15
Chapter 15
There is a saying that you get used to anything.
They say that just as your threshold for stimulation rises, pain also becomes bearable once you've experienced it, but that was total bullshit.
Unable to bear the sight of my left hand bleeding profusely, I left it hanging limp and stumbled forward with only my right arm hooked through the gun sling over my shoulder. A few people cast sidelong glances at me.
"Ugh... Urgh..."
"That's why you shouldn't have shot it."
There was a reason why Pastor Park Yo-han decided to support me instead of Monk Cheong-hwi.
It just fucking hurt. I wondered if this was what it felt like to have your blood vessels catch fire, burning your shoulder and neck while roasting the inside of your head. It hurt so much that I let out a groan drenched in cold sweat, which unintentionally mixed with a laugh.
As I recalled the effects of the Alteration-type magic, my heated blood vessels felt like they were boiling in an entirely different sense.
To think I could stop the movements of the target I was looking at? Magic that threw fireballs or shot electricity would have been enough—no, to be honest, I desperately wanted those—but my current magic wasn't too bad either.
That is, except for the pounding and burning sensation in my head, neck, and under my left shoulder blade every time my heart beat.
"Heheheh..."
"Pastor, isn't Baek Jemin going crazy?"
"He shot his left hand with a gun. Of course he's not alright. Tsk."
Even so, I was only able to maintain my sanity thanks to Monk Cheong-hwi's Mantra Chant.
Looking back, I could see the traits of the mages who had survived this hellhole. Their magic didn't look flashy and seemed rather plain, but they were actually quite effective.
Pastor Park Yo-han's Soteriological Certainty. Despite sounding like elusive nonsense, it seemed to guarantee personal survival. Corporal Park Se-hyeok's Heart Line listening magic seemed a bit lame, but... it was at least helping us stay alive for now.
Not to mention Monk Cheong-hwi's Mantra Chant, which was currently weaving together the soldiers—who would have otherwise run away in a panic—and helping them escape.
Tapping my shoulder, Pastor Park Yo-han spoke with a sigh.
"We survived thanks to you, Baek Jemin. Let's pull ourselves together a bit more, alright? The emergency light is right in front of us."
He was right.
My tier-two magic must have delivered a massive shock to the amalgams, as they didn't dare to approach rashly. Corporal Park Se-hyeok, who had strained his ears to listen to the Heart Line, also nodded and readjusted his grip on his gun.
"They aren't coming. Well, it feels like they're nearby, but..."
"That's good enough. I'll make contact. Quack monk... everyone, protect the monk well. If Baek Jemin or the monk dies here, consider us all dead."
After barking that warning at the terrified soldiers, Pastor Park Yo-han pulled out his phone from the inner pocket of his jacket under his poncho and tried to make a call.
However, perhaps because it was an underground environment filled with fog, the pastor's phone only played a dial tone.
Riiiing....
Every time the tone echoed through the underground cavern, the low breathing of the soldiers flowed out through their gas mask filters. Monk Cheong-hwi had already taken off his gas mask and was catching his breath with his hands pressed together in prayer. Still lacking the courage to look at the bloodstains covering my left hand, I pointlessly stared at the green emergency light.
That was when Corporal Park Se-hyeok let out a ragged breath.
"I hear something."
"Is it those fucking monsters?"
"No. It's coming from beyond the emergency light."
"Then that's fine."
The moment Pastor Park Yo-han replied in a slightly irritated voice, the call finally connected.
"Everyone, quiet."
Pastor Park Yo-han deliberately turned up the volume slightly, looked back at us with a wink, and cleared his throat before speaking.
"Ah, ah. This is Pastor Park Yo-han. You're the commander of the military unit at Suwon Station, right?"
[Pastor, you're still alive? What about the survivors?]
"There's me, the monk, Baek Jemin... and this guy named Park Se-hyeok. That's 4 operators, plus 8 soldiers. We can go up now, right?"
[What about the amalgams?]
A momentary silence fell.
It was the first time hesitation and uncertainty showed in Pastor Park Yo-han's eyes. The pastor looked back at us through his smudged glasses before replying in a slightly dry voice.
