Chapter 296
Chapter 296
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 296
Chapter Title: 119. Tool (3)
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Not everyone speaks the truth.
Especially on a battlefield where life and death intersect, the truth becomes even more ambiguous.
Because even what the speaker believes to be true and says might not be the truth.
"It's real. Monsters. They brought monsters with them, I swear."
The man's pupils were dilated, and his body trembled violently at intervals.
He looked like he'd taken an awakener drug.
His intentions might be pure, but his words lost credibility as a result.
In cases like this, cross-verification is necessary.
If there's only one survivor, it might be different, but with multiple, everyone needs to be checked.
However, such cross-verification doesn't always yield the right answer.
"Fanatics brought monsters. I saw it too."
"It was more like they were leading them. Like they were giving orders."
"Yeah, they brought them. We hid as soon as we saw those guys."
On the battlefield, madness spreads easily.
But most of the witnesses hadn't taken awakener drugs, and their statements were consistent, which was worth noting.
"I'm Kwon Chan-young."
The young doctor named Kwon Chan-young was currently leading the settlement.
His yellowed doctor's coat was still stained with vivid red blood in places.
His physical and mental state were the best among the people we'd met here.
I asked him a question, expecting he could confirm the truth.
"Did the fanatics really control the monsters?"
Kwon Chan-young fell into thought.
"They came together, that's for sure. But I've never seen fanatics giving orders or anything like that. They did leave together, though. They razed our settlement on purpose, then went back with their followers."
It was hard to believe.
But if so many different people were saying the same thing, we at least had to be prepared to accept it.
Humanity still knew nothing about monsters.
We mustn't forget that.
What we thought we knew could be wrong.
Defender offered Kwon Chan-young a small gift.
Liquor, cigarettes, and ammunition.
In exchange, Defender asked about the inside collaborator he was supposed to contact.
Perhaps thanks to the gift, Kwon Chan-young tried his best to answer properly despite the chaos.
"Mr. Lee Soo-chil fought bravely and passed away. He tried to kill a fanatic controlling a monster from right beside it, but he got caught in a reflective barrier and died. That fanatic was an awakener too."
Then Kwon Chan-young spoke about the fanatics.
"......They demand children. Especially ones with awakener potential—they're desperate to take them. No one knows what they do with those kids, but everyone here knows not a single one of the children they've taken has ever come back."
I don't believe in feng shui, but there must be something to it.
Seeing how the fanatics around the docks had set up a lab nearby, just like Woo Min-hee had done.
The fanatics sent envoys to nearby communities demanding children, and if there were none, young women who could bear them.
The settlement had been suffering from the fanatics' demands for a long time and had handed over several children, but the fanatics were never satisfied.
Give them one, and they'd demand two; give them two, and they'd demand all of them.
"Everyone opposed it. They said fighting would just make our neighbors happy. The majority opinion was to hand over the kids and keep our mouths shut."
Kwon Chan-young slumped powerlessly to the floor and shook his head.
"It was bullshit. We should have fought."
Then a scrawny middle-aged man who had been watching us from behind spoke up in a shrill voice.
"Fighting wouldn't have solved anything. This is what fighting got us!"
He didn't like Kwon Chan-young's statement.
Kwon Chan-young ignored him, but the man kept talking nonstop in a self-defensive tone.
"If we hadn't fought, we'd have held out until now. We're alive to complain because we didn't fight! What do you know, blabbering on without knowing shit from shinola!"
I looked at Defender.
There was nothing more to gain here.
Defender sighed and looked around.
"Not the best situation to leave the vehicle."
"Then?"
"Park it as close as possible and come back."
"That might be best."
It didn't look like we'd get any fuel here either.
But we'd spotted several factions on the way, so we could trade with one of them.
It was time to leave.
Defender handled the farewell.
"Well, we'll be off then. We'd like to help, but as you know, our situation isn't great either."
"No, that's fine. Be careful out there."
Defender headed to the car first.
I looked around.
High-rises stood like folding screens, and below them sprawled the ruins of what was once a ground-level park.
How many people must have lived here before the war?
They probably lived happy lives.
But give it a little more time, and no humans would be left in this vast complex.
I let out a shallow sigh and followed Defender.
Kwon Chan-young stared at his bloodstained surgical rubber gloves and muttered sadly.
"......If only we had Failnet."
I felt no particular sympathy for this group.
It was a common sight in the apocalypse.
The natural process of humanity, sentenced to extinction, fading away.
But those three syllables from Kwon Chan-young struck a chord in me.
"Failnet?"
I spoke to Kwon Chan-young.
Surprised by the sudden question, he looked at me with faint astonishment despite his exhaustion.
I asked the prepared question while looking at him.
"That Failnet... was it made by John_nenon?"
"John_nenon?"
"You don't know John_nenon?"
"Oh, now that you mention it, there was an admin with that nickname before Failnet went down. Wonder why he made such a big deal of his username."
"Ah......!!"
As expected.
People missed Failnet and John_nenon.
To confirm, I asked another question.
"If Failnet had still been around, would things have been different?"
Kwon Chan-young nodded at me with conviction.
"Failnet was crude and messy, but it could connect people far apart, right?"
Kwon Chan-young gave a wry smile as he stared at the blank screen of his old, broken phone.
"......Now there's nothing. Nothing at all."
"......"
I got into the vehicle, leaving him behind.
Defender asked.
"What'd you talk about?"
"Just some trivial internet stuff."
It wasn't entirely trivial.
It was important.
Maybe as important as the mentor I was heading to see now.
*
The bustling building layout, war-torn ruins left abandoned, garish tents everywhere, and the endless waves of the West Sea.
