Awakening and Unwelcome News
“Wish we had a gun or something.”
The regret was immense.
When he was originally discharged, he had considered stealing a rifle, but the rumor that getting caught meant execution made him leave empty-handed.
Still, time was the real killer. The number of monsters he had killed one by one kept growing. He had taken down nearly forty, but unfortunately the evening sky was already beginning to glow with sunset.
Staying on the outskirts of the city after dark was not a good idea. No matter how strong his older brother was, the same rule applied.
“Looks like we won’t make it today.”
“We’re cutting it pretty close.”
“Hm?”
Kang Han-sung, who had been shaking his head as he spoke, looked up at his brother’s somewhat ambiguous expression and then spotted a bright light shining from a point in the sky.
“Hey! Over here! Right here! Come this way!”
Fearing it might land somewhere else, Kang Han-sung quickly raised one hand and waved. As if responding to his desperate guidance, the light descended and poured straight toward him.
“Whoa!”
Watching his younger brother, who was brimming with emotion, excitement, and joy, Kang Tae-sung finally let out a small sigh of relief and scanned their surroundings.
“Only one, huh.”
It was unexpected.
Based on his earlier rough calculations, since Kang Tae-sung had awakened after killing about five monsters, even with the current penalty of two people, he had estimated that around twenty monsters should have been enough.
But in practice, it seemed the experience points weren’t transferring properly after all. He also hadn’t accounted for the fact that each monster gave different amounts of experience.
“Okay!”
Still, the goal of awakening had been achieved. When his brother jumped down from the second-floor window and landed fairly cleanly, Kang Tae-sung extended a hand toward Kang Han-sung.
On his palm, the number 100 floated up. Kang Han-sung blinked at it, staring blankly.
“What’s that?”
“Points. Take them. If you check the Point Shop, there should be a skill called Recovery Enhancement or something. Buy that.”
“Is it good?”
“I don’t know. I never bought it.”
“Then why?”
“Because you’re weaker than me. So buy it anyway.”
“…I just awakened, so why does this make me feel like my pride took a hit?”
Kang Han-sung muttered with a face that had cooled somewhat from its earlier excitement, but he still accepted the points without complaint.
The 100 points were part of what they had earned from the monsters killed while his brother was awakening. They had been lucky enough to get five cores as well.
Unfortunately, no skill books or spell books had dropped. They hadn’t seen any notable equipment either.
“Brother.”
“Hm?”
At the cautious call, Kang Tae-sung turned and found his younger brother staring at him with an extremely serious expression.
“I’m not buying anything like Recovery Enhancement.”
“……?”
As Kang Tae-sung tilted his head at his brother’s deliberately heavy tone that sounded almost rebellious, another beam of light descended from the sky and seeped into Kang Han-sung’s body.
“With 100 points, you level up, brother! What the hell is Recovery Enhancement? Come on.”
“Ah.”
“You’re surprisingly clumsy in some ways.”
Having used the 100 points from his brother to level up, Kang Han-sung said his random stat had gone into Strength. He then put both of his remaining two stat points into Agility.
“From what I’ve seen, when fighting monsters you absolutely have to be fast. Forget blocking or parrying—just dodge first. I’ve cleaned up more than a few corpses of guys who got cocky, thinking they could block or deflect everything.”
Speed above all.
Watching his brother speak with such conviction, Kang Tae-sung simply nodded quietly.
“You’re not wrong.”
There was nothing bad about high agility.
Since his random stat had gone into Strength, his physical power should have improved as well.
Since there was no single correct answer for stats, Kang Tae-sung left it to him and checked the byproducts they had gained from this hunt.
What they had collected in bulk were various monster shells, hides, meat, bodily fluids, and so on. Most of it didn’t look particularly useful.
He stored the hides and meat in his subspace pouch, while the rest was neatly packed into the trunk of the car.
When the still-excited Kang Han-sung took the driver’s seat, Kang Tae-sung climbed into the trunk and looked around. Just as they were about to set off, he pulled out his tablet to check if their youngest sibling had sent any messages.
Sure enough, there was one. It looked like it had arrived only a few minutes ago.
Because the “read” indicator was already on, their youngest started messaging again before he could even reply.
From the tone, it didn’t seem dangerous. If it were, the youngest would have written something like “big trouble” instead.
But after reading the next messages, it seemed something rather ambiguous had occurred. People from the headquarters had come.
The purpose of their visit was the ambiguous part.
Apparently they had said they would relocate the people here to a safer facility.
They planned to combine the old geriatric hospital located relatively close to the city center with several surrounding buildings to create a kind of welfare center.
Hmm.
Just hearing that, one might think the nation was finally showing proper consideration.
