[[⚠️WARNING: NSFW⚠️]]
Chapter 65
Baek Seol-hwa wasn’t born with this disability from the beginning.
It was merely unfortunate luck; before the apocalypse, she had sturdy legs, a somewhat pretty face, and intact eyes.
As an ordinary 8th grader, she was going through the turbulence of adolescence, like anyone else.
If there hadn’t been an apocalypse, Baek Seol-hwa would have passed through her adolescent storm, perhaps feeling embarrassed about it later, and graduated middle school as an ordinary girl.
But, as everyone knows, an apocalypse swept across the world.
There was no safe place anywhere, and a world emerged where survival of the fittest became the norm.
In such a world, for an ordinary girl to survive, she had to awaken as an Awakened.
Luckily, Baek Seol-hwa was one of the early Awakened in the apocalypse.
But to achieve that awakening, she lost many things.
“Seol-hwa! Please, you’re the only one who has to survive!”
You could say she just had terrible luck.
Baek Seol-hwa and her family realized the apocalypse had begun while they were all on their way to work and school, and unfortunately, they became trapped among zombies swarming the streets of Pohang.
Seol-hwa’s parents, surrounded by zombies, desperately tried to save their beloved daughter, but ultimately, they were consumed by the overwhelming numbers.
However, to the very end, they channeled their parental love into protecting their daughter, guiding Seol-hwa to a safer place.
“Die!”
【 You have Awakened. 】
Seol-hwa, who managed to escape to a safe place, succeeded in slaying a nearly dead zombie that her parents had weakened with all their might.
Her legs broken, arms twisted in unnatural angles, Seol-hwa succeeded in smashing the zombie’s skull with a wooden stick lying nearby.
With that, Seol-hwa became an Awakened.
【 Name: Baek Seol-hwa 】
【 Species: Human 】 【 Gender: Female 】 【 Age: 14 】 【 Alignment: Lawful Neutral 】
【 Level: 1 】
【 Traits: None 】
【 Class: None 】
【 Strength: 11 】 【 Vitality: 12 】 【 Agility: 17 】【 Wisdom: 18 】【 Magic: 17 】 【 Luck: 12 】
【 Skills: Magic <Temperature> (Low Rank) 】
Through her awakening, she gained a unique magic ability.
Unlike most mages who wield various elemental spells, she became a specialized mage with a unique type of magic.
The magic Baek Seol-hwa acquired was Temperature.
“Flame!”
Temperature.
It’s a concept commonly associated with hot and cold levels.
With this magic, Seol-hwa could sense or detect the internal temperature of nearby living beings and adjust the surrounding temperature.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t remotely control the internal temperature of living beings to burn them from within, so that strategy was unavailable to her.
However, she could rapidly raise the ambient temperature, scatter her magic as fuel, and use it as a trigger to cause a sudden explosion in the air.
“Impressive, Seol-hwa!”
“Hehe!”
Yes, a massive explosion.
The flame of Seol-hwa’s magic was genuinely powerful.
Whenever she cast magic, the area where it was applied would see a sudden rise in temperature, leading to an unexpected explosion.
The flames born from the explosion held intense heat, enough to instantly melt or reduce a zombie to ashes.
Her ability was perfectly suited for mass extermination.
Moreover, the magic cost was minimal since she only needed heat and a bit of fuel from her magic to initiate the explosion, making her skill exceptionally efficient for slaughter.
Initially, using this power actively, Seol-hwa decimated hordes of zombies, and her overwhelming might drew many people to follow her.
“Is everyone okay?!”
“We’re fine, Baek Seol-hwa!”
Seol-hwa, with her followers, managed to establish her own camp at Pohang Airport, where countless survivors began relying on the young girl as their leader.
‘This is my duty! I’m the one who survived after losing my parents; this is my responsibility!’
And when she saw that people depended on her, Seol-hwa felt it was her fate to fulfill her duty as the one who survived after awakening from tragedy.
At such a young and sensitive age, she had gained immense power, and people sought refuge in her.
If a teenage girl didn’t feel a sense of destiny in such a situation, one might consider Seol-hwa to be oddly lacking in emotion.
Yes, Seol-hwa believed it was her duty to save those who depended on her.
