-Rat Swarms and Zombies
“Oudin!”
Loki called out to me.
That was right. Loki again. The last time I had met him was at the scene of the tentacle monster terror attack, and now here he was once more.
He only appeared where there were dark mage terror attacks, and wherever I sensed that ashen energy, he was there without fail.
I had sensed a faint ashen energy even in the magical waves the rats emitted. Since they were probably test-subject rats manipulated by a dark mage, I had thought that was only natural.
The problem was why Loki himself was steeped in such dense ashen energy.
“So you were here too? Were you on your way to Neo Forest?”
Loki said as he approached me.
It was a blackout, but the flames the mages had conjured made the surroundings bright enough to recognize faces.
Even though my expression, lit by the firelight, must have been rigid, he treated me with a friendly tone and expression.
Loki was with another blond foreign mage. Both of them had flames burning at their fingertips.
“Yeah. What about you?”
I answered briefly.
What was I supposed to do with him? If Loki was scheming something together with a dark mage, I had to stop him.
But for the moment, I had no clear evidence, and he did not seem likely to answer even if I pressed him.
“I was on my way there too. But what the hell is all this? A blackout, and now swarms of rats. Is Korea’s system falling apart now too? What a mess.”
“Since a dark mage has appeared in Korea, all sorts of incidents are happening.”
“Incidents? Are you saying this is a dark mage’s terror attack? From what I can see, it just looks like the rats got oversized. Maybe there’s a problem with Seoul’s underground ecosystem? Cities have their own ecosystems underground, you know. Something probably happened down there.”
Loki was not only playing dumb about the monster rat swarm, he was saying something bizarre.
“What are you talking about? You’re saying the appearance of a swarm of monster rats isn’t a dark mage’s terror attack?”
“You can’t necessarily see everything as a dark mage’s terror attack. Biological mutations happen naturally often enough. Of course, it would mean something changed in the natural environment. Korea has dwarves who like the underground world, doesn’t it?”
“Dwarves? What on earth are you talking about? Ashen energy is being detected from the rats. That’s proof this is an incident caused by a dark mage. Are you saying you didn’t sense the rats’ magical waves?”
I deliberately brought up the ashen energy. I was letting him know that I was watching him, while also probing him.
But Loki slipped away as calmly as an eel.
“Really? I was busy dealing with the rat swarm, so I didn’t do any separate detection. That’s Oudin for you. You attacked the rat swarm with fire and even detected that? If you say so, then maybe it is something a dark mage did. So did you find any traces of the dark mage?”
As he said that, Loki casually turned his gaze toward Gil beside me.
This time, Loki said nothing even after seeing Gil, but for some reason, his gaze alone made me feel unpleasant.
Gil was staring off into the distance with a somewhat blank expression. He did not seem to be paying attention to Loki and me talking.
“I didn’t find any traces of the dark mage. It doesn’t look like they left behind traces of a magic circuit.”
This time, I had not found traces of the magic circuit in the shape of the infinite pentagon.
It could not simply be blamed on the disruptive waves emitted by the rats. No matter how many disruptive waves there were, if the infinite pentagon shape had remained, there was no way I would have missed it.
It was possible the one who caused this terror attack was not Yasin.
“But the ashen energy itself is clear. Especially when you came close just now, it became very distinct.”
I spoke more directly at Loki. I wanted to see how he would react.
But then Gil shouted.
“Mage! Another swarm of rats is coming over there!”
Loki, I, and the blond mage beside Loki had no choice but to stop talking at once and look where Gil was pointing.
Even in the darkness, it was clearly visible. More than by what I could see with my eyes, I could feel it through the motion flowing toward us like a wave.
The swarm of rats was coming again. They seemed to be pouring in from every direction.
Even though we had killed all the rats nearby, their numbers looked as if they had not decreased at all.
They came surging in, black and writhing.
“Whoa! The rats are coming again? Let’s continue our conversation later and deal with those rats first!”
After saying that, Loki raised flames at his fingertips and ran toward the rat swarm. The blond mage followed after him.
They quickly vanished into the darkness, as if deliberately trying to put distance between themselves and me.
I stood where I was and cast fire magic. At the same time, I looked back at Gil standing beside me.
I could see concentric circles of magical waves spreading out from Gil.
“Gil, what are you doing? You’re not trying to absorb the rats’ mana, are you?”
Worried that Gil might be trying to save the rats and absorb their mana like he had with the tentacle monster last time, I asked.
“No. I don’t want to absorb the test-subject rats’ mana either.”
“Then why are you sending out magical waves?”
“I’m calling the zombies.”
“What? The zombies?”
While we exchanged those brief words, the rat swarm had already reached our feet.
“Stay right beside me!”
I greatly enlarged the fireball. Then I spun around once, stretched out my hand, and swung the flames.
I did not stop there, but continued pouring in mana. A ring of fire formed according to my movements.
Fwoosh! Fwoosh! Whoom!
The ring of fire spread wide outward, pushing the rat swarm back and burning the remaining rats on the spot.
Squeak! Squeak! Squeak! Squeak! Squeak! Squeak!
The rats let out shrill screams and fled outward.
