Hiding a House in the Apocalypse - Chapter 297



Only Krnovel

119. Tools (4)

Although I suffered from many accusations and slander throughout my school and active years, the most difficult thing to endure was the misunderstanding of the relationship between Jang Ki-young and me.

“Isn’t Jang Ki-young actually Park Gyu’s real father?”

“I’m not the only one who thought that.”

“It could be a smokescreen.”

“If Jang Gi-yeong had given even half the attention he gave to Park Gyu-han to other students, there wouldn’t have been so many dropouts.”

As Jang Gi-yeong’s disciple, I enjoyed his exclusive support and attention.

One person’s interest leads to another person’s envy.

It was a very natural progression, but deep down I was reluctant to have Jang Gi-yeong become like my father.

In fact, I was Jang Gi-yeong’s disciple, but I didn’t like him, and later I even detested him.

As my fame grew and the number of monsters I defeated increased, my feelings of disgust grew proportionally, and just before leaving China, I had internally branded Jang Gi-yeong a complete fraud.

But despite all that accumulated hatred, one thing remains unchanged.

Jang Gi-yeong liked me.

They had serious expectations of me and hoped that I would achieve greater things.

My success was soon his pride.

I won’t even deny that sincerity.

“Park Gyu. Your posture is messed up. Some people say that a straight and measured posture is not very helpful in actual combat, but your posture is a mirror that reflects your mind and an indicator that will give you a reference point when you wander.”

I suddenly remember my teacher forcing me to have harsh private lessons after work.

The sight was soon replaced by a living corpse with dried, grayish-white pupils, like a mummy pulling a cart.

“Eeeeeee······ Nozzle······ Nozzle······ Jet spray······.”

It was true that Jang Gi-yeong was still conscious.

But if that’s the case, wouldn’t it have been better to not speak at all and just be a normal zombie?

I feel an inexplicable goosebumps running down my spine.

“······.”

My condition is extremely poor.

I feel emotionally moved.

“Skeleton.”

The defender turns to face me.

“You don’t look so good.”

He responded with a hand signal.

The idea is to keep going.

I decided to take a detour past the fanatics.

I took the route of turning towards Jang Gi-yeong while keeping as much distance as possible in case there was someone with the ability to sense him.

Avoiding places with fanatics means meeting other enemies.

A group of zombies were staggering behind a dilapidated warehouse where not even moonlight could reach.

They noticed us and started walking towards us hesitantly, and one of them even started running towards us quite quickly.

The defender stepped forward.

Bam!

Blunt weapons are very effective weapons against zombies.

Because human bones and tendons are harder than they look, and sword blades dull more easily than they look.

Snap!

The merciless defender crushes the head of an approaching zombie with a single blow, then runs forward and knocks down the zombie that follows behind with its accelerated forelimbs before striking its head down.

I followed the defender at a fast pace and dealt with the zombies attacking from the side.

Bam!

In an instant, the zombie horde was cleared out.

The Defender took care of most of it.

He approached me, wielding a blunt instrument dripping with viscous blood.

“Are you okay? I feel like your condition has suddenly gotten worse.”

“are you okay.”

It’s not okay.

It’s true that I’m shaken.

The problem is the cause.

The reason I’m shaken is not because I saw Jang Ki-young’s changed appearance.

I already knew his reality and was prepared for a worse ending.

What really shook me was the surprise.

It was unbearable for me to think that Jang Gi-yeong, the old man I detested and looked down on so much, could shake my emotions just by showing up.

“let’s go.”

Was Jang Gi-yeong that important to me?

It’s not like he liked me from the beginning and chose me as his successor.

Rather, at our first meeting, he took on the characteristically stern and prickly attitude he displayed when dealing with substandard students.

For example, when dealing with Kang Han-min.

It was after I excelled in various exams that he began to treat me as a true disciple.

So when I first got the top spot.

From then on, I was Jang Ki-young’s disciple. Before that, I was just an ordinary student that Jang Ki-young wanted to expel.

In other words, Jang Gi-yeong only saw me as a tool.

“There’s another group over there. There aren’t many, but there seem to be a lot of runners. What should we do?”

He continued to respond to the Defender’s questions with hand signals.

Breakthrough.

Taking a detour will only lead to more zombies that the fanatics were unable to deal with.

“What about the fanatics?”

“There’s no other reaction. The whistle can be heard from far away. It must be at least 300 meters away.”

“The sound spreads farther and clearer as the night goes on. The whistle itself can be a deception.”

