WETRIED TRANSLATIONS

The Wizard In the Poncho

[Translator – Aren]

Chapter 15 - The Wizard in the Poncho (3)

They say people could get used to anything.

That once you experienced enough pain, your tolerance would rise alongside it, like your threshold for stimulation gradually increased or something. Yeah, so that was complete bullshit.

I didn’t even dare look at my left hand, blood still pouring from it. So I let the arm hang limply while staggering forward, my rifle sling hanging awkwardly from my right shoulder alone. A few people kept gazing at me.

"Hgk…Ugh..."

"Why’d you shoot yourself with a gun like an idiot?”

There was a reason Pastor Park had decided to support me instead of Monk Cheonhwi.

It just fucking hurt. Honestly, it felt like my blood vessels had been set on fire, like flames were scorching through my shoulder, climbing up my neck and boiling inside my skull. The pain was so intense that cold sweat mixed with involuntary groans poured out until somehow the sound blended into laughter without me realizing it.

Because whenever I remembered what my Alteration-type magic had just done, my blood started boiling for an entirely different reason.

I could stop the movements of whatever I was looking at. Sure, throwing fireballs or blasting lightning would’ve been amazing. No, honestly, I desperately craved those kinds of powers, but this spell wasn’t bad at all either.

Aside from the sensation of every heartbeat pounding molten heat through my head, neck, and left shoulder.

"Hehehehehehe…”

"Pastor, isn’t Baek Jemin-ssi slowly going insane?”

"He shot his own hand with a rifle. You think he'd still be normal after that? Tsk.”

At least Monk Cheonghwi’s mantra was keeping my sanity intact.

Looking back on it, I realized something about the surviving wizards. Their powers weren’t flashy. They actually looked rather plain. But in reality, they were incredibly practical.

Pastor Park Yohan’s Redemptive Conviction. Nonsensical religious rambling aside, it seemed to genuinely guarantee his survival. Corporal Park Sehyeok’s heartbeat-hearing magic felt kind of mediocre…but it was helping us stay alive.

And Monk Cheonghwi’s mantras, well, that one didn’t even need explanation. Without his power, the soldiers would’ve panicked and scattered long ago. Instead, his chanting was holding everyone together as we escaped.

Pastor Park Yohan patted my shoulder and sighed wearily.

"We survived thanks to you, Baek Jemin-ssi. Keep it together a little longer, alright? The emergency exit’s right ahead.”

And he was right.

My 2nd stage magic must have terrified the Amalgams, because they no longer approached recklessly. Even Corporal Park Sehyeok, listening carefully for heartbeats, nodded while adjusting the grip on his rifle.

"They’re not coming. No, I think they’re nearby, but…”

"That’s enough. I’m going to make a call. Hey, you lot…make sure to protect the monk. Just remember, if either Baek Jemin-ssi or the monk goes down here, we’re all going down with them.”

Pastor Park barked some stern warnings toward the terrified soldiers before pulling out his phone from inside his poncho-covered jacket and trying to make a call.

But perhaps because we were deep underground, or because the station was covered in dense fog, the phone only rang uselessly.

-Riiiiing...

Each echoing ring spreading through the underground tunnels only made the soldiers’ breathing harsher behind their gas masks. Monk Cheonghwi had already removed his mask and was quietly catching his breath with his hands pressed together in prayer. Meanwhile. I couldn’t bring myself to look at the blood covering my hand. So instead I kept staring at the green emergency lights. 

That was when Corporal Park Sehyeok suddenly inhaled sharply.

"I hear something."

"Is it those damn monsters again?”

"No. It’s coming from beyond the emergency lights."

"Then it’s fine.”

The moment Pastor Park Yohan replied with mild irritation, the call finally connected.

"Everyone, quiet.”

Pastor Park Yohan intentionally turned the volume up a little, winked at us with one eye, cleared his throat dramatically, and began speaking.

"Ah, ah. This is Pastor Park Yohan speaking. Am I connected to the commander at Suwon Station?”

[Pastor, you’re still alive? What about other survivors?]

"There’s me, the monk, Beak Jemin-ssi and…a guy named Park Sehyeok. Four operators in total. We also have 8 soldiers with us. We can come up now, right?”

[What about the Amalgams?]

