Chapter 57: Magic Has Types

[Translator – Aren]

The magnificent church, wrapped in glass walls, towered so high its peak disappeared from view.

We barricaded ourselves inside one of its multipurpose rooms, turned it into a makeshift safehouse, and spent some time regrouping. While we were at it, I replaced the batteries in my overworked tactical flashlight. Blowing into it to clear the dust from the crevices, I snapped the new battery into place.

-Click, click.

The mechanism locked smoothly into place without problems. I switched the flashlight off, slipped it back into the pouch on my chest, and looked over my fellow Supreme Archmages. Unfortunately, after awakening Ears-branch, Stage 1 I’d gained the unpleasant side effect of occasionally hearing people's thoughts.

The one saving grace was that my Ears-branch magic was far inferior to Shin Nain’s.

Why was that a good thing?

Because from past experiences, we’d learned that the stronger a spell’s effect, the harsher its backlash. The fog reduces that backlash, but inside this multipurpose room, the fog was relatively thin. I estimated I’d still take about 70% of the full backlash.

And this was where the difference between my Ears-branch magic and Shin Nain’s became obvious.

The difference was in the details.

According to Shin Nain, his Ear-branch, Stage 1 let him hear not only a person’s thoughts but also the subconscious impulses and intentions beneath them. Compared to that, my Ears-branch, Stage 1 magic, which could only distinguish whether someone bore me hostility or not, wasn’t even close.

If all I heard from someone hostile was the sound of a babbling stream, then Shin Nain could hear the beginnings of how they intended to act on that hostility.

After explaining that, Shin Nain stood up and straightened his clothes. Well, all he really had on was covered by a poncho stained with blood splatters and grime.

"It seems your Ears-branch Holy Alteration Battle Arts aren’t as developed as mine, Jemin-ssi. I’ll explain the details after I get back from the bathroom.”

"I'll come with you. The plumbing isn’t dangerous, but we should still go together.”

"Huh? Nain-ssi, wait a sec. I’ll come too.”

The moment Shin Nain mentioned he was going to the restroom, Hamza and Lee Sejun immediately stood up and began dismantling the barricade.

Some people might complain that splitting up over something as trivial as going to the bathroom was reckless in a place like this. But we were the Supreme Archmages. Opportunities to use an actual restroom were few and far between. So when one presented itself, you took it no matter what.

It wasn’t like we could just relieve ourselves behind a bush every time. If an Amalgam happened to pounce on you while your pants were around your ankles, you might end up becoming a monster in the stupidest way imaginable.

That wouldn’t be some noble sacrifice. It’d just be a humiliatingly absurd way to turn into a monster, right?

So we’d avoid unnecessary risks whenever we could.

Just then, Pastor Park Yohan tilted his head and looked at Lee Sejun.

"Lee Sejun, you erased your urge to relive yourself, didn’t you? You don’t even need to poop anymore, so why are you going?”

The pastor’s puzzled gaze fell squarely on Lee Sejun, who proudly thumped his own chest, his eyes sparkling.

"I need to make sure it really doesn’t come out anymore!”

"Ugh. Forget it. Just go already. I don’t even want to continue this conversation. And take your rifle with you.”

"Yessir."

It was a relief that he at least listened when the pastor told him something.

Shin Nain, Hamza, and Lee Sejun all headed toward the restroom with their rifles in hand.

Thankfully, my Ear-branch magic was weak enough, its side effects were just as mild.

I wasn’t constantly bombarded by the endless stream of bullshit running through Lee Sejun’s head. Apparently I only heard people’s thoughts once in a while. And I was sincerely relieved by that.

If I had to listen to Lee Sejun’s inner monologue 24/7, I might’ve gone insane and started firing my rifle at random.

A 24-year-old former short-service staff sergeant, covered in body hair, dreaming of becoming a sweet little girl who sucked on lollipops and was loved by everyone…

Having to hear that every second of every minute would’ve crossed the line from hardship into straight-up torture.

Without question.

The pastor clicked his tongue, feeling sorry for Lee Sejun, who was probably on his way to the restroom by now.

