Chapter 162: The Potential of a Trash Mob

5TB Phone World, October 21st, 2038, 8:57 PM.

With thick storm clouds overhead and the sun already gone, the night sky had grown even darker. Streetlights flickered on, laying bare the devastation across the road. There were no people or monsters, but bloodstains and vehicles with shattered windows remained.

Every time we passed through the utterly deserted six-lane road and the commercial buildings around it, an inexplicable sense of unease surged through me. It was hard to tell whether it came from my Ears-branch magic, or whether the ominous atmosphere itself was simply making me recoil.

-Step.

I stopped walking and stared at the site of a three-car pileup. A van had read-ended a compact car, and then a sedan turning through the intersection had slammed into them, leaving all three tangled together.

Naturally, the compact car caught in the middle had no chance of keeping its original shape. Like a mosquito crushed flat under a hand, it had been crumpled from both the front and the rear. But an even more horrifying fate had awaited the person inside.

-Clunk.

The vehicles tangled together in the pileup began vomiting sticky flesh through their shattered windows. On the driver-side window of the van, whose frame was at least mostly intact, a blood-soaked handprint remained clearly visible.

Along with the streaks of blood left behind as that hand had pounded desperately against the glass before sliding down.

That was when Ears-branch, Stage 2 [Hearing Monster Voices] came through amid faint static.

'Why am I so slow?' 'Someone grabbed me. Help!' 'My stomach’s empty. I threw up. I need to find it…'

-Click.

I immediately raised my gun, bracing it beneath my right arm. It was definitely harder to shoulder and aim than when both my eyes worked, but I’d gained a trump card through [Information Alteration], so if anything, this was better.

Thanks to the van’s twisted rearview mirror, I could roughly see what the other Supreme Archmages were doing.

The pastor, Lee Sejun, Go Ryeoha, Hamza.

The Supreme Archmages had gained enough experience by now that they naturally took up their guns and covered every direction. Even the cowardly Hamza, though trembling, held his weapon without complaint and kept watch all around him.

The pastor asked in a serious voice, and Go Ryeoha clicked her tongue before adding.

"Heretic. What kind of monster is it?”

"Looks like we’ll probably have to put it down with firepower…”

-Splat!

Something leaked out of the crushed compact car. At first I thought it was liquid, but a closer look proved me wrong. It was covered in blood-red mucus but it writhed so vigorously that I recognized it immediately. It was the swarm of milky-white parasites I had seen squirming in the puddles along the subway tracks.

[Hearing Monster Voices] told me that thing had once been human.

Help me…I need a body…

The swarm of parasites squeezing through the broken window raised their heads and tails rigidly as though screaming. Even though they couldn’t make a sound, they kept crying for help inside their minds. Despite looking as though they shouldn’t even possess sensory organs, they writhed and looked around themselves. Dozens tangled together, rubbing against one another like mating snakes, screaming with human minds.

They were incredibly slow, so all we had to do was keep our distance.

They’d dry up and die on land anyway, so no problem.

But then the monster inside the vehicle, hidden by the shadows, began pounding against the crushed door that refused to open.

-Thud.

The moment the trapped monster slammed its body against the window, I heard Hamza and Go Ryeoha suck in their breaths after instinctively turning toward the impact. When people truly came face-to-face with something disgusting and terrifying, they often couldn’t even let out a scream, so they swallowed it instead.

I, Baek Jemin, was no different.

-Hup.

The instant I sucked in a breath, a heavy mass of mucus slammed against the bloody handprint on the window. I opened my eye wide and took in every ecological feature of the monster before me.

-Thud.

Segments divided by faint, shallow grooves. A circular mouth that clung to the car window like a sucker and scraped against it, lined with tiny human teeth. Vestigial arms and legs that had lost all function, hanging limp and swaying along with its body.

Pressed flat against the window under its own weight, the monster had the shape of a leech.

It thrashed its body like a whip, rammed itself against the car door, flattened itself against the glass and scraped at it with the human teeth sprouting from its sucker mouth, while the human consciousness that still hadn't realized what had happened to it spoke.

