Before I retired, the scenery Kang Han-min and I saw would have been almost the same.

We were in the same battlefields, belonged to a government agency called the National Ability Agency, and above all, fell under the single category of hunters.

Both of us also went into the Rift intermittently.

Even after retirement, I think there wouldn’t have been a large difference personally.

It’s just that Kang Han-min would have seen somewhat flashier, more important, and therefore more secret sights.

Until the world collapsed, we lived breathing the air that was the bountiful product of humanity’s golden age.

The point where our two sceneries truly began to diverge was probably after the war.

My scenery is now confined to the narrow bunker and its surroundings.

For a year I even patrolled around the bunker with care and did not respond to any situations occurring nearby.

I lived holding my breath in the dark, like the dead.

By contrast, I doubt Kang Han-min’s scenery changed much from before the war.

He would have gone back and forth between the ashen world inside the Rift and Jeju, the island that kept intact the legacy of humanity’s golden age.

To him, the war and the changes it brought to the world would have been distant stories encountered via news or rumor.

He has no interest in humans.

He did like Na Hye-in, but thinking back now, it seems he was swept up by a brief heat represented by hormones.

Maybe he did it knowing I had feelings for Na Hye-in.

The only human who interested Kang Han-min would have been me, Park Gyu—who shared the same teacher, was despised by that teacher, and at the same time monopolized that teacher’s love.

For Kang Han-min, the destruction of humanity is no different from the apocalypse preached by a radical Christian.

According to it, humanity’s creator, no longer able to endure mankind’s fall, punishes humanity and guides the faithful to the heavens, to an everlasting kingdom.

Kang Han-min’s plan has a similar structure, but unlike the four-syllable-named god, he doesn’t consider the punitive element of humanity’s fall in the least.

He believes in one subjective hypothesis only—that if the number of humans decreases, the Rift will not react—and he seeks to prove that hypothesis.

In that cold process of proof, just as before the war, he merely commuted between the Rift and Jeju; he did not, directly, look back at the humanity he intended to annihilate.

He has never seen people flailing in a shattered world.

He has never seen those driven from their homes and wandering after losing their families fade away.

Nor has he ever seen how, amid despair, people hold to hope and make it bloom, or how that hope turns into a flower of despair.

Kang Han-min watches the world with eyes as cold as a machine.

That’s why I wonder whether I can make him look at Sejong.

That said, I won’t claim there are no humans in Kang Han-min’s scenery.

“Taking a swing at a big shot like Jeon Si-hoon based on nothing but conjectural talk—doesn’t seem right to me.”

“If we hit Jeon Si-hoon? You think he’ll sit still? We all saw it—how that bastard moved like the Air Force’s sparrow hands and feet.”

“What are you going to do, drop a nuke or something.”

“Let sleeping dogs lie. Since he’s holed himself up in the Tower, let’s leave him. He’ll handle himself.”

“I hear monsters are cropping up a lot everywhere in the world. What’s the issue if there are a lot °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° in Korea?”

These are probably the kind of humans I’m looking at—people who gained something called status in one corner of the world and want to protect it.

Since becoming a savior, Kang Han-min has never met ordinary people.

Besides his colleagues, those he dealt with were the entrenched class who look like the upper crust, the powerful, the real players in Korea, China, and sometimes the West.

Even after countries flipped multiple times and the world order completely reversed, the essence of the entrenched class remained the same.

“We can’t. We have to refuse.”

“We can’t move the military based solely on Hunter Park Gyu’s subjective claim.”

“So what if monsters come to Sejong? We’ll crush them. We’ve already refurbished a Kill Zone barrier near Sejong.”

They seek to protect what’s theirs.

More precisely, they seek to protect the very base that makes them the entrenched class.

As with all things, there are two sides; the fact that IAmJesus has become an adult now turns out to be a disadvantage to me.

“Sorry, Skelton. As you can see, the resistance is too strong.”

IAmJesus wanted to go to the Tower with me, but there’s too much hanging from his shoulders.

Sejong is the fate IAmJesus inherited from King.

No matter who lives inside it, IAmJesus will protect this city.

