Hiding a House in the Apocalypse-Chapter 164.4: Hypothesis (4)
There’s nothing more valuable than life.
I loathe old-school ideologies about self-sacrifice and noble deaths.
But that doesn’t change the fact that there are countless tasks in the world where someone has to risk their life.
Even something like construction work or truck driving exposes you to thousands of times more danger than someone sitting comfortably in their room browsing the internet.
As hunters, even before the war, and especially after, we held the most death-prone job imaginable.
But just because our work brushes close with death doesn’t mean we should accept it as inevitable.
To accept death lightly just because we work near it is no different from telling someone who handles poison to just drink it.
The closer one’s work is to death, the more they must treasure life.
All of our work comes with life on the line, but even among them, there are missions that are exceptionally dangerous.
That includes missions with absurdly high prerequisites, ones involving enemies or types far more dangerous than usual, in terrains or environments we’re unfamiliar with—or missions with goals that are practically impossible.
As a team leader, I usually filtered out those missions myself.
The reason I kept a distance from the Chinese wasn’t just a personal preference—it helped with drawing this sort of line.
Other team leaders who got chummy with Chinese officers got emotionally dragged into dangerous missions and ended up wiped out.
That said, I didn’t avoid every dangerous mission.
There were some I deemed risky but worth it—tasks that only we could pull off.
When we took on such high-risk missions, I poured just as much effort into persuading my team as I did planning.
In my experience, appeals to camaraderie or promises of big rewards rarely worked.
Team members show little interest in suicidal missions because the odds of dying are simply too high.
So to convince them, I had to show that despite the risks, they had a better chance of surviving than they thought.
The most effective method I found was to present a clear route of survival.
How do we make it back alive?
It’s kind of like providing collateral when you take out a loan.
I've had to put up collateral for loans myself before.
From a bank’s perspective, the most reliable assurance is knowing how they’ll recover the debt if I default.
In the end, I did default—but money and human life are two very different things.
Clack-clack—clack-clack—
The train rumbled forward.
We were moving toward Seoul Station at 60 kilometers per hour.
Before the war, the trip from Cheongnyangni to Seoul Station took quite a while. But now, it was nearly instant.
Because we weren’t stopping at any of the stations in between.
Still, there was one unavoidable stop.
Exactly 1.1 kilometers from Seoul Station, we’d have to halt.
That’s the point where Hong Da-jeong’s drone lost contact—and we needed to recon the area again starting there.
But the most important question is whether the Screamer-type is still at Seoul Station.
Three days ago, a high-altitude drop drone captured an indistinct pale form assumed to be a Screamer.
Considering that monsters, once settled, tend not to move an inch from their spot, the thing is likely still there.
“Wouldn’t it have been better to just bombard the area?”
Kim Daram was still openly unhappy with my plan.
Hearing that from someone who should know better—a former team leader, my senior—made me feel something close to disappointment. But Mgu’s camera was already filming us.
I mentally calculated the angle between my face and the lens, stepped into the optimal frame, and spoke in a calm tone.
“It would be nice if a bombardment worked. But if it doesn’t, the monster will relocate. And we may never get another shot at it.”
That’s how the General-types are.
How many airstrikes and bombardments had they tried before sending us in?
None of them worked. That’s why we’re here.
From a monster’s point of view, the difference between an airstrike and us is like night and day.
“You know how it is. Sometimes, the hardest missions end absurdly easily.”
That’s how the world works.
You don’t know until you try.
Some missions that look tough unravel easily. And others that seem simple can turn into a nightmare.
Luck plays a part, but I believe the attitude you bring to the task is just as important.
If it’s hard, we examine it from all angles, brainstorm, grind through it, and eventually find a solution.
And if that works out, like I told Kim Daram—it might even end absurdly easily.
Of course, things can also go wrong.
That’s when you deploy Plan B.
No hesitation. Just run.
There’s another power generator and control car attached to the rear of the train.
If we sever the connection with the car loaded with explosives, we can use the rear control car to retreat along the path we came.
“They still haven’t noticed us.”
Today’s new addition was Kim Hanna, a Regular Awakened.
Though some viewed her as excess baggage, she was the most experienced fighter among the Regular Awakened in New Seoul.
I owed her a personal debt, but she had insisted on taking part in ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) this operation.
As a veteran who had worked inside Rifts, she understood things I didn’t.
“They’re not alert yet.”
Just like humans have various levels of alertness based on perceived danger, apparently monsters have a similar system.
This didn’t seem to apply to lone monsters, but for clustered groups, it looked like they shared a sort of collective threat-sensing network.
Let’s use Kim Hanna’s own words here.
“When the threat level rises, monsters tend to respond as a group. They have their own danger scale. Shells and missiles trigger it the most. They also react sharply to aircraft and drones.”
“What about people?”
Cheon Young-jae suddenly chimed in.
Kim Hanna glanced at him with uncertainty, then replied in a quiet voice.
“They don’t seem to fear people that much. Maybe they respond a little to people with guns, but inside the Rift, most monsters are mid-tier or higher...”
She trailed off, but the implication was clear.
