Hiding a House in the Apocalypse - Chapter 58



Only Krnovel

37. Immortality (4)

It’s not that hard to go to a place an hour away by bike and kill someone.

It was getting dark and the pioneer’s lights were no longer visible.

Perhaps it is a result of the recent chaos in Seoul.

As the situation in Incheon stabilized to some extent, the power struggle that had been dormant began to raise its head.

As criticism grew that lawmakers whose terms were extended indefinitely were receiving useless resources and excessive treatment, the National Assembly decided to elect as many as 500 pseudo-lawmakers who would be called national representatives.

I’m not sure, but it seems like there are some people among the pioneers who want to become national representatives.

I guess he thinks he’s qualified.

If the number of people you send to your death is an achievement, then wouldn’t it be worth claiming your share?

By the way, reality always seems to be more vile and dirty than we think.

Even before reaching Dragon’s bunker, which I had visited twice, I discovered unexpected people.

On the road a fair distance from the bunker, three men were drinking and chatting around a campfire inside a drum.

It’s probably a gang brought by a human who is Pilcrum’s younger brother.

I hid for a moment and eavesdropped on their conversation.

“Those guys over there. Aren’t they Chinese?”

“Those kids. I want to kill them all.”

“They say that the ROK-US Combined Forces swept everything that landed into the sea, but those people are just lying.”

“That cartoonist’s wife is so sexy. What the heck. Why can’t I just kill that bastard and play with his wife?”

“I don’t know. I guess it’s up to Hyungmin to decide. Thanks to that, I got to buy a lot of food and drinks. Isn’t this a profitable business?”

A trivial story.

This is not a story that you really need to listen to.

I thought for a moment about how to handle it.

You can kill them with a gun or by chopping them down with an axe.

Before taking action, we did another thorough reconnaissance.

As expected, there is a car parked there.

An electric vehicle with bulletproof plates.

There was also a charger with a solar cell next to it.

There was no one inside the vehicle, but it was full of alcohol and food that appeared to belong to Mr. Dragon.

I took stock of my opponent again.

Three people around the bunker.

Three people in a bunker.

Of course, this is assuming that Dragon is dead.

He approached the car and placed large rocks in front and behind the wheels.

It’s insurance just in case.

Of course, I will make sure that no one leaves here without my permission.

I slowly approached the campfire.

It was easy to approach since there were no guards behind.

He walked lightly without slowing down and cut off the neck of the man holding the bottle of alcohol without any warning.

Phew!

The sound of the axe blade digging into flesh and breaking bone echoed softly.

The man staggered without even being able to scream.

Before he fell, he struck the man’s head with another axe with precise force as he tried to turn his head.

Bam!

The last man left was lucky.

I was able to see your face for a brief moment.

But at the same time, I was unlucky.

Because I had to take on two axes with my body at the same time.

He supported his body by sticking the axe blade into the man’s neck as if he were cutting down a tree.

Zururuk-

The flowing blood got on his gloved hands, but not on his clothes.

I laid him down next to the campfire, slowly, as if I were putting a child to bed, and headed toward the bunker.

In front of the bunker, a man who called himself Pilcrum’s younger brother, whom I had seen before, came out and sat on the camping chair where Pilcrum had been sitting, looking out at the distant sea.

I glanced at him.

There are no guns.

The bunker door is also closed.

“······.”

He’s not really a friend worth talking to, but his temper raised and he stood up.

No, I had something I wanted to ask too.

I let the moonlight invade me and emerged from the darkness.

“What, what are you?! You?!”

The man’s bloodshot eyes soon found me.

“Take up your weapons.”

He showed off a bloody axe.

The man is seen shrinking into his chair as if he were about to sink into it.

“You’re a hunter?”

“What, what?! Yeo-Hoon! Yeo-Hoon!”

He shouted in the direction of the campfire.

When there was no answer, the man looked toward the bunker this time and shouted urgently.

“Hojun! Hojun!”

He picked up his pistol and fired three shots at the entrance to the bunker.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The sound of gunfire and ricocheting bullets shattered the silence around the bunker.

I heard a scream from inside and asked him.

