Chapter 80
Everyone Survived
There were only five fully armed soldiers spread across three rubber boats, but their presence was reassuring beyond words.
I couldn't even remember the last time I'd encountered normal people.
The only problem was the weight of all our equipment.
We had to split up.
I immediately climbed into the boat that only had a single soldier.
"Less people is always better."
"If Mr. Jemin got on without any problems, it can't be that dangerous."
Hamza answered before climbing into the same boat.
Whenever the inflatable boat rocked from our weight, the rosaries, prayer beads, pentagram necklaces, and other charms tied to the handles clinked together like chains.
Then the college girl in the black mask—Goryeoha—naturally stepped into our boat as well.
"Heave-ho! Whew... It feels like a dream. Can we really get out?"
"Probably."
"Huh? Junior, your voice sounds much more subdued."
"That's just how I am."
Goryeoha hugged her knees and stared at me.
Hamza had long since pretended not to notice and moved next to the soldier fiddling with the motor.
At that moment, I realized something.
Perhaps Goryeoha would become a permanent fog hanging over my life.
Seoul covered in fog wasn't a place.
It was a person.
In the end, the boats were divided like this:
Boat A
- Me
- Hamza
- Goryeoha
- One soldier
Total: 4 people
Boat B
- Pastor Park Yohan
- Shin Nain
- The radio operator
- One soldier
Total: 4 people
Boat C
- Lee Sejun
- Two soldiers
Total: 3 people
Lee Sejun was effectively counted as two people because of how much gear he carried.
"Don't blame me. Most of this weight is ammunition."
"Mr. Sejun, nobody was going to criticize your weight."
As Shin Nain coldly shut down his nonsense from across the water, I found myself under attack from an entirely different direction.
Goryeoha, who had been staring at me, suddenly started pointing at me with her index finger.
At first I thought she was pointing behind me.
I turned around.
I even shifted seats.
Her finger kept following me.
Eventually I gave up.
"What is it, Master?"
"You know... this has been bothering me the whole time. I kept wondering why you felt strangely familiar."
"What?"
"Are you carrying something inside your clothes?"
Something?
Confused, I patted myself down.
Flashlight on my chest.
Magic handbook.
Bag of hardtack in my pocket.
Sword at my waist.
Military belt.
Grenades dumped onto Lee Sejun.
Four magazines.
Then—
"Ah. Right."
There was one thing.
Deep inside my shirt pocket, pressed almost directly against my skin.
A talisman.
Poppy Auntie had given it to me before I entered Seoul.
She'd made a huge fuss about how expensive it was.
I'd completely forgotten about it.
When I finally pulled it out, the yellow paper was filthy.
Sweat-soaked.
Wrinkled.
Grimy.
As I wondered whether I should even put something this dirty back in my pocket, Goryeoha suddenly clapped her hands.
"A Ghost-Warding Talisman? Someone put a lot of effort into making that."
"Come to think of it, you said your family practiced shamanism."
At that moment, a horrifying possibility flashed through my mind.
What if this talisman was the reason Goryeoha felt familiar toward me?
If so, then Poppy Auntie's good intentions had somehow transformed into catastrophic bad luck.
Maybe she wasn't such a great shaman after all.
Meanwhile, the soldiers noticed everyone had boarded.
The motors roared back to life.
"We're heading past Guri and into Namyangju. Hold on tight and don't fall out."
"There aren't monsters in the water, are there?"
"We don't know. Don't ask. The boat carrying the two civilian operators takes point. Visibility's terrible, so stay together!"
Putter-putter-putter-putter...
The engines sounded exactly like farming tractors.
Hamza and I looked around at the bright orange rubber boats.
It felt strangely surreal.
Unless a ship sank, I'd never expected to ride something like this in my life.
Yet here we were.
At least the soldier in our boat was relatively friendly.
He slapped both Hamza and me on the shoulder.
"You don't need to row. Just keep watch with your firearms."