I waited for a while and observed the situation.

Kick-kick-

Jang Gi-yeong is still pulling a cart along the dock.

The sight of him slowly pulling the cart with unsteady steps may not be an appropriate expression for the situation, but he looked very peaceful.

Jang Gi-yeong soon entered one of the dock warehouses.

It’s a warehouse with a half-erased name written on it: 13B.

I stayed in that position for a while, keeping my ears open and trying to hear every sound around me.

A piece of cloud obscures the moon.

As the world grew darker, the chorus of insects scattered across the land grew louder.

But not enough to completely cover our ears.

With your firearm held, ready to fire at any moment, calmly observe where the enemy may appear.

Those with sensory abilities used to be objects of fear, but after dealing with them a few times, I realized that they are humans not much different from us, operating within the inherent limitations of humans.

Fear mostly comes from ignorance.

After understanding the law of relativity to some extent, I realized that the ability to sense was not an ability that directly helped in combat.

Ironically, the first person to disparage the ability to sense something was none other than Jang Gi-yeong.

“What if you find someone? If you find someone, that person will die? No, right? That can be solved with technology. If you just use an infrared sensor, you can find most people, right?”

At the time, it was treated as nonsense, but now, after a long time has passed, Jang Gi-yeong’s words are persuasive.

But that doesn’t mean Jang Gi-yeong had foresight.

The biggest reason why Jang Gi-yeong belittled the person with the ability to sense at that time was because the person who was fighting with him over his job was a low-level Awaken.

Everything is like that.

My teacher.

The reason why many of his words come true later is not because he is special.

Because there’s too much to say.

Rustle-

There is a person.

He is a fanatic.

It looks like they found us and tracked us.

Well, it did make a little noise when killing zombies.

“Let’s lure them.”

I headed towards the warehouse where the wall had collapsed with the Defender.

There are a lot of zombies inside the warehouse.

Most of them are standing there, frozen in place, not moving at all.

It’s a dormant zombie.

When they sense human breath, they react and wake up.

As expected, as soon as we show up, the zombies start writhing and mumbling.

Trying to wake up.

Normally you would run away, but there is a bit of a gamble here.

I took out a handkerchief and covered my nose and mouth.

Research has shown that zombies are most sensitive to sound, especially gunshots, but are just as sensitive to human breathing.

It appears that the reaction is greater to gases whose composition is close to that of the average human breath, rather than to carbon dioxide itself.

Therefore, it is said that if you cover the mouth of a dormant zombie with a handkerchief, you can reduce the zombie’s reactivity.

Of course, entering a space filled with a large number of zombies is something only a madman would do.

The standard way to do this is to bypass most of them or sweep them away with strong firepower.

But here, a gamble is needed.

I covered my nose and mouth with a handkerchief and looked around the warehouse, trying to keep my presence as quiet as possible.

Luck is on your side.

There is a makeshift walkway, commonly called a catwalk, connected to the prefabricated stairs and stairs and close to the roof.

“Here?”

He nodded to the defender’s question and took the first step.

Kkieeee-

It’s quite old, but not old enough to be worn out.

It could easily support the weight of two fully armed adult males.

“Ambush here.”

He briefly explained the operation to the Defender while keeping one eye on the zombies and the other on the structure of the building, with his breathing apparatus blocked.

The ability to detect the pants revealed in Jeju Island is not an invincible ability.

The sensor only knows where the target is, not who it is.

The point is that there is no way for us, as sentient beings, to know whether we are scavengers who have come to scavenge or trained hunters.

So we can make them like moths to a flame, rather than an all-powerful tracker that can find them wherever they hide.

Here, dig a death trap.

“It’s in there.”

A fanatic’s voice is heard from beyond the wall.

The estimated number of people based on footsteps is three.

Looks like you found it quite funny.

Perhaps the lack of proper combatants in this area is what gave him his confidence.

The fanatics entered the building.

The first thing they’ll encounter will be a large number of zombies.

“omg!”

“It’s a dormant zombie.”

Most of the fanatics’ weapons were blunt weapons, with only one carrying a shotgun.

Is there a guy here with a shotgun?

bang!

there is.

And I made a mistake.

“Ughhhhhhh······.”

“Kururur······.”

Suddenly discovering a large number of zombies, he was so surprised that he woke up a dormant zombie.

The number is about 50.

It would be nice to deal with them all at once, but if the battle drags on, zombies will call zombies.

There don’t seem to be that many zombies in this dock, but five cultists, and those with a severe shortage of automatic weapons, would be a lot to deal with.

