Chapter 95: The Dream Team Nightmare Edition

[Translator – Aren]

The hospital in Anyang was bigger than I expected.

At the very least, it was big enough for the military to bring 14 armored vehicles and 8 tanks. There were dozens of soldiers on each side of the perimeter as well, and I supposed that was about what it took to deal with one massive building swallowed in fog.

Since we had landed in the park, I could get a good look at the military cordon surrounding the hospital. The tanks had been positioned 2 or 3 at a time, spaced roughly one road apart, with their main guns trained on the building.

4 or 5 armored vehicles were stationed beside each group of tanks, their autocannons aimed just as menacingly, while soldiers either hurried around them or caught their breath behind stacked sandbags with their rifles resting on top.

I had looked over the Korean forces, so next I decided to check out the Chinese volunteer forces parading around a little farther away beneath fluttering Five-star Red Flags.

They were marching in perfect step while singing something in Chinese, escorting tanks on either side. Judging from their crisp, rigid posture, befitting the authoritarian Chinese military, I could almost picture the training course where they had been drilled endlessly on marching formations. My feelings toward them as a nation weren’t exactly warm, but as someone who had been through his own share of grueling service, I clicked my tongue and offered them a tiny bit of sympathy.

The frog lieutenant colonel eventually led us to one of the hospital’s annex buildings.

The military hospital in central Anyang consisted of one large main building, a nearby parking lot, a funeral hall beside it, and two annex buildings standing side by side across a single crosswalk.

We entered the 1st floor of Annex Building 1, where groans were already overlapping with the sound of hurried footsteps throughout the lobby.

The command and control center had been set up on the 2nd floor.

Only after leaving behind the soldiers rushing people around and hauling boxes did we enter one corner of a room packed neatly with cables and communications equipment, where the frog lieutenant colonel finally turned toward us.

"Aphorism, I’ll brief you on the situation on the ground.”

And so, through the frog lieutenant colonel’s explanation and the occasional additions from his staff, we were able to piece together the details.

May 6th.

About 2 days ago, fog had appeared around Anyang.

Everyone had been tense, but most of it dispersed naturally, so at first they relaxed. Then several pockets of fog refused to clear, and the hospital planted right in the middle of downtown was one of them.

Not only was the hospital covered in dense fog and suffering from poor communications with the outside, but even the survivors inside who could still make contact had no clear understanding of what was happening.

The frog lieutenant colonel scratched his cheek while carefully flipping through the documents handed to him by a second lieutenant.

"The survivors we were able to contact had barricaded themselves inside the 11th-floor conference room. They said they could barely hear any screams or groans from outside, but apparently someone started a fire. The fire alarm went off, and while they were trying to evacuate, they ended up trapped there.”

"Oh my god, if someone started a fire, wouldn’t everyone just die together?”

Go Ryeoha covered her mouth with both hands as she chimed in, to which the frog lieutenant colonel shrugged.

"The hospital originally served as a major regional medical center, so it was properly equipped for fires. The problem is that the fire-safety systems appear to have restricted movement inside. Fire barriers came down, sprinklers activated, things like that. Based on previous incidents, the military currently estimates that most survivors are probably barricaded inside isolated rooms, with their phones switched off to prevent sound from leaking out.”

These were incredibly complicated and unpleasant conditions.

I felt bad for the survivors inside, but it was almost enough to make me think sweeping the whole place with gas once would be better. Now that we were close to the dense fog, Hamza’s Dogma-type magic, [Angel’s Intuition], seemed to have become more precise because his expression had gone completely rigid.

"It’s dangerous. Jemin-ssi, this is really dangerous.”

"How dangerous?”

"Extremely. Maybe even more dangerous than when we met the Seoul wizards.”

"More dangerous than the Seoul wizards?”

For a moment, I wondered if I had been underestimating the Seoul wizards.