"How does a kid who looks like he could probably deadlift 350 kg end up like that?”

"Maybe his testosterone overflowed or something?”

"Overflowed?”

"I mean, having too much of something can be worse than not having enough.”

"Yeah. Moderation is important in everything. Jemin-ssi, you’d really make a great youth group leader.”

And so the Supreme Archmages split into two groups. The trio heading to the restroom, and the duo consisting of the pastor and me.

By horror movie logic, the smaller group would get attacked, and everything would go to hell. But we weren’t helpless horror movie characters. We were alpha chads marching proudly into hell.

The proof came in the form of gunfire.

-Ratata!

It seemed like they ran into a monster on their way to the restroom. I hadn’t even heard any approaching footsteps. Even the cowardly Hamza must’ve stood his ground instead of running away.

The pastor and I considered going to support them but immediately changed our minds.

We were concerned about our backpacks, sitting right there inside the multipurpose room.

"They’ll fall back if they need to. If we lose all this, we’re dead anyway.”

"Understood.”

I answered while silently speaking to Shin Nain, who might be listening somehow.

Don’t think we’re heartless. Without bullets we all die. You know that, right?

The supplies we’d brought were priceless. Not that the local Seoul wizards had a rough idea of how we operated, leaving our gear unattended would be inviting looters.

Every Supreme Archmage was a valuable asset, but people couldn’t fight without food or water.

Not to mention, there were undoubtedly plenty of people eyeing our lead-attribute magic, otherwise known as guns and ammunition. Given the realities of Seoul and South Korea, I had no doubt there were countless Seoul wizards who’d drool at the sight of firearms and bullets.

Instead, I quietly took out the spell phone and watched the screen.

Gunfire had echoed through this opulent, magnificent church. Would the survivor groups that may or may not surround us actually exchange information using these spellphones? That was what I wanted to find out.

The current time was April 18th, 2028, 11:14 PM.

After checking the time displayed on the dark blue phone, the pastor and I waited in silence.

Several more bursts of gunfire echoed through the building.

Babang, bababang...

But the phone in my hand never vibrated. When even the spell phone remained silent, the only sounds left inside the multipurpose room were the pastor’s and my breathing. We didn’t dare chat. If the phone vibrated, we couldn’t afford to miss it.

Only after some time had passed did footsteps echo down the hallway.

-Bang!

The people who pushed open the door were, as expected, our fellow Supreme Archmages.

They’d clearly been through another fight, yet none of them were stained with blood. Apparently they’d washed up using the restroom sink, seeing that water was dripping from their ponchos.

If this had been outside Seoul, everyone would’ve made a huge fuss, screaming that a monster jumped at them and demanding to know why we didn’t come to help them.

But this was Seoul.

In a city that no longer belonged to humanity, there was nothing strange about non-human things appearing.

If anything, we were the unnatural ones in Seoul’s current ecosystem.

The thing worth actually making a fuss over was something else entirely. I checked the spell phone’s screen.

11:40 PM.

I showed the display to Shin Nain, Hamza, and Lee Sejun, then waved it at them.

"So what the hell were you doing in the bathroom for 36 minutes? Constipated?”

"Jemin-ssi, if I told you Nain-ssi spent 30 minutes singing hymns while soothing his anal sphincter in the Lord’s name, would you believe me?”

"Oh, Allah. Nain-ssi, that’s constipation.”

Lee Sejun and Hamza made a far bigger fuss over Shin Nain’s bathroom habits than they ever did over monsters.

Even while joking around, they carefully stacked the benches back in front of the door to rebuild the barricade. That kind of professionalism was exactly what you’d expect from the Supreme Archmages. Meanwhile, Shin Nain smiled innocently, tapped his headset, and, like it was nothing, pulled a tightly rolled sleeping bag out of his backpack.

The Shitmaster, who’d occupied a bathroom stall for thirty straight minutes, grinned, his bloodshot eyes narrowing.

"Jemin-ssi. Considering everything I have to endure, I’m sure the Lord will forgive me for spending 30 minutes singing hymns while cleansing my body of impurities.”

"Hmm."

