Chapter 246
Chapter 246
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 246
Chapter Title: 103. Struggle (2)
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The entire outpost had been turned into a fortress.
We scraped together materials from the warehouse, the barracks, and the trash piles scattered out back, stringing wire at ankle height along the main approach paths and hanging empty cans from it.
It wouldn't mean much during the day, but at night—when things were most dangerous—it would serve as a motion detector.
We also dug holes in various spots.
Traps at the outpost entrance, behind the outpost, and scattered across the open ground from the final cover on the approach path to the outpost itself.
The pits weren't deep, but we filled them with shards of broken metal and glass.
Enough to leave nasty gashes on the legs or feet of any humans or mutations that stepped in.
We cleared away every hill or structure that could provide cover in the open field visible from the outpost, and in their place, we set up a defensive position on the rooftop where the solar panels were mounted.
For the final bastion at the outpost entrance, we built partition walls using the stones and debris we'd gathered over time.
From the entrance, it bent inward in an L-shape.
A setup to block mutations and force any potential human gunfire into close-quarters combat.
We did the work during daylight hours, taking care not to exceed six hours a day.
To keep the fatigue from burdening the next day's body.
And so, ten days passed.
Nothing happened. No signs of anything at all.
On the seventh day, the military vehicle that had brought me here reappeared, but contrary to my hopes, they didn't extract me. They just handed over a bit of food and supplies.
It was deeply disappointing, but I didn't let it show. Instead, I said to the soldiers,
"Got any spare ammo? Something was prowling around the night before last. I panicked and burned through some rounds."
I scored 90 bullets.
A gain was a gain, but the truth was my hopes had been dashed.
Three more days went by like that.
No hint of rescue anywhere.
No contact from Unicorn herself, either.
The view out the window was bleak, and above all, the gray fog lurking at the base of the mountain gnawed at my mind.
Right now, the greatest pain I felt wasn't anxiety or fear.
It was boredom.
Fortifying the outpost had kept me busy enough that boredom never crept in, but once that was done and my days settled into constant vigilance from inside the outpost, a stifling boredom even thicker than the fog below began to bind my soul.
There were plenty of ways to kill boredom.
Viva! Apocalypse! was one of them.
But for some reason...
I just didn't feel like logging in right now.
I'd dip in occasionally, but only to check messages from Unicorn.
I wasn't reading the posts on the boards. Not even the popular ones.
Even though it was the kind of boredom that made mindlessly scrolling tempting.
Analyzing my own feelings, it seemed to boil down to the difference in location.
I was still SKELTON, and Viva! Apocalypse! was still Viva! Apocalypse!, but since I was in a place that wasn't my own turf, my board naturally felt distant.
The fact that Foxgames—with his mini wristband—was prancing around didn't help my reluctance to log in, either.
I was steeling myself to fend off the endless waves of boredom and get through yet another day when Unicorn finally messaged me.
Not to brag, but I'm pretty quick on the uptake.
By the time the conversation reached that point, a bitter taste filled my mouth, and I arrived at a depressing conclusion.
Beating around the bush.
Asking something of me.
There was only one thing that could mean.
I let out a heavy sigh.
"Haa..."
Unicorn.
No, Na Hyein hadn't done a thing.
In the end, she hadn't been able to leave the house.
More precisely, even staying home, she hadn't been able to reach anyone who could fulfill her request.
Kang Hanmin.
"..."
I pondered what to reply for a moment before placing both hands on the keyboard.
Tap tap
I decided to play dumb.
I'm the one who said I'd hold out.
No need for weak talk. No need to blame her.
As she said, the holdout time had just stretched from the week I expected to a full month.
Anyway, I wanted to end this conversation.
Still, better to add a little pause than cut it off cold.
So I typed a few meaningless lines.
Was there anything more futile than dragging on meaningless chatter?
Feeling self-loathing and tedium, I decided it was time to wrap up and lifted my hands from the keyboard.
What now?
Only one answer.
Somehow endure here, survive, and board the ship to Busan.
I wouldn't think too deeply about what came after.
One fact was crystal clear.
Park Gyu had no business being on this island.
Staring blankly at the monitor, I tapped the keyboard.
I closed the board window and switched Valentine's mini-program to OFF.
"..."
Suddenly, the bunker felt dark.
Strange.
Unlike my underground bunker, this outpost was aboveground, and the second-floor observation post had large windows on all eight sides—sunlight should have been pouring in as long as the sun was up.
