Hiding a House in the Apocalypse-Chapter 169.4: The Question (4)
Amid the silence, we reached the third checkpoint.
Assuming no margin of error, the General-type was now within one kilometer.
In other words, within shooting range.
The operation had gone so smoothly that our initial concerns now seemed baseless.
The signal relay from The Hope had even delivered uplifting news: not a single casualty.
Given that the relay only communicated through predesignated symbolic codes, the full context was unclear. Still, while it was true that an anti-tank attack had taken place and we’d lost an armored vehicle, the assumption was that no one had died and the retreat was carried out safely.
Zero casualties.
Even I hadn’t dared to hope for that.
On top of that, the regular check-ins showed all sixteen units in their scheduled positions, each balloon marking the advance of a hunter team according to plan.
Every hunter team was smoothly taking over major parts of the city, boxing in the General-type.
Clank, clank—
The sound of tank treads nearby was undeniable proof that the operation was progressing as intended.
And yet...
“......”
Too smooth. Far too smooth.
I don't tend to lean toward worst-case scenarios—but I don’t trust the best-case ones either.
A perfect victory isn’t achieved through superiority alone.
It also requires the enemy’s foolishness or missteps.
Of course, an overwhelmingly perfect outcome could theoretically occur if we had overwhelming power and seized initiative from the start.
But when this mission was being planned, I rated the odds of success as extremely low.
I expected significant casualties—possibly even my own death, following after my comrades.
And now you're telling me this flawless ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) schedule is unfolding across the entire battlefield?
It only leaves me with a sense of dread.
“Senior. You don’t look so good.”
I nodded.
“It’s all going too well. That’s what’s bothering me.”
“Yeah?”
As we spoke, Gong Gyeong-min lowered his posture.
“Something’s there.”
He crouched and squinted into the mist.
“What is it?”
“Looks like a person.”
I had just felt it.
Something had sprinted across the terrain roughly 40 meters ahead.
“Fanatic?”
“Probably.”
More ankle-biters.
Annoying, yes, but honestly, a relief.
Having absolutely nothing happen would only feed my suspicions and unease.
Not that fanatics could ever be the cause of the creeping dread swelling inside me.
No, what I feared was something more fundamental.
The rift itself.
Bang! Bang!
We took down a small group of fanatics and secured the area.
“Clear.”
Among the bodies was an RPG. We collected it along with five other high-powered anti-tank weapons they’d stashed.
They might be useless, but in the right situation, firepower like that could serve as hunter substitutes. We stowed them in the armored vehicle and continued the sweep.
No survivors.
We had secured the final checkpoint.
Just around the corner was the main road leading to the central rotary.
The enemy—our General-type—was now practically within arm’s reach.
We could charge straight in, but the unease that had been gnawing at me made me linger.
And then—
“Wait.”
I found something.
“Wh-what is this?”
My teammates gasped as they looked where I pointed.
“Capsules.”
That’s right.
Capsules.
Most of the monsters that had occupied this city had been wiped out after weeks of back-and-forth skirmishes and counterattacks.
There couldn’t be more than thirty left in the area now.
But right there before our eyes, embedded in one wall, were over ten grotesque capsules.
“They don’t get picked up on scans?”
I asked Gong Gyeong-min.
He nodded.
“Capsules aren’t alive, remember? Even if you're retired, you should know they’re basically short-range teleportation devices used by small-type monsters.”
“So they’re undetectable...”
My eyes met his.
He was my former teammate, once my closest peer.
We were thinking the same thing.
“It could be a trap.”
I rushed to the armored vehicle and picked up the comms.
“Communications secure.”
Thankfully, the line was still intact.
“Please send the following signal immediately.”
Bwooooooo—
The low-frequency siren from The Hope echoed across the ashen cityscape.
The signal balloons floated up, eyes turned to the relay device atop The Hope.
The signal relay would now begin cycling through the following messages:
Stop. Caution. Monster. Ambush. Danger.
Limited, yes—but faster and easier to understand than anything drawn out.
It worked.
The tank treads we’d heard earlier went silent.
If everything had gone according to schedule, that tank belonged to Ahn Seung-hwan’s team.