A form of PTSD—specifically, survivor’s guilt for having lived while her parents had not—had driven her to embody the heroic figure that people expected.
Choi Yuna acted similarly, relentlessly helping others at her own expense before meeting Bahamut, so PTSD might be the most common psychological ailment in this apocalyptic world.
“Let’s retake Pohang, starting with the airport and saving survivors!”
But Seol-hwa, ignoring her distorted feelings, continued to rescue survivors around Pohang Airport with a confident front, forming alliances with those she saved.
Her zombie-slaying prowess quickly made her name known throughout Pohang, leading to an ever-growing following.
Yet, a question could arise here.
If her power relied on raising the ambient temperature to ignite explosions and flames, would she be powerless in the rain when the temperature couldn’t rise?
Indeed, there was serious discussion about the limitations of Seol-hwa’s power within the Pohang community, with some starting to analyze her weaknesses.
Among them were raiders, who had appeared sporadically in Gyeongju and were now emerging in Pohang as well.
“Damn it. Just a kid with good luck and a fancy ability.”
Their envy of her power and fame was plain to see.
It was nothing but petty jealousy.
But the raiders believed they had a good chance of capturing Seol-hwa.
Their logic was that since her powers depended on raising temperatures and adding magic as fuel for explosions, heavy rain that lowered temperatures would weaken her mass-killing abilities.
So, they waited for heavy rain in Pohang and attacked her camp once the rain began.
“Wh-what is this?!”
“Ice?!”
Although Seol-hwa’s magic was indeed based on manipulating temperature,
Temperature doesn’t only mean heat, does it?
Cold is also a form of temperature, and Seol-hwa could control it too.
The explosions and flames her magic created were merely secondary effects, not her primary skill.
It must have felt like the sky was falling for the marauder, who thought explosions and flames were all there was to magic.
“Heh. Looks like you’re the infamous marauder I’ve been hearing about.”
The one who bound the marauder was none other than the ruthless ice.
By sharply lowering the surrounding temperature and condensing the moisture in the air, she could create ice through her magic.
Naturally, this surrounding air meant the air around the marauder, which Baek Seol-hwa could manipulate to either give the marauder frostbite or fully encase him in ice.
“R-Run away!”
“I won’t let you!”
And she could even gather ice into a spear and launch it.
It was a versatile ability that could be used in any situation, and Baek Seol-hwa had proven her leadership over Pohang Airport with this single power alone.
Though she still had shortcomings in politics and other areas, this overwhelming strength made many people admire and follow her.
If we were to discuss her further, Baek Seol-hwa would be regarded as the strongest awakened one symbolizing Pohang, with an influence comparable to that of the Pohang Three Camps.
However, when the Balhut Cult entered Pohang, her name was scarcely mentioned, and her presence was almost entirely absent.
Only through Son Sang-hui was it known what ultimately happened to Baek Seol-hwa’s camp at Pohang Airport, and it was understood that her camp had been annihilated before she could establish a large-scale camp centered around Pohang Airport like the Pohang Three Camps.
In reality, it wasn’t much different from what Son Sang-hui had described.
“W-What is that!?”
By sheer bad luck, Baek Seol-hwa became the first person to encounter the newly mutated zombie spider in Pohang.
Who could have predicted that on the day she went out to discuss forming an alliance with other small and medium-sized camps to establish a large camp, she would encounter a new type of mutated zombie?
Above all, the mutated zombie spider was critically incompatible with Baek Seol-hwa’s abilities.
“Flames and explosions don’t work!”
Not only was the mutated zombie spider resistant to heat, but the webs it used were also extremely heat-resistant.
Even when she unleashed flames and explosions, the firepower she could muster wasn’t enough to burn them, and its tough exoskeleton remained unscathed.
Though it had evolved as Baek Seol-hwa’s hard counter, she still lived up to her reputation as the strongest awakened one in Pohang. After realizing flames weren’t effective, she immediately switched to attacking with cold.
“Aah! Aaaaaaahhh!”
“Baek Seol-hwa!”
But her luck was truly abysmal.
Unlike the Balhut Cult, which had obtained prior knowledge of the mutated zombie spider’s venom through Son Sang-hui, their local collaborator, Baek Seol-hwa was facing it for the first time without any prior information.
