Give a Doe, Take a Mal
"Then I'll be back in exactly two days. I've got some preparations of my own to make."
"...Alright. I understand. Please make it back safely."
"You stay alive too, Jeonga. Don't go dying on me."
With that, I grabbed the laptop and charger I'd already picked out and left the apartment complex.
Behind Chaeyeon, who was trailing after me with quick little steps, anxious eyes watched us through the windows. I met those gazes for a moment, then turned my head away.
"What's wrong, Oppa?"
"Nothing. But you're seriously fine with the fact that I just killed people?"
"Huh? Oh — I was a little surprised, yeah. I knew you were strong, but I'd never seen someone smash a human skull open like a watermelon before."
"...And that's the only reason you were surprised?"
"Is there supposed to be another one? Oh, right — so the place you got shot, that's actually okay?"
I stared at her. Murder didn't seem to register with her at all; she just changed the subject and fretted over my body instead.
Honestly, that was the question I wanted to ask her.
Whether she was genuinely fine — or just pretending to be. Remembering the way she'd gone to town on that dead man's eyeballs, it seemed pretty genuine.
Either way, I started walking again.
"We're hitting a clothing store nearby before we head back. No AC, no blankets — so we need to grab as many clothes as we can."
"Sure, whatever... focus on warm stuff like padded jackets... wait, no — why won't you just give me a straight answer?"
"Drop it. I'm fine."
"How can you be fine after getting shot? What if it gets infected and— wait. Don't tell me that's another ability you bought from Crow unni?"
"...No. Call it congenital. Built-in toughness."
"It's your body. Why are you talking like that? Suspicious..."
"I said drop it. Don't be a pain."
"It's really suspicious though..."
I ignored Chaeyeon's narrowed eyes and kept walking — then a thought hit me.
Day five already, huh. Two days left.
Crow had made such a big deal of it for a reason. Best to prepare as much as possible.
And "prologue complete," of all things. The more I heard that word — treating this goddamn apocalypse like some cheap game — the more it pissed me off.
Shit. Don't tell me I'm going to run into that bandage-wrapped bastard again.
A flicker of unease crossed my face as Chaeyeon and I stepped into the clothing store.
Two days later. Exactly the seventh day of the end of the world.
Unfortunately, my prediction landed dead-on.
"Oppa! Oppa! Get up, hurry!"
"...What. What is it."
I'd been sprawled out under the oversized padded jacket I'd brought as my personal blanket when Yejin shook me awake in a panic. With the prologue about to end, I'd bumped my nightly pull-ups from three thousand to five thousand, and my upper body was still strangely sore as I rolled over to look at her. Her face was bone-white, and she was stumbling over her words.
"That mummy man from the first day of the apocalypse — he's back! But where he appeared..."
"...Where?"
Yejin swallowed hard, trying to steady herself, and finished.
"He filled the entire sky. He's so massive that no survivor in the city could possibly ignore him."
"...What the hell does that mean. Filled the sky?"
Through the window I could see the kids gathered on the athletic field, mouths hanging open, staring straight up.
I grabbed Yejin — who was clutching my arm and hopping from foot to foot — and threw the window open.
And in that same instant—
A voice I would never forget rolled across the sky like dry thunder.
I lost every word in my mouth and could only stare upward, dumbstruck.
A hologram of truly colossal — absurdly, impossibly colossal — scale was projecting the mummy's form. Spanning the entire planet, visible to every human being on Earth who could look up, he gazed down on humanity in the same formal suit he'd worn on day one.
He slowly stroked the bandages wound around his fingers, drawing a smile full of darkness across the sky.
An eyeball the size of the sun itself rolled beside the mummy, sweeping once across every human being on the planet.
And just as I felt those eyes lock precisely onto mine, he wiped the smile away and continued.
After that unfunny little joke, he leaned his upright torso forward, shoving his face closer.
I wanted nothing more than to fire a missile into that thing hanging in the sky. The fact that I didn't have one was a regret I'd take to my grave.
While my group stood crushed under the weight of his endless garbage, someone somewhere else seemed to have said something. He turned his head and stared hard at a particular country, then broke into a wide grin that laid bare the hollow emptiness inside his body.
Then his mouth closed, and he murmured coldly.
He was taking living people and comparing them to corpses — a roundabout way of tearing us down. His fixed gaze drifted slowly as he went on.
Whether it was the unimaginable scale or the sheer atmosphere of it, everyone but me was overwhelmed, simply listening. I alone kept my eyes narrowed, analyzing his words — and then Crow spoke into my head.
Master, that word — Successor — is a title for the Alpha type.
Successor? Succeeding what, exactly?
I'd figured out how to talk without speaking out loud, so I put a hand on Yejin's tightly hunched shoulder and asked the question inwardly.
Then I turned toward the glowing screen behind me. On the laptop, Crow was staring at me with a face full of tension.
Alpha types are on a completely different level from the corpses you're thinking of. They're reverse-walkers who succeeded in reclaiming the lives they once lost.
In other words, they're the same as a new humanity. Beings who died once, came back, and — like you, Master — breathe and feel emotion.
...Wait. Then that means—
Exactly. The precise meaning of Successor: it means they will newly inherit this dimension's Earth.
Through a contract with the Apocalypse Administrator, Alpha types are humanity from another dimension — here to exterminate you, Master, and all of humanity, and claim the planet for themselves.
No matter what happens, they are the worst kind of existence you must eliminate.
The moment Crow finished explaining, the mummy — who had been slowly surveying humanity — delivered one last line.
"Since giving you a briefing wouldn't sink in anyway, we'll end the demonstration here. I'll wrap this up."
"I sincerely hope that your deaths — and the process of approaching them — prove more valuable than the lives themselves."
He closed it out with the polished courtesy of someone ending a formal ceremony — and with equal savagery.
At that line, I muttered one last review of my own.
"What a goddamn performance."
A one-eyed ideologue who painted all of human history in black and white, strutting around like that — it was almost funny.
Just before the hologram vanished, his eyeball snapped toward me as if he'd overheard my monologue. I flipped him off for good measure.
"O-Oppa...?"
"I've always wanted to do that at least once. Round up the kids. Let's eat breakfast."
I gave the horrified Yejin a pat on the back and shut the window.
Whether it was humanity's fault or humanity's fate — deciding that was our job. No one else's.
With that thought, I headed off to wipe down the bloodstained pull-up bar for my morning routine.