Hiding a House in the Apocalypse-Chapter 119.1: Tool (1)

Park Gyu's dream was just as bizarre as Bang Jae-hyuk’s stories.

He was walking through an unfamiliar street in a suit, and someone was stepping on his shadow, following closely behind.

That person was none other than Jang Ki-young.

He was wearing an ill-fitted, shabby suit, trailing behind, and for some reason, he was leaking what seemed to be urine through his pants.

The setting suddenly changed. It looked like a library, or perhaps some kind of public facility—a vaguely official space unfolded before him.

He was lying on the floor in his suit, arms at his sides, when he turned his head for no particular reason.

Jang Ki-young was lying beside him.

When their eyes met, Park Gyu waited for him to speak.

It wasn’t patience—just a long-ingrained habit from his time as a disciple.

But no matter how long he waited, Jang Ki-young said nothing.

Then, out of nowhere, Park Gyu remembered—Jang Ki-young was already dead, or at the very least, in a state equivalent to death. He asked him, "What are you doing here?"

The moment he spoke, the lights in the facility went out, and everything was swallowed by darkness.

Within that darkness, Park Gyu realized he was dreaming. But the dream refused to let him go.

When he woke up, his body was drenched in sweat.

“......”

He wasn’t the type to be shaken by dreams.

But this one was different. It had left a lasting impression.

It wasn’t just the dream that prompted him to contact Woo Min-hee for the first time in a long while—but he couldn’t deny it played a significant role.

*

“It’s been a while, senior. And now, out of the blue, you’re calling me? What’s gotten into you?”

Woo Min-hee only responded an hour after he’d sent his request for communication.

That same dreamy, lilting voice as always.

“Just wondering how you’re doing.”

“Oh my. My senior, worrying about me? I must be living longer than I thought.”

“How are things on your end?”

“Here?”

“Yeah.”

There was something he was curious about.

Kim Daram.

The probability was high that Kim Daram had ended up on Woo Min-hee’s side.

But that was too sensitive a subject—to both Kim Daram and himself.

Only Woo Min-hee could handle such a topic lightly, but everything she held in her hands always ended up broken and ruined.

It was wiser to ensure she didn’t even think of it.

“Well, we’re still managing to communicate with Jeju every now and then. We get airdrops, though they’re rare.”

“Any news from the Lighthouse?”

“No, nothing.”

“I see.”

“I was actually planning to send an expedition there. And just as I was thinking about it—what a coincidence! My senior contacts me first.”

She chuckled.

He said nothing.

He had no desire to go there, and no reason to.

Besides, there was no need for him to rely on Woo Min-hee anymore.

He had formed a group.

The chances of running into a stronger, larger group and getting crushed had increased significantly, but they could now handle most dangers on their own.

“You don’t want to go, do you, senior?”

“...If I’m being honest, yeah. It’s frightening, uncomfortable, and I don’t think I’d be of much help even if I went.”

“You’d be helpful!”

Her breathing turned slightly uneven.

“You already know this, but the Rift is producing Anti-Awakened entities. And they’re being mixed in with regular ones when they come through. It’s getting harder for us to handle them alone.”

So she needed him.

Not out of personal connection, but for tactical necessity.

If what she said was true, then it made sense why she’d taken in Kim Daram.

“I see.”

“So? What will you do?”

“I won’t be able to provide support for the time being.”

“Why?”

She must have brought her mic closer—he could hear her breathing clearly.

That meant she was irritated.

He was just as irritated, but he had no intention of provoking this monstrously strong, mentally unstable woman without reason.

“I formed a group recently.”

“Oh my. Really?”

“Yeah. Gathered some people I know, some folks from around here, and made a small group. You already know that after the collapse of the Legion faction, some academy hunters have been targeting me.”

Before he could even finish speaking, her breathing disappeared, and instead, her voice drifted in faintly from the speaker, indirectly relayed.

“Really?”

There was someone else in the room.

She was asking them.

If his instincts were right—

“Oh. Kim Daram says that’s true, too.”

So, he was there.

He’d already assumed as much, but he had to act surprised.

“Kim Daram? He’s there with you?”

“Yeah. It just happened that way. But why did he come to me instead of staying with you? Ah—I get it.”

