Chapter 12
Chapter 12
A large discount supermarket in Mapo District that had once always been crowded with people.
Now it was nothing more than a massive concrete tomb.
The collapsed entrance made direct access impossible. The only way in was by climbing over the wall of the second-floor parking structure.
Squeezing through the gaps between stacked abandoned cars, one would pass through the basement level-1 food court where even the foul odor had long since faded.
Then, after descending another level via the emergency stairs, their refuge finally appeared.
Basement level-2.
The mechanical room.
“Please open the door. It’s me.”
When the heavy iron door creaked open, a wave of heat rushed out along with a strange smell.
Damp air mixed with the scent of machine oil from old equipment and the sweat of people.
Under the ceiling tangled with enormous boiler pipes, bedding woven from [Blade-Beak Chicken] feathers was scattered across the floor.
“It’s Sungjun! Sungjun’s back!”
“You’re later than usual. We were worried.”
About twenty exiles made up entirely of non-Awakened individuals rushed toward Yoon Sungjun in relief.
He set down the worn backpack hanging from his shoulder.
“Today I was lucky. I managed to find a few items still in decent condition.”
When the backpack was opened, supplies covered in dirt spilled out.
A few expired antibiotic pills.
Unopened winter clothing.
And most importantly—bottled water and canned food.
“Waaah!”
The children cheered.
Smiling, Yoon Sungjun handed them several pieces of hard candy.
Sweet spoils discovered in the ruins where expiration dates no longer mattered.
But one elderly man watching from afar narrowed his eyes sharply.
Park Muryong.
A white-haired old man sitting at a workbench in the corner, wearing a magnifying lens while maintaining firearms.
A former engineer from a military supplier, he survived by manufacturing guns and ammunition and supplying them to nearby exile groups.
Of course, it wasn’t free.
That was the only reason he could feed more than twenty people.
Yoon Sungjun was the one who gathered materials in the field and handled the sale of weapons.
“So Sungjun’s back.”
Park Muryong approached and lightly tapped Sungjun’s shoulder.
“Good work.”
“It was nothing.”
Sungjun bowed his head.
Instead of replying, Park Muryong jerked his chin toward the corner.
“Let the others sort the supplies. Come here for a moment.”
Sensing something serious, Sungjun signaled his wife with his eyes and followed the old man behind the large pipes in the corner of the mechanical room.
Once they were out of sight, Park Muryong’s voice dropped.
“You crazy bastard. Are you in your right mind?”
“…Excuse me?”
“You brought a child hunting? What’s wrong with your head as a father?”
It wasn’t shouted, but the suppressed anger was unmistakable.
Yoon Sungjun lowered his head deeply.
His daughter had begged to leave the suffocating basement, and he had taken her out—almost getting her killed.
“…I have no excuse.”
“You thought Hyochang Park was safe? Where in this world is safe, you idiot.”
“…There hadn’t been any signs for weeks, so I let my guard down. I didn’t expect raiders to appear in such a large group.”
Sungjun continued carefully.
It hadn’t been just raiders.
“Also… one of them was an Awakened.”
“An Awakened?”
Park Muryong’s brow furrowed deeply.
“Yes. A man with an electrical discharge ability. Judging from the power, probably the lowest tier of F-class.”
“Even F-class Awakened are still Awakened. Monsters who could fry someone like you with a finger.”
The old man clicked his tongue and examined Sungjun from head to toe.
It was the look of someone amazed he had returned alive.
“So? Since you’re back in one piece, did you use the gun against them? Then mutants will probably swarm this area soon.”
“No. Don’t worry.”
From deep inside his clothes, Sungjun pulled out an object wrapped in cloth.
A well-oiled old 9mm pistol.
It had been repaired by Park Muryong—Sungjun’s last resort and hidden weapon.
The old man skillfully removed the magazine and checked it.
“…You didn’t fire a single round. Then how did you survive? Did the raiders suddenly start doing charity work?”
All fifteen rounds were still in the magazine.
Perplexed, the old man watched as Sungjun carefully placed another item on the workbench.
A blackened and torn piece of metal.
[Crude Fragmentation Grenade Fragment]
“What’s this?”
“Grenade shrapnel. Another Awakened suddenly appeared and wiped out the raiders with these.”
Park Muryong narrowed his eyes and picked up the fragment.
Returning to the mindset of an engineer, he lowered the magnifying lens and examined it carefully.
“A grenade?”
The old man’s hand trembled slightly.
His rough fingers traced the surface of the fragment.
The metal had long since cooled, but his expression changed as if he were holding a burning coal.
“This…”
“What is it?”
“There are no seams.”
Park Muryong muttered in shock.
“No welding marks. No casting bubbles either. It looks like the entire metal mass was machined or stamped at once.”
His gaze sharpened.
