Dogs had long been humanity’s best friend.

I like dogs too.

When I was a kid, the landlord didn’t allow pets, so we never had one, but my older sister and I used to pester our father to buy us a puppy.

I also like cats, but not as much as dogs.

The animal I’ve really wanted to raise in my life, though, is a black goat.

Anyway, that friend of mankind drifted away from our side once the disaster of Mutations erupted from the Crack.

Not every dog is a threat to mutate, but humanity has a tendency never to overlook a potential threat to itself, even if it’s only a possibility.

To put it bluntly, if the neighbor’s dog turned into a Mutation and attacked me and my family, who could take responsibility for that?

No one could.

My family cannot be someone else’s family.

And so, humanity’s friend left humanity’s side.

But then, the dog that had disappeared came back.

What returned was a beast as large as a ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) tiger, wagging its tail like the dogs we remembered, accepting the food offered by humans even as those same humans died, and then rolling over to bare its belly.

Even the cruelest humans are often lenient toward animals.

Hitler himself—infamous as he was—was the first to enact animal protection laws, and he was a devoted dog owner.

Jeon Si-hoon’s soldiers were brutal men, but when they saw a dog again after so long, their gaze softened into something unmistakably human.

“That mutt. The more I see it, the cuter it gets. Even the team leader seems to have taken a liking to it.”

“Yeah. Its body’s huge, but a dog is still a dog. I had one before the war myself.”

“I always preferred dogs over cats. Back when the rumors of war were swirling, I’d take my pup for walks along the Han River, and it felt like—no matter what happened to the world, who cared?”

Before long, Silver became the mascot of Jeon Si-hoon’s unit.

It wasn’t unheard of for Mutations that had left humanity to return to human hands, but only when there had been a deep, historic bond and mental connection with their former owners.

Never—not once—had a Mutation with no ties approached people on its own, wagging its tail like a stray looking for home.

The soldiers began talking about Silver constantly, calling it a spirit-beast.

The story of how it had been found spread mouth to mouth over radio chatter.

“For real? You’re saying the dog just walked up on its own?”

“Yeah, apparently it was limping bad and whimpering as it approached.”

“What if someone had shot it?”

“They say it somehow sensed which guy wouldn’t pull the trigger and chose to approach him.”

“Damn. That’s clever.”

“Well, that’s why it’s a Mutation.”

Silver didn’t seem captured—it had surrendered itself to humans of its own accord.

Even I had to admit the story was extraordinary.

Of course, there were those who still looked at it as food.

“When are we going to eat it?”

But such remarks were quickly drowned out by the dog lovers’ backlash.

“Why the hell would you eat that mutt?”

“He’s the sweetest thing in the world.”

...Maybe.

But was it really?

Silver was Gold’s offspring—yes, that Gold I had known.

It might look dumb at first glance, but among Gold’s progeny, Silver inherited his blood the most strongly.

Intelligence.

And with that intelligence, Silver tricked me cleanly.

Whether he pulled it off smoothly is another question.

The whole thing left a bad taste.

Gold’s intelligence had been the spark that deepened my bond with him. Silver’s intelligence only left behind bitter afterthoughts.

How to put it...

The difference between someone who’s smart but loyal, and someone who’s smart but treacherous.

Though Gold’s child, I never liked Silver much, nor did I seek it out.

Even if I had, I doubt that sly bastard would have welcomed me.

The reason Silver reappeared among humans now? I think it was nothing more than its injured leg.

There isn’t much entertainment inside a bunker, and like Kim Daram says, kids are always looking for something to amuse themselves with. So I shared some video clips of Silver with Mark Two.

“Cute.”

But contrary to her words, Mark Two showed little genuine interest in Silver.

If anything, she revealed she considered it a threat.

“Just like the instructor back at the facility said—big and dangerous.”

“Dangerous, sure.”

In the animal kingdom, size is power.

But bigger size doesn’t always mean proportionally stronger fighting ability.

Among the infamous brawlers of the weasel family, there are Mutated specimens, but they never last long.

Their very identity—agility—gets ruined by the added bulk. They end up clumsy brutes that can’t dominate other animals unless they turn to ambushing humans.