There was Jeong Nari, the Dubai Sticky Witch. An inverted Alteration-type wizard who sucked people’s memories and experiences right out of them, swung around concrete shields, and ran across walls.

Han Minjun, Ski-Goggles. As if commanding monsters through Ritual-type magic weren’t enough, he had used Eyes-branch, Stage 3 to shrug off bullets, then fought using stealth and close combat with the monsters under his control.

If this palace was dangerous enough to be worse than these seniors, was there something like the Gate Monster inside?

I decided to ask the frog lieutenant colonel calmly and rationally.

"Didn’t you conduct reconnaissance inside?”

"We did. But…”

According to the frog lieutenant colonel, this was what happened.

The military had learned by now that blindly sending people in only gave the monsters more bodies, so they sent drones instead. Even through the dense fog surrounding the 15-story building, they launched drones to observe the exterior, and several of them even swept through the hospital corridors floor by floor.

However, the results of that cautious, meticulous drone reconnaissance were disappointing.

"We found no monsters or corpses, and no broken or damaged interior windows. There was also none of the drone-disabling phenomenon that occurs when entities such as Neural-Parasitic Amalgams, the ones known as Blood-cord Delta or Blood Web, are nearby. We swept the hospital with drones, and aside from the fog filling the interior, there was honestly nothing unusual. Other than equipment and fixtures scattered around up through the 6th floor, it was so clean there were barely even signs of panic.”

"If there’s nothing unusual, why is there fog?”

"We’re certain that if the fog is there, then so are monsters.”

The Korean-US Combined Command currently operates its forces in three stages.

Stage 1 consisted of the main forces maintaining the blockade line.

Stage 2 consisted of mobile strike teams organized from non-wizard soldiers with combat experience against monsters and specialist soldiers who were wizards, tasked with searching for and eliminating monsters that appeared inside the blockade line. If there were not enough specialist soldiers, civilian Operators were either requisitioned or enticed with MPC and attached to the mobile stroke teams for deployment.

The final Stage 3 was the deployment of us Supreme Archmages.

One major reason the Anyang military hospital had been escalated to Stage 3, the deployment of us Supreme Archmages, was because the initial reconnaissance mission had failed.

One upright Alteration-type, Eyes-branch, Stage 2 specialist soldier and two upright Alteration-type, Ears-branch, Stage 1 specialist soldiers had gone in with roughly 30 troops. They disappeared.

They had thoroughly surveyed the exterior with drones, swept everything up through the 6th floor, and, worried that something might be lying in ambush underground, even installed motion sensors near the stairwells. On top of that, unmanned military robots had been positioned to prevent anything from escaping through external passages.

The frog lieutenant colonel let out something close to a groan and irritably dropped the documents.

-Thud!

Having slammed the papers onto the table, he practically complained as he spoke.

"Communications were normal through the 3rd floor. The moment they moved up to the 4th, all contact was lost. They did report encountering and killing entities like Amalgams and Predator Spines, but still. Nobody expected soldiers with actual combat experience to disappear on the 4th floor. For all practical purposes, the entire team was wiped out.”

"Can’t we just gas the place?”

Why the hell were they trying to send only 3 Supreme Archmages into somewhere that dangerous?

It seemed far more sensible to gas the whole building, euthanize the survivors cleanly, and wipe out the monsters as quickly as possible. Apparently, though, not everything in the world revolved around the optimal way to kill monsters.

The frog lieutenant colonel blew air through his thick lips with a vibrating brrrr sound and raised his eyebrows.

"Most of the people inside are medical personnel and soldiers. There’s also sensitive equipment and infrastructure. We can’t guarantee it wouldn’t be damaged during decontamination, and since this was originally a major regional medical center, abandoning it would mean the medical infrastructure for southwestern Seoul would practically collapse. On top of that, there are political reasons."

"What? Political?”

For a moment, I wondered if I had heard him wrong.

The apocalypse was right in front of us, and monsters were standing there with their mouths wide open, so what the hell did politics have to do with anything?

