Chapter 62
Reading Under a Clear Sky
People who knew nothing would probably rejoice as the fog continued to thin.
At last, the damned fog was disappearing, and they could finally shoot the monsters dead.
If monsters appeared alongside the fog, then it was only natural to think that once the fog vanished, the monsters could be defeated as well.
But we, the Supreme Mages, had made contact with a local Seoul Mage and learned of another possibility.
What Sister Kang Areum told us was the complete opposite of what we had always assumed to be common sense.
It wasn't easy to accept.
Cause and effect had been reversed.
We had mistaken the order.
According to Sister Kang Areum, monsters come first and the fog follows behind them.
The fog is both a blessing for mages and something that weakens monsters.
The thinner the fog becomes, the stronger the monsters grow.
It sounded so absurd that even hearing it directly from a local made me doubtful.
But it seemed the time had come to find out the truth.
Not that I particularly wanted to learn through experience.
April 19, 2028 — 6:01 PM
Day 5 of the Expedition
At that moment, visibility exceeded 300 meters.
In fact, the sky was so clear that measuring the density of the fog had become meaningless.
Of course, before everything happened, people would have called this heavy fog.
But this was Seoul now.
An alien ecosystem had taken root here.
Under the clear sky, we were finally able to witness the true state of the city that had remained hidden behind the fog.
The moment we turned back from the Han River and stepped into an alley between the pharmacies, I saw something running across the rooftops.
At the same time, the sound of broken slate roofing and debris falling from bombarded buildings echoed clearly.
Tutududuk...
The Supreme Mages reacted instantly.
Before Hamza could warn us.
Before Shin Nain could say anything.
Everyone hid behind fallen signboards or inside buildings with shattered windows.
I crawled into the first floor of what looked like an ordinary villa.
A faded red cross hung precariously from a sign outside, revealing that it had once been a church.
Perhaps after the Threshold Breakthrough, people had entered hoping for a miracle.
Half-eaten snack bags.
Crushed water bottles.
Broken chairs and desks.
Rotten bloodstains splattered across the walls and floor.
Unfortunately, the miracle of resurrection hadn't arrived in the form people wanted.
Then footsteps sounded from behind me.
In a place where only bloodstains remained and the corpses had mysteriously vanished, Hamza followed me inside.
He raised a finger to the filter of his gas mask and gestured for silence.
"Shhh."
He'd apparently become so accustomed to the mask that he used its filter in place of his lips.
"Okay."
I followed his lead.
The two of us hid behind overturned chairs and broken desks, waiting for the sounds outside to disappear.
With ammunition already a concern, recklessly fighting an unknown monster was out of the question.
I desperately wanted to test my new magic.
But with the fog thinning this rapidly, I couldn't use it carelessly.
I had to consider the backlash.
Besides, Cognitive Dissonance was an excessively passive spell.
The combat records of Ski Goggles—the senior mage who had come before me—proved that.
If it were possible to inflict Cognitive Dissonance directly on an enemy, there was no reason he wouldn't have used it.
Huh? Didn't I just fire my gun?
If he could force thoughts like that into someone's head, the fight would be over instantly.
The term Cognitive Dissonance makes it sound philosophical and complicated.
In reality, it was simple.
This magic was essentially insisting that something was true.
The important part was how far that insistence could reach.
Based on the knowledge engraved in my head, the Third Stage of Overcoming and Denial—Cognitive Dissonance—could only insist upon changes that occurred within my own body.
The fact that I couldn't erase the wedge-shaped characters covering my body with the spell suggested that contracts forcibly imposed through ritual magic were beyond its power.
Ski Goggles' memories made that painfully clear.
So I decided to focus elsewhere.
Since the fog had become much thinner than expected, I activated only First-Stage Eye Magic and checked whether any red footprints were approaching.
Fortunately, the magical backlash had improved compared to when I was in Suwon.
Back then, my eyes became so bright that tears streamed endlessly.
Now it merely felt as if my eyes had been dried out for ten straight minutes.
Scratchy.
Stinging.
Itchy.
But bearable.
Was it because my realm had advanced?
That was the only explanation I could think of.
Ten seconds into the future, I saw no red footprints approaching us.
None at all.
