Hiding a House in the Apocalypse - Chapter 280



Only Krnovel

114. Ronin (1)

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The reporter who had been in seclusion for a long time has appeared after a long time.

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…

…

In an attempt to fill the gap, the reporter has been very active, reminiscent of his heyday.

I saw the pictures.

It is not a distortion or a lie.

It’s not a crude AI image either.

This was filmed in the hell we were in, Wonju.

At that point, I had strong doubts.

How did she manage to obtain the photos of Wonju, left in an area north of Seoul that is now almost eroded?

It is no exaggeration to say that all of the intelligence assets she had on the mainland were destroyed as the government moved to Jeju.

The group of Woo Min-hee that I saw in person is just a small but powerful group.

They may have enough force to protect their own group, but they don’t have enough to deploy vast reconnaissance assets far away.

In the midst of growing doubts, I happened to see a shadow captured in a photograph.

Anyone who sees it might mistake it for a man’s shadow.

Just looking at his sturdy yet slender body and tall stature.

But this shadow belongs to someone I know very well.

“Kim Da-ram······?”

Surely not.

Even if my junior is a thick-skinned person, he will never go under Woo Min-hee, whom he hates so much.

Well, Woo Min-hee herself didn’t seem to be particularly conscious of Kim Da-ram.

We have more things to worry about than that.

It is the reinforcement of the area.

“Okay. This way. A little further.”

Just two more people added to my team and my territory became more vibrant.

Defender and Da-jeong both try to shed their usual gloomy, Valentine-like images and fit in with the group.

Although it was Ha Tae-hoon’s first time meeting Da-jeong, it seemed like he already knew Cheon Young-jae.

“······No one pressed the detonator button, so you pressed it?”

“Yeah. I clicked it. I think it was a good decision. Considering what they usually do.”

“Still, three hundred at once. That’s impressive.”

“They say that the person who dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima also enjoyed a long life.”

The two talked without any particular difficulties.

There is a lot of construction going on in my area right now.

Two more people need to be added to provide living facilities.

In particular, the sewage and water supply facilities that had been intended to be reinforced for a long time are currently under construction under the command of Defender.

What’s more important is the defense.

This is an area more about machinery than construction, and Ha Tae-hoon and Da-jeong, along with occasional Valentine, are building a perimeter and surveillance system.

I’m also putting my effort into this.

There’s nothing I can do.

Since the Legion Faction split into warlords, it was obvious that sparks would fly in my territory.

In that respect, the Defender siblings are a good source of information.

“School Hunters? Oh, yeah. They were some weird guys.”

Defender has been under Kim Da-ram for quite some time.

So he knows the physiology of that group well.

“······They seemed to be more ranked and honor-seeking than us, who were from the same school? They were that kind of guys. Should I say they were anachronistic? They were full of guys with heads full of flower gardens.”

So I guess they’re after me.

Unless you’re a flower garden, you probably wouldn’t have thought of beating up Park Gyu who’s sleeping at home.

If there’s someone you want to beat up that much, wouldn’t it be more in line with the honor they seek to swim to Jeju Island and beat them up?

“Among those friends, there are some who want to kill me, right?”

“Oh. There it is.”

“How long will it take to get here?”

It is important to know the approximate number of enemies.

But the Defender reacted in a completely different way than I had imagined.

“Here? Why?”

He asked back.

Since I couldn’t understand it, I just watched quietly, and then the Defender snickered and continued talking.

“The target has changed.”

“Target? Who?”

“Team Leader Kim Da-ram.”

For a brief moment, my junior’s face flashed through my mind.

The image of my beloved junior gradually changing into a negative one every time I see him.

But it is also true that the change came with a strong persuasive force.

“······During the process of Wonju being destroyed, he ran away alone, taking only his faction with him. Mostly the school hunters. And only those who were loyal to him. He abandoned the rest. Whether they were school hunters or school hunters.”

To elaborate a bit, on the day the circle was destroyed, a group of Awaken headed to the Hunter headquarters.

The Defenders only heard about the situation through radio, so they couldn’t know the details, but through the radio transmissions between the Hunters, they were able to learn that the Awaken was a guardian in charge of the military for a cult group.

Those guardians attacked the hunters.

Up to that point, it’s within the expected range.

The Legion faction was not stupid, so they knew about the existence of the guardians and had prepared training and manuals to deal with surprise attacks by fanatics.

