The Blood Trail
How would headquarters respond?
The government officials coming down to the provinces were clearly here to restore this country as a functioning nation. They wouldn’t tolerate half-baked local warlords.
But what about the City Defense Force that had been rebuilding this place and protecting its people, the headquarters chief who commanded them, and the handful of figures beneath him who had carved out their own influence by dividing up distribution rights? How would they react?
Even a grain of power, once grasped, was hard to let go. Yet the old authority had always been temporary, held only as long as the rations lasted.
The government had arrived with a plan to truly rebuild the city—not just scrape by day to day, but restore it to a place where people could live without fear—along with the capability to make it happen. So what would happen now?
‘I hope they don’t do anything stupid.’
In the worst case, they might reject the government’s reach and insist on surviving on their own terms—if they refused to surrender their current power.
‘If it comes to that, I’ll have to move the family to another city.’
He didn’t have much attachment to his hometown anyway. The neighborhood full of memories had already been destroyed, and the mountains on the outskirts where he used to exercise were now home to giant rabbits.
“A difficult problem.”
Moving for the sake of something he felt no attachment to wasn’t easy. It would be better to think he was acting for his family.
“……”
While Kang Tae-sung was roughly organizing his thoughts, his gaze suddenly fixed on something beyond the school fence in the distance.
The faint noise reaching his ears sounded like a vehicle with an electric motor… or perhaps something lighter. He guessed it was some kind of transport.
The children hadn’t noticed it yet, but Kang Tae-sung moved before they could figure it out themselves.
At this hour, a group of that size moving around was unlikely to have good intentions.
“Go back to the gym and wake up Kang Han-sung and Kang Yeon-sung. Tell them their big brother is calling them to the front gate.”
“Ah, got it.”
The boys near the gate, startled by the sudden voice, relaxed when they recognized the speaker. They answered quickly and hurried off.
“……”
Kang Tae-sung quietly watched the presences approaching from beyond the gate. They drew closer, then stopped at a distance, as if scouting and observing the school.
When the group and the faint motor sound began to move away again, Kang Tae-sung narrowed his eyes and scanned the inside of the school grounds instead of the area beyond the gate.
Then, in an instant, he kicked off the ground and sprinted sideways.
Each makeshift guard post had two children stationed inside, keeping watch. Startled by the sudden presence, they all turned with similar expressions to watch Kang Tae-sung dash past at terrifying speed.
‘Two, two, two…’
After circling nearly halfway around the inside of the school fence, Kang Tae-sung came to an abrupt stop. His eyes locked onto one post that stood empty—unlike all the others.
It was almost directly opposite the main gate, in a dark, secluded spot the children didn’t like much.
But it was definitely a post that was supposed to be occupied. Someone should have been there.
Kang Tae-sung knew the missing children weren’t simply slacking off or playing hooky.
“Big brother!”
Kang Tae-sung glanced back at his two younger brothers running toward him from the opposite direction, panting heavily. He turned his gaze forward again.
“Are the other posts and the kids all right?”
“Yeah. Everyone’s fine. But…”
Kang Han-sung and Kang Yeon-sung finally noticed the empty post Kang Tae-sung was staring at. They froze, drawing in sharp breaths.
“Those damn…”
“Hide it. We don’t need panic spreading right now.”
Kang Tae-sung spoke calmly to Kang Yeon-sung, whose face had gone rigid, while Kang Han-sung muttered curses under his breath.
“It’s better to deal with the situation first, then explain.”
“I agree.”
At Kang Tae-sung’s added words, Kang Han-sung nodded in agreement. Kang Yeon-sung looked between his two older brothers, then nodded as well. He took off the shirt he was wearing, walked over to the post, and carefully wrapped it around the head of the boy lying there.
He could feel that the body still held some warmth. Blood that hadn’t yet cooled soaked into the fabric.
“We should probably call the kids back in, hyung.”
“It’s fine for tonight. That was just a scouting party. They were testing us.”
“Who the hell are they? Did you see them, hyung?”
Kang Tae-sung glanced at Kang Yeon-sung, who had risen with the blood-soaked shirt clutched to his chest, and nodded.
“Outers. Probably them.”
“Until recently, the city defense force at least put up a token line and kept watch… but not anymore.”
“But why would they kill a kid who did nothing wrong… shit.”
Kang Han-sung, who had been ranting in agitation, suddenly shut his mouth as if remembering something.
“The kids are sharp. They’ll notice something’s off, so keep them calm. I’ll be back.”
“Huh? Where are you going?”
“…You’re going alone again?”
Both brothers tried to stop him as he started to move, but Kang Tae-sung simply shook his head.
“You’ll only slow me down. You can come with me once you’ve properly awakened.”
“Damn it. That damn awakening!”
Kang Han-sung kicked the bare ground beside him in frustration, then scratched the back of his head while looking at his brother.
“What are you planning to do?”