Silence fell instantly.

It was the first time I’d seen hesitation and uncertainty flicker across Pastor Park Yohan’s eyes. He looked back at us through the grime-covered lenses of his glasses before finally answering in a dry voice.

"They’re pursuing us. If we can’t get out, everyone here dies.”

Another silence followed.

Muffled shouting echoed through the phone, occasionally drowned out by harsh metallic noises. After several long seconds, the commander finally spoke again.

[There should be an emergency side door built into the blast shutter. The shutter itself is sealed, but the emergency access door hasn’t been locked down yet. Escape through there immediately. And…]

"And?”

[The army is conducting emergency containment operations to establish a defensive kill zone and prevent further Amalgam spread. Head toward the main building of Suwon Station. If you move anywhere else, you will be fired upon indiscriminately.]

The call ended there.

One of the soldiers instinctively reached for the radio on his back in panic, but Pastor Park Yohan clicked his tongue and stopped him.

"Forget it. It won’t help. In this situation, nobody’s answering anything anyway. You all heard him. Let’s move.”

And so the surviving group pushed onward toward the green emergency lights.

The crunching of shattered glass beneath our boots mixed with the ragged breathing echoing through gas mask filters as we finally arrived before the massive sealed shutter blocking the way.

Then, the moment Pastor Park confidently tried to shove open the side access door, his voice faltered.

"It’s not opening?”

"Ah, shit.”

Corporal Park Sehyeok reflexively stirred and immediately rushed to the door. After failing to push it open with his hands, he slung his rifle over his shoulder and started throwing his entire body against it.

"Fuck! Fuck!”

"Please remain calm. If the soldiers all push together, the door will open. Alone it is difficult, but together it will yield.”

Honestly, if not for Monk Cheonghwi’s calm suggestion, the entire group might have panicked right there.

Even Pastor Park Yohan looked close to losing it. But after hearing the monk, the pastor removed his glasses for a moment, wiped the sweat from his soaked face, then put them back on with renewed determination.

"Phew. Right. The Lord protects me. I do not doubt salvation, and therefore I shall be saved…”

Pastor Park Yohan steadied the soldiers while adjusting the grip on his rifle again.

"Baek Jemin-ssi, I, and you two soldiers. We’ll be holding the line. Everyone else, force that damn door open. Smash it with rifle stocks if you have to.”

"Me too?”

"You’re the only one here who can stop those monsters, Baek Jemin-ssi.”

And so I, who was bleeding endlessly from my left hand, Pastor Park Yohan, and two terrified-looking soldiers with absolutely no idea what they were doing, turned to face the fog-filled concourse.

Once, countless people had passed through this station with blank expressions, hurrying about, but now it had become a crimson purgatory stained by emergency lights and shattered glass. The only reason I couldn’t outright call it Hell was because I wasn’t confident there wasn’t something even worse waiting beneath it.

What if I called this hell, only to realize that the real one actually came later?

It was what I’d called "linguistic deflation" meant to prevent Hell inflation. My own personal countermeasure against overusing dramatic vocabulary.

"Baek Jemin-ssi, you’ve seriously lost your marbles if you can giggle at a time like this.”

"Damn it, what do you expect? I shot my own left hand with a rifle.”

"I told you you should've believed in God. If you believed in God, would you have had to shoot yourself? It’s not too late, you know. Believe now.”

"The priest ended up getting killed, though.”

"That’s because Catholics are heretics! He believed in that charlatan Pope!”

Honestly, if I’d heard that kind of nonsense in ordinary life, I would’ve thought the guy was completely insane. But hearing it down here in this damp, dark underground station was weirdly comforting.

Comforting enough that for a split second I almost thought that I should at least try believing in God a little.

If I weren’t such a deeply filial descendant who cared about my ancestors, maybe I really would've gone to church, telling myself that I didn’t need to care if my ancestors or whatever were burning in hell for not knowing God. Surely my ancestors would understand the sincerity behind my thoughts and forgive me, even if I hadn’t placed food on the ancestral rites altar in over 10 years.

Then the side door that had been violently rattling in its frame for a while now finally burst open.

Monk Cheonghwi turned and shouted toward us.

"It’s open! Stay calm! One at a time!”

At those words, the first to move was Park Sehyeok.

