Chapter 49: Seoul 2028

[Translator – Aren]

Once everyone had woken up, not a single person crawled back into their sleeping bag.

We were all too busy wondering what exactly that thing had been. That pale yellow gaze that had pierced through the fog and pushed it aside.

I was trying to organize my thoughts about what kind of monster its owner could be. If it had legs, we’d at least have heard heavy footsteps, but there had been nothing. We’d only realized something was approaching after the fog itself began to part.

Without even realizing it, I’d thought of it as swimming through the deep sea brought to the surface land, and honestly, the description fit better than I expected. Something that enormous moved without causing a single vibration or sound. There hadn’t even been the beating of wings.

So how exactly had it moved?

I had no idea. Neither did the other Supreme Archmages.

There was only one thing we knew for certain. Even the Seoul wizards hid from that monster. Pastor Park Yohan removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

"Unless we’re inside a room surrounded by some seriously thick walls, we stay underground.”

"Agreed."

Maybe that was why the survivors at Jangji Station had refused to venture aboveground. Maybe it hadn’t been because of the Seoul wizards at all but because of that unknown monster.

We all tried to go back to sleep, but naturally, none of us could.

Or rather, we were exhausted enough that our eyelids kept drooping shut, yet our minds remained painfully awake.

Everyone leaned against the barricade or the wall with their eyes closed, doing nothing but breathing. Normally Shin Nain or Lee Sejun would’ve been spouting nonsense to liven things up a little. This time, however, no one said a word.

Just as you instinctively understood that getting hit by a flying blade meant death, we needed to know why we’d all instinctively believed that making direct eye contact with that thing meant certain doom.

Without expecting an answer, I muttered to myself.

"Think that’s another unidentified species?”

Unexpectedly, Hamza answered.

He remained curled up with his eyes closed.

"I don’t know. The military pulled out about 3 months ago. It could’ve appeared after that.”

"I guess that’s possible. Look what happened in barely 4 months.”

We’d joked about Seoul having turned into a completely different world or hell itself, but today was the first time those words had truly sunk in.

Maybe, deep down, I’d still believed Seoul belonged to humanity. Seeing the shattered concrete left behind by the bombardments made me subconsciously think that people used to live here, and somehow that thought had reassured me.

Hmm. Or maybe that wasn’t it. The bigger reason was that I’d believed a draw was still possible.

‘The blockade line getting breached? Monsters spreading everywhere? No problem. We could always just nuke the entire Korean Peninsula and hit the reset button~’ That absurdly simple mindset had quietly become my psychological safety net. ‘Even if I fail, it’s fine. We can just all die together after getting nuked.’

But now, feeling the heavy, cold weight of the rifle in my arms, a terrifying thought crept into my mind.

What if there were monsters that survived a nuclear blast?

Right now, our nuclear weapons were humanity’s last hope. Not because it was some ultimate final weapon, but because it answered one fundamental question. "Can humanity’s physical force still kill these things or no?" That belief that “nukes will end this” was the only thing keeping human civilization from collapsing into absolute panic. 

If the nukes wiped out every monster, that would be the happy ending. Sure, 50 million Koreans would be erased in nuclear fire, but the other 7.97 billion people would survive.

But if the nukes fell and something still walked away alive…

......Then we had to learn magic.

The magic symbols that had flared inside my head when that gaze turned toward us still felt vividly burned into my memory. Magic wasn’t just another supernatural power. It was a ladder that might someday lead to omnipotence and humanity's only means of survival. As time passed the gap between those who could wield magic and those who couldn’t would only become more obvious.

With those thoughts in mind, I closed my eyes and simply let the time pass.

The sound of the wind slipping through the shattered windows, the rustling sleeping bags, and the growling of empty stomachs.

At some point, my eyelids began to itch slightly. When I opened my eyes, I saw the pitch-black night fog slowly taking on a faint gray tint.

Not that we could see any farther than before.

"Anybody actually asleep?”

"Nope."

Lee Sejun answered with a sleepy yawn, while Shin Nain, looking a little better than before, adjusted his headset.

After what we’d gone through in the middle of the night, everyone looked completely drained. Fortunately, there was one miracle cure for drowsiness. People wake up fast when they have something to focus on. And, as luck would have it, we had exactly that.

I dug through my belongings and pulled out the small booklet I’d carefully packed away, along with a ballpoint pen. Everyone immediately gave me strange looks.