Mutated dogs compensated for their lack of hunting ability through the original pack instinct—cooperation.

But nature is merciless.

If sheer size and strength were enough to guarantee survival, our world would be overflowing with giants far greater than now.

“Then why did that big, strong dog let itself be caught by people? Back at the facility, the teacher said Mutated dogs are cunning but vicious, and would never befriend humans.”

“It’s limping.”

Silver had a bad leg.

For people, a bad leg means plenty of limits, but for an animal, a leg is survival itself.

They need it to flee from stronger foes and to catch prey.

Maybe that’s why it sought out humans—because of its condition.

Whatever the case, more people love dogs than hate them, and dogs themselves had become a symbol of pre-war nostalgia. So even though Mutations were dangerous, plenty of people chose to love them anyway—if anything, because of that danger.

The fact that even Defender’s old comrades, men who thought nothing of killing humans, treated Silver this way suggested maybe I could set aside my worries for the moment.

Still, Silver was a wound to me.

That resentment—that it had deceived me—lingered like a fog in the back of my heart.

*

Thanks to the capable assistant Hong Da-jeong, I’d gotten used to handling drones.

Strictly speaking, it was thanks to the excellence of the Chinese military drones we had salvaged, but I’d gotten a taste for peering down from high altitude.

Now that my activity on the boards had slowed, it was practically my only pastime.

By chance, I spotted what seemed to be Gold’s old pack of Mutated dogs.

Once fierce, forged by the crucible of nature even before the war, Gold’s pack had dwindled to a pitifully small group.

Six, maybe.

They were eking out survival in the basement of an abandoned apartment.

Their condition was miserable.

Most were gaunt, ribs showing. Their movements were weak and weary.

Most of all, they were fearful.

Unlike the old days when they weren’t even afraid of humans, now they tucked their tails and bolted underground at the mere hint of human presence.

They’d learned, through experience and intelligence, that they were no longer predators but prey.

The only reason they’d survived this long was humans. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

I wondered what they’d been eating—turned out it was human rations.

The same kind of “brick rations” I had in my bunker. Except mine were premium U.S. imports, and theirs were Chinese knockoffs, maybe a tenth of the price.

I’d thought I was being rational back then buying the expensive ones, but in hindsight, I got swindled.

Their stash had likely come from another bunker.

Besides the rations, I saw sacks of dog food, instant noodles, even cat food bags lying around.

“Looks like they’ve become scavengers with their boosted intelligence, huh?”

That was Mark Two’s take.

Scavenger—originally a term for sharp-nosed animals like hyenas. Humans just borrowed it.

Once strong, once hating humans, Gold’s pack was now scraping through human garbage, surviving off scraps of food humans had left behind.

Mark Two pretended disinterest, but she was clearly fascinated to see living animals for the first time.

“Hunter Park Gyu. Look at that.”

While I’d stepped away, she called me back to see the drone feed.

“What’s this?”

Puppies.

At dusk, small pups crawled out of the basement to tumble in the snow.

“Puppies are cute. The big ones aren’t, but these are.”

“Yeah. That’s why people used to dote on them when they were small, then dump them once they grew.”

“What?”

“Cruel world.”

But one thing nagged me.

One of those pups looked far too much like someone I knew.

Gold.

And there were a few with silver coats, like Silver.

In other words, some of those pups might be Silver’s offspring.

That thought left me uneasy.

Had Silver abandoned its own litter to come here?

Why?

Gold had died protecting his pups. To the death.

Shouldn’t Gold’s child do the same?

Of course, maybe I was mistaken—I don’t know dog genetics. Maybe Silver knew by scent they weren’t his and ignored them.

But to my eyes, they looked undeniably like Gold’s and Silver’s.

“...Huh?”

As expected of Woo Min-hee’s bloodline.

Mark Two, who could look vacant and lost, sometimes displayed a piercing observational skill that startled people.

“That dog. Isn’t its limp strange?”

“What about it?”

“It was the left leg before. Now look—it’s limping on the right.”

I looked.

She was right.

