The Steel Nightmare
By evening, Sim Geum-a had managed a brief counterattack—but after a few scattered shots and a half-hearted clash, her people slipped back behind their solid walls and sealed themselves in.
The raiders who watched them retreat started shouting that she was a "cowardly bitch," and the mood among them settled into something close to certainty. Victory, they decided, was all but theirs.
They lit campfires here and there, sat in circles around the flames, and talked freely about what waited once they took those walls—the abundant food and water inside, and the women they would rape at will.
Lieutenant Colonel Seo Guk watched those animals through the gap in the truck's canvas tarp, eyes full of contempt, and opened a secret channel to the division.
"This is Caw. Reporting to Headquarters."
"The mutual annihilation operation has failed."
"We still have surplus small arms available, but the AT—that is, the Hyungung—has already been expended."
"For the fallback plan of securing a definitive occupation, I request one additional Hyungung round be resupplied."
When his report ended, a dry, bureaucratic voice came back over the radio—"Understood. After reporting to higher command…"—and then cut off mid-sentence.
What followed ignored every communication protocol in the book. An enraged voice slammed into his ear.
"You son of a bitch!"
"I told you never to use that Hyungung unless you were about to die—and you wasted it on trash like that? What?"
"Mutual annihilation failed? Fallback plan? Occupation? And now you want more? Another Hyungung round?!"
Seo Guk let out a long, heavy breath at the sound of that voice, then answered.
"Deputy Division Commander… the operation did not proceed as anticipated."
"The unknown variable of the drones, and the technological capability of the force that provided them to Sim Geum-a, far exceeded anything we had imagined."
"I truly nearly died…"
"But you didn't die!"
"You're not dead—you're sitting there talking to me just fine, you bastard!"
"Do you have any idea what a single Hyungung round costs?"
"You damn bastard, do you know how much that is?!"
Seo Guk clenched his fists until they shook, trying to swallow the rage boiling up inside him. On the faces of the loyal subordinates beside him, the same fury and humiliation were written plain.
"Hey, fuck! Why aren't you saying anything?"
"No answer? Yeah, of course you've got nothing to say."
"You blew over a hundred million into thin air—what more could you possibly say, huh?"
Lieutenant Colonel Seo Guk forced a single word toward the radio.
"…No, sir."
The radio delivered its final, merciless sentence.
"We only supported you specially because you whined about wanting revenge for your men."
"The division will make no further investment."
"Until Cleaning Day, clean up that area yourself. Understood?"
With a burst of static, the line went dead.
Seo Guk hurled the radio to the ground and stomped it underfoot.
"Fuck!!!"
"So what if a Hyungung costs over a hundred million now!"
"In this world, where the hell are you supposed to spend that money—money, money, fucking money!"
He poured out his rage at the bastard sitting safe in a bunker, issuing orders with nothing but his mouth. After a long stretch of seething, he looked at the men around him, forced his feelings down, and spoke in a voice gone flat and cold.
"…I'm sorry. This is all I'm capable of. There will be no additional Hyungung."
He paused, then went on in a tone hardened with resolve.
"Still, we have plenty of weapons left. With these, let's pressure that wall somehow."
The men inside the truck answered with a sharp "Yes, sir!", threw back the canvas, and climbed out. They began whispering what had just happened to the other soldiers disguised as raiders outside.
His plan had been driven to the edge of a cliff with nowhere left to retreat.
Past midnight, most of the raiders left only a handful of sentries and curled up around the campfires, huddling against the night's growing chill as they drifted into sleep.
That was when it came.
Thud—! Thud—! Thud—!
Out of the dark, something enormous came running, a heavy sound that shook the earth itself.
The sentry who heard it first screamed, "Something's coming!", and in pure terror emptied his rifle at the unknown shape.
Bullets struck home with metallic ting, ting! and sparks leapt into the air. For a brief instant, those sparks lit its terrible form.
The raiders screamed.
"Th-that's the steel giant bastard that ran off this evening!"
"Shoot! The bastard's back!"
But this was nothing like the evening. The giant made no pretense of raising a shield. Sparks flying from its body, it simply charged—forward, always forward, without stopping.
