Hiding a House in the Apocalypse - Chapter 223
Only Krnovel
95. Signs (5)
Each military commander’s combat power assessment of monsters varies greatly.
Commanders who worked in front of the kill zone would have experienced the endless number of monsters and their incredible fighting power, but they would not think of them as unkillable.
Although not as well-defended as the Killzone, a well-defended ceasefire line-like fortified area where a monster or two occasionally appear will be considered by a commander to be a small to medium-sized threat that can be dealt with without much difficulty, although it is still a bit of a hassle.
The experiences of most military commanders who defended the Korean Peninsula converge on these two cases.
In countries like China where the entire country has been eroded and commanders are forced to literally fight in the field against hordes of monsters without a front line, they come to know firsthand why monsters are the natural enemy of humanity.
Each and every one of them is a superior version of a human combat unit, has the ability to neutralize most human weapons, and above all, humans can do nothing but suffer in the face of this infinite number of enemies that simultaneously attack both the front and the rear.
Kim Byeong-cheol’s insistence on defending the National Assembly building was likely largely due to his narrow-minded experience in fighting monsters.
They have no experience in large-scale field battles with monsters.
They may have had the opportunity to do so, but they quickly abandoned the front line, citing the imbalance in supplies between Seoul and the front line as an issue, and converted the Gangwon-do and Gyeonggi-do areas into comfortable fortresses and rear cities just for themselves.
Now time has passed and they too have something to protect.
“There are already a lot of monsters lurking in the southeastern part of Seoul. I don’t think securing just one observation post will be enough to stop them all.”
My plan went all the way up to headquarters.
It seems that the “monster specialists” at headquarters are reviewing my plans.
Kim Da-ram’s report is also said to have come out after going through the opinions of that expert advisor.
“The idea is to cut off the follow-up troops. Those who have already entered must be dealt with by the Legion’s forces.”
“Wasn’t that a strategy to conserve power?”
“Kim Da-ram. Didn’t you notice anything strange during this large-scale offensive?”
“What’s strange?”
“Huh. Haven’t you ever felt like the monsters, who are supposed to move instinctively without any consciousness, were being commanded by some higher being?”
Kim Da-ram’s gaze turned downward.
She also seemed to have remembered something.
But she always was.
Her gaze is always fixed directly in front of her, on the step she is about to step on.
Even in the battlefield where countless interests and lives collided, she only explored the enemy and the tricks of life right in front of her, and was indifferent to any information or knowledge beyond that.
She didn’t accept my opinion.
“I don’t have the confidence to convince those people, so you go ahead and say it yourself.”
Still, they gave me a chance.
We headed to the operations room filled with soldiers in shiny uniforms with Kim Da-ram.
At the center of it all was our Kim Byeong-cheol, and it was strangely noticeable that there were Chinese people among the leadership.
When I appeared, the female hunter smiled and pretended to know me.
Kim Da-ram whispered something to the man wearing the rank of brigadier general.
The man looked at me.
Mid to late 30s.
He’s quite young for a general.
It looks like this guy is a specialist in dealing with large monsters.
He looked at me and said.
“I heard that you are going to go to that slanted apartment as an observer and guide the artillery fire.”
As he spoke, several officers behind him revealed their teeth.
“Do you know where that Hope is? It’s in Gangdong-gu. Gangdong-gu. It’s right next to Hanam-si. If we direct artillery fire there, we can probably kill a few monsters in the rear. But what about the monsters that have already come in?”
His logic is almost identical to what Kim Da-ram presented.
He answered the same way.
“We have to deal with it with our own power.”
“There have been reports of over twenty medium-sized species.”
“If we don’t stop it at The Hope, we’ll see over 100 medium-sized species coming over.”
The brigadier general snorted.
The rest reacted similarly.
Kim Byeong-cheol, who had been resting his chin on his hand with a hardened face, glared at me with only his eyes moving.
Then someone raised a hand.
He is a Chinese hunter.
As Kim Byeong-cheol’s gaze turned to her, she opened her mouth in fluent Korean.
“This guy. The professor still has the unfinished tag that lingers like a legend.”
As everyone’s attention turned to her, she continued speaking, glaring at me with eyes like an emotionless snake.
“That day, during the Battle of Beijing, if we had followed the professor’s plan, we might have been able to defend Beijing.”
Kim Da-ram, who was standing behind me, muttered while flinching.
