-Back to Chinatown
[Mage, where are you?]
Yu Jae-seon’s voice was tinged with anxiety and urgency.
It seemed the situation was very bad.
I briefly told him our current location and how our chimera subjugation had gone so far.
Yu Jae-seon told me about the overall situation in Incheon, and it was quite serious.
Just as I had expected, even though most of the mages from the government and the Hall had rushed to Incheon Airport, things still weren’t going well there.
[Giant monsters have appeared on the runways and even inside the airport itself, so the airport is currently sealed off.]
“Are the giant monsters chimeras?”
[No. They say what appeared at Incheon Airport aren’t chimeras, but a giant tentacled monster and giant man-eating plants.]
“Man-eating plants?”
[Yes. Apparently they broke into the airport interior and caused absolute chaos.]
Something bizarre had shown up.
Given that a giant tentacled monster had appeared as well, the strange life-forms at Incheon Airport were probably Yashin’s handiwork.
Black magic that transformed a single life-form into a giant monster.
It was relatively simple, but its power was tremendous.
If they had sealed off the airport, it meant they weren’t properly controlling the situation.
He said that not only mages but even the military had been mobilized, yet they still hadn’t managed to eliminate the strange life-forms.
“What’s the situation in the city?”
[Explosions occurred in several places and caused many casualties, but the police and military have been dispatched and are bringing things under control.
The problem is the places where the strange life-forms appeared. Guwol-dong and Chinatown here suffered the most damage.]
Yu Jae-seon said he was currently in Chinatown.
Guwol-dong was around the terminal where we were.
“Are chimeras still being sighted in Guwol-dong?”
[No. The chimeras swept through Guwol-dong and headed toward the terminal. If you subjugated dozens of chimeras there, Mage, I don’t think any more remain.]
“I’ve frozen the whole lot for now. What should I do? It’ll take some time to completely annihilate them. It’ll probably consume quite a bit of mana too.”
I finally brought up the question I had wanted to ask.
[I’ll send a disposal team that way immediately. Please leave the cleanup to the Administration Bureau and the military, and come to Chinatown, Mage. To be honest, the situation here is extremely serious.]
Yu Jae-seon gave me the answer.
I couldn’t fully trust the Administration Bureau, but I trusted Yu Jae-seon, so it seemed fine to leave the cleanup to him.
He would send someone reliable.
‘At the very least, they won’t take the chimeras and use them as test subjects to create even worse life-forms.’
That was what I was worried about.
After all, the tentacled monster I had handed over to the Hall in a frozen state had turned up again as a test subject in the basement of Kim Seon-ho’s mansion.
But now didn’t seem to be the time to worry about cleaning up the frozen chimeras.
Yu Jae-seon was earnestly asking me to come to Chinatown.
He said the only mages currently out in Chinatown were himself and one colleague.
Yu Jae-seon had intended to pass through the city, inspect the area near Incheon Station, and then head to Incheon Airport, but the situation in Chinatown was so serious that he had remained there.
It seemed there were even more chimeras there than here.
“Understood. Then I’ll head straight to Chinatown.”
Even while we were on the call, monstrous roars and screams kept coming through from the other end of the phone.
It seemed better to end the call quickly and rush over.
I hung up and examined the mountain of ice before me. The freezing magic was still holding well.
The weather was terribly hot, but unlike ordinary ice, it was maintained by magic, so it would likely remain frozen solid like that for a few hours.
It wouldn’t budge for a while.
“Let’s move. He says to come to Chinatown. Looks like the situation there is very serious.”
I said, looking back at Cheon Dan-bi and Gil.
“We’re just leaving this here and going?”
“He said he’ll send an Administration Bureau disposal team. We can just leave it and go.”
“Then let’s hurry.”
“That’s a relief. We don’t have to kill them all one by one.”
As I started walking, the two of them quickly followed behind me.
When we returned to where we had parked the car, I remembered Ren. Where was Ren?
I looked up at the sky, but I couldn’t see the crow within my field of vision. Should I extend my detection?
“We need to take Ren with us, but I don’t see him.”
When I said that, Gil immediately replied.
“Should I try calling him?”
“Calling him? Can you do that?”
“I’ll try. If he isn’t too far away, I think I can.”
Then Gil sent concentric waves of mana spreading out in every direction. They were very gentle-feeling waves.
I couldn’t hear it, but it seemed he was carrying a message within the concentric waves, like sound transmission.
So Gil’s trait of communing with living beings could be used like this too.
A moment later, a crow flew toward us. Gil’s method had worked after all.
“He’s here. Ren! We have to move somewhere else now.”
“Caw!”
Even without transforming, I could tell at once that it was Ren. The crow’s claws were green.
“Well done. Now let’s hurry and head out.”
We quickly got into the car.
Even after getting into the car, Ren didn’t transform into his true form or a cat, and remained in the shape of a crow.
It seemed he knew our schedule wasn’t finished yet.
I wondered what Ren had been seeing while he was out.
But in the form of a crow, he couldn’t converse.
