Chapter 277
Chapter 277
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 277
Chapter Title: 112. Faith (6)
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While operating as team leader, I'd always tried to keep plans as simple as possible.
Fresh grads straight out of school often have this delusion that plans should be flashy and intricate. What a foolish notion.
Sure, crafting some elaborate, mysterious scheme does sound cool.
But the moment a plan kicks off, it slips from the planner's grasp. No one can predict how the massive ball of circumstances will roll—where, how fast, or in what direction.
That's why plans need to be straightforward and easy to grasp.
Any net spun from the human mind tears apart all too easily against the juggernaut of reality.
That said, even I occasionally weave something a bit more complex.
It's not something I do lightly.
Only for missions that absolutely must succeed, when our forces are critically short.
But I've never devised an operation foreseeing failure.
"They might just kill you on the spot. What can you do? That's your luck."
Joking was something the old Professor could never pull off.
"But I'm certain of this: they won't kill you outright. Didn't you see it on the boards? Those fanatic thugs are obsessed with social media flexing? So..."
I paused, searching for the right word, when Defender grinned and beat me to it.
"Proof of life?"
"Exactly. They'll want to capture you and post proof."
Every plan needs a rock-solid core objective.
I turned dead serious toward my internet buddy, who'd lit up at the word "proof" for once.
"If you spot a familiar face, point him out."
The fanatics might wield a bunch of powerful Awakened, but they're no true believers or apostles of any god.
Just a mob of crazed Awakened and humans teetering on the edge of madness.
What lets them track us is a perception-type ability user.
The fix is simple.
Kill that perception user.
Take out the hound sniffing Defender's scent, and we're free and clear of the fanatics.
I'd prepped two things.
One: bait.
Defender himself, the one detected, would play the lure.
Using a teammate as bait goes against my principles, but circumstances left no choice.
Where there's bait, there's a fisherman.
The rest of us lie in wait on the ridgeline 600 meters out.
Could've stretched it farther, but my sniping skills aren't on Kim Daram's level.
I'd picked the max range where I could reliably pick off targets from outside a sensor's detection zone.
Cheon Youngjae and Ha Taehoon handle fire support, while Dajeong runs drone overwatch.
"Wait, you're the drone pilot from back then?"
"Yep."
Ha Taehoon did a double-take at Dajeong's looks, then gawked even harder when she revealed she was the one who'd trolled those Chinese with the drones that day.
Dajeong had three drones.
All recon models, but she'd rigged the biggest, most powerful one with a mortar round.
"Alright, then."
Time for brief goodbyes.
Defender met my eyes.
A flicker of fear in his gaze, but overshadowed by trust enough to shake it off.
"I'm counting on you."
"Don't count too hard. You might die."
"If I do, take care of my little bro."
Defender glanced back at Dajeong fiddling with her drone controls alongside Ha Taehoon.
"...She probably knows, but neither she nor I lived picture-perfect lives."
"John_nenon."
"Huh?"
"Nah, nothing."
"What the...?"
I don't know myself.
Why I'd suddenly dropped John_nenon's name out of nowhere.
But it did cut through some of the grim drama between us.
No need for heroics, anyway.
That's embellishment for tales long ended.
Finally, I checked the motorcycle right in front of Defender.
Phase one of our plan: Defender tries to flee on the bike, but it "breaks down," stranding him.
"Purring like a kitten."
The bike was in perfect shape, as expected.
I stood, thinking of Baek Seung-hyeon.
"Let's do this."
Eyes locked with Defender.
We nodded in sync.
No words needed between us.
Except...
"Hey. That thing. Isn't it a monster?"
Cheon Youngjae, monitoring the dark through night-vision gear, shoved it my way.
On the entry road to the city north, 8km out, pale gray beasts under moonlight shuffled in a horde toward the urban sprawl.
The military had pulled out for good reason.
Monsters inbound.
"..."
With the lighthouse dark, monster packs could spawn anywhere now.
But the human heart clings to denial.
Please not here.
Luckily, humans beat the monsters to the punch.
Lights flashing.
Fanatics.
I raised my clenched fist high, signaling everyone.
*
Bang!
600 meters is a stretch for me, alien territory for our hunters too.
We'd fought entire wars mostly inside 100 meters.
Plus, I was never a designated marksman.
Always up front in the fray.
Could hand it to Cheon Youngjae or Ha Taehoon, but this was my burden.
Not theirs, no matter their specialties—especially not for something tied to me.
So I'd zeroed in beforehand.
Bang!
Checking impact.
Fanatics swarming? No issue.
Gunshots were white noise echoing everywhere anyway.
"Good."
Defender confirmed the hit.
"Spot on. But feels a hair low-right?"
"Got it."
