The Kill Zone system—originally conceptualized by a Pole and first implented in the U.S.—was considered one of humanity’s finest examples of weaponizing intelligence.
“Four mid-class types—no, five! Two of them are Pretorian-type!”
It wasn’t based on cutting-edge weaponry, but rather on inexpensive, conventional arms capable of easily neutralizing monster swarms. That made the Kill Zone a cornerstone of anti-monster strategy.
I too considered the Kill Zone one of humanity’s greatest inventions, a barricade that must be preserved forever.
“They’re coming straight this way! Estimated arrival ti: 35 minutes. But the airborne monsters in the lead will arrive within 20!”
“What the hell were the sentries doing?! Just eating and wasting air?!”
But even that belief had started to shift, just a little, in this changing world.
“What about defenses? Are they coming here?”
“They’re heading directly toward us. One o’clock direction!”
“What about Charlie?!”
Now, we have to reflect.
Humanity had been killing our natural enemies far too easily, far too comfortably.
And that’s how people like Pyo Won-sang and Cha In-seop ca into being.
Fools with just enough smarts to believe that monsters—creatures of infinite unpredictability—were controllable variables.
“Colonel Cha, your assessnt?”
“A surprise assault by monsters. Not unexpected, but it’s concerning they’re coming in a formation. Still, nothing we can’t handle.”
“And Jeong Dae-kyung?”
“He’s already cornered. Just keep him from escaping and focus on the monsters first. This will take a lot. We’ll need to call in the TF as well.”
“The TF? That might raise so eyebrows...”
“They’re our most elite, aren’t they?”
Pyo Won-sang and Cha In-seop were calmly preparing to face both Jeong Dae-kyung and the monsters.
And soon enough, one of those smart fools ca our way.
Pyo Won-sang.
I couldn’t read minds, but I knew exactly what he was about to say.
“Excuse . Commander Park Gyu.”
“You’re going to ask for help, aren’t you?”
I preempted him.
He nodded and continued.
“Of course. We need your help.”
“Commander!”
“First, there are a few things I’d like to clarify.”
I asked what level of authority, equipnt, and manpower I’d be allowed to use.
“...I’m sorry, but we’re only requesting assistance in one sector. This is our operation, and we don’t want to burden you. Just covering one sector will be more than enough.”
No personnel support.
No firepower support.
The best they could offer was a single jeep.
They’d give us rifle ammo and portable weapons, but that was a given.
My eyes weren’t on Pyo Won-sang, but on the bespectacled, wiry man behind him quietly issuing orders—Cha In-seop.
“He’s got monster combat experience, doesn’t he?”
Pyo Won-sang nodded.
“Yes. Brigadier General Cha—well, now Colonel Cha—has been involved in monster wars for a long ti, starting with the India deploynt. He was also stationed in Yangsan and the Boseong Rift. In Jeju, he served as Kill Zone Commander.”
“Ah, is that so?”
At that mont, Cha In-seop looked at from a distance.
He must’ve overheard our conversation.
He stared at briefly with emotionless eyes, then resud talking with his subordinates.
As that eye contact ended, Pyo Won-sang spoke again.
“I know this isn’t an easy situation, but if we’re going to survive in Shangri-La, we’ll have to be ready for this. Of course, hearing the opinions of proven experts like you is helpful—but as you said yourself, you won’t be here forever. So maybe this is a good opportunity for us to practice standing on our own.”
A silver tongue.
Now that I’d already agreed to help, backing out would be bad form.
And more importantly, we needed to get out of here for a while anyway.
“Fine.”
I accepted without hesitation.
But it wouldn’t be Pyo Won-sang if he left it at that.
He glanced cautiously at Woo Min-hee, who stood to my side with her arms crossed, and probed gently.
“Will Director Woo be staying?”
He clearly had his eye on her.
I answered imdiately.
“No. She’s coming with us.”
“Ah, I see.”
I gathered my team.
Emgu, Cheon Young-jae, Kang Han-min’s kids, and Woo Min-hee.
The area Pyo Won-sang and Cha In-seop asked us to cover was the eastern outskirts of the city.
It was the most dangerous route—the path monsters would take if they circled around the mountains.
“They’re dumping the most dangerous spot on us and giving us nothing in return...”