But in a broader sense, this outpost and my bunker were kindred structures.
Click
I checked my firearm and stepped outside.
Time to dig another pit.
*
Fifteen days had passed.
Still no hostile presences detected around.
I uploaded the duty log via computer, then had a simple meal.
While eating, I gazed out the window.
Was it because it was summer?
I hadn't seen the ground below since arriving here.
This outpost was clearly positioned to oversee the plains farther down, rather than the empty mid-mountain slope.
Time crawled inside the outpost.
I glanced at the computer.
It had been quite a while since I'd logged into Viva! Apocalypse!.
I hadn't connected since learning Unicorn's real situation.
No desire to.
This boredom was eating away at me, but I had no urge to dive into a virtual world packed with realities I didn't want to see.
Still, I should at least report survival.
Send one "I'm alive" message and log off.
With that in mind, I logged into the board for the first time in ages.
A message had arrived.
I checked it.
"..."
It was from Unicorn.
I read Unicorn's messages carefully.
Let out a shallow sigh and sent a reply.
Reply came seconds later.
For some reason, an image of Na Hyein with an excited expression flitted hazily before my eyes.
But it didn't quite fit.
Her, who always exuded a calm and mysterious aura, making an excited face.
In the three years at school, and all that time on the battlefield, I'd never seen her wear an expression like that.
Before closing the board window, I checked the attachment Unicorn sent.
It looked like a program similar to the one Valentine had given me.
The file name was...
-magic_glasses.apk
Magic glasses?
I read the manual.
I installed the program.
Small file size, so even on this decrepit computer, it didn't take long.
With the program installed, I connected to the intranet.
I'd been there before, so finding the Red Archive board wasn't hard.
But last time, what I'd seen was an endless emoji orgy.
No one speaking actual words, just everyone spamming their own emojis. A bizarre place.
Like if monsters were using a chatroom.
Incomprehensible to humans, no way to understand.
I'd installed the magic glasses program, but I doubted it'd do any magic.
Half-skeptical, I accessed the Red Archive board.
"..."
Still the emoji orgy.
What the hell was I supposed to do here?
Did the Awakened have some emoji-only communication superpower?
As my doubts veered off in a weird direction, a new window popped up on the monitor.
"Hm."
I waited quietly.
And moments later, the screen-filling emoji horde transformed like magic.
Emojis into text, or fragments of text mixed with emojis.
...
"?"
The moment I saw the board, I doubted my eyes.
That bizarre space overflowing with emojis had suddenly been annexed into human territory.
What the hell caused this?
One little program could make this happen?
Anyway, it had happened.
For the first time in ages, my heart pounded as I browsed the board.
First impression: young crowd.
Younger age group than any board I'd been on.
Red Archive—the name of this board—was a Korean game, but for some reason it featured a bunch of Japanese-named, speaking-in-Japanese beautiful girls. A mobile game that swept through teens and twenties.
Come to think of it, that bastard Gong Kyungmin played something like this too.
Not Red Archive, some weird Chinese game, I think.
Anyway, as I browsed this new board, I realized why I'd grown sick of ours.
Too familiar.
Foxgames was an annoying prick, sure, but the board's flow, the hot topics, people's behaviors—they all moved in such similar patterns on a large scale that it felt stale.
Staleness is one of the biggest reasons people detach from something.
Maybe that staleness was part of why I left my bunker.
Click—
Gun in one hand,
Click—
Mouse in the other.
Gripping two utterly mismatched items, I alternated between vigilance and surfing the net.
Before long, a pure smile crept onto my lips.
"Unicorn, you bastard..."
That weird otaku concept.
Must've gotten it from the Red Archive board.
Guys like that were everywhere here.
"..."
Still, these kids.
They sure knew how to have fun.
Jeju's situation couldn't be good, yet they could endlessly spin game topics, hang out, and scribble their diaries.
Our board had a time like that too.
Up to a year after the war, maybe.
Back when every user was scrambling to become an influencer.
Chin—
I set the gun down and moved my hands to the keyboard.
Gun was what I should be holding right now, but for some reason, I wanted to type.
I knew my situation was dangerous, under constant threat of death at any moment, but I couldn't help wanting to hang with these kids.
Such impulses aren't easy to suppress.
Feeling my lips curl into a smile for the first time in forever, I tapped the keyboard.
"..."
Tap tap