Hiding a House in the Apocalypse - Chapter 379



Only Krnovel

Episode 339 136. Candle (3)

The conflict did not last long.

The man with the low voice put down his gun.

“You can ignore it.”

He glanced at the woman staring at us and then turned away.

“They are not human. They are already dead. That is why we call them candles.”

“candle?”

He asked, staring blankly at the obviously alive woman who was smiling at us.

The man nodded.

“They are the kind of people who just wait for the day to burn out like a candle.”

The candle he speaks of doesn’t seem to refer only to that woman.

This refers to all the humans here, who are as motionless as monsters.

As the man said, the woman could only see us from beyond the snake’s spine-like structure.

I didn’t engage in conversation or cause any harm.

“······.”

This is the first time I’ve seen a fanatic in the narrow sense.

It’s a given.

In China, we defended major cities and strongholds where humans still remained.

The areas we have withdrawn from or failed to defend are erosion zones.

The impression, as always, is not good.

I hate them.

It’s not that I want to kill everyone who raises a gun, but honestly, I don’t want to put those weak and foolish humans who surrendered to the enemy of humanity on the same level as me.

If that woman does anything to harm us in the slightest, I won’t hesitate.

I do not regard fanatics as human beings and therefore omit some of the standards I would apply to humans.

The fanatic who suddenly appeared just stood there as the man had said, so we turned our attention back to our immediate goal.

“Instructor. What do you think?”

Song Yu-jin asked, looking at the cracks and the surrounding area beneath the mountain.

“difficult.”

It’s not that it’s easy.

difficult.

It implies that we should not say that something is difficult among our hunters.

“In order to achieve our goal, we need to approach the rift’s edge, but considering the level and number of monsters lurking around the rift, it’s impossible.”

There are only two solutions.

One is the concentrated firepower that can wipe them out from outside the reflective field’s range.

Artillery, air force, and warships limited to coastal areas.

Before the war, they were always reliable friends by my side, but now they are a force that is difficult to rely on.

The other one is the boss of these young friends, Woo Min-hee.

Woo Min-hee must be there.

You need an Awaken like Woo Min-hee to tear apart the monsters in front of you and open up a path of escape.

But given Woo Min-hee’s personality, she probably wouldn’t come here to help me.

“······Thank you for guiding me this far. Thanks to you, I was able to update the image of the Paju crack that I remember after a long time.”

In short, mission failed.

“Let’s withdraw.”

Early giving up is a trait shared by both incompetent and competent leaders.

A wise renunciation saves everything, but a foolish renunciation gradually loses everything.

I tend not to give up unless absolutely necessary.

As such, there is no answer to this issue.

I saw Valentine.

“My Lord Valentine, I am very sorry, but there is nothing we can do against that level of force.”

“Is that so?”

Valentine is still in shock.

Heavy sweat, shaky eyes, and heavy breathing are signs of how stressed he is.

“Let’s go back. Our plans are important, but aren’t our lives more important? If we die, it’s over. Everything is over.”

“No, that’s not true.”

Something like a blade pierced through my heart.

It’s a clear murderous intent.

I glared at the fanatic who was spouting nonsense next to us with murderous intent.

“Can I kill you?”

I asked around.

A man with a low voice soon answered my question.

“Ignore it. Didn’t you say candle?”

Crash

He picked up a pistol.

The motivation is extremely simple yet powerful.

Fanatics should not be allowed to speak.

You must not let your dirty gray-white tongue speak out such disgusting thoughts.

“Monsters won’t react, but alien species may swarm in.”

The man said, looking at the gun.

“······.”

I reminisce sometimes.

I often ask myself whether I should have killed that woman back then.

“Just a moment.”

It was Valentine who stopped the killing.

I was curious.

He, who had accepted and followed every decision I made as if he were an NPC, tried to stop me from emitting a clear murderous intent that even Song Yu-jin could sense.

I guess deep down I also recognized that he was inferior to us, that he was below us.

I see you feeling more bewildered than angry at his intervention.

“Can’t I use it?”

Valentine looked at the woman and said.

“You’re using it?”

“These people. They’re moving around so well even in a place with so many monsters.”

That thought of Valentine’s Day is one we cannot think of.

In school and on the battlefield, we are taught and reinforced in our own minds that fanatics are not human beings, but something that must be killed.

The fanatics we see are not human.

But to Valentine, who lived an ordinary life, they still seem like humans.

It seems like they are the same being, capable of conversation and harmony.

I waited for Valentine’s next move, feeling a new and refreshing shock.

“Hey. Hey. Hello!”