“There are awakened among them too.”
Kang Yeon-sung added his own worried comment, but Kang Tae-sung already knew that and offered no further reply.
He simply emphasized once more that they should keep the children and the people in the gym calm, then slipped away. In a single bound, he cleared the fence and vanished into the darkened streets beyond.
A faint tapping of footsteps echoed briefly before fading into silence.
“Han-sung hyung… what do we do with this kid?”
Kang Han-sung looked at his youngest brother, who was still holding the shirt, and scratched the back of his head with a bitter expression.
“We need to put him somewhere out of sight. You know a good spot, right? First, let’s clean up the bloodstains here.”
“I’m worried about big brother too. He keeps going off on his own.”
“He’s always known what he can and can’t handle. He’ll be fine. You saw how calm he was. We were the ones getting worked up.”
Even as Kang Han-sung reassured him, he couldn’t help feeling a bit puzzled himself—just like his youngest brother.
When had their big brother become the type to charge ahead like this?
‘Five years really does change a lot.’
At that same moment.
Someone was sprinting in a straight line across the rooftops of intact buildings and the ruins of collapsed commercial structures, bypassing the open roads entirely.
Kang Tae-sung leapt without hesitation toward the roof of a building more than ten meters away. He didn’t land cleanly, but he managed to dive through a shattered window two floors below.
Inside, he rolled across the dust-covered floor a couple of times, using the momentum to spring back up and keep running without pause.
When a fence blocked his path, he cleared it in a single bound. When a wall stood in his way inside a building, he simply smashed through it with his body.
He wasn’t wearing any armor, so his skin tore and chunks of flesh were ripped away.
But as he continued running without stopping, the minor wounds regenerated at an incredible speed, leaving only faint scars before vanishing completely.
‘This way.’
They shouldn’t have left the boy’s head behind.
Kang Tae-sung could roughly guess their intent—some pathetic attempt at symbolism or intimidation.
But because he had seen the blood there, and because they were still carrying the rest of the bleeding body, they could never hide their location from him.
What Kang Tae-sung was tracking now wasn’t the sound of motors or footsteps. It was the scent of blood.
In a battlefield that had been nothing but a sea of blood, it might have been different. But in this situation, even a single thread of that metallic scent was more accurate than any real-time satellite navigation.
As if a red line had been drawn straight to their position, Kang Tae-sung accelerated without hesitation.
A considerable crowd had gathered in what used to be the southwestern commercial district, now reduced to ruins.
Dozens of people sat around large fires in an unnamed parking lot between collapsed buildings. Some were sharpening their weapons, others were fighting or laughing loudly among themselves.
Some openly indulged in physical pleasures without caring who saw, while others watched them with lecherous eyes.
There was no clear leader in this group.
They were the Outers—people expelled from the city, those who had left of their own accord, or those who had never had any connection to it in the first place.
Among them were criminals who had escaped from a prison that collapsed during the chaos, as well as ordinary citizens who had once lived normal lives.
But in the current world, they were nothing more than a mob that gathered and scattered on impulse, looting and killing people.
Within the group, some dragged what looked like ordinary civilians over to rape or kill them, and no one around bothered to stop it.
The world of humans had ended.
And with it, both humans and human laws had ended as well.
That was what they claimed.
“I’m telling you, it was completely undefended.”
“They actually put kids who don’t know anything on watch duty.”
“We should go again tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after that.”
“Don’t you know what ‘day after tomorrow’ means, you idiot?”
“I know, you bastard.”
While one person flipped meat skewered over a large bonfire, others were talking nearby.
“Save some. We’ll need bait when we hunt the wolves.”
“What wolves? There are plenty of sheep over there.”
“Yeah? Then we don’t need to keep this one alive either.”
The man looking down at the bound and crying boy nearby spoke casually as he drew his knife. Suddenly, he thought he heard the sound of wind from somewhere.
“……?”
But nothing unusual happened. It was probably just the night breeze blowing between the buildings.
“Does that taste good?”
At that moment, someone approached the man who had been forcing down undercooked meat and spoke.
A faint haze seemed to rise from his body, as if he had been exercising under the moonlight. Or perhaps it was steam from his wet clothes drying by the fire. Either way, he was the kind of person who drew the eye.
“You want some? Nothing’s free. Come with us tomorrow. Starting tomorrow, we’re moving more seriously, so we’ll need more people.”
“How many people if I join?”
“We’ll only know tomorrow. Still, maybe twenty? Everyone else here has already agreed to come. Maybe even other groups will show up.”
The man who had been complaining that spreading the word would reduce their share of the food cut off a slightly burnt piece of meat with his knife and brought it to his mouth.
“From what I can see, there’s not a single person here right now.”
At the reply that followed, the man tilted his head in confusion. He didn’t understand what was being said.
“And that includes me.”
The barely audible addition was followed by the sound of something snapping.