“Let’s run.”

He walked briskly up the catwalk with his breathing apparatus blocked.

At the midway point there is a ladder leading to the roof.

After climbing up to the roof, we will observe the situation and then head straight to Jang Gi-yeong’s warehouse.

“Krrrrrr!!!”

The zombies have awakened.

They first went to protest to the person who had directly woken them up.

Bang! Bang! Bang!!!

“shit!”

The fanatic’s sighs are heard from beyond the wall.

Taking advantage of the gap, I quickly moved along the catwalk to the roof.

I stood on the steeply sloping roof and looked down.

thud!

I feel the shock wave.

It appears that one of the cultists who tracked us was over level 5 Awaken.

Crackle!!

Judging from the sound of it burning along with the flashing gray-white lights, it is presumed that it has also learned the attack power.

But the zombies’ momentum is also formidable.

Woohoo—

Woohoo—

The zombie horde’s response echoes from all over.

This is a sign from the zombies that they are aware that their own kind are being attacked and that they are going to rescue them.

Even fanatics aren’t fools, so they retreat.

I went down the ladder with the Defender and ran to the target warehouse.

[ 13B ]

There it is.

There is my benefactor, Jang Gi-yeong.

As I get closer to the warehouse, for some reason my steps become heavier.

“······.”

I guess that’s what it is.

Even though I denied and ignored it so much, isn’t it true that fate, the absolute magnitude of love and concern, is something that can’t be easily blown away with just a single sneer?

I was Jang Gi-yeong’s tool.

This is true.

Let’s add one more line.

I was also the pride and joy of Jang Gi-yeong.

I know that fact.

Every time I discovered a new monster, defeated it, or figured out a new weakness or pattern, Jang Gi-yeong was as happy as if it were his own business.

I hated that.

Why did you hate it?

Because he’s a vulgar person?

Because he’s a conman who pretends to know something when he doesn’t?

The warehouse is approaching.

So close that the sound of the dead person’s breathing could be heard pressing against the aforementioned skin.

As I took a step further, a voice I knew very well, a hard, exacting, inflexible voice that I thought I would never hear again, flowed out through the open warehouse door.

“The Hussain Frees were too dependent on machines. My method is more human-oriented. Machines are, after all, tools of the population. Tools presuppose humans. Because we forget that simple fact, we make the same mistake.”

It’s Jang Gi-young.

My benefactor is Jang Gi-yeong.

This is my mentor, Jang Gi-yeong, who used to talk nonsense so seriously without any concern.

“······.”

I feel the Defender looking back at me.

He spoke to me in a low voice.

“Come in. I’ll guard this place.”

He bowed and expressed his gratitude, then went into the warehouse.

And then I saw.

A mountain of junk covered with so much junk it’s hard to describe.

In the large dock warehouse, there was literally a huge hill of scrap metal and equipment here and there, and in the center of it, in front of a work table that was slanted, the back of a shabby, middle-aged man with his head all shaved off, shaking as if he was having a seizure.

“······.”

I’m speechless.

When he was still human, he used to talk a lot in that cramped rented apartment.

Still, my mentor is constantly spouting serious nonsense, which is his trademark.

“That thick armor of the Kraken type that was supposedly invincible and couldn’t be penetrated by human technology except nuclear weapons was pierced by the ceaseless barrage of artillery fire. That’s what monsters are like. Me too. Woo Min-hee too. I should have expelled you. Kang Han-min. You’re a bad guy. You’re a really bad guy. Don’t curse at me. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

For a brief moment, I had high hopes.

Maybe my benefactor is in his right mind.

No, maybe he, who has even obtained the power of Awaken, might be able to teach me new lessons that he could not teach me.

Thinking of the black sheet of paper hanging next to Suu’s in my room, I mustered up my courage and opened my mouth to my teacher, who had turned his back on me, pushing away the various waves of emotions that even I could not understand.

“Instructor.”

Jang Ki-young’s movements stopped.

Slowly the zombie turned to look at me.

I was a little curious about what would come out of his mouth.

He said.

“What? Are you Park Gyu-nia?”

My teacher turned his head back toward the desk.

“Do you remember what I told you the day before yesterday?”

“yes?”

“I told you I’d make you a secret weapon! That general-type bastard. I’ll beat you up!”

“······.”

“It’s almost done. Yes. It’s almost done!”

Jang Ki-young laughed out loud.

I couldn’t say anything.

This is what happened.