"What are you doing, Baek Jemin…? This isn’t the time to fool around.”

"Let’s just use the thick fog to cram some magic symbols into our heads. We’re all exhausted. I doubt we’re doing any serious scouting right now anyway.”

"Won’t looking at those just make us dizzy?”

The pastor still sounded unconvinced. The other three, however, seemed to agree with me.

Lee Sejun, driven by what he could gain, Shin Nain, who never stopped calling it Holy Alteration Battle Arts, and even Hamza, all eagerly accepted copies of my Magic Crash Course booklet.

Each of us drew the magic symbols we knew and showed them to everyone else. Naturally, we threw up.

"Bleeeeeegh…”

We failed to acquire the Heart and Ears-branch.

Still, the side effects were definitely milder than before. Back outside, trying to study them had left us dizzy for 30 minutes while it felt like needles were being driven into our brains. This time, we only ended up vomiting up what we'd eaten.

If we kept bashing our heads against this while surrounded by dense fog, I felt like we’d eventually learn them. Eventually……

Pastor Park Yohan patted my shoulder and clicked his tongue.

"You noticed that monster last night, didn’t you? Maybe the reason no other monsters are coming around is because that thing’s here. Staying in one place is dangerous.”

"Uugh…Man. If I could just learn the heart-branch."

"Kid. It’s only our third day. Don’t you think you’re getting a little greedy?”

"Pastor, these days everybody’s looking for cheats, you know? If anything, we’re the old-school grinders here, actually putting in real effort.”

Just look at all those stories with worlds where phenomena like this appeared.

Either there’s a status window, or the protagonist has some heaven-defying talent and levels up just by breathing. Meanwhile, we Supreme Archmages were painstakingly learning magic one step at a time, while vomiting our guts out.

Lee Sejun and Shin Nain both nodded in agreement.

"Isn’t this basically the same as working out?”

"The devil is always the one promising easy power. I much prefer Holy Alteration Battle Arts that grant strength through hardship and trials.”

"You people are unbelievable. What about you, Hamza?”

"Bleeeeegh…”

The pastor had assumed Hamza would probably agree with him. Instead, he was still busy throwing up.

Our Alteration-type trio had long since mastered the art of vomiting without getting any on our clothes ourselves. Hamza, on the other hand, was a Dogma-type wizard, so he was hunched over against the barricade, retching miserably.

Yet another reminder that Dogma-type wizards had a much harder time learning Alteration-type magic symbols.

Ironically, Hamza feeling awful worked out pretty well for us.

Normally, we’d have gotten up immediately, packed everything away, and moved out. But with even one porter being valuable, Hamza being completely out of commission forced us to take a proper break. So while he recovered, we focused on getting ourselves ready.

Packing up the sleeping bags and gear came first.

We also cracked open the canned food we’d scavenged from the 7th floor of the department store and called it breakfast. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a single Spam or Richam in sight. A real shame. People always insisted on frying it first, but honestly, Spam tasted great even straight out of the can.

Everyone else, however, looked at me like I was insane.

Using chopsticks, he’d wiped down with a tissue. The pastor opened a can of tuna and raised an eyebrow.

"You eat ham raw too? Isn’t the whole point that you’re supposed to fry it?”

"You really can eat it straight out of the can.”

"I mean, you won’t die, so I guess there’s no problem.”

He shot back with a look that was dripping with disdain.

Honestly I felt wronged, but I didn’t feel like arguing. Ham really does taste good without cooking it… Maybe this was how sashimi lovers felt every time someone told them to just eat grilled fish instead.

Meanwhile, Lee Sejun calmly placed a spoonful of tuna on top of a hardtack cracker.

I bet it’d taste even better with Spam instead.”

"Yeah. I wonder if there’s any left somewhere.”

It was an offhand remark, yet somehow, it became a surprisingly meaningful secondary objective.

The main reason I, Baek Jemin, had come to Seoul was to learn magic. Saving Korea from getting nuked? That was the mission the soldiers had signed up for. Honestly, after everything we’d seen, I was starting to think that dropping the nukes might not be such a bad idea.

The real problem was that foreign countries wouldn’t stop at just Seoul.

‘Just nuke Seoul? Why not flatten the whole Korean Peninsula? If you’re launching nukes anyway, might as well finish the job.’