"Yes, sir."
The moment he said rowing wasn't necessary, I immediately put the oar down.
Hamza tried to do the same.
I instantly blocked him.
"Why are you putting yours down? You can't even shoot."
"Mr. Jemin, that's cruel."
"Should I take it instead? I'm a Heart Mage, remember?"
Hamza and I silently agreed to stick to our respective jobs.
Me:
Security.
Hamza:
Professional oar holder.
"What about me? What should I do?"
"Just sit there. It's natural for a disciple to take care of their master."
"Ahaha! What's that supposed to mean?"
Goryeoha laughed with crescent-shaped eyes.
The atmosphere was awkward enough that anyone with common sense would've noticed.
Even the soldier running the motor glanced at the three of us before deliberately pretending Goryeoha didn't exist.
I sighed deeply and tucked the Ghost-Warding Talisman away again.
Poppy Auntie had specifically said it repelled evil spirits.
Then why was Goryeoha showing this much interest in me?
If she hadn't promised to make magical items for me, I never would've fallen for this.
While I gloomily checked my magazines, our true escape finally began.
***
The lead boat started moving first.
"Alright. Let's head home."
"I'll take the oar, Pastor."
Boat B surged forward.
Shin Nain pushed them away from shore while one of the soldiers aimed his rifle into the fog.
The engine roared.
The boat cut through the water.
Watching it disappear ahead of us, the reality finally sank in.
We were really leaving Seoul.
Pulling my poncho hood back over my head, I felt strangely conflicted.
Part of me felt relieved to be escaping danger.
But an even larger part regretted leaving magic behind.
Then Boat A started moving.
The motor's vibrations rattled against my gas mask.
The smell of rubber mixed with river water.
I slowly shouldered my rifle and scanned the fog.
Honestly, I doubted visual observation would help.
If Hamza's doctrinal magic and Shin Nain's detection magic couldn't function properly, then eyesight alone was meaningless.
Still, I understood the soldiers' paranoia.
Goryeoha sat quietly with her knees hugged to her chest.
Hamza looked around nervously.
The soldier's eyes betrayed his anxiety.
Together, we followed the wake left behind by Boat B.
Not quickly.
The fog was too thick for that.
The soldiers clearly wanted to move at full speed.
The environment wouldn't allow it.
Water droplets formed on my gas mask lenses.
Instinctively, I wiped them away with my left hand.
And then I noticed.
How ruined that hand had become.
After cleaning the lens, I let out a small laugh.
For the first time, I truly understood something written in the journal left behind by one of the survivors who encountered the Teratoma.
Only after seeing my own left hand—covered in the scars of endless pain—could I understand those words.
Humanity loves itself too much to win.
I understood them.
And because I understood them, I also understood why they couldn't survive.
People like that weren't stupid.
They simply wanted survival to be an absolute constant.
Something guaranteed.
Something outside the realm of reason and sacrifice.
They refused to accept that survival might require suffering.
The choice itself offended them.
Splashhh...
Behind us, Boat C drew closer.
Lee Sejun and the two soldiers aboard swept their rifles back and forth.
The boats accelerated after passing beneath a concrete bridge.
As our inflatable craft rose and fell over small waves, I closed my eyes and smiled bitterly.
My choice had been correct.
The suffering required to pursue magic.
The suffering that always returned a guaranteed reward.
The suffering that developed me.
The suffering that saved me.
I was proud of my choice.
Proud that becoming Grand Mage Baek Jemin had been the best decision of my life.
...
The smile vanished.
I wiped the moisture from my gas mask and exhaled slowly.
It really was true.
Those who considered themselves too precious to suffer inevitably became monsters.
Those who believed they possessed absolute worth merely by existing were doomed.
Only those who believed in something greater than themselves.
Only those willing to sacrifice themselves for power, faith, or purpose.
Only those who understood that humanity possessed no inherent value beyond what it achieved and what it was willing to endure—
Only those people could resist the monsters.