“Give me a little time. I’ll settle it within today.”

*

“You saw DP, right?”

“Yeah. They weren’t kidding calling him the King of the Dead. It was no joke. Like a death aura? I really think something like that was coming off him.”

“Over Level 10 Awakened really are different. You can feel it even from afar.”

A seat makes the person.

Yeom Dda-wan and his friends don’t know IAmJesus’s past.

What they saw was Sejong’s king—hair slicked back, immaculate suit, and makeup adding to his gravitas—not the powerless boy locked up like a shut-in inside a narrow bunker.

“As expected, Hunter Park, you’ve got quite the network. You even know DP—the one even Savior Kang Han-min was curious about.”

At first he used banmal, then half-formal mixed with banmal, and now he’s using polite honorifics. One way or another, it seems IAmJesus made a deep impression on Yeom Dda-wan.

“I got along fine with Si-hoon, but that person there is different from Si-hoon. If Si-hoon felt like an old friend you’ve known forever, that one gives off the dignity of a born royal. Thanks for the great sight.”

With our schedule open, I toured downtown Sejong with Yeom Dda-wan’s crew.

The city is still brimming with vitality and life.

It’s ironic.

Cities and shelters that received all sorts of government support became ruins or vanished, but the city that received not support but slander and checks has become the last city left in the Republic of Korea.

The ones who felt Sejong’s true worth most keenly were Yeom Dda-wan and his friends.

“Wow. This really feels like old Seoul.”

“Yeah. The new Seoul was crowded too, but the mood was a bit North Korea-like. They controlled everything, you know?”

“I heard Sejong was a crime city where gangsters cluster, but this is totally different from what I heard.”

They came over from Jeju.

Back on Jeju, from those neat and proper families I saw, they enjoyed good food and welfare and spent the harsh postwar life relatively comfortably.

The scenery they saw wouldn’t be much different from what Kang Han-min saw.

And yet those friends from Jeju all look at the strange city called Sejong with their eyes shining.

What they’re admiring isn’t Sejong’s splendor, but the tough people living in Sejong.

For a long time many people were mistaken, but a city is not made of buildings.

A city is made of people.

Maybe Kang Han-min has seen Sejong too.

But the Sejong he saw would have been an aerial photo taken from the sky, or an indirect video shot by a spy and sent via the medium of a camera.

He has never seen, never felt, a living city.

After a while we returned to King’s palace.

Waiting for me was IAmJesus, his expression gloomy.

“Sorry.”

I expected it.

The resistance from the surrounding power-holders was too strong.

Even if I were a power-holder, I’d likely have reached a similar conclusion to theirs.

You see as much as you know.

The entrenched in this city don’t know how precarious their current situation is.

They also don’t know that this miraculous city they built with blood and sweat could crumble like a sandcastle overnight.

The foolishness of thinking you can endure on meager faith without realistic awareness has already been a farce repeated countless times even before the war.

“It’s okay. I wasn’t expecting much.”

“Skelton. I’m truly ashamed. You helped me in my hard times, and yet when you’re in trouble, I can’t help you.”

“I’m not the one in trouble.”

I corrected him, looking at IAmJesus.

“This city is going to be in danger.”

“Because of that lighthouse?”

“Yeah. Kang Han-min sees Sejong as a thorn in his eye, and he’ll soon sweep this city away. Jeon Si-hoon’s Tower was already taken over by Kang Han-min’s believers.”

“How do they operate a lighthouse? If you’re right, to run a lighthouse you’d need at least a three-digit cluster of Awakened. You said it takes about that many to guide monsters.”

“You saw it too, didn’t you?”

IAmJesus is definitely quick.

Personally, I think IAmJesus’s mind works better than Jeon Si-hoon’s.

There’s a saying that most kids who hole up in their rooms are smarter than ordinary kids—maybe it’s actually true.

Because if you’re smart, you can perceive that those around you dislike you or that you’re not being acknowledged.

Whether you accept the bad talk about yourself is a matter on another plane.

In any case, IAmJesus quickly caught what I was about to say.

“No way... his children? Kang Han-min’s kids?”