"I'm going first!”

Honestly, rather than thinking that the guy was selfish or cowardly, I just thought that for a guy like him, he’d held out impressively long already.

He’d done his share. If he wanted to go first, no, who was going to stop him? 

But the instant Park Sehyeok shoved the side door open, the silent underground concourse exploded into violent wind. The fog was blasted backward so hard it scattered between the crimson emergency lights like water being sucked into a funnel.

Our soaked ponchos snapped violently against our bodies. Thick, white fog formed across our gas mask lenses.

Already drenched from head to toe, we could actually feel the freezing cold gale cutting through us.

But even that wasn’t the overwhelming part. What truly dominated everything was the massive rotor noise hammering into our ears.

The violent roar of helicopter blades. They were loud enough to instantly drown out the screams of people begging for help. The sound almost seemed to physically slam into us with the weight of the water-soaked ponchos pressing all the way down into the emergency shutter area underground.

Then static erupted from the radio communications officer’s back.

Naturally, given the situation, radio reception was really bad. And since nobody wanted to lower their weapons, Pastor Park Yohan, being the only one with a free hand, pulled his phone back out.

After several rings, someone answered.

"What’s with the helicopter?"

[First suppression wave. Get out. Now!]

-Click.

Pastor Park smacked his lips irritably, clenched the phone tightly, then shoved it back into his jacket pocket.

"Baek Jemin-ssi.”

"Haah, fuck.”

I already knew what he was about to say. That made it actually worse. But what sucked even more was that I understood why it had to be this way.

No fucking way was I about to become the guy who stays behind at the end of a horror or monster movie to sacrifice himself. I really wanted to curse out the world right then, yet seeing no other way out of this, I swallowed hard and inhaled slowly.

After several exhausted sighs, still grimacing from the burning pain racing through every nerve in my body, I finally spoke.

"If I get baptized right now, do I go to heaven? Actually, I already got baptized in boot camp. Can I do it twice?”

"What the hell are you talking about? I’m staying behind with you till the end, Baek Jemin-ssi, so keep those damn eyes open.”

And for the first time in my life, I think I finally understood, at least a little bit, what camaraderie and humanity actually meant.

Maybe if Pastor Park Yohan hadn’t constantly gone on rants about how worshipping Grandfather Dangun was idolatry and looked down on shamans, I might’ve secretly considered him a friend. No, maybe if he weren’t the type to shout “Believe in Jesus and go to Heaven, reject Him and go to Hell” every chance he got, we could’ve actually been close. 

Then again, the fact that even in a situation like this I could still immediately think of his flaws probably meant becoming that close was impossible.

Anyway, with Pastor Park Yohan and me temporarily taking rear guard, things settled down a bit. The emergency side door wasn’t wide, barely allowing one person to squeeze through at a time, so you had to readjust your rifle just to get through it.

And even then, things were chaotic. The insane winds slamming against the shutter whipped our soaked ponchos around like lashes, while the helicopter rotor noise was so overwhelming that unless you screamed, your mouth just moved soundlessly.

White fog kept gathering on my gas mask lenses. The condensation turned into droplets and rolled down, and then the moment I exhaled again, the lenses fogged right back up.

-Huuuff—. Huuuff—.

No, this wouldn’t work at all.

I undid my helmet strap and ripped the gas mask off.

My face was almost as soaked as the mask itself, drenched with sweat and moisture. My hair clung to my forehead like someone had dumped a bucket of water over me. I tried to fasten my helmet again with one hand, then quickly gave up.

Trying to adjust the straps with only my shaking right hand was way harder than I’d expected. 

Instead, I wedged the rifle under my right arm and aimed into the underground depths beyond the swirling fog, focusing entirely on controlling my breathing. My left hand still hurt like absolute hell. But maybe because my brain had finally accepted that I was genuinely in danger of dying, it was dumping enough chemicals into my system that the pain had eased slightly.

When I mentioned this, Pastor Park looked at me seriously.

"Your nerves aren’t dying or something, right?”

"Ugh, no way, right?”

But that wasn't what worried me. Normal people might think, ‘What if my nerves die and I can’t move my hand anymore?’

