It didn’t seem like Jeon Si-hoon had been speaking with absolute certainty.

“Even before they made landfall, they must’ve sent drones to keep an eye on things. Who knows? A guy like Jeon Si-hoon might even have had military satellite access and been watching from orbit.”

Kim Daram was trying to explain the recent contact from Jeon Si-hoon—contact that had upended our territory over the past few days—through her own experience and logic.

“One thing’s for sure—Jeon Si-hoon’s lost track of Woo Min-hee’s location. That’s why he reached out to us on the off chance we knew something.”

Truthfully, this kind of speculation was nothing more than after-the-fact rationalization.

After that sudden message, Jeon Si-hoon hadn’t made any further contact or additional demands.

The only thing that had happened was that an object—likely a drone—had appeared high in the distant sky, visible only to Kim Daram’s eyes, and then vanished.

What this incident made clear was that Jeon Si-hoon knew where I was.

When we’d run into each other on the bus that day, he must have ordered a subordinate to track me. He’d somehow learned not only our location but even the unique ID number of our radio, through means I couldn’t guess.

In short, we were sitting in the palm of Jeon Si-hoon’s hand.

I’d thought we were in Dies_Irae’s grasp, but it turned out someone even bigger was watching us.

Still, neither Kim Daram nor I had any real power or influence in the real world.

To be coldly honest, we were nothing more than an ordinary small group of individuals with some Hunter experience.

Unless we pulled off a surprise attack while his guard was down, the odds of killing Jeon Si-hoon were close to zero.

The same went for political influence.

Sure, online I could bury him under my legendary reputation, but the internet was in bad shape right now.

Viva! Apocalypse! had become a communication channel for a very limited set of members.

Using Necropolis transmissions like before wasn’t an option anymore.

VIVA_BOT014: Currently, 60% of satellites are nonfunctional, and more than half of the remaining 40% are showing degraded performance.

VIVA_BOT014: Viva! Apocalypse! is already fading into twilight. If we siphoned Necropolis transmissions on top of that, the kingdom Melon Mask built wouldn’t last a single month.

That was how Melon Mask operated.

He had a knack for making things look good, but no knack for making them durable.

Classic “falls apart right after the warranty ends” products.

Viva! Apocalypse!’s warranty was five years from an apocalypse-grade disaster.

Five years had passed since the war, so it was about time for things to start breaking down.

To be fair, we’d gotten our money’s worth.

Expecting more would be unfair to a guy who was already trying to leave the solar system.

That’s why we had to push ahead with developing a second PaleNet—placeholder name.

It was a shame Yoo Jeong-min wasn’t particularly capable, but at least she wasn’t lazy or the type to slack off.

Once she built up the knowledge and know-how, she’d become our internal manager for the new board.

Of course, watching her flirt with Cheon Young-jae made my blood boil, but I’m a pretty patient man.

Trouble always comes from where you least expect it—or from what you underestimated.

Bang!

A gunshot cracked above my head.

Kim Daram’s cold voice came over the comms.

“Hostiles.”

*

After the war, Korea had been split into two worlds.

One was the so-called refugee camps under government control. The other was the outlying zones beyond government reach.

The difference between the two was as stark as the town mouse and country mouse from the fable.

In the camps, residents depended on government rations, building a shadow economy from surplus handouts. Survivors outside had to be self-sufficient.

The biggest difference was in conflict resolution.

In the camps, disputes were usually with neighboring camps or their allies. Conflicts were resolved in a way not unlike gang wars in the old days: night raids, short but fierce gunfights, sirens and lights, the military police arriving too late, corpses lying around—unannounced to the public but with the victor and loser clear to the parties involved.

Outside, conflict resolution was basically a war of annihilation.

My old mentor Jang Ki-young would have called it an “Elimination Match.”

Back when he occasionally played the classic game StarCraft in front of us, he’d lift off his Command Center and run it around while methodically destroying every one of his opponent’s buildings, proudly declaring that this too was a legitimate strategy.

With no mediator, the outcome was determined purely by strength. The loser lost almost everything.

There were pseudo-mediators—groups acting like a government—only when there were similarly sized factions in the same area.

The real danger wasn’t the forces you knew.

It was the sudden appearance of a professional raider crew—more feared by outside survivors than monsters.

I’d had such people come for me before.

They were fewer than ten, but I had to fight for my life, alone.

If it had been a large crew, I’d have been a skeleton long ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) before killing that General-type.

The group attacking us now was one of those.

Roughly fifty people.

Fifteen vehicles.

They appeared out of nowhere with no warning and surrounded our territory.

“So this is my first time getting hit with an Arirang Stick-Up.”

Cheon Young-jae’s “Arirang Stick-Up” referred to a slang term from the past—smacking a drunk over the back of the head to rob them—now used for a raiding tactic in the outer zones.

They’d scout targets with a small recon team, withdraw if spotted, then bring overwhelming force to smash the target in one blow and take everything.

It didn’t happen often, but the method’s success rate was high.

This time, Kim Daram had pulled off a big one.

If she hadn’t put a bullet through the forehead of the lead man on a modded scooter, we’d be looking at enemies encircling us right outside the bunker.

Now the raiders were arrayed in a fan shape about 400 meters away.

The man she’d shot lay sprawled beside his overturned scooter 150 meters out, a neat hole dead center in his forehead.

Judging from the tire marks, he’d been going at least 60 km/h. Classic Kim Daram marksmanship.

They didn’t seem ready to push in right away. The loss of that sharp first strike had clearly rattled them.

No surprise—the guy on the scooter had been wearing heavy armor that would shame a medieval knight, with only the visor open over his forehead.

Maybe he’d been the leader.

Either way, their hesitation was our big chance.

“Hold it for a bit.”

