—Chungju Lake
It took about two hours after leaving Daejeon to arrive at Chungju Lake.
Nothing happened on the way. We didn’t run into Yasin, nor did there seem to be any other black magicians following us.
While keeping our guard up, we still enjoyed the feeling of traveling, exchanging light conversation along the way.
Gil, in particular, seemed delighted by the scenery of places he was seeing for the first time, and by everything about traveling by car; the smile never left his face.
“Huh? A lake! Is that Chungju Lake over there?”
At last, as the waters of Chungju Lake began to come into view, Gil immediately raised his hand and pointed as he asked.
“Yeah. That’s one of the branches of Chungju Lake. The lake is so large that it winds on and on for quite a distance.”
Just as I said, it was such a vast lake that I had no idea where to begin looking.
Wondering where to park, I drove along the lakeshore for a while before simply stopping the car anywhere that seemed suitable.
After parking, I first activated detection magic and swept the surroundings. I couldn’t sense any particular movement.
“Let’s get out now.”
“Yes!”
Before getting out, I checked Cheon Danbi’s and Gil’s barriers once more. There was no harm in being extra cautious.
As soon as Cheon Danbi and Gil got out of the car, they immediately kept watch in every direction.
They, too, had not forgotten that a battle could break out at any moment from here on.
Even so, it seemed they couldn’t suppress the exclamations that burst out of them like tourists upon seeing the lake.
“Wow! The lake is really huge. The scenery is so beautiful.”
“I told you this lake was amazing, didn’t I? It’s even better if you take a boat and go around it. What you can see right now is only part of the lake.”
Cheon Danbi and Gil stood side by side like close siblings, chatting together.
“Gil, this is your first time here, right? Have you ever seen a lake before?”
“I’ve seen Seokchon Lake in Seoul. But this is the first time in my life I’ve seen a lake this big.”
At Gil’s words, Cheon Danbi and I couldn’t help but smile.
We slowly walked along the edge of the lake.
From a distance, we would have looked like people leisurely enjoying the scenery, but in truth, all three of us were each spreading out our own detection.
Gil, too, now used detection magic naturally, and perhaps because she was in nature, Cheon Danbi was communing even more actively than usual.
“It’s so nice to come somewhere so full of nature for once. There are so many forests around, too, so it feels like my vitality is being replenished on its own. I don’t think there’s any particularly bad energy nearby, though?”
“I feel the same. I don’t think Yasin or any black magicians are close by.”
The two of them reported the results of their detection.
“Right. I don’t sense any suspicious mana fluctuations or ashen energy.”
I agreed as well.
But after walking for a few more minutes like that, the moment we rounded one bend of the lake, all of us stopped in place at the same time.
“There’s something here.”
“Doesn’t the lake seem suspicious? Bad energy is flowing out from inside it.”
“We’ll have to get closer and take a look.”
I left the walking path and carefully went down toward the lakeshore. The closer I got, the more I could feel a strange wave rolling toward me.
At the edge of the lake, where the water lapped gently, something dark could be seen here and there.
Gil and Cheon Danbi followed me down.
“Could there be some bizarre life-form living inside the lake?”
Cheon Danbi gazed far out toward the middle of the lake, narrowing her eyes as she spoke.
Gil seemed to have noticed, just like me, something that had been washed up to the edge of the lake, and followed close behind me.
There was something pitch-black beneath the lapping water.
I plunged my hand into the water, grabbed it at once, and pulled it out.
“Ah! What on earth is that?”
Gil let out a small scream as he asked. At that sound, Cheon Danbi turned around and screamed as well.
“Ack! What is that?”
The two of them instinctively took a step back.
It had such a horrific appearance that anyone who saw it would naturally scream and shudder.
It was pitch-black and viscous like crude oil, slick with grease. Like a catfish boiled thoroughly in a pot, it sagged limply, bits of flesh dripping off.
It was not a living creature. Even though I was holding it, it did not move at all.
But it was undoubtedly the corpse or remains of something that had once been alive.
“Could it be the corpse of a fish or something like that?”
Gil asked with a grimace.
“But isn’t it too big to be a fish? This is a lake, not the sea. I don’t think a fish that large would have been living here.”
As Cheon Danbi said, the thing I had pulled out was quite large. It was about the size of an adult’s upper body.
And it was strange to call it a fish. No matter how much it had died, rotted, and lost its shape, the texture itself did not feel like a fish.
“I don’t think a fish would turn into this after dying. I can feel mana fluctuations from it, too. This seems like the corpse of a bizarre life-form.”
“Right. The texture is far too strange. It’s strange even to call it a bizarre life-form. It feels like the remains of a demonic creature that rotted away before it could fully become one.”
Cheon Danbi’s description was more detailed than my guess that it was the corpse of a bizarre life-form.
She might have been right. It occurred to me that the black magicians might have dumped the failures from their experiments into the lake.
“Now that you mention it, that’s true. If it were the corpse of a fish, we wouldn’t be able to feel mana fluctuations from it. I can feel a weird, prickling wave.”
Gil added.
A prickling wave. A strange mana fluctuation.
