Hiding a House in the Apocalypse - Chapter 354



Only Krnovel

Hiding the House in the Apocalypse Episode 360

147. Mountain range (2)

Click click

I felt uncomfortable while taking the photo.

I wonder what kind of discomfort it is.

Mutation hunting is not our specialty.

Mutation hunting, which can be done by anyone, even non-hunters, was considered a second-class mission.

There are plenty of monsters to kill, so sending an alpha team like us to hunt mutations is a waste of resources.

Still, a significant number of mutations were hunted.

That’s because there were so many mutations running rampant on the battlefield.

From that experience, I observed footprints.

The overly large feline footprints catch the eye, but the spacing between the footprints, their direction, the depth at which they are made, and their abrupt appearance and disappearance are all important.

My experience and intuition tell me that this footprint is out of the ordinary.

“what do you think about it?”

When it comes to mutation hunting, Kim Da-ram has probably encountered and accumulated more cases than I have.

After the Old School Hunters were pushed to the second line, their main job was to hunt mutations that appeared in the suburbs, and Kim Da-ram was in charge of overseeing these second-line hunters.

“well.”

She seemed to feel something strange too.

But perhaps because of the difference experience brought, she didn’t doubt the very existence of the footprints like I did.

Instead, she knelt down on the cold snow, her face almost pressed against the ground, and showed meticulousness by observing the shape of the footprints from various angles.

“······.”

This is one of the reasons why I liked Kim Da-ram.

When doing work, he is more thorough and certain than anyone else.

She may not be a very good commander due to her lack of flexibility and imagination, but it would be hard to find someone with as many qualities as she does as a first-class field agent.

“As you may have seen, Senior, the depth of the footprints is extremely consistent. Do you see that sloping part? The weight of the mutation, measured by the size of the footprints and the stride, seems to be at least 3 tons. The load on this part where it stepped over the sloping part should be deeper than the other parts, but even that is consistent.”

She added, rising from her seat and looking around with sharp eyes.

“Could it be that someone was playing a prank?”

“I agree.”

It’s not that uncommon for humans to cosplay as mutations.

Even before the war, the world was in chaos enough, and there were plenty of people who took advantage of the situation for personal gain or to resolve grudges.

We began a full-scale search by exchanging communications with the drone agent.

The object of the search is not the footprints of the mutation, but the corpse of a warlord’s soldier.

Kim Da-ram spread out the corpse that was badly damaged among the corpses buried in the snow on the snowfield.

Those who were present, especially the new hunters and soldiers, were blatantly disgusted, but Kim Da-ram calmly observed the corpse.

“Hmm. This is definitely a beast that was eaten. But judging by the teeth and the way the flesh is torn off, it doesn’t look like it belongs to the owner of the footprints.”

“What kind of beast is it?”

“Maybe it’s a wild boar?”

“I see.”

The search continued.

After an additional hour of searching, we unearthed another truth hidden behind the tiger’s footprints.

“It’s definitely true that someone has been here.”

There are over 50 corpses strewn about, but not a single one of them has ammunition.

The number of guns is also strangely lacking.

Most of what’s left are old and in poor condition.

One rifle in relatively good condition had its barrel missing.

Perhaps someone had left it there as a distraction to distract people, but the missing bullet in the rifle only served to heighten my suspicions.

“Is there any smoke rising around here?”

It started out of interest, but I definitely want to do it.

The drone operator soon reported the results of his reconnaissance to us.

“I can’t see any smoke, but there’s a village nearby. I checked it against a pre-war map and it looks like there’s a village there.”

Before the war, South Korea was clearly a wealthy country.

Looking at the concrete road paved in the middle of these steep mountains.

The streetlights that were no longer shining showed us where the road buried in snow was, and we headed forward along it.

In the middle, an armored vehicle made a loud noise.

As we backed the car out and dug through the snow, we saw a spiked barricade.

If a normal vehicle had passed by, the tire would have been punctured.

As the evidence of human presence grew stronger, we arrived at a village in the mountains.

Schools, community centers, beef wholesale and retail stores, post offices, Nonghyup branches, etc.

They say it’s a mountain village, but it looks like something out of the blue.

When he saw the hunters he was with trying to get off, he had Kim Da-ram stop them.

No need to get out of the car.

We have the power.

“I want everyone living in this town to assemble at a point within our sight within 30 minutes. Otherwise, I will designate this place as the artillery coordinates in 30 minutes. I repeat, everyone living in this town······.”

One experience I gained in China.

If there is a means of intimidation, it is actively used.

The Chinese army did not indiscriminately slaughter their own people from the beginning.

Countless accidents and casualties have left them in dire straits.

The hostile civilians we deal with are full of danger and hostility beyond what can be expressed in this dry expression.

Someone is trying to kill me.

