The Apartment
The radio function, derived from the Trailer, was a feature that let Won-goo contact someone at a place he had personally visited before. It was originally meant to be used inside the Trailer itself, but thanks to the Compaction trait, he could use it without ever pulling the vehicle out.
The Temporary Shelter had spawned a great many derived functions. Some of them required spending coins to unlock the corresponding ability; others worked without any investment at all. The long-range radio was one of the latter.
Even so, Won-goo rarely used it. The cooldown was vicious enough to be called criminal, and the cost was steep. There were abilities that shortened the cooldown and reduced the fee, but Won-goo wasn't foolish enough to spend coins on that. Besides, he'd never intended to use this function in the first place. He was, after all, the kind of man who still thought it was too expensive.
Tiiiing... ziiiing...
He pictured Sanghae's shop and dialed, but no one picked up.
The moment the call began, the 180-second window started draining away.
"Why isn't this bastard picking up?"
"No answer?"
"There's no way he's left the area, though?"
"Is that clock running or what?"
Time kept slipping past. Before he knew it, he was staring at 170 seconds.
Won-goo quickly summoned a different location to mind.
This time, Sapiens's office.
Tiiiing... ding!
The line connected. Won-goo spoke at once.
"Hey! Sapiens!"
"What the—? Isn't that Boss's voice? Am I the only one hearing this?"
"No, I hear it too. What is this? A ghost... a ghost?"
"Ah, for f—k's sake! Stop with the ghost talk. It's me. Gong Won-goo!"
"A g... a GHOST!"
Sanghae and Sapiens shrieked at the same time.
"Hey! Sanghae! Donguyeon! No time! I'm not a ghost, it's me! Me!"
"My name? It really is you, Boss?"
"Yeah. I'm calling through an item right now."
"An item?"
"Judging by the reaction, word's already spreading that I'm dead. Well, I'm not."
"Seriously?"
"Alive and kicking. But Sanghae! Why is your office empty and you're out gallivanting around!"
"Well... the moment I heard you'd died, Boss, I came straight here to confer. Do you have any idea how shaken I was, coming all this way?"
"You weren't doing a victory cheer, were you?"
"How can you say that about a person! Everyone's been dead serious. I've been racking my brain over what to tell the contractors, I swear."
"Doesn't matter. No time. This won't last long, so listen carefully. I took the hit. It was Ganjeol Point's bastards — I checked everything down to the water temperature of the Samdo River, so know that for certain."
"What exactly happened?"
"Details can wait. Here's what matters: the two of you operate on the assumption that I'm dead. Don't breathe a word to anyone else. Especially not — there'll be rats crawling all over the place that Ganjeol Point planted. Don't get caught. Can you picture what kind of operation I'm planning from that much?"
"Yes. We can picture it."
The moment the two confirmed he wasn't a ghost, their voices turned calm and level.
"I'm giving you the plan. Respond as aggressively as possible."
"How aggressive?"
"Aggressive enough that Ganjeol Point gets furious and considers charging straight in? Just don't be too blatant about it. You know the type — not enough to openly flip the table, but the kind that festers and pisses them off for weeks. When Ganjeol Point sends someone to probe, that's the treatment they get."
"Understood. Message received."
"Tell the contractors I'm dead, and act accordingly. Keep to it, no exceptions. Only the two of you know about this."
"Boss, should we not say anything to Baek Seol?"
"No need. She'll figure it out on her own."
Baek Seol was no fool. The moment the rumor spread, she'd check the Tower first. A conquered tower was required to hold a new election for its Tower Lord once its owner died — a system where whoever climbed to the top first claimed ownership again.
"So we just leave her be?"
"She'll probably come find you. If she does, just say the word Respect. That's all."
"Respect? Got it."
"And someone came by earlier, right?"
Having said everything he needed to, Won-goo still had time left on the line, so he pressed for specifics.
"All Kind. Cain."
"That slacker?"
"Yeah. He's an irritating piece of work, I'll admit."
"Then that bastard's running point on this whole thing. Tell him to be ready."
"Leave it to us, Boss."
As soon as the call ended, Montage, who had been sitting quietly, spoke up.
"Can ye really trust those fellas?"
"It's not a matter of trust or not. They've got no choice. We've been through too much together for anything else."
"Boss, yer hide's worth a pretty penny, ye know."
"Still lighter than watching a shelter's foundation collapse. Sanghae and Sapiens aren't fools of that caliber, so don't fret. They're not exactly short on loyalty, either."
Yeongyeong, who had been unable to wake, abruptly bolted upright at some point, startling everyone around her.
Her body was still caked head to toe in soot. She could have passed for a charred corpse, and yet she moved.
The first to notice was none other than Won-goo. A sense honed like that of a wild animal.
The moment she rose, Won-goo opened his closed eyes.
"You're up? Thought we'd lost you, Yeongyeong."
"What happened to me?"
"What happened is you got cooked. Properly. Take a look at yourself."
Yeongyeong examined her own body as she stood there.
Never mind the IV line stuck in her arm — her skin color alone was nowhere near normal.
"Understand now?"
"......"
"At least you're not screaming."
"Screaming wouldn't change anything."
"Fine, details can wait. If you're awake, sleep more. I told you — the more you rest, the faster you recover."
"Did the work get... handled?"
Yeongyeong asked.
"No. Now we handle it."
With that, Won-goo rose and gave Yeongyeong's IV line an injection — the one Potion had handed over with instructions to administer it the moment she woke.
After waking that once, Yeongyeong began recovering at a rapid pace. Getting up and moving around was no longer much of a struggle, and she was now spending more hours awake than in bed.
"Did you explain things to her properly?"
Won-goo asked Fresh. Whatever else, Yeongyeong had entered this incident as Fresh's partner, so going through him was the correct procedure.
