Merry Christmas

December 25, 2053.

As long as religion still existed in this world, Christmas had returned in the end.

Even in a post-apocalyptic world, faith was anything but weak—if anything, it only grew stronger there. Hwi-hyun had already paid the World Union in Tokens to build something like a proper church, shipped in Bibles and crosses and all the rest, and had twenty-odd churches completed by around December 18.

Of course the believers had been overjoyed. Before long, they had chosen their own parish priests, appointed deacons and monks, and within just a few days had gone so far as to elect a bishop, forming a full-fledged faith community.

It made sense. A fair number of the refugees had once been clergy themselves.

"Still, not even ten days have passed and they’ve already got this kind of cohesion... Truly marvelous. Is this what divine inspiration looks like?"

He hadn’t done anything stupid like appoint clergy from within the quarantine zone or lay the groundwork to turn it into a state religion.

History was full of wars that started over the right to appoint priests. On matters of faith, the ideal was for everything to resolve within the faith community itself.

Of course, if they tried to shelter hardcore criminals—murderers, rapists, that sort of trash—in the name of rehabilitation, then he’d have to show them what pain felt like. But surely not even believers were that stupid.

Maybe because it was, in its own way, a meaningful day, the Gallery was far calmer than anyone had expected.

The sacred symbolism of Jesus’ birth seemed capable of suppressing even the hearts of players soaked in madness.

Was that really so strange?

To be honest, the players had no way of knowing whether this other world’s religion was Catholicism, Protestantism, or Orthodoxy, and this other world wasn’t even Earth, so of course they had every right to feel wronged.

They’d spent their own money to get in here, only to reap the benefits without having their authority recognized. From the standpoint of anyone in power, that was never going to be easy to swallow.

Unless you were some old grognard like Lee Hwi-hyun—someone who had scraped through the art book, the hidden lore, the walkthroughs, and dozens upon dozens of retries—there was no way to figure it out. It was one of those “if you don’t know, you deserve to get hit” patterns every game had.

You could call it unrealistic, but religion was religion. Once that word was involved, you had to expect the unexpected, and that was just part of the package.

*

"Hmm."

Once December arrived, the World Union’s merciless refugee bombardment grew even more merciless.

On the worst days they sent over 3,000 people at once, and unlike before, when there had at least been the occasional quiet day, every single date on the calendar was now crammed with refugee intake.

There was no grand reason for it. It was just winter. Food was already in short supply, and heating was even worse, so they were dumping ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠anyone they couldn’t handle straight into the quarantine zone.

Since they were loading refugees onto rockets mostly by whether they were doomed to starve, freeze, or die of illness, people who couldn’t be used as labor—sick or not—started to pile up, including the elderly, the disabled, and infants.

The World Union must have had some conscience left, because it increased the Tokens earned from refugee intake by a factor of two for three months, claiming Roseberry had faithfully accepted refugees until now.

Out of game, it was practically a tutorial that forcibly diversified the population structure and made him seriously experience five-tier population management: infants, teenagers, young adults, middle-aged adults, and the elderly.

And it was also a silent warning to save up as many Tokens as possible for the coming anniversary grand offensive and buy whatever he could from the shop.

With the first anniversary grand offensive now truly breathing down their necks, the whining in the Gallery died off almost overnight. Even the familiar idiot posters and anonymous lurkers who usually only crapped out trash posts were suddenly analyzing forces in earnest and scrambling to devise ways to survive.

After about five hours of furious debate, they reached a conclusion.

At the very least, by now they should have gathered more than 10,000 troops. So they would park 2,500 each at the gates in the east, west, south, and north—where the main assault was likely to hit—and then flexibly distribute the remaining forces to respond to any breakthrough.

Honestly, it was too crude to even call it military science, but the disparity in troop strength between players was so extreme that all they could do was settle for something that looked like a tutorial.

And one by one, as they left the Gallery to try out their own defense doctrines and train their troops, the place slowly began to go dark.

*

"Control system."

[Yes.]

"Tag all currently deployable military assets."

[Infantry: 30,000. Assault Walkers: 1,200. Wiesel Light Armored Vehicles: 6,000. Hermes gunships: 36.]

"We really did pile up a lot."

Lee Hwi-hyun let out a long breath and leaned back in his chair.

The moat had been dug. The walls had been upgraded. The troop numbers were more than enough. All that remained was to wait.

"Would’ve been nice if there were a five-times speed button... but I guess that’s not happening here."

Back in the game, he had slammed the speed-up button relentlessly. But now that reality itself had become locked at 1x speed, he couldn’t count how many times he’d wished for a -5x button.

"So... is this game logic, or reality?"

Would the attacks grow stronger with each one-year gap, just like they had in the game? Or would they be random? Or had the grand offensive system been erased entirely?

He couldn’t predict any of it.

All he could do was finish every possible preparation and, sweating bullets, wait for January 15 to finally arrive.

He didn’t know how many would come.

Even in the game, it had only been described vaguely as several thousand swarms. It had never specified an exact number of entities.

All the player testing had shown only one thing: at minimum, tens of thousands and likely hundreds of thousands of BTs would come pouring in.

The grim conclusion was that each soldier might need to kill at least ten to a hundred of them. But with shells and grenades available, it still wasn’t a fight he could call especially difficult.

As a leader, he had done everything he could. He had no regrets. He’d simply done his best, and now, whether the outcome was good or bad, he would bear it.

Still, when you had someone to lean on, even a piece of white paper was better to lift together.

The commanders bound by the bond of the Gallery filled in the pauses with their back-and-forth exchanges as they welcomed January of 2054.

Now, another natural selection was about to begin.

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