"Do you know the first thing the Korea-China Combined Command did immediately after it was established? China and the US are currently locked in an international struggle over who will hold the commander position for the UN forces that are expected to deploy soon. The United States currently has the advantage, but China is apparently leading international opinion alongside other countries by demanding the full disclosure of information regarding Localized Invasive Structural Alteration phenomena. The Korean-US Combined Command’s position is that it cannot release that information due to concerns over worldwide social instability.”

As he said, the frog lieutenant colonel subtly glanced out the window.

Not at the hospital's main building blanketed in dense fog, but at the so-called Chinese ‘volunteer forces’ marching proudly in the distance.

"Right now, Anyang is essentially a Joint Security Area. If China expands its influence here and takes over 100% of Anyang’s security, Pyeongtaek will be left completely exposed.”

"Come one, Soldier-ahjussi. We're all trying to stop the monsters together, right? If they’re willing to do the fighting for us, isn’t that a good thing?”

Go Ryeoha answered with her eyes half-lidded, and the frog lieutenant colonel snorted with laughter.

"Fair enough. If someone said they’d stop those monster bastards for us, there’d be plenty of people willing to shake hands with the Devil himself.”

Right. It was a seriously irritating relationship, but as long as they stopped the monsters, weren’t we all part of humanity? If they were willing to put their bodies on the line and eventually become experience points for me, I couldn’t help feeling my old grudges melt away. All the politics and diplomacy crap was nothing more than gossip now that the country had fallen apart anyway.

It was time to discuss practical matters.

"So what? Are we taking a helicopter to the roof and climbing down?”

"No. You can’t.”

"Why not?”

This time it was Hamza, not me, who asked with wide eyes.

Anyone following the perfectly reasonable logic that it would be better to sweep the building from top to bottom would have thought the same thing.

But the frog lieutenant colonel pointed out how naive we were.

"The fog is too dense for a helicopter to approach safely, and that hospital doesn’t have a helipad.”

"Don’t major regional hospitals out in the provinces usually have one?”

"This is near Seoul.”

The frog lieutenant colonel vibrated his lips again and grinned.

"We can’t have helicopter noise tanking the value of apartments people spent their whole lives paying for. Please enter from the first floor and work your way up to the roof. We believe there’s no medical equipment in the basement, so we’ll be pumping gas into that.”

Okay.

I’d heard everything I needed to hear.

-Scraaape!

I stood up with the sound of my chair scraping over the floor, and Go Ryeoha and Hamza rose with me.

The frog lieutenant colonel looked surprised when he realized we intended to leave immediately.

"You’re going already?”

I gave the frog lieutenant colonel a sloppy salute and answered.

"We’ve already spent plenty of time on this. Let’s go, Master. Hamza, keep up.”

"Don’t worry, Soldier-ahjussi. We’ll save the people!”

"Jemin-ssi, couldn’t I just stay here and handle communications?”

"Hamza."

Hamza wisely stopped spouting nonsense.

It was already shitty enough that I looked like I’d be doing all the hard work myself. If even my Spam buddy Hamza abandoned me, I might make an extreme decision. I had no idea what form Holy Relic Hamza would take, but he would probably be less satisfied with it than his current form, which at least had two functioning legs.

And so the three of us left the annex, receiving bewildered looks and hesitant salutes from soldiers we passed.

Now wearing the ponchos inscribed with Ancient Hebrew that had become the symbol of us Supreme Archmages, we naturally put on our gas masks and breathed out in short bursts.

"Uwaah~, Hubae-nim, Muslim-ssi. How do you put on a gas mask?”

Go Ryeoha.

Since she was someone who had barely scraped her way into the Supreme Archmages, she was even wearing her poncho wrong.

Instead of putting her arms through the sleeves, she had tied it in front of herself like a cape, and now she was fumbling around with the gas mask straps in confusion.

"Master, didn’t you serve in the military?”

