Chapter 114: The Calm before The Storm

[Translator – Aren]

People tend to think death is supposed to be something dramatic.

An elder whose breathing slowly stops with everyone watching after living a meaningful life and accomplishing something he can be proud of. That’s probably what people imagine as the most ordinary kind of death. There’s a reason people have this term, “a good death.”

Only after standing among people groaning in pain will you come to your senses.

Even though Shin Nain and I had a hospital room to ourselves, we still had to hear every groan and ragged breath coming from beyond the hallway. Whenever wheels rattled down the corridor, the voices of medical staff followed closely behind.

"Pupils constricted, heavy secretions, oxygen saturation above 80.”

"Any room in intensive care?”

"Equipment shortage. They said decontamination comes first…”

Listening to their voices fade into the distance reminded me all over again just how exceptional we Supreme Archmages were. These were times when getting decontaminated the moment you arrived, receiving proper treatment, and then being allowed to recuperate was a privilege. Shin Nain and I, already changed into hospital gowns, looked at each other and shrugged.

I’d more or less expected this outcome from the moment they said they’d use gas.

Gas-mask filters aren’t permanent. The longer an operation drags on, the more exposure to gas becomes unavoidable. They couldn’t freely rotate personnel either, and with CBRN gear being distributed to every soldier along the blockade line, they must have been burning through supplies no matter how much equipment they had stockpiled.

This was how death came.

It came without caring about anyone’s dreams or determination, without even a smell, and stole their breath away. How arrogant were the people who took it for granted that death would have meaning? The complacent and sheltered went completely silent before the atmosphere of death pervading the hospital.

Death came silently for Shin Nain and me as well.

In the form of disgustingly bland hospital food.

-Clack!

I set down my spoon and smack my lips for no particular reason.

"You’d see more smiles at acolumbarium than in here."

"Jemin-ssi. A columbarium is much more solemn and reverent than this place.”

"The people in the framed pictures are smiling, right?”

Sometimes I think the world is way too harsh.

I’m just a kindhearted, studious person who wants to learn magic, live however I want, and abuse my power just a tiny bit. I don’t understand why the world has to be so cold and violent.

Everyone else just dresses it up in nicer words. They all want to boss people around as well. So why can’t I just borrow whatever I need long-term without asking, flick people I don’t like on the forehead, and leave it at that?

"It’s because we can restrain such base desires that we are human.”

"Isn’t wanting to swing my own fists far more progressive than wanting to coast your way into Heaven and live easy?”

"You mustn’t let violence consume you. Satan tempts us toward the easy path. And ‘coasting’? The gates of Heaven only open through the sanctified life of a righteous person who faithfully follows the words of the Lord. The real freeloaders are those who pile up excuses upon excuses for hurting others so they can profit from it.”

Spoken like a damn zealot who came up with reasons to shoot people dead.

If I argued with him, I’d only end up getting framed as the asshole, so I decided to let it go. Instead, I grinned to myself as I went over the new Stages I’d gained from the fight.

The part I was happiest with was Heart-branch, Stage 2,  [Physical Enhancement].

I lifted my arms one after the other and looked at them from every angle. There was definitely a difference between having it and not having it. My recovery was faster. Fresh, plump skin had already grown over my right palm, where all the skin had been scraped off.

That was the kind of injury that would’ve required a respawn if I were a non-wizard.

I probably would’ve lain there groaning until the morgue started to enter my view, then stuck my tongue out and died.

At least spending this short while focused entirely on recovery and forcing down hospital food that passed off its tastelessness as ‘mild’ had been worth it.

Of course, my tongue still wasn’t in good enough condition to test the performance of the new Stages Original magic form.

"Jemin-ssi. I’m warning you just in case. Unless you want to gargle with undilutedAlbothyl, stop."

"Wow. Damn."

A vicious medical product that legalized torture under the name of treating mouth ulcers.

And apparently the stuff sold commercially was diluted. The military hospital was using the undiluted concentrate for faster recovery. Thinking that I would’ve had to gargle with undiluted Albothyl if I hadn’t gotten Heart-branch, Stage 2 sent a chill down my spine.

Anyway, the fact that Heart-branch, Stage 2, also improved recovery was absolutely amazing.

The shallow little non-wizard mindset still clinging to life in one corner of my mind kept whining that it at least wanted to cast a Fireball, but both my reason and emotions had already tilted the other way. A wizard who shoots guns and lies around is better than one who gets burned to death instead of getting to cast Fireball.

Still, it was also true that ending things here would be boring.

