-Blackout
“Gil! Are you in there?”
There was no answer when I called, so I opened the door. It wasn’t locked.
Looking around the room, I found Gil asleep, leaning against the place where the folded blankets had been stacked.
It seemed that while everything had been happening outside, both Gil and I had been equally oblivious to the world.
Then again, there was no television, no computer, and nothing for him to do alone in that room.
After tidying up the few household items he had, he probably hadn’t known what to do next. He must have fallen asleep out of boredom.
Thanks to that, at least he hadn’t gone looking for me despite the phone and alarm ringing so loudly in the upstairs room.
“Gil! Wake up.”
When I lightly took his shoulder and shook him, Gil’s eyes snapped open. Waking quickly seemed to be a habit he had picked up from life on the streets.
“Ah! Master Mage.”
“You were asleep, huh? Get up. Let’s go to Neo Forest.”
Gil didn’t even ask why we were going and sprang to his feet as if ready to leave at once.
“Eat this first. I don’t think we’ll have time to get dinner separately.”
“Yes. I’ll just go wash my face for a moment.”
Gil washed up like lightning and returned, and I handed him a sandwich. Then I briefly told him what had happened at Neo Forest.
“You go there and stay with Cheon Danbi. I’ll probably have to move with the people from the Hall.”
“Yes. Understood.”
“You’re still not good at controlling your magic, so be careful not to get caught up in anything for no reason.”
“Yes.”
I felt like I would be relieved if Gil was with Cheon Danbi. Cheon Danbi was someone more than capable of taking care of herself.
The terror attack had failed, and we were only going to investigate, so there probably wouldn’t be any danger, but still, one never knew.
As soon as Gil finished his sandwich, we left the house.
“To think someone tried to carry out a terror attack on Neo Forest… It really is shocking.”
“I know. It’s terrorism, plain and simple. Whoever did it must want the world to fall apart.”
Even though the explosion hadn’t succeeded, everyone was shocked by the same thing.
Neo Forest was that symbolic of a place. Doing something that would harm the World Tree was something ordinary people couldn’t even imagine.
We had just come all the way down the alley and were about to catch a taxi on the main road.
Suddenly, the lights around us went out, and darkness swallowed everything. The streetlights and the lights from the shops all vanished at once.
“What is this? A power outage?”
Unless there was a natural disaster, blackouts were something one almost never experienced in Seoul.
Wondering if there had been a fire at a substation, I looked off into the distance, and saw the darkness gradually spreading.
All of Seoul was sinking into darkness.
It was a blackout.
The surroundings were so pitch-black that it made me wonder if night had always been this dark. For city dwellers who always lived amid a saturation of lights, such inky darkness was unfamiliar and disorienting.
It felt as if some primal fear, long forgotten, was quietly reviving.
“Uh, oh! Look at that!”
Gil cried out in surprise. Following his gaze, I saw cars on the road crashing into one another.
The blaring of horns rang loudly in my ears.
Even in a power outage, car headlights were still working, but once all the traffic lights on the road went out, the cars lost their bearings and, trying to go first, collided and tangled together. Utter chaos broke out on the road.
“What’s wrong with them? Why are the cars doing that?”
“Is this a terror attack?”
“Hurry and report it. Call 119!”
“Huh? The phone’s not working either. What is going on?”
The people on the street poured out frightened words.
Those who had been looking around in confusion at the blackout were now afraid, suspecting terrorism.
Then someone even started shouting something ominous.
“You will all die now! Go home and wait quietly for the day you die! That’s why you should have conserved energy from the start. Oil is the blood of the devil! The end is coming now! This is Gaia’s curse!”
In the darkness, a head of white hair seemed to float as it shouted. It looked like a mad old man. Because it was too dark to see properly, the sight was eerie.
People’s screams followed. Fear spread like spilled ink.
How could chaos arise so quickly just because of a blackout?
It was astonishing.
It might have been nothing more than a traffic accident and a drunkard’s nonsense, but because it happened in the dark, it drove people into terror.
As people began running this way and that, the confusion grew worse. They collided with one another, fell, were trampled, screamed, and the whole place descended into pandemonium.
“This won’t do. We’ll have to walk through the alleys. Gil! This way.”
I grabbed Gil’s arm and pulled him along.
There were too many people on the streets of Itaewon. We crossed the road while avoiding the cars and headed into an alley.
There were a lot of people in the alleyway too, but once we went a little farther in, it was at least somewhat better.
The only thing was that, with no cars passing through, the alley was far darker than the main road.
But darkness wasn’t a problem for me. I activated my golden sight and could see clearly ahead.
“Why did the power suddenly go out? Could this be terrorism too?”
Gil asked in a low voice.
“Probably, right? They said Yasin likes chaos, so this could be his doing.”
It could also be another black magician.
If it was Yasin who had caused the explosion at Neo Forest, it didn’t seem likely that he would attempt it and then carry out another act so quickly afterward.
If the pure white light that had stopped the explosion was a magical defense, then Yasin might have been injured.
