A Survival Guide for a Counselor in the Apocalypse Chapter 67

Chapter 67

 

After regaining consciousness, during the four days I spent in the infirmary, the only people I encountered were Lee Hoin, Shin Yerim, and a few staff members belonging to the infirmary.

There was no reason for patients to meet each other. For one, I couldn’t even get out of bed, and the others were probably busy dealing with their own injuries.

Even the staff were hard to see. There were too many injured constantly pouring in without pause. When I was brought in, the infirmary was nothing short of chaos. There were over a hundred wounded brought in at that time alone. And even after that, the injured kept flooding in without rest.

Those with minor injuries, those with severe injuries, and those with fatal injuries. They were assigned to different areas, but there weren’t enough beds, to the point that I could hear requests for additional capacity echoing through the hallways.

 

—

[Ah, the crusty old fixture of the infirmary makes his appearance! Whether this is a delight or a disaster, I cannot say!]

—

 

Leon Wolf. That old man was standing there now.

Of course, there had been no reason to meet Leon Wolf either. He practically lived in the infirmary due to chronic age-related illness, carrying a heart like a ticking time bomb.

However, his range of movement was extremely limited. He avoided coming into contact with other patients in case of potential infections.

Leon Wolf had a weak body, and even illnesses that others could easily shake off could become fatal for him.

I lowered my head in greeting.

“…Hello.”

“Hello, my ass.”

Leon Wolf stepped inside.

“With this pathetic attempt, when exactly do you think you’ll learn anything? At this rate, it’ll take you ten years just to grasp a single character! You idiot! Do you not know that magic consists of tens of thousands of characters? To learn them all, your short and feeble life won’t be enough!”

Tap, tap.

The old man struck my paper.

“Instead of wasting time on this, recover your body quickly and go beg the mage division. Mages aren’t exactly a sympathetic bunch, but if you grovel desperately long enough, they might open the door for you.”

Open the door? Mages?

‘Knowledge is basically treasure to mages.’

Not all of them, but most mages lived off intellectual vanity. That was true in almost every world.

So flashy and complex wording was a mage’s virtue. It was practically a competition of how elaborately one could describe ‘fire.’ Even if inefficient, the more detailed and ornate it was, the higher the precision.

Compared to just saying “flame,” something like “a majestic, brilliantly blazing sphere capable of easily devouring iron and altering its form, about the size of my palm” was far more detailed and purposeful.

When I fell silent for a moment, Leon raised an eyebrow.

“Well, chances are low anyway. Those fools are too busy worrying about how to make prettier sentences.”

Leon briefly went quiet, staring at my tattered paper. Then he moved mana through the air with his finger, forming the same ‘light’ I had been trying to create… but refined.

“If you can’t grasp it like this, seeing it once is faster, isn’t it? You idiot brat, full of effort but nothing else.”

A small sphere of light hovered in the old man’s hand. It was bright enough to gently illuminate the dim hospital room, where the curtains had been partially drawn.

“This is magic.”

Hearing him say it in a tone like “this is the click,” I tried to absorb the parameters of the ‘light sphere’ he created.

It’s smaller than I thought. About the size of a thumb joint. The light is white with a slight yellow tint. The glow is soft but spreads widely…

The old man, watching me, frowned.

Then… tap.

He flicked my forehead with his finger.

It was a light flick, but his hand was as big as a pot lid, so my head rang instantly.

Reflexively clutching my head, I heard him scoff.

“Magic isn’t something you ‘learn.’ You feel it, you idiot brat. If you try to memorize and input everything one by one, sure, you might succeed eventually. But you’ll only ever create one kind of light. Light has many forms, doesn’t it?”

No, how the hell am I supposed to feel it?

 

—

[That is like telling a newborn who cannot crawl to start running!]

[This is why geniuses are like this…]

[They are practically a different species from birth! No need to try to understand them, let’s just keep doing what we were doing!]

—

 

When I looked at him, unable to find direction, the old man clicked his tongue.

“Can’t you even manage simple reasoning? Feeling is like this.”

A sphere rose above my palm. It had no temperature. Perhaps that was the simplest form of ‘light.’ It told me to produce light, not heat.

Producing both light and heat must be something else entirely.

The light flickered steadily.

Feel it. Feel it…

Even so, I still couldn’t grasp it. How am I supposed to emit this? How do I materialize it?

“Didn’t I tell you not to try to understand? You think too much. Hah… your talent is truly abysmal.”

Another flick struck my forehead.

Pain exploded through my head.

I rubbed my forehead hard. It hurt like hell… but my mind felt blank afterward. Maybe there really is a “before getting hit” and “after getting hit.”

I stared blankly at the light. I kept staring as if trying to dive into it.

But even after a long time…

“They say you shouldn’t teach those whose minds have already hardened. That fits you perfectly. Your brain is too rigid. So rigid that you can only learn this as letters and shapes.”

The old man clicked his tongue.

“You’ve already been trapped by structured ‘learning,’ and that’s the problem. You idiot brat… learning isn’t something standardized. If enlightenment followed a single method, everyone would have achieved it.”

That was true. Learning wasn’t standardized. It wasn’t something you could only gain from a teacher.

 

—

[Even under a great teacher, not everyone can learn.]

[Leon Wolf is trying to make the narrator feel something, but the narrator’s terrible talent is blocking it! Ah, how tragic indeed!]

—

 

…

I had no rebuttal.

I steadied my breathing and stared blankly at the light. But nothing came to mind. Nothing surged up.

The old man clicked his tongue again and withdrew the light.

“That’s enough for today. I don’t want to see your idiotic eyes any longer. Rest, you fool.”

And just like that, he left without hesitation.

Even after Leon Wolf left, I kept trying magic, recalling the light he showed me… but nothing worked. Absolutely nothing.

White was just paper. Black was just drawings. The smudges were just from endlessly erasing.

The next morning, after I had spent the entire night drawing and erasing, the old man burned all my papers.

“You idiot brat, don’t give this fool any more paper or pencils!”

At his shout, Shin Yerim flinched, but seemed to think she should stop me now, and gathered the remaining supplies.

“B-but… th-the pa-patient needs to re-rest…”

“Rest, my ass! Should I show mercy to a fool who can’t even manage his own body?”

“Eek…”

Shin Yerim flinched and hid behind the papers.

“P-please don’t shout…”

Leon Wolf ignored her and smacked my head again.

Thwack!

It was definitely his hand, and he was an old man, but it sounded like I got hit with a wooden hammer. Damn, is this tinnitus?

A dull, splitting pain tore through my head.

“Ah–AAAH!”

Shin Yerim screamed.

“T-the pa-patient–!”

“From ancient times, disobedient fools learn through pain!! Remember this! Every time you act like an idiot, I’ll carve it into that thick skull of yours!”

The old man resumed his lesson. Once again, placing light before me, telling me to “feel it.”

Thwack!

“Didn’t I say don’t think, you damn fool!”

THWACK!

“You think I wouldn’t notice your eyes wandering? I’ve lived several times your lifespan. How dare you try to fool me?”

After that, I kept getting hit. At this point, it felt like a contest… whether his hand would break first, or my head would crack open.

It didn’t take long to realize… my head would lose first.

Fuck.

Someone save me.