Chapter 45: The First Survivors

[Translator – Aren]

As the gunfire faded and the smell of gunpowder dissolved into the fog, the Supreme Archmages gathered one by one around the Seoul wizard’s corpse.

The first to approach was Hamza. He started muttering something in a foreign language, rattling off words that sounded vaguely like Allah this and Allah that. Then again, anyone who had actually seen and fought the Seoul wizard would probably react the same way.

Still, Hamza had made a serious mistake. He should’ve explained himself to us before apologizing to Allah.

I peeled off the cute cat-themed bandage from my left hand, now soaked with the Seoul wizard’s blood, and tossed it away. Then I flicked my hand to shake the blood from my knife.

I was only doing it because her blood felt disgusting. I wasn’t trying to intimidate anyone, but Hamza’s expression grew strangely uneasy.

"Hamza, you bastards. So you didn’t run away after all.”

"If she targeted me, I’d have died instantly. I had to wait and intervene at the most important moment.”

Hamza offered a surprisingly reasonable defense.

His actual combat ability was practically nonexistent. If he became a target, he’d either die immediately or get picked off soon after. Wouldn’t it make more sense to stay out of sight until the decisive moment and then appear when he could help his allies the most?

If I’d still been running on adrenaline, I probably would’ve told him to shut the hell up, but we’d successfully killed the Seoul wizard. I was in too good a mood to argue.

While I was nodding along to Hamza’s perfectly sensible reasoning, Lee Sejun, the man who’d landed the finishing blow, checked the cylinder of his ridiculously huge revolver and clicked his tongue.

"These rounds are really valuable. I already used two of them. Still, definitely worth it.”

"Give it here."

If I’d known this thing was such a badass weapon, I’d have been using the ridiculously huge revolver myself.

As someone who could do all sorts of nonsense with Eyes-branch magic, it only made sense that a weapon this awesome belonged in my hands. Thinking exactly that, I reached out. The moment I snatched the revolver from Lee Sejun, I nearly dropped it from surprise.

"This thing weighs almost as much as a K2!"

"Oh, come on. Stop exaggerating, Jemin-ssi. It’s lighter than that. A K2’s what, 3-4 kg? This is only about half that. It has an 8-inch barrel, so around 2 kg, maybe?”

"And you fired this one-handed and actually hit something?”

I respectfully turned the revolver around and handed it back to Lee Sejun grip-first.

This wasn't a weapon for ordinary people. It was a weapon for Lee Sejun, who’d reached Heart-branch, Stage 2. And unlike the .38 revolver I’d fired for fun at a shooting range once, this thing seemed to require actual specialized training.

Apparently this lunatic had spent his time at Suwon City Hall practicing with it.

If a delicate intellectual like me tried firing that monster, I could already see my shoulder exploding in the future. A man should know his own limits.

Since I wasn’t the type to cling to things I couldn’t use, I parted with the ridiculously huge revolver in a mature and dignified manner.

That was when Pastor Park Yohan clicked his tongue and walked over.

"Strong? What about us is strong? There were 5 of us beating up 1 person. We were supposed to win.”

"Come on, Pastor. If fights were decided by numbers alone, we should've gotten our asses kicked.”

"What kind of nonsense is that?”

"Don’t you know that in this day and age five guys ganging up on some mysterious woman would get them slaughtered instead? Look at us. Every single one of us is wearing ponchos and gas masks, hiding our faces. Meanwhile she’s walking around with her face fully exposed and smiling. That’s the classic setup for a total annihilation event.”

I kindly explained the modern evolution of horror and action-movie clichés to the hopelessly out-of-date pastor.

The Power Rangers fantasy of 5 heroes beating up 1 villain had died alongside the franchise. Nowadays, the moment 5 heavily armed people hid their faces, they were destined to be hunted down one by one by the single smiling woman showing hers. That was just how 21st-century media worked.

