Animals Already Living in the Apocalypse
"Early bird rising—ahn!"
‘Ah, fuck. It’s already 4 PM.’
Today was ruined too. Yesterday, I was up reading a web novel on Nookpia called The Chaebol Heiress Who Ignored Me: Nine Years in Prison After I Dicked Her Down into Submission, and I didn't sleep until the sun came up. So of course I woke up late.
But seriously, there were still eight years of thrilling prison life left in the story. How was I supposed to just stop reading and go to sleep? It was right at the most exciting part—whether the protagonist would protect his cherry or get turned into a total bottom. I really need to study for my exam, though. My brain is turning into absolute mush. Okay, seriously, I'll just watch one Radiotube video and then get to work.
I like brainless animals. Just as much as cat moms or puppy daddies do.
Cute little creatures that can't survive without relying on someone else, completely useless, obsessed only with the food I give them, and constantly begging for headpats like some helpless TS novel heroine. Even I can't resist the irresponsible pleasure of turning my brain completely off, just like a dumb cat.
I was watching a nature video on Radiotube like usual when—
"Whoa, holy shit."
Living alone meant I rarely spoke out loud, but the words slipped out of my mouth for the first time in ages.
User1: Why are those male lions killing and eating that lioness???
↳ User2: Don't they usually spare the females?
↳ User3: They'd rape her, sure, but they wouldn't kill her.
↳ User4: Those guys are the Mapogo coalition. They're a famous lion alliance. Search them up lol.
↳ User5: She's a lioness from another group called the Ross Pride.
↳ User6: A pride is basically a lion family.
User7: Usually, the pride's patriarch keeps both the mother and daughter lions in his harem to breed them.
↳ User8: They only raise the male cubs while they're minors. Once they grow up, they get kicked out immediately.
↳ User9: If they don't kick the male cubs out, they'll grow up, overthrow their dad, and breed their mother, older sisters, younger sisters, aunts, and cousins.
↳ User10: So a pride is a family, but the females stay the same while only the male patriarch changes.
‘Ah, fuck, I really need to study... I got fired from my job, even if it was just a temporary position. A pseudo-orphan piece of trash like me is completely fucked if I don't pass the civil service exam! I'll just look up this one thing on Dust Wiki and then immediately grind out eight hours of pure study time!’
Intrigued, I searched Dust Wiki. It turned out that the daily lives of lions and Mongolian wild horses were a straight-up apocalypse.
"Stole another pretty female today? Talk about a total Lucky Bolshevik!"
"Wresting females from the privileged through grappling is the true revolution. I am the Grappler Bolshevik!"
It was basically that kind of vibe. The animal kingdom was so hardcore it put most post-apocalyptic fiction to shame. Neither lions nor wild horses had awakened abilities, but they certainly knew what was good. I mean, a mother-daughter double-header was practically their default setting.
A late lunch, or was it an early dinner? When I went to get some food, I realized there wasn't a single pack of ramen left in the house.
‘Guess I have to go down to the convenience store on the first floor.’
As I was coming back up with my ramen, the girl from next door walked past me. She was wearing pajamas, had hair rollers clamped onto both sides of her head, and was keeping her face buried low.
‘Is she insane? What is she doing in a public space looking like that? She should've graduated from that phase back in middle school.’
She didn't even look like a college kid; she looked like an office worker. Yet here she was, walking around like a petulant child.
‘Wait, is that not even pajamas? And is this loser trying to imitate the school bullies she envied in high school by wearing hair rollers now that she's an adult?’
I quickly put the pathetic girl out of my mind. While waiting for the ramen water to boil, I kept reading Dust Wiki.
Among the Mapogo lion coalition brothers, Makulu was the largest and naturally took the role of leader. Meanwhile, "Mr. T" loved fighting and women, so he constantly challenged Makulu to claim the leadership and monopolize all the females.
However, Mr. T got absolutely thrashed by Makulu. Taking his brother, "Kinky Tail"—who shared his cunning, cruel, and lustful nature—Mr. T declared the eastern portion of their shared territory as their own fiefdom and broke away.
(A male lion lets out a pained groan)
"I used a bit of clickbait for the title~ But as expected, foreign source videos have the most vivid footage, right?"
"Whoa, wait, his spine is totally snapped! Who was that king from the Goryeo Dynasty again? His back got folded in half just like him!"
"Hold on! Is he still alive? He's literally being eaten alive right now!"
"Well, lions cannibalizing other lions is a pretty rare sight to begin with."
"In the end, Kinky Tail kicked the bucket."
"Oh! We're heading back to the same spot!"
"Wait, only his head and two front paws are left?"
Kinky Tail had been ganged up on by male lions from another pride, leaving behind nothing but his head and front paws. In a pathetic twist of fate for a king of beasts, his decapitated head was carried off by a lowly jackal to be eaten at home.
Having lost his only general, Mr. T no longer had the ability to defend his territory, so he went back to live with his brothers. There, Mr. T slaughtered three of his brothers' cubs right before their eyes, and his brothers were too terrified to stop him. Naturally, Mr. T also bred his brothers' females—his sisters-in-law.
But in the end, Mr. T met his match too. He was ganged up on by male lions from another pride, tortured alive, and killed.
‘They say it's not the strong who survive, but those who survive who are strong, right?’
Even in the world of lions, the law of nature dictated that it wasn't the strongest or bravest who won. Instead, the most numerous and underhanded brothers used sheer numbers to gang up on rivals, stealing their wives and daughters. In fact, the braver a lion was, the more likely he was to meet a miserable end.
‘The lion kingdom is basically a communist society. Even when brothers share females, they do it "equally." Though, of course, the higher-ranking brothers get to breed the females during their peak ovulation periods when they're most likely to conceive, while the lower-ranking brothers only get to breed them when the chances of pregnancy are low. All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.’
Like anything else, studying is only hard to start. Once you actually get going, any normal person can keep at it.
‘But I ruined today's studying too. Because I couldn't even start... That's exactly how I ruined my last exam, and the one before that. Looks like I'm going to ruin tomorrow's exam too...’
But even for someone like me, an event was about to occur that would change everything.