The Third-Generation Chaebol Returns from the Apocalypse

"Hey, Gold Spoon."

"What is it, you old fossil?"

"You punk… so it's finally your turn to go, huh?"

"You're one to talk, throwing the first punch like that."

"Ha. Sharp-tongued to the very end, aren't you…"

"…"

"…"

"…The others?"

"…I'm the only one left."

"I see. …So this really is the end."

"Any last words? I'll hear you out."

"What's the point of last words? There's no one left to hear them but you."

"…"

"So instead of a will, I'll leave you with one thing."

"I'm listening."

"…Thank you. For not running, and for fighting alongside us to the very end. You were… a far better man than the rumors ever made you out to be."

"…!"

"Ha. Guess I really am done for, spouting nonsense I'd never normally say."

"It certainly sounds that way."

"You punk… whatever else anyone says… you're S-Rank Number 1 when it comes to running your mouth… and that's a fact."

"…"

"…"

"Then… may I say something as well?"

"…"

"It was an honor to fight beside you, sir."

"……"

But no answer ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠came back.

Maybe I should have said it a little sooner.

Snow-white hair, a thick unkempt beard, and a frame far too massive and powerful to belong to any ordinary old man.

That was how Hunter Association President Park Kang-chul met his end.

I covered his lightless eyes, lifted his body, and laid him down gently beside the other comrades lined up in a row.

They were the remains of hunters who had fought to the very last. Most were riddled with wounds, and some were missing parts of their bodies — or mangled so badly that describing it was agony — but I had somehow managed to scrape the fragments together and restore something like a human shape.

Seven bodies in all. I confirmed every last one of their faces: the Association President; Han Ji-yeon, Rank 1 among S-Ranks; the twin brothers Kim Do-hoon and Kim Do-gyeom at Ranks 3 and 4; Park Jeong-hyeok at Rank 12; Milena Lee at Rank 14; and Cha Yoon-ha at Rank 17.

Then something glinting on my left hand caught my eye.

Even appraising it showed nothing. It was just a ring, with no effect whatsoever.

"Picked it up on the way. It dropped while I was hunting, and it's not even worth selling, so you deal with it."

"Am I a garbage disposal or something?"

That was what Cha Yoon-ha had tossed at me one day, just like that. What on earth she'd been thinking, I'd never know…

And now this ring had become the only memento of a comrade I had ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠left.

"…"

I stroked the ring for a moment, then rose to my feet.

"Guess it's time I followed them."

It was time to end my life.

I drew mana up from my mana heart and shaped it in the air into the form of a massive shovel. With it, I dug a deep pit into the dirt exposed between the shattered concrete, laid the bodies to rest inside, and finished by raking the excavated earth back over them.

I saw no need to raise a headstone.

The words carved on a grave are meant for the living who remain, not for the buried —

and in this world, there was no one left alive but me.

I looked around.

Collapsed buildings, shattered roads, corpses half-buried here and there among the rubble of concrete and cement.

A city utterly dead.

Anywhere in South Korea — no, anywhere in the world — the exact same scene would be stretching out before you.

Boom… boom…

As I stood dazed in the middle of that ruined world, a faint tremor rolled in from far away.

I knew exactly what that sound was.

The beings that had brought the apocalypse to this world.

Aliens. Gods. Demons. Grotesque existences that could not be explained by any word humanity had ever known.

But there were two things I knew about them with absolute certainty.

One: the instant humanity failed to clear a Tower within its deadline, those things descended upon the Earth.

Two: they were more powerful than any monster hunters had ever faced, without exception.

From the moment the first Tower collapsed to the fall of civilization, five years had passed.

Once the monsters had razed the nation to which a Tower belonged, they marched on into the neighboring country.

The result: even the nations that had successfully managed their own Towers until then crumbled, unable to withstand the monsters pouring in from abroad.

Then the fallen nation's Tower collapsed in turn, even more monsters joined the horde, and they surged toward the countries still standing.

Nations toppled one after another like dominoes, and South Korea was no exception.

Towers collapsed in China, then in North Korea, and the monsters that spilled out set their sights on the Korean Peninsula next.

The same fate befell us.

The hunters resisted relentlessly, but we were driven back south, ever south… and five years after the first battle against those things, even Busan — humanity's final line of resistance — had fallen completely.

"So in the end, I'm the last one left alive."

Lowest-ranked among the S-Ranks, Baek Do-hyun.

Call it fate's cruel joke: because I was the last S-Rank to awaken, I was the weakest — and so I became the one who survived the longest.

But my luck ends here.

KRUMBLE— KRUMBLE—

The tremors were closing in. It meant my end was not far off.

"…Well, seeing as it's come to this, might as well go down swinging."

I dredged up what little mana remained and ran it through every circuit in my body.

Then, toward the source of the sound, I started walking down the wrecked six-lane road.

With every step, the old memories surfaced.

I had lived my twenties like a degenerate, wasting them however I pleased.

And at twenty-nine, the world's end began with the news that America had failed its Tower raid.

I awakened by pure chance in the middle of that chaos, and joined the Hunter Resistance Army belatedly.

My role in the Resistance was operations — and supporting the other hunters.

