Chapter 31
Chapter 31
Mapo Boulevard at dawn.
Drops of morning dew clung to the asphalt. On an ordinary day, the empty road would have echoed only with the distant cries of mutants. Now it was filled with the stench of bloodlust and the heat of battle.
“Waaaaah—!”
A coalition of roughly three hundred raiders.
Human trash gathered from various gangs, brandishing firearms and Molotov cocktails as they howled like beasts.
Their eyes were fixed on one place.
Right beside Mapo Station stood the Seoul Garden Hotel, the fortress claimed by Steel Corporation.
Glossary - Owner of a Workshop …
The hotel’s front entrance had already been sealed with massive shipping containers and sandbags, forming a sturdy barricade. Between the gaps of the rooftop railing, sniper scopes glinted in the morning sunlight.
Anyone could see it was a fortress that would be extremely difficult to breach.
Yet the attackers’ eyes held no fear.
“Brothers! Can you hear the breathing of that pig bastard?!”
A man shouted from atop an overturned bus in the middle of the road.
Twin karambit knives gleamed in his hands.
He was Karambit, former second-in-command of the raider group occupying Mapo Police Station and now its boss, seeking to overthrow the first seat entirely.
Glossary - Owner of a Workshop …
“My brother—and the pig’s loyal hounds—Hammer and Viper were taken down by a coward’s ambush! That means the same blade could stab any of you in the back someday!”
In reality, Kang Sinhyeok had eliminated Hammer and Viper, but Karambit firmly believed it had been Pig’s doing.
“Under the Garden Hotel, the pigs have stockpiled years’ worth of food, cores, and UP!”
He pointed the tip of his knife toward the hotel.
“Today! We cut open that fat pig’s belly, pull out its guts, and reclaim what was stolen from us!”
“Waaaaah!”
Mad cheers shook the entire Dohwa-dong district.
But when Karambit stepped down from the bus, his face was cold. He was calmly calculating the battlefield.
Without Hammer, we can’t absorb gunfire from the front. Without Viper, we can’t suppress the rooftop snipers.
In a conventional siege, defeat was inevitable.
Half the raiders would be shredded into meat shields under the hail of bullets raining down from above.
But Karambit had prepared a hidden blade for this day.
“Open the garage!”
At his command, five large street-cleaning trucks rolled onto Mapo Boulevard.
They no longer resembled vehicles meant to clean roads.
The driver’s windows had been welded over with thick steel plates, leaving only narrow slits for visibility. Beneath the chassis were massive obstacle-clearing blades like those mounted on locomotives.
Raiders called these vehicles Iron Bulls.
Inside the massive cargo compartments were not garbage but tons of improvised fertilizer bombs and stacks of scrap tires that would produce dense smoke.
They were suicide assault vehicles—tanks meant to replace Hammer’s defensive role, only far more destructive.
The raiders gripping the steering wheels had bloodshot eyes.
Before the battle, Karambit had forced them to take high-concentration narcotics. Fear had vanished from their minds; only destruction remained.
“Crush them!”
The moment Karambit shouted—
VROOOOM! BOOM!
Five Iron Bulls spewed black smoke and charged uphill.
RATATATAT!
Machine-gun fire erupted from the hotel rooftop and the barricades.
Bullets rained down like a storm, but they only sparked against the thick steel plates welded to the trucks.
“Hahaha!”
“Die, you pig bastards!”
The drugged drivers roared with laughter as they floored the accelerator.
The heavy trucks surged up the steep Mapo Boulevard.
When the trucks’ bulldozer blades smashed the barricades apart, three hundred raiders followed behind, firing rifles as they surged forward like a tidal wave.
“Kill them all!”
“They’ve got bombs! Suppressing fire!”
“Ahhh!”
“Help me!”
The roar of engines, gunfire, and human screams merged into chaos.
It resembled a scene from an apocalypse war film from before the collapse.
BOOM!
Top floor of the Seoul Garden Hotel—
the penthouse.
The massive glass window overlooking the Han River trembled violently.
On the table, a crystal wine glass rippled as crimson liquid sloshed in circles.
Do Gi-cheol—known as Pig, the C-Grade Awakened who ruled Mapo Boulevard and led Steel Corporation—watched Karambit’s movements on television.
