[Translator – Aren]
A short while later.
Naturally, the driver who’d suddenly puked all over his own seat came back to complain.
All while his car was still parked in the middle of the road.
But I had Magic Crash Course on my side.
"Hey, you fucking bastard.”
"Take a look at this.”
"The hell I will!”
The moment I snapped the booklet open and shoved it toward him, the driver squeezed his eyes shut and swung a fist at me.
But what are human eyes for if not to see attacks coming and dodge them?"Quit shoving that fucking thing in my face and fight properly, you asshole!”
"Sure."
The moment he closed his eyes himself, there was no reason to hold back anymore.
I immediately started beating him evenly like tenderized meat with the rifle butt.
"You piece of shit. I’m already miserable enough getting dragged back into uniform in my 8th year as a reservist, and you’re gonna throw a tantrum at me?”
"A-agh! I’m gonna die! I’m dying! This psycho soldier’s trying to kill me!”
"You know what a mobilization order is? You’re built pretty solid, actually. Quite tough as well. Perfect material for a soldier. Come on, you're getting drafted too. I’ll break your legs, slap shackles on your ankles, and make you haul sandbags around. Congratulations, I’m your military manpower administration now.”
"Urgh! Argh!”
Every time the bastard tried opening his eyes, I flashed the Magic Crash Course at him again. The moment he shut them, I went right back to swinging the rifle butt hard enough to nearly split his head open.
At some point, maybe because it reminded me of learning to play the janggu drum back in elementary school, I unconsciously started swaying to a rhythm while beating him senseless. Then suddenly, someone grabbed my arm.
It was Kang Daniel desperately trying to restrain me.
"Baek Jemin-ssi! You absolute maniac! You can’t beat civilians like that!”
"Huff…Huff…”
Still, Kang Daniel was right.
Whether I liked it or not, I was now a soldier defending liberal democracy. I couldn’t just go around using violence against civilians. A soldier had responsibility after all.
Carefully shaking Kang Daniel off, I turned back toward the driver in a calmer mood.
Having deeply engraved the spirit of the Republic of Korea Armed Forces into my heart, I somehow managed to compose myself and politely bow my head.
"I apologize."
"You…little…I’m suing you. Got it? I’m seriously suing you.”
The moment I heard that, I understood.
True sincerity was expressed through actions.
So I swung the rifle butt downward and smashed the bumper of his car.
-Bang!
"Y-you…”
"Feel free to sue me. You’ll be walking to the courthouse though.”
"You fucking psycho!”
The moment he glared at me again, I reopened the Magic Crash Course. Unable to dodge it in time, the driver instantly bent over and started vomiting again.
"Bleeeeargh…”
While the driver retched violently, the squad members behind me stared at me like they were looking at a lunatic, and nearby civilians whispered among themselves in alarm. Meanwhile, I calmly opened the Magic Crash Course again and examined it more closely.
These mysterious symbols.
This thing Lieutenant Shin Hangi called magic.
I needed to learn it. Somehow, by any means.
If simply showing the symbols could make life this convenient by inducing vomiting, then what would happen if I gained actual power from them?
Forget exemption from overnight watch duty.
"I should ask forspam next."
"What?"
Ignoring Kang Daniel, the poor man who was still unable to grasp the true potential hidden within this terrifying power, I found myself consumed by a thirst for knowledge for the first time in 28 years.
* * *
And then, unfairly yet understandably, I ended up getting dragged away by military police with both arms pinned.
"Reservist Baek Jemin-ssi. You’re being charged with assault and property damage.”
Life really was funny.
I could barely remember the last time I’d linked arms with a woman, yet somehow I now found myself sandwiched between two hulking, sweaty guys getting hauled around like a criminal.
Contrary to my expectations, however, I wasn’t locked up or thrown into detention or whisked away to some interrogation room. Instead, I was sent right back to the consultation room where Lieutenant Shin Hangi waited.
