Woo Min-hee’s proposal was tempting.
It wasn’t about returning as just another hunter—it was a leadership position, managing and commanding other hunters. A role that ca with real responsibility.
As she put it, it was a position worthy of the na “Professor.”
But I was soone who had long since retired, and a staunch pessimist.
To be honest, I don’t believe in the reconstruction of Seoul.
Maybe they’ll enjoy a brief period of prosperity, but the obstacles are overwhelming.
The mouths to feed, the proximity to the Paju Rift, the remnants of the Legion faction, the zealots, the looming cold.
And on top of that, the masses abandoned on Jeju will start flooding in.
Groups that lived under vastly different conditions will inevitably clash.
Idealists with flower fields blooming in their heads keep preaching dialogue and understanding—but from what I’ve seen, over and over again, the reality is simple: if two groups are to rge, one side has to bow its head.
I don’t think those left behind will look kindly on the ones returning from Jeju.
And I doubt those from Jeju will think highly of those left behind.
Of course, I could be wrong.
Maybe, just like how those trying to go to Jeju were once sent off to China, those headed for Seoul now might be redirected there too.
It’s hard to cross a line for the first ti, but once it’s crossed, it becos aningless.
More than anything, what solidified my decision was regret.
I’ve worked too hard to survive.
I endured mockery, scorn, and humiliation to build this bunker, and I’ve prepared in my own way to beco one of humanity’s final survivors.
Heading to Seoul now would be to deny the life I’ve built with my own hands.
Not being able to freely use the internet like I do now—it’s not the biggest factor, but it did contribute to my decision.
So, after careful thought, my answer is:
“Thanks for the offer, but I’ll have to decline.”
A refusal.
“Really?”
As if she had anticipated my answer, Woo Min-hee imdiately suggested an alternative.
“Then... could you at least stop by and help us get things in order?”
“? Isn’t Kim Daram there?”
“Kim Daram? Sigh...”
“What?”
“She’s not popular. No—really unpopular. To the point people would rather take orders from an AI than from her. And you know how she is—no finesse, not exactly sharp... sigh. At least she used to have a sweet personality, now even her face is full of scowls... Ugh, forget it.”
That’s classic Woo Min-hee. Brutal.
I don’t enjoy gossip, but since what she said was basically true, I didn’t call her out for it.
“Anyway, what if you ca just to help us set things up? I an, if you did it, it wouldn’t take long, and it’d be done right. Even those proud Chinese bastards restructured their whole unit exactly how you suggested, didn’t they?”
“If it’s just temporary, how long are we talking?”
“As long as you feel necessary?”
“Minimum three months, then.”
Maybe even longer.
A lot of new species have appeared since I retired, so I’d have to relearn everything from scratch.
As I kept turning her down, Woo Min-hee’s tone gradually lost its playfulness.
“You’re not going to like what’s coming if you stay there.”
I asked why, cautiously.
“Remnants of the Legion faction.”
She replied with a scoff.
“One of the warlords tead up with a cult and took over Sokcho. The displaced remnants are now moving west.”
“That so?”
“They’re like starving wild dogs. Tearing apart anything in their path. There’ve already been reports. Oh, and Dies_Irae posted about it on the board too. Didn’t make it to the top because everyone’s obsessed with Jeju news right now, but it’s fresh. Read it and let know what you think.”
She added,
“I’ve said this before, but I still believe you have a big role to play on the battlefield. And that belief? It’s stronger now than it was then. That’s why I need you.”
After ending the call, I sat on the central toilet and began to think.
The central toilet is located at the heart of the bunker and is one level higher than the rest.
You could say it’s the perfect place to think.
Woo Min-hee had always placed high expectations on .
She used to say there were things only I could do.
And now that monsters were spawning new types to counter Awakened, her words were becoming more and more concrete.
In other words, the environnt was starting to favor the coback of an old-school hunter like .
“...”
I could feel my ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) heart leaning.
Even though I had told myself “no,” that buried desire within kept trying to cross the line I had drawn.
I couldn’t help it.
Since the day I lost my family to monsters, the only purpose in my life had been killing them.
Sure, I have new joys and goals now—but I won’t pretend the flas of hatred inside have burned out.
If I go to Seoul, I’ll probably get to kill a lot of monsters.
And I’ll probably die with Seoul.