But I could still infer what was happening throughout Seoul from the sounds alone.
A scream tore through the air.
A childish voice—at most an upper elementary school student—scraped desperately at its throat and shouted in panic.
"Mom! Dad! Help me!"
Help me...
Help me...
The child's cries echoed between shattered windows and empty alleyways.
For some reason, I remembered climbing the mountain behind my neighborhood as a kid and shouting "Yah-ho!"
This wasn't even high ground, yet the child's voice repeated endlessly.
A kind person might have felt guilty.
Someone overflowing with justice might have already rushed outside.
But we were the Supreme Mages.
We were the people who had calmly shot Teratomas dead even when they lured victims with the cries of babies.
There was no way we'd be shaken by nothing more than the screams of an elementary school student.
Partly because we all understood reality now.
The only people capable of surviving in Seoul were mages and those attached to them.
At best, that screaming child was a Seoul Mage.
More likely, it was simply a monster imitating a human.
This time, too, it was the latter.
After the scream of the child who hadn't even reached puberty came the sounds of a young woman, perhaps in her mid-twenties, struggling desperately.
"AAAH! Let go!"
Countless dying cries overlapped.
Go away!
Sob!
Father!
No!
Get off me!
The uproar intensified.
Windows that had somehow remained intact shattered.
Doors crashed apart.
Optimistic people might think survivors were hunting monsters.
But Hamza and I, trembling behind a desk, immediately realized this wasn't a battle between humans and monsters.
Because of the sounds that followed.
Hrrgh...
In the alleyways revealed by the thinning fog came the unmistakable sound of air escaping.
Not a sigh.
The weak voice of someone whose lungs had been punctured, someone no longer capable of speaking properly.
That wheezing voice crushed all the other cries beneath it.
Crunch.
If it had stopped there, it would've been nice.
But it didn't.
Have you ever thrown chicken bones to a dog in the countryside?
People argue about whether dogs should eat chicken bones.
But some rural mutts absolutely loved them.
When I was young, visiting my grandparents' house, I once tossed a fresh chicken bone to their dog.
The dog wagged its tail furiously.
It grabbed the bone in one bite.
Then it drooled all over it and crushed it instantly.
Even now, I can vividly remember the sound of the bone shattering between its teeth.
And right now...
I was hearing that exact sound.
A creature scraping something with its tongue and crushing it between its teeth.
Whenever people hear sounds, they inevitably imagine things.
So I desperately forced myself to remember only that childhood memory of feeding a chicken bone to a country dog.
Lick. Lick.
Thick saliva stripped meat from bone and coated the remains.
Crack.
Crack-crack.
Teeth scraping against something too hard.
Crunch!
Crunch!
Whatever it was, it was eating with enthusiasm.
Crunch. Crunch.
Apparently it liked a particularly large bone.
It kept rotating it, crushing it from different angles, sucking every bit of marrow out.
Thank God I couldn't actually see it.
Hiding behind a desk and trembling was bad enough.
I didn't need to witness it.
At last, when the bone softened enough for its teeth to penetrate, it crushed it completely and greedily devoured the marrow inside.
The image of that country dog came vividly to mind.
But after the dog in my memory finished eating every last piece of bone, it had looked up at me and licked its muzzle.
As a child, I'd thought that look meant anticipation.
Standing inside the ruins of a collapsed church, it felt entirely different.
My desperate attempt to cling to that memory collapsed when I heard the next sound.
Hic...
Sob...
The thing that had painstakingly chewed every fragment of bone began to cry.
Some unknown creature was sobbing quietly atop the rooftops and ruined alleyways beyond the broken windows.
A voice that could no longer speak properly.
A voice like air leaking from a punctured balloon.
It was grieving.
While licking something.
Hack...
Cough...
Sob...
Something seemed lodged in its throat.
Yet it continued licking.
Cold sweat ran down the back of my neck as I glanced at Hamza.
He was already halfway to insanity.
His face had turned ghostly white.
Eyes squeezed shut.
Legs twisted together.
He looked as though he was about to wet himself, but he was desperately clenching every muscle he had.
Terrified that if he urinated, the smell would attract that thing.
Considering that even I—who had already pissed myself long ago—suddenly felt the urge again, I couldn't blame him.