Did mana change its wave pattern like this when it rotted? Or had the black magicians damaged the mana during their experiments and made it like this?
Just then, ripples spread widely across the lake, and something was once again washed toward the shore with a gentle lap.
Pitch-black, glossy lumps of flesh, small limp fragments, shapes spreading out thickly.
Things similar to the one in my hand, though not exactly the same, were being washed in.
Still, because of the grease, they did not mix into the water, so the lake’s color did not turn black.
Though the sight of grotesque corpses floating in the clear water made it look even more horrifying.
“There were more of them.”
“Doesn’t it seem like there are a lot inside the lake? Doesn’t it look black over there?”
I looked toward the middle of the lake, where Cheon Danbi was pointing.
Black shadows were reflected beneath the water.
This lake was beautiful only when seen from afar. As expected, there was something wrong with Chungju Lake.
It was not fine. The residents’ stories about a massive pillar of water rising from the lake had not been empty talk.
It was unreasonable to hope that there would be no harm to the lake when a pillar of water caused by a black magician had erupted here.
“I’ll have to go into the lake.”
I set down the thing I had been holding on the lakeshore and took off my shirt.
“You’re going into the water? Will that be all right? What if the lake itself has rotted away? There are so many of these things in it.”
Cheon Danbi said, her eyes wide.
“I have a barrier. I’ll be fine. You two keep watch from here.”
I jumped straight into the water.
I had swum in lakes many times before, so I wasn’t worried. Perhaps because the weather had gotten hotter, jumping into the water felt refreshing.
I slowly swam toward the center of the lake.
Gradually, I began to sense ashen energy. It was different from the faint sensation I had felt from land.
It felt dense enough to sting. It seemed the source emitting the ashen energy was underwater.
As I continued pushing through the water, the sticky ashen energy tried to wrap itself around my body. But of course, it could not pierce my barrier.
‘What kind of bastard is it? A black magician wouldn’t be underwater. It must be a bizarre life-form, right?’
After taking a deep breath, I dove beneath the surface.
Underwater, it was so dark that I could barely see ahead.
It wasn’t because the water was murky, nor because it was dark; the water was clear, and the day was sunny and bright.
It was because the place was filled with black corpses.
‘Just how many are there?’
In the middle of the lake, black, viscous corpses were piled up like a mountain.
They all seemed to be corpses, without question. They were stacked in layers and did not move.
Should I call it fortunate that they were dead, or should I be horrified by the sight of the lakebed piled high with corpses like a mountain?
Had the people living near the lake really not known until now that the lake was in this state?
Then again, thinking back on what Jang Jeyeong had said, it seemed the residents had filed complaints several times.
The ones who had done nothing were the government and the mages. They said they had even come out to investigate and witnessed a pillar of water shooting up, yet they had never once gone into the water?
If they had at least taken a boat out to the middle of the lake, they should have been able to discover the corpses.
‘I’ll have to get rid of them all.’
I was just about to use decomposition magic on the pile of corpses.
Suddenly, a powerful mana fluctuation surged up. The center of the mountain of corpses began to writhe. From there, an unpleasant, stabbing mana wave stretched outward.
‘What? Was there something else inside that?’
For the moment, I swam backward and retreated.
Because I was underwater, I hadn’t spread out magic in several directions as I normally did, so I had failed to detect it in advance.
Before starting an attack, I had to first see what was inside.
The pile of corpses wriggled and squirmed, then gradually collapsed as rotten lumps of flesh loosened and spread in every direction.
The black shapes drifting here and there now felt like living grotesque creatures.
I knocked away the things drifting toward me with my hands and opened my eyes wide.
At that moment, a pillar of water abruptly shot up from the center of the mountain of corpses.
Kwa-kwa-kwa-kwa-kwa-kwa!
Like a volcano erupting, a fierce stream of water surged endlessly toward the surface. The corpses that had formed the mountain scattered in every direction as if exploding.
The mana fluctuation was so powerful that for an instant, my body was swept backward.
I endured it and stared straight at the stream of water.
At first glance, it looked like an ordinary stream of water shooting upward, but upon closer inspection, there was a transparent core running through its center.
That core was stretching upward, creating the pillar of water.
Because of the fierce energy, it was extended straight, but the core was not entirely rigid.
It was a long, soft-bodied life-form. No, I should call it a bizarre life-form. Though it was different in that it was transparent, it looked similar to the tentacled monster I had encountered at Seolleung Station.
‘Did they release a tentacled monster into the lake? Or were they creating tentacled monsters here from the very beginning?’
From the side of the transparent pillar, which had only been stretching upward, a tentacle suddenly extended. It was a transparent body cutting through the clear water, but I could see it plainly.
The tentacle seemed to have become curious about me.
Unfortunately, it was at that very moment that I began to run out of breath. I had been underwater for too long. As a human, I had no choice but to need air.
The upper part of the tentacle was already outside the water. Fighting on the surface should be more than enough.
I swam a little farther back, then surged up toward the surface. Then I heard Gil and Cheon Danbi’s voices, calling out to me desperately.
“Mage-nim!”
“Mage-nim! Oudin!”