Chapter 109: Nobody Loves Non-Wizards like Baek Jemin

[Translator – Aren]

I leapt from rooftop to rooftop.

The world changed rapidly over the span of just a few seconds.

Every time I flailed my legs in midair, bursts of gunfire and the sharp cracks of ricocheting bullets rang out. I could hear cars getting torn apart, of course, along with the smaller popping sounds of rounds smashing into the asphalt and breaking apart.

With leg strength like this, saying I was practically walking through the air wouldn’t even be an exaggeration.

I, the Great Archmage Baek Jemin, was fully enjoying the possibilities of Heart-branch magic that Lee Sejun had wasted by staying glued to the ground. A realm that some dumbass former sergeant trapped by stale military jargon and conventional thinking could never reach…!

I shuddered again and again before this fragment of omnipotent power.

Before long, the scenery beneath my feet once again became a painted concrete roof.

The tips of my feet touched the rooftop railing, and I rolled forward onto the roof as though dropping onto it.

-Craaaash!

I ignored the way the rifle dug painfully into my shoulder.

The dopamine rush from bounding across rooftops was far more intense than any pain.

I immediately readjusted my grip on the rifle and strode toward the railing when Shin Nain’s telepathic message reached me.

'Jemin-ssi, drones.’

At that, I immediately looked around.

A door leading to the stairs and a rooftop room with a slated roof.

I chose the latter.

The rooftop room looked like an illegal extension at a glance.

The slate had been laid neatly across the roof, but the partition walls were barely better than a shipping container, making it obvious whoever built it had given up on proper heating and air-conditioning.

It had a digital door lock, but I was someone who had been clearing distances equal to the breadth of 1.5-lane roads with nothing but leg strength. Swearing that Heart-branch, Stage 2 would absolutely be the next magic I unlocked, I clenched my fist.

It was time to use the most perfect hacking method for bypassing security equipment like this.

-Bang!

Plastic and circuit boards shattered and scattered in all directions.

My bare fist pinched straight through the door, and other than a slight tingling sensation, it was perfectly fine.

All that remained where the door lock had been was a large hole.

I pulled my fist back out, turned the doorknob, and stepped into the rooftop room.

"Excuse me."

The moment I turned the handle and entered, a revolting stench washed over me.

The smell of rotting protein.

A scent of death combining rotten fish and rotten eggs pierced through my gas mask filter and struck my nose. I closed the rooftop room door behind me and went farther inside.

Black stains were visible across the yellowed vinyl flooring, but they weren’t burn marks. Something had melted, flowed across the floor, and dried into sticky pools of tar.

The powerless refrigerator door was slightly ajar, so I checked inside and found it completely empty. The water had apparently been cut off long ago. There wasn’t a single drop at the faucet, and only faint outlines of dried detergent residue remained in the sink.

I opened the room’s only sliding partition door and looked inside. There were people collapsed in misshapen heaps.

That was when the swarm of drones began passing overhead.

-Buuuuuzzz.

With gunfire rattling faintly in the distance like corn popping in a pan, the wasp-like buzz peculiar to a swarm of drones beat against the tightly shut windows. Scraps of cloth hung precariously over the glass from loose thumbtacks, fluttering as sunlight slipped through the gaps along their edges.

Every time the beam of light spilled into the room widened or narrowed, the shadows changed with it.

Even so, the three rotting corpses had stayed pressed tightly against the wardrobe until the very end, holding one another so they could remain in the shade. They had been human. Whatever they had looked like in life had been completely erased and crushed away, but there were no signs of mutation.

I simply stood there in front of them and breathed quietly.

I listened to the sound of my own breathing leaking through the gas mask filter.

-Huuuff—.

The vibrations from the artillery reached this flimsy rooftop room even more clearly. The flight noise of the drone swarm indiscriminately shooting anything it found also sounded especially loud.

While I waited for the swarm to pass, the shifting sunlight inside the room let me get a better look at the scraps of clothes that had been hung over the window to block the light.

Children’s clothes.

The kid couldn’t have been older than maybe a first-year middle school student.

At that size, even if the clothes had been properly fixed to the window frame, they still wouldn't have blocked out all the sunlight.

Only then did I notice that one of the three corpses was significantly smaller than the others.

My precious doping time was ticking away by the second, but instead of sprinting off to avoid the drones, I chose to stay inside the room and wait in silence. I absentmindedly stroked the trigger with my right index finger.