Faced with Shin Nain’s perfectly logical and surprisingly reasonable rebuttal, I quietly glanced at Lee Sejun’s back and chose not to argue.

It filled me with a truly unbearable sense of humiliation to find myself agreeing with that deranged, fanatical zealot, but the most horrifying part was the mental environment created by Lee Sejun’s thoughts.

'Ah, I want to get rid of all my body hair.’

I frowned at the side effects of Ears-branch, Stage 1 and shook my head.

The pastor stepped in at that moment.

He looked at us like we were hopeless idiots, then, after noticing Shin Nain pulling out his sleeping bag, he yawned lazily and walked over.

"Enough of that. Tell everyone what new magic you’ve learned. We’ll sleep at midnight. We can get moving a little later in the morning. It’s already late anyway. At this point, it’s more important that everyone fully understands each other’s abilities without any misunderstandings. When the crucial moment comes, that's what keeps people from falling apart.”

"Just what I’d expect from you, Pastor. Very thoughtful. Since we have the time, it’s better to settle this properly.”

As Shin Nain nodded along, Lee Sejun and Hamza finished rebuilding the barricade, then came over and sat down as well.

"We definitely should know this stuff. How else are we supposed to make plans if we don’t even know our own team’s capabilities.”

"Exactly. The Angel isn’t saying anything as well. We need to prepare thoroughly. Right, Jemin-ssi, give me your right hand.”

"Huh?"

"I need to disinfect that wound.”

Only then did I remember that I’d sliced open my right hand with the combat knife.

Hamza pulled out the first-aid kit from his backpack and started rummaging through it, taking out alcohol wipes, bandages,madecassol ointment. As he treated my right hand, we began discussing our respective spells. 

"Ears-branch, Stage 3 doesn’t just let me hear the dying words of the dead. It’s extremely limited, but I can actually hold conversations with the voices of the deceased.”

According to Shin Nain, that was why he’d spent 30 whole minutes locked inside the bathroom. There’d been the voice of someone who’d been murdered in the stall next to his.

While singing hymns to steady his mind, he’d used Ears-branch, Stage 3 magic, to talk with that voice and find out just how much information he could obtain. As bathroom habits went, it was absolutely awful.

As a mage, however, what he did was remarkable and worthy of respect.

Even inside the restroom he didn’t lose his passion for magic. That dedication was exactly what you’d expect from one of the Supreme Archmages. Despite his countless personal flaws, I decided to acknowledge Shin Nain as a fellow wizard.

This was what the dead voice he’d spoken with through Ears-branch, Stage 3 had to say.

The owner of the voice was a mother who had hidden inside one of the men’s restroom stalls, only to be haunted by a Predator Spine. Unable to endure the pain, she’d died from shock. However, because she’d been consumed by terror and despair at the moment of death, it had been impossible to hold a proper conversation with her. Shin Nain said he had to question her almost as though he were conducting a leading interrogation.

Besides, what if the voice itself had been a monster’s trap?

After confirming that the restroom was filled with dense fog, Shin Nain accepted the backlash and used Eyes-branch, Stage 1, Past Vision. Looking several hours into the past, he saw the abandoned corpse of the former host, slumped inside the neighboring stall. Only then did he trust the voice.

The truth he uncovered was this:

"The mother, who was infected by a Predator Spine inside the restroom, became its host and was later killed, actually died on the day of the threshold breach. On that day, meaning January 6th, when the mobilization order was declared, people across Seoul tried to escape… At that point, the blockade line hadn’t been fully established yet, and the military units still stationed inside Seoul tried to stop the evacuation.”

The dead woman’s voice had been confused, terrified, and despairing over having lost her child amid the chaos before hiding alone inside the restroom. She spoke incoherently, jumping from one thought to another. Yet somehow, Shin Nain managed to piece together the fragmented information.

Amid the confusion of dense fog and monsters pouring out everywhere, the military seemed to have already prepared to block the main roads.

The way they’d stopped the evacuation was far more methodical than we’d imagined.

The moment the threshold breach was recognized, the military desperately moved to seal off the major roads leading out of Seoul and intentionally created massive traffic jams.

