-The Scene
Just as the bus was passing near Suwon, Yoo Jae-seon called.
The timing was so perfect that it seemed as though he had been watching us and contacted me as soon as we drew close to Seoul.
[Are you coming up to Seoul?]
“Yes. We’re almost there. We’re passing Suwon now.”
[I see. Once you arrive, would you come to the Gangnam Management Bureau?]
“I’d rather meet at the scene than go to the bureau.”
[You mean the scene at Samseong Station, correct? Understood. Then I’ll head there.]
My call with Yoo Jae-seon was very brief.
It was as if simply deciding where to meet had been enough for us to understand one another.
I liked that. There was a lot I needed to discuss with Yoo Jae-seon, but none of it was something we could deal with in a brief phone call. We both knew that well.
The moment I hung up, the phone rang again. This time, it was Kim Seon-ho.
[Magician Oudin? This is Kim Seon-ho. Are you still not in Seoul?]
“No. I’ve been in the provinces this whole time. I’m on my way up to Seoul now.”
[Ah, I see. I thought it was strange that you hadn’t appeared at the terrorist site. You’re always the first to take the lead in a raid. This time, the site is right in front of our company, so I’ve been waiting for you.]
Kim Seon-ho treated me as though he had never heard any of the rumors circulating about me.
As though I were still a magician being treated like a hero, and therefore it was only natural that I would be the first to appear at a terrorist site.
His attitude was a little surprising, and I felt like prodding him.
“Am I supposed to take the lead in the raid? I heard that these days people are calling me a black magician who causes terrorist attacks.”
[What are you talking about? You don’t need to pay any attention to rumors. They’re nothing more than the sort of things idle people spout from hiding. If it weren’t for you, Magician Oudin, our country would have been in serious trouble by now.]
He was even flattering me now.
In any case, Kim Seon-ho had heard the rumors and knew about them, but he didn’t believe them.
Did he need me because the terrorist site was in front of Vanaheim’s headquarters? Was he really waiting for me? Was that why he had called?
“Your mansion was badly damaged because of Yashin last time, wasn’t it? But the basement beneath the annex was unharmed, wasn’t it?”
I steered the conversation in another direction.
[It was. Just as you said, Magician, the underground cavern wasn’t damaged at all. Yashin also disappeared. He left quite a mess behind, though…… Have you encountered Yashin since then? There hasn’t been anything about it in the news.]
“He did chase after me, but I managed to shake him off. He’s probably still wandering around somewhere.”
[I see. In any case, it’s good to hear that you’re on your way back to Seoul. Hurry up and come release the test subjects in the cavern.]
“You want me to release them already? The danger hasn’t completely passed yet, has it? There’s even a terrorist attack happening right now.”
[This attack is at headquarters, so it doesn’t matter. I want to move the test subjects in the cavern somewhere else before Yashin appears again. We need to finish the experiments and launch the Golden Apple soon. If we miss the schedule, the losses will be enormous.]
So, in the end, what Kim Seon-ho wanted to tell me was that I should hurry over and release the test subjects.
Was Kim Seon-ho a businessman after all? He was clearly growing impatient as he talked about launching the product and suffering losses.
No. Even if he was a scientist, he was a mad scientist—and even if he was a businessman, he was a thoroughly insane one.
Regardless, I had no intention whatsoever of releasing the test subjects.
Whether they suffered losses or not was none of my concern. The release of the Golden Apple had to be stopped.
“Yes. Let’s keep an eye on the situation.”
[If you’re coming up to Seoul, you’re heading to the site at Samseong Station, right?]
“Probably.”
[Then I’ll be waiting. Contact me when you arrive at the site.]
“All right.”
He had pestered me so much that I gave him an appropriate answer and hung up.
I wanted to avoid Kim Seon-ho for a while if possible, but with the terrorist site located near Vanaheim’s headquarters, it had become difficult to stay out of his sight.
I closed my eyes for a moment and sank into thought.
First, I went over the contents of the call again and reached a conclusion.
The site of this terrorist attack had not been chosen by chance.
There was a reason it had occurred near Vanaheim’s headquarters.
And yet I had the nagging feeling that there was something I was overlooking.
But I couldn’t figure out what it was. It only hovered at the edge of my thoughts, never quite taking shape.
I felt that I would only understand once I went to the site.
“Oh! We’re in Seoul now!”
Gil looked out the window as he spoke. He must have woken up after dozing off for a while.
The bus had already left the highway and was heading toward the terminal.
I leaned forward and spoke to Gil and Cheon Danbi, who were sitting in the seats ahead of us.
“Aren’t you tired? Do you want to go home first? I’m planning to head straight to the site at Samseong Station.”
We had been wandering around the provinces for several days. It hadn’t been a relaxing trip, and all sorts of incidents had taken place.
I thought going straight to another site as soon as we arrived in Seoul might be burdensome.
But their answers were completely different from what I expected.
“Not tired at all. We got plenty of rest last night, and we rested the whole time on the bus, too. We should go straight to the site.”
“I’m fine, too. I want to hurry to the site and see the pile of amoebas.”
Did they possess steel constitutions? Cheon Danbi and Gil seemed like people who rarely ever felt tired.
No. It wasn’t just their physical stamina. Their mental strength was extraordinary as well. While everyone else was busy fleeing from the site, the two of them were determined not to miss it.
So, in the end, was curiosity the truly remarkable thing?
“All right. Then let’s all go to the site together.”
After getting off the express bus, we caught a taxi and headed for Samseong Station.
On the way, I checked the latest news. I also logged onto the Hall’s bulletin board.
There did not seem to have been any major changes at the site yet.