“That means it was made using an Awakened ability.”
If the quality was this high, the ability would likely be something narrowly specialized like bomb manufacturing.
Abilities tended to weaken the more broadly they could be applied.
However, Park Muryong had never heard of a class called Bomb Maker.
If such a class existed, it would already be famous on the black market.
Unless he had reasons to hide his identity.
The old man used tweezers to scrape some black powder from the fragment.
Without hesitation, he touched it to his tongue.
Sungjun didn’t even have time to stop him.
“Pth!”
The old man spat immediately.
Shock and fear appeared on his face.
“This… makes no sense.”
Could there really be a Bomb Maker class?
“Is something wrong with the gunpowder?”
“It’s 100% pure black powder. Not a single impurity.”
Park Muryong shouted.
“Do you know how precious even one gram of gunpowder is in this world? Even the shelters use substandard powder! But this is perfectly refined!”
Even from this fragment alone, it was obvious the maker was insane.
“How many of those bombs did this guy use?”
“…Five or six. I counted the explosions.”
Bang.
Park Muryong slammed his fist on the workbench.
“What? Five or six?”
The old man stared again at the fragment.
“A single grenade needs about 60 grams of gunpowder. That’s enough for 150 rounds of 9mm ammo. And he used five or six? Not even against a wild boar—just a few raiders?”
In an era where every resource was scarce, that was absurd.
“…Could he be an Awakened raised by the military?”
“Hard to say.”
Park Muryong shook his head.
“If he belonged to the military or a shelter, he wouldn’t need handmade grenades. He’d use standard supplies. And even the military wouldn’t casually release gunpowder this refined.”
“He slaughtered the raiders without mercy and asked me about Ahyeon Shelter. I thought he might be a murderer. But since he gave us supplies and let us go, I can’t be certain.”
“Sungjun.”
Park Muryong cut him off.
“Even murderers usually follow their own rules. The crazier they are, the stricter their personal principles. And if someone uses that kind of firepower so wastefully…”
He didn’t finish the sentence, but the meaning was clear.
Either he had enormous resources—
Or he was a terrifying monster with incredible abilities.
“At minimum he’s probably B-class or higher. Stay away from Hyochang Park for a while. That’s his territory now. At least until he gets what he wants.”
“Yes. I was planning to do that anyway. Fortunately, he didn’t seem skilled at tracking.”
“That’s good. We’re experts at hiding.”
They had already avoided detection from Ahyeon Shelter’s trackers for over a year.
Park Muryong sighed and carefully wrapped the grenade fragment in cloth.
“Still, be careful. Let someone else handle hunting for now. You just observe the situation near Hyochang Park. From far away. Very far.”
“Understood.”
In the corner of the mechanical room of the abandoned supermarket—
Under the faint glow of rechargeable LED lamps—
The legend of the Bomber, born from misunderstanding, quietly began to grow.
With the workshop concealment and storage organization finished, it was time to seriously develop my ability.
There were two things to work on.
The smartphone taken from the raider leader.
And the mountain of military drones piled in the warehouse corner.
Naturally, the smartphone interested me more.
Holding a precision screwdriver, I examined the device.
Part of me wanted to pry open the back immediately.
But after thinking for a moment, I set the screwdriver down.
Would disassembling it really help me understand semiconductors?
I had to think realistically.
The core of this palm-sized device was the application processor.
It was created through nanometer-scale manufacturing processes beyond human craftsmanship.
Even if I opened it and dismantled it, there was no way I could comprehend those microscopic circuits.
To be honest, could humanity even recreate such advanced devices in the current era?
Probably not.
“If I dismantle it now, I’ll just lose a valuable sample.”
There was only one option.
Later, I would search the ruins of the city for more smartphones.
“If I spend a day scavenging, I could probably gather a hundred… maybe even a thousand.”
Before the collapse, everyone had carried a smartphone.
At that point, I could use the system’s power to repeatedly [Disassemble] them and hope blueprint fragments dropped through probability.
Even dismantling a thousand devices might not yield the AP blueprint.
But I had to try to find out.
Without hesitation, I placed the smartphone deep inside Storage.
Then my attention shifted to the mountain of drones beside it.
“Right. Drones should be manageable.”
When a motor spins, rotors rotate.
They push air and generate lift.
Unlike semiconductor chips, these followed visible and intuitive physical laws.
More importantly, there were five hundred units here.
Failure didn’t matter.
I scanned the drone pile.
The massive combat drone [K-30 Titan] and the sleek stealth reconnaissance drone [X-1 Ghost] clearly looked complicated.
No need to be greedy.
Those could wait.
There were only five K-30 Titans and one X-1 Ghost.
Until my ability could reproduce their internal components, touching them would be foolish.
Fortunately, there were simpler drones.
About four hundred fist-sized reconnaissance drones [K-1 Wasp].
