Chapter 40
Traces of Life
The subway tracks weren't in particularly good condition.
Repeated bombardments and power disruptions had created stretches of complete darkness where no lights remained. In those places, the only thing we could rely on was the L-shaped tactical light attached to our chests.
It was one of the reasons the military had tried, from the earliest days of the disaster, to destroy or seal off underground passageways.
Narrow subway tunnels were ideal for concentrating firepower.
But if a defensive line broke, it could collapse catastrophically.
On top of that, the existence of Predatory Spines—creatures that moved along walls and ceilings while lying in ambush within the darkness—must have placed a tremendous burden on conventional military tactics.
Poorly trained conscripts.
The monsters' durability.
Their intelligence and unnatural movements.
The sudden outbreak and expansion of the crisis.
There were countless reasons.
The Republic of Korea Army was organized to fight humans.
Not monsters.
An eight-man infantry squad had to overcome panic and expend enormous amounts of ammunition just to bring down a single Amalgam.
But we were different.
***
Hoooo—
Shin Nain exhaled deeply through his gas mask filter and tapped the headset beneath his hood.
A signal.
Apparently he'd abandoned unnecessary explanations and switched to simple reports.
“Spines and faces. Multiple. Coming from behind too.”
The moment I heard that, I removed my gas mask and hung it from my left arm.
Tightening the strap, I secured it firmly around my forearm.
Like an armband.
Like a badge.
Seeing it there filled me with excitement.
Then I immediately raised my rifle and stuck out my tongue.
“Bleeeh.”
Target. Monster. One minute. Route.
My tongue split open again.
Blood poured out.
Yet somehow the wounds felt less severe here in Seoul's fog.
I swallowed a mouthful of blood.
“Hamza and Pastor, stay low. Sejun, prep a grenade. Poop Prophet, take the faces' legs.”
The instructions were short and half-baked.
But by now we understood each other perfectly.
A moment later, familiar-looking monsters emerged within the beam of our tactical lights.
The most noticeable was a five-legged Amalgam dragging the body of what looked like a five-year-old child behind it.
Fortunately, we already knew these creatures attacked human emotions.
It affected us less now.
We were the people who had survived the Teratoma pretending to be a baby.
The Alteration Trio no longer panicked or grieved.
We had become professional mages capable of hating and despising monsters instead.
Lee Sejun had changed the most.
The same man who once trembled and screamed in terror now converted fear into rage.
As he pulled a grenade pin, he muttered:
“You fucking bastards.”
BOOM!
At first I thought I'd accidentally fired first.
I hadn't.
One of the hunchbacked Amalgam's legs exploded apart, causing it to lose balance.
Lee Sejun had thrown a grenade using Heart Alteration Stage Two.
The metallic clang echoed across the tracks.
Instinctively, all of us lowered our heads.
A deafening ringing followed.
Something rained down from above.
But none of us were afraid.
The only real threat was the Predatory Spines.
While the grenade detonated, several of them had rushed across the ceiling like spiders.
I answered them with gunfire.
The sound of rifles pierced through the ringing in my ears.
Heads burst apart like smashed watermelons.
Shin Nain and Lee Sejun opened fire as well.
The stench of gunpowder filled the air.
Brass casings scattered across the tracks.
Disgusting monster fluids flowed across the floor.
Yet there was one threat we still couldn't ignore.
While our attention focused forward, the clicking sound of bones crawling along a wall struck my ears.
I bit my sore tongue lightly and turned around.
My pain is longer and greater than any before.
“Caught you, bastard!”
Three Predatory Spines were just preparing to leap.
Normally they would've anchored themselves to the wall using their mutated rib-cage limbs.
One hadn't finished doing so.
It crashed to the ground with a wet smack.
As it struggled to recover—
Shin Nain spun around.
“Demons, demons~ by the Lord's grace~”
Bang! Bang!
That bastard might be a poop prophet, but he had definitely been an FM ace during his military service.
The two Predatory Spines hanging from the wall had their heads blown apart instantly.
Apparently their skulls were slightly softer than real human ones.
Meanwhile, Lee Sejun approached the remaining monster.
Then he raised his foot.
“Hup!”
CRUNCH!
For a moment I thought I'd imagined the sound.
It was exactly like a large dog chewing through a chicken bone.
Lee Sejun's combat boot had punched straight through the monster's skull.
That still wasn't enough for him.
He lifted his foot again.
Then stomped.
And stomped.
Grinding the skull into fragments like a child dancing through fresh snow.
I watched the entire thing unfold.