But my thought process had already gone somewhere far more ridiculous. Stuff like ‘My 2nd stage magic scales based on pain, so if my nerves die and I stop feeling pain, wouldn’t I be screwed?’ rushed through my head. 

Just to be sure, I poked the wound with my right hand.

"Aaagh! AGH! Aaaaaaagh…Fuck…Aagh…”

"Stop doing stupid shit and stay still.”

"Hehehehehe…"

I was laughing.

Because as long as I could still feel pain, as long as this pain continued, I could survive.

Meanwhile, it seemed like the evacuation had finally finished. Knocking echoed from outside.

Before I knew it, only Pastor Park Yohan and I remained underground.

I took a deep breath and looked at him.

"Go first."

"Baek Jemin-ssi."

"If you leave quickly, I can leave quickly too.”

"Hah. You sure you don’t want to come to church? I’ll make you head of the youth group.”

"Quit bullshitting and go already.”

The sound of footsteps gradually faded away.

The rotor noise returned. Strong winds funneled through the gap again, sweeping away the fog pressing inward.

And through the crack of the emergency side door, a thin sliver of light spilled into the underground. Compared to the red emergency light or the green exit sign, that tiny beam shone infinitely brighter.

But beyond my dew-covered rifle barrel, beyond the violently swirling fog, I was too powerless to drive away the silhouettes swaying within it.

Even against the savage roar of the helicopter blades, the united voices and breaths still arose like the sounds of wind instruments, standing unmoving against this massive storm.

-Woooooosh—.

And then, footprints that split the fog apart appeared. Footprints from 10 seconds in the future- Between them, I witnessed the end of someone familiar.

Faces tangled together like grotesque conjoined twins stared in my direction. Like fermented bread full of holes, eye sockets had opened all over their bodies. Compound eyes rolled independently in different directions as they fixed themselves upon the emergency shutter.

Beneath them, limbs dangled and twisted unnaturally. Kneeling, bracing against the ground with hands, moving with bent joints, all trying desperately to synchronize their mismatched strides.

And among those hanging limbs were familiar ones.

The distinctive prayer beads gave it away immediately. Bosal Geulmun. Because his Spirit Sight attracted the hostility of the Amalgams, he must’ve been their first target during the chaos on the platform.

However, the thing that truly sent a chill down my spine was the one hanging at the very front.

-Looord… Loooord… Aaaah…

A voice splitting apart from the unified chorus. A desperate cry escaping through tangled tongues. 

The black-robed body with exposed forearms still struggled desperately, scratching frantically at its own face. The problem was that everything except the fused mouth and tongue was gone. 

Father Jeong Yonghwan’s eyes, nose, and forehead were completely melted away among those countless faces. Not even enough remained to become part of the compound eyes.

The body twitched and writhed, still letting out pained echoes, trying to find its own face, tearing and scratching at the melted flesh of the creature, but the fingernails only ripped away pieces of warped faces and rotting meat.

Looking at that, I felt something beyond fear. A profound sense of futility.

"I vowed I’d put a bullet between your eyes, so you came back without a forehead at all, huh?"

Then I immediately threw myself toward the empty emergency exit.

-Bang!

The instant I slammed my body against the steel door using my speed and weight, I heard the monsters howl.

"Mommy!” “You think monsters like this are real?” “Uuhuuugh…” “No! I don’t want this!”

I had to run.

But the surface turned out to be far harsher than I’d imagined.

"Haah, haah..."

The helicopter was flying much lower than I expected.

The winds from its rotors were so violent it felt like my soaked poncho was drying in seconds. The fog had been blown away, but now the searchlights were blinding enough to make tears stream down my face.

A piercing ringing, like tinnitus, filled my ears while my body staggered.

Yet, a single primitive instinct remained.

The monsters chasing behind me. That alien erased every pain and hesitation from my mind.

[Come out, come out!]

I had no clue where the amplified voice was coming from. Gripping my rifle tighter, teas endlessly pouring out of my eyes, I practically scrambled forward on all fours. My left hand wouldn’t move properly anymore, so I dragged my left arm across the ground, not caring if my forearm scraped itself raw. Holding the stick against my right side as I sprinted like a maniac.

At this point people could have called me a cripple, and I wouldn’t have been able to argue. I wasn’t in a position to care about dignity anymore.

-Thud.