Since Kang Tae-sung couldn’t keep feeding hundreds of people by himself forever, it was something he could even welcome a little.
But what the youngest wrote next caught his attention.
“…….”
A one-sided notice.
It wasn’t a method he particularly liked.
Considering the current remaining population, it seemed they planned to shrink the city’s foundation itself.
They were even giving awakened people work by having them handle building demolition.
They still don’t know.
The intention was good.
Abandoned buildings and old city districts where no one lived were dangerous anyway. The only things roaming around were either monsters or outlaws.
Still, the plan to raze everything and expose the bare ground—while it might include using magic to farm on that outer land—essentially opened pathways for monsters to approach more easily.
Did they not yet understand the relationship between concrete floors and monsters? Or did they know and still choose to do it?
Just in case, Kang Tae-sung searched the internet and learned that this plan wasn’t limited to their city alone.
The same project had begun in other cities as well, and various communities were buzzing with heated discussions about it.
After checking the government’s plan, Kang Tae-sung saw the attached simple rendering and immediately understood exactly what they intended.
It was an absurd plan to completely demolish all buildings and ground beyond a certain range and use the debris like stones to build a massive high wall.
They would encircle the city outskirts like a medieval fortress, leave only the major roads open, and concentrate defensive personnel along those routes.
“……”
He suddenly wanted to open up whoever came up with this idea and see what was inside their skull.
But as he continued reading the proposal, Kang Tae-sung tilted his head.
The “castle wall” made by magically hardening building debris and ground was said to be roughly 20 meters high and 10 meters thick.
If they could actually make it, the plan wasn’t entirely bad.
It’s ridiculous, but…
It felt like reading the absurd yet strangely tempting campaign promises of a man who had once been a presidential candidate.
However, after reading the explanations that followed, he could clearly see that these people were serious about doing it.
Mages specialized in construction, along with experts invited from other countries, were already prepared to be dispatched sequentially to each city.
In the case of Seoul, they either considered the population itself a defensive wall or thought the scale had grown too enormous to manage, so it hadn’t been included in the target cities yet.
On the other hand, provincial cities included in the plan were already competing fiercely to be the first to demolish their areas, all because of the ridiculous claim that construction would begin in places where demolition had been completed first.
Shaking his head, Kang Tae-sung had no choice but to acknowledge that no matter how insane the plan was, he and the people around him could do nothing more than express opposition.
There was no reason to use force to stop it. After all, he had never thought their life in the gymnasium would last forever.
Oh Sang-man.
The problem was that the man’s name had come up.
“Hmm.”
When he searched the local community for information about the welfare center, sure enough, Oh Sang-man’s name was being mentioned.
It wasn’t just a simple rumor—there was even a photo posted with the label “Appointed Director.”
Wasn’t he part of the old headquarters director’s fallen faction?
It was impressive that he had managed to switch over to the government side, but Kang Tae-sung couldn’t simply dismiss it as someone else’s business.
If that man sat in the director’s seat and took control of the welfare center, it was painfully obvious what would happen.
“Better to kill him.”
If he got involved half-heartedly, there would be lingering consequences. Completely eliminating the person himself was the cleanest way to prevent all the small problems that would follow.
He already knew what kind of tendencies the man had and what kind of things he had done.
The fact that he had obtained a position meant he had made some kind of connection with the government. If not the central government, then he had likely lobbied the headquarters that currently controlled this city.
First, he needed to figure out that part. What had been given, whether it had already been given, or if it was a future promise.
If it was the latter, killing him could cause friction with the government. After all, it would be cutting off future profits.
While thinking about all this, they soon arrived near the school. Upon returning, Kang Tae-sung stored the meat obtained from the hunt in the large refrigerator used for meat preservation.
He then listened to a more detailed account directly from the youngest, who had been congratulating Kang Han-sung on his awakening.
However, the government officials had only come with two bodyguards, looked around roughly, and hadn’t done any threatening or coaxing.
“The atmosphere was decent enough.”
“I see.”
In truth, there was no reason for them to apply pressure.
Since the area was already scheduled for demolition, and the plan was to move people to a safer location, it was actually something the people here should welcome.
The ones living here now weren’t doing so because they liked it—they had been pushed out from the center and had no choice but to stay.
“Understood for now.”
After finishing the conversation with the youngest, Kang Tae-sung told the still-excited Kang Han-sung that he had something to look into and left the school in his care.
“Okay. Leave it to me.”
Now a proper hunter, Kang Han-sung nodded without his usual cheekiness.
The way he was laying out various weapons and pondering over them suggested he was trying to decide which one he would mainly use going forward.
Have a pleasant Sunday.
See you next time…