Hiding a House in the Apocalypse - Chapter 281



Only Krnovel

114. Ronin (2)

I decided to let the man in.

Given the circumstances, this man is alone.

There are no other companions and no signs of any special work.

Of course, before that.

“Take off your clothes.”

I guess I’ll have to check it out.

“Everything but the pants.”

Normally, he wouldn’t have done this, but the fact that he came alone and to a place like this alone could be interpreted as him being prepared to die.

Anyone who is prepared to die can hide a bomb, represented by an IED, and attempt to blow themselves up at any time.

The man obediently followed orders.

“You are very suspicious.”

His body was thin but muscular, and there were big and small scars here and there.

On the surface, he may seem like a hero who has come from behind, but in my opinion, he is not.

Are these wounds from battle?

There are no visible wounds, either on the joints or abdomen, that could have serious aftereffects, only shallow but noticeable scars on the back, avoiding the shoulders, forearms, and spine.

Judging by the shape of the scars and the similarly spaced tattoos, it appears to be an extension of the tattoos, rather than an actual combat injury.

“Come in.”

The door opened.

Cheon Yeong-jae, who was standing next to him, asked.

“Can’t we just kill them?”

“I have something to ask.”

I didn’t tell Cheon Yeong-jae, but there’s one more thing.

I looked outside the outer wall.

It is visible.

A black object lurks in the abandoned farmland below.

It’s a cat mutation.

This guy was playing tag with me when I was heading to Diesirae’s territory, but for some reason he followed me here.

He has a high level of intelligence and has a lot of experience fighting humans with guns, so he rarely gives in.

It’s quite annoying that when you go out with a gun, they run away.

Of course, if Kim Da-ram comes, it could be over in three days at the most, but even I am curious about how that woman is living now.

beep—

The iron door opened with a buzzer.

The man whistled as he hurriedly put on his rain-soaked clothes.

The rain-washed face looked like someone of similar age to me.

“What kind of guy is he?”

I asked the Defender as I came down the outer wall.

“He’s a guy who uses his power quite a bit in the Academy Hunters. He’s not a leader, but he has his own group.”

As he came down the stairs, the Defender glanced at the man and added briefly.

“But are they all dead? Or not.”

He reached the man before the defender finished speaking.

The man looked back at us with a bitter sneer.

When his eyes met the Defender’s, he looked surprised but showed no further reaction.

He looked at Ha Tae-hoon.

“Are you a professor?”

He said it in protest.

“I think what you’re looking for is me.”

The man snorted.

“Ah, I was looking for the person whose call sign best matches mine.”

Ha Tae-hoon was wearing glasses.

I don’t wear them all the time, but I do wear them when I do precision work.

Defender and Cheon Youngjae looked at me at the same time.

It means to decide on a disposal.

Of course, I have no intention of recruiting this guy or keeping him alive.

If I really wanted to, I could just end up being exiled, but I had already painfully experienced from the previous incident how sending someone alive who could kill me could come back as a big boomerang.

So, I guided him to my bunker.

Instead of a towel, he gave me a dry rag to wipe my body with and offered me a glass of hot water.

Not offering coffee, tea, or even cheap powdered beverages is not a major flaw in the doomsday era.

A cup of well-purified, hot water is a generous treat for any hostile character.

In fact, the man emptied his glass of water with a satisfied look on his face.

“wow.”

He looked back at my bunker.

“That’s cool.”

His gaze soon rested on the central toilet.

“What is that? Is it some kind of torture device?”

“Now answer the questions I ask you.”

The interrogation began.

What I want to know most is the status of the Hunters within the Legion Faction.

The Defender came back with some information, but he hid in a shelter with his brother before the incident happened.

This guy probably knows better what the Legion Hunters have been through in the field and what their current status is.

But this guy doesn’t seem to have any intention of opening his mouth.

“Well. I’m also in a hurry to get out of here. As you can see, there’s no radio. Kim Da-ram, I know that rotten bitch betrayed you.”

I could easily read the man’s thoughts from his smiling lips, his expression that said, “If you want to try, try,” and his challenging eyes that occasionally looked at me.

He doesn’t intend to do anything that might help us.

I came prepared for that.

So I asked.

“Why on earth did you come here alone?”

At this, the man shook his head and turned his head towards me.

“I have something to show you.”

“To me?”

“Yes, Professor. I came to see how good that guy is.”

“Have you finished checking?”

The man shook his head.

“There’s still one left.”

“What is that?”

Then the man pointed his finger at me.

There are a lot of omissions, but I can tell what the man wants from me just by looking at him.

He pointed at me and immediately turned his head to see the painting of Kim Pil-seong hanging on the wall.