Unfortunately, a few words weren’t enough to bridge the generational divide. Pastor Park Yohan simply clicked his tongue and walked toward the Seoul wizard’s body.

"Baek Jemin, quit talking nonsense and get over here. Let’s see what we can salvage.”

"I think we should destroy the walkie-talkie.”

Shin Nain, who had spent the entire time silently surveying the area instead of joining the conversation, let out a short sigh.

I was wondering why this fanatic little shit was acting so unusually serious when he tapped the side of his headset with a finger and spoke.

"Three soldiers. All critically wounded. They’re going to die soon. Let’s burn this demon’s corpse, grab anything worth taking, and head over there and give them a quick baptism.”

"Baptism?”

"Maybe they want a chance to repent and go to Heaven before they die.”

This fucking lunatic.

Yet Pastor Park Yohan nodded with complete seriousness and pointed at the Seoul wizard’s corpse.

"All of you, come take a look.”

"There’s still something worth looking at?”

I’d emptied at least 2 magazines into her while trying to kill her.

The Seoul wizard had been shredded apart by bullets and grenade fragments to the point that only her legs still resemble a human body. Still, the moment I saw what the pastor was pointing at, I understood.

Beneath the Predator Spine’s ribcage, one organ remained perfectly preserved.

A heart.

And carved into it was the Heart magic symbol Lee Sejun had mentioned before. A vertical line cutting through a circle.

The symbol had been etched into the flesh like a scar, making it easy to spot.

Lee Sejun handed his ridiculously huge revolver back to Hamza and frowned.

"It definitely looks like the Heart magic symbol…but it’s a little different from mine.”

"How so?”

"The one I saw had a horizontal line. This one’s vertical.”

The moment he said that, an intriguing thought struck me. I turned my head and began searching for the chunk of tongue I’d cut off the Seoul wizard.

I had absolutely no desire to touch it with my hands, so I carefully speared it with the top of my combat knife and lifted it up. When I carried it over to the gathered Supreme Archmages standing around the corpse, Pastor Park Yohan’s eyes widened while Hamza immediately made a gagging noise.

"Wow, Baek Jemin. Don’t tell me you’re actually planning to use that.”

"Bleeeugh…"

"Use it for what, you psycho?”

Just what the hell did this damn pastor and foreign worker think of me?

I hadn’t brought the tongue over because I had some bizarre fetish. I wanted proof. I gently shook the severed tongue loose from the knife top. With a wet splat, it landed on the floor, revealing the magic symbol carved into the flesh.

But it wasn’t the same as the one I knew.

The Tongue magic symbol I’d seen before consisted of a semicircle at the bottom like a bowl. A vertical line stood at its center, and several short horizontal lines branched off that line like limbs on a tree.

The symbol on the Seoul wizard’s tongue, however, had the semicircle on top.

The semicircle sat near the root of the tongue, meaning that when the tongue was fully extended, the symbol appeared upside down.

I presented this perfectly reasonable observation. Pastor Park Yohan’s first response was to grimace. Even through the gas mask lenses, it was obvious.

"Baek Jemin, you’re overthinking it. Couldn’t she have just considered the root of the tongue to be the bottom? If that’s the case, there's nothing strange about it being upside down.”

"The vertical line on the Heart symbol definitely feels reversed, though.”

"There’s something even more important!”

Just as Pastor Park Yohan and I were about to launch into a 1-minute debate, someone interrupted us.

Hamza frowned as he looked over all of us, or more specifically, us three Alteration-type users, and his face grew slightly pale.

"This woman learned magic too. And then magic symbols appeared on her body. So then… you guys too?”

"When I got examined in Pyeongtaek, nobody said anything like that.”

Lee Sejun immediately shot the idea down. After all, he’d gone through every medical test imaginable while trying to figure out the exact effects of Heart-branch magic.

I stuck my tongue out and waved it around.

"Aao eeah?”

"Jemin-ssi, put that away. It’s gross.”

