there was one thing we could count on, it was his abilities and usefulness.

"So we should follow the logic of a madman.”

After splitting from the Taeguk Jesus Brigade, we Supreme Archmages advanced in a triangular formation.

At the very front was me, Baek Jemin, the man who could see 10 seconds into the future. The fog was a little thinner indoors, but it was still dense enough.

In a place like this, it was only natural that the guy who could predict monster movements through red footprints would take the lead.

On the left was Shin Nain, who could hear the voices inside the minds of people and monsters. His expression remained tense as he listened to the crying babies, which he supposedly heard constantly. As a result, every step he took was even more cautious than usual.

On the right was Lee Sejun, our human catapult who never seemed to run out of battery. His detection abilities were trash, so spotting ambushes or hidden threats was out of the question. Instead, his job was to use his superior physical abilities to rescue allies or unleash overwhelming firepower when things went south.

The good news was that the fog was so thick the backlash from magic was almost nonexistent.

My eyes felt a little strained, sure, but compared to the burning sensation I’d experienced outside of Seoul, like someone had scrubbed my eyeballs with mint toothpaste, this was nothing. I kept my 10-second foresight active at all times while preparing for whatever danger might appear.

Fortunately, there wasn’t a single red footprint near the emergency stairwell door.

Still, I didn't let my guard down. I glanced at Shin Nain, who nodded.

"Nothing."

-Creeeeak—

With my rifle tucked beneath my right arm, I pushed open the emergency stairwell door with my left hand. It was a push-to-open door without a handle. Even a little force made it groan loudly.

Fortunately, the staircase itself was intact.

Just in case, I aimed the light mounted on my chest down toward the lower stairwell. There I found benches and bookshelves that hadn’t been visible from the lobby. They’d been tossed together with piles of trash. As if someone had been trying to block off access to the basement.

If we had more time, we might’ve cleared everything away and searched below.

But it was obvious this wasn’t ordinary trash. Someone had thrown all of it there in a hurry to barricade the path downstairs. If it had simply become a dumping ground, you’d expect at least one person to have pissed on it or scribbled graffiti somewhere, but the place was surprisingly spotless.

There weren’t even any red footprints.

After signaling to Lee Sejun and Shin Nain that it was safe to enter, I adjusted my grip on my rifle. The lower stairs were blocked, so it was time for us to head upstairs to the second floor.

As we climbed, I kept an eye on both of them.

Shin Nain remained visibly tense. Meanwhile, Lee Sejun glanced toward the blocked stairwell below before muttering to himself.

"Maybe nobody used the stairs much.”

After that, a heavy silence settled over us.

The only sounds were bits of concrete dust and shattered glass crunching beneath our boots. Debris left behind by the bombardments.

-Crunch, crunch.

Countless tiny fragments cracked and rolled beneath our combat boots. The noise seemed to make the air inside my gas mask feel even more humid. Beyond the lenses, the world was enveloped in thick fog. A mysterious terror hung over everything.

People imagined hell as a place filled with roaring flames and the stench of sulfur. I've started changing my mind about that lately.

Hell wasn't bright nor lively.

It’s a dark, damp place. A place where humanity has been judged unworthy even of eternal punishment. A place that doesn’t bother applying concepts like good and evil to mankind anymore.

Hell is a place where you’re not even granted the chance to burn and give off light before you die.

And right now, we were in hell.

The fog shifted ever so slightly with each step we Supreme Archmages took. The tension, that there might be corpses or monsters lurking beneath that fog, made my heart pound so hard that it hurt.

At the same time, we found traces that people had once lived here.

"Candles?”

Melted wax and burned-out candles lined both sides of the hallway.

Just in case, I swept the area with Alteration-type Eyes-branch Stage 1 magic, but no red footprints appeared. That didn’t mean it was safe. My foresight only predicted threats from moving targets, monsters, and only 10 seconds ahead.

If a monster were lying in ambush and attacked within that 10-second window, we’d still be screwed.

So I shouldered my rifle and watched every intersection, corner, and doorway. Then I waited exactly 10 seconds. Even after several rounds of waiting, no red footprints appeared. I turned to Shin Nain.

"Hey, Shitmaster. Hear anything?”