"They are chasing us. If we can't go up, everyone here will die."
Silence descended for a while.
Muffled, unintelligible shouts echoed through the phone, and loud noises sometimes drowned out the voices. After roughly a few seconds passed like that, the commander spoke again.
[The emergency shutter should be down. There will be an emergency side door on the shutter for evacuation. We haven't blocked that side door yet, so come out through there. You have to come out right away. And...]
"And?"
[The national army is taking emergency measures to form a barrage network to stop the spread of the amalgams. Come toward Suwon Station. If you head anywhere else, we will open fire indiscriminately.]
With those words, the call disconnected.
The flustered signalman tried to check the condition of the radio slung on his back, but Pastor Park Yo-han clicked his tongue and stopped him.
"Forget it. It's useless. They wouldn't answer in this situation anyway. You all heard him. Let's go."
The surviving party headed beyond the green emergency light.
A struggle to escape the underground, where the fog condensed into dew. Amidst the sound of glass shards crunching underfoot mingling with the breathing from the gas masks, we arrived in front of the shutter firmly blocking our path.
However, the moment Pastor Park Yo-han confidently tried to push the side door with his palm, his voice trembled slightly.
"It won't budge?"
"Oh, fuck."
Corporal Park Se-hyeok reflexively muttered a curse and headed toward the side door. After trying to push it with his palms a few times to no avail, he started slamming his body against it with his gun still slung over his shoulder.
"Fuck, fuck!"
"Please do not panic. Let us have all you soldiers push the side door open together. It is difficult alone, but it should open if you do that."
If it hadn't been for Monk Cheong-hwi's calm suggestion, we might have had a collective panic attack right there.
After all, even Pastor Park Yo-han was on the verge of panicking. Upon hearing the monk's words, the pastor briefly took off his glasses, wiped his sweat-drenched face, and put them back on with a renewed gleam in his eyes.
"Phew. Right. God protects me. I do not doubt salvation, therefore I will be saved..."
Pastor Park Yo-han rallied the soldiers once more and readjusted his grip on his gun.
"Baek Jemin, myself, and two of your soldiers will keep watch together, so the rest of you try to push the door open. Even if you have to smash it with your buttstocks, get it open."
"Me too?"
"Right now, Baek Jemin is the only one who can stop those monster bastards."
And so, four of us—me, bleeding profusely from my left hand, Pastor Park Yo-han, and two incredibly unlucky soldiers—ended up glaring at the fog-filled waiting room.
This place, where countless people with expressionless faces once came and went, had become a purgatory on earth, stained with blood-red emergency lights and shattered windows. The reason I couldn't outright call it hell was because I lacked the confidence to see if there was a bottom below this rock bottom.
What if I called this a living hell now, only for an even worse hell to show up later?
Consider it linguistic deflation to prevent hellish inflation; this was my own way of preventing the overuse of new terminology.
"Baek Jemin, you chuckling like that means you've truly lost it."
"Fuck, I shot my own left hand with a gun. How could I not lose it?"
"That's why you should have believed in God. If you believed in God, would you have had to shoot your own left hand? Believe in God now, before it's too late."
"But the priest already kicked the bucket."
"That's because Catholicism is heretical! It's because they believe in the Antichrist Pope!"
If I had heard this in my everyday life, I would have thought he was a madman, but hearing it in this damp, dark underground made me tearfully glad.
It was enough to briefly make me think, Should I just pretend to be fooled and try believing in God and Jesus?
If I hadn't been a filial descendant who cherished my ancestors, I might have attended church, not caring whether my ancestors who didn't know God burned in hellfire or not. I trust my ancestors will recognize their descendant's profound intentions and forgive me, even though it's been ten years since I last offered a memorial service for them.
Meanwhile, the side door that had been rattling opened with a loud slam.
Monk Cheong-hwi looked our way and shouted.
"It's open! Everyone, stay calm and go one by one!"
Park Se-hyeok was the first to step forward at those words.
"I'll go first!"
Honestly, rather than thinking he was being insolent or mean, I figured he had held back for a long time for someone of his disposition.
He had done his part and wanted to leave first, so what could I do?