“Large-scale sniping······?”
The distinction between medium-sized and large-sized species has long remained ambiguous.
For a long time, the method of distinguishing monsters based solely on size and fighting power was common, but as we gained experience in numerous battles, we began to suspect that some of the larger species had human-like intelligence and controlled other monsters accordingly.
However, although it exists conceptually, if we cannot discover its actual existence, it will remain only a hypothesis.
The first intelligent monster I ever captured was one I could barely name.
I feel a similar creepiness in Seoul.
“Nothing good will come of wasting time.”
He said this while looking straight at Kim Byeong-cheol.
Kim Byeong-cheol looked at me and Kim Da-ram alternately.
The special agent who specialized in monsters desperately wanted to catch Kim Byeong-cheol’s attention, but Kim Byeong-cheol’s attention never turned to him.
“I guess it’ll be able to block all the monsters rushing in from the rear?”
“If it’s a medium-sized species, I’ll try my best to block it.”
I stared at Kim Da-ram.
“I’ll leave the monsters that have already been deployed to you.”
That concluded the meeting.
Kim Byeong-cheol raised my hand.
Before I left, Kim Byeong-cheol called me.
“Professor. No, Skelton.”
“······.”
“They say the internet and reality are different, but you are truly a person whose internet and reality are completely different.”
“I don’t think so.”
“No skeletons today.”
Kim Byeong-cheol handed me a walkie-talkie.
I had a puzzled expression on my face because I also have a walkie-talkie, but my doubts were resolved when Kim Byeong-cheol showed me the personal identification number of the walkie-talkie.
Personal identification number: PROFESSOR.
I boarded the helicopter, carrying a radio that I couldn’t tell if it was a makeshift one or if it was something I had always had.
It was still afternoon.
Kim Da-ram looked up at me with his scarred eyes and saw me off.
“······.”
The world began to shrink amid the roar of the rotors.
Outside the sharply turning window, I could see a ruined city, a collapsed road, monsters moving briskly between them, and white smoke rising from various places.
There was a bad, familiar stench from those white smokes.
*
“Captain! M9 speaking!”
It was thought that M9’s secret to survival was entirely dependent on his infamous tilted house.
I thought that was what made him famous and, by extension, mysterious.
It is also true that soldiers from the Legion and National Assembly factions made bets on small things like cigarettes and money regarding his fate.
But as time goes by, another hidden advantage becomes apparent.
m9 This guy. Something refreshing and bright.
“A monster? Ouch. There are more customers than usual. It’s not even a market day. Oh, customers! This is a no-kids zone!”
It was just a joke, but the soldiers enjoyed it.
Certainly, it is better to laugh and joke than to be dead.
Perhaps the real secret to our m9’s popularity is his strong attitude of never losing his smile, even though he lives alone in Seoul, in an apartment that could collapse at any moment.
In a sense, our m9 itself may have gone far beyond the limits of ordinary humans.
He’s also an internet celebrity of similar level to me.
Even today, when it comes to enthusiasm for the Internet, he is one step ahead.
“Today is the day of Live! Apocalypse! I’m going to film this mega hit video. My phone is a bit blurry so I’m a bit worried, but with these numbers. I wonder if they’ll revive the discarded influencers.”
At that point he spoke to the pilot.
“I don’t think there’s much time left.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“But somehow it feels like it’s going back.”
“Yes. All the drones around here are silent.”
“Destruction by electronic equipment attack?”
“That could be possible, but······.”
The pilot trailed off.
“Is there something?”
“That’s not all. There are a few more possibilities.”
“for example?”
“Man-pad. There have been recent reports of some fanatics attacking military helicopters with RPGs and drones.”
“That much already?”
“Since General Kim Byeong-cheol began to implement a policy of separating believers, we started to gradually separate from those guys. Didn’t you see them arresting all the fanatics in the city as soon as the monster eruption was reported?”
I looked at my feet.
There was no trace of human presence on the ground 1.5km below the surface.
“Mutations also occasionally attack helicopters. They usually attack at night, but some bold ones will attack in groups during the day as well.”
“Is it a mutation?”
“Yes. Mainly pigeon mutations. They were shitty guys even before the mutations, but they became even shittier after the mutations. If they had at least cut their wings when they were released in 1988, this wouldn’t have happened.”
The helicopter circled.