“Where did you go?”

The man rolled his eyes furiously and reached out for the dagger he had left on the floor.

He let him hold the dagger.

“Where did the person who was here go?”

I felt like he had to hold the dagger to get to the answer I wanted.

“Killed.”

As he took up the dagger, the man spoke the truth.

The man grumbled, as if he had some confidence buried in his dagger.

“You knew that, right? If you left, that bastard would get hurt. Why didn’t you stop him then? Huh?”

But all I gained was confidence.

Nothing changes just because you hold a dagger.

He walked briskly towards him, holding an axe.

The man barked like a dog, thrusting a sharp blade into my hand.

“This kid! Are you crazy?! Won’t you get out? Huh? Huh? Stab me?! Huh?! Stab me?!”

In the end, he was the first to stab me with the dagger.

At the same time, perhaps out of habit, he reached out his other hand and tried to grab me.

Two axes split the air.

Chaengkang!

Drop the dagger in one go.

Phew!

I hit the other one with my elbow, making the arm that was trying to grab me dangle.

“Ahhhhhhh!”

I asked him quietly, watching him cry out in pain.

“Are you a hunter?”

The man bit his lip with an expression like a crying child.

There is no need to hear the answer.

He just threw the axe away.

The axe carelessly flew in a parabolic arc towards him, who was frowning.

It’ll probably take about a second.

A second or so would be enough time to realize one’s actions and fate.

Maybe that one second felt like an eternity to him.

Bam!

The man died with the axe embedded in his body without even offering a single proper resistance.

He pulled out the axe that had been stuck between his eyebrows, wiped away the brain and blood, and headed to the bunker.

Inside the bunker, a man’s heavy breathing, a woman’s screams, and a child’s cries were mixed together.

Could there be another one?

It doesn’t matter if it’s there.

He spoke calmly toward the closed door, holding a pistol in one hand and an axe in the other.

“Open the door. Before I kill you all.”

The door opened.

A terrified family appeared before me.

There was never another enemy I was worried about.

I checked the corners in case they were hiding in the dark, but they were all there.

As I was brandishing my pistol and scanning the bunker, Pilcrum knelt down before me.

“I’m truly sorry! Please spare my life! At least my family is my family······.”

“Where is my friend?”

DragonC.

The end of the man who gave life’s vitamin called fun to our community bulletin board was ordinary.

I saw a man rotting on a ridge of a rice paddy, with only a shallow layer of dirt barely covering his face, without any respect.

The decaying complexion, coincidentally, was not much different from when he was alive.

A dark red earth color reminiscent of death.

Pilcrum begged for his life in front of the corpse.

“I didn’t kill him. Hyungmin. Hyungmin told me to kill him······.”

“Ask again.”

I threw a shovel at him.

“Politely.”

I took a step back and watched quietly as Pilcrum buried Dragonsea.

“for a moment.”

Work was paused for a moment.

Something fell off the body.

That’s right.

The wad of paper inside the plastic-wrapped paper bag is Dragon’s manuscript.

The title of that manuscript is none other than “The Remnant.”

This is the final masterpiece that Dragon-ssi had been desperately trying to achieve, the one that would make him immortal.

I stood still and read his manuscript.

It was a list of characters rather than a storyboard.

Mr. Dragon first created a story with words and drew a storyboard based on that.

I think I’ve told this story before.

“······.”

Now I understand.

The reason why his hands were slow.

Because I had to do it twice.

But the sentences he left behind had the power to touch people’s hearts.

While Pilcrum was digging the grave, he entered the bunker.

My family was looking at me with fearful eyes, but they didn’t even spare me a glance and looked into the bunker.

The atmosphere had changed a lot.

Perhaps the biggest change was that all of the posters of his work that Mr. Dragon had put up were taken down.

I sat down in front of the workbench that Dragon-ssi had been using, looking for one more reason to kill.

“······.”

Is this the laptop the deceased used while alive?

He stroked his laptop and turned his gaze to the monitor.

There were several PaleNet posts floating around in the Internet window.

All of these are the little things that Philcrum used to write and look at.

When I tried to close everything, a small window for our bulletin board was still open in the corner.