Then the creature finally broke into a hoarse wail.
"Ahhh... Aaaah..."
Had it realized what it had become?
Was it mourning the loss of its humanity?
Honestly, I wished that were the reason.
Instead, the creature cried in a human voice.
A ruined human voice.
And it finally gave voice to the sorrow it could no longer contain.
The echo that shook the nameless alley wasn't a plea for rescue.
Nor was it a wish for death.
It was only one thing.
"I'm hungry."
After screaming with all the despair of a human being, the monster began moving again.
Sound revealed many things.
I could vividly imagine it stomping across the green urethane rooftops and slate coverings of the villas.
Jumping from roof to roof.
The footsteps were followed by more screams.
Don't come!
Run!
What's wrong with you?!
You've never acted like this before!
Oppa, something's wrong with you today...!
I remained where I was until the countless dying cries faded.
Until the bouncing footsteps disappeared.
Until even the wheezing sobs vanished completely.
The sharp smell of ammonia rose beside me.
Hamza had finally lost the battle.
But I didn't criticize him.
Expecting him to master the advanced art of strategically wetting himself in tiny increments was unreasonable under the circumstances.
Several seconds after the creature disappeared, footsteps approached our location.
No red footprints appeared.
Only then did I cautiously peek outside.
Familiar faces came into view.
Pastor Park Yohan.
Shin Nain.
Lee Sejun.
The instant our eyes met, we made a decision.
Not a single word was spoken.
The decision was conveyed entirely through our expressions.
With the fog this thin, operating outside any longer was impossible.
The place our Supreme Mages chose as a temporary shelter was the third floor of the church.
The church resembled an ordinary villa, with gray exterior walls. Including the glass structure covering the rooftop, it stood roughly four to five stories tall.
The first floor was too vulnerable to monster intrusion.
The rooftop was ruled out because it appeared to be part of the travel route of that bone-chewing monster we had only heard.
There seemed to be no entrance other than the staircase.
Unfortunately, we couldn't find any way down to a basement.
There was a shuttered area that made us suspect a basement might exist, but with no telling when a monster could return, we couldn't afford to investigate.
Even speaking had become something to be cautious about.
Wary of making unnecessary noise, we followed the pastor's nod and moved deeper into the building.
Indoor spaces were naturally ideal habitats for Predatory Spines and Pig Monsters, a subspecies of Amalgams.
Fortunately, there were no Predatory Spines in this building.
Perhaps it was because of that unidentified monster we had just heard whining about being hungry in a human voice.
That was only speculation.
We climbed the stairs slowly and carefully, checking our surroundings.
With my greatsword drawn, I prepared myself to swing it at any moment while enduring the pain of activating my ability every ten seconds to inspect the building's interior.
Lee Sejun casually shook bloodstains from his fists.
While Hamza trembled helplessly, Shin Nain and the pastor tucked their firearms beneath their arms and assisted with my reconnaissance.
Whenever I watched for danger, the pastor would carefully turn a doorknob and poke his gun barrel inside first before waiting.
I glanced hopefully toward Hamza.
No chance.
"Huff... huff..."
"Yeah. Just focus on breathing."
Mentally shattered, Hamza couldn't even provide danger warnings anymore.
Panting silently was already the best he could manage.
None of us pushed him.
Shin Nain chose another method instead of speaking aloud.
She stared at me for a moment, tapped her headset, and blinked repeatedly.
I wondered what kind of nonsense she was trying to pull, but after I stared back blankly, she let out a long sigh.
Then she pulled out the Magic Lecture booklet from inside her clothes.
She tapped her headset with the booklet and opened a page bearing the seal of Ear-type magic.
Only then did I realize what she was trying to tell me.
I focused.
Ear Stage 1: Mind Reading.
"Jemin, can you hear me?"
I can.
"It seems practitioners of Ear-type Sacred Arts can secretly communicate like this when they recognize each other as allies. It only works between people of the same realm. I think it became possible because you reached Eye Stage 3 and entered the same realm as me."
Apparently Shin Nain had spent quite a bit of time thinking seriously about her magic.
But the moment I heard that explanation, I realized how horrifying and malicious Ear Magic truly was.
Now...
