Chapter 46: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

[Translator – Aren]

Fortunately, the Seoul wizard’s tongue root was still intact.

Of course, that meant someone had to grab the remaining tongue root and yank it out, but compared to advancing my magical mastery, that was a trivial price to pay. I also made sure not to miss the chance to wink at the Seoul wizard, who had so tragically lost most of her head.

"Wink~ Bleeeh~.”

I even stuck my tongue out from behind my gas mask as I mocked her, prompting Pastor Park Yohan to shoot me a look of utter disappointment.

"What are you doing?”

"Teabagging."

"Teabagging? What’s that?”

"It basically means to taunt someone, Pastor.”

Thanks to Shin Nain’s helpful explanation, the pastor let out a deep sigh.

"Hey. She’s already dead. Do you really think she’s going to see you mocking her? Quit being creepy and get on with it.”

"Yessir."

Honestly, I didn’t want to keep touching a tongue root coated in cold bodily fluids either, so I decided to finish it quickly.

Using my combat knife, I sliced off the remaining tongue root and set it on the floor.

All that was left was to raise my foot and stomp on it. If I did, I could learn magic…

"Jemin-ssi, what are you doing?”

Lee Sejun blinked at me, while Hamza looked over with obvious confusion.

With complete seriousness, I confessed just how delicately this man named Baek Jemin had been raised.

"Do I really have to step on something this disgusting for it to work?”

"Jemin-ssi, stop whining. You’re saying it’s gross after grabbing it and cutting it off yourself?”

Seeing everyone silently agreeing with Lee Sejun, my heart hurt a little.

Left with no other choice, I squeezed my eyes shut and brought my foot down.

-Crunch!

The moment I did, the fog burst out, accompanied by loud hissing. But that wasn’t all.

The Tongue-branch magic symbol I’d learned blazed to life inside my mind. Knowledge I had never possessed was forcibly shoved into my head. Perhaps all that time I’d spent studying occultism wasn’t wasted after all, because organizing the countless flashes of inspiration flooding my mind proved far easier than it should have been.

It was something close to what people called enlightenment.

Only far more intuitive and physically visceral in nature.

The fragments of wisdom that had once seemed meaningless suddenly lit up the instant I crushed the Seoul wizard’s severed tongue. Shattered pieces of knowledge from an unknown origin flowed through my veins, awakening me all the way to my fingertips.

Even so, just as you couldn’t catch a raging river with your bare hands, I grasped only a tiny fraction of what poured into me.

Still, what I learned could be summarized like this.

Alteration-type magic is divided into two great paths.

They resemble theSefirot andQlippoth of Jewish mysticism, particularly the Kabbalistic tradition. The two pursued opposite, inverted paths toward the same ultimate destination.

What that destination actually was… I couldn’t tell. But I understood one thing with certainty. The paths themselves were fundamentally different.

Eyes, Ears, Tongue, Hands, Heart.

Each represented a defining aspect of humanity. Human perception, human fate, human adaptability, human intellect, and human life. Whether one affirmed or denied those aspects determined which path they walked.

The Sefirot—the uninverted path of Alteration-type magic—was an esoteric system that assigned these defining human traits to different parts of the body in order to define what humanity truly was.

The Qlippoth—the inverted path of Alteration-type magic—assigned those same human traits to the body’s different parts only to deny them, seeking to prove what uniquely remained of humanity even after those defining qualities had been stripped away.

The Tongue-branch magic governs Acceptance and Change.

The upright Tongue-branch of Alteration-type magic values humanity’s memetic evolution through language, one of mankind’s defining characteristics.

The inverted Tongue-branch, on the other hand, focuses on humanity’s predatory instincts, emphasizing ecological adaptation through consumption.

Just as Father Jeon Yonghwan had theorized, Stage 1 of the upright Tongue-branch was a spell that degraded languages humans were never meant to speak into human language. The inverted branch was a predation spell that devoured other living beings, stealing their memories and experiences.

But that wasn’t all.

The moment I crushed the Seoul wizard’s severed tongue, I felt myself reaching Stage 2 of the tongue branch. I recognized it immediately. After all, I already possessed 2 branches that had reached not only the 1st stage, Retrospection, but also the 2nd Stage, Grief.

Stage 2 of the Tongue-branch was Desire Amplification.

Interestingly, the upright path specialized in amplifying desire, while the inverted path specialized in amplifying emotion. Either way, both were magic designs to overwhelm people by causing desires or emotions beyond what they could possibly endure.

Furthermore, a wizard could acquire the essence of another wizard of a higher Stage in the same branch by obtaining and either consuming or destroying that wizard’s remains.

It was, in essence, a kind of relic.

