The Disaster Has Not Ended
The campus of SHAS was a vortex of chaos after the white giant had passed through.
A massive crack split the training field in two, and instead of the usual drill ground, the air filled with swirling dust and flying debris.
The outer walls of the buildings were torn open, exposing raw metal supports, and the cherry trees in the flower beds were scorched black by the intense heat.
“Calm down! Still more debris falling—everyone, fall back!”
The teacher’s shout echoed across the campus.
Students hobbled among the wreckage, helping one another up and staggering forward.
Some had torn off their helmets and wept openly. Others kept muttering the same broken phrase.
“It was… I survived…”
The white giant had merely brushed past the school.
But that single pass had brought down half the campus.
Most of the students exhaled in relief.
If the monster had glanced their way once, SHAS would have vanished entirely.
Yet one person remained unable to smile.
Ha Min-ah.
The captain of the Decoy Unit, praised across the world as the Goddess of the Dash.
Only she still stood motionless in the center of the exercise yard.
The moment the monster had reared skyward, when her body had frozen and refused to move, that memory kept replaying.
“…I couldn’t even shoot.”
She gritted her teeth.
The hand that had gripped the pistol’s grip still trembled.
“Damn it… what was I even doing?”
Her fist slammed down on the cracked asphalt.
Blood droplets spattered across the broken surface.
Only now did she understand.
If she had moved even a fraction back then, every student in the school would have died with her.
So that moment of stillness had been the best she could manage.
Yet the deeper humiliation was realizing she had survived by doing nothing.
Ha Min-ah lowered her head, breathing hard.
What remained in her ears was still the giant’s roar.
The sound of the earth shaking with each single footstep echoed inside her skull.
There was no reason left for her to stay.
Even if the monster disappeared, she had no way of knowing whether residual energy remained.
After the teachers finished evacuating the students, they finally approached her.
The look in their eyes held both pity and deep respect.
“Captain Ha Min-ah, please stand up. We should evacuate now.”
“Yes… even in that situation, anyone would—”
They tried to comfort her, but Ha Min-ah simply lowered her head in answer.
Her lips trembled.
That was the moment.
A chill raced through her.
The temperature dropped. The colors dimmed.
The wind died. Even the birds stopped flapping their wings.
Ha Min-ah’s entire body stiffened.
A cold sweat traced down her spine.
It felt as if an invisible blade had brushed along her skin.
And she was not the only one.
The teachers beside her, the students fleeing the yard—every single person suddenly held their breath.
As if an unseen hand had seized their nape, the primal certainty of death struck first.
Only then did Ha Min-ah slowly turn her head.
And she saw.
Between the ruined buildings that had collapsed from the giant’s sudden appearance, something was slowly rising from the shattered rubble.
A smooth, upward movement, as if climbing an invisible staircase.
Instead of hands or feet, a hazy white silhouette emerged.
At first it looked human.
But the closer it came, the more it revealed itself as something that merely mimicked human form.
The entire body was smooth, covered in white skin-like material. Where a head should be, there was nothing.
Instead, at the center of its body, a single red eye slowly floated upward.
The instant that eye blinked, the air across the entire exercise yard twisted.
“…Disaster Class.”
“What did you just say?”
“That monster… it’s definitely a Disaster Class.”
There was no proof.
They were not inside a command center that measured monster body waves to assign ranks.
But instinct—perhaps that was the only word for it.
As the captain of the Decoy Unit, who had lured monsters from the front lines for years and faced countless of them, Ha Min-ah’s honed instinct told her immediately.
The creature before her was on par with the Bellial Bird she had met a week earlier, and the white giant that had erupted from the ground moments before.
A being capable of shaking cities, and with a mere slip, the entire nation.
A Disaster Class monster.
But this one was different.
It was small.
Human-sized.
That made it all the more terrifying.
A colossal monster would trigger an instant terror that made flight instinct overwhelm the urge to fight.
But this one was different.
Small.
Right in front of you.
In that moment, the complacency that said “maybe we can handle this” became the perfect prey for a Disaster Class monster.
Ha Min-ah understood.
Clang.
Exactly when someone believes “maybe I can stop it,” the game is already over.
Just as she had predicted, someone drew a pistol.
“I’ll hold it back! Everyone, run!”
“No!”
Before Ha Min-ah could scream, the monster’s red eye turned toward her.
A brief silence.
Then the continuous crack of gunfire.
Bang, bang, bang!
Three bullets struck the exact center of the monster’s chest, piercing straight through the red eye.
Shell casings bounced across the ground, and a thin metallic scent spread through the air.
The monster’s body gave the tiniest of shakes. The disturbance spread outward like ripples in water.
Yet that was all.
“A monster-killing anti-monster round…?”
No blood came out.
Instead, purple light beams began to seep slowly from the bullet holes.
It was like liquid and gas combined—unstable, formless light that flowed while somehow retaining shape.
The fine hairs on the back of Ha Min-ah’s neck stood on end by themselves.
At that instant, the monster’s eye blinked.