Those who refused suffering became trapped inside monstrous bodies, waiting eternally for death.
Those who accepted suffering gained the chance to fight back.
In this hell, only people who weren't blinded by love for themselves could resist.
If the Korean government had been excessively concerned with human rights, the peninsula would've already fallen.
The people who asked:
"Why is sacrificing ten million people considered competent leadership?"
The people who said:
"If you can't save everyone, you're a failure."
The people who offered no alternatives.
Those people could never have fought this absurdity.
I genuinely believed I could end it all if given the chance.
Then—
SKREEEEEEEEEEEECH!
An awful grinding noise.
Something was being shredded.
Everyone turned toward Boat B.
One of the soldiers in Boat C shouted.
"What happened up there?!"
"Contact! Hold fire! Too much risk of friendly fire!"
The radio operator immediately shouldered his rifle and aimed beneath the water.
Bang! Bang-bang!
Shell casings bounced across the boat floor.
Nothing improved.
The motor screamed.
The soldier sprayed bullets around the propeller area.
That was all he could do.
At that moment, I unconsciously activated Eye Stage One.
I tightened my grip on my rifle.
"M-Mr. Jemin..."
Hamza spoke in a trembling voice.
I didn't need to hear the rest.
I already saw it.
With normal eyes, the Han River looked clear.
For all the jokes about it being dirty, it was infinitely cleaner than blood or sewage.
But through Eye Stage One—
Through the ten-second future vision that revealed crimson footprints—
The river looked completely different.
The Han River was slowly turning red.
Like red paint spreading through water.
Pixel by pixel.
Color value by color value.
Slowly.
Then came the sound.
SPLOOSH!
SPLOOSH!
"Scattered Ones, fall back!!!"
Shin Nain was smashing the water with an oar.
I hadn't seen her look this desperate in a long time.
The same thing was happening everywhere.
THUD!
Something slammed into our boat.
We nearly fell over.
The same happened to every vessel.
Boat A.
Boat C.
All three boats suddenly slowed to a crawl.
Grinding noises echoed beneath us.
Despite being in the middle of the Han River, all three boats had effectively become trapped.
I was naturally prone to seasickness, so I bent over the side.
And that's when I saw it.
The charms hanging from the boat handles.
The silver chains of a pentagram necklace.
Rust.
Bright red rust spread across them.
Snap.
The pentagram cracked apart and sank beneath the water.
The rosaries followed.
Pop.
The cord broke.
Beads scattered everywhere.
Prayer beads and rosary beads rolled together before disappearing beneath the surface.
Not a single one floated.
All of them sank.
Immediately.
As though dragged downward.
"AAAAAH!"
Hamza completely panicked.
He began beating the water with his oar alongside Shin Nain.
Water splashed against my hood.
Meanwhile, Goryeoha simply wiggled her fingers inside Hwahusu.
Perfectly calm.
"Hmm... The water energy is too strong. Hwahusu won't work. There's not enough fire energy to create an explosion."
I hadn't expected much anyway.
The truly terrifying part was how calm she remained.
Maybe years in Seoul had completely destroyed her sense of danger.
Then—
KWAAAAAAANG!!!
An explosion shook the river.
A pillar of water erupted into the sky.
The source was Boat C.
Lee Sejun.
He casually spun an unpinned grenade in one hand like a baseball.
Then he exhaled.
"It's Odok!"
"What?"
"I saw it earlier! It's Odok!"
The grenade had worked.
The grinding sounds weakened.
The boats began moving again.
Lee Sejun stumbled before sitting back down.
Another grenade was already clenched tightly in his fist.
From that moment onward, the soldiers lost control.
Supreme Mages took over.
The instant he heard the word Odok, Pastor Park started waving frantically at us and shouted:
"Move! Run before it catches us!"
And the soldiers trusted survival instincts more than military hierarchy.
VROOOOOOOOM—!!!
I never knew an inflatable boat could move this fast.