Eventually, the sound of the drone swarm faded into the distance, and Shin Nain’s telepathy came through.

'Jemin-ssi. They’re gone.'

Instead of replying, I turned around.

I could feel the hem of my poncho sway and its weight shift, but I ignored it. I turned the handle of the door whose lock I had already destroyed and stepped out of the rooftop room.

Beautiful people leave beautiful places behind.

The door had a gaping hole punched through it, but I still closed it quietly so it wouldn’t make any noise.

Around then, thick gunsmoke began rising endlessly from one direction.

The artillery transmitted its sound not through my eardrums but by shaking my entire body. Instead of my ears, my organs trembled and resonated with that horrifying vibration. The fear of chemical shells, artillery, and drones closed in around me in place of the fear of monsters.

Gunfire and screams began blending together between concrete buildings collapsing into rubble.

That was when Shin Nain’s bleak, dry telepathic message came through.

'Military unit on Sanseong engaged while advancing north. Group of demons.'

He had said he would contact me every 2 minutes, so factoring in time for reporting anything unusual, about 5 minutes had probably passed.

The doping still seemed to be in effect, but I’d gotten too sentimental.

I turned again and headed toward the rooftop railing.

The problem was that this was where the villa district ended.

Northern Seongnam was packed with relatively low buildings centered around the broad road called Sanseong, but redevelopment complexes and newly built villas were mixed in here and there, so the building heights were all over the place.

That also left the alleyways badly exposed, which made me worry whether Shin Nain and the pastor could advance safely.

Thanks to the pastor’s Dogma-type magic [Redemptive Conviction], they probably wouldn’t suddenly die some senseless death, but if the 55 Unit hit them with a serious ambush or surprise attack, then I’d be the one in danger of dying. I couldn't forget that. The pastor’s magic protected the pastor and the area around him.

And since ‘the area around him’ was far too abstract, I didn’t want to rely on chance.

But right now, I was doped.

I had no idea how long this miraculous state I’d gained by destroying the remains of a low-level Heart-branch wizard would last, but while I could use it, I needed to squeeze it for everything it was worth. That included figuring out the full extent of the doping effect.

Did it stop at amplifying the effects of the magic I used? Or did it reduce the backlash too?

How much stronger did it make me? How long did it last? Was there a cooldown?

And there was no better way to find answers to those questions than beating the shit out of the Gangnam group.

Standing on the rooftop railing of an old villa with an illegally built rooftop room, I looked up at a newly constructed apartment building in a redeveloped area. Even while getting a taste of Heart-branch, Stage 2, simply hopping up there seemed impossible.

The laws of the world and humanity’s common sense wouldn’t allow it.

The problem was that the bizarre red beam was pointing toward the roof of that apartment building.

A 55 Unit sniper.

I couldn’t just ignore them.

Counter-sniping them? That’s for amateurs.

Thinking you had to take out a sniper on a rooftop with counter-sniping was the mindset of a soldier who still barely understood how to use magic. Something Lee Sejun would do. I dreamed of becoming a Great Archmage, I was captivated by the limitless possibility of magic, and I was someone willing to set foot in Seoul in pursuit of that omnipotent power.

I would solve this like a wizard.

I rolled my tongue around inside my mouth.

This time, I wasn’t using Eyes-branch, Stage 1, [Cognitive Expansion], nor Eyes-branch, Stage 2, [Cognitive Distortion].

Someone might think this magic could only apply to my physical body. That it could only be used to deny physical wounds, but had [Cognitive Dissonance] ever been limited to merely refusing to acknowledge injuries to the body?

A truth that was self-evident to someone else was not necessarily true for me. Common sense that applied to humanity didn’t apply to me.

Beneath the heavens, only my own cognition and senses determined my world.

Upright Alteration-type Eyes-branch, Stage 3, [Cognitive Dissonance] 100%.

Beneath my feet is the direction gravity pulls.

Then I hopped lightly and stretched one foot straight out in front of me.

-Bang!

Agony surged through me as though a meat tenderizer were pounding my tongue flat. Tears burst from my eyes, then began streaming down my face. The pain made the backs of my knees weak, and before I knew it, I was squeezing my thighs together as my legs trembled.

But all that agony and pain was replaced by a faint sensation of weightlessness.

What pushed me away from the railing was a pulling force.

It wasn’t the road below, littered with abandoned vehicles, that pulled me toward it. It was the outer wall of that apartment building.

As my body tilted and began to fall, there was nothing before me but clouds pouring downward like a waterfall, a painfully clear sky, and apartment buildings standing upright like dams.