"What? Why does it keep coming! Die, you monster!"
While the raiders reeled in shock, the giant closed the distance in a heartbeat. Like a runaway locomotive, it slammed straight through their lines, swept them aside, and tore on past.
Those hit head-on never even managed a proper scream. Bones shattered; they were flung far into the dark and dead before they landed. Even those merely grazed had the struck flesh crushed into ruin, and they rolled on the ground howling in agony.
And when the red glow of the campfires finally revealed the giant's full shape, the survivors cried out in fresh horror.
"Chains…! That bastard's wrapped in chains all over!"
Except for its head, the giant's body was wound two and three layers deep in thick, gleaming steel chains—each link as thick as a woman's thumb. Between those chains, the blood, flesh, and bone fragments of the raiders it had just smashed through were caught and dripping in a grotesque mess.
Just as they had in daylight, the raiders poured gunfire and grenades at it—but the giant treated the hits as if they meant nothing. It simply kept tearing through their ranks, colliding, running, colliding again.
Worse, in the dark of early morning, the bullets they fired found their own people instead, and the night filled with the screams of a nightmare friendly-fire slaughter.
Lieutenant Colonel Seo Guk, too, sensed something wrong in the chaos. He hurriedly formed up the elite men who followed him and shouted.
"Grenade launcher team! Prepare to fire! Target: that steel giant! Same as daytime!"
"Don't worry about the trash getting caught in it—fire on its path and surroundings, pin it down, and concentrate your attack!"
Just as in the day, the rain of grenades should have worked. Something was different.
The steel giant's body rocked hard under the explosions—but instead of bringing up a shield, it turned toward the grenade launcher team. Then it made a strange motion, as if hurling something into the sky.
Bang—! Sizzle—!
A searing yellow light burst overhead, bright enough to blind.
The launcher team screamed and squeezed their eyes shut against the sudden flare. When their vision adjusted, what they saw was the landscape lit by the floating glare—and the chain-wrapped giant charging at them like a demon clawed up out of hell.
"S-shoot! Shoot now! Don't let that bastard get close!"
Seo Guk barely recovered his wits enough to give the order, but it was already too late.
The giant took the storm of grenades full on its body. Now and then a piece of chain went ting, ting and fell away—but even staggering, it did not slow by a single step as it came for them.
"Grenades! Grenades! Everyone else besides the launcher team—open fire! Throw grenades!"
At Seo Guk's desperate cry, every remaining man poured the last of their firepower at the giant.
The giant simply walked out of the explosions as if they were nothing, and at last it was on them.
Crunch—!
The sound of human bones and the gear they carried being crushed whole.
The giant punched straight through the heart of the grenade launcher team, then paused a moment to look over the soldiers who could only stare back in wordless terror.
With a rattling clatter, it let the chain wound around one arm drop free.
Then, with a hideous whiiiiir—, a blue energy saw unfolded from the giant's arm and revealed itself.
It was a sound that did not belong to this world.
In the light of the flare hanging overhead and the haze of gunpowder smoke, the moment that blue energy saw appeared, Seo Guk's elite troops understood it in their bones.
If they did not kill the giant in front of them, that giant would kill every last one of them.
"F-fire! Concentrated fire! The joints! Aim for the joints!"
Seo Guk's shout cut through the terror-stricken battlefield, the voice of a soldier forged by training. They crushed down their fear and opened up with their rifles, pouring a furious stream of fire into the steel giant.
Tat-tat-tat-tat—! Dozens of rounds struck its body and threw sparks. That was all.
The giant took the rain of bullets the way a man might take an annoying shower, and came on—one step, then another.
Ting, ting, clank! The metallic ring of bullets ricocheting off, the occasional falling scrap of chain—each sound chewed away at what little hope they had left.
At last the giant stood directly before them.
"H-hyaaah!"
One soldier dropped his rifle in pure terror and collapsed backward. The giant looked down at him through emotionless blue lenses. Then, very slowly, it raised the energy saw in its hand.
Slice—
The blue blade cut through the soldier's body, the rifle he still held, and the truck chassis behind him without the slightest resistance—as cleanly as a hot knife through butter.