'My stomach’s empty. I threw up. I need to fill it again.’ ‘Someone tied me up. Let me go!’ ‘Something’s wrong with what I’m seeing…’

-Step.

I instinctively backed away.

People who believed in the nobility and sanctity of humanity might criticize me for that. If they knew those things had once been human, wouldn’t compassion be the natural response?

But I could say this with certainty.

Looking at monsters that had once been human and still possessed human minds, all I felt was revulsion and disgust. Sympathy and pity? Some shallow love for humanity that said I’d kill them someday and save them that way? Ever since awakening Ears-branch magic, those trivial feelings had been rapidly evaporating.

The more I read the monsters’ minds through [Hearing Monster Voices], and the more clearly I learned to distinguish them, the more chilling the sensation became.

Some might speak of salvation in the truest sense.

They might research whether the people trapped inside monstrous bodies could somehow be restored to their original forms. Even I, Baek Jemin, had once considered that possibility, albeit only faintly, in one tiny corner of my mind.

But that had changed.

Their minds and consciousness were still human, yet something fundamental had changed. The more I used Ears-branch magic, the higher my aptitude became, and the more clearly I discerned monsters for what they were, the less I could suppress the disgust surging up alongside the nauseating sensation in my chest.

An irreversible change had occurred.

An irreversible change that couldn’t be seen with the naked eye.

It was no different from cutting through meat with your canines, grinding it to mush with your molars, dissolving it with saliva, then trying to restore it to its former form again. You can’t bring meat someone has chewed up and spat out back to life.

Anyone who saw meat someone else had chewed up and spat out would grimace and say the same thing.

It’s just over.

The baseless certainty made me raise my gun without hesitation and pull the trigger.

-Click.

A shell casing flew.

A flash burst forth.

As the acrid gunsmoke dispersed on the gentle breeze, the monster’s bodily fluids spilled out as well. The car door was riddled through in an instant and torn clean off. Flailing the stubby, vestigial limbs hanging from it like the shell of a shrimp, the boneless human leech slumped across the ripped-off door.

-Splat.

Pus-like fluid gurgled out through the bullet holes.

A human cough burst through the gaps between the crooked human teeth sprouting from its sucker mouth.

-Cough.

I pulled the trigger even more relentlessly to silence the human coughing coming from the monster’s twisted mouth. Every time the leech monster coughed, milky-white parasites emerged, writhing beneath coats of blood-red mucus.

My Great Archmage’s reason instantly classified the two monsters, inferred their ecological traits, and tried to name them. Even as muzzle flashes flickered and the sound of gunshots filled the empty roadside, I tried to analyze the disgusting monsters so I could fight them.

But my non-wizard’s sensibility wanted to remain ignorant of these monsters I hated and despised as much as if they had been the murderer of my parents.

The part of me that wanted to believe humans were special and inherently noble screamed:

I don’t want to know.

My reason, which had already accepted that humanity was nothing special and stood before a miserable end, coldly pointed out:

But if you want to survive, you have to know.

That contradiction turned into cruelty. Against lowly monsters like these, marksmanship was enough. We hadn’t been ambushed, and they weren’t in the water where they could move freely.

What I needed was focus.

Only the concentration to keep acting while enduring the backlash of Ears-branch magic would save me.

Help me.

I kept pulling the trigger.

It hurts.

I felt no sympathy or pity.

Mom.

At that moment, I ran out of bullets.

"Huff, huff, huff…”

When I came back to my senses, the inside of my gas mask was soaked with moisture from my breathing. Wet condensation had even reached my cheeks. I kept the slightly heated barrel trained on the monster’s corpse and removed only the magazine.

-Click.

I didn’t have the presence of mind to give the other Supreme Archmages any instructions. I managed to squeeze out only one sentence.

"Changing mags.”

-Click.

I discarded the spent magazine, pulled another from my pouch, and put it in. I’d done this shit often enough that I was getting used to it. And once something becomes familiar, your mind starts wandering.

At least the thought that came to me was a useful one.

