Hiding a House in the Apocalypse - Chapter 277



Only Krnovel

112. Faith (6)

When I was working as a team leader, I tried to make plans as simple as possible.

Friends who have just graduated from high school have the illusion that plans should be fancy and complicated, but that is really foolish.

Well, it’s cool to come up with complex and ingenious plans.

However, all plans leave the hands of the planner the moment work begins, and no one can predict where, how, and at what speed the giant ball of a situation will roll.

Therefore, the plan should be as simple and easy to understand as possible.

Because the net of plans woven from the human mind is something that is easily torn apart in front of the huge ball of reality.

But I also sometimes make a little complicated plans.

It’s not something you can do just any time.

When there is a mission that must be accomplished and power is seriously lacking.

But in no case has an operation been planned with the expectation of failure.

“They might kill you right away. But what can you do? That’s your luck.”

Jokes are an element that professors of the past lacked.

“But I’m sure. They won’t just kill you. Didn’t you see it on the message board? That group of fanatics are surprisingly obsessed with social media activities? So······.”

While I was choosing my words for a moment, the Defender smiled broadly and said.

“Are you talking about authentication?”

“Yeah, that’s it. They’ll catch you and try to authenticate you.”

At the heart of every plan must be a firm purpose.

I spoke seriously to my internet friend who was showing joy at the mention of certification.

“If you see a face you recognize, point to it.”

Although the zealots possess many powerful Awakens, they are neither gods nor disciples of gods.

They are just a bunch of crazy Awakens and humans who will soon go mad and die.

The reason they can track us is because we have cognitive abilities.

The solution is simple.

Just kill that cognitive ability user.

If we just kill the hounds that come after the scent of the Defender, we can escape safely from the fanatics.

I prepared two things.

One is bait.

The perceived party, the defender, will take the bait.

I’d like to avoid using my colleagues as bait, but the circumstances aren’t favorable.

Where there’s bait, there’s fishermen.

The rest lie in hiding on a ridge 600 meters away.

I could have kept my distance, but my sniping skills aren’t as good as Kim Da-ram’s.

I have specified the maximum distance at which I can focus and kill outside the detection range of the sensor.

Cheon Yeong-jae and Ha Tae-hoon were to provide fire support, and Da-jeong was to support us by piloting the drone.

“What? You’re the drone pilot from back then?”

“huh.”

Ha Tae-hoon was shocked to see Da-jeong’s beauty, but was even more surprised to learn that she was the drone pilot who had troubled the Chinese that day.

Dajeong has three drones.

They are all reconnaissance drones, but Dajeong has attached a mortar shell to the largest and most powerful drone among them.

“Okay, then.”

It’s time for a brief farewell.

The defender looked at me.

There was a hint of fear in his eyes, but there was also enough trust to dispel that fear.

“I only trust you.”

“Don’t trust too much. You could die.”

“Then please take care of my little brother.”

Defender glanced at Da-jeong, who was operating the drone with Ha Tae-hoon.

“······I know that, but neither I nor that guy lived a very desirable life.”

“I love you.”

“huh?”

“No, it’s nothing.”

“What the sudden······.”

I don’t know either.

Why did I suddenly bring up the name of Jonnaenon?

But it is true that the name has somewhat taken away our spleen.

There is no need to be so desperate.

That’s just decoration for a finished story.

Finally, I checked the motorcycle in front of the Defender.

The first stage of our plan is that the Defender tries to escape on his motorcycle, but his motorcycle breaks down and he is stuck in place.

“It’s so cool.”

The motorcycle is still in good condition.

I got up from my seat, thinking of Baek Seung-hyun.

“then.”

I locked eyes with the Defender.

We nodded at the same time.

There is no need for long words between us.

but.

“Hey. That thing. Isn’t that a monster?”

Cheon Yeong-jae, who had been watching beyond the darkness with his night surveillance equipment, handed me the equipment.

On the access road to the northern part of the city, 8km away from us, a swarm of grayish-white monsters bathed in moonlight were slowly advancing toward the city.

The soldiers withdrew for good reason.

The monsters are coming.

“······.”

With the lighthouse out, monster hordes can now appear anywhere.

But the human mind is not like that.

At least I hope it doesn’t come this way.

Fortunately, people came before monsters.

The lights are flashing.

They are fanatics.

He raised his fist and signaled to everyone.

*

bang!

The 600m target is quite a long distance for me and also an unfamiliar distance for us hunters.

We fought within 100 meters for most of the war.

Besides, I wasn’t a designated marksman.

I always fought at the forefront.

I could leave it to Cheon Yeong-jae or Ha Tae-hoon, but this is my job.

I don’t know if it’s their specialty, but they shouldn’t give me a burdensome task that involves me.

So I fired in advance.

bang!

Check the impact point.

It doesn’t matter if a fanatic comes in.

Anyway, gunshots are a kind of white noise that can be heard from all directions.

“good.”

The defender confirmed the impact point.

“That’s correct. But it feels like it fell just a little bit to the bottom right?”

“i get it.”

Next to me, Dajeong was testing a drone with a drone controller.

She answered the questions I asked her earlier, moving her little quarter drone around.

“Manryu-kyo? Yes. Many people called it that. There were also people who pretended not to know, but little by little they believed in the religion and spread it to their close friends.”

It is a well-known fact that Da-jeong had been in the hospital for a long time.

Although she would not say what illness she had or still had, she spoke calmly of the plagues of human society that she had seen in the hospital.

“Surprisingly, there were many people who believed in them. Why? Monsters. Aren’t they scary? No matter how many times you kill them, they keep coming back. China, India, Russia, those big, strong countries. You finished them off, right? And they were all nuclear countries.”

