Chapter 223
Chapter 223
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 223
Chapter Title: 95. Omen (5)
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Evaluations of monsters' combat prowess vary wildly from one military commander to the next.
Commanders who've served on the front lines at kill zones would have experienced the monsters' endless numbers and astonishing fighting power firsthand, but they wouldn't go so far as to think of them as unkillable beings.
For commanders who've dealt with monsters that sporadically appear one or two at a time in well-fortified zones like the armistice line—though not quite as intense as a kill zone—monsters would be rated as small- to medium-scale threats: something that takes some effort but can be dealt with without much trouble.
Most commanders defending the Korean Peninsula fall into one of these two categories.
Commanders in places like China, where the entire country has been overrun and they have to wage open-field battles against monster hordes without any defined front lines, learn viscerally why monsters are humanity's natural predators.
Each one is a superior version of a human combat unit, capable of neutralizing most human weaponry, and above all, their infinite numbers assault both the front and rear simultaneously—leaving humans with nothing to do but take it on the chin.
Kim Byung-cheol's stubborn defense of the National Assembly building likely stemmed in large part from his narrow experience fighting monsters.
They've never fought massive open-field battles against them.
They might have had the chance, but they quickly abandoned the front lines, citing supply imbalances between Seoul and the front, and turned Gangwon and Gyeonggi provinces into cozy fortresses and rear cities just for themselves.
Now time has passed, and they have things to protect too.
"Monsters are already entrenched across southeastern Seoul in large numbers. Securing one observation post won't be enough to stop them all."
My plan had made it all the way up to headquarters.
Apparently, headquarters' "monster specialist staff officers" were reviewing it.
Kim Daram's report had come back after passing through those specialist staff officers too.
"The idea is to cut off their reinforcements. We'll have to handle the ones already inside with Legion faction forces."
"Wasn't this operation meant to conserve those forces?"
"Kim Daram. Didn't you notice anything off during this large-scale assault?"
"Anything off?"
"Yeah. Didn't it feel like these monsters, who should be acting purely on instinct without any awareness, were being commanded by some higher intelligence?"
Kim Daram's gaze dropped downward.
She seemed to recall something.
But she was always like that.
Her eyes were always fixed only on the immediate ground ahead, the next foothold she'd step on.
Even on the battlefield, where countless interests and lives clashed, she only scouted the enemies right in front of her and the clever paths to survival—ignoring any broader information or knowledge.
She didn't buy my take.
"I don't have the confidence to convince those people, so why don't you tell them yourself, sunbae?"
Still, she was giving me an opening.
I headed to the operations room with Kim Daram, packed full of soldiers in crisp uniforms.
At the center was our Kim Byung-cheol, and it was strangely conspicuous that there were Chinese people among the top brass.
As soon as I appeared, a female hunter flashed a knowing smile and greeted me.
Kim Daram whispered something to the man wearing a major general's insignia.
He looked at me.
Mid-to-late thirties.
Pretty young for a general.
He must be the monster specialist staff officer.
He spoke to me.
"I hear you plan to head to that leaning apartment yourself as an observation officer and guide the artillery fire."
As he spoke, a few officers behind him bared their teeth in smirks.
"Do you even know where The Hope is? Gangdong-gu. Gangdong-gu. It's right up against Hanam City, despite the name. Guiding fire from there might snag a few monsters in the rear, sure. But what about the ones already inside?"
His logic matched almost exactly what Kim Daram had laid out.
I gave the same response.
"We'll handle them with our own forces."
"We've already spotted over twenty mid-sized ones."
"If we don't hold them at The Hope, you'll see over a hundred mid-sized ones break through."
The major general scoffed.
The others reacted similarly.
Kim Byung-cheol, who had been propping his chin with a stony face, flicked only his eyes toward me in a glare.
Then someone raised a hand.
A Chinese hunter.
As Kim Byung-cheol's gaze turned to her, she spoke in fluent Korean.