"Hey, Gold Spoon. You've run a company before, haven't you? Then the Resistance's operations are yours."

That was the role the Association President had all but forced into my hands.

Looking back now, I think it was his way of accommodating me — of finding a place for someone whose combat power fell short compared to the other S-Ranks.

In any case, even from a step behind, I gave it everything I had.

I started with the fundamentals — supplying the hunters with the materiel they needed and managing our facilities — and once I'd memorized every hunter's abilities and condition, I threw myself into real support work: treating injuries, assisting with training, and eventually proposing entirely new applications for each hunter's powers and optimized tactics to match.

"And here I thought you were just a rude little Gold Spoon. Turns out you're actually pretty good at this?"

The hunters who had distrusted me at first soon came to acknowledge what I could do and accepted me as one of their own.

And so, as a member of the Resistance, I watched their struggle unfold from right beside them for five long years.

Until the bitter end, everyone fought with everything they had to survive.

And I, too, threw every method I could muster into helping them live.

But they vanished, one by one.

Some died running. Some died sacrificing themselves for a comrade.

In that final year, there was no one left to do the fighting, and so I had to take up arms myself.

That was how I came to watch the deaths of others with my own two eyes on the battlefield.

Every death I'd heard about — and every death I'd witnessed — was still nailed into my heart, not one of them missing.

What should I have done differently? Was there truly no way to stop this?

I thought it over and regretted it endlessly, but nothing ever changed —

— and as I walked on, lost in those thoughts, They finally began to reveal themselves in the distance.

Grotesque things, no matter how many times I saw them, no matter how many times I looked.

Some flew through the sky — colossal rings of living flesh studded with countless eyeballs.

Some were giants as tall as buildings, their bodies carved with unknown black runes.

Some were shaped like humans — except for the eight arms and ten legs, and the enormous black wings bursting from their backs.

Not one of them overlapped with another; each was more bizarre than the last, and every single one was enough to turn your blood to ice.

Dozens of those monstrosities — perhaps hundreds — stretched out in a long horizontal line, slowly sweeping the city away as they advanced toward me.

Krrrk.

Dum-da-da—

By the time I came to my senses, I was already sprinting at full speed toward them, teeth clenched without my even realizing it.

If I don't land one last hit on those son-of-a-bitch things, I'll never rest in peace…!

I gathered every scrap of mana I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had left into my right hand.

Vwoooom—

A massive blue radiance bloomed and took the shape of a greatsword.

The distance between us had dwindled to barely thirty meters.

The ring of flesh floating at the head of the line noticed me, and every one of its eyeballs swiveled my way.

—Kii-gi-gik.

It let out a hideous noise as light gathered at its center —

but my side was one beat faster.

Thwat— SWISH!

I leapt with everything I had and brought the mana sword down on the thing with all my remaining strength.

But my blade couldn't even cut halfway through the ring of flesh. It lodged in, and stopped.

Vwwooom—

The light gathering at the thing's core did not fade.

"Ah, shit."

From the swelling blue radiance, a colossal beam of light fired straight at me.

There was nothing left but to accept death.

Only — as my consciousness dissolved into that searing blue brilliance, something seemed to glimmer faintly at the corner of my vision —

…Something's wrong.

The searing agony that had felt like it would consume my entire body was gone.

Am I completely dead? It didn't feel that way — my consciousness was far too vivid.

Fwoosh—

Just then, my vision suddenly blazed bright.

"Ugh…"

I winced against the brilliance and slowly regained my sight.

Just as I was trying to work out what was going on —

SPLASH!

"Uack!?"

Something cold assaulted my face.

…Water? Who the hell is splashing water on my face right now?

I rubbed my eyes again and again, and finally managed to blink them open —

"You worthless piece of trash."

The first thing I saw was a middle-aged man, his face twisted with rage, clutching a water cup in his hand.

Neatly combed-back salt-and-pepper hair, an immaculate black suit, a severe face, angular glasses.

I knew him. It would be impossible not to.

The name on the nameplate atop the fine hardwood desk read Baek Tae-seok.

My father — and the chairman of Baekmyeong Group, South Korea's third-ranked chaebol.

"Uh…?"

As I stared at my father in dumb bewilderment —

Whoosh—

"!?"

The empty water cup came flying at my face, and I barely managed to duck. It slammed into the wall behind me and shattered to pieces with a crystalline crash.

"You lunatic. You're a disgrace to this family!"

"…?"

"If you're going to cause trouble, at least cause something worthy of the name! What was it this time — you got into a fight over a video game? So you marched over there for some real-life PvP showdown? A grown man, dragging bodyguards along like a coward?"

"…"

Something about this was… familiar. No — I'd already lived through this exact moment once before.

"You—you…!"

My father, seething with fury, snatched the newspaper off the desk and hurled it at me.

"Read it. Read with your own two eyes what they wrote about you!"

One of South Korea's major dailies. The headline on the front page read:

My gaze drifted numbly up to the top of the newspaper.

The date printed there was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠February 12, 2030.

Exactly ten years ago. I was twenty-four.

"…Uh?"

It seemed I had come back.

Back to those days — when I was the notorious scoundrel of Baekmyeong Group, South Korea's third-ranked chaebol.