With even the tanks now quiet, the ash-grey world settled once more into a silence that reeked of death.
From within that suffocating stillness, Gong Gyeong-min asked,
“What do we do now?”
“No idea.”
Not like ideas pop into my head on demand.
But I was trained to think through any situation. Years of experience and a record of hard-won victories guided me.
“If those capsules are its trump card, then clumping them up might be our best move.”
“Clumping them up?”
“A formation of small-types can be highly effective in dense groupings.”
Barely had the words left my mouth when—
Boom!
A terrifying shockwave echoed from the center of the rotary.
There was no mistaking it.
It was him.
The bastard who had once stolen the entire world from me.
I felt hatred burning more intensely than ever—but clenched my teeth and suppressed it, readying myself for what came next.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Lesser shockwaves burst from within our building.
Kim Daram exhaled deeply.
Capsules.
The General-type had begun summoning his ambush troops through them.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
...
...
They echoed endlessly from all across this grey cityscape.
And then—
“What... what the hell is that?”
One of them stepped into view.
Four sturdy legs like desk casters, grotesque arms that looked like mounted guns, and most disturbing of all—a human-like head.
“...Executioner-type.”
Small-class, combat model.
A new rift prototype.
I’d already experienced its power firsthand in Jeju.
I sprinted to the armored vehicle, grabbed an RPG, and fired.
Whooosh—
The rocket shot like a bullet—not at the monster directly, but at the upper section of the ruined building above it, ready to collapse at any moment.
BOOOOM!
The explosion brought the wreckage crashing down, burying the monster under tons of debris.
It likely wasn’t dead—but it’d take a long time to dig itself out.
“Nice shot.”
Gong Gyeong-min gave me a thumbs-up.
I moved toward the armored vehicle again.
“Communications secure.”
“Relay this message to all teams using every means available.”
“What message?”
“Immediate convergence.”
Bwooooooo—
The low-pitched alarm rang out.
At the same time, the signal relay atop The Hope began to transform.
Upon seeing it, each hunter team immediately launched their flares.
Fweeeeeee—
Fifteen flares soared into the sky, their brilliant light piercing the heavy fog as they descended.
Through those flares, the hunter teams could now visually confirm each other’s locations.
“What now?”
Gong Gyeong-min asked.
“This is actually a chance.”
“A chance?”
I nodded.
“If our forces gather, the enemy’s attention will naturally shift. With Na Hye-in among us, he’ll be even more concerned. If we hold the line around her and create the illusion of a counterattack, he’ll falter. That’s when we challenge him...”
BOOM!
Another shockwave.
From the direction of the General-type.
What’s that bastard scheming now?
We held our breath and waited.
A sharp screech rang out from the northeast.
A hissing, roaring sound.
I’d heard it before.
It was the artillery fire of a medium-class combat model.
They’re firing? At us?
Just as I was about to dismiss the idea—
BOOOOM!
A tremendous explosion came from the rear.
I tried checking via landline.
But—
Beeeep... Beeeep...
The line was dead.
The situation changed in an instant.
“Captain Park!”
A soldier inside the armored vehicle called out.
He was our ammo handler—also tasked with comms, equipment, and anything else we needed.
“Check the signal system, sir!”
His pale face told me something was very wrong.
I climbed in.
He brought up a screen on the monitor.
A massive tilted structure.
There wasn’t a single Korean who didn’t know that silhouette.
The Hope was falling.
It had always been mocked for its slanted design, but as the nation collapsed, it somehow came to symbolize hope—and unity.
Now, South Korea’s last luxury apartment was under a brutal monster attack, and its end had come.
“Son of a bitch... He bombed The Hope?!”
“It’s really going down?”
“It’s a miracle it lasted this long. You all knew, right? It was barely holding together.”
BOOOOOM!!!
With a deafening rumble that shook the earth, The Hope collapsed, swallowed by a mountain of dust like volcanic ash.
This was more than the fall of a building.
It marked the end of an era.
And—
“...Mgu.”
Someone I knew lived there.
My internet friend.
Not a best friend, but someone I could laugh with whenever we crossed paths, even after long absences.