"This man still carries the unfinished legend of 'Professor' attached to him."
As eyes in the room turned to her, she continued, staring at me with emotionless, serpent-like eyes.
"They say that if they'd followed Professor's plan during the Beijing siege that day, they might have saved Beijing."
Kim Daram, standing behind me, flinched and muttered.
"Sniper shot on a large-type...?"
The distinction between mid-sized and large-types had long remained ambiguous.
Size and combat power had been the standard for ages, but as battle experience piled up, we began to suspect that some large-types possessed human-like intelligence and could control other monsters accordingly.
But if something exists conceptually yet we've never actually encountered one, it remains just a hypothesis.
The first intelligent monster I ever spotted was barely enough for me to slap a name on it.
I felt a similar chill in Seoul.
"Dragging this out won't do us any good."
I said it staring straight at Kim Byung-cheol.
Kim Byung-cheol glanced back and forth between me and Kim Daram.
The self-proclaimed monster specialist major general desperately sought Kim Byung-cheol's gaze, but it never turned his way.
"You can block all the monsters swarming from the rear?"
"If they're mid-sized, we'll block as many as we can."
I stared at Kim Daram.
"The ones already deployed are yours to handle."
That ended the meeting.
Kim Byung-cheol had given me the nod.
Before I left, Kim Byung-cheol called me back.
"Professor. No, SKELTON."
"..."
"Internet and reality are different, they say, but you're truly the polar opposite of your online and real-life selves."
"I don't see it that way."
"No SKELTON today."
Kim Byung-cheol handed me a radio.
I already had one, so I gave him a puzzled look, but when he showed me the personal ID on the radio, it clicked.
Personal ID: PROFESSOR.
I took the radio—whether hastily made or long prepared, who knows—and boarded the helicopter.
It was still afternoon.
Kim Daram saw me off from below, looking up with her scarred eye.
"..."
Amid the roar of the rotors, the world began to shrink.
Out the window during the sharp turn: ruined cityscapes, collapsed roads, monsters striding through the gaps, and white smoke rising here and there.
Those plumes of white smoke carried an unpleasant, all-too-familiar stench.
*
"Captain! M9 speaking!"
I'd always thought M9's survival secret lay entirely in his infamous leaning house.
That it made him famous, even mysterious.
It's true that soldiers from the Legion and Assembly factions had placed petty bets on his fate with cigarettes or cash.
But watching over time reveals another hidden strength.
This M9 guy. He's surprisingly upbeat and personable.
"Monsters? Aw, man. Got more guests than usual today. Not even market day or anything. Ah, customers! This is a no-kids zone!"
Nothing fancy, just a joke, but the soldiers loved it.
Definitely better than a grim face waiting for death—cracking jokes with a smile wins out.
Maybe the real key to our M9's popularity is that ironclad attitude: living alone in Seoul, in an apartment that could collapse any moment, yet never losing his grin.
In a way, that alone puts our M9 far beyond ordinary human limits.
He's an internet name of the same caliber as me, after all.
And today, his passion for the net outshines even mine.
"Live stream day—Apocalypse! This is gonna be a mega hit. Phone cam's a bit fuzzy, kinda worrying, but with this many viewers? Maybe they'll resurrect my influencer days."
At that point, I said to the pilot.
"We're almost there, right?"
"Yes, sir."
"But it feels like we're circling."
"Yes. All drones in this area have gone silent."
"Destroyed by electronic attacks?"
"Possible, but..."
The pilot trailed off.
"Something else?"
"Not just that. A few other possibilities."
"Like?"
"Manpads. Some cultists reportedly hit military choppers with RPGs or drones recently."
"Already that bad?"
"Ever since Kim Byung-cheol's bigot separation policy kicked in, things have soured with them. Didn't you see them sweeping up cultists in the city right after the monster outbreak report?"
I looked down.
No sign of humans 1.5 km below on the ground.
