Chapter 165: Survival Intelligence MAX

5TB Phone World, October 22nd, 2038, 6:08 AM.

I tapped the screen of my local phone to turn it off, then casually looked out the window. The sun was up. A bright symbol of hope. Of course, 5TB Phone World had already gone completely to shit after failing to put up any form of resistance, so there was hardly anyone left to welcome that sunlight.

-Tap.

After setting the local phone down on the table, I faced the people gathered here.

We had gathered around a table in the safety center’s 2nd-floor lounge where the firefighters usually rested. I had carefully handpicked who would attend so we could get these negotiations moving quickly.

4 people.

First was me, Baek Jemin, leader of the Supreme Archmages and our most diplomatic negotiator and a Great Archmage.

Next was Firefighter Jeong Gyeongmi, who had passed out earlier and came back after taking a quick shower.

Her name was quite lovely, and so were her muscles. Being born a woman yet possessing the guts and physical ability to grab a fire hose and blast away monsters with it had left her with rather broad shoulders and a slightly horse-like face.

But I couldn’t underestimate her.

Jeong Gyeongmi was pretty much the leader of this safety center.

Just as I had figured out through Ears-branch, Stage 1 [Mind Reading], the firefighters who wore fireproof gear and fought on the front line were the most experienced veteran wizards. The rest were either newbie wizards or had no real combat ability. To be more exact, they lacked the guts for it.

Jeong Gyeongmi was both a Heart-branch wizard and a Hand-branch wizard. She had handled the fire hose by herself.

Maybe because of what I’d done to her, she made no attempt to hide the way her cheek twitched with anger whenever she looked at me.

"Baek Jemin-ssi. Why did you bring that soldier in here? Isn’t he completely insane? He always points his gun at the civilians first before anything else, you know?”

Sitting across from her, where Jeong Gyeongmi was pointing with her chin while keeping her arms crossed, was Sergeant Im Junho.

The man who seemed to be in his mid-40s, who had laughed and called me a kid when dealing with me earlier, was now chewing on his lip and pretending not to care.

"You never know whether they’re actually civilians or monsters.”

"Don’t you have an Ears-branch wizard?!”

"If wizards were that common, the country wouldn’t have collapsed. Am I wrong?”

He really knew how to get under someone’s skin.

But Sergeant Im Junho was on our side.

Even after securing continued contact with these people, Sergeant Im Junho had slyly concealed the single most important truth.

The fact that we came from Supreme World.

Sergeant Im Junho noticed me looking at him and gave me a subtle nod. Good. Telling them we came from another multiverse would only make them see us as potential sacrifices or become needlessly wary of us.

The last person was the old woman, one half of the elderly couple.

Aside from her slightly hunched back, she was a neatly dressed woman who had aged gracefully. She was here to represent the small number of non-wizard survivors. I’d asked her to join because I figured she might help lighten the mood a bit.

Sure enough, the neat old lady sat with her hands folded politely over her knees and tried to calm everyone down as she looked around.

"Stop fighting, all of you. Stop it. You’re all here to save people, so why are you acting like this? Don’t fight. Get along for just a little, okay? Take a deep breath, both of you. Calm yourselves down a little.”

"...Grandma, what kind of soldiers treat civilians however they want? That makes them no better than mere looters.”

"Let’s not act too rudely out of respect for the lady, so how about stopping accusing each other of things, hm?”

-Clap, clap.

I clapped to draw everyone’s attention. It was good that the grandma was easing the tension, but I couldn’t tolerate her drawing more attention than me. Especially when I had gathered these people specifically to get the negotiations moving quickly.

I tapped the barrel of the gun resting beside my chair with my right index finger as I spoke.

"I, Baek Jemin, a Great Archmage of 5 Branches, hold a relatively neutral position toward the 66 Society. And I came here because of one thing Sergeant Im Junho told me. That you could provide us with information related to the Society.”

Then I firmly imprinted in them just how genuinely friendly, amicable, and diplomatic I was.