Hamza reacted first at my question.

He looked at me like I was pathetic.

"Jemin-ssi.”

"I know."

He was giving me attitude.

After some twists and turns, Hamza taught her how to put on the gas mask, and Go Ryeoha finally managed to wear it properly.

-Huff—.

The moment she breathed out once to check the seal, Go Ryeoha started giggling like she had found something hilarious about it.

"It stinks!”

Fuck...

I turned away while silently chewing over that one exclamation, which somehow contained a multitude of meanings.

"Let’s go. Seriously.”

At the approach leading toward the hospital’s main building, we heard soldiers swallowing nervously.

In front of the dense fog blanketing everything within 10 meters of the hospital, we heard countless drones buzzing around the building like a swarm of bees around a hive.

As we pushed into the fog, I switched on the low-power light attached to my rifle out of habit.

And the moment we reached the hospital’s main entrance and saw the broken windows and flickering fluorescent lights beyond the swirling fog, I disengaged the safety.

-Click.

"I’ll handle basic detection with Eyes-branch, Stage 1, use Spirit Sight to draw out anything lying in ambush. We can’t repeat the same checks every single time, so Hamza, use your judgment before we open doors or round corners. I’m in the lead, Hamza’s in the center, and Master takes the rear.”

Once I quickly assigned positions, Go Ryeoha’s eyes widened.

"Hubae-nim, you suddenly sound super professional!”

"Jemin-ssi, I’m nervous.”

"I know.”

So was I.

With the rifle tucked under my arm, I pulled out my phone and checked the screen.

May 8th, 2028, 6:02 PM.

Couldn’t we just come back tomorrow?

This was going to be even worse once it got dark.

I decided to shelve that perfectly reasonable thought for the moment.

"Let’s hurry and save some people! Rescue 119, rolling out!”

"Jemin-ssi… I really think I should just stay in the rear and handle communications—.”

-Click.

I turned off my smartphone and slipped it back into my pocket.

Compared to this team, nightfall wasn’t the scary part.

-Clack.

I adjusted my grip on the rifle and stepped into the hospital without hesitation.

Into that strange space where fog drifted gently through the dust.

The moment I entered the 1st floor lobby of the hospital, one thought came to mind.

I had deliberately kept it to myself, but Hamza naturally said it out loud after looking around.

"It’s cleaner inside than I expected.”

Please.

But Hamza wasn’t the only problem.

Go Ryeoha drew her combat knife, sliced across her right hand, then looked around and shouted loudly.

"Hello! Is anyone here~?”

"Shh! Shhh…Ryeoha-ssi, please keep it down…”

"Muslim-ssi, if we want to rescue people, we have to shout loudly! Hellooo~.”

Instead of responding, I simply surveyed the area with Eyes-branch, Stage 1, allowing me to look 10 seconds into the future.

If a monster heard this racket and moved, red footprints would appear or the fog would clear. At the very least, trash mobs like Amalgams would probably react no matter how well they were hiding.

But Hamza was right.

Even 10 seconds into the future, no red footprints appeared. Just as the frog lieutenant colonel had said.

Apparently, they hadn’t completely avoided combat up through the 3rd floor, so was that why there were no monsters left in the 1st floor lobby?

If Shin Nain were here, he could’ve hummed a hymn and roughly pinpointed the monsters’ types, numbers, and locations one after another, but there was no chance of that with this team.

I was just starting to wonder if I’d have to do Shin Nain’s job too.

-Clatter!

I heard the sound of objects falling in a room off to the left of the main entrance.

I aimed my rifle toward it, but no new traces appeared. The fog was still drifting lazily, and neither the dust beneath the flickering fluorescent lights nor anything else showed signs of movement.

The only thing was that the door to a large room on the left side of the entrance, probably some kind of examination room, was slightly warped.

Inside? Had something actually reacted to all the noise?

I was aiming my rifle and trying to judge the situation when…

"Hubae-nim, I’ll draw another reaction from it.”

