Chapter 321
Chapter 321
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 321
Chapter Title: 129. Voice (1)
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roxanneGIRL: What?
She denied it outright, but in one corner of her heart lingered a faint "what if."
Monsters and rifts belong to the realm of the unknowable.
The greatest geniuses and scholars from every field had devoted their all to uncovering the secrets of the rifts, but they'd revealed nothing about the rifts themselves.
And so, when it came to the true nature of rifts, everyone stood on equal ground.
Ignorance itself.
Monsters using radio waves?
It sounded utterly ridiculous, but I couldn't dismiss it outright.
I might call myself a monster expert, but all my knowledge stemmed from hard-earned experience—lessons beaten into me.
roxanneGIRL: What does that even mean? You're spouting stuff I can't make sense of?
I fired off the question.
However,
Deadman_working had no intention of answering my question.
He was just spewing whatever he knew.
It didn't matter.
Whether his words rang true or not, we'd find out soon enough.
"Monsters are moving!"
"Monsters are emerging from the nest!"
"Targets Gap-Eul-Byeong-Jeong—all in motion!"
The soldiers guarding the rear of the warehouse sprang into frantic action.
"No way—monsters out of nowhere? No large-scale surge, so why? And from an established base at that?!"
Kim Byung-chul's bellow carried over as well.
"What's going on?"
Hong Da-jeong's voice came through the comms, and Cheon Young-jae answered in my stead.
"Monster alert. Doesn't look like a surge. Group migration, maybe?"
The monsters were on the move.
Deadman_working's claim looked to be hitting close to the mark.
"......"
A frequency monsters used.
Internet comms riding that frequency—and monsters reacting to it.
Thoroughly intriguing. A rare spark for my pathological curiosity.
No one had known of it, let alone proposed it, back when I was in the field.
Had a bunch of engineers, totally unconnected to hunters, discovered and exploited it?
"Um. Mr. SKELTON."
Pulling me from my reverie was none other than Valentine.
"Things sound chaotic outside. Is something wrong?"
"Yeah. Seems like it."
I pondered for a moment.
How to handle this situation.
The soldiers' reactions made it clear: things were grim.
Monsters—humanity's apex predators.
And they were swarming our way in a horde.
If Kim Byung-chul were still the Legion's head like in the old days, he could've held them off with overwhelming artillery. But right now, he was just the boss of a ragtag little warband.
The first option that came to mind: abandon ship.
Halt Necropolis reception, scrap everything, and pull back.
A choice where you lose nothing... but gain nothing either. Utterly passive.
But was that really okay?
What gnawed at me was regret.
The regret of missing a chance that might never come again.
I'd felt it time and again living with such choices.
That emotion doesn't heal.
You can bury it under the soil of other memories and forget for a while, but the shovel of some event digs it up, revealing the scar-like regret every time.
"......"
Abandoning this felt like it'd cast an eternal shadow of regret over my soul.
Necropolis?
Important.
A second PaleNet?
Monumentally important.
Worth staking my life on.
But now there was an even more compelling reason.
The frequency that summoned monsters.
A concept no one—not a single soul—had ever known or even hypothesized before.
No scholar, no supercomputer had ever decoded the behavioral principles of these alien entities called monsters.
That's why humanity treated their invasions as "surges"—events stripped of intent.
We're utterly ignorant of monsters.
How they churn them out from their domains. How they communicate across species. How they expand their zones of erosion.
We know nothing.
That's why we suffered. Why we're marching toward extinction now.
And from an unexpected corner, a clue to monster behavior had surfaced.
A monster frequency.
This could upend the entire paradigm root and stem.
"Mr. SKELTON. What should we do? Monsters are coming, right?"
Valentine's voice brimmed with unease.
"Wouldn't it be better if we just bailed?"
Hong Da-jeong felt the same.
"Hm. Something just doesn't add up."
Cheon Young-jae—who'd been indifferent to the internet from the start—sounded almost relieved.
Defender stayed silent, but deep down, he probably wanted to end this reckless gamble too.
That was the team consensus as I saw it.
But.
"......"
Let's be honest.
If I die, it's all over.
I'd bluffed to Valentine about meeting John_nenon in the afterlife, but I don't believe in that stuff.
Dead is dead.
No more regrets.
Above all, smashing through surface threats like Woo Min-hee and the warehouse dragon, only for monsters to leap vividly into the fray before me... it felt like fate.
Yeah.
This Park Gyu was never a standalone proposition.
I only exist as "me" because of the foil called monsters.
I'd momentarily forgotten that fated pairing.
"General."
I approached Kim Byung-chul, his face ashen as he stared at the monitor.
"I'll hold them off."
*
Back in my China days, I'd notched a mildly interesting record.
Probably the battle that layered legendary fame atop the already renowned Professor callsign.
A lone hunter team defending a single combat zone against the massive monster horde bearing down on Beijing.
Over that week's fighting, we'd tallied over thirty kills.
The feat of a mere four hunters—or six, counting support.
Such miraculous feats weren't coming twice.
I'm older now, rusty from years away, and my current team doesn't match that era's caliber.
But if you asked whether this battle had no chance of victory?
I'd say no.
"Monsters approaching. Small types! Dancer variants!"
Right now, I was moving with the soldiers.
"Good. Let's draw them in further."
There was a rumor floating around during Beijing's fall.
If the capital's defense had been handed to a pro hunter—not some bungling fool, but someone like Professor—instead of the incompetent brass, they wouldn't have handed over the city of 1.3 billion souls so pathetically.
