Park Gyu's dream was just as bizarre as Bang Jae-hyuk’s stories.
He was walking through an unfamiliar street in a suit, and soone was stepping on his shadow, following closely behind.
That person was none other than Jang Ki-young.
He was wearing an ill-fitted, shabby suit, trailing behind, and for so reason, he was leaking what seed to be urine through his pants.
The setting suddenly changed. It looked like a library, or perhaps so kind of public facility—a vaguely official space unfolded before him.
He was lying on the floor in his suit, arms at his sides, when he turned his head for no particular reason.
Jang Ki-young was lying beside him.
When their eyes t, Park Gyu waited for him to speak.
It wasn’t patience—just a long-ingrained habit from his ti as a disciple.
But no matter how long he waited, Jang Ki-young said nothing.
Then, out of nowhere, Park Gyu rembered—Jang Ki-young was already dead, or at the very least, in a state equivalent to death. He asked him, "What are you doing here?"
The mont he spoke, the lights in the facility went out, and everything was swallowed by darkness.
Within that darkness, Park Gyu realized he was dreaming. But the dream refused to let him go.
When he woke up, his body was drenched in sweat.
“......”
He wasn’t the type to be shaken by dreams.
But this one was different. It had left a lasting impression.
It wasn’t just the dream that prompted him to contact Woo Min-hee for the first ti in a long while—but he couldn’t deny it played a significant role.
*
“It’s been a while, senior. And now, out of the blue, you’re calling ? What’s gotten into you?”
Woo Min-hee only responded an hour after he’d sent his request for communication.
That sa dreamy, lilting voice as always.
“Just wondering how you’re doing.”
“Oh my. My senior, worrying about ? I must be living longer than I thought.”
“How are things on your end?”
“Here?”
“Yeah.”
There was sothing he was curious about.
Kim Daram.
The probability was high that Kim Daram had ended up on Woo Min-hee’s side.
But that was too sensitive a subject—to both Kim Daram and himself.
Only Woo Min-hee could handle such a topic lightly, but everything she held in her hands always ended up broken and ruined.
It was wiser to ensure she didn’t even think of it.
“Well, we’re still managing to communicate with Jeju every now and then. We get airdrops, though they’re rare.”
“Any news from the Lighthouse?”
“No, nothing.”
“I see.”
“I was actually planning to send an expedition there. And just as I was thinking about it—what a coincidence! My senior contacts first.”
She chuckled.
He said nothing.
He had no desire to go there, and no reason to.
Besides, there was no need for him to rely on Woo Min-hee anymore.
He had ford a group.
The chances of running into a stronger, larger group and getting crushed had increased significantly, but they could now handle most dangers on their own.
“You don’t want to go, do you, senior?”
“...If I’m being honest, yeah. It’s frightening, uncomfortable, and I don’t think I’d be of much help even if I went.”
“You’d be helpful!”
Her breathing turned slightly uneven.
“You already know this, but the Rift is producing Anti-Awakened entities. And they’re being mixed in with regular ones when they co through. It’s getting harder for us to handle them alone.”
So she needed him.
Not out of personal connection, but for tactical necessity.
If what she said was true, then it made sense why she’d taken in Kim Daram.
“I see.”
“So? What will you do?”
“I won’t be able to provide support for the ti being.”
“Why?”
She must have brought her mic closer—he could hear her breathing clearly.
That ant she was irritated.
He was just as irritated, but he had no intention of provoking this monstrously strong, ntally unstable woman without reason.
“I ford a group recently.”
“Oh my. Really?”
“Yeah. Gathered so people I know, so folks from around here, and made a small group. You already know that after the collapse of the Legion faction, so academy hunters have been targeting .”
Before he could even finish speaking, her breathing disappeared, and instead, her voice drifted in faintly from the speaker, indirectly relayed.
“Really?”
There was soone else in the room.
She was asking them.
If his instincts were right—
“Oh. Kim Daram says that’s true, too.”
So, he was there.
He’d already assud as much, but he had to act surprised.
“Kim Daram? He’s there with you?”
“Yeah. It just happened that way. But why did he co to instead of staying with you? Ah—I get it.”
Her voice turned sickeningly sweet, making sure he could hear.