Glossary - Owner of a Workshop …
His brow twitched.
The vibration under his fingertips.
This was not the aftershock of simple gunfire.
“…What?”
He rose from the leather sofa and approached the window.
Looking through binoculars, the scene on Mapo Boulevard filled his vision.
Container barricades were crumpling like paper.
Five massive steel beasts were climbing the slope while shrugging off machine-gun fire like fireworks.
“Iron Bulls? Those belong to Iron Hammer.”
Iron Hammer was a production-type Awakened faction that had fortified the ruins of the Guro Industrial Complex and produced machinery and metal equipment.
Glossary - Owner of a Workshop …
They were also a major supplier of ammunition and mechanical equipment to Union Tech.
Glossary - Owner of a Workshop …
Pig ground his teeth.
“Has Lee Wang-jae gone senile?”
Mapo Bridge and Mapo Boulevard were the key arteries for logistics between Seoul shelters.
Union’s spatial delivery system could handle small shipments, but heavy equipment and bulk materials still had to travel by land.
Iron Hammer had always paid Pig enormous tolls to pass through.
Now the weapons they produced were aimed at his throat.
“That’s unlikely, Chairman.”
Manager Oh adjusted his glasses as he assessed the situation.
“There’s nothing for Iron Hammer to gain by turning against you.”
Pig’s eyes shook.
Which meant—
“A custom order… Karambit, you bastard.”
Five pieces of specialized heavy equipment, secretly commissioned?
That was not something a few coins could buy.
“He whined about having no money… Turns out he was embezzling the tribute meant for me and sharpening the knife to cut my throat.”
This was a coup planned for a very long time.
Crash!
Pig hurled the wine glass against the wall.
Fragments and red wine splattered across the wallpaper like blood.
“That insolent mutt forgot who his master is!”
Yet the battle situation continued to deteriorate.
BOOM—! BOOOOM!
The first Iron Bull slammed into the weakest section of the hastily assembled container barricade.
The truck itself was essentially a giant bomb.
With a thunderous explosion, a black mushroom cloud erupted from its cargo compartment.
Thick toxic smoke from the burning tires swallowed Mapo Boulevard, instantly blocking visibility.
Desperate voices echoed over the radio.
“We can’t see! We can’t see anything! Cough!”
“They’re coming through the smoke! Request support—AAARGH!”
Snipers stationed in nearby buildings—the core of the hotel’s defense—were neutralized in an instant.
Karambit’s elite unit, wearing gas masks, pushed through the smoke the moment the suppression fire stopped.
Screams erupted near the Garden Hotel entrance.
“…Bastards.”
Pig snarled as he ripped off his tie.
Two men who had silently stood behind him stepped forward.
“Chairman, please calm yourself.”
One of them looked like a giant boulder in human form.
Bare-chested, ammunition belts wrapped across his torso.
He was Pig’s right-hand man—Vulcan, a former shot-put athlete.
“The first defensive line is already shredded. I’ll go down there and wipe them out before they climb up.”
He adjusted the heavy bag slung over his back.
In his hands were not guns but fist-sized mortar shells and grenades.
His fighting style was brutally simple—throwing them like baseballs to bombard enemies.
“Good. Vulcan. Mercenaries alone can’t stop Karambit. Go.”
Manager Oh also tightened his gloves.
“I’ll seal the lobby and elevator hall.”
His ability was D-Grade Force Wall.
The power to erect invisible barriers.
“If those rats get inside the building, I’ll crush them.”
“Do it. But Manager Oh.”
Pig’s eyes gleamed viciously.
“If they break through the lobby defense line… release them too.”
“…You mean the breeding pit? Once released, they’ll be hard to control.”
“I don’t care.”
Pig clenched his teeth.
“The army can clean up the aftermath.”
Inside my workshop, ten monitors covered an entire wall.
On them unfolded a literal hellscape.
BOOM!
Monitor Three.
An Iron Bull broke through the first defensive line and detonated, launching a container into the air.
Shrapnel scattered everywhere. Humans danced in flames.
THUMP—BOOM!
Monitor Five.
A shell flew through the thick smoke and landed in the middle of Karambit’s formation.