They physically blocked roads by demolishing buildings along the roadside so they’d collapse across the streets or they blew apart water mains, flooding low-lying areas to prevent vehicles from passing.

Then they continuously opened fire on anyone who disobeyed orders and tried to escape.

During that time, many religious facilities throughout Seoul did their best to shelter civilians. Whether they had once been dismissed as cults or recognized as orthodox religions no longer mattered. People realized that if they wanted to survive, they had to stick together.

Naturally, Mimics had mixed themselves in with the refugees.

Amalgams, Predator Spines, Human Slimes, Bloodcord Deltas, Human-skin Jellyfish, Teratomas, Tadpole Bellies, Lung Trees…

That was the fate of the locals who fled to religious shelters without proper weapons or worthwhile equipment. The people who survived were either incredibly lucky or managed to endure the chaos by sheer force of will.

It was a heavy topic, yet Shin Nain simply dismissed the dead woman’s voice as an echo.

"The dead voices I can hear are merely remnants left behind by those who experienced overwhelming emotions or deep regrets at the moment of death. Since she attended church, her soul has surely gone to Heaven. There is no reason for her spirit to remain in this world.”

"Indeed. Amen. O Lord, please gather Your frightened lamb into Your care.”

The discussion ended with the pastor’s brief prayer. But thanks to this, we learned that Shin Nain’s Ears-branch, Stage 3 magic, was exceptionally useful for reconnaissance and gathering information.

It resembled psychometry, yet it also allowed him to converse with the dead to some extent, learning about their experiences and knowledge. Honestly, it kind of felt like necromancy. Of course, if I ever actually called it necromancy to the face of this guy constantly rambling on about Holy Alteration arts or whatever, we’d end up in a fistfight. So I wisely kept that thought to myself.

It had become one of the unspoken rules among the Supreme Archmages.

Next came Lee Sejun. Surprisingly, his Hand-branch, Stage 1 magic wasn’t very different from mine.

Actually, I misspoke. It was exactly the same.

"So if your right hand bleeds, it can hurt monsters too?”

"Yeah. I bit my right hand to make it bleed, then punched one of those monsters, and it exploded, you know?”

"Sejun-ssi’s amazing. I feel like I won’t die if I stay with him.”

Judging by how excited even Hamza was while wrapping the bandage around my hand, it really was that impressive.

By combining Hand-branch, Stage 1 magic, with upright Heart-branch, Stage 3 magic, Lee Sejun had become the undisputed king of close combat. While I was busy pulling ridiculous combinations using Tongue-branch magic to enhance Eyes-branch magic, Lee Sejun could simply bite his hand, make it bleed, and crush monsters with his fists.

The Heart-branch wizard whose body was so abruptly tough that firing a 2 kg hand cannon one-handed couldn’t even dislocate his shoulder had now evolved into Bloody Fist Lee Sejun.

I desperately hid my jealousy, gritting my teeth inside my own mind.

Lee Sejun.

The way he was building his magic skill tree so brilliantly was starting to become dangerous.

He was becoming a truly terrifying rival capable of threatening my status as the Great Archmage. 

...This won’t do.

I, Baek Jemin, was a man who had always lived by honor, but if Lee Sejun was going to threaten me like this, I had no choice.

Starting today, I resolved to actively sabotage him so he could never reach Stage 4.

Just then, my eyes happened to meet Shin Nain’s by coincidence.

But the contempt filling those eyes certainly wasn’t.

"Tsk."

As Shin Nain clicked his tongue, the pastor took off his rather sly-looking glasses and slipped them into their case.

"That’s quite the power-up. It’s a shame for Baek Jemin, but at least he won’t get fooled by ordinary people anymore. And now you’ve got a way to fight without relying on guys, so that’s one less thing to worry about. Tomorrow we’ll leave the church and keep moving.”

Pastor Park Yohan rubbed the wrinkles around his eyes and let out a sigh.

"There’s another subway station nearby. Let’s recover our strength and punch through it as quickly as we can. I got this feeling that the monsters are going to start swarming.”

For the first time in a while I tossed and turned in my sleep.