The moment we sat down across from each other again, the first thing I heard was his exhausted sigh.
"Baek Jemin-ssi. That booklet was not given to you for that purpose.”
"Then are you confiscating it?”
"..."
Conflict was written all over Lieutenant Shin Hangi’s face.
Apparently people unaffected by the symbols weren’t uncommon, but they weren’t plentiful either. And judging by the lingering attachment in his eyes, the military clearly considered this so-called magic something extremely useful or containing great potential if they were still reluctant to give up on someone like me despite everything.
After wrestling with himself for a long moment, Lieutenant Shin Hangi finally proposed a compromise.
"You’ll lose the exemption from overnight guard duty. In exchange, we’ll pretend the assault incident never happened. The other party also bears responsibility for attempting to force his way through during an active mobilization order. We’ll simply state that we intend to handle disciplinary actions internally and quietly bury this matter.”
A truly veteran officer-like judgment from a man who clearly understood the secret to maintaining a spotless internal accident record.
That said, I was officially labeled a problematic individual and placed into isolated confinement.
Though confinement really just meant being stuffed into a storage room and quietly told to study the Magic Crash Course by myself.
Just like that, I’d been removed from road security duty and shoved into the community center storage room instead.
Sitting there with the military police guarding the door outside led me to think about many things.
Being spared from labor and routine duties so I could study the Magic Crash Course booklet wasn’t punishment but practically a privilege.
Kang Daniel and the rest of the squad were probably cursing me behind my back, convinced I’d intentionally acted insane just to get exempted from work. And to be honest, if I claimed that thought hadn’t crossed my mind even a little, I’d be lying. Still, there was another major difference between me and everyone else who still hadn’t grasped the severity of the situation.
Localized invasive structural alteration phenomena. Magic existed.
And these symbols tied to magic had only ever been discovered inside the fog-covered restricted zones. In other words, the fog in Seoul and whatever unrest was happening there were anything but ordinary.
Especially considering how Lieutenant Shin Hangi acted.
He’d explained the magic itself, yet deliberately avoided saying what exactly happened inside Seoul. That alone strongly implied the threat lurking there wasn’t remotely normal.
In a situation like this, carefully experimenting with how these symbols affected people was essential.
How much exposure triggered the psychological backlash, Lieutenant Shin Hangi mentioned? How much exposure was actually effective? Did the effect only work through visual recognition?
The experiment I’d conducted on the violent driver had yielded surprisingly valuable results.
It helped me understand the gaps in the military’s explanation or perhaps the details they intentionally hadn’t shared.
1. The symbols only produced effects when physically seen and fully recognized by the target. If someone closed their eyes or was too far away to properly perceive their shape, it didn’t seem to trigger dizziness, headaches, or vomiting. At the very least, random pedestrians passing by hadn’t all started puking simultaneously.
2. Before revealing this classified information, Lieutenant Shin Hangi asked all sorts of personal questions about religion, faith, and spiritual experiences. Which meant the government, or at least the military, considered these symbols to be something spiritual in nature. And because metaphysical subjects could easily become distorted depending on individual interpretation, recklessly attempting to interpret them carried significant risks.
The Bible itself was proof enough of that.
Just look at the countless branches of Christianity in the world. Entire histories had been shaped by people arguing over how to interpret single verses and calling each other heretics over it. If people started arbitrarily interpreting these bizarre symbols, there was a high chance the original meaning would be lost entirely.
3. Despite that, Lieutenant Shin Hangi never once doubted the effectiveness of magic. At minimum, the military had already confirmed that these symbols could produce magical effects, and after realizing their usefulness, they were actively trying to increase the number of users or contact anyone capable of understanding them.
Of course, the alternative explanation was that the entire military had collectively gone insane. Honestly, that possibility felt surprisingly plausible as well. The problem was that the world itself also seemed to be losing its mind.
That raised another question.