After being exposed to such pure murderous intent several times, the superficial word ‘civilian’ is quickly erased from your mind.

We can’t assume that the people living here are hostile civilians, but it can’t hurt to be careful.

The most important thing is our lives.

“shooter!”

As Kim Da-ram gave instructions to the operator, the armored vehicle operator fired a 20mm machine gun at the village.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

A bullet of a different weight from our firearms collapsed a house, raising a huge cloud of dust.

After a while we could see.

Pale people crawling out of the ruins one by one.

As expected, there were no tigers among them.

*

There are several places in Korea called clan villages, where people with the same surname live together.

The village we found was one of those clan villages.

It seems that several elderly residents were stubbornly guarding the village.

There was also a young man and woman, but judging by their exotic appearance, they did not appear to have the surname of a clan.

Even judging from the way they look at the elders, it seems like there is a hierarchy that we are unaware of.

I had a conversation with Kim Da-ram beforehand.

“There have been a few cases where people from clan villages refused to comply with the relocation order and remained in their hometown. Most of them ended in tragedy, but here, they seem to have managed to preserve the community.”

“Who is doing this to you?”

“Mutations rather than looters. Most clan villages are in the countryside, and mutation relief does not occur as easily in the countryside as in the city. There have been cases like India where mutations were picked off one by one and annihilated like eating someone out of a refrigerator.”

“Oh, like that.”

Kim Da-ram frowned and became lost in thought.

“By the way, isn’t there something left over?”

I think there were about ten people, excluding foreign men and women.

These numbers don’t have any special meaning to me, as I don’t have data on clan villages after the war, but Kim Da-ram is different.

“In a typical clan village, there would be at least 50 people. But that’s all that’s left?”

“There were two winters.”

“Hmm.”

After finishing the story, I started talking with the residents of the village.

“Don’t get out of here.”

An old man spoke as if making a declaration.

“Don’t worry, I won’t take anyone.”

Kim Da-ram spoke with a bright smile, but even to me, a senior, his face looked quite scary.

In the midst of the tense atmosphere, the residents of the village took out their bags.

“This is all.”

Just cell phones, tablets, notebooks, etc.

Their intentions were transparent in that there was no sign of ammunition or firearms, but what we want is the former.

Soon, Kim Da-ram discovered the owner of the artillery unit.

“It’s Lieutenant General Lee Jae-young.”

It’s an unknown name.

“Surprisingly, he came from a military background.”

“Military officer? Someone who didn’t even graduate from the military academy?”

“Well, he had a bossy disposition. You know those people? People who have received elite education for over a decade and who just eat up people with their talents.”

“You are capable.”

“Behind that promotion, there must have been a lot of fanatic influence. He wasn’t considered a dangerous person because his power was small, but he’s dealt a big blow this time.”

Kim Da-ram sighed as he closed his notebook.

“Our work here is done. The operation was a success.”

That’s how things are.

Things that seem difficult often end up being bland.

But as things ended so blandly, one thing stood out.

It’s a tiger.

The guy who brought us here, who was full of words and trouble.

“A tiger?”

I asked the residents.

Their attitude became much more friendly than before, as they had been assured that they would not touch the ammunition, weapons, or other equipment they had acquired.

“Who made the tiger footprints?”

The residents faced each other.

A face that hides something rather than one that doesn’t know much.

When I was about to say something, Kim Da-ram stepped forward instead.

“Ha. You’re annoying me for wasting my time. It’s not the first time you’ve turned a blind eye to something you know is obvious. Ah, hurry up. Answer me quickly!”

The ability to speak with such deep displeasure in every single sentence is a talent that the cute Kim Da-ram I knew before didn’t have.

Anyway, the residents must have thought that there was no answer even at that old age, so they took a look around and brought out a secret tool.

The secret of the footprints has been revealed.

This photo was taken by a resident of the clan village.

They apparently left footprints all around them, using their huge forepaws, which were quite feline in appearance.

With mutation footprints this large, neither marauders nor scavengers will bother to look.

“This was the secret of the mountain army.”

Kim Da-ram snickered as he looked at the “mountain lion’s front paw” used by the residents.

“······.”

It’s the expected ending.

I had a vague idea that this would happen.

however.

“Squirrel.”

“why?”

“I’m talking about these soles. Isn’t the quality unnecessarily good?”

The texture of the soles, the various pores carved into the soles, the traces of numerous hairs clearly visible even in the lush black paint.

This appears to be a processed product from a living thing rather than something that was manufactured in a factory.

“Where did this come from?”

A tiger bigger than my face shook its paw and asked the old people.

As everyone watched, one man raised his hand.

“There was a tiger.”

The speech is awkward.

As expected, he is a foreigner.

He appealed to Kim Da-ram that he had something to say to him, not to us, but to the villagers.