"We could proceed by destroying your remains and reading your memories, but I’ve decided not to. Life is precious, after all. However, if circumstances force your hand and you decide you don’t want to exchange mutual benefits, or if you become paranoid and refuse, then I’ll make it as painless as possible when I… send you to Heaven, and then recover your remains.”

"Isn’t your mindset already that of a looter?”

The corners of Jeong Gyeongmi’s eyes rose sharply.

Strange.

I’d definitely followed Master Go Ryeoha’s advice and used nothing but nice, pretty words, so why was I getting backlash instead of becoming more popular? I’d even prettied it up with that phrase “send you to Heaven” that the pastor had casually used before.

The moment my confusion passed, devastation washed over me. Ah. I’d fallen victim to the public roasting of young social butterflies. Misery surged through me, but I gritted my teeth and worked hard to maintain the character I’d already committed to.

"Let’s just look at the terms. Establish a relationship of trust with a Great Archmage of 5 Branches, gain military cooperation, secure your safety, and in exchange, share information about survivor groups currently scattered throughout Seoul as well as information about the Society. And these aren’t all the soldiers we have either. If we can secure food and medicine from the surrounding area, your odds of survival will rise dramatically.”

"Looks like you really are an outsider. Haah…”

Firefighter Jeong Gyeongmi let out a very careful sigh, then covered her face with both hands.

She looked like she might be sobbing, or maybe just rubbing her face for a moment because she was exhausted. The old lady watched her with concern, but Jeong Gyeongmi ultimately held herself together and lowered her hands again.

Though there were faint tear tracks left on her face.

Jeong Gyeongmi glared back and forth between Sergeant Im Junho and me before speaking in a calmer voice.

"October 18th. Some homeless man came by. He wore an old long padded coat that had gone out of fashion years ago, frayed around the hem, and slippers with loose strings dangling from them. He must’ve cleaned up his face in public restrooms, because his beard was kept trimmed, and his eyes were clear, so he didn’t seem to be on drugs either. His clothes did smell, though. I thought he’d come looking for somewhere to stay for a while, but that wasn’t it.”

Sergeant Im Junho turned his head away as though he had no interest in whatever she was saying, but it was clear that he was still paying attention.

I could see his eyes shifting ever so slightly.

I stayed quiet as Jeong Gyeongmi continued her account.

"He was a wizard from the 66 Society. He said this world was already finished and that we needed to escape. He told us to listen if we were prepared to learn, that he would teach us. When we tried to throw him out, he brought up something people had been keeping quiet about.”

"Keeping quiet about?”

"There’d been a lot of talk lately about problems with tap-water quality around the capital region. Rusty water coming out, slime-like stuff floating in it…They were supposed to run water-quality tests, but things weren’t moving as quickly as expected. With the tap water contaminated like that, acute food-poisoning cases shot up too. For a while, so many patients flooded the wards that people started saying that there must be a problem with management at the water source, but as you know, the country hasn’t exactly been doing well.”

Sergeant Im Junho and I secretly exchanged glances.

We had to nod along naturally enough to hide the gap between 5TB Phone World and Supreme World. If they found out there were different worlds, there was no telling how their attitude might change, so we had to be extremely careful. Of course, Supreme World had gone to shit too, but compared to 5TB Phone World, we still had hope.

But why was 5TB Phone World’s national situation so bad?

Something flashed through my mind. 5TB Phone World was a world where AI had fallen behind. I remembered reading an article on the local internet about how that had dealt a fatal blow to the South Korean economy, which had been hanging on as a semiconductor powerhouse.

Just as a financial crisis like the IMF crisis leaves lasting aftershocks and permanent changes across society, the failure of AI must have left deep scars on 5TB Phone World as well.

I activated [Mind Reading] and continued the conversation.

"If AI had succeeded and semiconductor stocks had gone to the moon, things probably would’ve been better. I got trapped at the peak too and couldn’t get out before getting wiped. Tsk.”

"Haah…Same story for everyone. With things like this, government budgets got slashed, the whole ‘civil servants have jobs for life’ thing ended ages ago, staffing got cut, salaries came in a week late, but the level of service they demand and the number of dispatches keep going up…It’s a vicious cycle.”