Cheon Young-jae muttered.
And he was right.
To Pyo Won-sang, the best-case scenario would be us disappearing along with the monsters.
But monsters were unpredictable creatures.
Yes, they had arrived here en masse—but what they were after, what their objective was, we couldn’t know.
Personally, I found it hard to believe they were targeting our train specifically.
Monsters simply move from Point A to Point B.
It just so happens that humans lie in between.
And Cha In-seop wasn’t an idiot.
Having spent years near Rifts, he knew well:
The cheapest and most reliable way to deal with monsters is artillery.
Chzzzt—
The radio crackled.
“Two Pretorian-type monsters have entered the designated bombardnt zone. Awaiting orders.”
“Begin once FO confirms.”
“Copy!”
As the transmission ended, the heavy guns behind us roared to life.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Dozens of howitzers fired simultaneously.
Half of them had been prepped to kill Jeong Dae-kyung—but that didn’t make them any less effective against monsters.
KWA-KWA-KWA-KWANG!
The blast echoed like the whole mountain range was shaking.
The shelling continued.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
As the sounds of impact shifted positions, it beca clear the artillery was adjusting its aim to match the monsters’ movents.
Likely using a coordinated fire thod—TOT (Ti on Target).
Even with machine assistance, pulling off such high-level artillery strikes in such short tifras was no small feat.
I looked up.
Dozens of drones still hovered above, holding their massive formation, awaiting orders.
Pyo Won-sang was seriously trying to eliminate both the monsters and Jeong Dae-kyung.
“Pretorian-types confird eliminated.”
There were actual results.
At those words, Cheon Young-jae—tense until now—finally exhaled in relief.
So did Kang Han-min’s kids.
Only Woo Min-hee and I had remained calm from the beginning.
Perfect.
I signaled to Woo Min-hee.
She caught my aning and followed with a subtle smile.
We slipped into a corner of an abandoned building to talk in private.
I pointed up at the sky, at the swarm of drones.
“Zama? They say there’s a thod called Zuma.”
“Oh, that?”
Of course, Woo Min-hee knew about the Chinese doctrine.
“What do you think?”
She paused for a mont.
Her smile was faint but undeniably warm—she wasn’t debating whether to tell sothing, but how to tell it.
Her eyes, shimring softly, locked onto mine.
“...When I was stationed in Jeju, there were six Alpha Awakened like . Official ones—not counting the unregistered.”
Her story pointed sowhere unexpected—deep into the most classified parts of Jeju I’d never known.
“Six?”
“Yeah.”
And this was far more interesting than any battle currently unfolding.
With the Pretorians gone, there wasn’t much for us to do at the mont anyway.
I listened.
“When there’s light, there’s always shadow.”
“Light and shadow... The light would be Kang Han-min and your senior?”
“Right.”
“And you?”
“? I guess... I was soone who, just barely, got to stand in the light too?”
The most famous over-level-10 Awakened—Alpha Awakened—were Kang Han-min and Na Hye-in.
Woo Min-hee might not have been as well known, but post-war she had gained recognition among the elite.
She had once been the queen of Seoul, after all.
The other three, the ones who belonged to the shadows, were practically unknown.
And with good reason.
“They were kept completely out of the dia and barred from being ntioned, even inside Jeju.”
Understandable—over-level-10 Awakened were national strategic assets.
Keeping their existence secret protected them from exposure or exploitation.
Even I had been given countless offers—but I’d heard that true over-level-10 Awakened got offers so good they were almost unimaginable.
Even Woo Min-hee, who was less famous than Kang Han-min or Na Hye-in, had been scouted by first-world countries who recognized her na.
“People say Korea’s got an unusually high number of Alpha Awakened... But personally, I think China and India had a fair number too. They just disappeared before anyone could notice.”
What she really wanted to ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) tell was about those three unknown over-level-10 Awakened.
She described them as creatures of shadow.
One of them was Chinese.
“A girl. Around fifteen. Pretty. I saw her once from afar—always wore white stockings. Rumor was she was a rich girl from Shanghai, but that’s all I knew. No na. No info on how she got to Korea, what missions she did—everything was a mystery. The only fact was that she ca with Kang Han-min.”
She vanished before the war even began.