At the moment of detonation, three or four bodies were crushed into unrecognizable fragments.
A battlefield drenched in blood.
I rested my chin on my hand and stared blankly at the scene.
Back when I carried boxes in the Mapo Shelter supply warehouse, I could never have imagined slaughter on this scale.
It was different from the controlled violence of the shelter.
“This… is everyday life outside?”
A chill ran down my spine.
A lawless world.
No law, no morality.
Power was justice. Plunder was survival.
The reality of the land I stood on sank deep into my bones.
But the reflection ended there.
My gaze shifted from the dying people to the items they dropped.
“Picker.”
“Yes! Boss! Are you seeing this spectacular fireworks show? This is popcorn material, pure popcorn material!”
“Save the popcorn for later. You see all those corpses and equipment scattered everywhere?”
Rifles rolling on the ground.
Ammo bags whose owners were gone.
Parts blown off armored vehicles.
All of it was my future assets.
“Film everything without blind spots. While those idiots are busy killing each other, we move in safely and collect the best loot. Plan the optimal farming route.”
“Roger! I’ll capture angles so perfect even Steven Spielberg would cry!”
“Steven Spielberg? Who’s that?”
“…Good question. Who is it?”
But the situation wasn’t ideal.
I currently had ten Honeybee reconnaissance drones operating.
Normally that would be enough.
But the battlefield was buried in black smoke, and secondary explosions erupted everywhere.
Bzzzt.
Monitor Six flickered into gray static.
It must have been hit by shrapnel from a stray grenade.
Monitor Seven’s signal also began to distort.
“Damn it. Already lost two.”
At this rate there were too many blind spots.
I needed more eyes.
“Deploy reinforcements immediately.”
The blueprint for Honeybee was already etched into my mind.
[Manufacture]
Humm—
Particles of light gathered rapidly.
There was no need to assemble each component.
Three finished drones appeared instantly.
“Whew. That should be enough.”
My mental energy drained sharply, but not enough to hinder movement.
“Go. Sweep everything.”
After sending them out, another thought struck me.
Opening and closing the huge workshop gate just to launch drones was risky.
If someone saw the door open, the workshop’s location might be exposed.
I should create a separate drone launch port somewhere—one that only drones could pass through.
I wiped sweat from my face and returned to the monitors.
Then my expression stiffened.
“…What are you doing right now?”
“Huh? What do you mean, Boss?”
Picker played innocent.
But my eyes weren’t fooled.
The feed on the main monitor looked strange.
The Honeybee drones were flying high above Mapo Boulevard.
Naturally, the camera angle should show an aerial view.
Instead—
The footage shook violently.
The camera crawled along the ground, peeking through broken window frames and gaps in collapsed bricks.
And there was audio.
Audio that did not exist on the real battlefield.
“Haah… haah… shit… haah…”
The ragged breathing of a terrified man hyperventilating.
Artificial static crackled across the screen.
“You’re shaking the footage on purpose?”
The drone’s gyroscopic stabilizer should keep the image perfectly level.
Picker’s sensor light blinked proudly.
“Boss, don’t act like an amateur. If we broadcast crisp 4K aerial drone footage, Union Tech would come knocking immediately asking ‘who the hell are you?’”
“…Huh?”
“Think about it. A random raider launches a high-altitude reconnaissance drone? In 4K resolution? Instant target. But this is different!”
Picker pointed at the screen.
In the shaking frame, a shell exploded and the camera flinched downward as if startled, then slowly peeked back up.
“See the realism? This isn’t a drone—it’s a terrified survivor hiding in the ruins filming with a smartphone. The handheld technique! First-person immersion! Beautiful!”
“…Wow.”
I was speechless.
This lunatic might actually be a genius.
He was right.
The perfect camouflage.
A third-party perspective.
The eyes of a random raider.
“Fine. I admit it. The breathing is a bit excessive though… but this feed is only for us, right?”
That was when the progress bar floating in front of Picker hit 100%.
[Upload Complete]
“…Upload?”
Before I could stop him—
“Where did you upload that?”
“Where else? The forum you were drooling over earlier.”
Picker proudly opened the page.
[Live Mapo Boulevard Situation.avi (feat. absolute chaos)]
Author: Thunder