"Are you sure this is okay?"
Pyo Won-sang was against eting Jeong Dae-kyung.
I didn’t know his exact reasons, but I’d picked up through other channels that things hadn’t ended well between the two of them.
Well, he did try ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) to persuade with his own version of the truth.
That Jeong Dae-kyung was a brutal tyrant who executed people on a whim, and the group surrounding him was no different—dangerous, ruthless types.
It was certainly enemy territory.
And absolutely full of risk.
But this was the reason I had co here.
Codena: Princess.
I had to et him.
I spent so ti preparing my gear and waited.
Familiar footsteps approached.
Woo Min-hee.
She stood beside while I inspected my handgun, and quietly spoke.
“Have you ever heard of the elephant’s final journey?”
At that mont, the first thing that popped into my mind was a photo of an elephant sticking its trunk into a toilet bowl.
But that couldn’t be it.
The mont I saw her face, I was sure I was right.
Still gazing into the distance. Still with that look of resignation.
The closer we got to the end of the journey, the calr and quieter Woo Min-hee had beco.
She used to chat often with M9, but starting from the Second Shangri-la, she mostly shut herself in her room, rarely showing her face.
You might ask if she was spending ti online, but that didn’t seem to be the case either.
She did nothing.
Sotis she’d co out and sit quietly in the passenger lounge, eyes softly glowing and empty at the sa ti, silently watching the landscape drift by, unmoving for long stretches.
“...Not really.”
Now, right before eting Jeong Dae-kyung, I didn’t feel like talking about heavy topics.
Won are definitely quicker than n at picking up on subtle emotional cues.
Her expression shifted—slightly, but with an unmistakable weight.
“You’re going to et Jeong Dae-kyung, aren’t you?”
I must’ve slipped.
I tried to cover for it imdiately.
“Well, yeah, but I also wanted to hear about the elephant...”
But we all know Woo Min-hee isn’t the type you can sweet-talk so easily.
“No, it’s fine. You seem busy. eting that man... that’s not sothing you can do without being ready for it.”
She was still unpredictable, hard to read, and most of all, delicate in a way only she understood.
That’s probably why so many n had either been abandoned by her or failed to keep up with her.
If I borrowed Kim Daram’s words, she’d be called exhausting—but I know sothing Kim Daram didn’t see, or maybe chose not to see.
“That’s not sothing I can help with, but—good luck! Say hi to Jeong Dae-kyung for !”
That her sensitivity... is tied to her kindness toward others.
I looked at the clock.
Ti to go.
Just like Woo Min-hee said, this wouldn’t be an easy eting.
It was sothing that required resolve.
I was the only one invited.
I had to face Jeong Dae-kyung alone.
The invitation ca from him, but I was the one who accepted.
“...”
Even so, I accepted it.
The biggest reason was the promise I made to Kang Han-min.
But I also think my obsessive curiosity—a part of that’ll never be fixed, even at death—played a big role too.
Jeong Dae-kyung.
He’s human.
On the outside, by his actions, biologically—undeniably human.
But there's sothing monstrous in the aura he gives off.
No one else seems to agree with , but that doesn’t matter.
A fla of hatred burns eternally in my chest.
That fla whispers to :
He’s a monster.
The military truck arrived at yet another ancient burial mound complex.
Stone-piled tombs, chambered tombs, terraced stone mounds.
Terms from my school days briefly flashed through my mind.
His kingdom was nestled in the shadow of these somber burial grounds, now converted into a kind of tourist area.
Even before the war began, this region had already fallen into decline.
Thousands of people now lived there in clustered villages, motels, and dormitories.
Above them all, Jeong Dae-kyung’s palace stood tall—looking down on the lesser masses from its artificial perch.
The palace wasn’t elegant—it was a gaudy tourist hotel with cheap roof tiles slapped over a concrete building.
“We’ll be closing the windows now. Please bear with the heat.”