Go Ryeoha let out a short, slightly awkward breath through her mask, as though she still wasn't used to wearing it.

For a moment I thought she might smack something with Telekinesis, but then I suddenly remembered the Dogma-type magic Go Ryeoha possessed.

The Dogma-type magic used by shamans, [Spirit Sight].

Magic capable of immediately distinguishing the souls of monsters and humans, and…

Magic that could instantly draw out a monster’s hostility.

-Bang!

Dust fluttered down from the uneven bulges in the door.

When I activated Eyes-branch, Stage 1 again, red footprints that hadn’t been there before now led out through the doorway, and they were turning toward us. But now that I had already seen 10 seconds into the future, this was too easy.

-Bang, bang, bang!

I simply waited for the door to break apart and the monster to come bursting through.

No matter how grotesque the monster was, nothing could stand up to a gun. I calmly steadied my breathing, tucked my elbows tight against my body, and raised the rifle into my line of sight. Whether it was an Amalgam or a Predator Spine, the moment it came out, it would eat bullets and die.

I’d show them the marksmanship I, Baek Jemin, man among men, had honed to perfection.

I had just made that vow and was caressing the trigger when…

"First strike wins!”

-Cruuuuuunch!

The door was ripped clean off with terrifying force. The barricade that had been blocking it from the inside crumpled along with it.

But what really left me speechless was the sight of the Amalgam being stretched and torn apart along with the door like mozzarella cheese.

The Amalgam that had been pounding on the door had its head, a grotesque mass of five human faces fused together, ripped off by an invisible hand, leaking pus-like fluid everywhere in long, messy streams. Then it was hurled to the floor with a wet splat.

Only after losing its head did the bodies making it up finally separate and collapse individually.

Even the Amalgam itself seemed outraged and bewildered at having its main body torn away, its faces twisting grotesquely as it thrashed and screamed.

"No, no!”

"Guuuuuurgle…"

"Sweetie, don’t cling to me. I’m tired.”

That didn’t last long either.

-Splat!

The Amalgam’s severed head was crushed as though caught beneath an industrial press.

At the same time, the sound of pounding erupted from closed doors all across the first floor.

-Bang, bang, bang.

I hollowly stared at the pulverized Amalgam, then turned toward Go Ryeoha.

"Tadaaa! Hubae-nim! There were this many left!”

"Let’s sweep the first floor from the main entrance before we move on.”

"L-let’s hurry and get out of here!”

I trudged after the fussing Hamza with limp, defeated steps.

Waiting near the main entrance, we painstakingly hunted down the groups of monsters. Go Ryeoha provoked them with [Spirit Sight] as they broke through the doors across the first floor. Watching monsters get smashed into a pulp by invisible hands made my heart ache.

Go Ryeoha, that woman was impossible.

Who would’ve thought she could be this merciless toward monsters that had once been human, monsters still carrying human selves and consciousness inside them?

Still, disappointed or not, I had work to do.

I rolled my tongue inside my mouth.

Target, kill, monster, 5 minutes, path.

With my eyes burning like they were being scrubbed raw and my tongue splitting open with a pop, I supported Go Ryeoha.

Monsters like Amalgams and Predator Spins had gotten so pathetically weak that they couldn’t even get close to us anymore.

The reason was that, as unpleasant and horrifying as it was, Go Ryeoha and I made a far better combination than I had imagined.

"Dad, what’s wrong?” “Your face looks kind of stretched…” “Doctor, something’s wrong with this patient!”

As the fused faces of the Amalgams charged while screaming their final words, Go Ryeoha reacted instantly, just as you’d expect from a former Seoul wizard.

-Thud!

Once the number of monsters increased, she shifted Hand-branch, Stage 3 [Telekinesis] away from killing and instead focused entirely on keeping them at a distance. She sent them flying as though backhanding them and smacked Predator Spines aside like she was swatting mosquitoes, knocking them to the floor.