Something struck the shutter behind me with enough mass to silence even the helicopter rotors for a brief moment. Then I felt a jolt travel straight down my spine.

A throbbing pain sharp enough to make my heart ache surged through me, traveling down the arteries in my trembling legs, forcing my collapsing body to keep moving.

But when I finally climbed all the stairs and the dampness of fog began sticking to my face…

I heard the blaring sirens and, over them, the military loudspeakers.

[All survivors report to Suwon Station immediately! Anyone moving elsewhere will be fired upon!]

But ahead of me, beyond the thinner layer of fog, rows of parked buses blocked the roads.

Behind them, other soldiers waited together with Pastor Park Yohan and Monk Cheonghwi. They appeared deep in prayer as if they were preparing for the Last Supper.

Staggering toward them, practically limping, I blurted out the first thing that came to my mind.

"Where’s Park Sehyeok? That grumbling bastard?”

Instead of words, someone answered me with a gesture.

A soldier in a gas mask pointed silently into the fog. Apparently he’d tried running toward one of the shopping district alleys. Park Sehyeok lay sprawled in the middle of the road, bleeding and twitching.

"Ugh, kgh…grrrgl..."

Cruel as it might sound, after seeing Father Jeong Yonghwan’s fate, I honestly thought a few holes in the lungs might have been a kinder way to go.

Pastor Park Yohan and Monk Cheonghwi were kneeling beside a collapsed soldier, ripping off his gas mask and slapping his cheeks while shouting at him.

"Hey! You close your eyes here and you’re dead! And not the peaceful kind of dead either!”

"You still have duties left to fulfill, benefactor. Are you already planning to close your eyes?”

"Hey! You survived down there, and now you wanna die the second you get out?! You’re supposed to make it to heaven!”

I stumbled toward them, desperately trying to catch my breath.

"We need to run.”

"Baek Jemin! You bastard…Our church’s honorary youth leader survived after all!”

"Those things are about to pour out from underground! They saw us escape and realized the seal isn’t complete yet! Even while I was staring them down, they dared to keep coming."

And then, something so horrifying it felt capable of stopping my heart rippled through the air.

My body felt it before my ears did. My organs seemed to vibrate faintly. It was like the deep rumbling that came before an earthquake.

When I finally looked up, fire blossomed in the gloomy sky.

And soon after, sharp crackling noises overwhelmed everything. Moments later came the sound of concrete shattering, like a construction site tearing itself apart.

-Ruuuuumble...

Thunder roared through the raging, dense fog.

The result was catastrophic. Stones exploded apart from every direction, fragments slamming into the buses and reverberating through the streets. Human voices instantly became meaningless when faced with this cacophony.

My ears rang, slowly going numb. Pastor Park Yohan and Monk Cheonghwi desperately slapped soldiers and hauled them back to their feet.

They were definitely screaming something, but all I could see were mouths opening and closing. No voice reached me.

Only the ringing in my skull grew sharper.

-Piiiiiii—

And yet one thing still came through perfectly.

It was the howling of the monsters.

The creatures forcing their way out while crushing and deforming steel. Their cries sounded terrifyingly human. And that somehow made them even worse.

-Mommy!

The ringing finally faded enough for the loudspeaker to break through.

[Helicopter running low on ammo! Survivors move!]

The neatly parked buses acted as walls and obstacles.

The rows of buses lined up at the transit center shielded us from the army’s indiscriminate fire, but navigating streets blocked by buses in heavy fog was harder than expected. 

And whenever anyone tried straying even slightly from the route, bright white searchlights cut through the fog and turned toward us while voices shouted.

"Blocking all major routes! Come any closer and we fire!”

"We’re survivors!”

"I said we’ll shoot!”

The military had apparently used their limited armored vehicles to seal off the major roads, setting up searchlights and machine guns.

Even from far away, I could vaguely hear things like ‘Changing ammo belts!’ and ‘Check identification bands!’ Naturally, from the outside, all anyone could think of were colorful profanities.

"What a bullshit life this is..."

"We’ll be saved. We just need to make it through the gaps between the buses. It looks like they’ve stationed forces around Suwon Station, so if we run fast enough, we can make it. The helicopters are holding off the monsters behind us, right?”

Pastor Park Yohan patted the soldiers on the shoulders as he reassured them.

