Chapter 5
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 5
Chapter Title: Humanity's Enemy (2)
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“Huuh… Huuh….”
A momentary silence passed, and only then did I exhale the ragged breaths I’d been holding back.
It was an anticlimactic death compared to the monster’s imposing presence, but where was there a meaningful death in this world anymore?
They were living creatures too, after all. Sever the head, and they die just the same. I’d simply been the first to succeed.
Ding!
New messages popped up one after another.
[You have completed the linked quest.]
[As a reward, you have acquired 100 hours of Survival Time.]
I dismissed the unremarkable notification, but it seemed the alerts weren’t over yet, as more messages continued to appear.
[You have completed the raid.]
「[Contribution Rankings]
Lee Min-jun 80%
Jung So-hee 17%
Kwon Dae-hee 2%
Lee Jun-young 1%」
[Rewards will be distributed according to contribution.]
[As a reward, you have acquired a ‘Common-Grade Weapon Exchange Ticket.’]
[You have harvested 30 hours of Survival Time by eliminating the Giant Larva.]
[You are the first in the area to successfully complete the Giant Larva raid.]
[You have acquired the title ‘Larva Predator’!]
[For achieving this feat, your Strength, Agility, and Vitality levels have increased by 1.]
Only after seeing that the linked quest to move to a safe location had also been completed did I realize that the larvae’s attacks on this place were finally over.
‘Whew…. Now I can catch my breath.’
I roughly closed the last guidance window and plopped down on the ground, catching my breath.
From the surface, through Jamsil Station Exit 7, all the way to this Exit 6. I’d been running nonstop without a proper rest.
I’d had to stay constantly on edge, never knowing when the larvae might charge in, and in the final battle with that Giant Larva, if I didn’t want to die, I had to unleash every ounce of power I possessed.
For now, rewards could wait. I just wanted to rest a little.
To the point where I wondered if this was all a dream…. In such a short time, so much had happened that my body—and my shattered mind—needed time to recover.
“Our brave citizen has slain the monster! Your worker, the son of Songpa, I, ‘Lee Gi-dong,’ will not overlook this deed. I will bring it before the National Assembly to ensure proper recognition and compensation for your merits and losses!”
But, as always.
The world wouldn’t leave me alone.
A National Assembly member appeared out of nowhere, unscathed and alone, grabbed my arm, lifted it high, and shouted to the crowd.
The masses, who had been hiding instead of fighting, cheered and clapped in response to Lee Gi-dong’s sudden speech.
“Soon, the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency chief, whom I’ve contacted via satellite phone, will come to rescue us. Until then, trust in me, Lee Gi-dong! Follow my directions. Then, surely! We will overcome this crisis!”
‘Ah, so that’s what it was?’
The reason the people forming the defensive line earlier had tolerated the assemblyman’s infuriating behavior.
It was because his claim of requesting rescue via satellite phone to the police made it sound like the government, military, and police were still functioning and would come save them.
It was absurd.
‘No way…. Could it be that the messages didn’t appear to everyone?’
With a sliver of doubt, I checked the wrists of the other citizens.
But…. Sure enough, everyone had numerical tattoos on their wrists, meaning they’d all seen the messages.
‘They’re escaping reality.’
They were fleeing the bitter truth for sweet illusions.
Pitiful, in a way. Frustrating, too.
The military and police aren’t coming. Even if they did, if you don’t kill the monsters within 100 hours, you die.
To survive, they needed to wake from their empty dreams.
‘This isn’t for them—it’s for me.’
At the very least, so I wouldn’t be plagued by guilt later, I wanted to try persuading them once.
I didn’t want to douse the hope on their faces, but thanks to the assemblyman beside me drawing everyone’s attention, they were all looking my way.
I decided to play the villain.
“If I may say a word, since I’ve stepped forward like this?”
The assemblyman seemed inwardly flustered by my sudden action, but as expected of a politician, he didn’t show it. Instead, he put on a hearty smile and replied.
“Of course! You’ve saved us all—what better time for words of hope?”
“…Most of you will probably die in four days.”
“…”
That single cold statement—that they would soon die—froze the atmosphere in an instant.
“You might not understand my words right now…. But you can all see the strange tattoos on your left wrists, right? …From what I’ve gathered so far, that’s how much time you have left in this world—your remaining lifespan.”
“W-What are you saying! Ha… haha! Our hero is telling quite the tasteless joke. Hahaha.”
As the assemblyman tried to brush it off as a joke with laughter, I stared him down piercingly while speaking calmly.
“You probably didn’t take the subway, Assemblyman, and evacuated from the surface, right? Then you must have seen it clearly. The shooting stars falling from space, the ‘One-Eyes’ filling the sky, and how many people those larva bastards have slaughtered.”
