Evolution (1)
Whoosh!
Jeron’s body slid smoothly out of the portal.
He shivered at the sudden, drastic change in temperature.
It was the height of summer in Hanes County, but here on Earth, it was the dead of winter.
The temperature difference between the two worlds was nearly forty degrees Celsius, making him feel as if his entire body were freezing solid.
Howl.
Clack, clack.
The cold wind rattled the window shutters violently.
Jeron looked around.
It was the same ordinary Earth villa he had visited last time.
Though it was completely devoid of warmth, the scenery was familiar enough to summon memories of his past life.
Jeron sat on the sofa for a moment.
Every time he returned to Earth, a tangle of complex thoughts flooded his mind.
"Whew."
Jeron took a deep breath of the freezing air and focused on the task at hand.
"I should head straight to the industrial complex after my training session."
His original plan had been to completely scavenge the middle school before moving on to the industrial complex.
However, that no longer seemed like the best decision.
Until now, Jeron had believed that Earth's resources alone could bring about a massive revolution on the Karen Continent.
While that was partly true, he had realized that to bring about immediate, significant changes to people's lives, he needed human resources.
There was a limit to the knowledge he could gather on Earth, and there were clear restrictions on how many items he could carry back with him.
This didn't mean he would neglect farming resources in the future, but the thought that Mr. Kang might be isolated in the industrial complex urged him to move as quickly as possible.
It would only take thirty minutes by bicycle to reach the complex. He planned to train here for an hour before setting off.
Jeron spread a blanket on the floor and sat cross-legged.
Lately, these training sessions had become his happiest moments.
He pulled out his fully charged MP3 player and plugged the earphones into his ears.
Some people found it hard to concentrate while listening to music, but that didn't apply to Jeron.
Following the shadow that has grown longer before I knew it...
A sweet voice flowed through the earphones.
It was a complex melody that could never be heard on the Karen Continent.
Jeron's mind focused into a single point, sinking deep into the world of his subconscious.
And with that, a new world opened.
His sensory perception expanded, and all things seemed to brim with life.
Swoosh.
The surrounding mana stirred, creating a gentle current.
The magical energy seeped rapidly into him.
As the mana flowed through his entire body, his fatigue washed away.
The magical energy swirled near his heart.
He felt a burning desire to compress it right then and there, but he barely managed to suppress the temptation.
He needed to recall his past experiences.
Trying to force the compression of mana would put an immense strain on his heart. There had to be a specific method for compressing magical energy.
Since he already had an agreement with the Count, there was no need to rush.
For about an hour, Jeron operated his mana breathing technique, entering a state of selflessness where he could observe every corner of his body.
Compared to before, the speed and amount of mana accumulating had increased.
He felt that if he could just compress the mana to form a circle in his heart, he would immediately advance to the next realm.
Beep, beep, beep! Beep, beep, beep!
"Ha, already?"
An hour had passed in the blink of an eye.
Jeron shook off his lingering regret and stood up.
Training for more than an hour yielded diminishing returns anyway, and today he had a firm objective: to reach the industrial complex and search for traces of Mr. Kang.
He immediately moved into action.
Creeeeak!
The front door opened with a loud, rusty screech.
As the harsh wind rushed in, Jeron instinctively hunched his shoulders.
The corpses scattered along the stairs were frozen even harder than before.
With humanity gone, Earth had recovered from global warming, and a true winter had descended upon the Korean Peninsula.
It felt like minus fifteen degrees Celsius, though the thermometer on his watch read minus ten.
Crunch, crunch.
Only the sound of the wind and Jeron's footsteps echoed in the silence.
Passing through the field of corpses, which was exceptionally dense here, he mounted the bicycle he had hidden safely beneath the building.
Before moving, Jeron unfolded his map and placed his compass on top of it.
If he followed the main road southwest for about fifteen minutes, he would reach Seosan Central Hospital.
The hospital was surrounded by a studio apartment district, and there was also a large apartment complex nearby.
Although the area was quite far from the city center, it was a hub containing a general hospital, apartments, commercial buildings, and studio rentals.
It was the exact kind of layout that mutants would love.
He already felt a heavy weight in his chest.
"Whew."
Jeron took a deep breath and focused on the map again.
Just a bit further down from the general hospital lay the vast grounds of the industrial complex.
If rice seeds and other crop seeds still remained, the industrial complex was the most likely place to find them.
Cutting straight through the hospital would be foolish; he had to skirt the outer edge of the studio apartment district.
There was a way to enter from the south of the industrial complex, but the situation there was likely the same.
Since another studio apartment district had formed to the south, there was no reason to waste time going that way.
As he approached the studio apartments, he would scout the area to see if any mutants were nearby.
If there were mutants in the district, he would abandon that path and try another route.
Even after reaching the industrial complex, he wouldn't let his guard down. In fact, it could be even more dangerous there.
Finding Mr. Kang was an incredibly important project, but it wasn't worth Jeron's life.
Having finalized his route, Jeron pedaled hard.
He rode along the two-lane national highway before turning onto a highway near the middle school.
An eight-lane highway was a sight he hadn't seen since coming to this ruined Earth.
The road stretched out wide and clear.
Compared to the Karen Continent, it was an incredibly advanced sight, but ruin had claimed this road just the same.
Left abandoned for so long, the asphalt was heavily cracked, and weeds that had sprouted through the fissures had frozen to death in the cold.