One of Jeong Dae-kyung’s subordinates rolled up the dark-tinted windows.
I wished the SUV had air conditioning, but sothing like that would be a luxury in this half-broken vehicle.
I looked out through the glass at the passing street.
There were people.
The area didn’t look too bad on the surface.
It wasn’t as organized as New Seoul, nor did it thrum with vitality like King’s city, but there was a subdued stability—people living quietly, making ends et.
The residents seed decently nourished.
Most were lean, but not in a sickly, North Korean way.
The markets were piled high with various goods, hinting at the abundance of this so-called Shangri-la.
I’d heard Jeong Dae-kyung’s group was a tight-knit organization with strong cohesion.
That ca from one of the ard groups stationed near the city’s edge—people who had once lived in this city.
They were disheveled and sickly, but their hatred for the place they ca from was venomous.
“Bunch of brain-dead morons. Say one bad thing about Jeong Dae-kyung and they’ll tear you apart like you’re a dog.”
“They don’t even have gulags like North Korea. Still, they praise him nonstop.”
“Feels like those cultist fanboys on the general board. Worms.”
I’d seen sothing similar before.
From my comrade, Kang Han-min.
He too was worshipped as sothing godlike.
Maybe it’s not that strange, considering the absurd powers these people possess.
Honestly, the palace was pathetic.
It looked like they’d done their best with a nonexistent budget.
The whole place was painted in mismatched colors that didn’t suit the old building, decorated with statues and paintings that had no clear origin or aning. Even in the middle of the day, neon signs flashed annoyingly.
At the entrance was a red carpet like the ones at film festivals.
Torn, dirty, worn-down.
Jeong Dae-kyung stood beyond it, waiting for .
“Welco.”
He led to his office.
Outside the door, his family—faces I’d seen in photographs—stood in a row, waiting to greet us.
They smiled warmly and offered greetings when they saw .
“My family,” he said.
I had no comnt.
Jeong Dae-kyung smiled fondly and stepped into the office.
Now it was just the two of us in that mismatched, overdecorated space.
I stared him down from up close.
Human.
He looked human.
That monstrous feeling I’d sensed in front of the train was nowhere to be found.
Was it just my imagination?
Or had I unknowingly been swayed by Prophet’s suspicions?
One thing was certain: Jeong Dae-kyung’s eyes held that sa shadowy gleam as Woo Min-hee’s... or Kang Han-min’s.
With a dry chuckle, he began to speak.
“I never imagined it. That Hunter Park Gyu I once worked with... would turn out to be the Professor. A legend.”
Back then, he wasn’t important.
And even if he had been, in an era when Chinese spy networks had infiltrated every layer of Korean society, I couldn’t afford to reveal information about soone like .
The governnt may have discarded like a chewed-up piece of gum, but to soone out there, there was still flavor left.
Especially for China, which still clung to its Old Hunter system—people like were valuable assets.
They’d tried to scout more than once.
“I never ant to hide it. But governnt policy and regulations required it.”
Jeong Dae-kyung nodded.
“I understand. I do.”
I stared at the na tag on his uniform.
A deliberate move.
I hadn’t said it aloud yet, but I needed to choose the na I’d use going forward.
Jeong Dae-kyung noticed my gaze and smiled.
“You can call Brigadier General Jeong Dae-kyung.”
“...What happened to him?”
A dangerous question.
But one we had to face if we were to define our relationship properly.
This wasn’t sothing to be glossed over.
Fortunately, Jeong Dae-kyung didn’t get angry or even look annoyed.
In fact, he wore a strange little smile, as if he’d expected it, and sipped his coffee.
“Where to begin? His bad luck, or my good fortune?”
There’s no precise starting point.
For both Jeong Dae-kyung and the man who would beco him—Lee Haeng-taek—Jeju at the ti was chaos incarnate.
No one knew if war would break out. If it didn’t, then what?