It was such a perfectly rational conclusion that arguing against it was difficult. If people overseas ever saw the list of monsters we’d encountered, they’d probably start protesting over why the nukes hadn’t already been launched.

Against a backdrop this extreme, setting myself the tiny goal of finding some canned Spam actually made me smile. Once the immediate terror faded, the only things left were salty canned food and an overwhelming craving for processed meat.

Watching me grin to myself, Hamza frowned.

"Jemin-ssi. Why are you smiling?”

"Because I want Spam.”

I answered while chewing on a slice of canned peach.

That reminded me of the single can of Spam Lieutenant Shin Hangi had given me before we entered Seoul. I’d decided to save it. With outside activity so limited, Spam was a precious commodity. 

So naturally, I’d eat it in secret.

Just as I finished making that sole vow, the phone vibrated again.

-Bzzzt.

I pulled the dark blue phone from my pocket and held it up for the Supreme Archmages to see.

"See. I turned it off. It keeps turning itself back on.”

After firmly establishing that this wasn’t my fault, I checked the screen.

Just as expected. With its familiar KakaoTalk notification, another message from an unknown sender appeared.

[Fog density decreasing. Non-wizard personnel are forbidden from going outside. Exercise caution around rooftops and open skies.]

The pastor was the first to react.

"Didn’t you say the fog reduces magic’s backlash? So why are people who aren’t wizards forbidden from going outside?”

"The Seoul wizards have been living here for 4 months. They obviously know a lot more than we do. And considering they’re probably not friendly…that makes things difficult.”

Lee Sejun scratched his beard and shrugged.

The messages were clearly written under the assumption that every Seoul wizard already understood the context. For outsiders, they were frustratingly incomprehensible. I always thought only rural towns were big on gatekeeping outsiders. Turns out, Seoul was just as bad.

And then, the thunder of artillery began echoing in the distance.

Fortunately, it wasn’t close. The bombardment was aimed south, back toward the direction we’d come from. Instead, strange groans and mournful cries flowed down the roads like an outgoing tide.

Staring out through the shattered windows, Shin Nain quietly nodded.

"They’ve probably moved toward the front."

"The guys on the frontline are having a rough day.”

* * *

April 17th, 2028, 7:35 AM.

Day 3 of our expedition.

With the ceiling shaking from the distant bombardment and dust raining down around us, we packed up our gear. After checking our gas masks with a few quick breaths, we set off once more. Our immediate destination was still Konkuk University. The plan was to make contact with the friendly wizard known as Go Ryeoha.

To do that, we’d alternate between traveling aboveground and using Line 8 of the subway, depending on what conditions looked like.

Since the bombardment had begun and we’d confirmed that monster hordes were on the move, we decided against rushing outside. Instead, we searched the outlet mall connected to the department store. Outside of the electronics section, everything had either already been looted or was useless.

Our biggest haul ended up being a handful of AA batteries.

After that, we checked the department store directory and headed toward the subway. As expected from a massive shopping complex, it was connected directly to the nearby station through an underground passage..

Back at Jangji Station, we’d encountered that human slime thing, and we’d been forced aboveground before we had a chance to properly explore. If this underground passage let us reach the station safely, it would be incredibly useful.

Unfortunately, that plan was abandoned the moment we approached the tunnel.

"Shh."

Quietly leading the way, Hamza raised a hand. He might not always know the right answer, but when it came to spotting the wrong one, his instincts were terrifyingly accurate. The moment he signaled us to stop, we knew something was wrong.

Instead of heading underground, we waited near the basement entrance on the first floor while Shin Nain finished his detection.

Thankfully, our friendly neighborhood monsters decided to save Shin Nain the trouble of using his Ears-branch, Stage 2 magic. A familiar sound echoed up the stairwell from below.

-Gurglegurglegurglegurgle…..

Ah~ That sound was far too familiar.

The military called it Amalgam subspecies Blood-cord Delta, but we just called them Blood Webs.

The things that devoured wizards, turned them into puppets, and assaulted their victims’ minds.

Their upper jaws had been torn away, leaving their tongues hanging limply from ruined mouths as they desperately tried to speak through the holes where their vocal cords used to be. That unmistakable noise echoed through the underground passage. Since they hadn’t climbed up to the first floor, they’d apparently made the basement their nest.

Suddenly it made sense why such a massive department store didn’t have a proper survivor settlement and why not a single Seoul wizard was present here.