However, the moment Park Se-hyeok took it upon himself to be the first and pushed the side door, the quiet underground waiting room was instantly swept by a gale. A wind so strong it temporarily pushed the fog away, making it vanish between the red emergency lights, rushed in like a stream of water pouring through a funnel.
Our wet ponchos fluttered heavily, slapping against our bodies, and a thick fog began to fog up the lenses of our gas masks.
Already soaked through, we actually felt a chilling cold in the face of that strong wind.
Yet, what was more overwhelming than all of this was the massive rotor noise slamming into our ears.
The helicopter's rotor noise, rough enough to instantly drown out people's cries for help, hammered into us along with the weight of our wet ponchos, suppressing everything all the way to the emergency shutter in the underground.
At that moment, loud static leaked from the signalman's radio.
Naturally, there was no way the radio reception would be decent in this situation, and since no one wanted to put down their guns, Pastor Park Yo-han, who had the most freedom of movement, raised his phone again.
After a few rings, the call connected.
"What's with the helicopter."
[We are carrying out the initial suppression. Come out, right now!]
Click.
Pastor Park Yo-han pursed his lips, gripped his phone tightly, and shoved it back into his inner pocket.
"Baek Jemin."
"Hah, fuck."
I knew what he was going to say. It was a shitty situation because I knew, and an even shittier moment because I understood.
To think I'd end up playing the cliché role in a horror or creature movie where someone stays behind until the end to self-destruct. I hated the world, but with no other choice, I swallowed hard and took a breath.
Eventually, after sighing heavily for a moment, I grimaced at the burning sensation still flowing through my entire body's nerves and spoke.
"If I get baptized now, will I go to heaven? I already got baptized at the boot camp, but can I do it one more time?"
"What are you talking about? I'm going to stay with you until the end, Baek Jemin, so keep your eyes peeled."
For a moment, I felt like I understood a little about what camaraderie and humanity meant.
If Pastor Park Yo-han hadn't thrown a fit about honoring Dangun being idolatry and despised shamans, I might have secretly considered him a friend. No, even if he just wasn't someone who chanted 'Jesus Heaven, Unbelief Hell,' we might have been a bit closer personally.
Come to think of it, seeing as I was still remembering his flaws even in a situation like this, a really close relationship was probably out of the question.
Anyway, thanks to Pastor Park Yo-han and me tentatively taking the rearguard, the chaos settled down relatively quickly. The emergency side door wasn't very wide, barely allowing one person to pass through at a time, and it was so tight that you had to readjust your grip on your gun to squeeze through.
Even that was incredibly chaotic, compounded by the immense gale pressing against the shutter and whipping our wet ponchos around like lashes, and the rotor noise that made it seem like people were just mouthing words unless they screamed at the top of their lungs.
The white fog that had formed on the gas mask lens dripped down as dewdrops, and when I exhaled again, the lens fogged up in a repeating cycle.
Haaah-. Haaah-.
This wasn't going to work.
I unfastened my helmet strap, threw off my gas mask, and gasped for air.
My face was just as drenched in sweat and moisture as the damp gas mask. Without even having time to peel off my hair, which clung to my head as if I had a bucket of water dumped on me, I tried to reconnect my helmet strap with just one hand before giving up.
I realized that fixing a helmet strap with only a trembling right hand was an incredibly difficult task.
Instead, I tucked my gun under my right armpit, aimed the muzzle toward the underground beyond the swirling fog, and focused on regulating my breathing. My left hand still hurt like crazy, but my brain, realizing I was in real danger of dying, must have been pumping out all sorts of chemicals because the pain felt a bit more bearable.
When I mentioned that fact, Pastor Park Yo-han looked at me with a serious expression.
"Aren't your nerves dying?"
"Ugh, surely not."
The thought that came to mind right now wasn't a mundane worry like, 'What if my nerves die and I can't move my hand?'
My tier-two magic's strength varied depending on the intensity of the pain, so my first worry was, 'If my nerves die and I can't feel pain, isn't that the end for me?'
Just in case, I lightly poked my wound with my right hand.
"Aaaagh! Agh! Aaaaargh... Son of a bitch... Aagh..."