I racked my brain trying to think of something I could perform, then lowered my gaze and happened to spot the soy-braised black beans. Since this was hospital food, they tasted like someone had rinsed all the sweetness and saltiness off with water, so I hadn’t touched them properly even once with my chopsticks.

This might work.

"Jemin-ssi, stop. You’re making a mess…”

-Grab.

I picked up the bowl of soy-braised black beans with my left hand.

As someone who had once dreamed of becoming a martial arts master thanks to countless pieces of media, I remembered the days when my heart would pound at scenes of masters effortlessly doing everything with chopsticks. I decided to dedicate this moment to the heart that had raced for these scenes back then.

I had obtained Heart-branch, Stage 2 [Physical Enhancement]. I couldn’t just let that pass without doing anything.

Otherwise, I’d be betraying the young Baek Jemin who had spent a whole three days dreaming of becoming a murim master.

-Hooooh~.

I let out a deep breath for some reason.

I could feel my whole body filling with tension and exhilaration.

Before all the beans hit the ground, I would catch every single one with my chopsticks and put them back in the bowl.

It would’ve been absolutely impossible before I got Heart-branch, Stage 2, but now I could do it!

"Hup!”

The bowl shot upward.

I could clearly see the black beans scattering in every direction. I wasn’t even using Eyes-branch magic, but I could see them. My physical abilities, my reflexes, captured every bit of this chaotic spectacle without missing a thing.

I wasn’t using [Cognitive Distortion], but by concentrating as hard as I possibly could, I managed to roughly imitate the sensation of time slowing down.

Even as I thrust my chopsticks toward the black beans floating through the air, emotions surged up inside me.

This…

..was Heart-branch, Stage 2 [Physical Enhancement]!

-Snap!

I moved faster and more brilliantly than I ever had in my life.

Afterimages of my chopsticks pierced through the air, recreating an impossible scene. They say anything solid can eventually be broken, but speed alone was unbeatable. They were right.

The chopsticks in my hand powerfully leapt like salmon fighting their way up a waterfall and slid gracefully like eels writhing around through mud.

-Snap, snap, snap, snap, snap!

It was the proudest moment in the life of Baek Jemin, a man among men.

If non-wizards had witnessed this, they would’ve clutched both cheeks, screamed, dropped to their knees, and prayed.

And by the time I finished with the chopsticks, I had even flawlessly pulled off the final flourish.

-Tap.

I finished by bringing the chopsticks together and tapped them against the tray holding my hospital meal.

Beautiful.

Even I had to admit that this was damn amazing.

-Claaaatter!

Anyone who saw that dazzling chopstick work wouldn’t even notice the beans rolling all over the place.

I looked to the side with a smug smile.

Look, Shin Nain. You fanatic zealot bastard.

This is the power of magic.

Shin Nain glared at me, biting down hard on his lower lip.

"Jemin-ssi, let’s start by teaching you how to use chopsticks again.”

Just then, a fly came buzzing in after smelling the beans that had rolled onto the floor.

Shin Nain apparently hadn't noticed it yet, but the fly was buzzing around the ceiling light, waiting for us to let our guard down. Seeing a fly in a hospital that was supposed to be clean was unsettling enough.

But the irritation I felt was on a whole different level.

A lousy fly dared to think the beans I threw away because they tasted bad were delicious?

-Whirl—.

The chopsticks in my hand spun once.

Then, taking up the stance with complete ease and familiarity, I flicked my wrist and launched the chopsticks.

-Bang!

Only then did Shin Nain look up at the ceiling.

The chopsticks embedded in the ceiling were still trembling before slowly coming to a stop, like an arrow buried in an old tree. And pinned where they had struck was a fly, its abdomen pierced straight through by the metal chopsticks.

Instant death.

At that sight, Shin Nain looked back at me with a noticeably more serious expression.

"How is it different from Sejun-ssi or Ryeoha-ssi?”

I rubbed my hand as I compared them.

Lee Sejun. A textbook porter type built around raw strength enhancement. His movement had gotten impressive as well, and considering I’d never seen him take a single hit in close-quarters combat, his reflexes seemed exceptional. Lately he’d been carrying a machine gun and pouring out firepower with it, which was exactly the kind of application a soldier would think of.

Go Ryeoha. She was a bit harder to figure out.

Considering the versatility of Hand-branch magic, combining it with the Heart-branch should let her pull off much deadlier techniques… Was it a problem with her ability to apply it? Or was she deliberately limiting herself so she’d look weaker?

That reminded me of when we first met.

During our first encounter, she’d definitely shown lethal techniques and sharp instincts, but during the Human-skin Tapeworm cleanup, she hadn’t performed as well as I expected. Had she been limiting her firepower because we were in a military hospital? Now that I’d awakened Heart-branch, Stage 2, myself, I could tell for sure.