'If even firefighters are dealing with late pay on a normal basis, what do you think it’s like over at the Water Resources Corporation? Go on Blind and everyone there’s busy complaining too. There aren’t any jobs out there anyway, so they just barely hang on because at least they want to keep enough credit to qualify for a mortgage.’

Jeong Gyeongmi sympathized.

Sergeant Im Junho moved only his lips and gave me a thumbs-up, acting like a ventriloquist. Thankfully, [Mind Reading] let me catch his admiration as well.

'Baek Jemin-ssi. Damn, you can act.’

Naturally, I, Baek Jemin, had never learned acting. This wasn’t acting.

Back when the Korean stock market had genuinely spun out of control, I really had broken open my savings and dumped around 20 million won into semiconductor stocks, gotten trapped at the peak, then finally cut my losses and graduated from stock trading. At least I survived because I hadn't used leverage…Fuck. So this couldn’t be called acting. This was my pure sincerity.

But one thing was certain. The Republic of Korea in 5TB Phone World had gone completely to shit.

The economy was in such critical condition that even if they had miraculously recognized how dangerous the situation was, they probably lacked the administrative capacity and manpower to respond early enough to establish a blockade line.

I even had doubts about whether that so-called Prophet could have changed things by intervening in 5TB Phone World. Could they really have made the same insane decision  as Supreme World and abandoned Seoul’s 10 million people? It was easy to forget, but Supreme World was the strange one here. In a normal democratic country, there was no way a decision to abandon 10 million people could ever be made.

Still, trying to relate like this was extremely effective at lowering Jeong Gyeongmi’s guard.

Humans can never truly understand another person’s suffering and usually don’t even try, but they become remarkably generous toward someone who pretends to understand their pain. Jeong Gyeongmi was no different.

"Alright. That’s what the 66 Society wizard disguised as a homeless man pointed out. He asked whether we really thought the Water Resources Corporation had simply failed to manage the Han River’s water quality. Around then, hospitals had started taking all kinds of measures because patients in the wards were getting worse. The symptoms that that homeless man described matched what was happening on the wards. Auditory hallucinations, visual hallucinations, and initial symptoms very similar to leprosy, then past a certain point the bleeding wouldn’t stop, almost like hemophilia, and the body would start melting while the person was still alive…He knew far too much about some embargoed fatal epidemic.”

"You knew that was a monster and that it was contagious, yet you still used the fire hydrant?”

"The homeless man told us it was safe below a certain concentration. He said as long as you didn’t make contact with it or drink it, colonies below a certain size couldn’t survive very long. He said bleach or similar chemicals could get rid of them. He also said they prefer similar environmental conditions to mold, so we should keep indoor spaces as dry as possible and let in plenty of sunlight.”

"Sergeant Im Junho.”

"Yes. I’ll write that down.”

Sergeant Im Junho stopped pretending not to care and started rummaging through the cabinets in the lounge. It seemed like he was searching for something to write with so he could take notes in his military notebook.

Jeong Gyeongmi didn’t particularly object to us writing things down for ourselves.

But to people from Supreme World, this knowledge was worth a fortune. Human Slime. Its formal name was probably Freedom Hive, or Cellular Degenerative Autonomous Colony Organism, or something like that…This bastard had filled the water and sewage systems to the brim, forcing us to abandon Seoul.

And now, unrestrained testimony had just revealed that before infection exploded out of control, Human Slime cells below a certain mass couldn’t survive long if left in a dry environment.

And the source was the 66 Society.

The fact that there really was a way to suppress infection without burning everything, as dangerous as it was, sent a chill through my chest. Hope? Not at all. I’d realized just how vast the gulf of knowledge between the 66 Society and Supreme World really was, and a freezing wind seemed to blow through me.

And it wasn’t just magical knowledge.

Knowledge about monster ecology. Countermeasures designed specifically against monsters.

The 66 Society was ahead in every aspect.