The terror of having nowhere to put my feet turned my mind completely blank. I was scared of roller coasters, never mind bungee jumping. Whenever I went to an amusement part, I was the kind of guy who bought an unlimited-ride pass just to ride the monorail and carousel 5 times each. This was way beyond my tolerance threshold.

As the fall began, my mouth opened without me realizing.

I probably screamed.

The wind tore at my poncho as though it meant to rip it apart.

I had neither the time nor the composure to hear anything.

I was falling faster than the clouds streaming past like a waterfall.

Fear that if I failed to reach the concrete, I would simply keep falling forever toward an empty sky seized my heart.

My life flashed before my eyes.

The turbulent trials and tribulations of Baek Jemin, man among men.

The time every toilet stall was occupied, so I had no choice but to shit in a urinal. The time I pocketed 600 thousand won in cram-school tuition and blew every last bit of it at aPC bang. The time I ditched my bag and ran off to skip mandatory night study, only to get summoned by the head disciplinarian the next day. The time when there was a thunderstorm warning in the military, and while I was heading out to check the equipment, lightning struck a tree beside me…

All those memories and emotions evaporated until only a single thought remained.

Ah. I’m going to die.

-Craaaaash—!!!!

It was instinctive.

With my relatively intact left hand, I slammed the ground. Completely by accident, I did a superhero landing against the apartment’s outer wall. The one silver lining was that all the residents who might’ve billed me for repairs had already inhaled gas and died.

If I hadn’t been getting a trial version of Heart-branch, Stage 2, [Physical Enhancement] through doping, I was certain I would’ve been crushed flat on impact.

The moment I realized that, countless things that had been suppressed beneath the fear burst out all at once.

The first thing to come out was my breath.

Breath mixed with dry saliva spilled through the gas mask filter.

-Huuff, huff, huuuuuff—.

My vision was a little dim too.

My normal eyesight was 1.2, but right now it felt closer to 0.8. My vision looked like a low-resolution photograph. Pixelated and distorted.

But I had survived.

I stood up and slowly took a cautious step.

Human common sense screamed that lifting my foot would kill me, while my own cognition insisted, asking why walking would kill me.

As the life I had lived collided with the life I was living right now, confusion and vertigo, dizziness and fear, exhilaration and déjà vu all tangled together chaotically.

Non-wizard Baek Jemin was screaming at me, asking if I was fucking insane, while Great Archmage Baek Jemin told me:

Reality is already collapsing.

If one couldn’t adapt to it, one would be left behind.

If you still hide behind the label of ‘ordinary person’ just to justify clinging to common sense of the past, you’d truly fall into becoming a non-wizard.

You’d have no ground to complain even if you were treated as more primitive and backward than a modern person, unable to even use a smartphone.

The Supreme Archmages didn’t mess with non-wizards. We protected them and even treated them properly as human beings, but how long would the other wizards continue nobly upholding such humanism?

If non-wizards fall outside the definition of humanity, then even by their precious humanist standards, there’ll be nothing wrong with refusing to protect them.

You didn’t even have to look far. The Seoul wizards were already showing us that future.

It had been laid bare through Ski Goggles and the memories I’d seen with Past Vision.

Among the Seoul wizards, the definition of ‘human’ was already changing.

Non-wizards?

They were merely weaklings without even the resolve to learn magic, unable to resist mutation, not even permitted the chance to fire a gun, yet doing nothing but eating food and complaining. Just future monsters.

If anything, the people who used to complain about science and capital and talk about their environment and the circumstances they were born into ought to be celebrating alongside me.

Whether I liked it or not, the path to this world was always open even to non-wizards.

A world where suffering is rewarded 100%.

A world where, if you’re willing to risk death and endure pain, you can enjoy a fragment of omnipotence

And if you didn’t want to risk death and didn’t want to suffer either, then just applaud the Supreme Archmages.

At last, the age of pure talent and passion had arrived.

This was the new normal. The first step into a new age!

-Thud.

My combat boot stepped across the cracked concrete outer wall.

The hem of my poncho streamed behind me, but my body stood perfectly upright.

Walking no longer made me dizzy.

Beyond the vertigo, I was starting to feel almost comfortable, like strolling along a riverside path in slippers while soaking up the sunlight. Other than the wind being a little rougher than usual, my stride was stable enough that I could’ve walked along while yawning lazily.

-Clack!