Vehicles lay abandoned everywhere.
Jeron navigated through the smashed, broken, and overturned cars.
A massive multi-car collision must have occurred here, leaving the vehicles violently mangled.
Corpses that had been thrown from the vehicles lay dead on the road.
He also saw mummies still strapped into their seats by seatbelts.
The car doors were all wide open.
Even if people had died in the accident, survivors wouldn't have passed by this place without scavenging.
Once he passed the congested section, the road cleared up.
Occasionally, he saw a car crumpled against the guardrail or smashed head-on by a dump truck that had crossed the median, but otherwise, the road was in decent condition.
After pedaling for about fifteen minutes, a sign appeared on the right.
[Seosan Central Hospital 300m]
Jeron took the exit toward Seosan Central Hospital.
Coming off the interchange, the hospital stood directly ahead, and to the left was the studio apartment district he had seen on the map.
Across from the hospital, he could see the apartment complex.
Beyond the apartments, a developed city skyline came into view.
Jeron instinctively knew he was getting closer to the city center.
From the diary of the man he had found previously, he knew that the city center had been overrun by mutants. He needed to proceed with extreme caution.
Whirrrr.
As the wind died down, the clicking of his bicycle pedals sounded incredibly loud.
After passing the intersection, the studio apartment district unfolded in earnest.
He needed to skirt the outer edge of this district to reach the industrial complex.
Jeron crossed the street and looked for a suitable building to use as a scouting post.
There was an eight-story building along the main road.
Commercial shops lined the main street, with studio apartments clustered behind them—a typical small city layout.
It was slightly larger than a town, an outer suburb rather than the city center.
It seemed this place hadn't escaped the mutant onslaught either.
Mangled mummies were scattered everywhere, and there were crushed, frozen corpses beneath the buildings.
Jeron stared at the entrance of the commercial building for a moment.
[Daemyung Telecom]
[CN Convenience Store]
[Daemyung Restaurant]
The sign reading "Daemyung Building" hung half-tilted.
The second floor was an internet cafe, the third was a billiard hall, and the offices started from the fourth floor.
As expected of a small city rather than a rural town, there were places to scavenge everywhere.
The only problem was that the risk was just as high.
The interior of the half-destroyed entrance was dim.
The building's lobby was covered in bloodstains, and there were spots on the wall where fingernails had dug in, leaving yellowed gouges.
Crunch!
Stepping on a shard of glass, the sound echoed loudly.
The reception desk was smashed, and the floor tiles were broken and mixed with various debris, forcing him to tread carefully.
Corpses were jammed in the half-open elevator doors.
It was hard to tell the age of the mummies, but judging by their clothes, they seemed to have met a tragic end at a young age.
It was highly likely that a pack of mutants, rather than a single one, had swept through the building.
The stairwell was equally desolate.
Blood was splattered and dried everywhere, and so many corpses were piled up that it was difficult to climb.
A cold wind blew in through the broken windows.
He bypassed the individual floors without checking them.
No matter what he did, scouting came first.
He reached the stairs leading to the rooftop past the eighth floor.
As expected, a scene from hell awaited him on the stairs.
When disaster strikes, people in a building either try to escape outside or head to the rooftop. That was how people had been educated.
But in an apocalyptic disaster, such education proved useless.
It appeared a massive crowd of people had swarmed the rooftop.
With so many people gathered in one place, it must have been an easy hunting ground for the mutants.
Looking up at the rooftop door, he saw it was completely smashed open.
Considering the mutants' ability to leap across buildings, the rooftop hadn't been a safe choice either.
Only after stepping over the corpses did he manage to reach the rooftop.
A gruesome sight unfolded before him.
Pools of blood had dried into black stains, and countless mummies hung half-draped over the railings or lay scattered with their entrails hollowed out.
Indeed, the closer he got to the city center, the more corpses there were, and the higher the chance of encountering mutants.
Leaning against the railing, Jeron scanned the ruined studio apartment district with his binoculars.
It was a completely different sight from the middle school.
The population density here was several times higher than in the countryside, and that density had ultimately become a weapon that slaughtered them.
Judging by the broken windows in every single home, mutants had broken in and slaughtered the residents.
These creatures weren't the typical "zombies" often seen in apocalyptic fiction.
Against zombies, one could survive by barricading the windows of an apartment or studio. But these mutants possessed immense strength from the start, and now they had even evolved.
They were creatures that could smash through front doors, not just windows.
They could leap across buildings, and unless the windows were reinforced with steel, there was no way to stop them.
Jeron clicked his tongue, quickly moving his binoculars.
The bleak city landscape swept past his lens.
"Skreeeech!"
"..."
At that moment.
A screech echoed from somewhere, and Jeron instinctively lowered his body.
He had wondered why there were no mutants around.
A studio apartment district of this scale was bound to be their hunting ground.
Jeron let out a sigh. Keeping himself hidden behind the railing, he peeked over the edge and raised his binoculars.
He immediately abandoned his plan to move through this district. He had to back off and find another route.
Moving blindly could get him caught, so he tried to locate the creature first.
Roughly three hundred meters away.
A woman bundled in thick winter clothes was running for her life, pursued by a mutant.
Thud! Thud, thud!
"What on earth is that..."
It was on a completely different level from the mutants he had seen so far.
It possessed a bloated, massive frame, towering over two meters tall with colossal muscles.
A monster in the truest sense had appeared.
"Are those things... still evolving?"