To clear my thoughts, I sat down at the laptop and typed Dies_Irae’s userna into the search bar.
Dies_irae69: Latest Update
Just like Woo Min-hee said, he’d posted recently.
It hadn’t hit the trending page, but it was a detailed post full of photos and effort.
Looked like a post that just got buried.
I sat up straight and began reading.
Dies_Irae had revealed his camp.
The open field, once used as a pasture, was now scarred with shell craters. Crushed livestock corpses and shattered vehicles lay scattered, all caked in dirt.
Dies_irae69: As you can see, this was the work of Legion remnants.
It’s widely known that the Legion faction was dismantled.
So warlord-level remnants still control entire cities, practically functioning as mini-states—but many of them are little more than roving bandits.
In reality, those are the ones we’ll most often run into.
Dies_Irae’s post introduced the worst-case scenario of what we might face.
Dies_irae69: One day, a drone flew over and scouted the area. The next day, it dropped a note tied to a rock.
Dies_irae69: The note contained demands—enough food to feed 30 adults for a week, 50 gallons of synthetic fuel, and enough dicine to go around.
Dies_irae69: Annoying, right? Not completely unreasonable—but no reason to give it to them either. Then below that, the bastards added a single line of threat.
Dies_irae69: “If there’s no reply by tomorrow, we’ll begin shelling your position at a rate of one round per day.”
Dies_irae69: And the day after, they did shell us. One shell a day.
Dies_irae69: Adjusting aim using high-altitude drones.
Dies_irae69: Judging by the impact and the shell size, it looked like a 105mm howitzer. Like I said—one round per day, then they vanish. Impossible to track them.
Dies_irae69: They’re operating in winter, when it's easier to pinpoint positions. That ans they’ve been preparing for this for a long ti.
Even though I wasn’t the one targeted, just reading it gave chills.
Artillery extortion.
If they were just wanderers, it wouldn’t matter—but for a settled group like us, they’re the worst kind of enemy.
We all rember how the massive fortresses of major conglorates were blown to pieces in the early days of the war.
Given how serious this was, I gathered the others and showed them the post.
“There’s no answer for that, huh?”
“If nothing else, we can tell the ones operating that battery are absolute monsters.”
“Korean artillery is no joke. And if they’re running it like that, even counter-battery radar wouldn’t be enough to catch them.”
The others shared the sa opinion as .
If we ever run into guys like that, we have two options:
Find them and kill them—or keep paying them tribute.
Neither is easy.
They know damn well people will go all out to track them down.
But Dies_Irae found his own solution.
Dies_irae69: It’s a sha, but I’ve decided to abandon the camp.
Wheels.
That’s the defining trait of Dies_Irae’s group.
Every ho and supply depot is mounted on wheels.
From the very beginning of the war, plagued by deserters from the Legion faction, he concluded that relocation was the most efficient solution. He reorganized his entire group to function like a band of nomads.
And so, he ended his post by saying he was once again leading his chanized caravan to a new place.
“Impressive.”
Ha Tae-hoon spoke with an impressed look on his face.
“That Dies_Irae guy? Pretty sharp. Seems like he’s ex-military. Definitely not your average survivor.”
“Thought Park Penguin was the only competent one out there... Guess there are hidden masters in the wild too.”
Cheon Young-jae’s thoughts weren’t much different.
To soone unfamiliar, that’s exactly how he’d seem.
This translation is the intellectual property of Novelight.
And badmouthing Dies_Irae here would only make look petty, so I kept quiet.
Anyway, the important question now was simple.
“What if guys like that show up here?” Bang Jae-hyuk asked.
No one answered right away—but I knew.
I knew soone who could deal with it.
Or rather, soone who might be the reason this is even happening.
*
“Never thought I’d see the day you’d head to Seoul.”
“Woo Min-hee called, huh? Makes sense. For soone like the Professor, it’s a worthy summons.”
“Three months, though. Isn’t that kind of long?”
Conclusion: I decided to go to Seoul.
After weighing my desire to be humanity’s last survivor against my unrelenting desire to kill monsters, this was the result.
Here, in our territory, we have no ans to counter the artillery threat Dies_Irae faced.
At the very least, we have to be prepared to lose the Winter House we spent the late sumr and fall building.
I never held onto the naïve hope that we wouldn’t be spotted.