I tucked the rifle firmly under my right armpit and lowered my body slightly. I was going to squeeze every last drop out of the doping before it wore off. For some reason, a laugh bubbled up inside me at the thought of doing my first proper sprint since middle school.

And so I ran.

Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot…

Each repetition brought my body weight crashing against the concrete underfoot. Huge painted letters naming whatever apartment complex this was slide beneath my feet. The hem of my poncho whipped violently behind me, trying to drag me backward, but my [Cognitive Dissonance] was strong.

-Thud, thud, thud, thud, thud.

The edge was approaching fast.

Like a tree branch growing horizontally out over a cliff, I alone was sprinting across a straight stretch of concrete.

Then helmeted soldiers appeared over the apartment railing.

-Clack!

I could clearly hear metal locking into place from the other side.

I lowered myself even further, grabbing the flapping sleeve and hem of my poncho with my left hand and lifting them up.

And then bullets came pouring in.

Ratatatatatatata—!!!!

Gunfire was always loud.

Maybe because the enemy had stuck their muzzles past the railing to fire, a few ejected casings came falling after the bullets as well.

From the distinctive weight and sound of things striking my [Bulletproof] enchanted poncho, I could tell the bullets apart from the casings.

The bullets bulged against the fabric as though they were about to punch through, then bounced away. The deflected rounds struck the apartment’s concrete exterior and ricocheted off with sharp cracks that hammered endlessly against my eardrums. The casings either jingled as they rolled away or cascaded down like raindrops.

By then, I was sprinting with my body lowered so far I was practically crawling.

-Bang!

A helmet dropped past the edge of my vision beside the eyes hidden under the hem of my poncho.

I was moving so fast that I only caught a glimpse of it, enough to wonder whether I’d seen it wrong. At least until Shin Nain’s telepathic message came through.

'Ally sniper!’

Only then did I hear the groans and screams leaking out like air escaping a balloon. The 55 Unit soldiers at the railing pulled back. The moment I confirmed it, there was no reason to hesitate.

At the very end of the concrete, with only the metal railing and fence guarding the apartment edge remaining, I leapt out toward the clear sky.

And the position on the rooftop came into view.

Every soldier belonged to the 55 Unit, all of them wearing white bandages. I saw a fortified position armed with an autocannon that looked like it had been stripped off an armored vehicle, rifles in the soldiers’ hands, and machine guns mounted on sandbags near the fence.

The 55 Unit soldiers were dragging away their wounded comrade while drawing their combat knives.

Then they made eye contact with me.

Right in the middle of two different gravities crossing each other.

Me, passing over the soldiers' heads while falling toward the sky alongside the clouds. The 55 Unit soldiers, clinging to the apartment rooftop and standing vertically as they stared at me like idiots.

At that moment, I rolled my tongue inside my mouth without hesitation.

Hand-branch, Stage 2, [Cognitive Distortion] 100%.

The price came immediately.

The burning pain in my left arm, something I had grown so used to that I normally just ignored it, boiled up through every blood vessel running along my forearm. The papillae on my tongue split apart, and pain like knives slicing all the way to the root of my tongue made the strength drain from behind my knees.

I literally pissed myself.

At the same time, my body was pulled back toward the apartment rooftop like a magnet.

-Splat!

In time slowed almost to a complete stop, the 55 Unit soldiers were already prepared. They hurriedly raised their muzzles and got ready to fire upward, while the Heart-branch wizard was even lifting the mounted machine gun itself.

But within my arbitrary perception, I was the only one free to move.

That was where firearms like the AR-15 had their advantages.

I somehow forced my trembling legs back under control, corrected my stance, and took aim. Most active-duty Korean men could probably hit a stationary target. This was exactly that kind of moment.

-Click, click, click…

I couldn’t even hear the gunshots.

Even so, I could feel the heavy recoil traveling through my body.

Within the slowed time, the muzzle flashes and gunsmoke pouring from my rifle simply piled up and up. The only thing reaching my ears was the clicking mechanical noise of the weapon working every time I pulled the trigger.

Because [Cognitive Distortion] at 100% hit me with backlashes proportional to how much I moved, I could reduce the cost by moving only a few times over a short period.

So I only needed to kill enough of them to draw attention, enough that they couldn’t threaten me, and then accept the penalty.

With smoke pouring from the rifle, I tucked it under my right armpit and used my left arm to grab and pull up the hem of my [Bulletproof] poncho. Cover my face. Curl up. 

Then time resumed.