But because rats continued to surge in from behind, they collided with one another, tangled together, piled up, and became fuel for the flames.
Fwoosh! Fwoosh! Fwoosh!
As the ring of fire unfolded in all directions, the rat swarm around us was annihilated. I was just about to move toward the direction the rats had fled.
“They’re here! The zombies are here. Mage, look over there!”
Gil jumped up and down as he shouted joyfully.
I looked in the direction the child’s gaze was fixed. A group writhing up from the bottom of the hill caught my eye.
They were zombies.
There were not just one or two. There seemed to be as many of them as there were rats. It was an endless procession of zombies, enough to make me wonder where so many had gathered from.
“You called all of them?”
“Yes. I called them. I conveyed my will through magical waves. I only asked the zombies nearby to come if they could, but wow! So many really came, didn’t they?”
Gil answered with a bright expression.
I was surprised. To think he would use magical waves to communicate with zombies. It was not a method ordinary mages would easily come up with.
It was magic akin to telepathy, but that belonged to a high level of mental magic, so there were not many mages who knew how to use it.
Moreover, it was not communication with a single individual, but communication sent to countless individuals...
Of course, this was possible because Gil was a mage who used unique concentric circles of magical waves.
“That’s amazing.”
“The zombies will suck the life force out of the rats. Let’s leave this place to the zombies and go to Neo Forest now.”
There were enough zombies that doing so seemed more than sufficient.
The zombies circled around the flames and headed toward the rats. Their steps were slow and staggering, but that was not a problem.
Chased by the ring of fire and pushed by their own kind surging in from behind, the rats could not escape anywhere.
Squeak! Squeak! Squeak! Scree! Scree! Scree!
The zombies pounced on the rats. The monster rats’ shrieks rang out sharply.
“Let’s go now. You don’t need to worry about the zombies. Even if the rats are carrying a plague, it won’t be able to infect the zombies.”
He was probably saying that with the zombies’ mysterious regenerative ability in mind.
To be honest, I had not even thought to worry about the zombies, but then something occurred to me and I said,
“But zombies got infected by a virus before. If it’s a plague caused by dark magic, maybe it could spread to zombies too.”
“Ah! I didn’t think of that.”
Worry suddenly fell over Gil’s face.
I felt like I had said something unnecessary.
“No. It’ll be fine. Let’s go.”
I gently pulled Gil along.
Gil seemed to hesitate over whether to send out his concentric circles of magical waves again and tell the zombies to avoid them, but he soon took a step and said,
“It’ll be fine. Look over there. They’re perfectly all right.”
In the darkness, the zombies were moving soundlessly. There were no signs of them turning strange like the virus-infected zombies.
They were merely staying true to their purpose, pouncing on the rats and sucking out their life force.
We hurried toward Neo Forest.
Once we left the battlefield where flames flew wildly, there was pitch-black darkness again. It was still a world of blackout.
Even as we followed the back streets, rats continued to appear. I dealt with the ones that came close with fire and pressed forward.
Zombies kept appearing from somewhere as well, chasing down the rats and pouncing on them.
It struck me anew that this many zombies had been living in Seoul.
There was no way all these zombies knew Gil, yet they dealt with the rats as Gil had asked.
Perhaps the zombies were contacting one another and moving as one body.
“The rat swarm is endless. Just how far did they spread them?”
“Surely not throughout all of Seoul, right?”
“Maybe they did. The power outage seems to have happened throughout all of Seoul too.”
We were climbing Namsan. In the distance, the city of Seoul spread out below us.
All of Seoul was dark.
If the rat swarm had also spread throughout all of Seoul, then I was both amazed and disgusted at where and how they had produced so many test subjects.
‘Could it be Yasin?’
But there had been no traces of the infinite pentagon magic circuit left at the scene.
That did not necessarily mean it was not him, but for some reason, I felt that the rat swarm was not Yasin’s doing.
Rather than releasing a swarm of rats, Yasin seemed more likely to have directly carried out the explosion at Neo Forest. That was not something just anyone could do.
After the explosion failed and Yasin disappeared, could he really have released the rat swarm immediately afterward? The timing did not seem right.
There had to be a subordinate. Yasin surely was not doing everything by himself.
‘Could it be Loki? Did Loki really join hands with a dark mage?’
I did not want to believe it, but the circumstances were suspicious enough.
But why would Loki join hands with a dark mage? That much I could not understand.
“Not enough with the rat swarm, now zombies too? What kind of chaos is all this? Are those things waging war against each other?”
“In any case, the zombies are taking care of the rat swarm for us. Makes things easier, I guess.”
“But were there always this many zombies in Seoul?”
“It’s a unique country. Korea gave zombies citizenship, after all.”
I heard voices talking somewhere and turned to look. Mages with flames burning in their hands were approaching.
Judging by what they were saying, they seemed to be foreign mages.
Before we knew it, we had reached the boundary of Neo Forest. I could see far more police officers than usual standing guard.
“Let’s go to the herb shop through that alley.”
I said quietly to Gil.
I wanted to avoid both the police standing guard and the foreign mages wandering around like onlookers.
First, I would take Gil to the herb shop, then go to Neo Forest and grasp the situation.