"I did. Trouble is, her memory's shot. She can't recall what actually happened."
Fresh said it with a bitter look on his face.
Losing memories or getting them scrambled after a major trauma was common enough. Just look at the people who lived through the moment the apocalypse began — plenty of them couldn't recall those events clearly to save their lives.
But enhanced survivors received a correction to their memory as well. Fortifying intelligence with coins was difficult — barring a special Gift, ordinary survivors simply didn't have that option. And boosting mental fortitude didn't exactly sharpen one's recall.
The real reason survivors were said to have memory protection was their resistance to all manner of status afflictions. The higher one's mental fortitude climbed, the more resilient they became to psychological aberrations — and naturally, the less memory they lost.
That was why survivors rarely lost memories unless the shock was truly exceptional.
Yeongyeong was an enhanced survivor strong enough to be classed as Named, and yet she retained no memory of her defeat at Number Four's hands. That alone said how devastating the experience had been for her.
"That happens. What about the children she took in? Do they want to see her?"
"Not even a question — of course they do."
"Why aren't they here, then?"
"Apparently she's sheltering a few of the kids somewhere beyond her usual survivors. She's set things up so that if she goes silent for a set period, word automatically goes out to the ones who've already made it on their own."
"Clever."
"It's a necessity. Nobody's guaranteed to survive."
The reason pathfinders had become so vital since the apocalypse opened was the terrain, shifting hour by hour. Granted, "terrain change" here didn't mean anything on the scale of the great cataclysms that fused or split entire regions. The zones themselves remained intact — but freak weather warped their features at a breakneck pace. A landscape that would have taken decades of natural erosion to transform could be unrecognizable overnight.
One might argue no pathfinder was truly needed for a shift of that degree. One would be wrong.
Human spatial memory simply wasn't as sharp as people liked to believe. It hardly mattered where distinctive landmarks existed or the roads were well made — but outside the shelters, there was barely a stretch of ground you could honestly call a road. Add in the field monsters prowling every which way, and the endless streams of survivors trampling back and forth, and unless a route was traveled constantly, the average survivor memorizing it properly was next to impossible.
That was why the pathfinder was treated as a core element of any party. Survivors would hire one rather than go without — this was precisely why.
Su-won, however, was a different breed of pathfinder.
He lacked the ability other pathfinders had to read the changed terrain as it shifted. Instead, he never forgot a road he had walked once.
Won-goo had recognized the value of that ability immediately — worth more than any other pathfinder's gift — and was already putting it to use. Being able to retrace a route after a single trip meant the abandoned facilities scattered around the shelter could be tapped at will.
"That one? It's pretty big."
"It is."
"At that size, wouldn't it have an owner already?"
Montage asked, eyeing the apartment complex visible in the distance.
"It had one. It's dead now."
"Who was the owner?"
"Respect."
To Pacific's question, Won-goo gave a clipped answer. Pacific gave a nod and rolled his wheelchair forward; Won-goo caught him from behind and stopped him.
"Why?"
"It's abandoned ground. No telling what's regenerated down there."
"Respect only cleared out of it recently. What's going to have sprung up?"
"It's a world where a single day is enough to produce a new master. Maybe 'regenerate' is a stretch, but other monsters could've claimed the territory by now."
"Roving monsters? Goblins?"
"Goblins, sure. Orcs too."
"Isn't there way too few markers for that, though? I don't see a single flag."
Fresh's comment.
"They could be dug in deeper inside. That's why you don't know."
"Fair enough. Caution never cost a man anything."
Goblins and orcs alike were monsters that prized their territory, but that didn't mean they never ranged beyond its borders. The moment their numbers swelled, they inevitably sought to expand — sometimes by simply widening their hunting grounds, sometimes by a faction splitting off entirely to strike out on its own. Letting your guard down was asking for trouble.
"Boss. Can we send out scouts?"
"We can."
Montage glanced back at Joce, and the moment Joce barked a word at the crew, a volunteer stepped forward at once.
Three scouts approached the apartment complex. The rest of the crew held their breath and watched the situation unfold — the textbook play.
Less than fifteen minutes later, the scouts came straight back.
"What in tarnation? Comin' out this quick, are ye?"
Montage said, watching his men return so soon after checking.
Won-goo's eyes went cold.
"Something's in there. Everyone, combat ready."
He read the situation in an instant and issued the order. The crew snapped into motion.
"We pull back for now. Just in case, get Dulla out."
"Yes, sir."
After handing out brief, precise instructions to the crew, Won-goo sought out Fresh.
"Fresh."
"Yeah?"
"You're on standby here."
"Why?"
"You're benched for the time being. We need someone guarding Yeongyeong."
"She's not gonna listen, though."
"She will. She knows better than anyone that digging her heels in here would just get in the way. Go tell her. This isn't a matter for persuasion — that's just how it is."
Fresh gave a nod and went off toward Yeongyeong.
"Boss. Says there's Taildogs in there."
"How many?"
"Says he counted at least thirty, bare minimum. Ye think we're good for it?"
At that, everyone exchanged looks.
Taildogs were no pushovers. They were classed between Tier 3 and Tier 4, and in a pack, they were far more dangerous still.
"Taildogs are worth taking, though. Those tails fetch a premium, every one of 'em."
"Good chance to loosen the limbs up properly, eh?"
"Let's think of it as a rehearsal. We've got meaner bastards to deal with ahead."
"Haven't we drilled together plenty already?"
"This spot's the best there is. Easy to spot anyone coming down from Ganjeol Point, ideal ground to hit from, and you saw the route ourselves — practically zero chance of being spotted getting here."
"Right then. We've come this far; no turnin' back. Let's get in there."