-Blink.

-Bang!!!!

The gunshots overlapped all at once.

The screams of the 55 Unit soldiers were instantly drowned out.

Their return fire came at the same time.

My ears were too muffled to make out the gunfire, but I could feel rounds pouring into me from the heavy impacts hammering against the poncho. The force was intense enough to leave quite a few bruises across my left arm.

If I showed even a little of my face, I’d be dead.

That rule applied to me, as well as to the Unit 55 soldiers firing at me furiously.

A shrill whistling sound of rushing air slipped through the gaps between the gunshots. It was so out of place that I couldn’t help hearing it. Whenever that sound came, the number of rounds hammering into my poncho decreased.

About 6 seconds.

While I was still crouched behind the [Bulletproof] poncho, Shin Nain’s telepathic message reached me.

'55 Unit is on the move. Allied special forces have intervened.'

Not long after, the gunfire stopped.

I pulled the poncho sleeve away and stood up, and the bullets embedded in it dropped out with a clattering sound. It was my first time hearing bullets, rather than spent casings, hit the ground and roll away.

Maybe because I’d also figured out how to handle [Cognitive Distortion] at 100%, I only felt completely drained, like I’d worked out until I was wrecked. It didn’t hurt so badly that I felt like I was dying, though.

Maybe this was why wizards were supposed to use guns.

If I’d stupidly charged in with a knife and started hacking people apart, I probably would’ve needed another shot of morphine, but replacing all that with a few clicks of the trigger made everything in life so much easier.

When I looked around, all I saw was death.

About seven people.

Most were gasping their last breaths, and only 2 were even granted the luxury of groaning and clutching the sides or arms where they’d been shot by the snipers. Shin Nain had said there were probably special forces around, and he'd been right. I couldn’t help admiring the marksmanship of humanity’s finest.

Yeah. If you could shoot like this, I’d allow it.

You wouldn’t be a non-wizard but a damn fine gun wizard.

I readjusted my grip on the rifle and walked toward the two surviving 55 Unit soldiers.

One of them gave up and started sobbing.

"Uhugh, sob..."

Then he went beyond sobbing and outright burst into tears.

"Uuuhuugh….Uugh…Uwaaaah….Ugh, cough…kugh…”

-Clack.

Without hesitation, I aimed the muzzle at his head.

One gunshot, and the crying stopped.

The last remaining soldier was clutching his side, panting as he let out tear-choked breaths. As I approached him, he gasped out some words.

"Why?”

"Why us? Why did this have to happen while I was in the army…?”

-Clack.

When I aimed the muzzle at him, the last man finally burst into tears as well.

"Mom!"

The moment a single casing rolled across the ground, tears rolled down inside the gas mask as well.

Not inside mine.

What I’d shed just now was a few drops of piss.

I checked my remaining ammo right there.

Tsk. I used a fair bit… But I had no idea how many rounds were left. I decided to just swap in a fresh magazine.

There were magazines scattered everywhere here anyway.

While I was at it, I checked for grenades, but apparently these guys didn’t carry explosives very often. Maybe explosives were simply too scarce. After quickly gathering what I could, I swapped in a fresh magazine and sent Shin Nain a telepathic message.

I’ve taken the apartment rooftop.

A moment later, Shin Nain replied urgently.

'Jemin-ssi, the military unit on Sanseong is isolated! Demons are converging on them, and the 55 Unit is focused on stopping the special forces and us!’

That was when my attention shifted away from the apartment rooftop.

I could really see just how badly Seongnam had been wrecked.

Screams and groans erupted between the low-rise buildings, while explosions burst up here and there amid clouds of black dust.

Far in the distance, I could even see enormous shadows thrashing within the massive fog bank over Seoul. They looked like animal fetuses trying to tear their way out through an amniotic sac, and the sight sent a chill through my body.

But the fact that they couldn’t simply burst out meant there was probably something stopping them.

Having reached that conclusion, I turned my attention back to Shin Nain. Of course, after slinging my rifle over my shoulder, I went for the Heart-branch wizard on the rooftop who had been serving as the machine gunner. The doping was gradually wearing off.

I broke open his ribs and pulled out the low-level wizard’s remains while sending another telepathic message.

So what do you want me to do? Where do you need help?

'Jemin-ssi, below your apartment!’

-Crunch!

I tossed the heart down and crushed it under my boot.

-Fsssshhhh...

Fog leaked out and seeped into me. That extended the doping duration.