It couldn’t be helped. The greatest dream of my life, becoming a Great Archmage, was in danger of being stolen by Lee Sejun, whose life goal was to apparently become a cute TS anime girl.

Still, when you’re exhausted, you just end up sleeping like a rock eventually.

True to what my parents always said, that once I fell asleep, I would sleep like a corpse, I had an absolutely amazing night’s sleep. When I woke up, the whole world looked optimistic again. 

Right, so what if Lee Sejun became Bloody Fist Lee Sejun? So what if he reached Stage 4 before me?

If he ever got there first, I’d just threaten to stab him in the back. That ought to stop him from even trying to reach Stage 4.

The moment I came up with that solution, a cheerful grin spread across my face.

I sluggishly sat up and stretched my arms overhead. That was when I noticed the spell phone in my pocket was vibrating nonstop.

Only then did I realize that the other Supreme Archmages were already awake.

All of them were glaring at me with sleepy eyes.

"Well, well. Baek Jemin. That thing’s been vibrating for over 10 minutes, and you still didn’t wake up?”

"Baek Jemin-ssi. If your phone vibrates for 10 whole minutes, you should really wake up.”

The pastor and Shin Nain grumbled at me, so I simply smiled brightly and calmly reassured them.

"Come on, everyone, let’s all think positively. I woke up in only 10 minutes. What a blessed morning, don’t you think?”

"Fuck."

Funny how these people who believed in a god without ever seeing Him were being awfully harsh just because it took me 10 minutes to wake up.

I pulled out the spell phone and checked the screen.

April 19th, 2028, 7:31 AM.

Back when I was unemployed, I used to wake up at 2 in the afternoon. By my standards, this was basically a miracle morning. But the truly miraculous part was the sender who kept flooding my spell phone with messages.

There were no cell towers, nor was there wifi. Watching a messenger app receive messages in Songpa District, Seoul, was already bizarre enough.

[Kang Areum: The five soldier survivors who entered the church. That’s you guys, right?]

"So it looks like the Seoul people really are mistaking us for soldiers.”

"Good grief. So these days if you dress properly, people just assume you’re military?”

The pastor grumbled while inspecting his gas mask.

The others seemed to feel the same way, idly fiddling with their firearms.

If you’re going sightseeing in Seoul in 2028, it’s common sense that you need to be armed at least as well as we were.

Sighing at the outdated prejudices of Seoul’s residents, I scrolled further down the spell phone’s long list of messages.

[Kang Areum: Only I know that you’re using the Jangji Station wizard’s phone. I’m part of a group, but they’re pretty indifferent toward you. Still, there’s one guy who’s started hunting you, you know? He’s pretty well known.]

[Kang Areum: I know you guys are a little weird, but you’re not bad people. That’s why I’m giving you this information. Be careful if you run into him.]

Attached to the last message was a photograph.

It was a picture of a man. It looked like it had been taken from far away with a zoom lens, so the focus was slightly blurred and the outline was fuzzy. Even so, the man in the photograph was staring directly into the camera.

Of course, I couldn’t make out his eyes clearly.

He wore a thick, long, gray padded coat, ragged jeans and work boots that looked fit for a construction laborer, a black face mask covering everything except his eyes, and a pair of ski goggles.

I assumed he was a man because his shoulders were much broader than an average woman’s. He seemed to be about 178 cm tall? As for his weight, the bulky clothing made it impossible to tell.

Wrapped up that tightly, I’d have thought he’d be drenched in sweat and barely able to move.

Thinking that, I scrolled down further and found the information attached to him.

[Kang Areum: His nickname is Ski Goggles. Estimated magic level is upright Alteration-type, Eyes-branch, Stage 3. He’s a Ritual-type wizard.]

[Kang Areum: His Ritual-type magic is believed to be some kind of stealth. No one knows what he made a contract with, but he offers human body parts as sacrifices. He’s known for ambushing ordinary people under the protection of other wizards. Looks like he thinks your magic levels are low enough to attack you. Almost nothing is known about Ritual-type wizards.]

I frowned the moment I read that.

"Ritual-type?”

There were more schools of magic than just Dogma and Alteration-type?