WETRIED TRANSLATIONS

The Wizard in the Poncho

[Translator – Aren]

Chapter 18 - Ever Heard of Shared Fate?

My complaint, worthy of a true wizard, that the most important part was missing got completely ignored by the other wizards.

They all looked at me with expressions like ‘What the hell’s wrong with this guy?’ before immediately shifting their attention back to the Colonel. The only one who actually reacted was the exhausted-looking Colonel himself.

"We’ll discuss Localized Invasive Structural Alteration phenomena later. Any other questions?”

As the Colonel looked around at us, the one who seemed to know the most about the military among the wizards, Sergeant Lee Sejun, raised his hand.

Even though becoming an Operator basically returned him to civilian status, it looked like he still hadn’t shaken off military life. I could see his lips twitch slightly, like he was about to give his rank and name automatically. But through sheer superhuman determination to escape military habits, Lee Sejun managed to stop himself and instead threw out a sharp question.

"Where exactly did all of South Korea’s artillery and air power go? Aside from that one helicopter at Suwon Station, I didn't see any tanks either.”

He had a point. South Korea was practically called the Ministry of Artillery Defense, the country famous for ditching infantry gear and dumping everything into artillery firepower.

Only after hearing Lee Sejun’s question did it hit me too. No wonder this didn’t feel like the Korea I knew. I had honestly been thinking that if they’d just started shelling things earlier, wouldn’t all of this have been over already?

The Colonel’s expression, however, turned unbelievably complicated.

"Most of South Korea’s currently available artillery, air assets, and armored units have been deployed to the Seoul blockade line. With the current expansion of martial law into Gyeonggi Province, military units still stationed elsewhere will also be redeployed. The number of personnel stationed along the Seoul blockade line is approximately 120 thousand. The military’s logistical capacity is being prioritized toward supplying these forces with necessary resources and equipment.”

Knowing we were basically civilians, the Colonel began explaining what the military considered the greatest dangers of the situation.

Actually, now that I thought about it, I was a civilian, shit...

"But our greatest concern in this situation is that visual observation has become nearly impossible. As of January 18th, Seoul is shrouded in a massive fog layer hundreds of meters thick, making identification of anything inside impossible. The same conditions apply near the blockade line, and artillery bombardment has already been conducted after adjusting firing coordinates in order to flatten outer urban areas near the blockade-line.”

At that moment, an article I had vaguely skimmed over suddenly resurfaced in my mind.

Someone had said they heard artillery fire. If the Colonel’s explanation was right, that meant they’d already begun shelling Seoul’s outskirts days ago. The Colonel brought up a weather map from January 10th.

"However, on January 10th, a civilian evacuation effort conducted by the government and military, taking domestic approval and international opinion into account, failed after it turned into an Amalgam infiltration attempt. Simultaneously, fog spread across areas near the blockade line, forcing the military to focus on verifying and rescuing front-line units. With assistance from American reconnaissance assets, low-altitude aircraft and fighters were concentrated on rescuing isolated containment forces. Even during the Suwon Station Amalgam incident, the Air Force’s top priority remained preserving the blockade line.”

"So that explains the report about the helicopters being out of ammo…”

"According to testimony from Major Kang Minsoo, who was commanding the Suwon Station forces at the time, emergency support had been urgently requested from a nearby helicopter pilot who had already been returning to base. The reports matched.”

As he spoke, the Colonel displayed footage from the incident.

The front-line containment units had been on the verge of collapse. Rather than stopping the Suwon breach itself, the military had poured everything into preserving the blockade line.

And sure enough, unlike the Suwon Station forces, the soldiers in the photos wore full chemical-protection suits and were even using flamethrowers. Things I had never imagined touching in my life.

Separated by hastily deployed barbed wire, soldiers continuously blasted flamethrowers at the melted-faced monsters. It looked less like bravery and more like desperation.

Occasionally artillery flashes slit up the fog itself, making it seem like someone had decided to drag civilization all the way back to the Stone Ages. The fog glowed from the bombardment.

"Naturally, the containment operation that has continued for the past twelve days has imposed enormous fatigue upon a military already fighting Amalgams for nearly a month. The strain on equipment from constant combat and exposure to fog cannot be ignored. Furthermore, once artillery and air assets were used to seal off the surface, infiltration attempts through subways using refugees as human shields caused severe concern within command. Most tanks are currently being used, or held in reserve for use, to maintain the blockade line. The rest remain stationed at rear positions to ensure security and deal with potential civil unrest.”

"If this humble monk understands correctly…it almost sounds as though the military believes the creature known as the Amalgam is learning human tactics.”

"That’s correct."

The Colonel nodded at Monk Cheonghwi, who had spoken up in place of the now-silent Lee Sejun.