I cautiously poked my head past the railing and checked the situation. Below the apartment, on a road narrower than the main road but still about 2 lanes wide, the two sides were already engaged.

On one side were two people in ponchos carrying firearms, naturally taking cover behind abandoned vehicles and piles of collapsed building debris.

At a glance, it was obviously Shin Nain and the pastor.

On the other side were soldiers wearing white bandages like armbands, the 55 Unit.

The 55 Unit’s squad tactics were far too sophisticated for conscripts.

There were 7 of them in total, split into groups of 2, 2, and 3, with the group of 3 alternating fire. They were using rifles, but mainly for suppressive fire. The two pairs were armed with a shotgun and a flamethrower, respectively.

Seen from the rooftop, the foundation of their tactics was obvious.

While the three riflemen pinned the enemy down, the two pairs with the shotgun and flamethrowers spread out along both flanks, encircled whoever was hiding in the building, burned them out, and dragged them into the open. You could tell someone had really racked their brains trying to make the most of a squad composition built from troops who had come from the blockade line.

Having noticed the same thing, Shin Nain and the pastor pulled the pin on a grenade and threw it.

Honestly, watching the fight was so fucking entertaining that I didn’t want to interfere.

But at that moment, a familiar voice boomed out like it was coming through a loudspeaker.

[Lissen, lissen.]

The fast-talking voice spoke with a sly but firm tone.

[If a grenade lands nearby, cover it with your body!]

One of the riflemen threw himself on top of the grenade Shin Nain had tossed.

I snapped my head around.

An explosion thundered out, and the slick voice echoed out once again.

[Lissen, Lissen. Resume combat!]

The two pairs rapidly began circling through the alley to get around Shin Nain and the pastor. Shin Nain noticed, took the pastor with him, returned fire while retreating quickly, then sent me a telepathic message that sounded ready to burst a blood vessel.

'Jemin-ssi!!! What are you doing?!!!’

Well… Honestly, if you were in my position, you would’ve watched too.

But I had to think rationally.

If I honestly confessed that I’d failed to intervene because watching the fight was too entertaining, that mind reader might expose every last thing about me.

So I sent back a cooperative telepathic response.

Fine, I’ll help.

Without hesitation, I grabbed a grenade from my belt.

This was exactly why, without even realizing it, I’d quietly thought of Lee Sejun as a dumbass and envied him at the same time. His thinking was rigid. Because he came from the military, he focused only on increasing firepower, and it always felt like a waste that he didn’t use his magic in more versatile ways.

It was also true that, while swallowing the nasty thought that I could use that magic better if I had it, I had ended up finding its advantages.

Right. If not Lee Sejun, who else was going to play pack mule?

But I, the Great Archmage Baek Jemin, intended to prove that even the same magic could be used differently.

-Click!

I pulled the grenade pin.Cooking it? No need. If I threw it from this distance, that was cooking enough.

I adjusted my stance as though I were skipping a stone and threw the grenade.

Normally, it would’ve dropped weakly to the ground.

But there was no such thing with the physical performance granted by Heart-branch, Stage 2, [Physical Enhancement].

It plunged straight down.

The grenade dug into the asphalt like a thrown spear.

And exploded.

With the blast, the two 55 Unit soldiers approaching from the apartment side disappeared. Grenade fragments swept through the windows of several abandoned vehicles, while the three riflemen laying down suppressive fire were themselves forced flat into cover.

The other two 55 Unit soldiers who had been circling through the buildings on the roadside also hurriedly ducked inside, cutting off their flanking route.

This was why positioning was so damn important.

I was just readjusting my grip on the rifle out of sheer satisfaction when I heard something absurd. From somewhere nearby came the unpleasant sound of fingernails scraping hard against something solid.

Someone careless might’ve assumed they misheard it.

But I immediately spin around.

Swinging the rifle butt as I did.

'Jemin-ssi!'

-Smack!

The buttstock was blocked.

A soldier. The 55 Unit? If so, why hadn’t he shot me?

At first glance, he looked like an ordinary soldier.

He would’ve, if not for all the name patches stuck haphazardly across the Velcro where a single name tag should’ve been, some horizontal, some vertical.

Velcro Corporal!

I sidestepped without hesitation.

That damn useless bayonet training finally decided to become useful at exactly this moment.

-Tap, smack!

The rifle barrel and buttstock crossed in an instant.

My rifle knocked aside the crushing weight bearing down on me.