Instead of simply closing the eyelid, the entire body seemed to fold inward, then unfurl again.
“…Huh?”
And simultaneously, the sound erupted.
A deep, resonant hum rose from the monster’s chest.
The vibration was like the sound of light itself.
In the next instant, a massive hole tore open in the center of the teacher’s chest.
Rather than blood gushing out, the area around the wound simply melted away.
It was not heat—it felt as if the very existence had been severed.
“Kyaaak!”
“Teacher!!”
Screams erupted, and Ha Min-ah reflexively ducked.
The monster’s red eye began to spin slowly.
The light inside it intensified, and even the surrounding air seemed to tremble.
Ziiiiing—!
“Duck!!”
She shouted desperately.
But it was already too late.
The light line bent and wrapped around the entire exercise yard.
No sound. No explosion.
The moment the line passed, every building and every person simply vanished as if their outlines had been sliced away.
Walls crumbled, trees split in half, and the students’ screams came a fraction too late.
The air had been turned to metal. Ha Min-ah’s vision was a haze of smoke and blood.
The monster remained silent.
Only its red eye slowly spun, cutting a path through the world.
Blink.
The eye blinked one last time.
The light vanished.
Silence.
No sound of crumbling debris.
At that moment, somewhere, a choked breath leaked out.
“…Haa.”
Short. Thin.
And then—
“Kyaaahhh—!!!”
Screams tore through the darkness from every direction.
“My… my arm… my arm!!”
“Aaaah… I can’t see…! Teacher… someone, please save me…! Teacher…!”
“Mama… Mama…!!”
Only shattered corpses remained where the monster’s laser had passed.
Perhaps she had been lucky.
Or perhaps not.
Even the clumsy children who had only brushed against it had been completely vaporized. Everyone had been severed—eyes, legs, arms.
Ha Min-ah folded forward, retching.
She was the only one untouched. That fact hurt more than anything.
The despair of being unable to protect anyone blocked her throat.
She tried to cover her ears with both hands and stand, but she could not hold back. She vomited.
“Uweeeeek…!”
A scream as violent as the monster’s own, and she could not stop the bile rising.
But she immediately raised a fist toward her own face.
Thud!
“Snap out of it!”
She slapped her cheek, punched her stomach, and forced her trembling legs to stand.
She aimed just above the thigh that refused to move, then pulled the trigger.
Bang!
“Ghh…?!”
Fear was replaced by terror, terror by guilt, and guilt by duty.
Ha Min-ah rose from the ground and shouted toward the living souls around her.
“Everyone! Do not stand up there! Stay still!”
“That voice…”
“Captain Ha Min-ah…?”
“Someone will come soon to protect you! So for now, pretend to be dead and survive no matter what!!”
At the same time, she fired toward the monster’s feet.
She did not aim at the red eye. It was a shot meant only to draw attention.
“Come here! Come kill me!”
I am the captain of the Decoy Unit.
My role is to lure monsters far away from people… even farther.
I am willingly throwing my body between the monster and the civilians.
Armed with that resolve, Ha Min-ah began to run at full speed.
At that exact moment, the monster’s red eye locked onto her.
It slowly, deliberately, tried to focus on her.
In that moment.
Boom—!
“?!”
From the exact spot the monster had been standing, dirt and concrete exploded upward together.
The shockwave slammed into her chest. The blast wave swept up dust.
While debris rained down, Ha Min-ah instinctively looked up, then quickly turned.
A black silhouette rose above the dust storm on the hill beyond.
Its trajectory ground against rocks as it advanced.
Heavy. Menacing.
It was one of Korea’s most powerful weapons—the K-2 Black Panther tank.
“Captain Ha Min-ah! Are you okay?!”
“Kim Pung… student?!”
Waving his hand while wearing a military headset from above was none other than Kim Pung.
The boy who should have been conducting an interview for the Monster Countermeasure Intelligence Agency was here?
But what truly held Ha Min-ah’s gaze was the flag planted on the upper part of the tank’s body.
Flapping beside the national-defense logo was not the Taegeukgi of South Korea.
It was the flag of the Aegis Union—the global alliance formed after the monster crisis, where countless nations had gathered to redraw the world on a single map.
The meaning of that flag was simple.
These people, who the world called “heroes” beyond the borders of any single nation like Korea, had arrived.
The tank’s engine growled low. Heat and distortion shimmered from the barrel.
When the tower motor that had been pounding against her ears finally stopped, regular footsteps replaced it instead.
Silhouettes half-fused with metal and flesh.
The exoskeleton frame served as muscle. Ceramic composite armor wrapped the ribcage.
Artificial joints released a crisp click as servomotors hummed low.
The optical monocle and organic pupil contracted at the same time.
They were smiling.
In the center of the frozen exercise yard, a clear and solid smile.
“Captain Ha Min-ah, you have worked hard.”
“You…”
“From here onward, leave everything to us.”
The culmination of human science and technology.
The Super Soldier.
The cyborg unit appeared in the exercise yard stained with dust and screams, the two words “Hope” written across them.