"The babies are crying…not nearby. They’re deeper inside.”

"Let’s quickly clear this place room by room.”

Lee Sejun swallowed hard. At this point, our formation of the Supreme Archmages was finalized.

The dangerous job of checking rooms fell to me, Baek Jemin. Shin Nain and Lee Sejun would guard the hallway for any monsters that might emerge. We agreed that every door we passed had to be shut behind us so we’d hear it if something burst through. And all three of us had to remain within sight of one another at all times.

Once those rules were established, the search truly began.

I had no idea how much time had passed. 10 minutes? Maybe there were only 17 minutes remaining.

I didn't hesitate. Since the magical backlash was so weak here, I used my ability as much as I wanted. I rounded corners, yanked open closed doors, and quickly swept through rooms. My Alteration-type Eyes-branch Stage 1 magic dramatically reduced the burden of constantly worrying about hidden threats.

-Bang.

Empty.

-Rattle.

Locked. I immediately adjusted my grip on my rifle.

I then slammed the stock into the door and kicked it open.

-Crash!

Dust exploded into the beam of my light. Keeping my rifle shouldered, I quickly scanned the room.

After roughly 10 seconds, the dust settled enough for a strange sight to reveal itself.

At that moment, Lee Sejun asked in a slightly shaky voice,

"Jemin-ssi, do you see anything?”

"Bloodstains and clothes.”

I slowly approached and knelt on one knee to get a better look at what lay beneath the dust and fog.

Clothing covered in dark, dried blood. They ranged from white shirts that had yellowed from being unwashed for far too long to padded jackets with frayed collars. It was clear proof that people had once lived here.

The problem was that all of those clothes were mixed together with bloodstains.

Just in case, I grabbed the edge of one relatively clean garment and tugged on it. The sound of dried blood flaking apart echoed softly as I pulled it free. It was old. Had a monster attacked the people here?

I searched the room more thoroughly, but there was nothing else left. The place had once been an examination room. Now it contained only clothes stained with mysterious bloodstains. There wasn’t enough time to theorize or imagine what had happened.

A chill crawled down my spine as I stood.

"Everybody get ready to fight. A monster definitely came through here.”

"..."

After seeing Shin Nain and Lee Sejun silently tighten their grips on their rifles, I moved on to search the other rooms.

-Click.

The doorknob turned easily. Inside were signs of resistance. Bloody handprints stretched across the wall and floor before abruptly ending. Whatever had happened, they hadn’t been dragged toward the window.

Judging by the direction of the smeared handprints, they seemed to have been dragged out into the hallway. Yet the trail stopped before it ever reached the hallway.

Instead, a thick bloodstain had dried near the doorway. As if something had exploded there. Other than that, nothing stood out.

I shut the room’s door again.

Time to check the next one.

-Bang, bangbang!

This room's doorknob was broken. For a moment I considered shooting it open, but firing a gun recklessly might attract monsters. Who was to say they couldn’t follow the smell of gunpowder? So I chose to force it open with the butt of my rifle again.

I left the selector on safe. There was still a chance I could discharge accidentally, but at this point it was all or nothing.

After smashing the doorknob several times with the rifle stock, I kicked the door open.

-Bang!

I quickly swept the room. Waving away the billowing dust, I narrowed my eyes and looked around.

There were no footprints. Instead, there was a strange symbol.

It looked like a bowl-shaped character.

For a second I wondered if it was a magic symbol, but it lacked that familiar sensation of having my mind forcibly stirred around. What stood out instead were the bloodstains. Someone had drawn it with a blood-soaked hand. The streaks where the blood had run downward were still visible.

Was that all?

This room resembled the second one. Blood-soaked clothes lay scattered everywhere.

The difference was that several bags, including school backpacks, had been neatly lined up against the wall. I headed over and slung my rifle onto my right shoulder before quickly checking their contents.

There were half-eaten snack bags, spoiled triangle kimbap smelled of rot, half.finished tuna cans covered in mold, sticky drink cans glued to the bottoms of backpacks…

The traces of people who had once lived here were unmistakable.

Then I spotted a notebook that had been violently torn apart. I picked it up and speed-read through it.

There wasn’t much inside.