The Tongue-branch was the lone exception. Because it represented Acceptance, Change, and humanity’s adaptability, and because its inverted counterpart placed such importance on predation, it could also consume relics from other branches and absorb their essence. The effect was considerably weaker, but it was still possible.

And all of this overwhelming flood of knowledge came from the memories possessed by the Seoul wizard we had just killed.

...I couldn’t take it anymore.

"Bleeeeeaaagh!”

Unable to withstand the dizziness crashing over me, I collapsed onto my hands and vomited.

I frantically tore off my gas mask, but not before splattering it anyway. Cleaning it was the least of my concern.

My stomach, intestines, and colon all seemed to have declared a joint strike, threatening to force every last thing inside me back out through my mouth.

Thankfully, it never got quite that far, but I couldn’t stop every bit of strength draining out of my body.

By the time I came to my senses, my hair was completely soaked with cold sweat.

Hamza had rushed over and was repeatedly patting my back, though the dizziness was so overwhelming I could barely even register what he was doing.

It went beyond the world spinning. Reality itself felt disconnected.

The moment I could finally make out voices again, I asked a question before answering anyone else’s.

"Hey…Lee Sejun. How the hell are you fine? And Shin Nain, you heard my thoughts too, didn’t you?”

How had they endured this torrential flood of knowledge?

I had barely managed to scoop up a handful, and it nearly broke me. How were those two completely unaffected? They’d studied occultism as well.

We’d all attended Anderson Makenford’s lectures together. If they had even a basic understanding of Western esotericism, shouldn’t they have reacted exactly the same way I did?

That was when Shin Nain stepped in.

The religious fanatic answered my question perfectly.

"The very act of lending your ears to such heretical knowledge is proof that your faith is lacking, Jemin-ssi. Repent."

"You two attended Anderson-ssi’s lectures too.”

"Jemin-ssi. I only heard do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do.”

It was only after hearing Lee Sejun, the self-proclaimed inventor of the 8-note scale, say that that everything finally clicked.

These idiots had never actually studied occultism at all.

So while I managed to pull up a handful of knowledge, they couldn’t even recognize a single fragment. The knowledge contained within the Seoul wizard’s magic was only a tiny fraction of what had poured into me, yet these idiots had let every last piece flow straight out the other ear. They’d stood in front of a mountain of treasure and walked away without picking up a single coin.

Come to think of it, these bastards hadn’t shown their faces back when Monk Cheonghwi was around and I was listening to lectures on numerology and other occult nonsense with the pastor…!

"Ugh…My blood pressure…!”

"You’re really the one saying that, Jemin-ssi?”

"Jemin-ssi, worry about getting rid of the smell of vomit first.”

Even listening to Lee Sejun’s indifferent response and Hamza’s calm remark wasn’t enough to cool my anger.

These…

These goddamn useless bastards…

* * *

The place we Supreme Archmages chose to rest was the 7th floor of the department store.

Unlike the intimidating rows of mannequins standing guard near the entrance, there was surprisingly little sign that anyone had actually lived inside. According to a directory illuminated by our tactical flashlights, the 7th floor had been the food court. But with roughly 4 months having passed since the disaster, there was nothing left worth eating.

The power had long since gone out. Opening the refrigerators only revealed rotten garbage. The only useful thing we found was a few cans of yellow peaches that had originally been stocked for shaved ice.

There were also clear signs that someone had already ransacked the refrigerators and restaurant counters. Either looters had passed through long ago or a survivor group had once lived here. There was far less useful material than we’d hoped for. Calling it a bust wasn’t much of an exaggeration.

Still, after a battle that intense, we needed rest.

We moved the tables and chairs that had been stacked up to barricade the emergency entrance, reinforced the position, and finally settled down. The moment I collapsed into a chair, I immediately felt better.

Considering everything we’d just been through, I should have been so exhausted that I passed out on the spot. Fortunately, the dopamine rush from acquiring new magic, and even more importantly, new knowledge, kept sleep at bay.

That allowed us Supreme Archmages to gather around a small round table, munching on packets of hardtack while discussing what we’d learned. The 7th floor itself seemed safe. Shin Nain’s past sight and detection abilities hadn’t picked up anything unusual. Most importantly, Hamza had judged it safe.

Meanwhile, I had to waste precious canteen water rinsing the vomit out of my gas mask.

Even so, I dutifully embodied the spirit ofHongik Ingan, benefitting all humanity, by enthusiastically explaining everything I’d learned. After listening, Pastor Park rested his chin on one hand and summarized it neatly.

"So according to Baek Jemin, when a wizard dies, the magic symbol corresponding to the branch they’ve learned appears on the relevant body part. And if that body part is destroyed, you absorb both their knowledge and their magic.”