I had emptied rounds into it nonstop in a trance. Judging from its grotesque appearance, the bullet-riddled human leech seemed to have an equally horrific origin. It wasn’t the mass of a single human being. No matter how bizarre and outlandish monsters became, they generally respected the boundaries of mass to some extent.

Sure enough three pairs of pale, bleached-looking limbs dangled from the human leech.

Three pairs of human eyeballs clustered around the head with the sucker mouth like spider eyes, while strangely, there didn’t seem to be an anus at the tail end. Its blunt, rounded rear made the human leech’s simple body structure more than obvious.

Judging by the thought about having ‘thrown something up,’ the swarm of milky-white parasites must have been vomited out by the human leech.

Each milky-white parasite was so small that I didn’t bother shooting them. Bullets were too valuable. More importantly, out of the water they weren’t a real threat. I could already see them drying up and dying so I wasn’t about to waste my own blood killing them with something like [Blood of the Right Hand].

What I couldn’t tell was whether they lived in symbiosis, or where this was simply the difference between juvenile and adult forms. If I knew their ecology clearly, it would be easier to infer how they attacked.

Still, I had two strong hypotheses.

One was that they were the human leech’s mutated internal organs. The other was that they were what remained of victims the human leech had eaten.

I didn’t want confirmation of either one.

-Huuuuff…

I steadied my breathing one last time and looked around the corpses. I could shoot the parasites one by one when I had time and ammunition to spare.

That was when Lee Sejun, who had been watching silently, approached.

I stroked the trigger, fully prepared to shoot him for real if he touched me, but unexpectedly, what caught Lee Sejun’s attention was the spent magazine lying on the ground.

-Swish.

He dropped to one knee, picked up the magazine, then shrugged as he stood.

"There are still rounds left in this.”

"You use them.”

I decided to nickname the two monsters [Three-Headed Leech] and [Gut Wriggler], respectively.

Calling it a human leech would probably cause confusion if another annelid-shaped monster showed up later, and it looked like it needed at least three humans combined together to function properly, so that was why I gave it that name.

As for the Gut Wriggler…Looking closely, it reminded me of uncolored konjac jelly so I named it the Gut Wriggler. The Great Archmage’s fair system of value assessment, if something looks fucking disgusting, at least its name should be cute, also had a major influence on the naming process.

Naturally, giving them names didn’t make me want to take off my gas mask in front of these disgusting monsters.

The other Supreme Archmages without Ears-branch magic felt the same way. Go Ryeoha and Hamza seemed thoroughly disgusted, hiccupping and pretending to gag.

"I’ve never seen anything like this in Seoul. That’s seriously disgusting. Ugh.”

"Jemin-ssi. I really think you need to let me leave the country now.”

"Stay put unless you want me to send you back to Pakistan hugging an Amalgam.”

Only then did Hamza, who loved his homeland so dearly, shut his mouth and transform into a loyal warrior of Korea again.

Even then, the pastor, who had been steadfastly keeping watch in every direction by himself, lowered his gun slightly and spoke.

"Heretic Baek Jemin. You ever seen monsters like that in our world?”

"No. First time.”

It hadn’t appeared during the first Seoul expedition either. Even when we were fleeing across the Han River, I’d seen Odoks swimming through the water, but no leeches. It had the kind of appearance you could never forget once you saw it. If I had, there was no way someone as negatively biased as me, someone who remembered all the shitty things in the world with particular intensity, would have missed it.

Around then, Go Ryeoha narrowed her eyes behind the lenses of her gas mask and fiddled with her rabbit brooch.

Unlike her usual beaming smile, she seemed to have noticed that this was genuinely serious, because even her tone became more subdued.

"It’s strange. 5TB Phone World seems to have only recognized the emergency on October 20th, but things are progressing so fast that a monster like this appeared after just one day. Is it because there's no fog?”

Even Lee Sejun, who normally did nothing but fuck around, added a comment as he tucked the magazine he’d picked up into his pouch.

"It would be pretty difficult for monsters like this to be roaming around openly without a single report or piece of news. And AI never really took off here, right? That would limit how much they could manipulate or steer public opinion. If they used the same kind of method as…Supreme World, the process of mobilizing that many people would’ve left traces. Six months at the absolute most. It looks like the monsters here grew stronger much faster than they did in our world.”