“Kim Pil-seong. It looks like you killed him? He was quite capable. The problem is that he was more noisy than capable. But what about me?”

Just like Kim Pil-seong, he is proposing a duel using cold weapons that have no meaning to me.

“······.”

I let out a shallow sigh, feeling myself rapidly losing interest.

The man grumbled.

“Why? Am I scared? Well, Kim Pil-sung was scared of me too. He avoided me no matter how many times I tried to get him to join me.”

The defender came to me and whispered.

“Should I pull it out?”

As I was wondering what to do, the man pointed at the wall of the bunker with his finger and shouted.

“Let’s keep it simple. If you don’t have the courage to fight me, hand me that sword.”

“That knife?”

“Yeah. If you give me that knife, I’ll just leave. If you don’t like it, you can just kill me with a gun. Or you can attack me in a group and lynch me. But the proud school hunters wouldn’t do such mean things, right?”

If this man’s goal was to pique my interest, he succeeded.

“What do you plan on doing with that knife?”

I don’t think that sword has the same power as Excalibur from British mythology.

But this man seems to think differently.

“If I have that knife, I can gather the kids again.”

“I don’t understand.”

“That’s your business. If you don’t like it, then either stick with me or do something mean to me.”

The man who had been laughing heartily suddenly turned his head towards the Defender.

“Do you know me?”

The Defender gave no answer.

“My call sign. You know? Why? After having fun killing each other.”

When I gave it a hint, the defender nodded reluctantly.

“Royer?”

I told him the man’s call sign first.

The man nodded.

“I’m glad you at least pretended to know.”

It may not be an official call sign.

Unlike us, Academy Hunters are not given unique callsigns.

They are merely a unit of a unit that fights monsters, and are given a dynamic call sign based on the unit’s name.

“Are you a lawyer or something?”

“I almost did it.”

The man leaned back comfortably against the backrest.

He began to speak, tilting his head back and glaring at me as if he was looking down on me.

“My father told me to go to law school. I could have gone if I had put my mind to it. I had a good school, a decent house, easy exams, and I was young. It’s hard to say I had no connections. But you know, I did some public service work at the court.”

I have no intention of agreeing with the man’s words.

Ignoring our cold reaction, the man continued speaking with a fixed, almost smiling face from the beginning.

“It wasn’t a big deal. I just helped out with the court staff’s work and searched and searched people’s petitions, it was just a trivial job. I became friendly with one of the staff members and was helping out with his work when I suddenly got a phone call. He sounded angry. I overheard him asking me why he issued a correction order like that, and then the judge who approved it suddenly asked me which Judicial Examination I took.”

“Are you here to vent your frustrations?”

I hated long stories, so I had no choice but to interrupt the flow, but the man had no intention of interrupting me.

“Can’t you see it at first glance? What’s that military judge advocate’s intention behind his talk about the riders?”

The man stood up from his seat.

He went to the place where we were looking at him with cold eyes, beyond the central toilet, and there was a picture of Kim Pil-seong’s painting on the wall.

The man spoke quietly, stroking the knife with his hand.

“That’s how it is in the world. There are ranks everywhere. Well, if you think about it, it’s not shit, but in this shitty world, they treat it like it’s some kind of insurmountable fourth-dimensional wall. Isn’t it the same in hospitals? There are a lot of guys who are better at surgery than doctors, but they get locked up because they didn’t go to medical school?”

The defender moved slightly.

There is life in the eyes.

He walked towards the man, holding back the defender.

The man chuckled.

“Isn’t that the case with you and me? It doesn’t seem like anything special, but some guys are treated like half-legends, while others are just plain old punks.”

“Have you tried it?”

Srrrrung-

I pulled out the axe.

The corners of the man’s mouth rose as if ascending to heaven.

“What? You want to stick it on?”

Moved forward.

And asked.

“Have you ever caught a monster?”

They stopped when they were within arm’s reach of each other, but the distance did not get closer.

Because the man took a step back.

I can see beads of cold sweat forming on his forehead.

The man seemed to feel intimidated by the sudden, unstoppable advance.

“Hey, what’s the point of catching them?! Even if you catch them, aren’t you just going to take all the credit anyway?”

“then?”

We went one step further.

“What, what?!”

The man takes another step back as he promised.

Bam

His back hit the floor.

A clear tension crossed his face, but he soon forced himself to suppress his fear and force a smile.

“What? Murder?”

“no.”

Srrrrung-

He took out another axe.

“Bar exam.”

A look of puzzlement appeared on the tense man’s face.

“No, why would you do something like that?”

“why?”

“Didn’t you hear what I said earlier? It’s obvious that I’m being treated like an illegitimate child. There’s no point in trying to do it, right?”