Even if one’s interpretation differed from the symbol’s original meaning, would the resulting effect change according to one’s own understanding of it? If so, what determined the power or limitations of the effects? And wouldn’t the side effects become even more dangerous?
I flipped past the first symbol, the one I had nicknamed squangle, and examined several of the others.
The moment I did, a wave of dizziness surged through me for the first time. My vision spun violently.
"Ugh."
I forced down the rising nausea and quickly flipped back to the squangle page. The instant I looked at it again, the nausea disappeared.
The dizziness was completely gone as well.
And I had been so focused on the squangle that I hadn’t even bothered to examine any other symbols more closely….
I slowly swallowed the sour saliva filling my mouth while absentmindedly tapping the Magic Crash Course booklet with my finger.
This…
"Is this because I haven't reached some sort of spiritual realm yet? Or is it a matter of compatibility?”
For now, or perhaps forever, it seemed like none of the symbols besides the squangle suited me.
Which meant understanding the squangle came first.
The problem was that the interpretations written beside it were completely incoherent.
Restoration, Severance, Despair, Growth, Forest, Scream, Spearpoint…
I rubbed my temples and frowned deeply while struggling through the possibilities.
Then suddenly, after endlessly comparing the symbol and its interpretation, realization struck me.
Maybe the symbol didn’t contain a meaning at all.
"Reservist Baek Jemin. The road security squad has requested additional manpower.”
-Clunk!
The military police opened the storage room door and stared at me coldly.
But honestly, I was just as irritated.
"No, seriously, Officer. No. Ah…No!”
"Come out.”
"Haah..."
Now I finally understood why martial arts masters in wuxia novels always had guardians protecting them while they trained in seclusion or pursued enlightenment.
Stuffing Magic Crash Course into my inner pocket, I followed the military police out of the storage room.
Looking outside, it was already pitch dark. The only lights left were the streetlamps and the headlights of cars rushing home in a panic.
Judging by the timing, it wasn’t the first watch shift or the last one either.
Had I really been that absorbed? After focusing so intensely, I’d been right on the verge of discovering something, but then those ignorant military policemen had to interrupt me.
"You people are making a huge mistake right now."
The military policemen didn’t even bother responding.
* * *
The person assigned to stand watch with me at the town intersection was the friendly-looking squad member who’d helped deal with that driver earlier.
His name was Han Myungwoon, a man blessed with smooth skin and an easygoing face. The moment he saw me, he frowned slightly before quickly laughing instead.
"Well. I have to admit what you did was pretty satisfying.”
"What?"
"You did what everybody else was thinking about doing. That felt good to watch. Most people can’t actually act on it because they worry about consequences.”
"Ah, right..."
"Still, good thing it won’t happen again this time.”
And so Han Myungwoon and I stood guard together while lazily yawning.
It was just past midnight, an absolutely miserable hour, but maybe because I’d lost the opportunity for enlightenment earlier, I remained strangely alert despite yawning nonstop.
Meanwhile, Han Myungwoon had already leaned back against a pile of sandbags and started fiddling with his phone.
That was when overlapping footsteps echoed through the ominously quiet town.
Bored out of our minds, both of us naturally turned toward the sound.
"Mmgh... Ngh..."
A man in a slightly rumpled suit, completely worn down by the grind of life, was passionately kissing a fit-looking woman while pulling her tightly against him. The two were pressed up against the alleyway wall so their faces stayed hidden from view.
Han Myungwoon snorted softly at the sight.
"Well. Look what we have here. They’re really going at it. Looks like there’s quite the age gap between them as well.”
"Haha...."
But without realizing it, my lips had begun to tremble slightly.
It was 12:24 AM.
"It’s getting cold."
"Well, yeah. It’s still winter."
While Han Myungwoon casually replied, my eyes weren’t focused on the couple anymore. They were fixed on the road instead…
On the faint fog slowly beginning to spread across it.