After chatting outside for a while, Kim Da-ram waved at me.

“This guy. He says he knows where the tiger is?”

I guess there was something else going on.

Clank-

Kim Da-ram shook his head as he inspected the gun.

“The tiger is dead.”

She stared at the back of the foreigner leading the way with a strange expression on her face.

There seems to be a story.

It wouldn’t be a bad idea to join in on Kim Da-ram’s pranks for the sake of restoring the relationship between seniors and juniors.

Indeed, there was an oyster.

What stands out is the collapsed barbed wire fence and the abandoned makeshift toilet facility that appears to have been used by people in the past.

The moment I entered the cave, the pungent smell of a corpse hit my nose.

The corpse of a long-dead tiger was crouching in the darkness.

It’s a tiger.

It’s a tiger mutation.

Its size was truly terrifying.

“······.”

Both Kim Da-ram and I were lost in thought for a long time.

What if something like that came crashing down on you in the dark?

I don’t want to imagine it.

It’s clear that this isn’t something that can be solved with an axe.

You can’t stop an oncoming trailer with an axe, can you?

Click click

I took a picture while smelling the unpleasant smell.

Click click

“Senior. Aren’t you taking too many pictures?”

Kim Da-ram, who was watching, said something, but they ignored him and continued filming from all angles.

however.

Dalgrak-

There’s something caught on my foot.

“?”

It’s a bone.

When the flashlight was turned on, a familiar-looking skeleton appeared.

It’s a bone.

Kim Da-ram looked at the Vietnamese.

“Was that real?”

The Vietnamese nodded.

“yes.”

The story begins in a now-destroyed India.

A tigress cub captured by poachers is airlifted to a not-so-great local zoo.

Given that the zoo’s income is directly tied to its welfare, the tiger may not have been treated well.

Before the war, the zoo went bankrupt amid turmoil.

While other animals were adopted in one way or another, no one would buy the deformed tiger that never grew up properly.

A miracle came to the tiger.

A blessing that would be a disaster to humanity, called mutation, has come upon tigers.

I imagine that many of the histories that would become known as Sangun were written then.

And the tiger was wounded.

A local hunter or soldier, perhaps a persistent hunter, fatally wounded the animal.

The wounded tiger flowed into this den.

Every time the tiger got hungry, it raided the village.

The village, isolated from the outside world and without proper firearms, was a pretty good hunting ground.

At first they attacked cattle, and when the cattle fell, they attacked people.

People resisted and even set traps, but such tricks were useless against the intelligent tiger, and only greater retaliation ensued.

Cleverly, the tiger did not commit the folly of killing all the humans.

One by one, they killed and ate as much as they needed.

People soon came up with a solution.

“······There used to be a lot of foreigners here. There were a lot of Koreans, and there were also a lot of kids from Thailand and Bangladesh. This place was a place with a lot of money because they grew Shine Muscats.”

They offered sacrifices.

They brought the people they needed one by one to the dying tiger.

A Vietnamese man who identified himself as Dinh was lucky.

The tiger died right before his turn.

It was much later that Dean learned the truth.

An old man who was close to him told him the truth while drunk.

This is the whole story about Sangun.

There were no Siberian tigers, no mystics like mountain spirits, no human hunters who were far superior to other mutations.

There was only a microcosm of the dirty and vile human affairs that one commonly sees.

“It’s bland but spicy.”

Kim Da-ram handed Dean an automatic rifle and a grenade.

Dean asked, his eyes wide open.

“Are you okay?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

We left the village, leaving a bewildered Dean behind.

“There was a young woman there?”

Kim Da-ram looked out the window and spoke coldly.

“It looks like the old people kept it alive to use as a toy. Well, if there was no one else to feed it, they would have fed it to me.”

“Have you ever considered that what he said might be a lie?”

At my question, Kim Da-ram looked at me with a serious expression as if he had finally realized something, and then soon turned his gaze away.

“······I’ll figure it out.”

You could say that this is a conclusion worthy of Kim Da-ram.

Anyway, this story has nothing to do with us.

The important thing is that I saw the guy named Sangun with my own eyes.

As Kim Da-ram said, it is a bit of an unsatisfactory ending.

I was looking out the window at the falling snow and thinking about how I could tell the story of today.

“hmm?”

Something passes through the white forest.

“ah.”

At the same time, Kim Da-ram spoke as if he had remembered something.

“That tiger. They say it looks like it’s pregnant with cubs.”

Just as those words left his mouth, something huge passed through the forest.

A net-like pattern in black, yellow, and white.

It’s a tiger.

“stop!”

“senior?”

“Drone control!”

I stopped the car and checked my surroundings.

There was nothing and nothing was found even in the sky.

I will never know if what I saw was an illusion or reality.

“······.”

The mountain is a story.

The story isn’t over yet.