"Exactly."

"The knowledge is limited by what you're actually capable of understanding. So you need enough foundational knowledge to make sense of it.”

"That’s right!”

The pastor’s concise summary was so perfect that I found myself applauding.

If he’d learned Alteration-type magic instead of sticking to that awkward Dogma-type magic, he’d probably have become an absolute monster. Personally, I thought he’d have been better off chasing magic than the Lord.

Just then, Shin Nain finally returned. He’d disappeared into the restroom 25 minutes ago, singing hymns the entire time.

"Jemin-ssi! How can a holy warrior of the Lord, one who practices Holy Alteration Battle Arts, entertain such wretched thoughts?!”

"How about you stop reading other people’s thoughts first?”

The mind-reading was obviously the backlash from his Ears-branch magic only picking up nearby voices. At this point, though, that lunatic seemed to actively enjoy that backlash.

He might’ve been a religious fanatic who locked himself inside bathroom stalls and sang hymns to help himself poop, but even I had to admit his passion for magic.

On the other hand, look at Lee Sejun.

Despite having reached Heart-branch, Stage 3, he hadn’t gained any knowledge from it, and apparently that didn’t sit well with him. He absentmindedly rubbed the rough stubble growing across his chin.

"This is seriously frustrating. Back then, just looking at a magic symbol shoved knowledge straight into my head. So why do I suddenly have to study now?”

"You say that like you’ve ever studied anything in your life.”

"I enlisted to avoid studying, you know?”

I opened my mouth to argue, then simply rolled my tongue around inside of it instead.

Why the hell had Lee Sejun suddenly come out with an irrefutable fact? I wanted to win the argument, but frustratingly, there wasn’t a single opening to attack.

In the end, I settled for passing on the knowledge I’d gained.

"The Seoul wizard we killed had Tongue-branch, Stage 2, and Heart-branch, Stage 3 magic, apparently.”

What I’d learned covered the difference between upright and inverted Alteration-type magic, the stages of the Tongue-branch, and the mechanics behind acquiring magic itself.

The important part was this. Normally, a wizard could only advance by consuming or destroying these remains, or relics, of a more advanced wizard from the same branch.

If destroying the heart had advanced Lee Sejun’s mastery, then the Seoul wizard must have possessed Heart-branch, Stage 3. That also explained why our Supreme Archmages’ spells had been less effective against her.

The reason my Eyes-branch, Stage 2, Shin Nain’s Eyes-branch, Stage 1, past sight, and even his Ears-branch, Stage 1, listening to the voices of people’s hearts, had been functioning so poorly was actually quite simple.

Hamza nodded and summed it up perfectly.

"Higher-stage wizards block lower-stage magic. Easy.”

When there was a gap in stages, the weaker wizard had to fight like hell, while the stronger one could simply laugh and steamroll them. Thinking of it as a level difference made far more sense than some vague explanation about combat potential.

Even so, the Seoul wizard, who was unquestionably an Alteration-type wizard, had been completely unable to overcome Pastor Park Yohan’s absurdly overpowered Dogma-type spell, [Redemptive Conviction]. Anyone could see she’d lost a perfect opportunity and given us the opening to counterattack.

That was when the pastor offered his own theory.

Carefully polishing the smudges off his thin-framed glasses with a cleaning cloth he’d brought along, he spoke.

"Back in Suwon, Baek Jemin said something about magic. He said magic was ultimately about belief. I still can’t say with certainty what fundamentally separates Dogma-type magic from Alteration-type magic, but I think we’re finally starting to see the differences.”

From everything Pastor Park Yohan had observed so far, Dogma-type magic and Alteration-type magic were practically natural opposites.

Father Jeong Yonghwan had learned both, proving that compatibility was at least possible. But looking back, both his Dogma-type spell and his Alteration-type spell had always seemed somewhat lacking, either in output or in overall performance.

"The young priest seemed convinced learning both systems would make him stronger. I disagree. First of all, neither I nor our Muslim friend suffers the kind of horrific backlash you people do. You’ve noticed that already.”

Alteration-type magic demanded the caster’s pain as its price. In return, it granted powerful and versatile abilities appropriate to each branch and stage.

Dogma-type magic, meanwhile, demanded unwavering faith. It wasn’t determined by whether someone was morally good or evil, nor by how strictly they obeyed religious rules. It depended entirely on the structure of that person’s worldview and religion, which, more than anything else, shaped a person’s worldview.

Unlike Alteration-type magic, however, Dogma-type magic didn’t force understanding directly into the caster’s mind. Instead, its practitioners had to gradually infer its workings by observing events around them.

That didn’t mean Dogma-type magic lacked advantages in comparison.

