Chapter 284
Chapter 284
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 284
Chapter Title: 115. Happiness (3)
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Cheon Young-jae's old flame was said to be in a small settlement built atop the ruins of an old mountain fortress.
The road winding through the mountains below the fortress and the abandoned village were blanketed in gray-white. From the deserted houses scattered everywhere came the zombies' gloomy song, filling the eerie domain like an endless round that would never cease.
"This the place?"
Ha Tae-hoon grumbled curtly.
He was one of the people unhappy about this mission.
Which was why I had no intention of assigning him anything dangerous or strenuous.
"A lot of people used to live here. See that apartment complex with the swan painted on it? They turned it into a stronghold and over two thousand survivors scraped by there. But they're all dead now—as you can see—and zombies to boot."
Bang Jae-hyeok remained neutral.
He had no particular interest in rescuing Cheon Young-jae's old lover, but he didn't have strong grounds to oppose the mission either.
I planned to have him and Ha Tae-hoon handle rear support together.
His leg made it impossible to demand too much from him anyway.
Up on the ridgeline overlooking the village, there were other visitors besides us.
A vintage-feeling Jeep was parked at the end of the ridge, engine off.
A familiar flag fluttered from the elastic pole extending from the vehicle body.
A penguin that looked somewhat comical somewhere.
Bang Jae-hyeok muttered upon seeing the flag.
"Park Penguin's people?"
A man and two boys stood near the Jeep.
They didn't seem surprised to see us, as if they'd been notified in advance.
The man approached us, leading the two boys.
"You folks the ones heading to the Herb Village?"
An ordinary face.
The kind of guy you could see anywhere before the war.
But you couldn't judge by face alone.
I glanced at the boys, who I assumed were his sons.
They harbored a bit of fear and wariness, sure—but they didn't hide their curiosity and spirit either.
In this crumbling world, raising two sons to this age was an impressive feat.
"Name's Park Penguin. Ridiculous, I know, but what can you do? That's what the world calls me."
The man politely offered us what looked like a pre-war business card with both hands.
[ Aram Hardware Shopping Center "Interior Estimates Welcome!" – Park Jin-gu ]
"This is my real name. Ah, don't mind the card. Just an old habit. Not many left anyway. I'll break it soon enough."
Park Penguin gazed out at the ashen wasteland with his sons.
"You're planning to punch through that?"
"Yes."
Park Penguin stroked his sons' heads.
"Take a good look, boys. These are the brave souls once called Hunters."
His two sons looked identical in face and build.
Twins.
Whether the baseball team that used twins as mascots foresaw this future or not, it was a fact that twins had become more common in an era where kids were precious.
The media claimed it was due to more IVF treatments, and indeed, you saw double strollers frequently at marts and on streets.
So many twins had been born, but few managed to keep their other half alive.
There had even been twins at my school.
One died, the other left for the front lines.
"You can watch from here, right?"
Park Penguin seemed to have received all our personnel info from the shelter side.
We didn't have any amazing tech or patents worth hiding anyway.
"By all means."
With Park Penguin and his sons watching, we began the operation.
The biggest hurdle was, of course, the zombies.
Too many of them blocked the road ahead of our vehicle.
A few zombies were just a light warm-up for us Hunters, nothing more or less. But the more zombies there were, the fiercer, wilder they got—and for some unknowable reason, they even seemed to grow stronger.
Like the faint souls left in those dead bodies resonating together.
Shoving a vehicle into streets teeming with zombies wasn't wise.
Detouring off-road around the pavement wasn't feasible either.
There was only one road to the settlement where Cheon Young-jae's ex was, and it ran through the village.
A buggy could ignore it all and power straight up the steep incline, but our cheap one-ton electric truck had limits.
Besides, we had Bang Jae-hyeok with his bad leg and the old lady.
We couldn't afford to lose the vehicle.
Another way was needed.
Entering a zombie-overrun urban area on foot wasn't smart, but as Jang Gi-young once said, no place was off-limits to a Hunter.
The academy had developed various methods for navigating zombie-infested cities.
One was the "Parkour Route."
As the name implied, it involved traversing narrow railings, rooftops to rooftops, steep slopes, and hard-to-reach terrains that massive zombie hordes couldn't block—pioneering a path through.
The biggest issue with Parkour Routes was individual physical ability.
Jump heights and agility varied person to person.
Some could pull off acrobatic feats like circus performers, while others struggled with basic tumbling.
Our Hunters prized steel hearts and precise, rapid marksmanship above all, tending to neglect other stats.
That said, we didn't ignore personal fitness entirely.
Back in school, there were obstacle course exams prepping for Parkour Routes, and plenty of students struggled.
I passed above average, Kim Daram made up her deficits gorilla-style, but my old teammate Kang Han-min didn't fare so well.
He always failed those exams and got reamed by Jang Gi-young.
The scolding was so harsh that rumors spread among students that Jang was trying to kill Kang through those tests.
He kept forcing the dangerous trials on him despite knowing he sucked.
A slip could mean fatal falls or injuries, and fatigue amplified the risks—yet Jang pushed him mercilessly.
People whispered that Jang wanted him dead, or at least acted with reckless disregard. I saw it differently.
No intent to kill.
Awareness of the risk, maybe.
Jang Gi-young wasn't a good man, but he wasn't pure malice either.
Like it or not, he was my mentor.
"Let's go."
The first target was a narrow building.
No rental banners on this one—the kind someone might've once boasted about proudly. Now it held only dust, shattered glass, and a few bleached skeletons.
Near the rooftop lay a corpse seemingly hanged, slumped over.
I guessed hanging from the frayed noose tied professor-style to a pillar.
Wooo— woo—
Zombie groans chorused from below our feet.
Dormant state sounds.