But even his hands were trembling, albeit slightly. Monk Cheonhwi used the edge of his rifle to slice off part of his robes, then walked over and wrapped my left hand with it.

"It seems this is all this humble monk can do for you, benefactor.”

"No, don’t say that. Everyone’s done everything they could.”

"Hoho…Does doing one’s best mean one can avoid resentment? You’re saying that because you’re trying to be considerate of me.”

Our group hid behind a bus for a moment and caught our breath.

Roughly 15 seconds had passed.

It was a short time, but long enough to exchange a few words and rip off our gas masks.

The surviving soldiers all looked around my age. Some even younger.

Sweat and moisture plastered their hair to their foreheads, while feelings of utter helplessness and desperation to survive mixed together on their faces.

At that moment, I unconsciously pulled out the Magic Crash Course booklet again.

I could already feel the makeshift bandage growing heavy with blood, but I ignored it and flipped through the pages with my right hand, not caring if they tore.

Stage 1: Retrospection. The expansion of one’s scope of perception.

Stage Two: Grief. The power to force my pain-warped perception onto targets within my sight.

Magic offered certainty. Its price was horrifying, but unlike studying your ass off for years with no guarantee of success, Alteration-type magic felt different. It felt like it would give you exactly as much power as the bone and flesh you sacrificed.

Then…

If I gave more, how much stronger could I become? Just what magnificent magic would I come to wield?

A curiosity burned inside me as fiercely as the pain in my body. Magic was honest. Magic became stronger the more it hurt. It grew stronger according to what you sacrifice. It felt like something was whispering those words into my ears constantly…

The one who pulled me out of these thoughts was Pastor Park Yohan.

"Baek Jemin-ssi, run!”

I shoved the booklet back into my chest pocket, inhaled deeply once, tucked my rifle under my arm, and broke out into a sprint.

I just ran.

I realized the helicopter was leaving only a few seconds later.

[Fire, fire! Shoot anything that moves!]

The loudspeaker roared. And through the fog, bright white lights erupted with muzzle flashes.

The sheer volume of gunfire nearly made me piss myself.

Thankfully I was already soaked through because of the mist and sweat, so no one would ever know. But some people weren’t nearly as lucky, meeting a gruesome end.

The sounds of bullets ricocheting off bus frames and slamming into concrete rang out. Each impact hammered against my heart with even greater intensity.

I threw myself behind a bus tire and gasped desperately for breath, only to see the face of a soldier stumbling after me. It was filled with nothing but despair.

Human flesh wasn’t designed to withstand heavy machine-gun rounds. And machine-gun rounds existed to tear human beings apart.

The soldier was hit by over a dozen rounds in an instant. His upper torso and side were literally shredded away, and he collapsed, staring blankly at the blood pouring out of himself.

Then the light vanished from his eyes.

"Fuck, fuckfuck..."

Someone muttered those words as the monsters’ howls rang through us in the storm of bullets.

The place where we’d been standing. The places we’d run through. And beneath the buses. Twisted limbs writhing unnaturally through the gaps beneath them burned themselves into my memory.

"Run, run!”

That was probably Pastor Park Yohan.

We broke into a mad dash again. The monsters chased harder. The rain of bullets intensified, coming from all directions. And the bus frames turned out to be a lot less durable than we’d hoped.

The military noticed the Amalgams using the buses as cover while advancing and, in a display of incredible bravery, or deep insanity, began pouring fire into them regardless of collateral damage.

Of course, that meant we got caught in their shooting as well.

-Ting, Titing! Ting, ting, ting!

Holes exploded across the bus body. They even blew out the tires, making the whole bus tilt with a horrible metallic screeching.

After the concentrated fire swept through it, the bus wasn’t spraying blood but fog. And one unlucky soldier hiding behind it took a bullet through the throat and died instantly. Or perhaps that made him lucky.

I glanced at his corpse and kept running, keeping my pace as best as I could.

But the Amalgams were far more relentless and far more absurd than we’d imagined.

-AaaaaaAAAAAAAAaaAAAAaAaagh—!!!

The unified vocal cords screamed like some massive brass instrument unleashing a horrifying note. For one instant the gunfire stopped. Faced with that low, vibrating howl that shook the earth itself, an untrained human body would simply freeze, their breath completely stolen away.