Mostly curses aimed at the people outside by someone abandoned in Seoul. If I summarized the entries that still sounded relatively sane, they went something like this:

-Requests begging them to stop the shelling were ignored.

-Vehicles came nearby. They weren’t relief vehicles. A newlywed couple who approached them was killed.

-Even here, babies were born. I want those babies to see sunlight.

After that, the writing devolved into madness. Stuff like “I hope everyone outside dies,” “We’ll break through the blockade and spread the monsters so everyone dies together,” “Let’s help the monsters and get revenge on the government and military,” and so on.

There was nothing else of value.

I tossed the notebook aside and tightened my grip on my rifle again.

The room deepest inside and furthest from the stairs was where the crying of babies was supposedly coming from. When I stepped back into the hallway, Shin Nain and Lee Sejun already had their rifles shouldered, aiming down the corridor.

Maintaining a perfect firing stance, Lee Sejun spoke up.

"Jemin-ssi, you took a while this time.”

"There was still food left in there. They didn’t just starve to death. Something happened here. Stay sharp.”

The three of us Alteration-type wizards from Supreme Archmages quickly formed up and advanced toward the innermost room.

The red footprints still weren’t visible. When I asked Shin Nain to check, he nodded.

Then, standing before the door to the deepest room in the building, even Lee Sejun and I could hear the crying babies.

-Waaah…… Waaaah……

Something swelled up from the depths of my heart.

It wasn’t a single emotion. It was far too complicated to describe it like that.

The first thing that hit me was sorrow. Sorrow that babies had been left behind in a place like this. Then came mourning for the noble people who had tried to protect them even in such a hellish situation.

And after that came righteous anger toward the circumstances that had forced such absurdity upon them.

If there was anything in the world capable of answering me, I wanted to ask what exactly South Korea had done to deserve this.

Why us? Why humanity? Why South Korea, a tiny country at the edge of this world, of all places?

I pushed those questions aside and reached for the door, then it happened.

-Tap.

"Jemin-ssi.”

Shin Nain grabbed my shoulder firmly.

"You’re not that heroic of a person.”

"..."

"You came here for magic. Sejun-ssi came because he wanted to repay his debt to the country. And I came to perform penance before God through holy war. There’s not a single person here who came because they wanted to save some heretics.”

I slowly closed my eyes.

It was insane, but I needed the moment to sort out my thoughts.

A few seconds later, I opened them again. The crying was still there.

-Waaah, waah. 

I could picture an infant kicking its tiny limbs while waiting for someone to protect it, but my mind and heart remained as cold as ice.

Lee Sejun seemed to have reached a similar conclusion.

He tucked his rifle beneath his right arm and absentmindedly touched the grenade hanging from his belt. It seemed he had steadied his resolve.

At that moment, I recited the motto of the Supreme Archmages.

Madness against madness.

Absurdity against absurdity.

We shall enter hell before it encroaches upon us.

"Hup!”

-Bang!

I kicked the door open and rushed inside.

Alteration-type Eyes-branch, Stage 1. My 10-second foresight finally revealed red footprints. They crawled forward at a painfully slow pace.

Slow enough that I could've killed them without foresight.

Then I saw the owners of those footprints, the world splitting into two overlapping visions.

One was the ordinary human view. The sight I saw when I wasn’t using magic.

There, abandoned babies lay wrapped in stained swaddling cloth that still held the faint warmth of human touch.

Their tiny limbs flailed as they cried. The desperate wails seemed to plead for life itself, to survive. A surge of pity welled up inside me.

"Waaah, waaah…”

However, the world seen through magic was entirely different.

What lay wrapped in those swaddling clothes were merely silhouettes that looked like babies. The dense fog, blankets, and crying concealed their true nature, but my magical sight peeled away that disguise.

Then a memory resurfaced inside of me. Years ago, I’d fallen for one of those old internet shock posts and ended up seeing pictures of malformed tumors.

Ateratoma, I think it was called.

A type of cancer that grows with half-formed teeth, eyes, and random organs protruding from it. And as much as I hated to admit it, cancer was a form of life, too.

It simply wanted to survive.

Even if that meant finding a new host when the current one died.

The things wrapped in those blankets were teratomas, and they were pretending to be babies. Crude, blasphemous imitations of the human form.