Her voice turned sickeningly sweet, making sure he could hear.

No surprise. Woo Min-hee’s nature would never change, not until the day she died.

“Well, if you can’t come, we’ll just have to put together a team and handle the expedition ourselves. Not that we were eager to call you anyway—especially after hearing some bad news from the advance reconnaissance team.”

“Bad news?”

“Yeah.”

She hesitated for a moment.

Then, after a suitable pause, she spoke.

“The Professor’s Nightmare has appeared.”

“......”

The Professor’s Nightmare.

It was an idiom used only by a select few. And it referred to a type of monster that had irrevocably altered his fate.

A General-class entity.

The first monster he ever discovered.

The first monster he ever admitted he could not kill.

Officially, the emergence of Awakened beings was the reason he had chosen to retire—but in truth, it was the General-class entity that had severed his last attachment.

Caught within the intangible restraints of that monster’s power, he had realized, down to his very bones, that there was nothing he could do against it.

“...I’m still old-school, Min-hee.”

He had spoken with Woo Min-hee many times before.

But this was the first time he had spoken with genuine sincerity.

And yet, they say sincerity calls to sincerity.

A warmth he had never expected flowed from the communicator.

“But there’s no one stronger than you, is there? Isn’t that right, Twelvesquare?”

“......”

So she knew.

He barely held back a laugh.

“Anyway, I’ll call if I hear anything else.”

“Oh, wait.”

“?”

“There’s something I want to ask.”

He had almost forgotten his main reason for calling.

“Ah? Jang Ki-young?”

Of course, she knew about Jang Ki-young.

“Senior, I thought you didn’t like him.”

Their mentor-disciple relationship was well-known in the hunter society.

Few people knew about Park Gyu as an individual due to his classified status, but the callsign "Professor" was famous worldwide. And Jang Ki-young had ridden that fame, becoming known as the mentor behind the legend.

“Professor is entirely my creation. He was the perfect realization of my ideals. What was it? Oh, right—a persona. He was my persona.”

Those who understood their relationship better often summed it up with a single /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ word: tool.

Jang Ki-young needed a tool to achieve his ambitions.

And Park Gyu was the perfect tool.

This translation is the intellectual property of Novelight.

It was someone else’s assessment, but he found it valid.

Jang Ki-young had tried to impose his outdated, impractical, and at times outright bizarre ideals onto them.

The “Rocket Axe” sketched in his notebook, its shading done with tightly packed lines—that alone was enough to show the kind of man he was.

The more real combat he experienced, the clearer it became that the knowledge Jang Ki-young had imparted was a product of delusion.

He had known since his student days that Jang Ki-young was nothing more than a mirage, built up by media and self-promotion.

But seeing him in reality had obliterated any last shred of respect.

Even juniors like Woo Min-hee, who weren’t close to him, knew the truth.

That the Professor, Jang Ki-young’s supposed masterpiece, didn’t actually like him.

“Well, since you’re curious, I guess I should tell you.”

Woo Min-hee spoke nonchalantly.

“I left him at the lab. Didn’t dispose of him—I think. We blew up the lab when we left, though. If he was lucky, he might have survived. But does it matter? At best, he’s just a zombie now.”

She even knew the latest rumors about him.

“Apparently, some weird rumors are going around, but they’re nonsense. Biologically, Jang Ki-young is dead. The Rift is just forcing his corpse to move. And even as a zombie, he was barely functional. No matter how much we provoked him, he didn’t react. He wasn’t rotting, but that’s all he was—a corpse.”

Jang Ki-young was alive.

Or at least, the zombie using his name was still walking.

*

Ever since I learned that Jang Ki-young was alive, my thoughts had been drawn to him for some inexplicable reason.

It was strange.

I had never held a high opinion of Jang Ki-young—in fact, I had secretly despised him.

Even when I heard he had turned into a zombie, I felt no real sorrow.

That was the extent of our relationship.

And yet, this incomprehensible feeling kept pulling my attention toward the docks in Incheon.

Maybe now that my group had stabilized, I had the mental space for such pointless concerns.

The first time I heard about a zombie suspected to be Jang Ki-young was, unsurprisingly, on our forum.