Was Mgu dead?
That wasn’t the only problem.
The signal relay that had connected our hunter teams across the city was gone.
Which meant: no more communication.
Which meant: to me, at least—death, ruin, annihilation.
“I knew it was intelligent, but this... This isn’t a monster. This is human. It thinks like us.”
Gong Gyeong-min gnawed at his thumbnail.
A habit from our school days.
Jang Ki-young had disciplined it out of him with brutal rigor.
He hadn’t done it once since. Not even in the worst battlefield scenarios.
Which meant this time, he wasn’t just scared. He was in despair.
Because our enemy didn’t just think like us—it strategized like us. Outsmarted us.
Kim Daram, though calmer, kept pulling out a photo from her coat again and again. She was clearly under heavy stress too.
Oddly, the one shining now was Ha Tae-hoon—the “senior” who hated being called senior.
He had kept silent the whole time. But now he finally spoke.
“Didn’t we all come here ready to die? Everyone knew it could end like this.”
No one admired him, and he usually had no presence.
But in this moment, Ha Tae-hoon showed the composure of a true veteran.
Even if no one listened.
Gong Gyeong-min ignored him. Kim Daram turned away.
But he continued.
“I’m the one with the most to lose, honestly.”
A bitter smile formed on his face.
“Think about it. Never had any luck with women—and in my mid-thirties, I finally got a damn beautiful, sweet wife. She’s a bit lazy, sure, but who cares? I was dreaming of having kids, raising a family even in this hellhole... and now I’m gonna die out here.”
He looked back at us, still smiling.
“My wife... she’s pregnant.”
Gong Gyeong-min looked at him.
So did Kim Daram.
Ha Tae-hoon, once overshadowed by all his more brilliant juniors, looked at them with kindness and added—
“So let’s make this count.”
I nodded.
“Yes, the situation’s bad. But listen. The General-type is just 600 meters away. Right beyond that building. If it really is intelligent like a human—”
Shffft—
—I lifted my dual-wielded axe, the maul, from my feet.
“Then maybe if we kill it, the rest become useless.”
Skreeeech—
Suddenly, static burst from a phone.
It came from the NP device installed in the armored vehicle.
Originally meant for Ahn Seung-hwan or Kim Hanna—both Regular Awakened who were cut from the final team—the NP gear had remained unused until now.
It was cobbled together from junk phones and powered by a heavy battery to receive Necropolis signals.
One phone’s screen lit up and emitted bizarre static.
“?”
Everyone stared, but quickly dismissed it.
Another weird side effect of fighting monsters, they assumed.
But I... I felt a pulse from that phone—something strange, but familiar.
It wasn’t because I was Awakened.
That wave—those signals, the data stream—it was part of my life. My other self. My old home.
Before I realized it, my hand was reaching for it.
Clack.
The NP device—so-called—was just a tangle of old phones wired to a battery to catch Necropolis transmissions.
I pulled one free, the power cable trailing with it.
“What are you doing, senior?”
Kim Daram scowled.
I stared at the phone’s screen.
“......”
There must have been something in my eyes.
A bright smile I hadn’t planned spread across my face.
One message burned across the aged LCD:
mmmmmmmmm: Fuck me sideways! Our shitty house finally collapsed!
“...Mgu.”
mmmmmmmmm: Pissed off, so I’m going live with a broadcast!
“Broadcast?”
The next moment, a miracle happened.
All the phone screens wired to the NP device lit up at once with the same message.
And there—astonishingly—was a photo.
I didn’t know how or what tech he used, but I recognized the man in the center of the photo, and the machine behind him.
Wearing those infamous “sergeant sunglasses” and grinning wildly, it was Mgu. Behind him, a massive antenna truck pointed to the sky—the very vehicle used to channel Necropolis signals.
mmmmmmmmm: LIVE! APOCALYPSE! No—NECRO-POCALYPSE! BROADCAST BEGINS NOW!
“......”
I didn’t know what was happening exactly.
But I knew what I felt.
We were witnessing a miracle.
Maybe the last miracle of our crumbling human race.
.
!
Chapter 169.4: The Question (4)
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