"Eeah oh."

"There’s nothing there, so put it away.”

Shin Nain was as prickly as ever.

In any case, despite Hamza’s reasonable suspicion, it seemed that our Alteration-type trio didn’t have any visible markings on our bodies. Yet the Seoul wizard clearly had magic symbols carved into her flesh. So what was the difference?

-Click.

At that moment, Shin Nain removed his magazine to check his remaining ammunition and spoke in a detached tone.

"Perhaps they appear when unbelievers die. The worship of saints or reverence toward their remains is highly heretical, but there’s nothing particularly strange about demonic remains being heretical as well. Naturally, practitioners of Holy Alteration Battle Arts are different from servants of demons.”

Filtering out the usual Shin Nain nonsense, there was actually a plausible theory buried in there.

Perhaps wizards didn’t bear visible markings while alive. Perhaps the magic symbols only appear after death, manifesting on body parts associated with the magic they had learned. But was that all? I needed to find out. After taking a deep breath, I made a decision.

"Sejun-ssi, lift your foot.”

"Huh? Okay..."

-Slice, slice

I shoved my combat knife between the ribs of the Predator Spine that had lived and died alongside the Seoul wizard. Scraping and cutting, I carved out the heart. Then I placed it neatly on top of the severed tongue right at Lee Sejun’s feet.

"Now step on it.”

"Jemin-ssi. I really don’t want to swear right now, but I think I’m about to. You want me to step on that?”

"Tsk. Do I really have to explain this in excruciating academic detail?”

"Baek Jemin, at least give us your reasoning.”

And so I did.

If a wizard’s remains possessed some kind of mystical property after death, then wizards were not only the most dangerous beings around, they were also the most valuable. At the moment it was just a hypothesis. Still, the fact that magic symbols appeared on a corpse’s body parts after death was already supernatural enough that I couldn’t dismiss the possibility.

Which meant that if there were groups hunting wizard remains, they wouldn’t ignore the fact that we had killed a Seoul wizard and retained part of her body. They might come after us to obtain it.

The odds that the remains were useful were high, but that was exactly why I didn’t want to carry them around.

"We don't know how to use them. At the same time, we can’t just hand them over to some unknown Seoul wizards. And we also can’t lug around a potentially dangerous object show effects we don’t even understand. We have no idea what the average Seoul wizard is capable of. Until we find records about this stuff or make contact with friendly locals, it’d be stupid to carry extra risks. So let’s destroy them."

After my perfectly rational and intellectual explanation, Pastor Park Yohan narrowed his eyes.

"And your real reason?"

"Holy shit, I just don’t want to carry around the tongue and heart of someone who stole people’s brains by French-kissing them and raised a Predator Spine inside their body. Can we just smash it already?”

"Okay. Accepted!”

-Crunch!

The foot of a Heart-branch, Stage 2 wizard functioned much like an industrial press. Lee Sejun’s stomp pulverized both the heart and the severed tongue. The instant he did, fog hissed out of them.

Caught completely off guard, Lee Sejun jumped backward, but it was already over. All that remained beneath his foot were fragments, crushed, flattened scraps of flesh so mangled that the magic symbols were no longer recognizable.

Meanwhile, Pastor Park Yohan rummaged through the Seoul wizard’s corpse, recovered a phone and what looked like a notebook, and handed both items to Hamza.

Meanwhile, the walkie-talkie was tossed back down at Lee Sejun’s feet.

"For now, let’s get rid of it. Sejun-ssi, give it another stomp. If the enemy used it, we shouldn’t go around using it carelessly. Curses, rituals, or whatever, if we’re not careful, it’ll come back to bite us. Our opponents are musical occultists. There’s nothing wrong with being extra cautious.”

"Ugh."

-Crunch!

Only after Lee Sejun let out a groan and crushed the walkie-talkie underfoot did we finally move on.