The zombie, which constantly muttered the word "Professor," had no official name or title. It was simply called "the scavenging zombie."

The first mention of it came from Anonymous458.

Anonymous458: "There's some zombie scavenging around the docks in Incheon, believe it or not."

Anonymous458 was one of the pure-blooded oldbies I respected.

He had once been a part of a small but admired group on the forum called the Kyle Dos Family.

That group, like Kyle Dos himself and another old internet friend, Anonymous848, had long disappeared beyond the horizon of ruin. But Anonymous458 had endured, continuing to post with the same mix of casual jokes and serious commentary as he always had.

In an era where consistency had become a rare commodity, his unchanging nature now warranted reevaluation.

Perhaps he wasn’t as normal as he seemed. Either he possessed an extraordinarily strong mind, or he lived in an environment stable enough to allow him to maintain that normalcy.

Regardless, it was a fact that Anonymous458 had brought up the scavenging zombie.

I decided to send him a message.

SKELTON: (Skelton Inquiry) Out of curiosity, what do you know about this scavenging zombie?

Messages were a tool for direct, private communication between distant users. But they also had another, unintended function.

By analyzing the time a message was sent and the time it was replied to, you could infer the recipient’s daily routine.

I had sent my message at around 9 AM.

By then, most people would have already woken up and started their morning tasks.

Anonymous458 responded at 4:50 PM.

That meant he had finished his day’s work, returned to his laptop or computer, and only then checked my message.

It was just speculation, but it suggested that he followed the same pattern we did—working at sunrise, retreating at sunset.

I checked his reply.

Message from Anonymous458: "Oh, that zombie? Not sure. I’ve only heard about it secondhand. But it’s a hell of an interesting story. I mean, can you imagine? A zombie pulling a cart around, loading it up with random junk. Isn’t that hilarious?"

I pointed out that it could have been a misunderstanding.

Anonymous458 responded immediately—probably dead serious.

Message from Anonymous458: "It’s not a mistake. More than one person has seen it. People who scavenge at the old refugee dock frequently report seeing this weird zombie wandering around, gathering stuff."

SKELTON: "So it's in Incheon?"

Message from Anonymous458: "Somewhere around there."

SKELTON: (Skelton Well-Wishing) I hope we get to see it for a long time.

Message from Anonymous458: "You too."

Even now, a good conversation with an old forum friend had a way of warming the heart.

The comrades in my territory gave me a sense of security, but it was different from the camaraderie shared with my fellow forum members.

“......”

Sitting at my desk, I absentmindedly flipped through the old notebook Jang Ki-young had given me.

I had noticed it before, but there was little in it that was of any use to me.

Still, whether it was useful or not, I could tell that the owner of this notebook had poured his will into every letter he had written.

My eyes lingered, as always, on that infamous rocket axe.

The drawing of the "Rocket-Propelled Impact Enhancement Attachment"—a ridiculously long name for a weapon—was taped to my desk.

Judging by the sketch, it was meant to be an axe fitted with a propulsion system that would send me, Skelton, soaring through the sky like some kind of superhero, slicing through monsters midair.

Even for me, that was too absurd.

“...Instructor.”

I smirked as I stared at the excessive amount of shading poured into the rocket axe illustration.

There was an odd, blank space within the shading—cut out deliberately.

It had been the hiding spot where Jang Ki-young used to tuck away his Awakened Examination Sheet.

There was nothing left to find there now.

But without thinking, I found myself staring at the area where his pen must have traced over a thousand times.

For no special reason.

Just the idle thought that his lines were always needlessly straight and lacked any real curvature.

And then—

“?”

There was writing underneath the shading.

To be precise, he had written something first and then covered it up with shading.

I brought the drawing closer to my eyes, trying to make out the text.

It was in Jang Ki-young’s handwriting.

Messy scribbles, made even harder to read by the overlapping shading.

But soon, I managed to decipher the words.

- Concept for the Ultimate Anti-General-Class Weapon

For my beloved disciple, PROFESSOR!

“......”

I stood up.

Something inside me moved.

And that meant I had to go.

If I didn’t go now, I might never get another chance to see my old master again.