No immediate danger unless we made gunshots or noises to rile them.
Weeeeng—
A drone buzzed overhead to greet us on the roof.
Ha Tae-hoon's drone.
His sunken voice came over the comms.
"Still quiet for now."
Standing on the roof, I eyed the building across.
"This."
Cheon Young-jae grimaced and muttered.
"We can make it from here. But coming the other way? Looks dicey."
"Not hard."
Low buildings always had emergency descent ropes.
Legally mandated.
No building owner was dumb enough to ignore fire codes and regs over installing a cheap one.
Those ropes rarely got used, though.
"Found it."
I checked the rope's strength, hooked it to a fixed pillar, and used it to swing with Cheon Young-jae to the neighboring rooftop.
Even from higher ground, it was over 4.5 meters.
A running start, but one bad slip and it was seven stories down.
Not even a professor or super skeleton could survive that.
Thud!
We landed lightly together.
Two sturdy ropes now spanned between the buildings.
Creating our own paths and routes as we advanced.
That was the essence of the Parkour Route.
Hoping no one would need to climb those ropes, we pressed on to the next segment.
Weeeeng—
As we built, adjusted, and solidified our route, Ha Tae-hoon's drone buzzed busily, scouting threats ahead.
Teamwork's advantage.
With a teammate covering your strong suit, fewer worries meant sharper focus on your own tasks.
Thus, we pioneered the tough path and breached the zombie town's worst choke point.
"End of the line here."
Even Hunters got winded from endless stairs, jumps, and tiptoeing narrow gaps.
I'd broken a sweat for the first time in a while.
But we were only halfway.
"Ha Tae-hoon here. I'll try getting the truck as close as possible."
While the truck detoured around the village to our support point, I scanned the surroundings.
Everything was dyed gray-white.
I spotted late-August vines.
They coiled inward in impossible right angles against nature.
Gloomy gray-white glowing orbs clung like fruit everywhere.
Scientists had tried dissecting them, but all failed.
The moment they cut one open, not even a minimal sample remained.
Rifts were beyond human grasp.
Yet we who'd faced them sensed their nature dimly, each in our way.
Atop bones, a stem coiled endlessly at right angles to a flower I'd never seen.
A Rift was life itself.
Like our red and white blood cells with souls and thoughts stripped to purpose alone, the calamities from Rifts pursued singular goals.
"Park, senior."
Cheon Young-jae spoke up, eyeing another ridgeline.
"Bit early, but... thanks."
"Too soon for thanks."
"I know, but."
"No, monsters aren't the issue."
I stared him down squarely.
"The real problem comes after."
"......"
"Brace yourself now."
A Necromancer-type lurked on that ridgeline.
Had to kill it fast.
Before it woke the village minions—zombies—and drowned us in a corpse wave.
Necromancer-types weren't proactive builders like Spider-types.
They hijacked human facilities as bases, cloaking in human-like guises.
But as a primitive early type, it had glaring weaknesses.
"There it is."
Behind a cheap motel, amid sloppily spun gray webs, stood a grotesque humanoid statue, unmoving.
Necromancer-type.
Nearly a hundred zombies shambled guard around it.
"That's a lot."
"Yeah."
Too many to approach easily.
Brute force was an option, but fighting through that many would let the Necromancer summon the village horde midway.
Sniping was pointless.
Monsters didn't sleep.
What looked like slumber from human eyes was just their vile corruption from beyond the Rift graying the land.
Praying to become beacons for kin soon to come.
"Hm."
Even the great professor had no clever fix here.
They'd been too easy before because we caught them early; a settled Necro was trickier than dainty small fries.
Back when Chinese military backed us, we'd just call coords and let artillery and air force flatten 'em. No such luxuries now.
"Bypass it."
No need to rush a monster fight.
Confirm the VIP at the destination first, ensure no way to extract without the vehicle, then engage.
Even in China, unless the monster was the goal, combat was my last resort.
I hated them most, so I knew their danger best.
From afar, it looked like dense woods, but up close on the slope, few big trees obstructed.
Likely burned as firewood surviving last winter's harshness.
Steep incline, but using severed stumps as braces, the next ridge was doable.
During a brief rest, we quenched with canteen water, shared a sugar-sweetened nutrient bar, then climbed again.
The drone didn't follow.
No sense provoking monsters or risking a valuable scout asset to their powers.
No drone eyes, but we had Cheon Young-jae's.
This journey was for him.
"Dunno what Bang told you."
Cheon Young-jae said, slightly winded.
"But we were pretty tight."
He smiled.
"Saw those kids earlier? Park Penguin's."
I just nodded, no reply.
At a near-cliff short obstacle, we grabbed small tree branches on the slope to advance.
I climbed first, pulled Cheon Young-jae up by the hand.
"Maybe I could be a dad like Park Penguin someday."
Feeling his hefty weight strain my arms, I asked.
"What?"
"She was pregnant when we split."
"......And you still broke up?"
"Who knows? Maybe kids are growing up without me knowing."
Cheon Young-jae showed subtle hope.
I doubted it.
Maybe even he didn't truly hope.
Just the proximity and reunion prospect reviving long-dead hopes, zombie-like from below.
"Don't expect too much."
"Not huge expectations. Just... possible."
Words said otherwise—Cheon Young-jae was excited.
His eyes gleamed.
"People!"
I restrained him overtaking me, calmly said.
"Slowly. No rush."
He stared straight at me.
That familiar gaze, testing me.
I met it steadily.
This guy had tested me several times before.
Or given off that vibe.
My turn now.
No exceptions in vetting.
I'd watch and test him.
Beyond the gloomy gray-white, smoke rose.
Hiding behind shrubs, I scoped the grayed-out villa complex with binoculars.
Around faded paint and exposed steel ruins, figures shuffled.
Humans.