This difference in information sealed Baek Seol-hwa’s fate.
“It hurts. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, aaaaaahhh!!!”
Despite her attempts to avoid it, the spider’s venom struck Baek Seol-hwa’s face, and she experienced her skin melting away in real time due to its intense acidity.
The unbearable pain coursed through her entire body, and young Baek Seol-hwa had no endurance to withstand it.
After all, her face and eyes were melting without any anesthetic. There was no way she could endure it with a clear mind.
“Guh… Ugh… A-ack.”
The venom even reached her vocal cords, rendering her speechless, and her eyes melted away, robbing her of sight.
She could no longer see anything.
No sound came out of her throat.
The intense pain engulfed her entire body, driving Baek Seol-hwa’s mind to the brink.
“Kihehehk.”
And, of course, the mutated zombie spider didn’t miss its chance to strike while Baek Seol-hwa writhed in pain.
It grabbed both her legs and began slamming her into the ground, shattering her spine with every impact.
Ironically, this pain ignited her survival instincts, triggering a rush of adrenaline.
Gaining a surge of concentration and pain tolerance, Baek Seol-hwa, despite her ghastly appearance, used all her remaining magic to aim precisely at the mutated zombie spider, unleashing a massive ice spear.
It seemed she had encountered a relatively early-stage mutated zombie spider, as its thick armor, which could withstand small explosions and ice spears, was finally crushed under the immense weight of her large ice spear.
“B-Baek Seol-hwa!”
“S-Sa… Sa-ack.”
However, the cost of defeating the mutated zombie spider was far too great.
Baek Seol-hwa, who had been the stabilizing force of Pohang Airport, fell into a state of utter incapacitation. With more mutated zombie spiders on the prowl, Pohang Airport’s forces couldn’t defend against them without her.
Losing their leader, Baek Seol-hwa, the forces at Pohang Airport fell into chaos. Although they tried to regroup and elect a new leader to establish a large camp, the mutated zombie spiders attacked before they could.
With the relentless assault by the mutated zombie spiders, Pohang Airport, now without Baek Seol-hwa, couldn’t hold its ground and was ultimately taken over and scattered.
The only silver lining was…
“Explosion in the front!”
“…! ……!”
Incredibly, even amid the disaster, Baek Seol-hwa managed to survive.
Her face and eyes had melted, her vocal cords were destroyed, her spine was shattered, and she’d been repeatedly slammed into the ground by the mutated zombie spider.
If she were an ordinary person, she would have died from shock or succumbed to her injuries long ago. Yet, whether by good or bad luck, Baek Seol-hwa’s awakened vitality kept her alive.
Or rather, she was forced to survive.
“Wow, we’re so lucky that Baek Seol-hwa has become our magic staff! Isn’t this just perfect?”
“Haha. We’re fortunate to have secured Baek Seol-hwa amid all this chaos.”
“……”
Perhaps a peaceful death would have been a blessing for Baek Seol-hwa.
She could barely eat, move, or express herself without relying on others.
She was always shrouded in darkness, left alone in that abyss.
In this darkness, her other senses sharpened, and since she couldn’t see, her hearing developed, becoming her only means of understanding her surroundings.
But Baek Seol-hwa’s ears only brought her despair.
“Yeah, if we make good use of this staff, we could become the representatives of Pohang Airport, right?”
“Good idea!”
The survivors who had rescued Baek Seol-hwa did not treat her as a person.
To them, she was a tool—specifically, a magic staff that could unleash powerful firepower.
They openly demeaned her, lowering her self-esteem, and constantly reminded her that without them, she couldn’t survive in this apocalypse.
This method proved surprisingly effective.
“……”
Just days ago, Baek Seol-hwa had been the leader of a survivor camp. Now, she was treated as a magic staff overnight.
The once lofty pride of the young Baek Seol-hwa was utterly shattered, and she realized she wasn’t the hero or protagonist of some story but merely a clown.
Her self-esteem plummeted, and she ultimately resigned herself to the life of a magic staff as the survivors desired.
Yes, the role of a story’s protagonist didn’t suit her.
Young Baek Seol-hwa painfully came to understand the cruelty of the world.
—
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