But one never knew. We had to get to Neo Forest quickly and investigate before we could grasp the situation.
We passed through one back alley and walked quickly along a side street.
Meanwhile, small lights gradually began appearing here and there. Light leaked from the phones people held, and from candles and flashlights lit in houses or shops.
I could also see flames conjured by magic.
On the side streets leading from Itaewon to Neo Forest, foreign mages appeared from time to time.
They were walking in groups of two or three, illuminating their hands with flames produced by fire magic.
‘Are they mages who came to attend the World Mage Conference?’
But all of them were heading toward Neo Forest. I wondered if they, too, had received word to come to Neo Forest.
Or were they simply going to Neo Forest out of curiosity after seeing the news?
It wasn’t a situation where we needed to compete, but I quickened my pace. I felt as if I had to reach Neo Forest before they did.
That was when we were diligently climbing the hill road.
A sharp scream rang out from an alley in the residential district. Then, like an echo, screams soon burst out from all directions.
“What’s going on?”
I quickly looked around and extended my detection magic.
I was able to find the cause of the screams almost immediately. Rats. Swarms of rats were pouring out from deep inside the alley.
“Ah! What is this? Are those rats? My god! What kind of rats are that big?”
Beside me, Gil spoke in a near scream.
Before I knew it, rats were flowing like waves even onto the side street.
They weren’t ordinary large rats. They were the size of an adult’s thigh. They were definitely not natural rats.
With rats like that swarming around in packs, the surroundings turned into a living hell in an instant.
“Uwaaah! Monster rats!”
“Wh-where are they? Where are the rats?”
“Help me! It’s a huge swarm of rats!”
“Please open the door! Let us inside!”
People who had already been anxious because of the darkness became even more terrified at the appearance of the rat swarm and fled in panic. No, they tried to flee.
They couldn’t walk properly. Whenever they stepped, rats squished underfoot. The squeaking rang in my ears.
The rats weren’t attacking people right away, but the mere fact that so many rats had appeared was threatening enough.
“Where did all these rats suddenly come from?”
Gil asked in an uneasy voice.
“Exactly. From where? Who released this swarm?”
I examined the surroundings with the detection magic I had already spread out, but it wasn’t detecting properly.
I tried to detect whether there was a black magician controlling the rat swarm, but there were far too many disruptive waves interfering.
Every single rat was emitting waves of magical power. They were waves I somehow didn’t like.
I had an ominous feeling that these rats had been manipulated to carry something like a plague.
“These rats seem like test subjects, don’t they? They’re big, but they’re also emitting magical power.”
Gil seemed to have sensed the rats’ magical waves as well and said that.
When I looked back, waves of magical power were spreading out from Gil in concentric circles.
“Gil! Don’t try to absorb their magical power carelessly. They seem like test subjects created by Yasin, but something about them feels wrong. They might be carrying a virus.”
“Yes. I won’t do anything. I was just checking because I wondered if they were test subjects.”
At that moment, sharp screams once again began ringing out from every direction.
“Aaah! Get away!”
“Help me! The rats are attacking!”
“Aaah! It hurts! My leg!”
“Is there a mage here? Please help!”
As if they had received some signal from somewhere, the rats all began attacking people at once. Screams echoed here and there.
The rats beneath our feet were also baring their teeth and rushing in.
I quickly drew up my magical power and shouted to the people.
“I’m a mage! Everyone, get back! Move against the walls!”
I raised fire magic on a large scale. A huge fireball formed at my fingertips.
Fwoosh! Whoomph!
If the rats might be carrying a plague, burning them with fire magic would be the surest method.
The problem was that, with everything pitch-black from the blackout and the ground beneath everyone’s feet full of rats, people couldn’t get away quickly.
So I reduced the size of the fireball a little. If I aimed for a wide-area strike, I could injure people too.
I shot flames first at the rats nearby.
Fwoosh! Whoomph!
Squeak! Squeak! Squeak! Squeak! Squeak! Squeak!
The rats scattered in all directions, letting out shrill screams.
I had to increase the size of the fireball quickly. There were far too many rats.
When I looked around to see if the people had gotten away properly, I noticed flames blazing here and there.
They were the foreign mages I had seen earlier. Like me, they were attacking the rats by shooting flames of fire magic.
The fireballs weren’t all that large. I couldn’t tell whether they were being cautious too, or whether that was the limit of their ability.
Fwoosh! Fwoosh!
Squeak! Squeak! Squeak! Squeak! Squeak! Squeak!
In any case, several mages were each dealing with the swarm of rats around where they stood.
At this level, the area around us was safe for now.
The problem was just how far the rat swarm had spread.
First, I quickly melted the rats around me with fireballs. People had now retreated a good distance away, so I gradually increased the size of the fireballs.
Once the surrounding area quieted down, I extended my detection magic again. This was not something that could be resolved by catching only the rats.
I had to find the black magician who had caused this terror attack.
At that instant, my detection magic picked up an ashen energy.
I turned my head in that direction.