Since last night, the magicians had been unable to properly attack the pile of amoebas. They had erected a protective barrier around the area and were keeping watch while pondering how to attack.
Of course, they had tried attacking with various spells at first. But whenever they attempted to approach or launch an attack, they were met with fierce retaliation.
Whenever the enormous pile of amoebas, which had been bunched together into a single mass, retaliated, it scattered in an instant and sprayed a potent toxic substance in every direction.
The magicians who came into contact with the toxic substance lost consciousness on the spot and had to be carried away.
The composition of the toxin was still being analyzed, but it appeared to be extremely lethal.
On the other hand, none of the magicians’ attacks had any fatal effect on the enormous pile of amoebas.
That was because the death of one or two individuals had no effect whatsoever on the pile.
‘That must be what makes amoebas so frightening. Infinite reproduction.’
Fortunately, when the magicians were not attacking, the pile of amoebas did not seem to move aggressively either.
That did not mean it simply remained still, of course.
It was said to bunch together and scatter again, sometimes piling itself up like a tower, and at other times flowing down and spreading flat across the ground.
As if it were testing the waters while waiting for some decisive moment.
‘Who on earth created it?’
The party responsible for the terrorist attack had yet to be identified.
If it had been Yashin, he would have already stepped forward to boast that it was his creation. Judging by his silence, it probably wasn’t him.
There was also a high probability that he had been near Danyang or Jecheon until yesterday.
Given that it consisted of piles of small, grotesque creatures, it also resembled a jellyfish, which made Nasanhaegyeong suspicious.
But could it have been him?
Nasanhaegyeong had fled the site of the crustal upheaval in Danyang in a state of exhaustion. He must have been too busy recovering to do anything else.
It seemed unlikely that he had traveled all the way to Seoul and carried out a terrorist attack in the meantime.
‘In any case, I’ll know once I reach the site and examine the magic circle.’
I suspected that it was neither Yashin nor Nasanhaegyeong.
I also didn’t think this was a terrorist attack carried out directly by Samir.
Compared to the crustal upheaval in Danyang, there was nothing similar in either the way it manifested or its scale.
The timing didn’t fit, either. The news about the grotesque creatures at the Samseong Station intersection had already begun circulating while Samir was causing the crustal upheaval in Danyang.
It seemed likely to be the work of a black magician connected to Vanaheim. But who?
“By the way, what’s the plan? You’ve thought of something, haven’t you?”
Cheon Danbi quietly asked me.
“The plan?”
“Yes. I mean the tactics. Oudin is being saddled with all sorts of false accusations right now. You’re not just going to the site to dutifully carry out the raid, are you?”
“Oh! That’s right. If you go to the site for no reason, won’t people misunderstand again and think that you caused this terrorist attack, Magician?”
Gil added a word, his expression worried.
“I have a plan. Naturally, I’m not going to go through the trouble of raiding the site only to receive nothing but abuse this time. If I’m going to carry out the raid, I’ll do it for my own sake. I’ll turn it into an opportunity to clear my name.”
“Oh! So you really did have a plan? What is it? Tell us.”
“What is it? Please tell us. We need to coordinate with you, too.”
The two of them looked at me with shining eyes.
“For starters, arriving late at the site after only now coming up to Seoul is the first part of the plan. It wouldn’t be bad if the raid had been completed without me, but as expected, they still haven’t managed to resolve it, have they?”
“Then you’re going to step forward as the problem-solver, Magician?”
“But that’s what happened in the previous terrorist attacks, too. Whenever the Hall’s magicians were at their wits’ end, Oudin would make a dazzling entrance and solve everything. Even then, they created rumors pinning the entire thing on Oudin.”
Cheon Danbi voiced her concern. She was right.
“That’s true. Once people decide not to believe something, they won’t believe it no matter what evidence of the truth you put in front of them. But this time, I’m going to show them evidence so definitive that they won’t be able to deny it. I’m going to reveal before everyone’s eyes who caused the terrorist attack.”
“What? Then you know who caused this terrorist attack?”
“Who is it?”
Just then, the taxi came to a stop, and the driver turned around to speak to us.
“I can’t go any farther. You’ll have to get out here.”
Looking around, we found ourselves roughly midway between Seolleung Station and Samseong Station.
When we had told the driver to take us to the terrorist site and asked him to get as close as possible, it seemed he had brought us this far.
I didn’t know exactly where the roads had been closed off, but this was close enough.
“Let’s get out for now.”
We got out of the taxi and began walking.
Our conversation naturally came to an end, and Cheon Danbi and Gil did not ask any further questions.
Now that we had arrived at the site, it was time to focus on the situation around us.
The two of them seemed to trust me, believing that since I had said there was a plan, they would naturally learn about it when the time came—even without hearing it in advance.
I liked that attitude of theirs.
As we walked toward Samseong Station, I first turned around to look behind us.
The area around Seolleung Station, where the tentacled monster had appeared, was still chaotic. The sinkhole had yet to be repaired, so construction was still underway throughout the area.
I turned my head forward again.
The Samseong Station intersection, where the enormous pile of amoebas had erupted from underground, was visible some distance ahead.
The surroundings were a forest of skyscrapers—a street packed with the headquarters of the most successful companies.
Among them, the tallest and most magnificent building immediately caught my eye.
Vanaheim headquarters.
“There it is. I think that’s the one.”
Cheon Danbi stretched out her hand and pointed toward a spot.
The enormous pile of amoebas, rising like a tower, stood across from Vanaheim’s headquarters, directly in front of a life insurance company’s building.
Only then did the company’s name finally etch itself into my mind.
[Eternal Life]