No surprise. Woo Min-hee’s nature would never change, not until the day she died.
“Well, if you can’t co, we’ll just have to put together a team and handle the expedition ourselves. Not that we were eager to call you anyway—especially after hearing so bad news from the advance reconnaissance team.”
“Bad news?”
“Yeah.”
She hesitated for a mont.
Then, after a suitable pause, she spoke.
“The Professor’s Nightmare has appeared.”
“......”
The Professor’s Nightmare.
It was an idiom used only by a select few. And it referred to a type of monster that had irrevocably altered his fate.
A General-class entity.
The first monster he ever discovered.
The first monster he ever admitted he could not kill.
Officially, the ergence of Awakened beings was the reason he had chosen to retire—but in truth, it was the General-class entity that had severed his last attachnt.
Caught within the intangible restraints of that monster’s power, he had realized, down to his very bones, that there was nothing he could do against it.
“...I’m still old-school, Min-hee.”
He had spoken with Woo Min-hee many tis before.
But this was the first ti he had spoken with genuine sincerity.
And yet, they say sincerity calls to sincerity.
A warmth he had never expected flowed from the communicator.
“But there’s no one stronger than you, is there? Isn’t that right, Twelvesquare?”
“......”
So she knew.
He barely held back a laugh.
“Anyway, I’ll call if I hear anything else.”
“Oh, wait.”
“?”
“There’s sothing I want to ask.”
He had almost forgotten his main reason for calling.
“Ah? Jang Ki-young?”
Of course, she knew about Jang Ki-young.
“Senior, I thought you didn’t like him.”
Their ntor-disciple relationship was well-known in the hunter society.
Few people knew about Park Gyu as an individual due to his classified status, but the callsign "Professor" was famous worldwide. And Jang Ki-young had ridden that fa, becoming known as the ntor behind the legend.
“Professor is entirely my creation. He was the perfect realization of my ideals. What was it? Oh, right—a persona. He was my persona.”
Those who understood their relationship better often sumd it up with a single /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ word: tool.
Jang Ki-young needed a tool to achieve his ambitions.
And Park Gyu was the perfect tool.
This translation is the intellectual property of Novelight.
It was soone else’s assessnt, but he found it valid.
Jang Ki-young had tried to impose his outdated, impractical, and at tis outright bizarre ideals onto them.
The “Rocket Axe” sketched in his notebook, its shading done with tightly packed lines—that alone was enough to show the kind of man he was.
The more real combat he experienced, the clearer it beca that the knowledge Jang Ki-young had imparted was a product of delusion.
He had known since his student days that Jang Ki-young was nothing more than a mirage, built up by dia and self-promotion.
But seeing him in reality had obliterated any last shred of respect.
Even juniors like Woo Min-hee, who weren’t close to him, knew the truth.
That the Professor, Jang Ki-young’s supposed masterpiece, didn’t actually like him.
“Well, since you’re curious, I guess I should tell you.”
Woo Min-hee spoke nonchalantly.
“I left him at the lab. Didn’t dispose of him—I think. We blew up the lab when we left, though. If he was lucky, he might have survived. But does it matter? At best, he’s just a zombie now.”
She even knew the latest rumors about him.
“Apparently, so weird rumors are going around, but they’re nonsense. Biologically, Jang Ki-young is dead. The Rift is just forcing his corpse to move. And even as a zombie, he was barely functional. No matter how much we provoked him, he didn’t react. He wasn’t rotting, but that’s all he was—a corpse.”
Jang Ki-young was alive.
Or at least, the zombie using his na was still walking.
*
Ever since I learned that Jang Ki-young was alive, my thoughts had been drawn to him for so inexplicable reason.
It was strange.
I had never held a high opinion of Jang Ki-young—in fact, I had secretly despised him.
Even when I heard he had turned into a zombie, I felt no real sorrow.
That was the extent of our relationship.
And yet, this incomprehensible feeling kept pulling my attention toward the docks in Incheon.
Maybe now that my group had stabilized, I had the ntal space for such pointless concerns.
The first ti I heard about a zombie suspected to be Jang Ki-young was, unsurprisingly, on our forum.