The dense fog streaked past like white lines.
The droplets gathered on my gas mask lenses were blown sideways and peeled away.
Naturally, the faster we went, the worse my motion sickness became.
I removed my gas mask with practiced speed and immediately leaned over the side.
"Uwaaaaagh...!"
"AAAAH! Mr. Jemin! Get up!!!"
I could feel Hamza grabbing me and pounding my back, but none of that works on someone with truly severe motion sickness.
Clutching my rifle, I emptied everything in my stomach into the Han River.
While I was busy vomiting my guts out, a desperate chase was unfolding in the middle of the river.
Bang! Bang-bang-bang!
Someone was firing.
At something hidden beneath the water.
THUD!
The boat shook violently with the waves.
The vibrations traveled through my entire body.
Lee Sejun had apparently pulled another grenade pin.
But what caught my attention wasn't the explosion.
It was the anxious voice of the soldier steering the motor.
"We should've arrived already! Then why...?!"
A flash of inspiration struck me.
Despite the dizziness, I forced my eyes toward the boat handles.
The pentagram necklaces.
The rosaries.
The prayer beads.
They were all visibly unraveling and breaking apart.
Like a herbivore seeing a predator for the first time, I instinctively understood.
The moment every one of those charms broke—
We would be trapped.
Then something vibrated inside my chest.
Bzzzzz—
A vibration I hadn't felt in a long time.
From the inner pocket of my jacket.
Even while vomiting and seeing the world spin around me, I desperately fumbled inside my chest pocket.
More desperately than when I became one-eyed.
More urgently than when I prepared to become one-eyed.
My fingers finally found it.
Bzzzzz—
Click.
The familiar name appeared on the screen.
Kkarok.
A new message arrived.
[Cheonghwi: I will now give you my answer.]
The motor.
The gunfire.
The brass casings hitting the boat.
Grenades exploding beneath the water.
And that familiar voice chasing us through the current...
I slowly closed my eyes.
Hungry.
That's what it had said.
[Cheonghwi: Mr. Jemin. You must have been confused when I left without saying a proper goodbye.]
Behind me, the radio operator's voice grew increasingly frantic.
The voice of a man confronting something worse than he had ever prepared for.
Something beyond reason.
"Air support! Air support—! Why did communications suddenly go bad?!"
[Cheonghwi: But thanks to that, you gained one more reason to decide to enter Seoul.]
Kkatok.
The monster's hungry cries and Cheonghwi's calm words overlapped.
I opened my eyes again.
[Cheonghwi: The military cannot solve this disaster. Magic is a path open to everyone, but not everyone can climb to the end. And I hope that you will climb to the very top.]
My reply came instantly.
[Me: Bullshit.]
[Cheonghwi: Throw the ritual phone into the Han River. If you do, you'll escape the Fog Beyond the Shore. You'll also learn why the Han River must never be used.]
[Me: Trying to stop people from analyzing the phone?]
[Cheonghwi: Simultaneously ensuring your group's safety. And from now on, don't use the Han River. Escape on foot like everyone else. I hope we'll meet again.]
[Me: Again?]
[Cheonghwi: I know you'll come back.]
I squeezed the ritual phone.
Hard.
I had to decide.
The value of the phone.
Or escape.
My desire to understand magic collided head-on with my instinct to survive.
Even if this wasn't the original ritual phone, there were mystics and scholars outside who could study its principles.
If I brought it back...
We could exploit one of the 66 Society's communication methods.
If I brought it back...
SPLASH!
A wave slapped me directly in the face.
The cold, fishy water shocked me awake.
I stood up.
Then pressed a final kiss to the ritual phone.
"Mr. Jemin! Use your Eye Magic!"
Hamza was screaming.
"Haha... Junior? What are you planning?"
Goryeoha laughed.
And I thought:
Pain only has meaning while you're alive.
Magic is the same.
The moment you die, learning ends.
As long as I'm alive, I can continue learning.