As part of Ear Magic's penalty, did I have to hear Shin Nain's inner voice too, not just Lee Sejun's?
At least she wasn't skilled enough for it to happen often.
I immediately vowed never to focus on Shin Nain unless we had agreed on hand signals beforehand.
"There are no demon bastards inside. There were, but after seeing that bone-chewing demon earlier, they seem to have fled."
You think they'll come back?
"I don't know. But we can't move recklessly right now."
Agreed.
Communicating telepathically with Shin Nain had been a thoroughly unpleasant experience, but I couldn't deny its usefulness.
With the two of us able to coordinate more closely, the risk caused by Hamza's absence from active duty was reduced somewhat.
Eventually, we reached the third floor.
A dusty interior greeted us.
Honestly, a room coated in dust was preferable.
Monsters weren't likely to spend days lying in ambush somewhere people never visited.
At least, I desperately hoped so.
We immediately began preparing the room as a shelter.
First, I shifted my greatsword into my left hand and cut my right palm again.
Slice!
"Ah, fuck."
Something had gone wrong.
I stared at my palm and couldn't stop myself from making a miserable face.
Lee Sejun, who possessed the same Hand Stage 1 ability, glanced over and tilted his head.
"What's wrong, Jemin?"
"I cut too deep."
"...There's not even any blood coming out."
"Show some sympathy."
To use Hand Stage 1 — Right Hand's Blood, I had to cut myself.
Wasn't sadness the natural response in a situation like this?
My delicate humanity and sensitivity were being crushed beneath these emotionally barren human concrete blocks.
Then I remembered our situation and gritted my teeth.
Right.
Baek Jemin realized something once again.
Just because something looks cool doesn't mean actually doing it is cool.
People who slash open their palms and bleed because they think it looks badass aren't cool.
They're idiots.
Everyone has methods suited to them.
Ignoring the faint mark left where the blade had barely scratched my palm, I instead pricked the tip of my right index finger.
"Sniff..."
"Why is Baek Jemin such a lunatic whenever we're not actually fighting?"
That fundamentalist pastor would never understand.
The sorrow of a man so terrified of needles that he skips his flu shots every year.
Anyway, I had enough blood.
That was what mattered.
I immediately smeared blood all over my poncho, set down my greatsword, removed my hood, and pulled up my gas mask.
"We need to cover the windows with blood-soaked ponchos and secure them. Everybody take yours off."
The response was swift.
With no proper curtains available, using our already filthy ponchos to block the windows seemed entirely reasonable.
The Supreme Mages immediately smeared Right Hand's Blood onto their torn and tattered ponchos before hanging them over the windows.
Without nails or screws, we secured them by stabbing greatswords into place.
They looked as though they might fall at any moment, but I overcame that problem somewhat by bleeding from my left hand and engraving the concept of "fixed" onto the swords.
Fortunately, the third floor still had intact windows, so we didn't need to worry much about drafts flapping the ponchos around.
While Lee Sejun and I reinforced the ponchos with more blood and secured them, the pastor and Shin Nain quietly stacked dusty chairs and desks in front of the door.
Finally, Lee Sejun and I applied Right Hand's Blood to the barricade itself.
The temporary shelter was complete.
Compared to a basement, it was more exposed and vulnerable to attack.
Still, considering the power of Hand Stage 1: Right Hand's Blood, it should hold for several days.
We secured our gas masks to our arms like military police armbands so they wouldn't get lost.
Only after placing loaded firearms nearby just in case did we finally breathe a sigh of relief.
At last, we had time to discuss the knowledge and spoils we had acquired.
Right then, the Cursed Phone vibrated.
Bzzzzzz—
"Check it."
Following the instructions of the pastor, who seemed to have aged several years in only a few days, I picked up the phone.
An anonymous message greeted us.
[Fog density decreasing. Outdoor activity effectively impossible. No support available. Endure as long as possible.]
[Unusual military movements detected. Exercise caution.]
After everyone read the screen, each reacted differently.
The first to speak was Pastor Park Yohan.
"That monster earlier... let's call it Odok. Odok's a monster that's never been mentioned before. But I think it was eating Amalgams. You know those deceptive human voices Amalgams use? They got buried beneath Odok's sounds and disappeared."