Then countless footsteps overlapped, and wet, squelching noises followed as the buses began tilting.

Only then did I look back. The fog parted, revealing footprints.

Despite the pounding headache, the burning eyes, the pain from my gunshot wound, and the tears pouring down my face, the clarity of the footprints remained completely vivid.

"It climbed on top of the buses! It’s splitting apart!”

With that, I had done my part.

I ran again with my rifle hanging at my side. The soldiers snapped out of the screams' lingering effects and resumed firing. Bodies dropped with heavy thuds around me.

My heart had felt ready to explode ages ago. The others running with me had long since scattered amidst the storm of gunfire, the Amalgams’ pursuit, and the surging fog.

I ran toward muzzle flashes. Toward any flickering light. But the sound of buses tilting and groaning kept following me. 

I had no choice but to look back.

Not out of curiosity, but to drive them away.

"Aaagh! Agh! Aaaaagh!”

-Bang, babang! Bang!

My screams mixed with the gunfire as I pulled the trigger over and over.

I wasn’t even aiming properly. I had the rifle tucked under my arm, firing from the hip, so my accuracy was abysmal at best.

Most of the bullets slammed into bus frames or tore through empty air, but the monster, with its melting, conjoined faces, still ducked down against the tops of the buses. These things seemed terrified just from a single look from me.

Machine-gun fire swept across the bus roofs.

-Thwackthwacktwack…

The sound of flesh bursting apart somehow sounded holier than the church hymns they played when we got hamburgers in boot camp.

Feeling the heat from my rifle barrel, I ran again. I didn’t even have time to fix my grip.

Through the fog, toward the faint silhouettes of soldiers, with tears endlessly pouring down my face.

But then utter despair washed over my very being.

Through the dispersing fog, the footprints of 10 seconds in the future were already ahead of me.

At this rate, I’d get caught.

"Survivor confirmed! Survivor confirmed!”

"They’re coming after him!”

All I could hear was the soldiers screaming. 

I’d finally made it this far through this hell and was this close to safety…

And because I just so happened to run slower, I was supposed to end up just like Father Jeong Yonghwan?

I clenched my teeth.

Still running with my rifle held tight, I switched the fire selector.

Then with my left hand, I grabbed near the barrel where heat still lingered. Cold and burning pain, contradictory sensations, scorched through my left hand, but at this point, fuck it.

"Survivor, get down!”

Following someone’s shout, I threw myself forward.

Then, just as I’d prepared for, I rolled over and landed hard on my behind.

There it was. A monster that looked as though hundreds of human faces had been kneaded together. Its human limbs twisted and bent at impossible angles as it lurched toward me with its mouth open.

Maybe because there were hundreds of melted faces fused together, there wasn’t actually just one mouth. Instead, its mouths looked like rows of zipper teeth crudely stitched across its body, several of them slashed open at random.

The thing rolled around countless compound eyes to look at me. And upon seeing me, several tongues wriggled with delight.

The tangled mess of faces twisted into faint smiles as they prepared to pour themselves over me.

In that instant, I raised my rifle and screamed.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!”

I had never heard shell casings hit the ground from this close before.

With every blinging muzzle flash, fire tore through the fog. Every single one also made me feel my left hand burning away.

The acrid smell of gunpowder replaced the space where the fog disappeared. Pain hammered into my skull so violently that tears burst out on their own. I forced my eyes wide open so the tears wouldn’t blur my vision and kept pulling the trigger.

The heat from the barrel seared my hand harder and harder, my agony intensifying.

Alteration-type Magic—Eye, 2nd Stage.

The pain I was feeling right now was longer and greater than it had ever been before…

"It…It stopped!”

"Fire! Fire!”

-Ratatatatatatatatatata!

Machine guns roared all at once toward the monster’s head. 

The creature that had seemed so absolute began to crumble under the concentrated barrage. It had come too close. There wasn't even time for it to split apart. Heavy rounds smashed into its bloated body, tearing it apart and ripping it to pieces.

Only then did I finally let tears stream freely down my face as I closed my eyes.

It was just a single blink. A blink to end this nightmare and this pain.

-Blink.

And in that instant, the monster screamed wretchedly as it collapsed.

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