As the angle of view changed, the land bordering the green area and the still ashen ruins appeared before my eyes, and then in the distance.
Our legendary apartment building that leans like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
“You said you were going to rappel down?”
“yes.”
“It won’t be easy. It looks steeper than it is on that slope.”
“It’s okay. I’ve been dropped from places more than this many times.”
“As expected. You’re a hunter. By the way.”
“yes.”
The pilot looked intently out the window and pointed at a point with his finger.
In the distance there was an area shrouded in a thick fog.
Could this be the water fog created by a tributary of the Han River?
A thick gray-white fog settled in one place.
The pilot asked cautiously, his voice tinged with fear.
“Have you ever heard of a monster that flies in the sky?”
“A monster that flies in the sky?”
It has been reported.
It is remembered in North America as a medium-sized monster with high firepower.
However, there have been no reports from China, Korea, Japan, or Taiwan.
“This is a ghost story that goes around among our pilots, but they say that among the monsters, there is one that looks like a guided missile.”
“Guided missile?”
“Yes. He said that suddenly, out of nowhere, several of them flew in at high speed from outside his field of vision and started piercing the helicopter as if they were skewering it.”
“This is the first time I’ve heard of it.”
“I guess so. But doesn’t the fact that it’s the first time you’ve heard of it just mean that it hasn’t been reported?”
“That could be the case.”
“······They say there’s something like that around the strange fog. Several of my classmates reported similar situations and then went missing.”
The helicopter began to slow down.
The pilot said nothing more about the matter.
As if the sailors had no intention of speaking any more of their true fears.
I don’t take this pilot’s words lightly.
That might be a possible story.
Since the beginning of their invasion of Earth, monsters have been imitating our human weapon systems.
Perhaps the first concept we introduce to them is the act of “killing” something.
Choaaaak–
The rope swayed downwards.
The soldiers loaded their heavy equipment onto my back.
“Here’s the communicator. It’s old-fashioned, but sturdy. If you link it with the GPS observation equipment, you don’t have to tell us the coordinates. The fire control center here will calculate everything and fire the weapon automatically.”
I made a big fuss, but when I actually looked at the tilted rooftop, I felt sorry.
It’s steeper than you might imagine.
Feeling a lot more tilted than before?
Of course, there is a way to land on the ground instead of the apartment rooftop, but if you think about it carefully, it is even worse.
The ground might be teeming with caterpillars or zombies I’ve seen before, or other monsters I don’t want to know about, and getting there from the ground means having to climb up this sloping apartment from the beginning.
In the end, there is only one thing to believe in.
“Captain M9 speaking!”
Called M9 to the rooftop.
A very ordinary South Korean man with a muscular yet sturdy build, with a rope tightly tied around his body, appeared on the rooftop.
He was wearing overly flashy sunglasses.
I sent a signal to him and tried to descend.
Kkeeeeek–
You can hear the sound of a rope being lowered and see the rooftop getting closer.
Landing soon.
however.
“?!”
My feet slipped, probably because the slope was quite steep.
As I struggled for a moment, unable to keep my balance, a man’s rough hand reached out from out of sight and grabbed my hand.
“Hey! Newbie!”
It’s m9.
I took his hand and stepped onto the rooftop again.
Successful descent.
m9 handed me another rope.
“Welcome to The Hope.”
As he was holding himself up with the rope, m9 suddenly tilted his head.
“Huh? You?”
M9 took off his sunglasses and stared at me blankly.
“Skeleton?!”
He answered with a smirk and a thumbs up.
“It’s been a while. Captain M9.”
M9 looked at me with a strange expression and slowly nodded.
“also······.”
He didn’t have much to say.
Maybe the guy had noticed it vaguely too.
I am saying that I and myself are not easy people in this world.
In an era where even internet names require real-world skills, it’s only natural to understand.
I looked at him and started to coquetry.
“Do you remember John Nae-non?”
“Of course. I worked so hard to grill the meat.”
m9 opened the rooftop door wide.
“Would you like a cup of tea?”
Beyond the open door, there was a staircase that distorted the view as if it was stretching towards a parallel line.
A fantastic staircase structure that befits a slanted apartment.
The m9 advanced up the strange stairs with the agility of a chimpanzee.
As I watched the backs of the residents of the last luxury complex in South Korea, I walked toward the strange staircase with a slightly fearful heart.
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