"I can't be certain, but the evidence points that way," Shin Nain said. "The demons called Amalgams are characterized by discordant noises. The demon you've named Odok was making a gurgling sound. The louder that gurgling became, the weaker the discordant noises grew until they stopped completely. It appears to eat—or at least kill—them."
With testimony from Shin Nain's Ear Magic Stage 2: Monster Mind Reading, everyone looked disgusted.
Even Hamza, who had barely regained his composure, clicked his tongue.
"Aren't monsters supposed to be on the same side? Is it just that there used to be so much prey they ignored each other, and now that prey's running out, they're starting to hunt one another?"
"Probably."
Shin Nain's calm response only made the reality feel more tangible.
Back in the Suwon Station bathroom, she'd insisted Predatory Spines possessed a sense of kinship.
Now she was saying the opposite.
That told me something important.
A monster's definition of "its own kind" was far narrower than we'd imagined.
"Maybe Amalgams only consider other Amalgams their kin, and Predatory Spines only consider other Predatory Spines their kin."
"Ugh. That's somehow even more disgusting..."
Lee Sejun pretended to gag.
He was right.
Until now, we'd said Seoul was no longer a human city.
At least we'd assumed it was a city of monsters.
But after witnessing monsters eating each other without even using Tongue Stage 2: Desire Explosion — Hunger, that idea suddenly felt far too simplistic.
This place was no monster city.
It was an entirely alien ecosystem.
The timing of Odok's appearance and the thinning fog felt suspiciously connected.
But since we'd never actually seen the creature, there was no basis for further speculation.
Reluctantly, we moved on to another topic.
Ski Goggles' backpack.
The goggle mage had carried a triangular cross-body pack for mobility.
There wasn't much inside.
But what was there was obviously valuable.
A book covered in wedge-shaped characters.
Rows of V-shaped symbols spiraled counterclockwise across its pages.
The moment Shin Nain saw it, she frowned.
Then covered her mouth and began dry-heaving.
"Urgh—!"
"Yeah, no. Put that thing away."
As our super-detector, Shin Nain had earned a strange degree of trust.
Whenever she suddenly started vomiting for no reason, something was wrong.
Without hesitation, we stuffed the wedge-character book back into the bag.
Then we noticed something else.
Hands.
Not a joke.
Actual hands.
Human hands carefully arranged in neat stacks.
Their surfaces were covered with wedge-shaped symbols carved by something sharp and laid out with almost obsessive precision.
Even Lee Sejun was impressed.
"Maybe because he's from Seoul? His organization is incredible. It's my first time seeing human hands stacked this neatly."
"Being from Seoul doesn't make people organized. Ski Goggles was just a tidy guy."
"You two are unbelievable! Baek Jemin! Lee Sejun! You're rummaging through the backpack of a guy who chopped off people's hands and carved them up, and you're complimenting his organizational skills? Are you insane?!"
Oops.
Apparently my humble attitude—that everyone has something worth learning from—had disappointed the pastor.
I sighed sadly as I thought about Ski Goggles' death.
If he hadn't mistaken us for soldiers...
If we'd at least talked things out...
Couldn't we have formed a mutually beneficial relationship?
I'd killed him because I was obsessed with getting Eye Stage 3 first.
Now that I'd actually achieved Eye Stage 3, regret was beginning to creep in.
"Jemin, do you want to be burned as a heretic? Talk things out with a guy who cut off people's hands and made contracts with demons? Have you lost your mind?!"
Unfortunately, my civilized belief that dialogue should come before violence was naturally criticized by the pastor.
This was exactly why people mocked fundamentalists.
Meanwhile, Shin Nain finally recovered from her nausea.
Her face was pale as she pointed toward the backpack.
"That. The book."
"Hm?"
"It's human skin."
The room fell silent.
No one needed to say anything.
We simply stared at one another.
A wedge-character book bound in human skin.
A genuine grimoire.
No matter how much we'd joked about eldritch horrors dying to steamships and modern weapons, encountering something like this in reality carried an entirely different weight.
I looked down once more at the wedge-character grimoire resting carefully inside Ski Goggles' backpack.
My eyes widened.
I instinctively stepped backward.
Covering my gaping mouth with both hands, I began to tremble.