While we were finishing up and sorting through the Seoul wizard’s corpse, Shin Nain spoke in a bitter tone.

"One of the soldiers died. I can only hope he attended church.”

"Oh, Lord.”

The pastor let out a sigh tinged with sorrow. I found myself sighing as well while pulling my gas mask back on. 

It was unfortunate. But the man had already suffered fatal injuries, and we weren't a rescue team. Even if we’d reached him sooner, there was probably nothing we could have done.

At least we’d avenged him.

* * *

Following Shin Nain’s guidance, us Supreme Archmages headed toward the soldiers who had survived the longest.

The first soldier he led us to was crouched near the entrance to a restroom, but he was as good as dead already.

Apparently he’d chosen to end things himself.

His rifle’s muzzle was jammed into his mouth. However, his hands must have been shaking too badly. The shot had gone off at an angle and failed to kill him instantly.

All that remained was the ragged sound of breathing escaping from his blood-soaked face.

It was then that Shin Nain knelt before him, checked his name tag, and spoke.

"Corporal Hong Gisim. If you kill yourself, you won’t get into Heaven. Did you attend church?”

-Gasp, gaps...

None of us could hear a response. Only Shin Nain seemed to be carrying on both sides of the conversation.

He nodded, then he chambered a round with a click.

Rising to his feet, he aimed the muzzle directly at Corporal Hong Gisim’s head.

"Brother Hong Gisim. May you be permitted to knock upon Heaven’s gate. Amen!”

-Bang!

The ragged breathing stopped. The trembling hand that had stubbornly clung to life finally went limp.

Without saying a word, Pastor Park Yohan approached the body. He folded the soldier’s hands together and offered a brief prayer. Nearby, Shin Nain switched his rifle’s selector back to safe while the acrid smell of gunpowder drifted through the air.

Meanwhile, Hamza, Lee Sejun, and I organized the soldier’s gear. We collected his rifle, magazines, grenades, and even the filter from his gas mask. Lee Sejun went a step further and removed the identification tags hanging around the soldier’s neck.

"I guess soldiers don’t carry phones.”

"Sejun-ssi, if you start looting phones too, I’m actually going to cry.”

After the brief funeral concluded, Shin Nain started walking again.

We followed him toward the location of the final survivor.

The department store’s first through fourth floors were packed with mannequins, clothing displays, and accessory stands. That was likely the only reason the surviving soldiers had managed to hold out against the Seoul wizard. In the fog, it was nearly impossible to distinguish a mannequin from a person. At the very least, one small stroke of luck remained. 

The fact that the Seoul wizard hadn't managed to absorb every surviving soldier was, ironically, the one bit of good luck in all of this.

If she’d had more ammunition and better firearms training, us Supreme Archmages would’ve probably been the ones wiped out instead.

Considering the soldiers’ unintended contribution, this dark, fog-filled department store was still a dangerous place, but one worth spending time searching.

The last surviving soldier lay slumped near an emergency stairwell door beyond a cluster of mannequins.

Apparently he hadn’t been able to get inside. The stairwell entrance had been barricaded with display stands and piled-up mannequins. The soldier was breathing heavily. Even from nearly 20m away, the sound carried clearly through his gas mask.

-Huuuff—, huuuff—, huuuff—.

The first person to approach him was Hamza.

Kneeling beside him, Hamza opened his bag and pulled out a first-aid kit, along with a needle and thread.

"Hamza, you know first aid?”

"I…was a medical student in Pakistan.”

"Not dentistry or something, right?”

"Surgery.”

Aside from the shocking revelation that our construction-worker foreign laborer had apparently been studying to become a surgeon, the odds of saving this soldier looked slim.

Blood was pouring between the fingers clutching his side.

Judging by the amount pooled around him, he’d been bleeding for a long time. And it wasn't just his side. Blood was also streaming from his thigh. The soldier didn’t seem to have noticed the leg wound at all.

Or maybe he simply couldn’t reach it anymore.