But the Dharma that was revealed in real life was too strong.

“Especially. A young-looking woman in white. It seems that she was too strong. She had long since surpassed level 5 and was strong enough to be close to alpha level.”

“······A woman who looks difficult?”

“Oh. That’s what they said. Why?”

“No, it’s nothing. Keep going.”

“The moment he saw that Awaken, Kim Da-ram disappeared. Kim Da-ram, who was supposed to lead a legion of hunters, not just a mere team member like me, ran away with his family.”

From then on, the communication interference was so severe that it is said that it is impossible to know what happened.

“One thing is certain, all the abandoned hunters are gnashing their teeth at Kim Da-ram. Still.”

The Defender added, stretching backwards as he scooped up a handful of the cement he had dug up with a shovel and loaded it onto his wheelbarrow.

“There are still people who cling to the Professor’s name. That’s how it is. People who think that if they kill the Professor, their miserable and insignificant lives will be guaranteed.”

All I know about the Academy Hunter is the fragmented, widely known knowledge.

The school hunters were created out of necessity, but their fathers are the school hunters they hate so much.

After seeing the data delivered by the school hunters dispatched to China, the government realized the seriousness of the threat posed by monsters and decided to increase the number of hunters.

That is the mass-produced hunter, the school hunter.

An elite hunter like Jang Gi-yeong vehemently opposed this, but in reality his right to speak was meaningless.

Hunter training schools, which would later be called academies, were established all over the country, and people interested in becoming hunters rushed to enroll.

The school hunter’s grades were not good.

Even the school hunters who had been brainwashed to be indifferent to death since they had just graduated from middle school were often unfit to fight when they saw an actual monster. In this situation, it may have been dynamic in its own way, but in the end, the school hunters who had been living ordinary lives were nothing more than frightened bystanders in front of monsters.

There are some who stand out, but what matters is the proportions.

Among the academy hunters, the percentage of warriors who can properly fight monsters is less than 10%.

It is common knowledge to anyone who studies Jonnaenon that our Jonnaenon is a C-rank hunter who graduated from the academy and has no combat experience.

Of course, just because he is a C-rank Hunter doesn’t mean the greatness he will show in the future will fade in the least.

Anyway, the Academy Hunters failed to achieve their intended goal and disappeared into the back alleys of the era along with the school Hunters they were jealous of, along with the appearance of Awaken.

You probably won’t make a lot of money.

It may not have been a very good treatment.

It is said that even at the end of the Chinese dispatch, school hunters were already receiving second-rate support, while academy hunters were treated even worse.

Perhaps they shared the same quarters or acted together with the Chinese military.

What is even more cruel to them is that even though they received the qualifications of a hunter recognized by the state, in reality they were not treated as proper hunters.

School Hunters could somehow continue their lives in the relevant departments as long as they could endure the humiliation of being Awaken’s maid, but Academy Hunters had no such thing, and the time they spent as Hunters was counted as inexperience.

Just like Jonnaenon, you can show off and show off your status as a hunter online, but when you meet a real hunter, you have to endure the unreasonable situation of having to bow your head.

Their anger towards the world cannot be said to be less than that of our school’s hunters.

I can somewhat understand why some of them harbor such fierce hostility towards me.

There are surprisingly many people like Kim Pil-seong who live in a vain past.

It was a week after the Defender siblings settled in my territory that the man came to my territory.

*

Message from COOKIEMONSTER18: Skeleton. It’s me. Rebecca. I heard from Suhan.

A message came to Rebecca.

I replied, recalling the gunshots she had told me about in the past.

SKELTON: Yeah. What’s going on? Suu says things aren’t going well there.

Message from COOKIEMONSTER18: Our support has been cut off. They can no longer provide us with supplies. It’s been two months since the commander received a message that they were sending a plane, and it hasn’t arrived yet, and there’s been no contact.

SKELTON: How’s the situation there? The remaining supplies, food, atmosphere, etc.

Message from COOKIEMONSTER18: There’s no food. The Korean company we contracted with has gone out of business. Monsters and mutations are visible from afar.

SKELTON: Is there a crack nearby?

Message from COOKIEMONSTER18: I don’t know. Yangsan? I heard it came from there.

As far as I know, the US military base where Rebecca is is located in Daegu.

The fact that a monster that came from Yangsan, which is a considerable distance away, came all the way to Daegu means that a significant portion of the path from Yangsan to Daegu was eroded.