He clicked to the next slide, where he moved his pointer toward the ribcage-bone monster I’d seen while escaping Suwon Station.

A human head with pale eyes dangling beneath it, a spine stretched out like some giant centipede, using its ribs as legs. That grotesque thing.

The Colonel tapped the image with his pointer as he explained.

"Identified species No. 2 Autonomous Mobile Spinal Extraction Entity. On the field we refer to it as ‘Predator Spine.’”

It was the same name mentioned in the timeline document.

The Colonel said he'd only explain it verbally and firmly warned us not to leak anything. Its mere existence and biology were classified as Level 3 state secrets. Only then did I realize something. Other than the two soldiers standing guard outside, there wasn’t a single other person around this meeting room.

"This creature possesses a sharp reproductive organ at the tip of its spine-tail structure that functions as both a blade and a needle. It normally ambushes prey outside their field of vision, for example, from ceilings or pipes. It severs the lower spine of victims to disable their lower body, then injects bodily fluid into the spinal column to reproduce.”

"..."

I smacked my lips awkwardly.

For a second I thought I’d heard wrong, so I glanced around. Everyone else looked just as dumbfounded as I did.

"And the infected victim's spine and skull are then reborn as entities possessing independent instinct or perhaps independent will. They consume the host’s internal organs from within, manipulate neural signals to control the host, and once the host body reaches its limit, they tear free and emerge to continue their life cycle through further ambush predation.”

The Colonel quickly switched the screen back to a perfectly normal map of Korea as if someone might catch a glimpse and added a few more things.

"Due to their photosensitivity, after power was restored to Suwon Station, effective extermination efforts successfully eliminated three discovered specimens as of January 18th. Current policy is to seal off Suwon Station underground and monitor the situation.”

Honestly, I was almost scared to ask how they’d even figured all that out, so I just refrained from asking.

There were some things that people shouldn't try to know too much about. The brain’s got storage limits too, and I wasn’t interested in cramming horrifying backstory details into mine. Thankfully, the Colonel didn’t seem interested in force-feeding it to us either.

Anyway, to summarize everything that followed.

Q1. Lee Sejun: Why aren’t we using flamethrowers or liquid nitrogen or something?

A: They already had. Flamethrowers with meaningful stopping power and fuel-based systems had been retired from South Korea’s military inventory ages ago. After digging through old reserves and redeploying whatever they could still use, they only managed to gather around 30,000 units, all of which had already gone to front-line containment forces already or were being moved there.

As for portable liquid nitrogen systems. The military didn’t have lightweight infantry equipment capable of maintaining ultra-low temperatures. They were apparently still busy trying to design the damn things from scratch. Plus, effectiveness in open environments had obvious limitations, so combat doctrine had shifted toward squeezing as much use as possible out of existing weapon systems.

As for why incendiary bombs and white phosphorus were being used only in a limited way? Apparently they’d tell us later.

Q2. Pastor Park Yohan: Seriously, how the hell did you pull off information control this perfectly?

A: AI technology, which was rapidly rising in prominence, seemed to be the real MVP here. During the process of carefully relocating Seoul’s communication hubs and data centers toward rear areas, the government used network instability as an excuse to cut communications so Seoul residents would not panic. And to stop people from suspecting they were isolated from the outside world, trained AI systems were deployed into online communities and news spaces to keep activity looking normal. That way Seoul’s population wouldn’t suddenly panic and try to flood out all at once.

Then finally, Shin Nain said the thing all of us had probably thought at least once but hadn’t dared to speak out.

"So if everyone’s already under Satan’s influence anyway, can’t we just nuke it? Seoul people weren’t exactly faithful in the first place. This is merely divine punishment, right?”

Pastor Park Yohan practically had a heart attack trying to stop the guy.

"No…Brother Shin Nain, what kind of thing are you saying…?!”

"Jesus told us to save the sheep. He never said anything about saving goats.”

At that point, the Colonel who had been speaking stepped aside, making room for another Colonel that had just walked in.

This one wore refined-looking glasses over deeply set smile lines. His name seemed to be Min Beomjun.

"It’s a pleasure to meet you, civilian Operators. I am Colonel Min Beomjun, attached to the Joint Chiefs of Staff Nuclear Response Center. I previously trained with a US chemical unit.”

Colonel Min Beomjun quietly exchanged a nod with the nameless colonel, then took the pointer from him and changed the screen.

"I will now explain the currently projected scenarios to the civilian Operators…”

* * *

Colonel Min Beomjun gave three major reasons why striking Seoul with nuclear weapons would be difficult.

First.

"South Korea does not possess nuclear weapons. We need to persuade a nuclear-armed state to launch them, and very few countries would be willing to accept the international condemnation and public backlash that would follow.”

Hearing that, Shin Nain pulled out his earphones and pounded his chest in grief, letting out a pained groan.