"Stop acting like an idiot and just stay still."
"Heheheheh..."
I was laughing.
Because I felt that as long as I could feel this pain, as long as this pain continued, I could survive.
Meanwhile, the evacuation seemed to have finished safely, as the sound of hollow thumping came from outside.
Before I knew it, only Pastor Park Yo-han and I were left in the underground.
At that moment, I gasped for breath and said to Pastor Park Yo-han.
"You go first."
"Baek Jemin."
"You have to go quickly so I can get out quickly too."
"Hah. Don't you want to come to church? I'll make you the Youth Group Leader."
"Cut the bullshit and just go."
The footsteps faded away.
Along with the rotor noise, the strong wind whipped through the gap like a funnel again, driving away the encroaching fog.
That single ray of faint light seeping through the crack of the emergency side door shone far more brilliantly than the underground emergency lights or the green exit signs. However, it wasn't enough to drive away the silhouettes swaying between the swirling fog clouds beyond my dew-covered gun barrel.
Unwavering even in the face of this harsh rotor noise, unified vocal cords and unified breaths clashed against the wind from outside like a wind instrument.
Wooooong-.
Then, footsteps scattered the fog. Through the gaps of footsteps from ten seconds in the future, I saw the end of someone familiar.
Faces tangled together like bizarre conjoined twins were staring in this direction, looking as if they had frozen mid-melt. Like a well-fermented, chewy lump of dough full of holes, eye sockets were scattered everywhere, with compound eyes rolling around in different directions, aiming at this emergency shutter as they approached.
The limbs dangling beneath moved with bizarre steps, kneeling, using hands for support, or moving completely bent out of shape just to match each other's stride.
Among those bodies were limbs dangling limply.
I recognized one person's end through the distinctive accessory of a prayer bead necklace. It was Geulmun Bosal. Given the nature of Spirit Sight, which provokes the amalgams' hostility, it seemed he was the first to be targeted when the incident occurred at the underground platform.
However, what truly terrified me was the end of the one hanging at the very front.
Wuuuub.... Wuuuub... Aaaah...
The only voice breaking out from the unified vocal cords and unified breaths. A desperate cry vomited out by a split, mangled tongue.
The body in a black cassock with bare forearms was still struggling, trying to frantically scratch at its own face. The problem was that, aside from the mouth and tongue woven together like conjoined twins, none of his other facial features remained.
Priest Jeong Yong-hwan's eyes, nose, and forehead had already melted among those faces, undulating without even becoming compound eyes.
A groan-filled echo, unaware that it had already lost its face, made the body thrash as it tried to tear and scratch at the monster's melted faces to find its own... but all those nails scraped away were the monster's melted faces and flesh.
Seeing that sight, I felt a sense of utter futility beyond fear.
"I prayed to put a bullet between your eyes, so you came back with the space between them completely gone."
Then, without hesitation, I threw my body toward the now-empty emergency side door.
***
Slam!
The moment I pushed the iron mass using my speed and body weight, I heard the monster's outcry.
"Mom!" "Do you think monsters like this really exist?" "Sob..." "No, I don't want to!"
I have to run.
"Gasp, gasp..."
The helicopter was flying much lower than I thought.
Because of that, a terrifyingly strong wind whipped around, making me wonder if my wet poncho would dry in seconds; while it pushed the fog away, the blinding glare of the searchlight made tears stream down my face instead.
A high-pitched ringing echoed in my ears, making me stumble.
However, just one primal instinct.
The presence of the monsters that must be chasing behind my back made me forget all my pain and hesitation, forcing me to run.
[Come out, come out!]
Without even knowing where the megaphone voice was coming from, I readjusted my grip on my gun and lowered my body, almost crawling while tears streamed down my face. Since my left hand couldn't move properly, I just stretched my left arm out, not caring if my forearm scraped against things, and ran like a madman with the buttstock pressed against my right side.
It was a gait that could easily be mocked as a limp, but this was no time for me to care about looking cool.
Thump.
The sound of a mass heavy enough to momentarily silence even the helicopter's rotor noise pounding against the shutter swept down my spine.
A tingling pulse, painful enough to make my heart ache, flowed down the arteries of my trembling, giving-out legs and forced me to move.