Her right fist, soaked in Hand-branch, Stage 1 [Blood of the Right Hand], was being used in a way I never would have expected. Not for close combat.

Go Ryeoha’s clenched right hand was full of bottle caps. She plucked them out one at a time between her index and middle fingers, then flicked them at any monster that came within a certain distance.

Normally, they would’ve buried themselves in monster flesh or bounded off hard skulls, cutting their effectiveness drastically.

That is, if she hadn’t been firing them absurdly hard and fast with Heart-branch, Stage 2 [Physical Enhancement].

-Baaang!

The fog split apart.

The monster burst forth with it.

I immediately raised my rifle.

-Ratata!

Shell casings flew.

Monster fluids sprayed everywhere.

The monsters that had been grinning after dodging Go Ryeoha’s piercing bottle caps suddenly had neat little holes punched through the center of their foreheads.

The two of us worked together better than expected.

Go Ryeoha kept the monsters from closing in while wiping them out with area attacks.

Then I took care of the ones she failed to knock away and cleaned up the trash mobs she scattered.

Hamza was probably trembling behind us right now, so there were really only two of us actually fighting.

And yet we were having an easier time than when I fought alongside Shin Nain and Lee Sejun. Even if we were moving a little slower.

Which made it even more irritating.

To put it in more vivid and specific terms, the way everything clicked perfectly into place pissed me the fuck off.

The combination of Go Ryeoha’s Hand-branch, Stage 1 and Heart-branch, Stage 2 amounted to something like a hand cannon built specifically for killing monsters.

Watching Amalgams stagger and lose their footing as they tried to dodge the bloodstained bottle caps ricocheting across the floor was probably one of the rarest sights I had seen in my few months as a wizard.

That was where my role came in.

The moment I realized Go Ryeoha’s miniature bombardment had broken up the monsters’ formation, I aimed toward where they were about to reposition and pulled the trigger without hesitation.

Eventually more than 40 monsters lay dead in front of us. Then I watched Go Ryeoha stomp repeatedly on one that was still alive and twitching, grinding it underfoot.

Only after the monsters were cleaned up did she turn toward me, wave brightly, and speak in a muffled voice through her gas mask.

"Phew~. Hubae-nim, are you okay?”

"Master."

"Yes, Hubae-nim!”

Go Ryeoha was clearly a reliable and reassuring combat partner who could even handle detection, aside from certain particular issues.

And despite her few mental defects, she was also pleasant enough to look at, so I wondered why I still didn’t like her.

"Where’s my Four-Tiger Sword?”

Right, I never got my item.

*t*t*

When the three of us entered the hospital again, the atmosphere among our team was downright terrible.

Because I had discovered that Go Ryeoha was an even worse scammer than a rental-deposit fraudster.

"Hubae-nim~. It’s not like I said I’d never make it for you~.”

"Ryeoha-ssi, please be quiet.”

While Go Ryeoha whined and used [Spirit Sight], I grumbled and checked for red footprints with Alteration-type Eyes-branch, Stage 1.

Hamza glanced between the two of us, then quietly pointed with a finger.

"Jemin-ssi, over there…”

Whenever Hamza pointed somewhere, there was no need to second-guess anything.

The moment I raised my rifle and aimed at the hospital room Hamza indicated, Go Ryeoha would automatically rip the door off with [Telekinensis].

Then, like sweet crabmeat tucked inside a shell, Amalgams and Predator Spines would come flailing out through the fog.

These goddamn trash mobs.

I was so afraid that letting even one escape might delay my stage level-up that I carefully shot each one dead with a single round.

Apparently all the time I had spent getting chewed out by Instructor Song Smith had paid off, because now I could kill them without even using Eyes-branch, Stage 1 at 100%. It seemed like my muzzle was getting sucked toward the monsters’ weak points.

And now, the monsters I had just shot were the last ones. 