He was right.

The mutations were progressing rapidly.

The Three-Headed Leech’s durability in particular was no joke. The magazine for my custom short-barreled AR-15 held 30 rounds. Add the one already in the chamber, and it took all 31 5.56mm rounds spread across its body before it finally died after spilling its fluids everywhere. Given how simple its body structure looked, I wasn’t even sure if it had anything you could call a vital point.

Looks like you have to kill it through sheer firepower like an Amalgam. Run into one of these things underwater and you’re more or less dead.

At least it bled wherever you shot it, so it was easy enough to damage with a gun. If I met one underwater…grenades. I was really glad the pastor and I had each brought 2 grenades.

That didn’t mean the danger was gone.

The pastor clicked his tongue as he checked his weapon and voiced his concern.

"Hrm. I just hope the soldiers who went ahead didn’t get hit by one of these things."

"Any country’s military would have a hard time holding out against monsters like this.”

Lee Sejun, a former staff sergeant who knew the actual state of the Korean military well, defended it, but apparently everyone knew enough to know better, because they subtly turned their heads away. Go Ryeoha in particular just awkwardly fiddled with her rabbit brooch and gave an embarrassed laugh.

"Ahaha..."

"What? Ryeoha-ssi, did you serve in the military? No, right? So just trust me. We’re fellow Siblings, after all.”

"Maybe the problem with our world’s military is that they respond a little too enthusiastically?”

Hamza, on the other hand, glanced at me and raised both thumbs.

"Korea is holding out well. I’m truly proud of O u r  R e p u b l i c  o f  K o r e a.”

"Hssss..."

Seeing Hamza act so fiercely patriotic felt a little strange, but I decided to let it slide.

Anyway, the atmosphere, which had grown tenser than necessary, eased up a little.

-Huuff.

After breathing out briefly through the gas mask filter, the pastor adjusted his grip on his gun and spoke up.

"That’s enough relaxing for everyone, right? Let’s meet up with Sergeant Im Junho before it gets any later. Hey, heretic. Go!”

"Pastor, technically I’m a heathen.”

I held out the True-Body Sarira prayer beads wrapped around my left arm, working hard to reduce the backlash of my Ears-branch magic, after which the pastor shot me a look full of rage.

"If you’ve ever served as a church youth group leader even once, you're a Christian for life. A Christian fooling around with other religions would be a heretic. If you want to roast gently in hellfire, hurry up and repent already.”

* * *

Anyone who served in the military in the 21st century would know a certain uncomfortable truth.

The vast majority of the South Korean military could hardly call itself elite.

Older people who still took pride in their service might say the kids these days did nothing but whine, but they simply didn’t understand the difference between an era when there were more than enough people available for conscription and the modern day, where every last person has to be desperately scraped together. In the old military, despite all the hazing and institutional bullshit, real men enlisted. Men with the indomitable will to change their own lives through effort.

Fortunately, the decline in military quality that Supreme World had worried about was solved in one fell swoop.

The troops from the blockade line were turned into elites with remarkable speed. You could almost call it a soldier-reform program.

Sure, the crash course in real combat had been a little intense. Extremely intense, actually. But thanks to that, the South Korean military had upgraded into perfect K-Soldiers who no longer wasted sympathy on civilians, shot everything they saw, and even finished them off properly afterward.

I hadn’t had many chances to fight alongside the Korean military until now, so it hadn’t really sunk in. But once we reached the area around Suji-gu Office Station, I could see it for myself.

5TB Phone World, October 21st, 2038, 9:24 PM.

Near Suji-gu Office Station, along a main road lined with 5 to 7-story commercial buildings and hospital signs.

Abandoned cars lay scattered around the centerline, while relatively intact vehicles blinked their headlights, casting long beams down the road and through the alleys. It was probably possible because so many cars had been abandoned in the traffic jam.

Of course, that also meant the road was so congested that visibility and clear lines of fire would have been difficult to secure, but conversely, the vehicles also served as barricades against monsters.

The soldiers themselves had left the road long ago.