Winter, with its visible heat signatures from heating systems, makes it the easiest season to detect movent—and those bastards have high-grade surveillance drones with thermal vision.
Even now, they’re probably flying drones around, scouting for their next target.
The reason Woo Min-hee specifically asked to read Dies_Irae’s post was because she knew we didn’t have many options against such a threat.
Of course, Woo Min-hee does have options.
“If you co, it’ll be no problem. We’ve got counter-battery radar, even attack helicopters.”
She smiled as she said it.
“And your bunker? I’ll protect it.”
That was her condition.
And above all, I know Woo Min-hee’s personality well.
She doesn’t just want there—she needs .
It’s not the kind of casual, take-it-or-leave-it request. She’s serious.
The fact that she’s repeated the sa proposal more than once proves it.
If I refused her offer now, knowing her temperant... she might just be the one shelling us next.
And really—who would ever know where a shell fired from 10km away ca from?
She could just say it was the sa warlord who targeted Dies_Irae.
So yeah—this whole thing could’ve been her way of pressuring .
“Sorry for the sudden decision. But it’s not permanent—I’m just being temporarily dispatched. I’ll co back once it’s done. And if any of you want to go to Seoul, I can scope things out.”
Given the stakes, no one objected.
In fact, soone like Ha Tae-hoon—who’d always had quiet complaints about our territory—seed hopeful about the intel I might bring back.
“This place is fine and all, but people need to play in a bigger pond. Go do your thing, Park Gyu. Stay in touch from ti to ti. What was your Viva! Apocalypse! userna again? Was it Dr. Emiris?”
“No. It’s RoxanneGirl.”
“Girl? Why girl?”
“Because Roxanne is a girl.”
“What the—”
I ignored Ha Tae-hoon’s confused question and moved on. That’s when Sue chid in.
“Isn’t your handle ‘Skelton’?”
Even Rebecca looked at , puzzled.
“It’s not ‘Skeleton’?”
Ignoring that too, I pulled Rebecca and her daughter aside.
“Sorry. It’s sudden, I know.”
I was going to Seoul, yes—but I couldn’t help but worry about the two of them.
Fortunately, Rebecca had her bearings.
She didn’t seem too shaken by my absence.
“It’s fine. Go on, Skelton.”
“You’ll be okay?”
She smiled and gave my shoulder a gentle tap.
“I’m not a kid.”
Then she wrapped her arm around Sue’s shoulder and smiled softly.
“Go. We’ll be here waiting, Skelton.”
That image would likely stay with for a long ti.
Feeling a rare warmth in my chest, I nodded.
Ti passed, and then—departure day arrived.
Woo Min-hee sent a helicopter.
Under the roar of the wind blasting away the shallow snow, I loaded up my gear.
“Why the hell are you bringing two satellite systems?” Cheon Young-jae asked as he helped load things.
No need to answer a question like that.
With everyone watching, I waved and left my territory behind.
The helicopter took to East Seoul, where The Hope lay tilted and broken.
Around what was once a barren ruin, a pretty solid settlent had taken root. And standing there—
“Senior.”
—was my junior, Woo Min-hee.
Screeeech—
With a pleased expression, she swung her hook-hand and led to where I’d be stationed.
“This is where you’ll be working from now on.”
[Seoul Hunter HQ]
“...”
Dozens of hunters stood at attention, waiting for .
“These are the people you’ll be commanding.”
Behind them stood mountains of weapons and equipnt—enough firepower to threaten a city.
“...I can’t believe this kind of stuff still exists.”
I could feel it.
The flas of hatred roaring back to life.
“Of course it does. This warehouse was built specifically in preparation for Seoul’s reconstruction.”
Those flas flared even higher when we reached the next chamber.
Waiting for us were people with a faint glow in their eyes.
Awakened.
Not just any Awakened—these were the elite, over-Level 5 class known as the Regular Awakened, standing in formation for my inspection.
“These guys will be under your command, too.”
Woo Min-hee looked at with eyes blazing with intensity.
“The era has changed again.”
Then, smiling brightly, she turned her back and walked away.
“Welco to New Seoul, Senior.”
Even after she left, I stood there for a long while, lost in thought.
“...”
I’ll need to remind myself every single day that I will return.
If I stay too long in this place full of nostalgic echoes of the past...
I might just forget the bunker cloaked in shadows—
—the one that feels more like a companion than a shelter.
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