I watched the acrid gunsmoke mingle with the fog and pretended to cool the heated buzzle by blowing on it.

-Huff, huff.

Aah, is that all?

Humans can never overcome pain. They can only forget it by replacing it with greater pain.

Therefore, my decision to learn marksmanship in order to strategically ration pain had proven correct.

We had picked the entire 1st floor of the hospital clean, even flushing out a few Predator Spines hiding inside bathroom stalls, and yet I had barely suffered at all.

I had used so little magic that I could clearly feel the familiar heat climbing up my left-hand staff.

If I’d had the Four-Tiger Sword on top of this, I would’ve been complete as both a ranged and melee damage dealer.

If only I’d had the Four-Tiger Sword.

"Hubae-nim~.”

"Ryeoha-ssi. I told you to please be quiet.”

I grumbled at Go Ryeoha as she dragged out the ends of her words, and Hamza carefully approached before speaking.

"Hemin-ssi. She said she’ll make one for you if you just wait until 2034.”

"Hey!!!"

I finally snapped and shouted. Go Ryeoha, despite still wearing her gas mask, clasped her hands together and pretended to pray.

"But Jemin-ssi. A Four-Tiger Sword is supposed to be forged in the year, month, day, and hour of the Tiger! How are we supposed to make one when 2028 isn‘t the Year of the Tiger?”

"Uugh…”

I grabbed the back of my neck.

Th-th-this damn bastard.

Apparently the Four-Tiger Sword wasn’t called the Four-Tiger Sword because somebody had come up with a cool-sounding name.

Year, month, day, and hour of the Tiger. In other words, it was called the Four-Tiger Sword because it had to be forged when all four Tigers aligned.

The last Year of the Tiger with a month, day, and hour of the Tiger had been 2022. Which meant the next cycle was 2034…!

Was this what it felt like to get scammed out of your housing deposit?

For the sake of my dental health, I ground my teeth only in my mind and warned them firmly.

"Don’t talk. Stop running your mouths and just focus on the mission. If either of you mentions the Four-Tiger Sword in front of me one more time, I’m seriously shooting everyone.”

"Yes, Jemin-ssi.”

Hamza, readying the room quickly, clamped his mouth shut.

"I’ll make you something else~. Okay?”

"Ryeoha-ssi. Stop.”

"Yes."

Once Go Ryeoha zipped her lips as well, peace finally returned to my heart.

"We cleared the 1st floor, so let’s head up. The basement looks dangerous as hell at a glance, so I don’t want to go there.”

"Roger”

"Let’s go~.”

Standing at the front with Hamza and Go Ryeoha behind me actually made me feel like a real team leader.

They said they were going to gas the basement, so there was no reason for us to go down there. We decided to work our way upward one floor at a time instead. It seemed all the survivors who could escape through the 1st floor had already gotten out, and everything else had been monsters lying in ambush around the 1st floor lobby.

They said the strike team had already cleared everything out, so for a moment I wondered if that had been bullshit, but there was no reason for the military to lie about something like that, so I shook my head.

There was only one likely possibility.

The survivors had been devoured and came down here afterward.

Looks like we’ll have to clear it all over again, I thought as we headed toward the emergency stairs.

"Huh?"

At Hamza’s voice, both Go Ryeoha and I stopped in our tracks as though we had planned it.

But Hamza wasn’t frightened. He looked puzzled. He hadn’t sensed danger but found traces of humans instead. As we moved closer, countless objects became visible beneath the thinning, pale fog.

Go Ryeoha frowned in surprise as well and raised her right fist.

"Phones? Is it a grave?”

Apparently phone graves were some kind of burial rite among the Seoul wizards.

But when I crouched down for a closer look, I came to a completely different conclusion. The phones scattered beneath the fog had lost their owners. Some blinked faintly, while others showed dim screens with only traces of battery remaining.

And one more thing.

There was nothing orderly or deliberate about them. They looked like they had simply been thrown there.

"It’s not a grave.”