Go Ryeoha was deliberately limiting how much she applied her magic.

"Sejun probably made the Heart-branch look worse than it is because he recklessly built up his strength so that he could carry heavy equipment. What I just did with the chopsticks was almost the same as what Master showed me in Anyang.”

"Almost the same?"

"Master launched bloodstained stones and bottle caps. Hers were way more powerful, though.”

"Wait…More importantly, when did she become your master again?”

"Shht!"

Damn it, are you going to take responsibility if I get my ass beat?

Fondness is something that naturally develops through everyday life. Go Ryeoha’s mental state had gotten shaky after I gave her a bit of the red pill, so I figured if I scored some points with her now, maybe she’d cut me some slack when I acted like an asshole later.

"That’s called grooming and gaslighting, Jemin-ssi!”

"Hey. That’s damn unfair. When did I ever say I was going to drag her into bed or something?”

"Haah… You’ve always made your sexual desires pretty obvious, Jemin-ssi. I’ll try to convince people to give you some Heart-branch remains, so how about using Heart-branch, Stage 3 to replace your sex drive?”

That was where Shin Nain and I had no choice but to start bickering.

Why couldn’t this bastard Shin Nain shake off that non-wizard mindset? He was taking way too damn long to adopt a worldview suited to the new age, the new normal.

I clicked my tongue and dismissed Shin Nain’s pathetic argument on the spot.

"Use magic to replace an urge I can take care of just by rubbing one out? Why? I should replace something else.”

"Wow..."

"More importantly, you said you’d give me the remains for Heart-branch, Stage 3?”

“If you’re not going to replace your sex drive, I’m selling them to our sponsor."

I raised my middle finger at him in my head.

Fuck you, asshole.

Having Shin Nain hear people’s inner thoughts as backlash was incredibly convenient. Shin Nain knew I’d flipped him off in my head, but since I hadn’t actually said anything, he couldn’t call me out on it. All he could do was scrunch his face up in disgust.

"More importantly, didn’t you reach Ears-branch, Stage 3?”

"Power-leveling doesn’t work. Looks like you can’t jump two or more levels at once. I can’t tell whether it's possible but the side effects are too severe, whether there’s just a hard limit, or whether it’s an experience point requirement thing, so for now we have to assume it can’t be done.”

"What a shame. If we were both Ears-branch, Stage 3, we could’ve listened to the voices of the dead together.”

Come to think of it, Ears-branch magic had some pretty harsh penalties.

You had to listen to horrible things, after all. Now that I thought about it, maybe because I barely used Ears-branch magic lately and had low aptitude for it, I hadn’t heard Lee Sejun’s terrifying inner thoughts.

No wonder my life had felt so comfortable lately.

Still, since I had a high-level Ears-branch, wizard right here, I decided to test Ears-branch, Stage 2 [Hearing Monster Voices].

If I could hear monsters inside the Seongnam military hospital, things would be completely screwed up, so there was no way I’d hear any. I planned this purely to figure out what kind of aptitude I had for Ears-branch magic.

Maybe because my aptitude for Ears-branch magic was so low, even my Stage 1 couldn't really be called mind reading. All I could do was hear something like a softly trickling stream and use it to tell whether someone was hostile or not. If I wanted to know whether Stage 2 worked similarly, I had to try it first.

Especially if I wanted to find out whether it came with any perks besides telepathy.

As a result, I learned quite a lot about my Ears-branch, Stage 2.

"I hear something…squelching. Footsteps? Sounds like someone stomping through mud on a tidal flat.”

"I sent that to you. You hear it differently from me. There’s an Amalgam nearBokjeong Station, past northern Seongnam.”

"You can hear that far?”

"If I’m somewhere comfortable like this and focus my mind completely on one place, I can. There’s nothing to do at the hospital, so I experimented.”

Ears-branch, Stage 2 wizards could transmit sounds they heard to one another.

Before, telepathy had felt like chatting through text. Now we could send audio files through telepathy. My Ears-branch, Stage 2 couldn’t distinguish between different kinds of monsters, and if there were too many of them, their footsteps overlapped and became difficult to tell apart.

At least now I knew that Shin Nain’s talent for Ears-branch magic was through the roof.

Come to think of it, this bastard had never even studied mystical knowledge, yet his Ears-branch magic kept shooting up just from hunting monsters. According to the information Go Ryeoha had given me, aptitude for Ears-branch magic was supposedly [Certainty in Fate]...

"Hey, Shin Nain. What the hell kind of fate are you so certain about that your Ears-branch magic grows this fast?”

"..."