With artillery and roaming monster hordes making travel aboveground so difficult, neither inexperienced wizards nor ordinary survivors could break through a Blood Web’s territory. The soldiers who’d reached the department store near Jangji Station had probably discovered the Blood Web too and decided it was still better to risk traveling aboveground.

We could deal with one. It would just be a gigantic pain in the ass.

I glanced over at Lee Sejun and Shin Nain. Judging by their expressions, they’d reached exactly the same conclusion. Any lingering temptation disappeared instantly.

Only Pastor Park Yohan and Hamza, who had never actually encountered one of these things before, looked puzzled.

"Our Best of the Best are backing down?”

"It’s dangerous…But the three of you can’t handle it?”

It was practically a direct challenge to the Supreme Archmages’ pride, but I sure wasn’t about to take that obvious bait.

Unless we were certain a magic symbol was involved, it wasn’t the kind of monster we wanted to go looking for.

"It uses the corpses of wizards as puppets and launches mental attacks. For some reason, it can jam drones too. I don’t think it’s worth the risk to travel underground through Jangji.”

"Hooh…I can only hope they weren’t good people. Wouldn’t want to pray too often for the fires of Hell to cool down.”

"Why not?”

Personally, I figured a cooler Hell sounded pretty nice. Wouldn’t it just become a warm sauna? The pastor and Shin Nain clearly disagreed.

"They were thrown into Hell to suffer for their sins. If it’s only lukewarm, what's the point? Justice demands proper punishment!”

"That is the attitude of a true Christian. They’ve already been given every opportunity to repent. Unlike the Antichrist Pope, who only tries to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes!”

Until we were certain the bombardment wasn’t shifting toward us, there wasn’t much we could do.

So we spent the remaining time paying one last visit to the burned remains of the soldiers. We didn’t neglect weapon maintenance either. We brushed the powder residue from our rifles and yawned in front of the fallen soldiers as we worked.

It wasn’t until 10:11 AM that we were finally convinced the shelling would remain far away.

After offering one final prayer for the burned dead, the pastor adjusted his rifle sling.

"Let’s move.”

-Step, step.

We fell into formation without anyone having to say a thing. It had already proven its effectiveness after all. We left the department store at Jangji without the slightest bit of hesitation.

The sound of our boots crushed the distant thunder of artillery and the screams echoing somewhere far away as we marched into the gray sea of fog.

Only then did I finally understand what they meant when they wrote that the fog had thinned.

Inside the department store, it had been too dark to notice, but the moment we stepped outside, the difference was impossible to miss. Normally, visibility struggled to reach even 10 meters. Sometimes it dropped to barely 5 meters. But today, it looked closer to 200 meters.

One could actually make out traffic lights several blocks away.

Lee Sejun looked around in amazement.

"Seriously, people ought to live somewhere with clear air.”

The one who immediately poured cold water on our newfound optimism was Hamza.

Just as I was quietly agreeing with Lee Sejun, Hamza calmly stated the truth.

"Sejun-ssi, you’ve been deceived. This isn’t clear weather.”

"If I can see way farther than yesterday, that's clear enough for me.”

Even so, you could feel everyone relaxing a little.

Compared to yesterday’s suffocating wall of fog, this was paradise. It was enough to make the warning on the dark blue phone, about how non-wizards are forbidden from going outside, feel nonsensical.

If the fog were thinner, shouldn’t that be when ordinary people had the advantage? Yet the message claimed the exact opposite.

Could the wizards simply have made up that rule to exert authority over normal civilians? Speculation after speculation ran through my mind as we advanced along roads scarred by shell craters and buried beneath collapsed concrete.

That was when we heard it. The loud buzzing of giant wasps.

Looking up, we spotted a drone flying noisily overhead.

The pastor brightened immediately.

"Oh. Looks like the military hasn’t forgotten about us after all.”

The age of AI and drones.

For the first time in what felt like forever, we looked up into the relatively clear sky, watching the drone soar overhead with quiet admiration, until something black began drifting toward it through the fog.

It was still too far away to make out clearly, but something like a giant black plastic bag drifted lazily through the sky.

It was enormous. Even from this distance and despite looking crumpled, I could still make it out. There was no way it was the size of an ordinary grocery bag. If I had to guess, it was at least as big as one of those 100 liter garbage bags.

Up to that point, one could’ve chalked it up to coincidence. Some random object floating through the air.