Eyes wide open.
Tears streaming down my face.
Not because I was emotional.
Because I was using my powers and worried this idiot might somehow get himself killed.
Blink.
“Lee Sejun, you crazy bastard. Just shoot it. If that thing freaks out and snaps your spine while you're stomping on it, I'm not helping.”
“Bullets are expensive.”
“Right now porters are more valuable than bullets.”
“... Jemin.”
The gratitude shining in Lee Sejun's eyes made me smile.
After all, he was the only one here capable of carrying two ammo cans around without even breaking a sweat.
***
Around then, Shin Nain finished reloading and approached.
“Swap magazines now. There are more monsters than expected. We're burning through ammunition. Sejun isn't entirely wrong.”
He had a point.
Our destination was Jangji Station.
Normally it would've been a five- or ten-minute subway ride.
Yet we'd already encountered two monster groups.
Not a few creatures.
Dozens.
Still, I wasn't upset.
Because Pastor Park and Hamza were staring at us as though we were completely insane.
Especially Pastor Park.
He seemed genuinely amazed that we'd fought such horrifying monsters without hesitation, fear, or a single injury.
“Baek Jemin. Why are you narrating my thoughts?”
“You don't need a poop prophet's ears to figure some things out.”
Baek Jemin possessed a unique talent.
I could instantly distinguish between a gaze full of admiration and one full of contempt.
Normally the pastor probably considered me ninety percent insane.
Now that number had dropped to seventy-five.
A significant improvement.
I also possessed a remarkable ability to distinguish sincere praise from empty flattery.
And Hamza's praise was definitely sincere.
“Amazing. No, seriously amazing! Soldiers can't fight them like that!”
Hamza explained that back at Suwon City Hall, command staff had used him like a wrong-answer detector.
He also revealed some useful information.
A properly positioned infantry squad of eight soldiers that didn't panic could kill Amalgams and Predatory Spines.
The problem was that most soldiers capable of that were concentrated along the First Containment Line.
Knowing Hamza was deliberately hyping us up made me extremely happy.
Clearly, years of surviving as a migrant laborer had made him a master of social skills.
Still, I wasn't going to take all the credit.
“Maybe it's because our Supreme Mages are just ridiculously awesome?”
Excluding Monk Cheonghwi, who had deserted, the five of us were probably the strongest mages outside Seoul.
Shin Nain.
A religious fanatic who spent twenty minutes singing hymns every time he used the bathroom but somehow remained a flawless detector.
Lee Sejun.
A seemingly ordinary guy whose grenade throws could punch holes through human limbs and who carried twenty-six kilograms of ammunition without complaint.
Hamza.
Who had eaten my luncheon meat.
The pastor.
Always thinking.
And me.
Baek Jemin.
Who required no further explanation.
We reformed our formation and continued toward Jangji Station.
“Jemin, aren't you changing magazines?”
“Still got about fourteen rounds left. I'll empty it first.”
For now, I decided to keep my gas mask strapped to my arm like an armband.
Smack. Smack. Smack...
I continued licking the blood from my split tongue as we advanced.
I was too busy swallowing the blood seeping from my tongue.
Part of it was simple paranoia. If I put my gas mask back on now, I felt like the smell of blood would soak into the inside of it.
Though, to be fair, it was still better than the nauseating stench rising from the monster fluids we kept stepping through.
Splatter. Squish.
“Ugh. That's disgusting.”
Using up the remaining rounds was easy.
Grrrgh...
I aimed my rifle at the hunchbacked Amalgam that was still groaning.
“Mom... can't breathe...”
The body of a child no older than five flailed its arms, patting at the melted faces fused into its body.
As though it were searching for the face it had already lost.
Just to be sure, I glanced at Shin Nain.
He chuckled.
“I don't hear any human voices.”
“Not calling for God like Father Jeong Yong-hwan?”
“Nope.”
Thought so, damn it.
I pulled the trigger.
***
What greeted us at Jangji Station was garbage.
Crushed plastic bottles.
Snack wrappers.
Blowflies attracted by the smell of human waste.
Even documentaries about the worst slums in the world looked cleaner than this.
Before entering a new area, we naturally looked to Hamza.
He nodded stiffly.
“It's safe.”
Safe or not, Jangji Station was filthy.
The platform itself was relatively clean, but dirty clothes and torn bags were scattered everywhere.
What drew our attention immediately, however, were the bloodstains.
Even though they had long since turned brown, they were unmistakably blood.
Because of the handprints.
Smears of hands dragging themselves across the floor covered the station.