Because monster extinction does not occur in eroded areas.

SKELTON: Really?

“······.”

Rebecca and her daughter’s situation seems more serious than I imagined.

It’s not for nothing that Suuga sent me an SOS.

By the way, Rebecca is always the same.

A message from COOKIEMONSTER18: But don’t worry, Skeleton! A plane will be coming from America soon. Here at the airport. Planes can still take off and land. Once the plane arrives, we can safely fly to America!

Still, she is overly positive.

The plane won’t come.

But Rebecca would believe that without question.

It’s not a question of being smart or dumb.

People tend to believe what they want to believe rather than objective truth.

Still, she misses the great mountains and pristine forests where she was born and raised.

SKELTON: Okay, I understand. If things get any worse, just call me anytime. Oh, and just in case things get really tough at the base. There’s an empty spot in my area. It’s bustling with people, but it’s more human-friendly than before. And there are women. This isn’t a men’s bathhouse, you know.

I guess this is about all I can do.

No matter how wide my radius of activity is, Daegu is too far away.

At best, my realistic area of ​​activity is the metropolitan area and, broadly speaking, Chungcheong Province.

Anything more than that is impossible.

If there was a flight like to Jeju Island, I don’t know.

So if Rebecca decides to come here, she too must make her own preparations.

The point is that we should at least show the good faith to meet at the halfway point.

Message from COOKIEMONSTER18: (Swoo Gongdu) Skeleton!

Message from COOKIEMONSTER18: Reply.

Suuga sent me a separate message.

SKELTON: Swoonya?

Message from COOKIEMONSTER18: My mom still believes that the transport plane is coming.

SKELTON: Is that so······.

Message from COOKIEMONSTER18: If there’s anything I can prepare, I’ll try to prepare it.

SKELTON: Really?

Message from COOKIEMONSTER18: Yeah, I can do pretty much anything. I took down a mutation from 1,500 yards away with a sniper rifle and everyone gave me credit.

Message from COOKIEMONSTER18: So just call me with the supplies.

Message from COOKIEMONSTER18: I still have a lot I want to do.

In the end, it looks like the one I’ll trust is Suin.

I don’t know how to put it, but I feel something like emotion.

That night, the child who came to my territory alone grew up to be so trustworthy.

Three whole years have passed and now we’re moving on to four years.

It might be enough time for the child to become an adult.

Especially in this time of destruction where we cannot guarantee our daily lives, it may be a time of abundance.

While I was organizing the things I needed for Suu, Cheon Yeong-jae called me over the communicator.

“Someone is coming.”

It was a day with pouring rain.

I saw the person Cheon Yeong-jae had found, standing on the outer wall wearing a poncho.

It was a man wearing a poncho and carrying a gun.

There is only one number.

My steps were weak, but I didn’t stumble.

It wasn’t hard to see that he wasn’t just passing through and that he knew my territory.

Among the many choices spread out around my area, I am climbing the hill along a gentle ridge leading to the hill.

That means you’ve been to my area at least once.

Ha Tae-hoon tried to communicate on the K-Walkie-Talkie public frequency, but he showed no response.

I just walked up the slope to my territory, one step at a time, with my gun in my hand.

Defender and Cheon Yeong-jae were positioned in different locations, and they hid behind the outer wall, waiting for the man to appear in the line of fire.

Soon he was at the same altitude as our territory.

“Oh. What is this?”

He spoke loudly.

“When was this made!”

A loud laughter erupted afterward.

“What did I say! He’s alive! The professor is alive!”

He threw the gun away.

“Is it there?”

The man took off the hood attached to his poncho and revealed his face.

A mess of hair, covered in blood, and looking like a beggar.

There are many words to describe that man, but they all point clearly in one direction.

“Professor!”

He called my call sign.

“What should we do?”

Cheon Yeong-jae urges for instructions.

After thinking for a moment, I asked Ha Tae-hoon.

“Aren’t there any colleagues around you?”

“Oh. There’s only one.”

In that case, it would be right to kill them.

Then the Defender’s voice came through the communicator.

“Huh? That guy?”

“Do you know him?”

“Royal.”

“Royer?”

“Callsign Royer. Hunter.”

Defender let out a shallow sigh and looked at his face, where the rain was washing away the blood and blackness in real time.

“School Hunter.”