Limbs covered in teeth flailed wildly, meaningless hearts pulsed in exposed flesh, and eyeless eyes rolled toward us. What emerged from the parted lips embedded in their throats were the shrieks of monsters.

"Waaah..."

-Click.

All three of us raised our rifles and took aim instantly.

The selector switch was switched to semi-auto. Our fingers were on the trigger.

"Uwaaaaaaargh!”

Gunfire erupted along with something that sounded like something halfway between a battle cry and a scream coming from Lee Sejun.

Spent casings fell heavily onto bloodstained clothing. Muzzle flashes burst like lightning. The masses of tumorous flesh exploded apart. 

The teratomas immediately stopped pretending. Their grotesque bodies scuttled forward, crawling toward us with surprising speed. all while continuing to cry like babies, trying to avoid our gunfire.

"Waaaah! Waah!”

Every time they cried, my vision dimmed, as though static had appeared before my eyes.

That was when I realized it. A psychic attack.

Those things exploited one of humanity’s deepest instincts. The urge to protect children. The monsters used that noble human compassion as bait.

Creatures that used the cries of helpless infants to suppress even humanity’s instinct for self-preservation.

Nightmarish beings that only those with survival instincts cold enough to override their love for humanity, or those who had awakened magic and seen through contradiction, could hope to fight!

"Waaaaaah!”

When my muzzle wavered for a brief moment, the teratomas surged closer.

Only then did I understand why nobody had simply tossed grenades in first. Why we’d chosen to enter even though it was a dangerous gamble.

The subconscious instinct of our species. The moral revulsion toward killing babies. Even after suspecting they were monsters, we’d chosen the worst option instead of the safest one.

All for a 1% miracle.

Hoping against hope that, somehow, genuine human compassion had protected real babies in this hell. That a miracle had actually happened…!

“In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Satan, begone!”

-Ratatatatata!

Several red footprints vanished instantly.

It was thanks to Shin Nain.

Through the stinging gunpowder smoke and flashing muzzle bursts, he fired without hesitation.

But there were too many, so we couldn’t kill them all at range. Lee Sejun and I prepared for close combat.

There wasn’t even time to scatter blood from my right hand to activate my Hand-branch magic.

I grabbed my rifle by the still-warm barrel and swung it like a club.

At the same time, I activated Eye-branch Stage 2.

My suffering stretched longer than any moment I had ever known...

-Thud!

A leaping teratoma slammed into my rifle stock and burst apart.

The moment its red footprints broke off and launched upward, the fog scattered just enough for my foresight to show me where it would land.

Calculating the 10-second delay and predicting the future, I swung my rifle to swat away charging teratomas. It wasn’t easy but manageable. With Eyes-branch Stage 2 magic stunning them on top of everything else, fighting them in close quarters was actually starting to feel easier than shooting them.

The real surprise was Lee Sejun.

The moment I knocked one teratoma away and tucked my rifle beneath my arm, Lee Sejun was already sweeping through them like he was swinging a baseball bat.

"Lee Sejun, I'm gonna blink once! Hold the line!”

-Blink.

"Uwaaaaaagh! Aaaagh! Agh!”

Listening to his battle cries, I bit down on my left hand hard.

The effect of Eyes-branch Stage 2 was unmistakable.

The entire pack of teratomas flinched and froze. And Lee Sejun went beyond just screaming. He seemed to be in a state of rage, kicking them one by one with his combat boots and grinding them underfoot.

"Die! Die! Die!”

Shin Nain, on the other hand, seemed almost relaxed.

"What a relief. They aren’t real humans after all. I won’t be shaken by baby cries again.”

The bastard was firing with such precision and speed you’d think he’d never been rattled in the first place.

-Baaang, bang...

I followed his lead, firing without hesitation.

The creatures were so slow that hitting them was easy. Whenever a bullet skipped across the floor, another tumor-mass would explode apart. Their durability was pathetic. 

If you managed to resist the teratomas’ psychic attack, they weren’t much of a threat at all.

They fought in groups, but they were weak. They could leap, but their movements were predictable.

-Blink.

When I opened my eyes again, every teratoma was dead.