I still didn't know whether they were the root cause of all this, but one thing was obvious. These bastards were controlling knowledge to cement their absolute advantage and seize control of society.

"Then how did you awaken your magic?”

"He helped us. That man.”

"The homeless guy? Why?”

Those fucking bastards. So in Supreme World they threw a goddamn fit because they didn’t want to teach anyone, but in 5TB Phone World they just handed magic out?

Rage surged up inside of me.

Why the hell?

What the hell were those idiots in the 66 Society so unhappy about that they ignored an incredible talent like me and bestowed the mysteries of magic on fools who jumped into raging fires to help other people? Did they actually take care of this place just because it was their own world or something?

I forced that righteous anger down and waited for Jeong Gyeongmi’s answer.

Jeong Gyeongmi looked toward the old lady, seeming slightly intimidated, to which the old lady nodded before placing a hand on Jeong Gyeongmi’s knee.

"If it weren’t for our firefighters, my husband and I would already be gone. Whatever that man did has nothing to do with the firefighters here.”

"...Thank you, ma’am."

-Haah…

Jeong Gyeongmi let out a short breath, then raised the corners of her eyes again and tried to put on a sharp expression. Compared to Go Ryeoha’s vicious glare, though, it was so gentle she looked more like a whining puppy.

"He tried to recruit us. Said this world wouldn’t last much longer and that an apocalypse overflowing with monsters was coming. He also told us not to put our faith in things like nuclear weapons, that at least the people who could survive needed to live, and then set conditions for the people at this safety center.”

"Like killing you if you told outsiders?”

"That too. But first, he said his teachings would let us identify infected people or give us the strength we needed at rescue sites, so some of us learned it while still skeptical of him… Then once we heard the conditions he revealed later, everyone refused to join.”

[Mind Reading] and the voice striking my eardrums echoed in my head together.

Both inside and out. She meant her words.

The firefighter Jeong Gyeongmi spoke with contempt and disgust.

"He said they needed a child.”

"..."

"He said a child under 10 was absolutely necessary to escape. A kid who hadn’t been tainted yet. The younger, the better. Firefighters are public servants people trust, so we wouldn't be suspected easily. He told us to gather children under the pretext of rescuing them.”

-Bang.

A cabinet slammed shut. Sergeant Im Junho strode back over with a pen and notebook, sat down in his seat, scribbled something, then squeezed his eyes shut and muttered under his breath.

I heard him through [Mind Reading].

'Fuck. Then those bastards Junbeom was chasing…’

.....

I slowly blinked for a moment. Being able to shut out the world just by closing my left eye was a much bigger advantage than I’d expected.

"Did he explain in detail why a child was necessary or what the process involved?”

"A tower built as an offering by children who were never born and therefore never sinned. If children build towers while longing for their parents when crossing the Sanzu River then perhaps crossing to the Other Shore also requires the untainted wishes of children. It sounds meaningful, but…there’s no way the ignition behind it is good.”

I closed my eye again.

My forehead was throbbing a little. Maybe I was coming down with a slight cold.

After taking a deep breath, I clenched my slightly trembling right hand into a fist and looked at Jeong Gyeongmi.

"Why do you think he told you all this so freely?”

"They use hitmen.”

Fear began creeping into Jeong Gyeongmi’s contempt and disgust.

It was a job that would be hard to endure on such poor pay without a sense of duty to save other people’s lives. I’d heard that plenty of firefighters suffered from PTSD, but just because they ran into raging fires didn’t mean they stopped being afraid of death.

Death.

Even an altruistic firefighter like Jeong Gyeongmi wavered slightly before it.

"They use the most obedient people to monitor anyone who comes into contact with them and becomes a wizard. They've probably already noticed this meeting too. If they’re still in Seoul.”

Listening to the fear in her voice, I could make two guesses.

The 66 Society had already abandoned 5TB Phone World.

They were either withdrawing or had already withdrawn.