"This is exactly why a country needs nukes... If we had nukes, we would’ve already nuked Seoul by now!”

He wasn’t exactly wrong, but man, the way he said it was pretty damn fucked-up…

Colonel Min Beomjun left Shin Nain to wail about how South Korea should’ve had nuclear sovereignty for the sake of nuking Seoul and moved on to the second reason.

"Second. Now that Identified Species No. 3, the Cellular Degenerative Colony Organism, has been confirmed to have infiltrated the sewage network, simply striking Seoul’s surface is judged unlikely to meaningfully eliminate the anomalous organism cluster. Therefore, in order to eliminate the anomalous organism cluster within Seoul, we would need to strike underground cavities and sewer networks as well.”

-Click, click.

Colonel Min Beomjun clicked the pointer several times, then presented an utterly horrifying calculation.

"To accomplish that, Seoul would need to be divided into 3 sectors and subjected to complete vitrification through surface detonation of 3 megaton hydrogen bombs. Naturally, this would cause catastrophic aftereffects.”

The next screen showed a map of the Korean Peninsula.

The only unusual detail was the wind direction marked across it. Colonel Min pointed at the arrows indicating wind direction with his pointer and continued.

"If 3 hydrogen bombs detonated at ground level, the resulting electromagnetic pulse would temporarily disable all medical equipment and electronic systems along the containment line and nearby areas. However, the most critical issue is fallout. The estimated radiation dose rate released from the center of Seoul following the detonation of 3 hydrogen bombs would reach up to 300 sieverts per hour, far beyond instant fatality levels. And furthermore…”

By now, everyone understood without needing him to say it.

The wind arrows were drawn diagonally, from northwest to southeast.

"January is a period when northwesterly seasonal winds are especially strong due to the winter monsoon. Even now, incendiary and white phosphorus munitions are being used with extreme caution because of concerns that secondary fires could spread under these seasonal winds. If fallout from 3 hydrogen bombs were carried by those winds, it would reach Busan within at least 12 hours. The Gyeonggi region would suffer immediate fatal exposure, Cheungcheong would face lethal exposure. Even Gyeongsang would be unable to avoid severe radiation aftereffects.”

Colonel Min Beomjun spoke calmly while standing at parade rest.

"Therefore, the US, having been informed of the truth behind the Seoul Unrest, and China, which has inferred much of it, are each pushing different positions while attempting to influence the international community.”

First, the position of South Korea’s ally, the US, was the following.

Are we sure nuking it will actually make it disappear? What if we nuke it and it gets stronger, like Godzilla? What if it develops resistance? More importantly, what guarantee do we have that destroying Seoul prevents those things from appearing somewhere else? And fallout would hit Japan too. Are we really doing this?

Research comes first. Conduct reconnaissance. We’ll provide support.

And then there was the position of our not-so-friendly neighbor, China.

Bullshit~ If those things spill out, are you Americans gonna take responsibility for it? Just dump whoever can still be evacuated onto all those islands off the west coast and nuke the place already. Then there’d be nowhere for it to spread except North Korea, and North Korea’s basically one giant bald mountain anyway, so it’s not like anything can hide there. Use them as a buffer zone and pound the place with artillery. Problem solved, right?

So, Korean, that’s how it is. The people who can survive should survive. Besides, your birthrate's already in the gutter anyway, so for the sake of humanity, let’s speed up that process a little more.

"The government is currently attempting to use reconnaissance information from inside the fog, information regarding magic symbols, and knowledge acquired regarding Localized Invasive Structural Alteration phenomena as bargaining assets in order to secure support and maintain its survival between these two major powers.”

The slight tremor at the end of Colonel Min Beomjun’s otherwise indifferent tone wasn't just my imagination.

Even my dopamine receptors, which I had finally managed to reset, felt like they were about to break again. So there wasn’t really any need to explain how shocked everyone else had been by that revelation.

Before I knew it, I was tapping my dried lips with my index finger.

"So that’s why everyone’s so desperate to maintain the Seoul blockade line. If containment fails…”

"Yes. Regardless of South Korea’s position, nuclear weapons will be deployed according to the interests of our neighboring nations.”

* * *

After leaving the conference room, everyone drifted off in different directions wearing hollow expressions.

Looking at Lieutenant Shin Hangi as he prepared to take me back to the hospital, I couldn’t stop myself from asking.

"Did you already know?”

"Haha..."

Lieutenant Shin Hangi gave me a tired smile while helping me into the van.

"I told you before. The people who could leave already left…”

He gestured for our quick-witted driver to step away for a moment, then pulled a cigarette pack from his pocket and flicked a lighter on. His hands and his complexion were incredibly pale.

"Now the only people left are the ones who’ll either die with this country or survive with it.”

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