Fear rose in his eyes.

That fear is less about the children themselves than about the malice possessed by the man named Kang Han-min that underlies them.

“The likelihood is very high.”

There’s nothing more to gain by staying here anyway.

Change only happens after a storm passes through.

If my prediction is right, a massive horde of monsters will soon cover Sejong.

Couldn’t we weather that wave at least once?

This side is a city guarded by IAmJesus.

Thinking so, I deferred things to tomorrow.

Of course, I had no intention of withdrawing without any arrangement.

“If that day comes, call me. I might not be able to annihilate the monster horde, but I might at least be able to destroy the lighthouse.”

IAmJesus gripped my hand.

Despite the nickname King of Corpses, his hand was warm as sunlight.

“If you help, those people won’t be able to oppose forever. Then I’ll go with you to Jeon Si-hoon’s Tower.”

“Good. You must keep that promise. You know what I mean.”

“Not like you, Skelton, but fine. I’ll swear on my name—no, on King!”

A thought struck me.

Through twists and turns, we’ve built trust, and there he is making a resolute oath—did Kang Han-min ever see something like that?

He wouldn’t have.

Beside him are nothing but yes-men or flatterers.

If they’re blind believers, they might even put the word conviction in their mouths.

From the start, Kang Han-min is someone who expects nothing from humans.

Maybe that’s why he could so easily speak of reducing the number of humans.

Dusk had fallen, yet the people in the streets did not thin.

Under the rank lights, people each with their own stories turned, eyes shining, taking in the streets.

Of course, I’m not saying everyone on these streets is good.

There are probably gangsters, prostitutes, looters, drug dealers, and maybe even human traffickers.

The line taught on Jeju that Sejong is a city of crime may not be one hundred percent right, but at least thirty percent might be true.

Right now, even before our eyes, women with hollow gazes stare, waiting for their fee.

On streets where the lamplight doesn’t reach, thugs beat people and extort money, and in dim corners, unfocused-eyed folks trade suspicious signals for shady deals.

“Feels nasty.”

“This is exactly the Sejong we saw in the lectures.”

The friends who’d been on Jeju showed clear disgust.

Maybe, hearing of Sejong by rumor and materials, Kang Han-min held a similar view.

I have no intention of defending those people.

Nor do I intend to endorse scenes like that and call Sejong a flawless city of survivors.

But even with such blots, the solid fact that Sejong is a city piled up by survivors does not change.

When tomorrow’s sun rises, then again bright, positive people who sing of tomorrow will color another day under the sun in their own hues.

A world of only light does not exist.

Even if the darkness is thick, because there is light, I will affirm the city.

That is the scenery of Sejong as I see it.

But if it were Kang Han-min, he would see only the night’s darkness.

Fixing his gaze on the bleakest, most miserable, most brutal facet, he would prattle about human nature and try to deny the entire city.

Our scenery, thus, is entirely different even when we look at the same thing.

If in a changing scenery I saw humans, then Kang Han-min saw only himself in the mirror.

We look at ourselves in the mirror every day, but we don’t notice the day-by-day change in that mirror.

What we see is nothing more than the result of psychological and physiological changes that occurred in the interval between times we looked at the mirror.

Who can see themselves aging in real time in the mirror?

Kang Han-min always looks only at himself in the mirror, but did he notice that the self in the mirror is turning into a monster?

I think not.

“Hunter Park. Over there. That— isn’t that a monster horde?”

On the way back, one of Yeom Dda-wan’s friends pointed at silhouettes loping along the horizon.

Monsters.

Combat types. Many mid-sized species.

Their numbers and composition exactly match the horde Gyeong-min and I witnessed earlier.

From east to west, from west to east, the monster horde that had wandered this way and that within the erosion zone is now heading south.

“Are they going to Sejong?”

At Jade’s question, I thought for a moment, then nodded.

“Probably.”

Soon enough they’ll come looking for us in Sejong.

Hard and dangerous work awaits us, but I take that too as the way of the world.

I will face the scenery Kang Han-min refused to see, the scenery he elided.

And I’ll show it to him.