Wiping the sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief, Valentine called out to the pale woman who was blankly watching us.

“This is difficult.”

A man with a thick voice spoke.

Song Yu-jin’s expression isn’t good either.

Another man, who had been silent the whole time, was now wearing a gas mask that covered his entire face.

He doesn’t say anything, but it’s clear that he doesn’t like the situation.

“······.”

But I can’t just stop it.

It may be considering Valentine’s feelings, but it doesn’t look good to come all the way here, taking on Woo Min-hee’s debt, and then leave without doing anything.

It is true that I had some hope.

“Yes. Over there. Can you go under that crack? It looks like the monsters aren’t attacking there. Yes. Can you hold this and stay there for five minutes? Then come back here? Oh, a little sugar? I have something to eat. There’s dried beef jerky, too. And a handful of flour.”

Valentine tried to communicate fiercely with the silent woman using hand and foot gestures.

I saw a woman.

Appearance: Appears to be in early to mid 20s.

He has messy hair, doesn’t wash properly, and is in poor health, so he looks more like a withered reed than a person, but if he takes care of himself well and eats well, he is a passable character.

Judging from his height, which appears to be around 165cm, it seems unlikely that he is North Korean.

The woman opened her lips.

A faint sound comes out.

But that voice did not reach us.

Even though I have quite keen hearing and have trained my hearing, I can’t seem to get the message across, so I guess the voice is either quite small or faint.

It was Valentine who conveyed her intention.

“He said he would do it.”

“······Is that so?”

“Yes. I think we can get to that horrible floating lake-like place without getting attacked by monsters, even though they’re talking about unification or something.”

“······.”

To be honest, it’s the opposite.

You shouldn’t do that.

Hunters, including myself, especially those who have been dispatched to China, believe that there is no problem in killing fanatics.

But if you think about it calmly, it’s just one piece of equipment at best.

“······great.”

“Can I borrow one of the communicators? Oh, and I think I might need to show you how to operate it.”

He gave me the communicator.

Valentine took the communicator and approached the cultist woman.

I saw his face.

A different face from when I saw Song Yu-jin and the others.

This is the face of an ordinary man who is serious, enthusiastic, and does his best in everything.

It’s a new thing, but I was curious about Valentine’s past.

At first, I didn’t have any major doubts.

When we first heard about his past, Valentine was a businessman who ran a small business.

But his past changed a little bit every time he talked about it.

Sometimes I ran a PC room, and other times I was an engineer at a large company.

Even his real name is ambiguous.

He said with his own mouth that the name he used while in the swamp was an alias.

This is also the first time I found out that he was married.

It’s not that I’m trying to dig into it, but he’s definitely a mysterious character.

However, Valentine’s hard-working, sincere, and affectionate personality does not dwell on the past.

Following people like me and having the same goals is a bonus.

I didn’t really bring up Valentine’s past, thinking that in a time of ruin where everything is in decline, wouldn’t it be okay to call that a defeat?

“Yes. I will go now.”

The fanatics are moving.

Barefoot.

The fact that she doesn’t even care, with her frilly clothes fluttering in the wind and her bare buttocks exposed, shows that this fanatic has already gone far beyond the level of an ordinary human being.

But the voice was sweet.

“You know what?”

The fanatic spoke through the communicator.

The soft Seoul dialect.

I’m not North Korean.

I noticed Song Yu-jin and the rest of her friends taking off their radios.

It is the result of old training and self-imposed stereotypes.

Don’t talk to fanatics.

Because the premise includes not listening to fanatics.

“There was a kangaroo in the hospital I was at. It was a tall kangaroo that supported the ground with its two legs and tail and always stood blankly in front of the hospital. It didn’t seem that old. Two? Three? Actually, I don’t know how old that kangaroo is.”

I also thought about turning off the communicator.

Because each and every one of those pleasant voices, breaths, and slow tempo felt like the propagation of an evil religion that was inciting the destruction of humanity.

“Wow. A kangaroo? Why is there something like that in the hospital?”

Valentine’s voice stopped the gesture to turn off the communicator.

“······.”

Let’s listen to the end.

Because I am also an accomplice in this incident.

Of course, I have no curiosity about fanatics.

I am not curious about fanatics.

What I’m just curious about is the inner thoughts of a man who thinks he’s close to Valentine but doesn’t seem like he’ll ever become close to her.

In the silence that followed, the fanatic, who had been hidden in a square, was captured walking barefoot on the gray-white plain.

There are monsters around.

Small species, snail type.

It is one of the earliest insect-like variations classified as spherical.

The monster that sprayed mucus that melted people didn’t react at all even when a fanatic passed by.