However, when I climbed all the way up the stairs, right as the moisture from the fog glistened on my face.
I heard the military's megaphone blaring alongside the maddeningly loud siren.
[All survivors, gather at Suwon Station! We will open fire if you head anywhere else!]
However, beyond the relatively thin fog in front of me, parked buses were blocking my path to run.
Behind the buses, the other soldiers, Pastor Park Yo-han, and Monk Cheong-hwi were already waiting, praying as if they were preparing for the final sacrament.
I awkwardly half-crawled, half-ran toward them and urgently asked.
"What about Park Se-hyeok, that grumbler?"
A hand gesture came back before words.
As a soldier wearing a gas mask pointed his finger beyond the fog, I saw Park Se-hyeok sprawling and bleeding on the road, twitching; it looked like he had tried to flee toward the shopping alley.
"Ugh, urk... Urgh..."
One might think it cruel, but having seen Priest Jeong Yong-hwan's end, I figured it'd be better to just have a few holes punched in my lungs instead.
Pastor Park Yo-han, gasping for breath alongside Monk Cheong-hwi, took off the collapsed soldier's gas mask and was slapping his cheek while yelling at him.
"Hey! Hey, you! If you close your eyes here, you're dead! You won't even get to die a clean death!"
"You still have things you must do, benefactor, yet you intend to close your eyes already?"
"Hey! We survived down there, and you're planning to die as soon as we get here?! You have to go to heaven!"
I approached them, desperately catching my breath, and said.
"We have to run."
"Baek Jemin! You punk... Our church's honorary Youth Group Leader survived after all!"
"Those bastards are about to pour out of the underground right fucking now. Seeing us get out, they must have noticed the blockade isn't perfect yet. They blatantly showed themselves even with me glaring at them."
At that moment, something thrilling enough to practically make my heart stop resonated.
My internal organs subtly dancing felt faster than my ears hearing the sound. It was to the point where I wondered if this was what it would feel like to hear the earth rumble right before an earthquake.
In the sky I belatedly looked up at, sparks were flashing.
Soon after, a chk-chk sound scrambled my focus, and not long after, the sound of concrete shattering—like something you'd hear at a construction site—rang out.
Ruuuuuumble...
Thunder echoed through the swirling fog.
The result was devastating. The sound of boulders smashing and splintering from all directions ricocheted off the bus bodies, rendering human voices completely meaningless.
With my ears ringing, Pastor Park Yo-han and Monk Cheong-hwi desperately slapped the soldiers to get them on their feet.
They were definitely shouting their lungs out, but they only seemed to be mouthing the words; I couldn't hear anyone's voice.
Instead, only the tinnitus piercing my head became clearer.
Eeeeeee-.
Even so, just one thing.
The monster's outcry rang through loud and clear.
The monsters' roar, which leaked out as they crushed and crumpled the iron mass with their sheer weight, was much more human than I expected, which only made it all the more bizarre.
Mom!
It was then that the ringing faded and the sound of a megaphone reached my ears.
[The helicopter is almost out of ammo! Survivors, run!]
The neatly parked buses were both a barricade and an obstacle.
Thanks to the buses lined up in orderly rows at the transit center, we were able to avoid the military's indiscriminate fire, but navigating a street blocked by buses in the midst of the fog was harder than expected.
Furthermore, if we tried to deviate even a little, a stark white light from beyond the fog would aim in our direction as they shouted.
"Major intersections are being blocked. If you come any closer, we will shoot!"
"We are survivors!"
"I said we'll shoot!"
The military seemed to have mobilized their few armored vehicles to block the main roads, preparing searchlights and machine guns.
I could tell because I faintly heard voices from afar talking about replacing ammo belts and checking IFF bands. Naturally, from our perspective, we couldn't help but curse.
"My fucking life..."
"We will be saved. Everyone just needs to get out through the gaps between the buses. It looks like troops are stationed at Suwon Station, so we just have to run well. They said the helicopter is blocking the monsters chasing us, right?"
Pastor Park Yo-han comforted the soldiers, patting their shoulders.