He never even managed a proper scream.
The cross-section left by the energy saw was so clean that not a drop of blood fell at first; the heat had seared it shut, filling the air with the nauseating stench of burning protein. Only when the split body hit the ground did the blood and entrails burst free.
At that unreal, hideous sight, the soldiers' formation collapsed completely.
"R-run! F-fuck, that's a monster!"
"Grenades! Throw grenades!"
Terror scattered them. Some fled in every direction; others hurled their last grenades in a desperate final stand. None of it meant a thing.
On the back of the giant's left hand, a round orb split open and a blue energy shield unfurled. Incoming grenades struck that wall and bounced back toward the soldiers, or detonated uselessly in midair.
"Die! You fucker! Just die already!!"
One soldier lost his mind entirely and charged the giant with a grenade in each hand. The giant, as if mocking the move, caught both of his wrists with impossible speed and precision.
Crack—! With a sickening crunch of bone, both arms bent at grotesque angles. The man stared at the grenades still locked in his hands and screamed in despair.
The giant simply threw him into the cluster of his own comrades. A massive explosion swallowed the battlefield along with the screams.
Another soldier tried to slip away between the narrow gaps of the trucks. A vast steel silhouette blocked his path once more.
Whir—
From the giant's left arm, the energy shield bloomed again. This time it was not for defense. The shield began driving the soldier straight back toward the wall at the far end of the truck corridor.
"U-uaaagh! Help—!"
Crunch—!
The hideous sound of bone and flesh being crushed. Under that invisible pressure, the soldier became one with the wall—reduced to a red smear no longer recognizable as human.
"Please! Please… why won't you die!"
From behind cover, one soldier aimed a trembling rifle at the giant's head and poured desperate fire into it, hunting for a headshot.
Bang! Bang! Bang! The rounds only sparked small flashes against the giant's skull.
As if annoyed, the giant turned its head toward him—and in an instant it was standing right in front of him. A massive steel hand closed around his head the way a man might pick up a ripe piece of fruit.
Pop—!
With a terrible bursting sound, the soldier's head simply ceased to exist.
This was no longer a battle. It was a one-sided massacre.
The steel nightmare did not stop. It moved through the dark, snuffing out the life of every fleeing thing one by one.
In the middle of that hell, Lieutenant Colonel Seo Guk raised a shaking hand and emptied the last rounds in his pistol into the giant. They raised nothing more than a few small sparks on its body.
In the center of the battlefield the steel nightmare had swept clean, only Seo Guk remained standing. His empty pistol slipped from trembling fingers and clattered to the ground. The loyal men who had followed him were now unrecognizable red chunks of meat scattered at his feet.
The giant came to a stop directly in front of him. Through those emotionless blue lenses, it looked quietly down.
As if he could see past those lenses into whatever lay behind them, terror and an uncontainable rage and sense of injustice erupted together in Seo Guk's chest.
"I… we!"
He howled at the steel giant in a raw, broken voice.
"All we wanted was Sim Geum-a—that crazy bitch who killed my men and looted our unit's supplies!"
"Why are you stopping us! Why are you helping her!"
His cry echoed through the empty ruins and came back hollow.
"Do you know how many of my men that bitch slaughtered like animals?"
"She's the same as those trash raiders running away over there—no, she's worse! So why!"
He threw the last of his strength into the shout, aimed at the steel giant that only stood and listened. The giant gave no reaction at all. It simply raised the blue energy saw in its hand—very, very slowly.
At that sight, the last of the hope drained from Seo Guk's eyes.
"Fuck… fuck…"
In a voice barely more than a whisper, he made one final request.
"…One last request. My men who fled… there aren't many left."
"At least let them go. Please…"
With those words, Lieutenant Colonel Seo Guk closed his eyes.
Slice—
A short, clean sound—and his body crumpled lifelessly to the ground.
The steel giant looked down for a moment at the place where he had fallen. Then it turned its gaze toward the handful of soldiers still fleeing desperately into the distant dark—the ones he had begged for.
It did not chase them. Instead it turned, and with heavy footsteps began walking once more toward the "raiders" still alive and hiding in the surrounding darkness.