The docks I'd visited after a long time hadn't changed much from when I'd stayed briefly in Hunter Street or when I'd gone to stop Emgu and Baek Seung-hyeon from causing trouble.
It was depressing.
The landscape was familiar, but none of the familiar people were there anymore.
No crowds filling the docks, no arrogant government agents, no junior Woo Min-hee.
According to Defender's intel, all that was left at the docks were zombies and fanatics.
He hadn't spotted any monsters on his final visit, but the settlement folks mentioned fanatics leading monsters around.
Defender and I had synced up many times.
Not a full team, but a quick glance or hand signal let us read each other.
Above all, we trusted each other.
Both I and Defender.
Defender went on recon first.
I was disappointed by his eerie demeanor sometimes, but seeing him take the lead made it fine.
As I keep emphasizing, Defender is an outstanding hunter.
His abilities were versatile, but he surpassed me in interpersonal combat, gathering, scouting, and survival skills.
Darkness was zombie territory, but since things more dangerous than zombies lurked, we waited for night to move.
Defender soon returned from recon.
"Zombie numbers are way down from when I was here. Not half—they're almost wiped out."
"Fanatics' doing?"
"Probably."
Zombies had been a shield protecting fanatics from the Horde faction, but with the Horde dismantled, they were just annoying pests now.
Under the moon rising toward full, we held our breath for a while, watching the docks.
Night limited visibility, but sounds constantly informed us of events.
The most frequent was the chirping of grasshoppers.
No matter how eerie zombie howls were, they paled against the chorus of autumn-craving insects.
Beyond the background insect hum, we waited for other sounds.
"SKELTON."
Defender, lying prone beside me, spoke.
He had something on his mind.
I replied, steeling myself a bit.
"What's up."
"About my little sister."
"Yeah."
"Not your type?"
That's what it was.
"Your sister."
"Yeah."
My type, huh.
She's a beauty, we go way back, and she's bright around me.
No reason for a guy to refuse.
But how to put it.
Different.
Something fundamental, a near-repulsion, held me back from her.
"What."
I looked at Defender with a faint smile.
Still a handsome face.
That face waited only for my answer.
"You really trying to make me your brother-in-law?"
"Wouldn't be bad."
"......You're coming on strong."
Unlike my smile, Defender's face was expressionless.
Meaning he was dead serious.
I wiped the smile from my face and thought for a moment.
"You know?"
"?"
"The guy we're looking for now. Instructor Jang Gi-yeong."
"Principal to me."
"Know how hard that guy tried to get me married—or rather, to knock me up?"
True to his academy hunter roots, Defender quickly grasped the historical context behind my words.
"Oh, that thing. Hunter second-generation plan? To get top hunters breeding fast?"
More precisely, it was research to see how our bodies—frequently exposed to monsters and rift pollution—affected the next generation.
Either way, Jang Gi-yeong's intentions were obvious.
"How many times did that guy try to pair me up."
"News to me."
"Kim Daram, who you know, was one of the candidates."
"For real......?"
Even the psychopath Defender changed expression at Kim Daram's name.
How much to tell him.
"Kim Daram herself clams up, but I have ways to confirm. Someone told me she got called to Jang Gi-yeong before joining my team as my first member."
"So Jang Gi-yeong sent team leader Kim Daram to SKELTON—no, Professor?"
"Just speculation, but high possibility."
"This'd be permanent top post material on Hunter! Apocalypse!"
"Eh, that big a deal?"
Honestly, not that impressive.
Neither Kim Daram nor I had any interest in each other.
From the start, it felt fixed as team leader and subordinate, regardless of gender.
Truth be told, I don't go for women as materialistic, tenacious, and gorilla-scary as Kim Daram.
Her current antics prove I had insight even back then.
"Not just Kim Daram. Woo Min-hee here was also on Jang Gi-yeong's pairing list."
"That's harder to buy."
"Woo Min-hee was just a near-miss. But tons of academy girls—either dead in China or whereabouts unknown—were deliberately assigned near me as part of Jang Gi-yeong's plan."
The high female ratio in my team supported that guess.
Including support staff, it was 20% at least, over 60% at most.
But back then, Professor was a tool for one purpose.
Killing monsters.
"......With that history, you think I'd fall easy for a pretty girl by my side?"
Defender smirked.
"Tough nut."
"Yeah. Not easy."
"SKELTON looks easier."
"SKELTON's even tougher."
We traded jokes, then shut up like we'd planned.
A whoosh echoed hollowly from the moonlit far side of the docks.
Clang!
The sound was muffled by distance, but it was a blunt weapon smashing a human body—specifically, a head.
I remembered it because I'd heard furious Chinese troops line up rebels, too cheap for bullets, suffocate them with plastic bags over heads, or countless times bash their skulls with anti-zombie clubs they called Ruyi Bangs.
"Fanatics."
Soon we spotted enemies emerging under the moonlight.
Unlike the mainland cultists, they wore normal clothes but all sported white armbands like politicians wear in elections.
Five of them. Except for the shotgun wielder, all carried heavy blunt weapons, strolling and casually crushing staggering zombies' heads.
"Hahaha!!"
Their scattered laughter made it clear they enjoyed it.
We slowly advanced, keeping them in sight, mapping their patrol route.
The fanatics stopped in front of a dock warehouse.
"Let's head back."
The zombie-slaughtering fanatics turned around.
Soon we knew why.
Ding-a-ling— Ding-a-ling—
Bell tolls rang out.
Rattling cart wheels accompanied it.
A handcart moved under the moonlight.
Pulling it was.
"Instructor."
My mentor, Jang Gi-yeong.