Considering the way the Seoul wizard had been hurling chunks of concrete around, he had probably been struck by one of those or perhaps by a stray bullet.

Even so, Hamza opened the first-aid kit and pulled out a tourniquet while examining the injuries.

Despite the hopeless look on his face, his voice remained calm and steady.

"Stay calm. I studied medicine. You can make it."

"M…My gas mask…”

Without hesitation, Hamza removed it with practiced composure. 

Fate really had a twisted sense of humor.

The moment the mask came off, I recognized the face. I’d passed him several times before.

"Why is Lieutenant Shin Hangi’s driver here?”

"Shin Hangi? That guy was his driver?”

Pastor Park looked confused. Lee Sejun and Shin Nain exchanged strange looks as well. Apparently they recognized him too, being at least lightly acquainted with him.

The driver, already pale as a corpse, didn’t recognize my voice.

Well, it made sense. We’d only crossed paths a handful of times.

Still, perhaps simply hearing someone who seemed to know him was enough. His chest heaved as he began to sob.

"I-I volunteered…”

This was where our resident fanatic translator proved useful.

Shin Nain spoke in a calm, subdued voice, relaying what the soldier was trying to say.

"The initial vanguard reconnaissance. They needed more than special forces to establish footholds, so they called for volunteers among regular army personnel who would enter Seoul. Priority was given to people who had family inside the city or another reason they needed to go in.”

The soldier gasped for air, then a coughing sob escaped him. Dry saliva dribbled down the corner of his mouth.

"M-mom…in a place like this…”

"..."

"What if she's all alone in a place like this…?”

Without saying a word, Hamza continued trying to stop the bleeding.

But there wasn’t enough equipment, supplies, or time left to rekindle a life that was already fading away. Shin Nain slowly closed his eyes. Then he raised one hand and made a small gesture.

Dead.

I placed a hand on Hamza’s shoulder and helped him stand.

"Just pray for the fires of Hell to be turned down a few degrees.”

"..."

"Even if you stop the bleeding, he can’t be evacuated from here. He would’ve died on the way back anyway.”

"...Yes."

Even so, Hamza couldn’t give up until he’d finished treating the soldier’s wounds.

Only after completing the futile first aid did he finally let go. He wiped his blood-soaked hands against his pants, reorganized the medical kit, and packed it back into his bag. While he was doing that, Pastor Park Yohan approached me.

"did you know him?”

"His mother was named Han Sookja. This driver used to tell me that his mom was still somewhere in Seoul.”

"Amen. A righteous man who cared for his family. I’m sure he attended church in life.”

I understood that this was his way of offering comfort.

And honestly, it was a lot warmer than saying the guy was an unbeliever who’d go straight to Hell.

Just like before, we collected the magazines and grenades. And once again, Lee Sejun was the only one who bothered taking the dog tags.

There was a reason we were being so meticulous about gathering ammunition.

"It took about 2 magazines per person just to kill one Seoul wizard. How many rounds is that?”

"About 300 rounds."

"Wow. We burned through 200 rounds fighting monsters on the way here, then another 300 in this fight. We’ve already gone through almost an entire 800-round ammo can in just 2 days.”

The idea of buffing bullets with the blood from my right hand was starting to sound increasingly more practical.

At the very least, today’s events had driven home just how important it was for all of us to start sharing magic symbols and learning each other’s magic. Still, since the day had already begun in spectacular fashion, we decided to replenish our supplies and recover the fallen soldiers.

We resigned ourselves to spending the rest of the day on it. The plan was to gather the dead soldiers and move their bodies to the second floor of the department store.

In the process, we recovered roughly 20 unused 30-round magazines. Just in case, we also grabbed 2 gas masks in good condition and 6 replacement filters. The rifles themselves were too heavy to carry around, so instead we disassembled them and kept two bolt carrier groups as spare parts.