My despair isn't death.
My despair is losing the ability to learn.
A closed possibility.
An unreachable future.
That is despair.
So I shouted.
"Seoul! Baek Jemin will return!"
Then I threw the ritual phone with all my strength.
"And when I come back, I'll loot every scrap of knowledge buried here!"
The phone flew.
No rainbow shimmer of scales appeared.
The Han River beneath the fog was no longer normal.
The fog parted.
The murk vanished.
What lay beneath resembled not a river—
But a deep ocean's aphotic zone.
A perfect blackness untouched by light.
Yet impossibly clear.
So clear that a single ray of light could reveal hundreds of meters of water and depths measured in kilometers.
Weird weed-like growths resembling tangled hair swayed through the darkness.
Scallop-like eyes turned toward the falling phone.
Odoks swam beneath it.
Their five appendages writhed like tentacles as they followed the descending screen.
Far below, through the impossibly transparent darkness, I could see the wreckage of downed fighter jets.
Countless creatures hidden beneath the fog became visible.
Everything that should've existed in Seoul.
Dogs.
Birds.
Cats.
Guinea pigs.
Snakes.
All bloated corpses.
Food for a new ecosystem.
I felt no attachment to the phone anymore.
Then the screen suddenly brightened.
Brighter.
Brighter still.
Like a miniature sun.
The ritual phone became a lantern.
Wherever it descended, the fog peeled away.
Then it touched the water.
Splash.
Only I noticed the change.
The truth hidden beneath the river's surface.
The Han River had been disguising itself.
Using the surface like a mirror.
The fish disappeared.
The debris disappeared.
The branches disappeared.
Everything vanished.
The green murk.
The red danger of my prophetic vision.
The yellow reflections of sunlight.
Gone.
The familiar creatures of Earth had become sacrifices.
Dragged into a deep-sea river that should never have existed.
The recently devoured corpses sank through crystal-clear darkness.
Only to be torn apart and eaten.
The monsters that fled the fog had hidden themselves beneath the river.
Growing larger.
Feeding.
Skin-Stripping Flies drifted through the water in massive swarms.
Odoks swam among them, devouring them by the handful.
The giant centipedes that once flew through the sky now swam through the abyss, carrying human screams inside their bodies.
And there were larger things.
Far larger.
Things hidden so deep that even the ritual phone's light couldn't reveal them completely.
Something eel-like.
Something vast.
Something impossible.
It felt the light.
And pulsed.
My heart pulsed with it.
Thump.
My heart asked a question.
Thump.
Not anyone else.
My own heart.
For the first time, it made me regret being alive.
Thud.
I collapsed backward.
Sweat poured from my body.
Far more than the river water covering my face.
Then a cry erupted behind me.
A cry of terrified joy.
"It's gone! It's gone!"
"Namyangju, Namyangju! Rescue Team reporting! Fog breached at 11:54! Fog breached at 11:54!"
The soldiers cheered first.
The fog gradually thinned.
Blue sky appeared overhead.
Artillery.
Gunfire.
Sounds that should've terrified us.
Instead they brought relief.
Putter-putter-putter...
For a long while, all of us simply blinked.
Eventually we looked at one another.
Then laughed.
A hollow, exhausted laugh.
"Hah... hahaha..."
Pastor Park removed his gas mask first.
Then looked up at the sky.
With his rifle slung over one shoulder, he clasped his hands together.
"Lord, thank You. By Your protection, we survived."
Shin Nain collapsed beside him and joined the prayer.
Her headset had come off during the chaos.
Yet her prayer was more desperate than ever.
"Amen. Almighty Lord God, make me Your sword. Let me oppose Satan and his demons without the slightest doubt..."
On Boat C, Lee Sejun exchanged salutes with the soldiers.
"Attention! Thanks to you guys, we survived!"
"No, sir! Thanks to your quick thinking!"
"Hahaha! We're comrades, aren't we?"