However, I could even see that Pastor Park Yo-han's hand was trembling slightly. Monk Cheong-hwi used the sharp edge of a gun barrel to tear the hem of his monk robe, then came over to me and wrapped my left hand.
"It seems this is the only thing this humble monk can do for you, benefactor."
"Not at all. Everyone did their best."
"Haha... Just because someone did their best, does that mean they won't be resented? You say such things because you are so considerate of me, benefactor."
Our group briefly hid behind the bus body and caught our breath.
For about 15 seconds.
It was a very short time, but it was enough to exchange a few words and throw off our gas masks.
The surviving soldiers all looked to be around my age or even younger. Their faces, glistening with sweat and moisture, their hair plastered to their skin, were a tangle of emptiness and a desperate desire to live.
At that moment, I absentmindedly pulled out the Magic Special Lecture booklet from my pocket.
I could already feel the makeshift bandage growing heavy with blood, but I flipped the pages with my right hand, not caring if they tore, wanting to see the next magic rune.
Tier one is Retrospection. The expansion of cognitive targets.
Tier two is Lamentation. The power to force my perception, distorted by my pain, onto the target within my sight.
In exchange for a terrible price, the power of magic was promising me a definite advantage. Even bone-grindingly hard studying doesn't guarantee a 100% result, but Alteration-type magic felt like if I ground my bones, it would truly grant me power proportional to the amount I ground.
If so...
If I could offer even more here, just how incredible of a magic could I use?
A curiosity and desire as intense as the pain I was feeling right now was whispering to me. Magic is honest. Magic becomes stronger the more it hurts. It will become stronger the more you sacrifice...
It was Pastor Park Yo-han's words that shattered my thoughts.
"Baek Jemin, run!"
I tucked the Magic Special Lecture booklet back into my jacket, took a deep breath, and sprinted with my gun tucked under my armpit.
I just ran for it first.
It was only about a few seconds later that I noticed the helicopter was leaving.
[Fire, fire! Shoot anything that moves!]
The moment the megaphone rang out, the stark white lights beyond the fog spewed flames.
In the face of that overwhelming gunfire, I slightly wet my pants.
Fortunately, I was already soaked in fog and sweat, so it wasn't noticeable in the slightest. But those who met an even more severe end also appeared.
The clinking sounds of bullets ricocheting off the bus bodies and concrete ground began to hammer at my heart even harder.
As soon as I ran like crazy and hid behind the bus's wheels, I saw the despairing expression of the soldier who had been panting heavily while chasing after me.
Human flesh wasn't designed to withstand heavy machine gun fire, and machine gun bullets existed to sweep people away.
The soldier, whose upper body and side were literally swept away by a dozen bullets in an instant, flopped to the ground and blankly stared at his own spilling blood.
Then, the light faded from his eyes.
"Fuck, fuck fuck..."
As someone muttered those words, the outcries of the monsters echoed through the hail of gunfire.
The sight of tangled limbs moving bizarrely where we had just been, where we had passed, and through the gaps under the buses burned into my mind.
"Run, run!"
It was probably Pastor Park Yo-han.
We sprinted madly once again. Correspondingly, the monsters' pursuit grew fiercer, and the hail of bullets raining from all directions intensified. And the bus bodies weren't as sturdy as we thought.
The national army, noticing that the amalgams were running while taking cover behind the buses, bravely began projecting their firepower, prepared for collateral damage.
It goes without saying that there were preemptive strikes in the process.
Clang, clank! Clink!
As holes were violently punched all over the vehicle's body, the tires were also pierced, causing the bus to tilt slightly with a bizarre, metallic screech.
The bus body, swept by concentrated fire, spewed fog instead of blood, and the unlucky soldier taking cover behind it was shot right through the neck, dying instantly. Or no, was he the lucky one?
I glanced at the soldier's corpse and followed along as best as I could.
However, the amalgams were far more relentless and bizarre than we thought.
Aaaaaargh-!!!
The moment the unified vocal cords played a scream like a heavy wind instrument, the gunfire ceased for a split second. Faced with that eerie shriek that hummed and shook the very earth, an untrained human couldn't help but stop breathing.