"Share some tips with me.”

Shin Nain didn’t answer right away.

Shin Nain idly ran his index finger over the headset hanging around his neck, then looked away.

"When you said we were testing the Original Holy Alteration Battle Arts last time, didn’t you hear my past with Ears-branch, Stage 1?”

"No. I heard the future.”

What could possibly be so interesting about the past of some dude?

Besides, I, Baek Jemin, am a cultured man who knows how to respect other people’s privacy and the lives they lived. I’m curious about what’ll happen to someone in the future, but I couldn’t care less what they did in the past.

Shin Nain turned back to me, looking surprised, then eventually shrugged and answered.

"I’m certain that one day, I will inevitably die.”

"Belief in death…”

That certainly gave me plenty to think about.

At the same time, I reflected on myself.

Maybe I, Baek Jemin, simply hadn’t been certain enough that I would become a Great Archmage. I needed to devote myself even harder.

That was when the pastor opened the hospital-room door and came in.

He was carrying a plastic bag with some canned food and a PET bottle of sports drink inside.

"What are you two making such a fuss about? Looks like you had plenty of fun by yourselves while I was at Seongnam City Hall.”

The pastor glanced around, spotted the chopstick embedded in the ceiling, and clicked his tongue.

"Why in the world is that stuck up there?”

"I was picking up these beans with my chopsticks, but then I saw a fly, so I threw them at it.”

My statement was 100% the truth, yet all I got in return was a cynical scoff.

"Baek Jemin, you get more ridiculous by the day. Here. Spam.”

"Oh?"

The pastor tossed me a can with a flick of his wrist, and I caught it immediately.

Perfect. I was just getting sick of eating nothing but hospital food……

"Pastor, this is luncheon meat.”

"As long as it comes in a can, it’s Spam, you punk. Nain, here. ‘When You’re 30% Short.’ Apparently the discontinued stuff came back under a new name. They said you can drink something like this. Just don’t have too much.”

"Thank you, Pastor.”

After handing everything out, the pastor threw himself onto an empty bend and flopped down.

He kept clearing his throat and giving me one hell of a pointed look, so eventually I had no choice but to ask.

While setting the luncheon meat on top of the bowl of soy-braised black beans.

"How are the guys who stayed at Seongnam City Hall?”

"Ahem. I was just about to tell you. They had a few drone attacks and other hits over there too, but then the enemy suddenly started holding back.”

"?"

Thinking about how vicious Yellow-Bandage Straggler and Velcro Corporal had been, they weren’t the kind of bastards who would simply back off.

The pastor and Shin Nain seemed to know that too, because the mood around us turned strange.

"We don’t know exactly why, but they figured the enemy might be plotting something, so they’re sending out recon drones and search teams… Still, after the magic Gangnam Thousand-Miles Eyes showed us, they can’t help being cautious. For now, it sounds like Command plans to hold back until Baek Jemin recovers.”

"Can’t they just send the trio?”

"Baek Jemin, you little punk. Can you really trust Sejun, Ryeoha-ssi, and Islam to handle it? No…even if you can, do you think the military can?”

After thinking it over, no.

Whenever Hamza isn’t with me, the bastard starts looking for a chance to bolt. With soft-hearted Lee Sejun or Go Ryeoha around, he might beg and plead until they let him board a plane to Pakistan.

Once you’ve set foot on the Korean Peninsula, you’re Korean.

I wouldn’t stand by and let Hamza head to Pakistan, a land ruled by poverty.

Shin Nain added something too.

"Besides, the heathen is useful when it comes to making strategic decisions. Rather than sending him straight to the front, it would be better to have him help make decisions from the rear. Looking at the bigger picture.”

"But your thigh’s busted, so you can’t run around.”

Now that I’d realized just how much easier life was with Shin Nain, the human detector, around, I couldn’t give him up that easily.

Without this pastor, I’d have way too much legwork to do myself.

That only left the pastor, Lee Sejun, and Go Ryeoha…

"I’m taking a break too.”

"Why?!”

"Rather than a break, let’s call it medical support. Maybe prayer? Since Shin Nain got hurt, I’m going to help with his recovery, and Command was wondering whether my magic would work on recovering soldiers too. I figured it was worth testing. It’s not like there are only one or two people groaning in pain right now. Besides…”

The pastor spoke with his face buried in the pillow as he lay on his stomach.

"It’s better than killing people.”

"Hmm."

I understood.

And then I shuddered at the unimaginable lineup that I was about to be part of.

"Let’s just send a 2-man party.”

Me, Lee Sejun, Go Ryeoha.

I didn’t have the confidence I would survive that completely screwed-up lineup.