The problem was there wasn’t just one.

The moment the first one appeared, more followed, gliding silently out of the fog like enormous black plastic sheets. The instant we realized something was wrong, we quietly slipped behind the debris lining the roadside without a single word exchanged.

Crawling beneath a collapsed pile of concrete, we continued watching the sky.

-Vrrrrrrrrmm—.

The heroic wasp-like buzz of the drone continued overhead until a strange sound cut through it.

-Chop!

The drone’s buzzing abruptly muffled. A moment later, something heavy hit the ground. Sound alone wasn’t enough to identify it, so I looked toward Hamza and Shin Nain. Unfortunately, with the fog thinner, the effect of magic was weaker.

"I think it’s dangerous…”

Hamza’s Dogma-type magic had become even more vague.

"It does seem to be a monster.”

"Seem?”

"I can’t hear it clearly, but it isn’t human.”

Even Shin Nain’s Ears-branch, Stage 2 magic, his ability to listen to the monster’s inner voices, had lost much of its detail.

In the end, the safest way to identify it was for me to combine Tongue-branch, Stage 1, to utilize my Eyes-branch, Stage 1, at full power.

1 minute, past, path, road near the Jangji department store.

The backlash arrived with perfect honesty.

For an instant, I almost imagined hearing something hiss. The taste buds across my tongue split open all at once. The wounds had barely healed before opening again.

Tears welled up involuntarily. My eyes felt even worse. Dry and scratchy, as though someone were gently rubbing them with a shriveled sheet of plastic or a dried-out sponge. It was revolting.

But the instant I saw what my magic revealed, I forgot the pain entirely.

It was a monster.

It floated through the sky, looking like a jellyfish, trailing countless impossibly thin tendrils beneath it. The moment anything touched one, it wrapped around its prey like a cloth sack. They seemed to move in groups, though each individual varied in size.

Ecologically speaking, it looked surprisingly ordinary for a monster.

Of course, like every monster infesting Seoul, it still looked horrifying.

It was a jellyfish, made from translucent human skin. Sheets of human skin billowed through the sky like a jellyfish’s bell covered with countless human eyes, with hands and feet protruding from random places as if innumerable people had been stitched together into a single hide.

Faces clung to its surface in uneven patches. Some stretched, some crumpled, some little more than wrinkled masks, and some eye sockets were empty, while others still held eyeballs.

Those eyes rolled endlessly every time the creature shifted position, scanning the streets below. After scanning all around it one of them spotted the brave little drone. The instant one tendril brushed it, the jellyfish dropped over it like a shroud.

The drone fell from the sky, already consumed.

After crashing, the jellyfish writhed, swelled, and then shrank over and over again until it realized that its prey wasn’t human. It slowly spat the drone back out. The countless faces covering its body merely twisted in silent screams or rolled their eyes without expression.

Then the jellyfish drifted back toward the rest of the swarm.

And that was when my magic ended. Needless to say, my stomach wasn’t strong enough to watch something like that without consequences. I immediately pulled up my gas mask.

"!!!"

You get better at throwing up after doing it enough times. I emptied my stomach in one short, violent, efficient burst, rinsed my mouth with water from my canteen, and spat again. Only after soothing my throat with the lukewarm water that had been warmed by my body heat did I turn toward the increasingly impatient Supreme Archmages.

The pastor and Lee Sejun practically shouted at the same time.

"What did you see? Baek Jemin, what kind of monster was it?”

"Jemin-ssi, stop keeping it to yourself already!”

-Hoooh……

Only Shin Nain remained calm. He’d already read enough of my thoughts to piece it together. Meanwhile, Hamza seemed to have guessed how dangerous it was. He quietly mumbled a prayer under his breath.

I was starting to worry about the initial vanguard reconnaissance unit.

Even if they were special forces, could they really survive in a place like this?

What could I even call that thing?

After thinking for a long time, I settled on a single name.

"Human-Skin Jellyfish.”

April 17th, 2028, 10:28 AM. Dawn.

We encountered the gigantic being whose yellow gaze pierced the fog.

And then, April 17th, 2028, 10:28 AM.

Day 3 of our expedition.

We encountered another previously unknown unidentified species. A swarm of tentatively named Human-Skin Jellyfish.

They drifted through the thinning fog like jellyfish swimming through the sea before lunging without warning to swallow their prey whole. A colony of monsters made entirely from human skin.