It is an undeniable fact that after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, people fell into a delusion of grandeur.

Although humans may pollute and defile nature, humans are still one of the parasites clinging to the planet called Earth.

Even if it’s not humans, there are many creatures that have changed the Earth’s environment.

Even if we only drink oxygen every day and if we lack even a little bit of it, it can lead to death. Isn’t that the achievement of our predecessors?

Although skepticism about the theory of human omnipotence was gradually growing in the 21st century, the emergence of monsters literally shattered the arrogant pride of humans.

When one belief collapses, another belief rises.

The delusions of a Chinese youth who used to scratch his stomach while reading martial arts novels in the corner of his room while being scolded by his parents have now been sublimated into a new global belief.

“He is a fanatic.”

The vehicle approaches the Defender.

Four four-wheel drive SUVs.

The entire thing was painted white, and a bright red line was drawn down the middle, as if the car had been cut in half.

It is one of the many symbols I saw while in China, including a black lotus, a leafless bodhi tree, the Chinese character 萬 (ten thousand) written in large brush on a fluttering yellow flag, and a legless pig.

Those various symbols are known as symbols of pseudo-religions or various sects, and one of them seems to have spread beyond North Korea to this land.

I don’t know the exact name or force.

To us, a fanatic is a fanatic anyway.

“At this distance, it would be beyond detection capabilities, right?”

I asked Cheon Yeong-jae, who was assisting me from the side.

“By my standards. But I know there are people who are better than me. But no matter how wide it is, it won’t exceed 500m. It’s a kind of limit.”

I think the limitation is due to the needs of the monster.

If most of Awaken’s abilities were passed down to monsters, they would have been adjusted to be the most appropriate abilities to use from the perspective of their original owner.

In fact, 400m is also a wide range.

I think 100m would be sufficient for urban combat.

Well, it’s not for me, an incompetent person, to say anything.

The cars stop.

They captured the Defender with their own eyes.

The Defender is hidden underneath the rear slope of the motorcycle.

It is an intentional action.

Because the fact that we don’t know our sensing or cognitive abilities makes us easier prey for fanatics.

Booooooo-

The cars stopped, turning their bodies in the direction where the Defender was hiding.

The bright headlights illuminated the place where the Defender was hiding.

“What a bad-tasting sight.”

Ha Tae-hoon, who was in charge of the side guard, smiled bitterly at the sight.

It’s definitely in bad taste.

But that bad taste gives me confidence.

He spoke into the communicator.

“As expected, these guys. They don’t seem to have any intention of killing you right away, do they?”

“I agree.”

As expected of a murderer who has been through a lot, Defender doesn’t seem nervous even when facing dozens of enemies.

“Okay, then.”

It’s the most important time.

“Can you see it?”

We need to find someone with cognitive abilities.

You need to kill the guy, take out the defender, and leave this area.

If we just take out the defender, we won’t have any trouble escaping.

My buggy may consume expensive, now scarce, precious fuel, but its off-road capabilities are incomparable to those of an SUV.

Even if they just go over the ridge of the rice paddy, the only thing a fanatic can do is send up a drone.

People dressed in white got out of the car, their headlights maliciously focused on where the Defender was hiding.

That double, what should I say, made me laugh.

You could say it’s an awkward mix of Chinese and Western styles.

It is a strange design that makes the people’s clothing look like a monk’s robe.

Still, the fact that they aligned themselves means that these guys are quite well organized among the fanatics and that they are upper class within that organized group of believers.

“There might be many Awakens among them.”

I told Cheon Yeong-jae.

“Then what should we do?”

“Stay away.”

I always feel like there’s no need for long conversations between hunters, but it’s convenient.

Cheon Yeong-jae smiled faintly.

“Are you saying you’re going to catch those things like you’re catching monsters?”

“That’s what I was going to do.”

“Will intimidating work? They’re people, aren’t they?”

“are you okay.”

“How can it be okay?”

“There aren’t many people who would pick a hand that would kill me in a 50-50 gamble. And they would pick a safe hand even more so when they have an absolute advantage.”

Cheon Yeong-jae nodded.

“You could think so. But you know, since they’re fanatics, aren’t there a lot of crazy people?”

I looked at him and smiled broadly.

“If they were truly crazy, they would already be next to the monster.”

This is precisely where the fanatic’s blind spot lies.

Their founder (the Gaepajongsa in their language) believed that monsters were not enemies of humans, but another harmony given to the world order, and therefore he vowed to live together with them in a land already thoroughly eroded and filled with monsters.

Most fanatics followed such teachings.

Hundreds of millions of abandoned Chinese were left behind on the eroded land and then disappeared.

When some of the disappeared Chinese turned into fanatics and appeared in the world where people lived instead of monsters, fellow Chinese people laughed at them.

To them, religion is just an excuse.

The judgment within the Chinese military was that this was nothing more than a series of rebellions that had been repeated endlessly within China since the legendary Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors established their bases in the Central Plains.

I totally agree with that idea.

Therefore, they are not crazy.

They would rather cling to life than we do.

“excuse me.”

The Defender’s voice came from the communicator.

“Do you see the guy wearing a T-shirt among all the guys wearing white clothes?”

“Short hair? And pierced ears?”

“Oh, yeah. Shit······.”

Suddenly the defender starts swearing.

“What’s going on?”

“It really exists, little sister.”

Sure enough, among the crowd dressed in white, there was a little girl in her early teens.

But that’s not really an issue for us.

I told Cheon Yeong-jae.

“It starts.”

I grabbed the gun and aimed at the ground, which had already been zeroed.

I see a person beyond the scope.

The enemy I have to kill.