Dajeong tinkered with her drone controller beside me, testing as she answered my earlier question by zipping a tiny quadcopter around.
"Manryu Church? Yeah, lots called it that. Folks pretended otherwise but spread it quietly to friends, all believers deep down."
Dajeong's long hospital stay was common knowledge.
She never spilled her exact illness, past or present, but she spoke plainly of the plague on human society she'd witnessed there.
"Surprisingly common. Why? Monsters terrify. Kill and kill, they keep coming. Took down giants like China, India, Russia—nuke-armed powerhouses."
Irrefutable: post-Hiroshima, humanity drowned in hubris.
We soil and pollute nature, yet we're just one parasite clinging to planet Earth.
Plenty of critters reshaped Earth's environment before us.
Take oxygen—the stuff we chug daily, die without—which our ancestors gifted us.
Human supremacy doubts simmered into the 21st century, but monsters outright pulverized our arrogance.
When one faith crumbles, another surges.
That Chinese kid scratching his belly in his room, badmouthing parents over wuxia novels? His delusions evolved into a global creed.
"Fanatics."
Vehicles closing on Defender.
Four-wheel-drive SUVs, four of them.
Painted stark white, bisected by a vivid red line down the middle like a cleaved car.
Black lotuses, leafless bodhi trees, flapping yellow flags scrawled with bold (ten thousand), legless pigs—symbols I'd seen in China.
Hodgepodge icons for cults and sects, one of which had crossed from North Korea into our land.
No clue on exact name or power structure.
Didn't matter. Fanatics were fanatics to us.
"Far enough outside sensor range at this distance?"
I asked Cheon Youngjae, on support beside me.
"By my gauge. But superior ones exist, I hear. Still, won't exceed 500m. Hard limit."
I figured that limit tied to monster necessities.
If Awakened powers derived mostly from monsters, they'd be tuned for optimal monster use.
400m was vast anyway.
Urban fights? 100m suffices.
Not my place to nitpick as a powerless guy, though.
Vehicles halt.
They'd spotted Defender visually.
He's hunkered behind the bike, in the ditch as planned.
Assuming we don't know their detection tricks makes us easier prey, from their view.
Vroom...
Cars swivel toward his hide, stopping.
Blinding headlights rake his position in unison.
"Tasteless spectacle."
Ha Taehoon, on flank watch, smirked wryly at the scene.
Tasteless, sure.
But it reassures me.
Into the comms: "Looks like they don't plan to waste you quick."
"Agreed."
Seasoned killer through hell and high water, Defender faced dozens without flinching.
"Here we go."
Critical moment.
"See him?"
Hunt the perception user.
Kill him, extract Defender, bug out.
Just Defender clear, escape's a breeze.
My buggy devours precious fuel, sure, but crushes SUVs in rough terrain.
Hit the paddies, and their only play's a drone.
Amid the sadistic headlight glare, white-robed figures piled out.
Their garb? Laughable.
Awkward mashup of Chinese and Western styles.
Mao suits styled as monk robes—bizarre.
But coordinated threads meant a well-organized fanatic cell, likely upper echelon.
"Plenty of Awakened in that bunch, maybe."
To Cheon Youngjae.
"Then what?"
"Fall back a bit."
Hunters get by without chatter—always convenient.
Cheon Youngjae grinned.
"Hunt 'em like monsters?"
"That's the idea."
"Intimidation work on humans?"
"It will."
"How?"
"In a 50-50 gamble, few hold a hand that kills me. Especially when we've got the edge—safer odds."
Cheon Youngjae nodded.
"Fair point. But fanatics? Probably more crazies among 'em."
I smiled at him.
"Real crazies would be with the monsters by now."
There lay the fanatics' Achilles' heel.
Their founder (founding patriarch, in their tongue) deemed monsters no foes, just cosmic harmony. So he vowed to live among them in monster-infested, eroded lands.
Most devotees followed suit.
Billions of forsaken Chinese stayed in the erosion, then vanished.
When some reemerged as fanatics in human realms, fellow Chinese scoffed.
Religion was their excuse, nothing more.
Just another internal revolt, like endless cycles since the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors claimed the Central Plains. Chinese military consensus.
I agreed fully.
Thus, they weren't mad.
They'd cling to life harder than us.
"There."
Defender's voice crackled over comms.
"In the white-robed pack, lone T-shirt guy in the middle—see him?"
"Short hair? Piercings?"
"Yeah. Shit..."
Defender swore suddenly.
"What?"
"She's really here. My little sis."
Sure enough, amid the white robes, a girl in her early teens.
But irrelevant to us.
To Cheon Youngjae: "We start."
Gripped my rifle, sighted the pre-zeroed ridge.
Figures through the scope.
The enemy I must kill.