Then, countless footsteps overlapped, and soon the bus bodies wobbled along with squelching sounds.
Only then did I look back to see the fog scattering and leaving behind footprints.
Even though I was weeping from the throbbing headache, my burning eyes, and the gunshot wound on my left hand, the clarity of those footprints remained unforgettable.
"The monster is climbing onto the bus and splitting apart!"
With this, I had done my job.
I ran again with my gun tucked away. The soldiers, recovering from the aftershocks of the scream, resumed firing, and in the process, I could hear the sound of corpses flopping to the ground.
My heart felt like it would burst ages ago, and it had been a while since the party I was running with had scattered amidst the hail of gunfire, the amalgams' pursuit, and the swirling fog.
Amidst that chaos, I sprinted toward the muzzle flashes, following the glaring lights, but the terrifying sound of bus bodies tilting chased right behind me.
I had no choice but to look back.
Not out of curiosity, but to drive them away.
"Aaaagh! Agh! Aaaargh!"
Bang, ba-bang! Bang!
Along with my screams, the trigger was pulled relentlessly.
Since it was point-shooting with the gun tucked under my armpit rather than properly shouldered, the accuracy was complete garbage.
The bullets often ricocheted off the bus bodies or simply tore through the empty air, but the monsters with melting conjoined-twin faces, as if terrified just by the fact that I was looking at them, lowered their bodies and crawled flat atop the bus.
At that moment, machine gun fire swept across the top of the bus.
Thwack...
The sound of flesh bursting apart sounded more holy than the church choir when we got hamburgers at boot camp.
Feeling the heat from the blazing barrel, I ran again. I didn't even have time to adjust my grip on the gun.
I ran toward the soldiers faintly visible beyond the fog, tears streaming down my face.
However, a desperate premonition struck me.
Through the scattering fog, footprints from ten seconds in the future were getting ahead of me.
At this rate, I'll be caught.
"Survivor confirmed, survivor confirmed!"
"They're chasing him!"
Even though the soldiers' scream-like voices were finally reaching me.
Even though I was finally reaching a place to live after breaking through this godawful hell...
Was I supposed to meet the exact same end as Priest Jeong Yong-hwan just because I was a slow runner?
I gritted my teeth.
As I ran while hugging my gun, I adjusted the fire selector.
Then, with my left hand, I grabbed the barrel near the muzzle, which still retained its heat. I could feel the paradoxically cold and hot pain searing my left hand, but it was all or nothing now.
"Survivor, get down!"
Following someone's order, I threw myself down.
And as I had resolved to do, I spun my body around and landed hard on my rear.
Right there, a monster looking as if hundreds of human faces were tangled together was flailing its bizarrely twisted and bent human limbs while gaping its mouth open.
Perhaps because the melted, tangled faces numbered in the hundreds, it didn't just have one elongated, torn mouth; instead, several mouths with densely packed teeth like Ziplocs were irregularly slashed across its form.
This monster rolled its countless compound eyes to look at me, and, as if pleased to see me, flicked its five or six tongues.
The tangled faces formed faint eye smiles, fully prepared to lunge at me.
At that moment, I aimed my gun barrel and opened my mouth.
"Aaaaaargh!!!"
I had never heard the sound of shell casings bouncing on the ground this closely before.
Every time a blinding flash tore through the fog, I felt my left hand burning up.
Acrid gunsmoke took the place of the vanished fog, and tears burst forth as my pain crushed my head. I kept my eyes wide open so my vision wouldn't be blurred by tears and continued to pull the trigger.
As the heat of the barrel seared my hand, my pain grew even more intense.
Alteration-type magic - Eye Tier Two.
My pain is longer and deeper than in any other era...
"It... it stopped!"
"Fire! Fire!"
Rat-tat-tat-tat!
The machine guns fired in unison, spewing flames at the monster's head.
The seemingly absolute monster began to groan and crumble under the machine gun fire. Having come too close to even split apart, the heavy bullets battered, shredded, and dismantled the bloated monster.
Only then could I finally close my eyelids again while tears streamed down my face.
A single blink to end the nightmare and pain.
Blink.
At that moment, the monster let out a howl and collapsed.
The End