Fortunately, thanks to the tireless efforts of our designated pack mule, Lee Sejun, collecting the bodies didn’t take long.

11 corpses.

Considering the capacity of the vehicles they’d arrived in, there should’ve been more. That was the problem. Neither Shin Nain’s past vision nor my Tongue-branch + Eyes Branch magic combo could locate the others.

"They must've scattered more than an hour ago. I can’t determine where they went. Looks like they became isolated and were hunted down one by one.”

"What about the officers?”

"One lieutenant and one sergeant first class.”

While Shin Nain and I exchanged information, Lee Sejun cut in with a sigh.

"They’re alive, right?”

"Who knows?”

We were still standing inside the department store. Visibility had improved slightly, but it remained under 20m. The place was still dark and packed with dense fog.

Even with tactical flashlights, the fog particles scattered the beams so badly that you could barely see what was right in front of you. Only I, with Eyes-branch magic, could part the mist slightly and steal brief glimpses of the silent ruin hidden beneath it. Just mere fragments.

This place would become their grave.

"Looks like the sunny spots are clear."

We headed back toward the vehicles.

Plenty of monsters had probably been stirred up by the deafening gunfire, but for the moment I couldn’t see any red footprints nearby. Another wizard might attack us at any time.

Still, these had been the first survivors we’d encountered inside Seoul.

They weren’t locals but just members of the initial vanguard reconnaissance unit that had entered ahead of us, survivors nonetheless. So we carried fuel from the drums loaded on the vehicles and poured it over the bodies.

I struck a match Hamza had handed me.

-Scritch, scritch...

The tiny flame was weak and fragile, trembling constantly. Yet against the backdrop of this filthy, dense, suffocating fog, it looked strangely beautiful.

Smiling faintly, I lowered the match onto the fuel-soaked pile of corpses.

"Anyone want to retreat?”

"Retreat? At this point it’d probably be easier to just nuke us.”

"Then all the magic would disappear. So, not happening.”

"Seriously. What are we even learning this stuff for?”

Lee Sejun barked out a laugh, earning a scolding from the pastor.

"There is no retreat in a holy war.”

"Running won’t help anyway.”

Shin Nain answered firmly, while Hamza simply sounded resigned.

No one wanted to retreat.

We Supreme Archmages stared at the burning bodies for a moment, quietly watching the flames. Then we turned our backs and started toward the upper floors of the department store.

No matter how terrified, prone to spouting insane nonsense, and filled with absolutely ridiculous dreams we were, not a single one of us seriously suggested turning back. Groping his K2 rifle, Pastor Park Yohan spoke up.

"Burning them might’ve attracted more monsters. Let’s check the upper floors. If they're safe, we can try learning that magic stuff again. You’ve all still got the booklets, right?”

"If not, we’ll write them down and share them.”

Far from retreating, we were determined to press forward.

It was only natural.

If we’d been some edgy bunch calling ourselves something pretentious like "Aphorism" or whatever, maybe we’d already be crying our eyes out and running home…

But we were the Supreme Archmages.

We were those that entered hell before it encroached upon us.

At that moment, Lee Sejun suddenly stopped.

"Erm, Jemin-ssi.”

"If this is another one of your cute anime girl gender-swap fantasies, I’m hitting you.”

My prejudice toward Lee Sejun was substantial.

Any man who wanted to cut off his dick because he thought life would be easier as a cute girl had earned this Baek Jemin’s eternal contempt.

But the moment I heard his next word, I couldn’t help but be completely dumbfounded.

"I think my Heart-branch magic just reached Stage 3."

"What?!!!"

Wait, did smashing that heart actually increase his Heart-branch magic stage?

The Supreme Archmages’ policy was revised immediately.

"Back to the Seoul wizard’s corpse!”

"The tongue’s already crushed though?”

Pastor Park Yohan sounded far too relaxed about it. I clicked my tongue.

"Then we’ll dig out the tongue root instead!"