If Ren had something he wanted to tell us, he would have transformed into another race, but seeing as he didn’t, it seemed he had no immediate desire to talk, so I left him alone.
This time, Cheon Dan-bi took the wheel as well.
All of Incheon was in chaos, so there was no telling what we might encounter on the way. It was better for me to stay ready to use magic at any time.
“Let’s go through Guwol-dong. I want to see what the city’s like.”
Unlike in the morning, the road was wide open.
That meant there were almost no cars on the road, not that the road was clean.
As we passed through Guwol-dong, I understood why they said this area had suffered heavy damage.
The scene on the streets was indescribably horrific.
Bloodstains could be seen everywhere, and there were many people collapsed here and there. Now and then, people missing parts of their arms or legs caught my eye.
It seemed there might be more dead than living.
The police were managing the scene, and ambulances kept coming and going, sirens blaring noisily.
“Ah, what on earth is all this……?”
“What do we do? There are too many dead people.”
Cheon Dan-bi and Gil spoke in gloomy voices.
“It looks like the chimeras caused havoc here first before coming toward the terminal. We were a little late.”
I replied heavily as well.
We had left the car window open to observe outside, and terribly hot, muggy air pushed its way in.
Even the atmosphere seemed to have settled heavily.
“It looks like it’s going to rain.”
I hadn’t brought up the weather simply to divert attention.
The heavy, sunken air was filled with gray energy.
Perhaps it even contained the energy of disease.
It felt as though the city had come under the influence of black magic.
I wondered whether rain would fall and wash away the gray energy and the energy of disease, or whether the damp, gloomy atmosphere would strengthen the influence of black magic.
“You’re right. The air’s really heavy. I feel like even the rain that falls will be impure.”
Cheon Dan-bi answered as if she had sensed my doubts.
If a druid sensitive to energy said that, then it seemed rain falling wasn’t exactly a hopeful sign.
“Let’s hurry. The situation here is over anyway, so there’s nothing for us to do, but Chinatown is still ongoing.”
“Yeah. We need to save even one more person there before it’s too late.”
For a while, we moved without speaking. Each of us was lost in thought.
By now, news of the terror attacks must have spread without gaps, because there were almost no people on the streets.
There were no cars on the road either, so we moved quickly.
However, there were places destroyed by explosions here and there along the way, so we had to avoid them carefully.
At the explosion sites, soldiers were out handling the cleanup.
Before long, the smell of the sea began to drift in.
We were getting close to the docks.
In the meantime, the sky had grown even darker, and as we approached the sea, perhaps because the humidity had increased, thick raindrops finally began to patter down.
But it felt less like rain was falling and more like the heavy sky itself was dripping down.
The subtly spread gray energy made me feel as if I were suffocating.
“It’s starting to rain.”
“The weather’s really awful. I don’t want to fight things like chimeras in weather like this.”
“Is there weather where you do want to fight chimeras?”
“Of course not. I’m saying I hate it even more in weather like this. I actually like rainy days. Plants cheer on rainy days, you know. How nice would it be to throw the windows wide open, listen to the sound of rain and the plants cheering, then lie on my stomach on the floor and roll around reading novels or comics? And when I get hungry, I could make some kimchi pancakes.”
“Wow! That really would be nice.”
“But today’s weather doesn’t feel like that at all. It doesn’t feel like rain that gives life, but rain that kills.”
“I think I know what you mean. It’s because of the gray energy, right?”
Perhaps trying not to be crushed by the heavy energy, Cheon Dan-bi and Gil chatted quietly.
But their conversation returned once more to the weighty gray energy.
To return to the simple everyday life of lying on their stomachs, rolling around, or frying kimchi pancakes, we still had to cross a massive mountain.
On top of that, this time, for some reason, I had a feeling that path would not be simple.
That was how ominous the surrounding waves were.
“Good grief. Now it’s really pouring.”
Around the time we passed beside the docks, the rain finally began to pour down.
It was a torrential downpour, as if a hole had opened in the sky.
“Drive carefully. Visibility’s terrible.”
“Yeah. You mages get ready too. We’re almost at Chinatown.”
Even without Cheon Dan-bi saying so, Gil and I had already drawn up our mana.
Because of the pouring rain, it was hard to see outside the car window, but I still looked around.
Incheon Port and Chinatown—it had been quite a while. I had kept meaning to stop by, but never found the time to come.
I had also intended to meet the Hwang family of Chinatown’s underworld organization again.
I cast my gaze into the distance and looked toward Wolmido.
‘I wonder if Yantu and the dwarves are doing well.’
For a while, they must have suffered from police searches and bad rumors about the dwarves.
Still, there hadn’t been any separate mention of Wolmido in the news about this terror attack, so nothing had happened, right?
“Ah! Chimeras!”
“Mage, up ahead!”
At that instant, Cheon Dan-bi and Gil shouted at the same time.
I quickly turned my gaze, and as Cheon Dan-bi slammed hard on the brakes, my body lurched forward.