Hiding a House in the Apocalypse-Chapter 168.1: Possibility (1)
A swarm of monsters had crossed the river.
There were 22 of them in the initial wave, all mid-class types.
Following the agreed-upon signal, the explosives rigged along the river were detonated.
Boom!
With a thunderous blast, the frozen river shattered into shards, and water geysers shot up through the ruptures.
Amid the rising columns of water, the natural barrier of the flowing river re-established itself between us and the monsters.
Without a trace of hesitation, the advancing monsters veered toward the bridge.
Bang! Tatatatang!
Streamlined unmanned machine gun turrets opened fire, pinning them down and herding them into a concentrated cluster as the rear artillery units prepared to fire.
I pulled off my glove and tested the wind with my fingers.
The wind was calm today.
Just after the alert for bombardment was transmitted, the distant sound of artillery reached us, followed by a sharp, eardrum-rattling whistle and a string of devastating explosions across the designated kill zone.
Monsters flailed, activating their reflective forcefields in vain—any shells they managed to displace appeared off-target, exploding harmlessly.
Under the merciless barrage, the monster horde dissolved one by one into particles of light.
But not all of them responded to our luring efforts.
Two monsters diverged, bypassing the destroyed section of the river and attempting to land on our side.
Woooooom—
The tank division roared into action with their heavy engines and opened fire.
One was easily destroyed.
The other, however, scattered a series of whitish explosive projectiles in all directions, unleashing a wide-area anti-personnel blast.
The explosion couldn’t pierce the thick armor of the tanks, but that didn’t mean it left no damage.
One of the tank’s treads snapped.
Of all things, it was one of our latest homegrown models.
Due to a shortage of parts, it had been patched and jury-rigged beyond its limits, and now it failed at the worst possible moment.
The recovery vehicle was dispatched immediately, but towing a tank isn’t easy—and repairing one is even harder.
For at least the next 24 hours, maybe longer, we’d be down one main battle tank.
The monsters didn’t wait.
As soon as the first wave was annihilated, a second wave began approaching at a measured pace.
I contacted the engineers and requested demolition of the outer sections of the riverbank.
We had to stop them from crossing.
There was no other choice.
There would be casualties. No avoiding it.
Mid-class—combat-type monsters are at least 10 meters long or tall. Equivalent to main battle tanks in destructive capability.
They don’t carry anti-personnel machine guns like tanks, but they possess far stronger durability than small-class types, with reflective forcefields and even some form of biological armor.
Soldiers and volunteers often asked: So how do we define small-class vs. mid-class monsters, exactly?
The truth is, there’s no consistent size.
Some monsters categorized as small-class looked like mid-class. Others labeled mid-class looked small.
This classification system was devised by the British.
As with most of their standards, they preferred weight over size.
Fittingly, their American cousins shared this tendency. Eventually, the global standard was dictated by their preferences.
It couldn’t be helped.
Even before the war, the world revolved around a single currency: the dollar.
No matter how much pride we took in our spirit, we couldn’t deny who really ran the world.
If Melon Mask had been born in Korea instead of the U.S., would he have risen so far?
It’s not an attempt to bash Korean society.
It’s just that being born at the center of the world brought its benefits.
Anyway, returning to the monster classifications—international standards estimate their weight, and classify by that.
There’s a basis for it, too.
Monsters may defy analysis, but one day, a small-class monster nicknamed White Beauty happened to step onto a highway weigh station.
A miracle—its weight was recorded precisely.
That gave humanity the first reliable data on a monster.
Sure, all we learned was its weight—but it proved monsters could be weighed. And that sparked intense academic efforts to gather more such data.
Two laws emerged.
First: A monster’s weight tends to scale proportionally with its volume.
Second: It’s estimated that monsters weigh roughly 0.7 tons per cubic meter.
The British and American-led Hunter Authority showed a sliver of conscience by not using pounds.
Based on these principles, researchers tried to estimate monster weights.
It became a kind of puzzle-solving exercise.
Cutting monsters into Photoshop-friendly shapes, slicing and reconfiguring them into tidy cubes, then estimating weight by tallying cube counts.
Shockingly, the results aligned quite well with the functional split between infiltration types and combat types.
Under this model:
Small-class: up to 20 tons
Mid-class: 20–45 tons
Large-class: 45+ tons
Super-large-class: self-explanatory—too obvious to need a number.
Some criticized it as a holdover from Britain’s naval traditions, equating monster classes to ship displacement.
But without a better alternative, the model stuck.
Excepting long-limbed monsters like the Dancer Type or Spider Type, mid-class monsters were typically bigger and heavier than small-class.
Large-class were a different beast altogether.
You didn’t need a number. You felt the difference.
The pressure was entirely different.
Thump!
Just like the pulse that blanked your mind when IAmJesus appeared, when several mid-class combat types emanated their pulses nearby, most people couldn’t even stay conscious.
In such full-scale confrontations involving swarms of mid-class or higher monsters, there was little we old-school Hunters could do.
Back when I was stationed in Paju, I’d always repeat this to my subordinates:
“Remember this. Our job is to be firefighters.”
Even that “firefighter” role only applied when small-class monsters used short-range teleportation to sneak into the rear of the kill zone. It was not a call to fight mid-class monsters head-on.
Right now, a mid-class monster was crossing the frozen river—headed straight for us.
It was an Annihilator Type, nicknamed the Eradicator.
With eight legs and a sturdy crawling frame, it was one of the biggest mid-class monsters—bordering on large-class—and packed firepower to match.
We’d barely managed to kill one before, and that was with Jeon Si-hoon and King.
Now, we had neither.
Since dawn yesterday, the Necropolis transmission has been acting up. Naturally, our NP gear is malfunctioning too. Regular Awakened are suffering from unbearable mental strain.