“You’re always like that.”

I don’t really like to categorize and classify people into types, but I think I know what kind of guy this guy with the call sign Royer is.

I did it while looking straight at him.

“Don’t you get tired of trying to judge the world based on such meager guesses? Without even trying.”

“what?”

“What about Kim Pil-seong, whom you ignored?”

He pointed an axe at me.

It means come in.

The pupils of the once proud man are seen shaking.

The confidence that was there when I first came here is nowhere to be seen, and all that is visible is the meanness of looking for room for surrender or negotiation.

“At least the owner of that sword.”

I went in first.

“Oh, don’t come!”

The man steps back and swings his sword,

Chaengkang!

With just two swings, the sword leaves his grip and falls to the floor.

He aimed the axe blade at the unarmed man, the sound of the blade hitting a tray echoing throughout the bunker.

“I wasn’t as vile as you.”

He nodded.

“Get out.”

The man began to walk sideways like a crab.

I thought that was our last meeting.

As always, humans have a high probability of exceeding expectations.

“That, that knife······!”

The man said.

“······Can’t you give it to me?”

“?”

She stared at the man with a puzzled face.

“Please. Can’t you do it?”

The moment I saw his haggard expression, my thoughts became paralyzed.

It had to be that way.

Begging here with such confidence.

Was that the flow?

No, can a person’s stance change so easily?

“Can you give me that knife? Please. Let me take that knife back with me.”

“What the hell are you talking about?!”

Cheon Yeong-jae, who was behind him, ran towards him and grabbed the man by the collar.

“This little bastard!”

Cheon Yeong-jae rolled his eyes, took out a dagger, and aimed it at the man’s neck.

He tried to dissuade Cheon Yeong-jae and let the man finish speaking.

“······If I take this knife, the bastards who abandoned me will come under me again.”

He bowed his head.

“I’ll thank you then. No, I will thank you!”

Only then did I realize the reason for the sense of alienation I had felt toward this friend.

He is different from me.

Even though we are the same human being, there are differences between us that are incomprehensible.

The difference is,

There is no need to understand it.

He winked at the defender.

Clank-

The defender put his gun to the man’s temple.

“get out.”

“Wait, wait!”

The man turned towards me.

He glared at me with glaring eyes.

“why?!”

“?”

“Can you help me out a little?!”

“Why should I help you?”

“You were famous! Huh?! You made a lot of money, right? That’s why you were able to build such a fancy bunker. You enjoyed so much more than anyone else, and now you’re just giving away that one knife. Can’t you just give it to me?”

“Then let me make a suggestion.”

I told him.

“proposal?”

“Here’s a mutation.”

“Mutation?”

“It’s a cat mutation.”

“Just one?”

The man who was trembling just a moment ago is now laughing again, wondering when he regained his self-esteem.

“If you kill it and come back, I’ll give you Kim Pil-seong’s sword.”

I glared at the man.

“Isn’t that level of task an easy task for a single hunter?”

“You said one, right? Is it a black one?”

“Yeah. It’s the black one.”

“I saw it. When I pointed a gun at it, it ran away in a panic.”

The man stepped into my territory.

He picked up the gun he had dropped on the floor and waved it vigorously at us.

I think I also said it wouldn’t take long.

Above his head, Dajeong’s drone secretly followed him.

Fit one brick on the bottom.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

A fleeting gunshot rang out in the endless rain.

The gunfire, however, did not last long.

*

“Ha, that little kitty. Really. How vicious.”

On the way up to my territory, a severed head lies as if in a tomb.

The owner of that face distorted with fear is the man who came into my territory yesterday.

Probably using the call sign Royer.

“What about the body?”

Cheon Yeong-jae asks the defender.

“None. I guess he only brought his neck.”

The severed head was to be disposed of by the Defender.

While the Defender descended, carrying the severed head without any hesitation, we discussed our next course of action.

“That guy. I think we should kill him.”

“That would be the case. But I need a good marksman. Someone who can snipe targets at least 1,200 meters away without delay.”

“Let’s try contacting Bang Jae-hyuk again.”

“Bang Jae-hyuk?”

“Oh. If you give that guy a 7.62mm, he’ll be able to kill that kitten without much trouble. He’s a good shooter.”

Cheon Yeong-jae stretched his body and looked up at the clear sky with pleased eyes.

He asked, his eyes fixed on the sky.

“What were you going to do if that kid killed the cat?”

“Wouldn’t that be impossible?”

“What if it just popped out there?”

I thought about it for a moment.

He soon answered with an awkward smile.

“Well, wouldn’t that be impossible too?”

At this, Cheon Yeong-jae glanced at me, but I didn’t say anything.