“I don’t know. I guess it was the hospital director’s order.”

Even when she was talking through the communicator.

“Look, Skeleton. Real monsters don’t do anything.”

Valentine came to me with an excited expression and spoke to me in a voice that was as feverish as his expression.

“······okay.”

Under ominous gaze, the woman walked straight towards the crack.

There were countless monsters and alien species swarming around, but none of them showed any interest in the woman.

“That’s amazing.”

Valentine let out a gasp.

Then the unknown man retorted.

“It must be a burned out candle.”

He turned back and muttered.

“They probably don’t care because it’s all burned down.”

I exchanged glances with Song Yu-jin.

Soon, Song Yu-jin’s group took a small step back and distanced themselves from us.

Meanwhile, the fanatic continued to talk softly.

“I always wondered about the kangaroo that stood blankly in front of the hospital, staring blankly at the horizon. The content of the question gradually changed. At first, I wondered why the kangaroo came to this place, but as time passed, I became more curious about what the kangaroo was thinking and living in this closed space.”

After hearing that, I called Song Yu-jin.

She used to be bright and innocent, but recently, she’s become quick-witted, perhaps because she got treated so badly by Woo Min-hee.

“Yes, teacher.”

She came over and answered quietly.

“Are you listening too?”

Song Yu-jin nodded while observing the situation.

“That story that woman was talking about just now. Is that the story in the manual?”

Perhaps it would be called a “fable.”

These are the stories that fanatics tell when they spread their religion to others.

There are some fixed fables, and fanatics repeat these stories like parrots to other evangelists.

The story of the kangaroo in the hospital is a fable I don’t know.

It’s been a long time since I left the battlefield, so that’s to be expected.

So I called Song Yu-jin.

Since she has been active all her life, she would know more about the latest mental information than I do.

“I don’t know the story.”

Song Yu-jin answered with her arms crossed and her eyebrows furrowed slightly.

“There is a pattern of pigeon stories in the subway, but this is the first time I have seen a kangaroo story in a hospital.”

“okay?”

The reason I asked this story was to cut off that nonsense in the middle.

It’s a somewhat conservative but surefire way to get people to shut up when the conversation is well underway.

The reason I’m even considering this number is because Valentine’s face as he listens to the story is not ordinary.

He took a liking to the first fanatic he met.

More than I, even though I’ve known him for several years.

Well, the other person is young and would be pretty if she dressed up, so it would be natural to like her.

The story continues in disappointment.

“There was a kangaroo room inside a hallway that was slightly past the lobby. Surprisingly, it was real. However, the ceiling of the room was quite high, so it took about two beer crates to get up there. When evening came, the kangaroo would step on the beer crates and go into his room.”

Song Yu-jin smiled faintly.

It’s such an absurd story.

I didn’t bother to comment on this nonsense.

My gaze was constantly on the fanatic.

The fanatic has now approached within 100 meters of the rift.

She walked barefoot through the hellish place, unmolested, where the medium-sized species guarded like the Four Heavenly Kings and where terrible alien creatures imitating all sorts of bugs swarmed below.

During the process, I clearly stepped on an alien species that resembled a songbird, but nothing happened.

However, the more relentless her advances became, the more color came to Valentine’s face.

“and······!!”

Although he is muting the sound, he seems to think that the fanatic’s actions are probably a miracle.

Well, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to be shaken when you see that kind of behavior in front of a monster that you’ve been taught is the enemy of humanity and that coexistence is impossible.

The fanatic passed through monsters and all manner of abominations and arrived at the source of all this calamity, beneath the rift, a calm, occasionally rippling lake like a mirror.

“It’s a candle. It’ll burn out soon.”

The unknown man muttered.

I asked Song Yu-jin his name.

“Hyung-taek. Shin Hyung-taek. He’s a year younger than me. The guy next to him wearing a gas mask is a sight to behold.”

As everyone’s thoughts crossed, Valentine returned to his serious face and began to take measurements.

“Okay. Keep it that way. Okay.”

I watched in silence.

What’s good is good.

The process is important, but the results are also important.

Especially in situations like this where there is no follow-through, the result often takes precedence over the process.

Valentine also observed the monsters, his eyes wide open as he looked at the tablet.

Soon Valentine nodded.

“Yes, that’s enough. That’s enough!”

Was the operation a success?

But then the fanatic standing beneath the crack suddenly broke the silence.

“I now know what that kangaroo was thinking and why he did what he did.”

He took off his communicator and said to Valentine.

“It’s a dog.”

He said it again with emphasis.

“Don’t listen.”