We Supreme Archmages swept the area with the lights we had brought, leaving not a single patch of shadow while I borrowed the power of the True-Body Sarira prayer beads and activated Eyes-branch, Stage 1 [Cognitive Expansion] at 100%.

Hostile survivors and monsters. Locations and paths. Within 300m of me.

The True-Body Sarira prayer beads took on the backlash of Tongue-branch, Stage 1 [Degradation] that came with using Eyes-branch, Stage 1 at 100%, which saved my ass in more ways than one. I could just use a gun to make up for any lacking combat power, but perfect detection like this was impossible without incredibly advanced technology.

Fortunately, there were no monsters near the roadside.

All I could see beneath the tangled vehicles were a few Amalgam corpses, dead with their limbs torn off and bodily fluids spilled everywhere. Lee Sejun noticed where I was looking, came over, and added some comments.

"The ones here are smarter. They raise their arms to protect the head, which is their main body, or use cover while trying to approach. They also split by  dividing their heads much more often. They’ll throw detached Amalgams like projectiles, or even disguise them as ordinary corpses and set up ambushes.”

"How do you know that?”

"We have Hamza-ssi, don’t we? He said it was dangerous, so we tested it by throwing rash at them. Fortunately, the Amalgams that split off like that seemed less clever than expected. They reacted and moved immediately just from getting hit by a rock.”

"Come to think of it, what happened to the Amalgam that chased us? Did you kill it?”

"Yes. But not all of it. After seeing our combat strength, the larger main body that hadn’t split as much stayed inside the subway station and ran away.”

"Fuck."

Lee Sejun seemed to understand my cussing. He nodded, then went back to watching our surroundings.

This is insane.

Humanity couldn’t win at this level without the fog.

The monsters in places without fog weren’t simply tougher. They were more cunning and more vicious. That kind of strength was more dangerous and cruel than simply having better physical abilities. Instead of charging mindlessly, they actively exploited their ability to split apart…

That was when Hamza tapped me on the shoulder.

"Jemin-ssi, over there. There.”

-Blink.

It was a place with a sign reading Hanmaeum Pharmacy. The pharmacy on the first floor was dark with its shutter raised, and along with the clicking of someone fiddling with a switch, a single beam of light kept blinking nonstop.

In front of it lay the corpses of two Predator Spines with skulls riddled full of holes and one Amalgam.

Hamza’s fussing made the other Supreme Archmages keeping watch notice the flashing light and turn their heads too. Go Ryeoha was the first to let out a dry laugh.

"Whether it’s here or there, they’re certainly good at killing things. Ah. I shouldn’t say that.”

Unlike Go Ryeoha, who still hadn’t completely shed her Seoul-wizard habits, Lee Sejun and the pastor chattered with each other.

"They’re holding out better than I thought. I figured they’d all be wiped out without Baek Jemin or Lee Sejun.”

"The special operators are wizards, Pastor. And some of them have probably spent longer on the blockade line than we have.”

Hamza and I exchanged glances and shrugged.

"Jemin-ssi. Obviously, those people are much weaker than you, a Supreme Archmage and the most powerful man on the Korean Peninsula.”

"Hah…Hamza. You don’t have to force yourself to suck up to me like that.”

If they’d been stronger than me, I would’ve shot them myself ages ago and gone after their remains.

That was something I, Great Archmage Baek Jemin, knew better than anyone else.

And so we Supreme Archmages slowly advanced while chattering noisily, but you’re always supposed to hide a knife behind your smile. It should work from this distance.

Ears-branch, Stage 1 [Mind Reading].

'If the warrant officer was right, 5 members of Aphorism came here. That’s the strongest force Command can send. We can’t expect anything more than this.'

Hmm.

After extremely careful and repeated consideration, I told the other Supreme Archmages what I had discovered.

"They are indeed soldiers from Supreme World with sound judgment, composure, the ability to adapt calmly to changing circumstances, outstanding courage, and the initiative required to accomplish their objectives. I see no signs of an ambush, surprise attack, or brainwashing, so we can safely join up with them.”

Competent Gun Wizards like these were worth saving.

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