My eyes were fixed solely on the blade flashing in the sunlight. Except it was closer to a fingernail than a blade. A filthy, huge, viciously sharp fingernail curved like a knife as it slashed through the air.

Plastic and keratin kept colliding atop the apartment rooftop.

-Smack, tap!

Naturally, plastic beat keratin.

When I shmashed down with the rifle butt, I saw the tip of Velcro Corporal’s nail bend with a sickening crunch.

"What shitty manicure."

That was when I heard the voice.

[Lissen, lissen.]

The sly chatterbox shouted.

[If you want to avoid the fingernails, throw yourself down!]

-Thump.

That was when my pulse came strangely into focus.

My certainty warped.

He’s Inverted Heart-branch, Stage 2. I have no idea what kind of shit he might be able to do. Is staying in close combat really the right move?

The instant that thought hit me, I hurriedly threw myself over the railing.

[Wahahaha!]

Only after that chattering, bird-like laughter rang out again did I realize it.

He used magic on me.

But I knew he was going to, and I let it happen.

I rolled my tongue inside my mouth.

[Congitive Dissonance]

100%!

At that moment, I became a feather.

Even as the weight of my poncho and equipment dragged me down, and even if my falling speed itself hadn’t changed, there was no impact. Instead, it looked as though the world itself was slowly sinking.

Under the clear sky, the rooftops of the low buildings that had stretched out like a horizon rapidly, very rapidly in fact, rose toward eye level.

Of course, I didn’t stop even during that.

-Clack.

With the rifle tucked under my armpit, I sprayed bullets recklessly.

-Ratatatatatatata—!!!!

I wasn’t even trying to hit anything.

Instead, I’d draw the drones over. Keep the 55 Unit soldiers from firing properly.

I could see soldiers dropping to the ground, crouching, and ducking behind vehicles and buildings to avoid the rain of bullets.

And I could also see the pastor and Shin Nain poking their muzzles out toward my back.

Two streams of bullets passing by each other.

One from above to below, the other from below to above.

I was shooting the 55 Unit soldiers on the road, while Shin Nain and the pastor were shooting at something behind me.

More curious about what the hell was chasing me than the familiar soldiers below, I looked back. And what a sight.

-Screeeeeeech...

Long sharp claws were sprouting from his forearm.

Broken shards of metal layered themselves over the nails like scale armor as he scraped his way down the apartment’s outer wall.

A wizard wearing a gas mask, with no helmet or hood, his close-cropped buzz cut exposed and his right forearm completely bare.

Velcro Corporal.

He was climbing down the apartment wall using the enormous nail-blades growing from his forearm.

-Screeeeeech—!!!!

Even when the nails snapped, they grew back. Even when blood burst out, he didn’t care. Bullets hammered into his body, but apparently he had reinforced something beneath his combat uniform too, because no blood sprayed out.

...Damn monster.

I reached the ground first.

The first thing I did after landing was swap magazines, then go around shooting the 55 Unit soldiers who were lying on the ground or hiding. I dropped the empty magazine onto the road and inserted a fresh one, while the enemy remained unable to hear my footsteps.

Thanks to [Silence] inscribed on my combat boots, they didn’t notice me until after I had finished changing magazines, checked the chamber, and cycled the bolt.

My mercy was a painless death.

-Bang, babang!

I strode forward confidently, punching air holes through the heads and chests of the three riflemen.

-Bang!

A gunshot rang out.

But this time, my shoulder burned like it had been seared. When I glanced over, I saw the poncho deeply dented inward. It had not penetrated. [Bulletproof] was still working.

But apparently ‘bulletproof’ didn’t mean getting shot wouldn’t hurt like shit.

That hit me dead-on, and it hurt like fucking hell…!

"Agh, aaagh! Shit!”

"Baek Jemin, quit fucking around and get down!”

Whoever the hell said it, I obeyed without question.

-Splat!

I dropped flat and skittered along the ground like an elegant cockroach, prompting an astonished voice to ring out.

"Wow. Crazy. I thought looking cool was your whole reason for living, but you’re actually willing to put up with looking that pathetic?”

Whatever. I instinctively crawled toward somewhere safe.

The ones who could freely shoot right now weren’t the 55 Unit. It was Shin Nain and Pastor Park Yohan!

My judgment was correct.

Still lying flat, I crawled between the vehicles. From behind a pile of concrete rubble a short distance away, Shin Nain looked over at me and extended only one hand in a signal. Telepathy?

When I focused, I found out that that was exactly what he meant.

