Chapter 101. Back to Our Nest.
Chapter 101. Back to Our Nest.
"In that case, it's settled — so why not stay and share a meal before you go?"
"Haha, that does sound nice, but we'll eat once we're back. We will take a little food with us now, though."
Our first meeting hadn't exactly been pleasant, but I was going to them as a guest now, so I figured I'd bring some food to build a little goodwill. Just before leaving to see them, I took a quick shower, then cuddled for a little while with Chaeyeon and Jia on the bed in my room.
"It's about time for me to head out."
"Mmm... I want to stay wrapped up just like this..."
"Me too..."
"I'll be back soon."
I stroked their heads, climbed off the bed, and changed my clothes. Then I asked them to let the others know I'd be back and left the room. I walked out, taking a look around as I went, but whether the operations commander was dead or alive, the scene looked no different from usual.
'Well, those who want to live will live.'
I went outside the base and headed for the Jung-gu Office at high speed. This time, since they knew my face, I went in through the main gate and the people there showed me straight to the conference room.
"When you didn't come, we feared things had gone wrong..."
"The situation is over. The zombies he was controlling — as it turns out, he turned survivors inside the base into zombies, the kind of people nobody would miss if they vanished."
"If I may ask, what became of the operations commander?"
"You won't be seeing him ever again."
When I told the man asking after the operations commander that he wouldn't be seen again, he gave a small nod as if he'd understood. Then I explained why I'd come.
"Have you considered living inside the command headquarters instead of here?"
Living in this cramped place, having to protect people from zombies that could surge in from all sides at any moment, probably wasn't much of a life for them, either. I pointed that out and suggested they consider relocating.
"Even so, I worry about whether we would truly be welcome there. People's perceptions don't change easily, do they?"
The original inhabitants of the headquarters had treated these people as something akin to devils who killed for sport. Of course, every misunderstanding had since been cleared up, but these people didn't know that yet.
"All the misunderstandings have already been resolved."
"Still, once a prejudice takes root..."
Whether he was soft-hearted or overly cautious by nature, he kept hesitating about moving to the headquarters. In the end, I laid out everything that had happened with the commander for them. After the continued persuasion, he let out a sigh and accepted my proposal.
"Hoo... I accept your offer. And to think, we still haven't even exchanged names."
Come to think of it, the mood back then hadn't been right for introductions, so we exchanged names now.
"I'm Cheon Sihu."
"I'm Kim Chang-ho. This is the group's representative and my wife, Park Ji-yeon."
We shook hands and introduced ourselves, and I exchanged names with the others as well. A few of them asked questions, and the most common one was how exactly they would get from here to the headquarters. I told them not to worry — we'd be using a helicopter — then excused myself from the conference room for a moment and pulled out my walkie-talkie.
"It looks like you'll need to send a helicopter this way."
"Oh, it sounds like the talks went smoothly."
"Yes, but they did seem a little concerned about the attitudes of the survivors living at the headquarters."
"Well, to the headquarters survivors, they are..."
The President said he thought he understood what they were thinking and that he'd contact Gimpo immediately to have a helicopter sent out quickly.
"Yes, then please tell the pilot the channel and have them radio me directly."
I ended the short radio call and went back into the conference room, where they were discussing among themselves things like what they'd need to do at the headquarters.
"You've returned?"
"Yes, I've requested a helicopter to come this way. It's scheduled to land on the athletic field right next to us. You should start packing up your belongings now."
They'd already kept their bags packed at all times in case of emergencies, so preparations were finished in no time. The helicopter was fast and flew through the air, so it arrived sooner than we expected. I guided everyone aboard, checked that no one had been left behind, and then boarded myself.
In less than five minutes, we'd arrived at the headquarters. Honestly, the time spent taking off and landing was far longer than the flight itself. Once they stepped off the helicopter, the headquarters people welcomed them. They'd been persecuted because of their own misunderstandings, and besides, having more strong Awakened was always an advantage for survival.
We all gathered now in the conference room of the commander's office, its owner having vanished. The sycophantic bastards had long since been expelled, and the seats were filled by the upright officers who had looked after and cared for the survivors. The people from the Jung-gu Office, now part of the same family, and the headquarters officers exchanged greetings.