And fifty transport drones [K-5 Cargo].
I manufactured a screwdriver and began removing the screws from a K-1 Wasp.
The more understanding I had, the higher the chance of obtaining a perfect blueprint.
I had already learned that from dismantling the corpse of a [Contaminated Wild Dog].
If I studied the structure first and then dismantled it, I should get a complete blueprint.
Click. Click.
The screws came out.
The outer casing separated.
“Oh. It’s small, but packed inside.”
Shock-absorbing padding.
Efficient wiring.
The sturdy design typical of military equipment.
I lined up the dismantled parts on the workbench.
Motor.
Propeller.
Battery.
Carbon frame.
These were easy to understand.
The problem was the green circuit board—the drone’s spine and brain.
Wires intertwined around tiny chips.
I narrowed my eyes and focused my Awakened vision.
“What’s this?”
My gaze landed on a small chip embedded in the center.
The blurry information sharpened into text on my retina.
[Inertial Measurement Unit]
The moment I read those words, a memory surfaced.
Five years ago at the shelter loading dock.
One box had been strangely light compared to the usual cargo.
—Hey! Be careful! I told you not to shake that box!
—S-Sorry!
—That device inside is worth more than your life!
Only now did I realize the object that had gotten me scolded five years ago was this tiny component.
It was a fascinating experience.
Perhaps because Work Protocol had leveled up.
Previously I could only see it as a circuit board.
Now each component appeared with its own name.
[Inertial Measurement Unit]
[Wireless Communication Module]
[BLDC Motor]
For ten years I had hauled cargo in the shelter like a mule.
Items whose names I knew but whose functions I didn’t understand.
Thanks to the Workshop Owner ability, I could finally comprehend them.
“…Interesting.”
For others this knowledge might be tedious.
But for me—
The flood of new understanding was enjoyable.
Maybe that was why I awakened this ability.
Carefully observing how wires—the machine’s bloodstream—connected to motors—the muscles—and the circuit board—the brain—I continued dismantling the drone.
“People back then were incredible. How did they even make things like this?”
Once I roughly understood the structure, I reassembled the parts.
Despite it being my first time seeing such a complex device, I reassembled it perfectly.
See? I wasn’t useless.
Feeling proud, I placed my hand on the K-1 Wasp.
Now it was time to truly make it mine.
[Disassembly]
My gaze filled with anticipation fixed on my fingertips.
But when the light faded, the result wasn’t what I expected.
[Plastic]
[Copper]
[…]
“Huh?”
That was all?
The most important Drone Blueprint was nowhere to be seen.
I was speechless.
“Was my understanding insufficient? Maybe dismantling it once and reassembling it wasn’t enough?”
That could be possible.
It had only been one attempt.
“Fine. I’ll keep going until it appears.”
Without hesitation I grabbed a second drone.
[Disassembly]
Again, only miscellaneous materials.
“…?”
Third.
Fourth.
Fifth.
Every time blue light flashed in my hands, another rare military drone turned into a handful of materials on the floor.
“This… feels wrong.”
It didn’t feel like simple probability.
It felt like the system itself was saying:
You’re not qualified yet.
Something fundamental seemed wrong.
But I couldn’t stop now.
Stubbornness took over.
“Let’s see who wins.”
Grinding my teeth, I grabbed the sixth drone.
Ding—
[Blueprint Fragment: BLDC Motor (1/5)]
“Huh?”
It wasn’t a drone blueprint.
“Ah… so that’s how it works.”
A hollow laugh escaped me.
Now I finally understood why I kept failing.
“A drone is ultimately a collection of parts.”
Motor.
Sensors.
Camera.
Communication modules.
I needed the blueprints for dozens of these subcomponents first.
Only after assembling them could the higher-level Drone Blueprint unlock.
Everything I had made so far had been simple.
Bent steel plates.
Cast metal parts.
Mechanical structures fitting together physically.
But drones were different.
They were the culmination of advanced technology.
Technology had strict hierarchies.
If I couldn’t climb those steps, I would spend my life handling only drone shells.
A normal engineer would need decades to climb this technological ladder.
More likely, they would die trying to reverse-engineer a single component.
It should have felt overwhelming.
But my eyes drifted toward the warehouse wall—
Where 394 K-1 Wasps still remained.
“Even if I dismantle all of them, there’s no guarantee I’ll collect every component blueprint.”
It was gambling.
If I spent everything and still lacked fragments, I’d lose precious power and gain nothing but junk.
But I had survived ten years at rock bottom.
For someone with nothing, there was only one way to live.
Keep smashing your head forward until something works.
“As long as it’s persistence and grit… I’m confident.”
If high-tier blueprints were too difficult—
Then I would start with the lower technologies.
After all, countless electronic devices were scattered outside in the ruins.