'Jemin-ssi, don’t regroup with us.’

Ah, why?

It fucking hurts!!!

'Shit… We need to keep up the diversion, don’t we?!'

That bastard Shin Nain was probably so calm because he'd never taken a bullet through a bulletproof poncho before.

I ground my teeth hard enough to crack them but held back because if I got any closer, I felt like he might turn his rifle on me. Once a little reason returned, I understood why. This was a glass-cannon fight. In a firefight this lethal, if we all got caught in one area attack and were wiped out together, it was over.

My freshly cooled-down rationality transformed me from an elegant cockroach into a cockroach fleeing for its life.

I’d move fast and finish off the other 55 Unit soldiers who had been flanking me.

The moment I committed to that, I could move faster than the bullets chasing me.

Rounds struck along the path I had just passed through, or where I was about to go.

-Ping ting!

The murderous rounds ricocheting off the asphalt gave me a very thorough demonstration of [Bulletproof]’s performance. My side, thigh, and left forearm.

Fuck, this hurts like hell. Tears streamed down my face, but even while I was crying, my perfectly clear rationality made me curl my body inward.

It made me tuck my feet beneath the hem of my poncho.

They were aiming for my feet.

If they targeted the part of me that the poncho couldn’t fully cover, I’d turn into a punching bag.

Knowing that, I hunched over as much as possible while moving, duck-walking so my feet stayed exposed for as little time as possible.

My legs were cramping like crazy, and what scared me was realizing that even this was being reduced by Heart-branch, Stage 2.

Then static crackled, followed by that familiar chatterbox voice.

[Lissen, lissen.]

Yellow-Bandage Straggler.

[Retreat! Don’t die easily. The enemy is a wizard. Make them split their attention!]

At the same time, Shin Nain’s telepathic message reached me.

'The 55 Unit, the special forces, and the drones are converging here. Hold out!'

As I turned into an alley, I saw the two fleeing soldiers.

Sorry. This is just how things are now.

Still need to do what I need to do.

I aimed and pulled the trigger in one motion.

Before I could even feel the recoil, something like a lump of shit came flying toward me with a wet splat sound.

Instinct screamed that I absolutely couldn’t let it touch me, and I recoiled backward.

That threw off my aim.

-Bang!

The shot went into empty air, and the gunshot itself immediately put the soldiers on alert. The guy waddling around with the flamethrower outright threw off his equipment. The one with the shotgun hit the ground and hurled himself over a wall.

The lump of shit that landed in front of me was a Human Slime.

I swung my muzzle toward where it had come from.

-Clack.

-Huuuff—.

The sounds of breathing through gas masks overlapped.

There were two wizards where my muzzle was pointed.

A soldier in a black mask and sunglasses, with a yellow bandage wrapped around his helmet.

Yellow-Bandage Straggler.

And a soldier wearing nothing but a gas mask, name tags stuck haphazardly all over the Velcro on his uniform, pustules swollen like tumors across his right forearm as he idly flexed his claw blades.

Velcro Corporal.

Of the two, the chatterbox, the Yellow-Bandage Straggler, tapped his sunglasses and laughed.

"Aphorism. You’re Baek Jemin, right?”

I stopped halfway through pulling the trigger and eased off slightly.

"Talk."

"According to Monk Cheonghwi, nobody takes magic as seriously as you do. The rest of us all use it as a means to an end, right? But someone who pursues magic as an end in itself is relatively free from the madness that magic brings about. That’s why you were able to achieve all 5 branches and why you’re one of our strongest recruitment candidates.”

The instant I heard that, I pulled the trigger.

-Ratatat!!!!

I wounded one of them.

Yellow-Bandage Straggler threw himself behind Velcro Corporal, but I still hit him in the left arm.

At that, Velcro Corporal tore one of the pustules from his arm and hurled it at me.

But I’d already been completely prepared to shoot and run, so I was already throwing myself flat into the alley.

-Splat!

That was the sound of both the Human Slime and me hitting the ground.

I hurriedly scrambled back up and made for the road, which let me hear Yellow-Bandage Straggler’s amplified voice behind me.

[You fucking… Who the hell shoots someone in the middle of a conversation!]

Fucking idiot.

I ducked behind a fallen sign first, then finally answered his question.

"You dumbass, why the fuck would I join you when I can just kill you and take your remains? Everyone at a higher stage than me is already in the 66 Society, so what the hell would I gain by joining?”

[What a damn bastard. Kill him!]