The zombie, which constantly muttered the word "Professor," had no official na or title. It was simply called "the scavenging zombie."
The first ntion of it ca from Anonymous458.
Anonymous458: "There's so zombie scavenging around the docks in Incheon, believe it or not."
Anonymous458 was one of the pure-blooded oldbies I respected.
He had once been a part of a small but admired group on the forum called the Kyle Dos Family.
That group, like Kyle Dos himself and another old internet friend, Anonymous848, had long disappeared beyond the horizon of ruin. But Anonymous458 had endured, continuing to post with the sa mix of casual jokes and serious comntary as he always had.
In an era where consistency had beco a rare commodity, his unchanging nature now warranted reevaluation.
Perhaps he wasn’t as normal as he seed. Either he possessed an extraordinarily strong mind, or he lived in an environnt stable enough to allow him to maintain that normalcy.
Regardless, it was a fact that Anonymous458 had brought up the scavenging zombie.
I decided to send him a ssage.
SKELTON: (Skelton Inquiry) Out of curiosity, what do you know about this scavenging zombie?
ssages were a tool for direct, private communication between distant users. But they also had another, unintended function.
By analyzing the ti a ssage was sent and the ti it was replied to, you could infer the recipient’s daily routine.
I had sent my ssage at around 9 AM.
By then, most people would have already woken up and started their morning tasks.
Anonymous458 responded at 4:50 PM.
That ant he had finished his day’s work, returned to his laptop or computer, and only then checked my ssage.
It was just speculation, but it suggested that he followed the sa pattern we did—working at sunrise, retreating at sunset.
I checked his reply.
ssage from Anonymous458: "Oh, that zombie? Not sure. I’ve only heard about it secondhand. But it’s a hell of an interesting story. I an, can you imagine? A zombie pulling a cart around, loading it up with random junk. Isn’t that hilarious?"
I pointed out that it could have been a misunderstanding.
Anonymous458 responded imdiately—probably dead serious.
ssage from Anonymous458: "It’s not a mistake. More than one person has seen it. People who scavenge at the old refugee dock frequently report seeing this weird zombie wandering around, gathering stuff."
SKELTON: "So it's in Incheon?"
ssage from Anonymous458: "Sowhere around there."
SKELTON: (Skelton Well-Wishing) I hope we get to see it for a long ti.
ssage from Anonymous458: "You too."
Even now, a good conversation with an old forum friend had a way of warming the heart.
The comrades in my territory gave a sense of security, but it was different from the camaraderie shared with my fellow forum mbers.
“......”
Sitting at my desk, I absentmindedly flipped through the old notebook Jang Ki-young had given .
I had noticed it before, but there was little in it that was of any use to .
Still, whether it was useful or not, I could tell that the owner of this notebook had poured his will into every letter he had written.
My eyes lingered, as always, on that infamous rocket axe.
The drawing of the "Rocket-Propelled Impact Enhancent Attachnt"—a ridiculously long na for a weapon—was taped to my desk.
Judging by the sketch, it was ant to be an axe fitted with a propulsion system that would send , Skelton, soaring through the sky like so kind of superhero, slicing through monsters midair.
Even for , that was too absurd.
“...Instructor.”
I smirked as I stared at the excessive amount of shading poured into the rocket axe illustration.
There was an odd, blank space within the shading—cut out deliberately.
It had been the hiding spot where Jang Ki-young used to tuck away his Awakened Examination Sheet.
There was nothing left to find there now.
But without thinking, I found myself staring at the area where his pen must have traced over a thousand tis.
For no special reason.
Just the idle thought that his lines were always needlessly straight and lacked any real curvature.
And then—
“?”
There was writing underneath the shading.
To be precise, he had written sothing first and then covered it up with shading.
I brought the drawing closer to my eyes, trying to make out the text.
It was in Jang Ki-young’s handwriting.
ssy scribbles, made even harder to read by the overlapping shading.
But soon, I managed to decipher the words.
- Concept for the Ultimate Anti-General-Class Weapon
For my beloved disciple, PROFESSOR!
“......”
I stood up.
Sothing inside moved.
And that ant I had to go.
If I didn’t go now, I might never get another chance to see my old master again.
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