"It's a pleasure to meet you. Mr. President, I am Kim Chang-ho. This is my wife, Park Ji-yeon. We were both public officials before all this."
"Ho ho, so you were people who worked for the nation."
Everyone exchanged warm greetings and shared their opinions on the work ahead and various other matters.
"By the way, I had heard you came from elsewhere, but I never imagined Mr. Sihu was the representative..."
"Well, normally one assumes the head of state, the President, is the representative."
"Then will the rest of you be heading back now?"
"We should. We have our own nest, and there are people waiting for us there."
This whole affair had started from the East Sea, really — a clash that happened in the process of safely relocating our ships. I doubted anything had gone wrong, but a pretty long time had passed since we'd last been to the village.
"Still, we're planning to stay one more day before we leave. We'll need to board the ship we came on and take the sea route back."
To let everyone build some rapport, our group excused ourselves for a while. We gathered separately and discussed once more where to anchor the ship.
"Pyeongtaek, where the 2nd Fleet is located, is probably too far... We'll have to make do with Incheon Port."
"Sounds good. We make trips to Incheon Port fairly often ourselves."
In truth, survivors did show up there from time to time, though not frequently, and the sheer, staggering volume of cargo there made it nearly impossible to move all at once. With roads effectively unusable in a crisis like this and helicopter fuel far from infinite, it just wasn't feasible.
"Now that I think of it, don't they get supplies from Busan Port?"
"Yes, I asked about that. Since it's the largest port in the Republic of Korea, they anticipated the zombie threat level would be proportionally high, so they haven't committed any personnel."
"Hmm... Looked at another way, that also means there's an enormous amount of cargo sitting there..."
'No... Incheon Port alone is still more than we can handle.'
After we'd roughly prioritized everything, the group went off to their respective rooms to sleep. We, too, went straight to sleep tonight without any funny business.
The next day, once morning came, we had breakfast and went about the day's routine just the same. The existing survivors and the new survivors who'd joined from the Jung-gu Office were sorting personnel, assigning them to suitable duties, and drawing up plans for a stable supply of resources.
At lunch, while I was overseeing our group's training, the Awakened couple who'd come from the Jung-gu Office showed some interest. I'd actually been curious myself.
"By the way, Mrs. Park Ji-yeon, is your ability some kind of people-reading perception?"
"Mm... I can see the exact System specs."
"The System...?"
"Aren't you an Awakened too, Sihu? Can't you see it?"
Come to think of it, I'd never been the type to rely on things like that in the first place, and I'd never even had a reason to. I'd simply noted in passing that Awakened who got superpowers had something like this.
"Anyway, I can see it quantified into concrete numbers."
Our village also had an ability that involved seeing people. A blind woman who saw something closer to a concept in the abstract. Unfortunately, that lady's ability wasn't especially suited for combat.
But this person's ability was, in a sense, an extremely good one. If you could assess someone's capabilities before a fight broke out, it would be tremendously helpful in battle.
"The strange thing is, for you, Sihu, I can't see anything at all. Should I say it looks like your System is completely shattered?"
I had a hunch. Even a transcendent divine authority couldn't see more than a fraction of my origin essence, so it was absurd to imagine that a mere human, who had only borrowed an ability that wasn't even her own, could perceive it.
"And that's when I felt it. No matter what we did, we couldn't beat you. So if that's how it is, better to throw ourselves on this person's mercy. Something like that?"
"Mm..."
"Don't make a face like that. Whatever the process, so long as the outcome is good like it is now, that's all that matters."
Until now, I'd completely forgotten about the Awakening System and Status Windows. Most of our group used the System as an objective gauge to check their own strength.
'I should look into this properly... It does seem certain some divine authority created it and intervened...'
And so, while I oversaw training and talked, the sun had begun to set before I knew it. So this time, the command staff, the people from the Jung-gu Office, and our group all gathered for dinner and spent the rest of the day together. When the sun rose again, we gathered in front of the harbor to return to the village.
"Thank you. I hope you all return safely."
"Yes, if anything happens, please contact us right away."
"Will do."
Without a single person missing, we boarded the ship and headed for Incheon Port, where the helicopter was waiting.
It hadn't been an incredibly long time, but everyone was buoyant at the thought of finally heading back to our nest.