Silver was limping on the opposite leg now.

The limp looked worse, more diseased than before.

It still wagged its tail, still tolerated people’s teasing tricks, but the behavior called back all my old resentment like a fog reawakening in my chest.

“....”

What the hell did Silver want?

For a moment, a cruel thought crossed my mind.

Maybe, unlike his father, Silver had abandoned his offspring to throw himself on human mercy.

Heightened intelligence doesn’t only lead to good.

It can turn cruel, scheming, insidiously advanced.

Only higher animals lie.

Message from folkbelly128: Animals actually abandon their own kids pretty often.

That was Hong Da-jeong’s remark after hearing my thoughts.

Message from folkbelly128: Honestly, as long as they don’t eat their young, maybe that’s better?

Whatever the reasons, things changed soon after.

The trigger came from the Sejong army, led by an old warlord.

On a day when the temperature dropped to minus 15, a hundred soldiers slipped through a ditch in the night, emerging behind Jeon Si-hoon’s shivering troops.

The sudden rear assault, combined with pressure at the front, crushed Jeon’s forces. They lost everything they’d held and fled toward Seoul.

The chaos echoed into my territory, gunfire and explosions rattling the night.

The next day, once it was certain Jeon’s men had pulled out completely, I risked sending up a drone.

I wanted to see how Silver was doing.

Gone.

The chain that had bound it was empty—as if by magic, it had vanished.

*

Silver reappeared in front of me less than a week later, one late evening.

I was out fishing, not especially alert, when it showed itself—fur shining silver in the moonlight.

At that moment I realized the beast I had once glimpsed at night had been Silver all along.

This time, it wasn’t limping. It wasn’t cringing.

It stood tall, arrogant, staring down at me from the top of the levee.

When it started to approach, I raised my gun.

It stopped immediately, but didn’t retreat behind the levee either.

Strange as it sounds, it looked like it had something to say.

“What do you want?”

I asked Silver.

It looked back over its shoulder.

A rustling.

Another one.

For a second, the word danger crossed my mind—until I saw it.

A small pup with golden fur scampered out from beneath Silver.

So it was his after all.

Silver gazed down at the pup whining at his feet.

It was small.

Too small.

It looked more like a normal dog than a Mutation.

Something the drone footage hadn’t revealed.

Then Silver nudged it with his paw.

Even a gentle push from a Mutation sent the tiny thing tumbling down the levee.

Silver stared at me, then suddenly flattened his ears and lowered his head.

“....”

I understood what it was saying.

“You want me to raise it?”

Its tail flicked once.

“Isn’t it yours?”

Silver gave no answer.

Just as it had appeared silently, it vanished silently, leaving only the golden pup behind.

“What, that’s a puppy? Looks nothing like on the video. What’s the word... it’s really fluffy.”

“‘Fluffy’ is the word.”

And so, I ended up taking Gold’s grandchild.

I had no choice, but I was also intrigued—by its size.

Compared to Gold and Silver, it was shockingly small, more like an ordinary dog.

That fact alone might mean hope for humanity.

We’ll see.

Even Mark Two, who never cared much about dogs, couldn’t hide her delight in seeing a real puppy.

Well, everyone loves puppies. Even seventy-year-old Grandpa Kim next door used to dote on them.

Taken alone, it wasn’t a bad ending for one puppy.

But seen from a wider perspective—Silver’s pack had been wiped out.

The scrawny dogs were hunted down or froze to death. The pups that had played in the snow outside the basement didn’t escape fate either.

Only Silver survived.

He had changed owners, mixed with people, earning reverence as a spirit-beast beside Sejong’s soldiers.

I can’t know what he’s thinking, but one thing is certain.

Children don’t always resemble their parents.

Silver may be Gold’s son, but he didn’t inherit his father’s character.

He abandoned his pack to survive, humbled himself, wagged his tail to humans, living the despised life of his ancestors.

Perhaps he still longed for the father who had protected his family.

Perhaps that’s why he brought the pup—his father’s lookalike, now sleeping peacefully beside Mark Two—into the care of those who had shared the deepest bond with Gold.