“T-That’s what our proud National Army soldiers are for….”
“Didn’t you see the message floating in front of you? Even if the military wipes out those larvae and comes to save us. When the time on your wrist runs out, we die—no exceptions.”
They’d seen the system messages and the invading larvae, so why couldn’t they believe in the Survival Time?
I turned my head from the assemblyman and looked back at the citizens.
“Whew…. Of course, judging by your pristine clothes, many of you haven’t witnessed the bizarre scenes on the surface. So it might not feel real. Honestly, I still can’t believe it myself.”
I exhaled my frustration and opened my mouth again.
“You’ve all received the ‘Tutorial Quest,’ right? The one telling you to kill bugs for time, or murder for time—choose.”
I thrust my left arm up high, showing my wrist to the crowd.
There, in clear black letters: 488.
“You—no, everyone in Seoul at least—are all ‘terminal patients.’ Buy weapons from the ‘Space Market’ the system mentioned. Use them to kill the larvae and complete quests. If you just sit here thinking it’s safe, all that awaits is death…. Please, face reality and seize your own lives.”
With that, I turned away, and silence fell over the crowd.
In truth, those last words were for myself as well.
I’d been living on borrowed time for a year anyway, so in a way, this situation was actually a boon for me.
The more desperately I fought for it, the more I could live. Because I could rewrite my terminal fate myself.
Ding!
The moment I steeled my resolve, a new system window appeared before my eyes.
「[Main Quest - (1)]
Difficulty: D
Clear Conditions: You, who have prepared your heart to live in a new world.
Fulfill the following to acquire the Minimum Qualification.
① Total Ability Level Sum (15/30)
② Survival Time Collected (488/5000)
Time Limit: None
Rewards: ① Title ‘Minimum Qualification’ acquired
② Space Market membership rank increased
Failure: None」
‘Whew, what’s this now….’
Seeing the new quest made the accumulated fatigue wash over me again.
I could check the details later.
For now, I closed the quest window and stared straight ahead.
In any case, I’d done my best to persuade them without guilty conscience.
The choice was theirs now.
‘….’
Lee Min-jun left the frozen assemblyman, his aides, secretary, and the crowd behind, heading toward the shopping mall in Golden Apartments.
* * *
Golden Apartments restroom.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
A man in a neat suit vented his rage by punching the bathroom mirror.
“Fuck! That goddamn bastard!”
The man swept back his disheveled hair amid the shattered mirror shards dripping with red blood.
Lee Gi-dong’s face twisted in demonic fury.
“That little shit dares throw dirt on the table I, ‘Lee Gi-dong,’ set?!”
Lee Gi-dong’s sclera flashed red for a moment, but his eyes in the broken mirror returned to white as if nothing had happened.
He pulled out some toilet paper and wiped the blood from his battered fist.
“When push comes to shove, he’s the type who only looks out for himself. Pretending to know it all, acting all noble, pretending to care about people! Hoo….”
They were fish he could’ve netted by the millions.
But some punk showed up to ruin it, and half the catch slipped away.
“It’s fine…. It’s fine. It’s just a minor detail in the big picture. I still reeled in a few. No problem.”
Lee Gi-dong straightened his hair while catching his breath. Then, habitually, he checked his left wrist.
716.
‘The guy who took down that big monster has less time than me….’
“Hm? Hold on. 716?”
Sensing something off, he muttered “Quest Window” softly, and something appeared before his eyes.
「[Sub Quest - Assassination]
Difficulty: F
Clear Conditions: Murder without being detected by others.
① Kills (5/10)
Time Limit: 24 hours
Rewards: Common-grade assassination dagger, all ability levels +Lv.1
Failure: Death
Tip) Benefits exist for exceeding clear conditions」
“Huh? What’s this? Why’s one missing?”
Lee Gi-dong turned around to see the bathroom floor soaked in blood.
Splat. Splat.
He slowly stepped through the sticky pool of blood and opened the last stall door.
Inside were six tangled corpses. Lee Gi-dong pulled a jackknife from his pocket and began stabbing their throats one by one.
Stab. Stab. Stab.
Stab!
After stabbing several bodies, when he pierced an old man’s throat, hot blood that hadn’t yet cooled gushed out.
“Ah, so the one playing dead was you, gramps? You’ve lived long enough already—why cling to life so desperately?”
Lee Gi-dong shredded the old man’s body with the cold blade several more times.
Ten cuts, twenty.
The old man’s body was covered in wounds.
By the time there was scarcely an untouched spot left.
The old man, unable even to cry out, collapsed, and the blood pouring from his wounds flowed like a stream toward the river of the afterlife.
“Alright, time to catch the rest of the fish.”
The assemblyman, who had chosen human hunting, wiped the blood from his knife with a handkerchief and grinned.