I picked up one of the phones, tried its pattern lock a few times, then put it back down.

None of the monsters we had encountered so far had shown any particular interest in phones. At the very least, none of them had a habit of gathering them together like this. Even wizards didn’t exactly go around looting phones either.

There was only one possibility.

An unidentified species.

"Ryeoha-ssi, do you know anything about this?”

When I asked Go Ryeoha, who probably knew the most, her voice turned serious as well.

"No…I think this is a kind of monster that rarely appears even in Seoul.”

No helping it.

Magic was an art of mysteries. If all you wanted was to kill an enemy spectacularly, guns, artillery, or a nuclear bomb did that better. The true value of magic lay in how overwhelmingly useful it could be in areas modern science couldn’t easily reach.

I picked the phone back up and rolled my tongue.

Phone, past, one day, everything, me.

-Click, click, click…

The scenery shifted as though I were turning the aperture ring on a camera or rotating lenses during an eye exam.

Looking down at the pile of phones scattered in front of the emergency stairs, not a phone grave, just a heap of phones, I focused on finding what was changing.

The battery level of the phone in my hand began to rise.

Phone screens that had gone black or faded pale grew vivid again.

I couldn’t hear the ringtones, but I watched hundreds of phones tremble and vibrate as though crying out.

Then I saw the names appearing on their screens.

[Mom] [Our Piggy] [Dad] [Academy Teacher] [Son]...

The calls just kept on coming.

The farther my eyes looked into the past, the further back through time I went, the more the once-dark phone screens lit up the pitch-black stairwell like torches.

Like a cluster of stars gathered beneath a clear night sky, they illuminated the surroundings far more brightly than the flickering fluorescent lights ever could.

The phones rubbed against one another as they cried.

Then their numbers began to decrease.

-Whoosh.

A phone was sucked up into the air.

Thinking I had seen it wrong, I raised my head, but it really had been pulled up into empty air.

One after another, the phones were sucked away.

For the moment, I had the illusion that the pile of phones itself was disappearing.

If I hadn’t remembered that I was rewinding time to see the past, I would’ve been completely thrown off.

And finally, 24 hours ago.

Even the phone I had been holding was gone before I knew it.

The fluorescent lights were still working perfectly fine too. The only thing that had changed was that there was nothing in front of the emergency stairs.

I rolled my tongue once more inside my mouth, the sharp sting and reek of blood filling it.

Playback at 10x speed.

The endless possibilities of magic.

Without any kind of recording equipment, I could investigate what had happened in the past.

Even playing it back at 10x speed, nothing continued to happen in front of the emergency stairs for quite a while.

Then, at some point, a phone fell out of thin air.

-Tap.

At first, I couldn’t understand it. Naturally.

All I could see was a phone suddenly appearing in empty space and falling.

Then the phones began pouring down.

-Clatter.

Screens displaying all kinds of names rubbed and bumped against one another.

Their owners had vanished without a trace, leaving only the phones tangled together helplessly, each displaying a different name.

-Clatterclatterclatter!!

As I watched the phones rain down, I finally realized something.

Why it had looked as though the phones were appearing out of nowhere.

-Click, click, click……

The playback ended.

Feeling the pressure behind my eyes pressing down heavily and painfully, as though I were being crushed beneath deep exhaustion, I had no choice but to close them.

"Jemin-ssi? Did you find something?”

"Yeah."

When I opened my eyes again, Hamza was already rummaging through his backpack in front of me, ready to pull out the first-aid kit.

Go Ryeoha was looking around with her fist clenched tightly.

They had realized I was using magic and had each taken up their roles. One was guarding the area, the other preparing medical support.

My main role in this operation was detection and searching.

So I had to do my job as well.

The reason the phones had seemed to appear from thin air before dropping to the floor.

"I can’t see it.”

"What?"

"It’s an invisible mob.”

A normal military unit sure as hell wouldn’t be able to fight this.