Otherwise they never would have allowed a meeting like this, where priceless knowledge and their own intentions could leak out. If I were the 66 Society, I wouldn't have allowed something like this to happen in the first place. I would’ve manipulated us into some bizarre encounter with monsters for a dopamine party, or done the opposite and steered us into forming a positive impression of the 66 Society.

Their intentions seemed obvious.

Apparently, the 66 Society didn’t care because everyone here was going to die anyway.

They believed 5TB Phone World would clean itself up without them having to care or waste any more time on it.

I was quite scared of that arrogant confidence’s source.

And one more thing.

Why Go Ryeoha, who had kept working hard to feed even the non-wizards at Konkuk University, had earned the expectations of the wizard-supremacist 66 Society and Father Kang Peter. How she had managed to receive enough support to keep nearly 200 people fed in Supreme World’s Seoul. Why the other survivors from Seoul had been wary and afraid of her. Why the Gangnam group led by Gangnam Thousand-Miles Eyes had taken one look at Go Ryeoha, called her Stage 4, and fled.

Why Father Kang Peter had gone on about that vile ecstasy. And where her outstanding ability to kill people in direct combat, better than even me, a 5-branch Great Archmage, had come from.

If I still hadn’t figured it out after this conversation, I wouldn’t just be a dumbass. I’d have been disqualified as a Homo sapiens.

"..."

Go Ryeoha.

No matter how I looked at it, she had once been one of the executioners used by the 66 Society.

Was she a spy? I suspected it for a moment, but quickly rejected the idea. There were many things that remained hidden about the 66 Society, but there was one thing, exactly one creed, that was perfectly clear. Father Kang Peter’s words and the 66 Society’s actions alike made it obvious.

To the 66 Society, non-wizards weren’t human.

There was only one reason Go Ryeoha had been abandoned by the 66 Society.

Because she defied the Society’s wishes and kept trying to save non-wizards to the very end.

* * *

The moment the meeting ended and we stepped outside, Sergeant Im Junho and I remained silent as we headed back toward the Supreme Archmages and his squad.

The rest of the group had decided not to venture too deep inside yet and were staying on the first floor, reinforcing the safety center in case monsters attacked. Thanks to that, the silence dragged on longer than necessary.

-Step, step.

Even as we descended the stairs, Sergeant Im Junho kept chewing on his lip until he finally let out a breath filled with boiling anger.

-Haaaaaah…

"Disgusting."

"..."

"Fuck. Monsters that come at you disguised as little kids are fucking disgusting, and so are the bastards who kidnap little kids.”

'And I fucking hate myself for having to shoot them if I want to survive.'

The backlash of my Ears-branch magic.

I just accepted it and continued down the stairs one step at a time while discussing our next steps with Sergeant Im Junho.

"First, let’s report back to Warrant Officer Lee Seongchun with the main force and have them come here. Maybe because they’re firefighters, their guard is pretty high, but they’re still a lot friendlier. If the military joins us, we should be able to establish a decent base here.”

"The more people gather, the more monsters will gather as well.”

While it was incredibly obvious, it wasn’t something we could afford to forget.

Still, humans were weak creatures that couldn’t survive scattered apart.

"While the ammunition lasts, have the Hand-branch wizards reinforce as many rounds as possible with [Blood of the Right Hand]. Push the pastor and Hamza hard, and test whether we can make those holy relics that supposedly can be made once Dogma-type wizards get stronger. More importantly, the special operators are all low-stage anyway, so they’ll be better off grouped together. We’ll need manpower too if we want to search for supplies quickly and carry everything back.”

We Supreme Archmages would handle the initial exploration, while the squads under the special operators would move into areas we had already cleared once and collect supplies or information.

If they discovered anything magic-related during that process, the Supreme Archmages would deploy again. Obviously, having every Supreme Archmage leave the base at once would increase the danger, so at minimum Hamza or the pastor would have to take turns staying behind.

Ideally, we’d find a facility capable of housing a large number of people, with limited entrances that made it easy to defend and another route for evacuation. Unfortunately, this was a country built around civilian convenience, so fortress-like structures were pretty rare to come across. Most buildings were the sort where you could get in just by climbing the walls.