Apparently they weren't tough bastards like Amalgams or Predator Spines. Honestly, they felt kind of underwhelming.

At least, that was what I thought in my head.

As the adrenaline faded and my senses slowly returned, the reality of the situation finally set in.

-Huuff, huuff—.

My breathing was rough.

The air escaping through my gas mask filter carried a sweet scent mixed with the smell of rubber.

Dried saliva clung to the corners of my mouth. Then a crushing wave of exhaustion settled onto my shoulders. I slapped my knee with my left hand to steady my slightly trembling legs.

For a while, the room contained nothing but the corpses of those tumor-creatures and the sound of breathing through gas masks.

"Reload.”

Nobody even considered saving partially spent magazines.

The moment I said it, we all swapped them out regardless of how many rounds remained. Everyone seemed to have switched to fresh 30-round magazines. The clunky box magazines were gone.

-Clack.

The sight of spent casings tangled among melting flesh made me sigh.

"I’ll finish searching the room. Shitmaster, Sejun-ssi. Watch the hallway.”

"...Yes."

"In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the name of our Heavenly Father.”

I had no idea how many minutes had passed.

Apparently the people outside had heard the gunfire. The static pouring from the radio Lee Sejun was carrying grew noticeably louder. The problem was that the reception was terrible, making it impossible to make out a single word.

Deciding that we could deal with them later, I quickly resumed my search.

Only then did I get a proper look at the room. The entire place was saturated with gunpowder smoke and blood.

Bloody handprints covered the walls from top to bottom. They didn’t resemble symbols or writing. They looked more like the marks left behind by people clawing at the walls in agony.

Beneath these handprints, however, sat a thick notebook with a pen beside it.

I walked over, knelt down, and opened it.

The pages were packed with notes written by an anonymous author.

Eyes - Perception, Distortion?

Ears - Fate?, Detection

Hand - Intelligence, Alchemy?

Heart - Life?, Enchancement

Tongue - Acceptance, Change

+ Every stage appears to guide the user’s thought process. When requesting explanations from wizards, the words "Retrospection" for Stage 1 and "Grief" for Stage 2 appear repeatedly.

+ Magical aptitude seems to vary depending on how closely a person aligns with the meaning symbolized by each body part. It seems thoughts and emotions influence it.

+ Hand-branch magic Stage 1 is highly versatile. Its duration is short, but handprints can block monster attacks to some extent. When I coated a club with it and swung, the monster took meaningful damage.

* I’m running out of blood.

** It only seems to work with blood drawn from the right hand.

*** I got someone killed for nothing.

+ Someone who knows the Tongue symbol has joined us. A new form of magic.

* I’ve awakened it. It’s Acceptance and Change.

** The side effects are worse than the other branches.

+ I’ve realized something. Humanity cannot win this war.

* We can’t win because we love ourselves too much.

** We must accept the fact that humanity isn’t special.

*** I’ve decided to abandon Tongue-branch magic.

+ The Tongue magic symbol is on the final page.

* The sound of babies crying echoes endlessly.

** Everyone capable of killing them is already dead.

+ Avoid the crying babies.

*t*t*

I silently thanked the author of the journal.

This was seriously perfect. It wasn’t cluttered with dramatic prose or endless poetic nonsense like Father Jeon Yonghwan’s writing.

It was written in straightforward Korean, making it easy for readers to digest. What more could I ask for? Without hesitation, I flipped to the final page of the journal.

Then I laid the notebook down amid the lingering haze of gunpowder smoke and fog.

As I did that, the meaningless symbol began to change, gradually transforming into something that actually seemed to hold significance.

Eventually the symbol revealed itself to be a semicircle with a vertical line running through its center. Branch-like lines alternating from left and right extended from it. It looked vaguely like a key.

It was a very strange symbol.

Naturally, the backlash from learning a new spell hit me all at once.

"Bleegh, ugh…”

"Jemin-ssi?”

"Blegh!”

Holy hell, it burned.

It felt like someone had dunked my tongue into a vat of chili oil and left it there to marinate. Tears streamed down my face. Goddammit, those were tears I’d been saving from my parents’ funeral, and now they were pouring down my cheeks…!

This was no time to be holding a rifle.