People with guns don’t matter to them.
I asked the next question.
“What about Awakened?”
Here, of course, I meant Awakened who can emit waves.
Kim Hanna’s face paled slightly.
A flicker of fear passed through her eyes.
I was about to retract the question when she spoke up first.
“...They ask who we are.”
“They talk to you?”
“No. Not like us. But it feels like they’re asking. I don’t think it’s just me—everyone else who went in said the same thing.”
Kim Hanna’s expression grew increasingly grim.
She nodded and waved her hand.
That was her way of saying: enough talk.
As the group started to scatter and return to their positions, I asked her quietly:
“You feeling okay?”
She forced a smile and pointed to the tactical comms gear strapped to her back.
“With NP equipment, I’m holding out fine.”
“You’re not expected to step up during this mission.”
“Even so, I want to be useful to you, Captain.”
“I appreciate the thought, but I’m not the kind of guy who needs much help.”
That’s just the truth.
Help is something you ask for when things aren’t going your way.
Sure, sometimes outside help is necessary—but not this time.
The plan was airtight.
“This place is monster-occupied territory.”
Kim Daram said coldly as she looked out the train window.
Outside was a world of muted gray—a bleak half-washed place.
I couldn’t give an exact percentage, but to my eyes, about 35% of the area north of the Han River was already eroded.
A lot of the terrain was stained with gray decay, but some parts still retained their original color.
That’s probably because Seoul held out for a long time after the war—and when it finally fell, the Lighthouse played a major role in slowing the collapse.
If not, the gray might have swallowed everything south of the river by now.
The area around Seoul Station was hit especially hard—wide-ranging, high-density erosion.
Almost like the monsters had established a forward operating base right there.
With the entire place leveled by war, who knows how many of them now live there?
Consistent recon s indicated that Annihilator-types, Centurion-types, Phalanx-types, Harvester-types—combat-specialized monsters—were entrenched there.
Fighting them head-on is suicide.
A small tactical unit like ours—just a Hunter team—isn’t built to deal with threats like that.
Luckily, our vessel—the Skelton—would likely be safe from their reach.
Because we were using subway tunnels.
According to Hong Da-jeong’s recon, the 1.1 km stretch leading to Seoul Station showed no sign of monsters—or even the grotesque structures they usually leave behind.
But now, that unexplored stretch lay ahead of us.
“Reducing speed. Preparing to stop.”
Cheon Young-jae was handling the controls.
He might not be popular with women, but he was smart and picked things up fast—perfect for the job.
Just as we agreed, the train came to a halt 3 km away from Seoul Station.
I pulled out the dumbass drone that Hong Da-jeong had built.
As the name suggests, it’s barely even a drone. More like a rail-cart with a motor and a wired camera strapped to it.
I set it on the rail and gave it a strong push.
Clack—
The dumb drone slid swiftly down the track before slowing down, relying on its spring-powered mechanism as it gradually disappeared from view.
The camera cable streamed real-time visuals back to us.
“Damn, that thing’s slow.”
Kim Daram grumbled again, but even Kim Hanna ignored him now.
That’s how often he complained.
Mgu didn’t even bother filming him anymore.
He told them not to, sure—but Mgu had figured it out too.
That my junior, Kim Daram, is kind of a trash human being.
I don’t keep him around because I like him.
I keep him around because he’s damn good at what he does. We’ve worked together long enough that I can’t just ditch him now.
If Defender had even half of Kim Daram’s competence, I would’ve brought him instead.
Maybe if that guy had spent more time on monster image-training instead of experimenting with murder and death, his future would’ve turned out different.
“This is killing me.”
While everyone else treated Kim Daram like air, the drone finally reached the target zone.
The most critical question had been answered.
The tracks were still connected.
It was time for the next phase.
“Disembark.”
Direct recon.
The hardest part begins now.
*
Step—step—
In the era of collapse, subway tracks can mean both life and death.
Tracks, by nature, imply direction. Routes. That makes subway lines a path of life, shielding you from surface dangers—yet also, paradoxically, a place of death where life and not-life fight tooth and nail.
In Seoul Station’s case, it feels like neither.
Utter emptiness.
Nothing there.
It had been cleaned out right after the war, and even after the Seoul government reclaimed the area, it remained abandoned.
That was probably because the southern railway bridge was destroyed during the war, turning this stretch into a literal dead end.
No matter how desperate someone is, they wouldn’t settle in a place people already abandoned—a place contaminated with lingering biochemical and radioactive hazards.
Indeed, scattered along the tracks were radiation warning signs installed by the former Seoul government.
Only a scavenger would come somewhere like this.
“What’s the radiation reading?”
To be sure, I handed the radiation scanner to Kim Hanna.
“It’s okay. A little high, but still within safe limits.”
She got the scanner because she’s essentially a non-combatant—but also because unlike us, who lived in nuked-out zones, she’s more concerned about radiation.
If you want to reassure someone, there’s nothing like hard numbers.
“Fork ahead.”
Kim Daram stared into the dark and spoke.
Chapter 164.4: Hypothesis (4)
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