We couldn’t even use tanks.
The Annihilator Type’s shotgun-like shrapnel barrage could pierce the frontal armor of old-generation tanks from 1,200 meters out.
Even our latest tank models, which supposedly withstand up to 800 meters, had already been sent to the rear.
Meaning we had to kill this thing ourselves.
Sure, we could use artillery or air support—but artillery would destroy the fragile landline network and infrastructure we’d painstakingly set up.
And air support? We needed to conserve that for what’s still to come.
So we prepared the “German method.”
Don’t be fooled by the name—there’s no special tech or knowledge involved.
You dig deep trenches, wait for the monster to pass, and hit it at close range with Hunter-grade weapons. Primitive, crude.
It’s called the “German method” because German soldiers once fought tanks like this—waiting in trenches, then slapping magnetic mines onto them.
It gets people killed, yes—but it’s oddly effective against mid-class monsters.
According to the latest s I’ve read, it’s the most cost-effective tactic China’s used in recent years.
I’d never tried it myself.
There was plenty of opposition too.
“Senior, do you really have to do it? What if you die?”
“This isn’t Romance of the Three Kingdoms, you’re not Lü Bu. A commander rushing the front is a bad habit. Think about what happens if you’re gone. Everything falls apart.”
“Shouldn’t you let a subordinate do it? Why show them yourself, Captain Park?”
But I had to do it.
Everyone expects the city to fall eventually, but the probability I calculate is far worse than what they think.
They see a 50/50 chance—or vaguely say it's likely.
But I’m looking at a 99% chance of destruction.
That’s how hopeless this battle is.
It’s not even a real battle. It’s slaughter, barely delayed by divine luck.
We were lucky to lure a General Type, yes—but real victory would require multiple strokes of divine luck.
So to others, this mission may look pointless—but to me, it’s one step in a long, long gambit to kill it.
Crunch—
I felt the monster’s massive body rise up from the riverbed.
The ground gave a soft tremble.
It was coming.
Its eight legs churned restlessly as it advanced toward us.
I looked up.
Through the narrow slit above, I saw the frigid, minus-10-degree sky—clear, pitiless, and blue, casting down faint light.
Hoo...
I had turned off all comms in advance, just in case.
My body was cold.
Even in thermal gear, the earth soaked with cold for days was like a living thing trying to freeze me.
I wouldn’t get frostbite, but the chill dulled my limbs.
I shifted subtly to keep my blood moving and used the vibrations to gauge its position.
The tremors grew.
It wasn’t coming straight—it was veering slightly.
It was now within 100 meters.
This was the riskiest window.
Almost all monsters had some kind of detection ability.
You couldn’t truly hide from them.
But they didn’t always react to a detected human.
Sometimes, they just ignored you.
That, too, depended on luck.
Specifically, monsters were more likely to attack if they sensed a human with a weapon and hostile intent.
But that wasn’t always the case.
We still knew almost nothing about monsters.
What I was relying on was pitiful: luck.
I prayed it wouldn’t attack me.
Call it superstition, but I understood how much blind luck my path required.
If I couldn’t even get through this—then I might as well die here.
If I was lucky, I’d get my chance to burst from the trench in time.
The vibrations got closer.
80 meters.
Closer still.
Rustle—
Dirt fell. It was that close.
Within 50 meters.
My heart began to race.
I looked at my weapon.
The Monster Punch.
A crude, makeshift weapon in the hands of most soldiers guarding trenches.
And I was the one who had requested this.
I needed to prove that even this rough tool could kill a terrifying monster.
If I didn’t show that possibility—who would hold the trench?
As anxiety built, the monster closed in.
30 meters... 10 meters...
And then—
Rustle—
It passed right by me.
My pounding heart stilled.
It ignored me.
This was my chance.
I grabbed the pump attached to the Monster Punch—it looked like a toilet plunger—and started the piston motion.
Shk—shk—shk—shk—
I had to pump it until the blue reagent turned red.
Shk—shk—shk—shk—
God, it was stiff.
I knew it couldn’t be helped, but damn it was frustrating.
Still, this may be the only tool that gave ordinary people a shot against monsters.
And so I, armed with the weapon of common men, would confront the beast.
Then—
Rustle—
Suddenly, the vibrations stopped.
And the next instant—
BOOM!
A brutal shockwave exploded right above me.
“Ghk—!”
Despite myself, I let out a grunt as my body reeled and I struggled to regain focus.
What the hell just happened?
KWA-A-AANG!
An explosion shook the air.
Shrapnel attack.
The Annihilator Type had fired its main burst cannon right behind me.
That mix of relief for surviving and rage for being ignored surged inside as I finished the pumping.
POW!
The clunky indicator confirmed the charge was active.
I leapt from the trench.
A towering gray mass blocked my view like a wall.
The monster.
My enemy.
The object of my hatred.
I aimed the Monster Punch and pressed the fire button.
Chiiiiik—
A crude firing hiss echoed from the RPG-shaped launcher.
Shoooooom—
The rocket howled, streaking toward the monster’s bulk.
KWA-KWA-KWANG!!!
True to its name, the Monster Punch pierced the monster’s body and detonated from within.
Its huge frame lifted slightly—then collapsed to the ground.
I ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) steadied myself against the shaking earth.
Another monster had turned into light particles.
I turned on my communicator.
“This is Professor. The Annihilator Type has been neutralized.”
A small victory.
Maybe even a fleeting one.
But if I could raise our odds even by 1%, I would do this again and again.
“...”
I looked up at the sky.
Faintly, far off, I heard the sound of jet engines.
If my memory served me right—it was an American fighter.
.
!
Chapter 168.1: Possibility (1)
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