Against the more cunning monsters of 5TB Phone World, even trenches would obviously get bypassed through some ridiculous flanking maneuvers.

"The military bases here probably aren’t laid out that differently from Supreme World, right?”

"Probably not. Unless the country’s mountain ranges are somehow different as well…”

"Let’s hit military bases first and see if we can secure vehicles, use the Heart-branch wizards to clear the roads, then check whether any military facilities are usable once we have access. For now, let’s secure ammunition, food, and cleaning agents like bleach. If we’re carrying bottled water around, we need vehicles, not Heart-branch wizards working as pack mules.”

At the same time, a stubborn obsession with the 66 Society was blossoming in a corner of my mind.

They went around disguised as homeless people.

They knew far too well how to disguise themselves as the lowest, most despised people in modern society and get themselves looked down on. Humans can never think highly of someone they despise after all. They didn't even need some impressive magic or something. Just stop washing, wear filthy clothes, and look foreign. Naturally you wouldn’t have a resident registration card, and people would just assume you were an illegal migrant worker who entered without a visa.

You didn’t even need Inverted Eyes-branch, Stage 1.

They simply understood that people tried not to pay attention to the homeless. Thinking about it, that really was kind of like magic. But no matter how good their disguise was, they couldn’t fool me, Baek Jemin.

If crossing worlds through the Mist of the Other Shore required a child under 10, I didn’t know how many children they needed, but I could focus on something else. Until the moment they escaped, every survivor group would need drinking water, food, transport routes, firearms for defense, and magic.

Even if that meant risking negotiations.

There should still be people receiving orders from the 66 Society, or people they had tipped off about escape routes, people who knew where the Mist of the Other Shore would appear and how they were supposed to escape through it.

"Hey, Baek Jemin. What’s with that look on your face?”

When we reached the 1st floor, the pastor looked over from where he had brought chairs in front of the garage and was reading the Bible for the elderly couple and the schoolboy. He didn’t even try to get under my skin by calling me a heretic anymore.

Beside him, Hamza was running around after the welder.

"The pipes over here are safe. That side probably needs some work.”

"Hey. Where’d you say you were from?”

"Pakistan.”

"Pakis…Ahme. Uh…must be a nice place. Hey. You’re good at this. You’re like a detector, right? A Detector. How useful!”

Beyond them, Go Ryeoha and Lee Sejun had already formed a duo and were helping the firefighters organize their equipment.

"There we go. Sorry. Our Hubae-nim is just a little timid.”

"Jemin-ssi’s magic is terrifying. Still, in a situation like this… even if it was a little extreme, please try to understand.”

"Haah. Well, you were pissed too, I guess…Hooh. Just don’t point guns at us.”

Civilians really should stick with civilians after all.

The soldiers stayed a distance away from us, huddled together in one corner of the garage as they took off their helmets and gas masks for the first time in ages and caught their breath. The way some of their eyes were rolling around made it look as if they were suffering from drug withdrawal.

Sergeant Im Junho and I watched the whole scene, then locked eyes with each other.

"Sergeant. When are you contacting them?”

"Damn it. Isn’t this where I’m supposed to say something cool?”

"Dragging around kids you have no connection to in an apocalypse like this is one hell of a gamble. It’s only been a day, but survivor groups that managed to keep their heads and look after unrelated children even during the worst of the panic probably have some degree of discipline and order. Groups that make particularly good use of magic should also have higher survival rates. Let’s contact groups like that and bring them under our control.”

Sergeant Im Junho looked me up and down, from my head to my toes, then clicked his tongue in amazement.

"Wow. Baek Jemin-ssi. You don’t look it, but you’re smarter than I thought."

"I’m the kind of man who’s like a cockroach, a fruit fly, and a diving beetle.”

Arrogant and full of confidence, I swept my hair back like a male model in a cosmetic commercial and smirked.

"In other words, I’m damn hard to kill.”

Luck comes to those who can crawl around like cockroaches.

_________________________________________________________________________

Join our Discord for updates on releases!