When Woo Min-hee later checked the registry, she found not only was the girl’s na missing—her existence had been erased entirely.
“...Another one was supposedly from North Korea. Disappeared before I ever arrived in Jeju. Sa as the Chinese girl—all records wiped. The only thing I heard was that he was close to Kang Han-min.”
KWA-KWA-KWANG!
Another round of shellfire echoed in the distance.
The battle was still underway.
I stared at Woo Min-hee with a hardened expression.
There was sothing I wanted to say.
But she wasn’t done.
“The last Alpha Awakened... is soone you know well.”
Jeong Dae-kyung.
“I don’t know him well. He never left his own little bubble. But his skill? No doubt about that. No political backing. Just a handful of old-schoolers and fringe regular Awakened—and yet he held the number one kill score for three months. That’s not luck. But you know how people get when soone rises too high? Gossip starts. Weird rumors.”
“...Weird?”
She nodded.
“They said he summoned monsters.”
“...”
So it really was Jeong Dae-kyung bringing those monsters here.
Woo Min-hee stared at the jagged peaks where the drone swarm hovered.
“Those cheap tricks won’t be enough to kill him.”
KWA-KWA-KWANG! KWA-KWA-KWANG!
The shelling continued.
Chzzzt—
“Confird: Heavywalker and Black Ox types eliminated! All approaching monsters neutralized!”
“Good. Resu Charlie elimination operation. Status on drone group?”
“All on standby. Target still isolated.”
The radio chatter flowed smoothly, signaling Jeong Dae-kyung’s imminent death.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Suicide drones relaunched.
Mortars provided support fire. The assault on Jeong Dae-kyung’s hideout intensified.
No further monster sightings.
Even the sporadic gunfire from Jeong’s side had vanished.
To anyone watching, Jeong Dae-kyung looked like a rat in a trap. A condemned man awaiting execution.
“This is Boramae-1. Beginning strike on target location.”
One of the drones circling above readied its payload.
It was ti for the finishing blow.
CHIIIIIIIK––
Two missiles nicknad “Hellfire” scread through the air, aiming for the bunker where Jeong Dae-kyung was hiding.
They carried enough firepower to incinerate, shatter, and obliterate the entire bunker.
But like Woo Min-hee said, Jeong Dae-kyung was no easy opponent.
BOOM!
A violent shockwave rippled out.
The missiles, flying straight, suddenly jolted mid-air like startled eels, spiraling wildly off-course—before exploding in a sad puff of smoke.
And then—
“Senpai.”
Woo Min-hee stared at with icy, sunken eyes.
“They’re coming again.”
“How many?”
She hunched slightly and answered.
“That was just the advance team.”
No sooner had she finished speaking than Moon Yang-gyeong and the others burst in, faces pale, hugging themselves and looking around frantically.
“Monsters.”
“Can’t count them.”
“They’re coming from every direction?!”
In her softly glowing eyes, I could see it—
A faint, inerasable fla of hatred.
“...So it really was him.”
This was dangerous.
Woo Min-hee was going to confront Jeong Dae-kyung.
There was sothing she hadn’t told —sothing that had taken her limbs and carved those unhealable scars into her once-beautiful face back in Jeju.
Now she was going to demand answers.
Two choices stood before .
But the outco would be the sa:
Woo Min-hee was going to et Jeong Dae-kyung.
And that event—whatever she hadn’t told —was as important to her as the event that etched hatred into my own heart.
So I wouldn’t stop her.
I couldn’t stop her.
In fact, I didn’t even have the right to try.
But, as always, the most important value in human affairs is timing.
And right now... wasn’t it.
“Min-hee.”
I called her na.
Her eyes flickered.
“Senpai? That’s rare. You actually said my na.”
“...Can’t keep calling you Director Woo every day. Anyway—”
“You said ‘Woo Min-hee.’ So stiff. Hmph.”
As she grumbled, I was busy typing away on my phone.
I sent a ssage.
A reply would co soon.
I was a legendary na, after all.
Sure enough, unlike in my no-na days, the response ca imdiately.
I looked at it, then turned to Woo Min-hee.
“I’ve got a plan.”
Sotis, putting things off isn’t so bad.
After all, procrastination is a luxury only afforded to those with the ti to spare.
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