Leaving Kim Daram and Cheon Young-jae on the line, I stepped back and picked up the radio.

Chzzzt—

As much as I hated to admit it, the only one who could help us right now was Dies_Irae.

This was why I’d been running errands under him.

Well, half of it was for my own purposes.

“What, Skeleton?”

It was Loka Hoon answering. He’d taken the call last time, too.

From the sound of it, he’d been leading a mid-sized crew for a while under Dies_Irae, which made it hard to get him on the line these days.

He’d changed—meaner and crueler than Dies_Irae in some ways.

Of course, he didn’t have Dies_Irae’s innate darkness, but like always, the half-trained ones are the worst.

“We’re under attack by an unknown group. At least seventy men. Looks like a professional raiding crew. They’re hesitating for now, but if they push, we can’t hold long.”

I pushed my dislike aside and gave him the situation report.

I’d inflated the numbers—something I’d picked up from the Chinese. It makes the other side think the situation is dire and act faster.

Seventy or fifty—it’s all the same.

“Yeah? These bastards... Don’t even know whose turf this is. Hold out a bit! I’ll send a drone! Tekkai!”

Even a bastard has his uses to someone.

After ending the call, I grabbed my weapon, crouched between Kim Daram and Cheon Young-jae in the shallow trench, and scanned the enemy lines.

I didn’t have my old optics, so I used the binoculars Foxgames had left. Poorly maintained—some strange residue in the lenses—but they worked well enough for spotting at a distance.

As expected, they looked like a professional raider crew.

A few seemed like they’d die tomorrow, but most were calm, steady, with the hollow, predatory eyes of carnivores.

I asked Kim Daram, “Anyone been snooping around lately?”

She shook her head.

“Maybe a drone?”

“A drone, huh.”

“The Chinese army dumped a lot of them when they pulled out.”

“If it’s high-altitude, nothing we can do.”

Drones had been a problem since the early days of Viva! Apocalypse!, often cited as an argument against solar power.

Korea had fewer drones than other countries before the collapse, but when the military and government fell apart, they flooded the market, with clever Koreans even making their own.

And Chinese army drones? No surprise there.

Of course, it wasn’t just the drones.

We hadn’t been especially careful about concealment. We weren’t the stoic type to put secrecy above all else—and this was Dies_Irae-protected land.

Anyone with a keen eye could find us.

And today, the visitors had come.

They didn’t bother with comms. Just prepped to attack.

Vrrrrmmm—

From a five-ton truck, they unloaded... a small bulldozer.

But not an ordinary one—this one had been plated over with extra steel and armor.

Looked like their trump card for when their usual rush failed.

“What do we do?”

Kim Daram eyed it like a leopard.

No sniper angle. We’d have to take it head-on.

We had the weapon for it. Not built for the purpose, but in principle, perfect for the job.

“Hold on.”

I went below, where Kim Daram’s family and Yoo Jeong-min looked at me with anxious eyes.

“It’ll be fine.”

From the armory, I took out the Monster Punch Dies_Irae had given me.

A jury-rigged Hunter weapon, but basically the same principle as a WWII-era shaped-charge anti-tank weapon.

Its penetration might not be great, but it would go through the crude plating around that driver’s seat just fine.

As I brought it back up, the bulldozer was still rumbling toward us, belching black smoke loud enough to hear hundreds of meters away, twenty elite fighters advancing behind it, using it as a moving shield.

Simple, but solid. Pros.

But if I let it hit us, what kind of Hunter would I be?

“Young-jae.”

“Yeah.”

“Watch for anyone trying to flank us. If I can’t deal with it, you cover me.”

“Got it.”

“Daram.”

“Mm.”

“Anyone popping out from the sides of that dozer is yours.”

“Understood.”

With my rifle slung and the Monster Punch in hand, I moved forward.

The gentle slope that had hidden their main camp from us now hid me from them.

We’d built a shallow trench around the bunker as a basic defense—not deep enough for them to use, but perfect for us to crawl through unseen.

Piles of trash and scrap for extra cover.

I lay flat, feeling the vibrations in the ground.

Vrrm—Vrrm—Vrrm—

They were coming straight at me.

“Straight ahead,” Kim Daram reported.

For all people called her a “nagging mom,” in combat she was so far above Cheon Young-jae he couldn’t even compare.

She didn’t worry about me. She trusted me as I trusted her.

Vrrm—Vrrm—

A hundred meters now.

Fifty.

“Senior.”

Her signal.

I’d been pumping the Monster Punch the whole time.

Crappy weapon, but that’s why it was easy to make and why there were so many around.

The last thing you should ever do in this situation is pin your hopes on outside help.

On the battlefield, you stand alone—especially in front of incoming bullets.

Vrrm—Vrrm—

The engine’s roar shook my chest harder than the cold. I rose.

“Ambush!”

The driver finally spotted me. Too late.

Soldiers behind the dozer surged out—

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

Our sharpshooter and marksman cut them down as they appeared.

The flaw in this plan was simple—if the bulldozer itself could be taken out, the attack meant nothing.

Maybe they’d gotten away with it against smaller groups, but we were Hunters.

Click—

Feeling the charge settle, I aimed the Monster Punch and pulled the trigger.

Whoosh—

*

Dies_Irae didn’t show up until everything was over.

He looked at the bulldozer still smoking and the scattered corpses, cigarette in his mouth, with a wry smile.

“As expected of Skeleton.”

Honestly, I was surprised he’d come himself.

“With a crew this big pulling an Arirang Stick-Up, it’s hard to hold them off.”

Even if he’d come late, just coming at all was something to be grateful for in this hellish age.

I nodded in thanks.

He accepted it offhandedly, then looked around our territory with a narrow-eyed, dissatisfied gaze.

“Mind if I give you some coaching?”