I saw our bulletin board from Dragon’s account.

A small world that we always see, moderately chaotic and moderately perishing.

There is something that is seen without notice.

This is a list of temporary saves.

One piece of writing was left unfinished, waiting to be completed.

I opened it.

DragonC: I’m partnering with Philcrum!

-Pilkrum, this guy. He’s just a guy. His imagination is outstanding, and his basic skills are no joke. Wow, shit, honestly, I felt a wall.

But you know, my friends.

There’s one thing I’m better at than that guy.

I was a much “better” storyteller than Philkrum.

We’re going to make a big deal out of this. Dragon-ssi and Pilcrum88 are going to join forces!

“······.”

Dragon’s last post was not posted on the bulletin board.

But it definitely got to me.

What he was trying to tell me.

“There is one way for you to live.”

Inside the bunker.

He spoke calmly to Pilcrum, who was kneeling in a half-exhausted state.

“Become a dragon.”

“yes?!”

I handed Mr. Dragon’s manuscript to Philcrum.

“It is a command to complete this in his name.”

“What, what is this?!”

A look of mild surprise crossed Pilcrum’s face.

“Is this a sequel to the one I drew?”

He nodded slowly.

At first, Pilkrum’s face changed as he looked at the storyboard and manuscript with bewilderment.

With surprise and shock.

“What, what is this?”

He looked up at me with a serious expression.

“Oh, honestly, it’s good!”

I turned around and left him behind.

“No matter how long it takes, just finish this. That’s the condition for me to forgive you.”

I don’t want to mix up the story anymore.

Otherwise, I might kill that human and his entire family.

The fake goldfish in the fishbowl on the corner of the desk shook violently and then turned its stupid face toward me.

“······.”

He put the fishbowl in his arms and left.

*

DragonC: “The Remnant” Episode 2

It was two weeks later that the latest version of Dragon C’s masterpiece, Remnant, was posted on the bulletin board.

It was a time of chaos when everyone was angry at the useless event of selecting 500 parasites called national representatives in Incheon, and at the same time, there were ominous rumors circulating that the elite of the legion faction were aiming for power again.

The latest update of Dragon C, which came out in this suffocating time, brought the same emotion to two disparate groups: Palenet and Viva! Apocalypse!

Amidst the flood of praise, I was reading the last piece he had entrusted to me, immersed in the dizzying aroma of coffee.

SKELTON

In the storyboard, which was nothing more than a doodle, a man was standing holding an axe.

He may be naive on the internet, but in real life he was a smart, loyal, and fight-hardened person.

I read his doodles as if I was sharing cartoons drawn by other kids in school.

“Hey. That’s not it.”

Well, it seems that Mr. Dragon was impressed by me.

If you look at this Park Gyu-ga, he can cut down medium-sized species like a radish and even deal with large species with a finishing move that is reminiscent of a sword.

I’m not an Awaken and I’ve never heard of an Awaken using a sword.

But it wasn’t such an absurd story.

“Oh, shit, a dream!”

If you look at the last monologue of the character Skeleton in the work.

I opened my notepad with a smile that I couldn’t tell was a bitter smile or a genuine one.

A pure white, eternal space spread out before me.

I absentmindedly typed two letters into an empty notepad.

imperishability.

The phrase was soon erased by a barrage of mindless backspaces.

“······.”

There were two writers.

One died and one remained.

To become immortal.

To remain immortal.

To leave behind immortality.

“Immortal······.”

He shook his head.

Wouldn’t expressing Dragon’s intentions with the hackneyed word “immortality” be a convenient way of oversimplifying the incident?

The fake goldfish turned toward me as if agreeing with my thoughts and looked at me with a dazed face.

It may have been a coincidence that I lightly tapped the table and several physical phenomena occurred as a result of the recoil, but the moment I saw the goldfish, a thought occurred to me like a dream.

I wonder if this situation, this flow, is exactly what Dragon C intended.

Like an immortal masterpiece that is completed through one’s own death.

No, maybe we are just fish swimming in the dreams of the dead.

It would be a possible story if our world were incorporated into his work.