Personally, I think Beijing's fall was inevitable.
Even if I'd been in command, I couldn't have stopped it.
Maybe delayed it some.
I glared at the ashen foe on the monitor.
Dancer type.
A threatening bastard.
The only small type I couldn't drop in close quarters.
Among known variants, anyway.
But even that powerhouse monster.
"Now."
The officer beside me hit the button.
A distant boom erupted.
Kaboom!
The screen erupted in clouds of dirt and debris, structures cascading like a landslide onto the dancers.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
The dancer tried resisting with its signature reflex field, but the fragments it spat back soared high—like a volleyball setter tossing the ball—only to be yanked down by gravity.
Crunch!
Dancers among the victims.
"Dancer type downed! It's particleizing and scattering!"
In urban warfare, herding monsters along a path, packing predicted pass-through buildings with explosives, and crushing them under debris—it was traditional, simplistic.
And all the more effective for it.
No target for the reflex field's counter. Overwhelms its limits with sheer impact mass.
Ideal choice.
Best part? No civilians to complain about demo jobs in Seoul now. No courts chasing property damage claims.
Every building and pile of rubble littering Seoul was our arsenal.
I'd pitched similar tactics in Beijing, but that's when I first learned how fiercely the Chinese clung to their rights.
"Good. Solid start."
Confirmed active monsters so far: six.
Four in the deadly 5km radius—and we'd just bagged one.
Trouble was the pair starting from beyond 5km, Misari side.
No surge heralded it, but drone recon picked up a medium-type closing from east Seoul.
Mediums were a whole different beast from smalls.
Right call here: massed barrage.
But Kim Byung-chul lacked artillery. And spotter officers to call shots.
Worst case, I'd have to handle it personally. But even then...
Me versus that medium—combat type, Praetorian variant?
"Target Eul! Approaching!"
Far-future worries could wait.
Priority: the next monster.
This one's a new small-type: hedgehog variant.
As the name implied, covered head to toe in spines. One I'd never tangled with.
No experience is the deadliest foe, but active hunters claimed it wasn't as formidable as it looked.
Close-range power on par with—or below—a spider.
Of course, it wasn't planning any fair fights either.
"Counter with tanks."
Kim Byung-chul had three tanks; one got wrecked inside the government warehouse.
Fortunate the survivors were both anti-monster specials.
These "dummy" tanks usually blocked monsters head-on, peppering them with low-power shots too weak to breach their own armor plating.
But I'd always itched to run them our way.
Meaning.
"Unit 4, locked on. Unit 5 reports threat shots ready."
Tank intimidation.
Pure curiosity.
What would a monster do facing threat fire from tank-grade firepower?
Boom!
The tank's hearty roar echoed.
Result transmitted to tablet and monitor in under a second.
No effect.
As expected.
To monsters, tank shells and bullets were one and the same.
One of the watching officers muttered.
"Shell count's not unlimited."
Supply officer, likely.
No proper logistics? Shell anxiety made sense.
"One more—no, make it two."
Truth? I wanted four, five.
To watch it shrug off tank cannon threats.
But alas.
Supply guy's face was a death mask.
Times like this, humor the boss.
Kim Byung-chul—who'd already granted me full authority—let out a shallow groan and nodded.
"Two more threat volleys."
The comms officer relayed to the forward tanks.
Boom!
The cannon belched fire.
Reflex field blocked it clean; shell whistled perilously past the tank.
And the third.
Same result.
Now for real.
"Alright. Live fire incoming."
Two shots, hair-trigger interval.
Threat first, then effective.
The new monster had crept within 2km of The Hope.
Let it go farther, and we'd need another building drop.
But that one was earmarked for others.
Especially prepping for that medium-type.
Waste as little on the small fry as possible.
"Now."
Command over comms.
Kaboom! Boom!
Cold stare fixed on the monitor.
As the cannon flashed, my fist clenched unconsciously.
No shockwave.
Meaning.
Crunch!
The threat shell grazed its body harmlessly—right before the follow-up slammed mercilessly into torso and skull.
Even low-power rounds shredded monster flesh like axes through butter.
One hit punched a hole clean through; it began particleizing.
"Target Eul, destroyed!"
At that, Kim Byung-chul—who'd been glued to maps and monitors—finally glanced my way.
He nodded.
"......Impressive. Two monsters down for this pittance."
Forty-eight 155mm shells.
The army average sunk into one monster.
More precisely, per rift-spawn column.
With multiples around, expenditure drops way lower.
Cheap payback for slaying humanity's foe, you might say.
But even so, the numbers screamed why we can't win.
Monsters spawn infinite.
No human hyperbole—infinite for real.
Forty-eight shells a drop in our production bucket.
But with rifts everywhere?
Daily—no, multiple daily—spawns. Sustain that shell burn rate?
Factor in pricier jets and gear?
Economy of scale.
That simple logic crushed us underfoot.
"Just the second one so far."
Time to fight smart.
Smart fighting meant economical. Risky, in other words.
Aliens to these once-supply-rich soldiers—but second nature to us hunters.
"Third monster confirmed. Damn. Necromancer type."
Cheon Young-jae relayed from recon.
I turned to Kim Byung-chul at once.
"Can you handle the zombies?"
"Not tough. What's your play?"
I drew my most economical weapon before him: cold steel.
"Taking it with this."
Kim Byung-chul smiled.
That smile would twist to a grimace soon.
I knew.
These weren't all the monsters closing in.
Woo Min-hee might even be among them—but that'd be for the best.
If voices of the dead truly lured monsters, we'd have plenty to discuss.