Flies circled them relentlessly, savoring the scent of dried blood.
Shin Nain used Eye Alteration Stage One—his past vision—but got nothing.
Not surprising.
The scene was clearly far older than an hour.
He glanced toward me.
“Want to try?”
“No.”
The blood had already browned.
The trash looked old too.
Using tongue magic to view the past without knowing the exact timeframe was something I wanted no part of.
I liked magic because pain could be useful.
I wasn't some ascetic willing to suffer for meaningless results.
Odds were a monster or some deranged mage had wiped everyone out anyway.
Why endure pain just to confirm the obvious?
As Lee Sejun yawned quietly, Pastor Park slowly surveyed the station and exhaled through his filter.
“Hiding underground scared them, maybe. The bathrooms should've been upstairs, but they deliberately relieved themselves near the tracks. Don't spread out. Search carefully. Look for records. Notes. Anything they might've left behind.”
“In a place this ruined? Who'd bother leaving a journal?”
The research diary we'd found earlier existed because its owner had been an unusually experimental mage.
I couldn't imagine a random survivor group doing the same.
The pastor immediately scolded that line of thinking.
“Idiot. How do ordinary people survive in Seoul without mages? If this place didn't collapse immediately at the start, there was probably at least one mage here. Maybe a leader. Maybe someone important. If phones can't access data and Wi-Fi is dead, people start writing things down. Taking notes. Keeping records.”
“I suppose that's true...”
The idea sounded surprisingly plausible.
Once people realized they were trapped among monsters with no hope of rescue, writing might have become one of the few things left to do.
For all we knew, some of the monsters we'd fought on our way here might once have been residents of Jangji Station.
The pastor cracked his neck and stroked his K2 rifle.
“Stay away from the bathrooms. If they chose to relieve themselves near the tracks, there was probably a reason. Let's focus on searching the platform.”
***
And so the Supreme Mages began searching for traces of survivors.
As we worked, a strange thought occurred to me.
Why had they scattered all these filthy clothes around?
I nudged one aside with my boot.
Beneath it lay a bloodstain someone hadn't managed to erase.
Apparently they'd used the clothing like rags to scrub blood from the platform.
The others noticed the same thing.
One by one they moved garments aside.
Each discovery made them frown.
Only Lee Sejun tried to joke about it.
“Don't tell me they resorted to cannibalism.”
“With a department store right nearby?”
“Exactly why I'm saying it.”
We searched the platform from one end to the other.
And eventually we found something strange.
Very strange.
At the far end of the station sat a small memorial.
Burned-down candles.
Dozens of them.
Their wicks long exhausted.
In front of them were neatly arranged phones.
Phones with shattered screens.
Phones whose batteries had long since died.
Someone had clearly organized them with care.
Faced with a place that seemed less like a shrine for the dead and more like a shrine for their phones, none of us spoke immediately.
Pastor Park instinctively reached for his glasses.
Then remembered he was wearing a gas mask and lowered his hand.
There were roughly seventy phones.
No bodies.
No graves.
Yet this place was proof that at least seventy people had once lived here.
Around the shrine, the walls, pillars, and floor were covered in messages written with rotting flesh and dried blood.
[Kill them all, fuck.]
[Why us? Why me?]
[I'll never forgive them.]
Hooo. Hooo.
There was no supernatural power in the words.
But the resentment and curses contained within them struck us harder than any magic could have.
The pastor let out a long sigh.
Then turned toward us.
“Find power outlets. Check if any of the phones can still charge. We'll stay here for a while.”
He paused.
“I'm... going to pray.”
He shrugged.
Immediately Shin Nain narrowed his eyes.
“Pastor, we don't even know if these people attended church. How can you ask Heaven to open its gates to them?”
“What are you talking about? They're probably burning in hell already. I'm praying they'll be roasted a little more gently.”
“Truly worthy of a pastor. I am ashamed.”
The moment those words left his mouth, me, Lee Sejun, and Hamza instinctively backed away from the two of them.
Then Hamza quietly whispered:
“What about Islamic heaven?”
“No pork.”
“Allah will provide you with a spouse.”
Lee Sejun tilted his head.
“Will He turn me into a cute anime girl too?”
The moment he heard that, Hamza immediately walked away from us.
I completely understood his reaction.
Meanwhile Lee Sejun turned to me with the proud expression of someone who thought he'd just made a brilliant point.
“If He can't create a gender-swapped anime girl, can He really be omnipotent?”
“Quit talking nonsense and go find a power outlet.”