The sa questions we had were the ones the governnt faced too.
Things finally settled after war broke out and the frontlines stabilized.
While Chinese submarines and warships silently waged war—sinking every vessel from the Yellow Sea to the Pacific, even the Magellan Strait—Lee Haeng-taek stepped into the Rupture for the first ti.
He later said he’d considered suicide when he saw what lay inside.
“...You’ve seen it too, right? What’s beyond that place... it’s not sothing most people can bear. A few in our crew ended up taking their own lives from the depression.”
Fortunately, the work itself wasn’t as grueling or painful as expected.
Discrimination wasn’t entirely absent, but the Awakened and Hunters he worked with didn’t mistreat him.
I have a good idea why.
They probably didn’t have the energy to.
In a world with infinite weight and crushing despair, people live pressed down, barely breathing.
“I even got married in there.”
Jeong Dae-kyung gave a bitter smile.
“Married?”
“Think of it as a governnt-mandated match. No ceremony. No congratulations. One day, I signed so papers and ended up living with a woman who had a child. That’s just how it was. Oh—they’re not my family anymore. Worse than strangers now.”
To him, that “family” had left a deep scar.
Go Jun-hee had told sothing similar.
But they weren’t the blade that wounded him.
They were the salt rubbed into the wound.
The blade... bore the na Jeong Dae-kyung, now worn by Lee Haeng-taek.
“...That man ca into the Rupture too.”
“You an him?”
He pointed to his naplate and nodded.
“Yes. He was in the sa grunt team as .”
I stared, unable to comprehend.
“I don’t know the details. But people lived in Jeju—plenty of them. Then, one day, they were gone. Why do you think that is?”
“...”
“I don’t know exactly. Maybe he massacred them like the rumors say. Maybe he drowned them. At the very least, there had to be so kind of forced relocation. What I do know is that he was involved in the project... and he didn’t agree with it.”
Rumors of a Jeju massacre had been circulating since the war ended.
There’s even data to support it.
Jeju had about 700,000 people before the war. After the governnt relocated there, the population dropped below 300,000.
And at least 100,000 ca from Seoul alone.
So where did everyone else go?
We’d never t anyone from Jeju here on the mainland.
A few users had accessed our forum from Jeju, but they vanished like smoke one day—feeding into the rumor’s chilling plausibility.
Anyway, Jeong Dae-kyung fell.
He beca a manager for Rupture laborers—what people called “Rupture grunts.”
As a manager, he didn’t go inside himself, but for a once-elite soldier, a man once considered a future top commander of Korea, it was a humiliating demotion.
It looked like a punishnt dealt by soone who hated him.
“...They say people reveal their true selves at rock bottom. That position was sothing I could only look up to, but not for him.”
The Jeong Dae-kyung I rembered was sharp, refined, from a good family—a soldier anyone would admire.
But the Jeong Dae-kyung who had fallen into the Rupture wasn’t the sa.
“They told you to transfer, didn’t they? You dumb bastard. Why don’t you understand plain Korean? No wonder you’re over forty and still can’t manage your own life. Get back in the Rupture. Go in alone if you have to and make the delivery! That’s an order.”
And worse—he knew Lee Haeng-taek.
“Hey. Lee Haeng-taek! You’re laughing at inside, aren’t you? Huh? Watching hit rock bottom—you love it, don’t you? Yeah, bastard. Your wish ca true. My life’s completely fucked. But listen... even rock bottom has a lower level.”
He smiled, pale and wide.
“I’ll ruin your pathetic life even more.”
Back to reality.
A different Jeong Dae-kyung exhaled a cloud of smoke with a heavy sigh.
His face flickered with emotions I couldn’t define—but what remained was a clear, relieved smile.
Looking at with that expression, he said:
“Now that I think about it, he was probably the one who saved .”
And in that mont, a chill ran through my chest.
The eternal fla of hatred inside —wavered, like it had been touched by a breeze.
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