"Mutations attack helicopters sometimes too. Mostly at night, but bold packs hit in daylight."
"Mutations?"
"Yeah, mostly pigeon mutations. They were shitty before mutation; even shittier after. If they'd all gotten wing clips back in '88 when they were culled, this wouldn't happen."
The helicopter banked.
The view shifted: green patches bordering gray ruins, and far off in the distance.
Our legendary apartment, leaning like the Tower of Pisa.
"Rappelling down, right?"
"Yes."
"Won't be easy. That slant looks steeper up close."
"It's fine. I've rappelled worse spots plenty of times."
"Figures. Hunter through and through. Anyway."
"Yeah."
The pilot stared intently at a point outside the window and pointed.
Far away, a hazy fog-shrouded area hung in the air.
Mist from a Han River tributary?
Thick grayish-white fog clung to one spot in particular.
The pilot asked cautiously, fear lacing his voice.
"Ever heard of flying monsters?"
"Flying monsters?"
There have been reports.
North America: mid-sized monster firepower projectors.
But none from China, Korea, Japan, or Taiwan.
"It's a ghost story among us pilots, but they say there's a monster like a guided missile."
"Guided missile?"
"Yeah. Suddenly a bunch zoom in from out of sight at high speed, skewering the chopper like a shish kebab."
"First I've heard."
"Right? But 'first I've heard' might just mean no reports made it out."
"Could be."
"...They say those things lurk around weird fog. A few buddies of mine reported similar, then vanished."
The helicopter slowed.
The pilot said no more on the topic.
Like a sailor clamming up about their true terror.
I don't dismiss this pilot's words lightly.
It's a plausible tale.
Since the invasion began, monsters have always mimicked our weapon systems.
Maybe the first concept we taught them was "killing" something.
Shwaaaak—
The rope unraveled downward.
Soldiers strapped heavy gear to my back.
"Here's the comms unit. Old-school but tough. Linked to GPS, so no need to call coordinates—the fire control center will calculate everything and adjust fire automatically."
Big talk, but seeing the tilted rooftop up close felt eerie.
Steeper than imagined.
Had it leaned even more since last time?
I could rappel to the ground instead of the roof, but thinking it over, that's worse.
The ground could swarm with caterpillars, zombies, or god-knows-what-else I'd rather not meet—and landing there means scaling this slanted apartment from the bottom.
Bottom line: one thing to trust.
"Captain M9 speaking!"
I called M9 to the roof.
A scrawny but solid-built, utterly average Korean guy appeared, one rope securely tied to him.
He wore excessively shiny sunglasses.
I signaled him and began the descent.
Kreeeeek—
The rope hummed as the rooftop neared.
Landing soon.
But.
"?!"
The steep pitch made my feet slip.
As I flailed to regain balance, a rough hand shot from my blind spot and grabbed mine.
"Hey! Newbie!"
M9.
I gripped his hand and replanted my feet on the roof.
Rappel success.
M9 handed me another rope.
"Welcome to The Hope."
As I secured myself with the rope, M9 suddenly cocked his head.
"Hm? You...?"
M9 took off his sunglasses and peered at me.
"SKELTON?!"
I chuckled, gave a thumbs-up, and replied.
"Long time no see, Captain M9."
M9 eyed me with a strange expression, then slowly nodded.
"Knew it..."
He didn't say much more.
He'd probably suspected as much.
That I—and he—weren't pushovers in the real world either.
In this era, internet names need real-world chops. Natural conclusion.
I bantered as I looked at him.
"Remember John_nenon?"
"How could I forget? I grilled all that meat so hard."
M9 flung open the rooftop door.
"Fancy some tea?"
Beyond the open door stretched stairs that warped the gaze, as if heading into parallel space.
A hallucinatory staircase worthy of a leaning apartment.
M9 scampered ahead down the bizarre stairs like a chimp.
Gazing at the back of Korea's last luxury complex resident, I stepped toward the eerie stairs with a touch of trepidation.