Only Boat A remained gloomy.
The lone soldier carefully avoided looking at me.
Goryeoha and Hamza stared at me with concern.
"Junior, are you worried about something?"
"Mr. Jemin, your complexion looks terrible. Your pupils seem unfocused too. Let me test something."
Hamza waved fingers in front of my face.
I answered firmly.
"Hamza. Stop flipping me off."
"Mm. Cognitive function seems normal."
"..."
I grabbed my pounding head.
No one else seemed to have seen what I saw.
Good.
Then there was no reason to talk about it.
I only needed to focus on what mattered.
"Hey, Hamza. What time is it?"
"11:54. Mr. Jemin... We survived. Everyone survived and escaped!"
"Yeah."
It still didn't feel real.
I glanced toward Goryeoha.
She was staring at the clear sky.
Her shoulders trembled.
She crouched down.
Never sobbing.
Only crying.
Tears streamed endlessly down her face.
I shook my head and covered my face with my ruined left hand.
The familiar weight of my rifle rested in my right.
A deep sigh escaped between my fingers.
It was finally time to count what we had gained.
***
The First Seoul Expedition had been far harsher, crueler, and longer than any of us imagined.
Shin Nain
- Ear Stage 3 acquired
- Eye Stage 1 acquired
Lee Sejun
- Heart Stage 3 acquired
- Hand Stage 1 acquired
Pastor Park Yohan
- Successfully mediated countless conflicts
- Marksmanship improved
Hamza
- Carried supplies and supported everyone despite the limitations of doctrinal magic
Special Achievement
- Established contact with Goryeoha, leader of the Konkuk survivor group
- Escaped together
Intelligence Acquired
- Confirmation of the existence of the 66 Society
- Significant information regarding the magic system
- Numerous unidentified species documented
- Confirmation that Monk Cheonghwi was affiliated with the 66 Society
Baek Jemin
- Eye Stage 3 acquired
- Ear Stage 1 acquired
- Hand Stage 2 acquired
- Tongue Stage 2 acquired
And...
The truth beneath the water.
Perhaps the Han River had become another world.
Or perhaps it had become a deep sea.
Either way, no ordinary river could ever be that deep.
We had been mistaken.
Because bullets worked.
Because artillery worked.
We had assumed brute force could solve everything.
We thought nuclear weapons could at least force a draw.
No.
That was the apocalypse.
And humanity's apocalypse had begun here.
In Seoul.
Only I had seen it.
And I finally understood where the 66 Society's confidence came from.
Then, amid the artillery and gunfire, another shout echoed.
"A Mimic Beast pack is approaching Namyangju!"
"You want us to fight again?!"
I tightened my grip on my rifle.
My tongue still hurt from constant biting.
I looked around.
Three boats moving upriver beneath a clear sky.
Smoke.
Fire.
War.
And the members of Supreme Mages.
The sight made me laugh.
Maybe it was true.
Looking at pathetic people really did make you smile.
"Supreme Mages."
Click.
The metallic sound of a rifle chambering a round drew everyone's attention.
Pastor Park and Shin Nain stopped praying.
"Baek Jemin. Nice to see you smiling."
"...It is a smile worthy of the Lord's warrior."
Lee Sejun stopped laughing with the soldiers.
"Oh! Mr. Jemin! Right, you got seasick!"
Hamza wiped his tears with his sleeve.
"I never want to go back there again... ever..."
Even Goryeoha rubbed her eyes and looked at me with red-rimmed eyes.
"Yes, Junior!"
"Master, handle the aphorisms."
"Huh?"
I remembered one of my principles.
Leave the annoying philosophy to someone else.
"Anyway, let's show them."
People who hide their claws die with them hidden.
I knew exactly how to market myself in this hell.
"Let's show them what it means..."
I chambered another round.
"...to survive eleven days in Seoul."
April 25, 2028 — 11:54 AM
Day 11 of the Expedition
Every member of Supreme Mages survived.