Unlike Alteration-type magic, its users didn’t have to endure unbearable pain or vomit their guts out trying to comprehend magic symbols. When exposed to the fog, Dogma-type wizards instinctively awakened their spells without ever needing to learn magic symbols in the first place.

And today we’d likely discovered another advantage.

Around then, Shin Nain looked at the pastor with genuine admiration.

"It would seem Dogma-type magic can overcome the resistance granted by an Alteration-type wizard’s stage.”

"It feels more like it applies universally instead of having discrete stages. When that noisy Seoul wizard charged at me, if my faith in the Lord had been subject to stage differences or whatnot, I’d have died on the spot. Fortunately, faith has neither stages nor limits.”

"I am ashamed. As a fellow Chrisitan, seeing the steadfastness of your faith fills me with shame. Aah, Lord in Heaven. Why did you grant me Holy Alteration Battle Arts instead?”

"Nain-ssi. It’s all part of God’s providence. Don’t doubt it. Just believe He has given you a mission and carry it out. Faith itself is salvation!”

"...Yes. I nearly wavered. Thank you, Pastor. I almost forgot that the Lord granted me Holy Alteration Battle Arts instead of Dogma-type magic so that I might drive out the power of demons……!”

And just when things were finally settling down, these lunatics started their bullshit again.

I snapped my fingers sharply to bring these overzealous Christians back to reality.

"Alright, you ugly Christians, knock it off already. Let’s hear what Sejun-ssi has to say. So, Sejun-ssi, what’s this Heart-branch, Stage 3 spell you learned?”

I’d learned an important lesson. Never let Shin Nain and the pastor get carried away together.

So I redirected the conversation to Lee Sejun. He popped another piece of hardtack into his mouth, chewed thoughtfully for a moment, then tilted his head before casually thumping his chest.

"Seems pretty useful. I think it’s a spell that lets you choose one of the things your body needs and satisfy it completely.”

"What the hell does that mean?”

"You know, people have physiological needs, right?”

Still chewing his hardtack, Lee Sejun began gesturing with his hands.

As usual, his explanation was phrased in the crudest way imaginable. Translated into the refined vocabulary of yours truly, Baek Jemin, it meant something like this:.

"It appears to let you choose one of your essential physiological needs, like hunger, sleep, sexual desire, or excretion, and completely fulfill it. So for example, if you chose hunger, your body could sustain itself without needing to eat.

At that moment, the other four Supreme Archmages exchanged glances.

Hamza was the first to speak.

"So you’d stay full without eating?”

"Yeah."

Next, the pastor lowered his glasses slightly.

"What if you got rid of, you know, the need to poop? Would that mean perfect digestion? Like, your body absorbs everything instead of producing waste?”

"I think choosing hunger would probably get rid of that too. Pretty much the same thing, right?”

This time Shin Nain asked a question to confirm his own theory.

"And if you eliminated the need for sleep, you’d no longer have to sleep?”

"Ah. Exactly."

-Clap, clap, clap...

Someone began applauding after hearing his answer.

And that someone was me, Baek Jemin.

Faced with the unbelievable power of Heart-branch, Stage 3, Transcendence of Physiological Needs, I couldn’t help but marvel. Was this really magic? This was only the 3rd stage, and yet it allowed someone to completely satisfy one of humanity’s unavoidable biological necessities purely by choice.

As a wizard walking the path of the Great Archmage, it was only natural for me to applaud.

But that wasn’t the only reason.

The other three Supreme Archmages immediately realized why I was clapping and joined in. Who cared if monsters showed up or if another wizard attacked? None of that mattered.

At this moment, Hamza, Shin Nain, the pastor, and I were sincerely celebrating Lee Sejun’s ascent to Heart-branch, Stage 3.

Only Lee Sejun himself failed to understand why we were applauding. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously as he looked around at us.

"What’s with everyone?”

The pastor shot Shin Nain a sidelong glance before declaring.

"For the end of having to play rock-paper-scissors against a mind reader. Amen!”

Still oblivious, Lee Sejun looked between us. Smiling, I graciously decided to explain.

"Sejun-ssi, you know how democracy works in Korea, right?”

"Uh. Wait…”

Only then did it dawn on him.

His expression instantly changed as he hurriedly tried to backpedal, but the vote had already been decided. Shin Nain and Hamza spoke in perfect unison.

"To Lee Sejun, the Heart-branch, Stage 3 wizard, our permanent night watch!”

"Cheers!”

And finally, for the briefest moment…

I, who had mercifully decided to relinquish the title of Great Archmage to a companion who had reached a higher stage than myself, brought the celebration to its conclusion.

"Long live Great Archmage, Lee Sejun!"