I practically threw the gun onto the ground, yanked open my canteen, and desperately poured water over my tongue.

For a brief moment, the cold water seemed to soothe it. Then the water itself started feeling like it had been mixed with chili powder.

"Ghaaah! Haah! Uwah!”

I swear, even chemical warfare training wasn’t this spicy.

I thought I was going to die. I lifted my mask slightly, and blood-tinged saliva spilled out in strings.

I could hear Lee Sejun and Shin Nain saying something, but I couldn’t make out a single word.

I didn’t know how long I lay doubled over like that.

At some point, the fiery burning faded. My tongue began feeling cold and slightly sticky like melted ice cream.

Only then did I spit out a mouthful of saliva and put my gas mask back on.

When I looked up, Lee Sejun was staring down at me like I was an idiot.

"Jemin-ssi, this is what happens when you learn random magic without thinking.”

"You should try learning some yourself."

"Hah. Why can’t our magic be the kind that throws fireballs and shoots lightning…?”

Complaints of a mortal like Lee Sejun didn’t matter to me.

What really mattered was the icy stare Shin Nain was giving me.

"I can still hear the babies crying. Let’s leave and fast.”

"Wait, wait.”

I expertly tucked the journal into the waistband of my pants. There wasn’t anywhere better to put it, so I entrusted its safety to the elastic band of my underwear. Combined with my belt, that made it a double-lock security system.

When I picked my rifle back up after putting away the journal, the look in Lee Sejun’s eyes bordered on disgust.

"Ugh, shit. You’re planning to hand that over with ass hair on it?”

"There are things way nastier than my body hair. Let’s move.”

Getting out was quick.

As we’d already seen on the way in, the upper floors and rooftop had taken the brunt of the bombardment. The second floor still seemed relatively intact.

Despite all the tension, I didn’t sense any immediate danger. The only threat was Shin Nain insisting he could still hear babies crying.

We finally encountered that threat when we reached the 1st floor lobby.

The Taeguk Jesus Brigade should have been there, but they weren’t.

Instead, Shin Nain stared into a dark hallway untouched by our lights and spoke in a slightly trembling voice.

"The babies are crying..."

"What about the old men and ladies who went in there?”

At Lee Sejun’s tactless question, Shin Nain didn’t answer.

Or rather, he couldn’t.

We couldn’t leave right away. Instead, we stood there for a while, rifles aimed down the dim first-floor hallway. 

When I peered beyond it using Alteration-type Eyes-branch, Stage 1, I could see red footprints, but they weren’t approaching us. Instead, they lingered in the darkness, circling beneath the shadows as if staring us down.

I didn’t know how those teratomas reproduced.

If I had to guess, since they were essentially monstrous cancer cells, they probably preyed upon a species’ instincts, drawing victims close before borrowing in and spreading their tumors.

I imagined them latching on like a nursing infant, whimpering and curling up like a baby nestled in its father’s arms. Perhaps they latched on like a pacifier, weaving flesh into flesh until they became one with the host.

The victim would eventually be consumed, scattering beneath a mass of tumors and transformed into more teratomas.

And yet people couldn’t bring themselves to kill them because they wore the guise of babies, because they cried with the voice of babies.

They were so sacred and pure in appearance that even in a hellscape like this, people hesitated despite knowing they were monsters. And so they met blasphemous deaths with tears in their eyes.

Those people had worn Taeguk flag capes and marched under a ridiculous name…

But one thing was certain. They had been brave enough to walk willingly into this hell.

I patted Shin Nain on the back. He still couldn’t force himself to move.

"Let’s go."

Only us three, the Supreme Archmages, returned.

The armored vehicle’s machine-gun operator flinched when he saw us. Once we climbed inside, the driver glanced our way and asked,

"What about the people who went in with you? The ones wearing the flag capes?”

Shin Nain clasped his hands together in prayer, unable to remove his gas mask. Lee Sejun took his mask off and squeezed his eyes shut.

Only I removed mine and answered him properly.

"They aren't coming back. Let’s move.”

Only then did the armored vehicle’s hatch close. The wheels began to turn.

At last, I slumped forward and let out a long sigh.

There were no eternal flames, nor devils torturing the damned.

And yet we were undoubtedly in hell.