Ch.139138. Severe Cold

While the Balhut Cult headquarters remained relatively peaceful, sharing diplomatic achievements obtained from international organizations, the Ulsan Airport was a fierce battleground against the Cult of Immortality.

What troubled the soldiers on the frontlines most was:

“Damn undead! Moving just fine in this bitter cold!”

“They’re such a nuisance!”

It was the undead army that operated perfectly even in this cold wave.

These undead forces showed no signs of fatigue despite the terrible cold and continued to launch attacks toward the Ulsan front. Of course, in a direct confrontation, the Balhut Cult, which had fortified Ulsan Airport and entered a defensive position, could easily handle the undead legions approaching the airport using traps and defensive weapons installed along the routes.

“Seems like the enemy isn’t stupid!”

“It’s strange that someone smart would fight against us!”

The problem was that the enemy wasn’t foolish enough to insist on frontal assaults.

Even for undead, meaningless deployment of troops would be a waste of immediately available soldiers, and the enemy understood this. Even with their vast numbers, if casualties exceeded ten thousand, it would be a burden even for the Cult of Immortality. Naturally, they needed to consider alternatives to directly attacking the fortified Ulsan Airport, and the most efficient method they could choose was:

“They’re flanking us!”

“They’re bypassing our fortified position! Well, that’s to be expected.”

Simply put, they were bypassing the fortified Ulsan Airport to strike the allied forces’ supply lines.

Having secured all bridges leading to North Ulsan, the Cult of Immortality could easily find roads to bypass the airport, and through these detours, they attacked the allied forces’ supply lines. If lucky, their detachments could even target the Balhut Cult’s main base, making this an extremely tempting strategy for the Cult of Immortality.

“We’ll protect our own food trucks!”

“You damn undead! Even dogs don’t disturb others during meals!”

But of course, the allied forces were well aware of the importance of supply lines as their potential weakness.

The most crucial element in a defensive position was supplies to endure, and the allied command knew well that supplies delivered through their headquarters were their lifeline. Therefore…

“The commander anticipated this and set up checkpoints!”

“Hey, undead! This is a bulletproof checkpoint!”

Before coming here, Jeong Dong-geon had installed checkpoints or at least outposts at critical junctions to protect supply routes, and now those preparations were paying off.

With outposts or checkpoints at important locations, the movements of the Cult of Immortality could be quickly detected, and once a detachment was spotted, patrol response teams stationed in each area would immediately deploy to handle the flanking forces. For the small detachments from the Cult of Immortality, being eliminated was practically guaranteed once a patrol response team appeared, as the element of surprise—essential for their attacks to be effective—was lost.

“How annoying.”

“We always need to keep some forces on standby.”

However, the need to always keep certain forces on standby to protect supply routes clearly had the effect of reducing the troops stationed at Ulsan Airport.

Especially since soldiers couldn’t properly rest and had to remain on emergency standby, this could potentially diminish the morale and combat effectiveness of the allied forces in the long run.

“Looks like they’re trying to cross over the mountains now.”

“Don’t forget the annoying mountains of the Korean peninsula. Plus there are monsters there.”

Considering this, targeting supply routes or headquarters was such an attractive strategy for the Cult of Immortality that they now seemed focused solely on operations aimed at supply lines rather than the fortified Ulsan Airport.

Apparently believing that the allied forces would absolutely refuse to engage during winter, the Cult of Immortality’s leadership continued their flanking attacks endlessly. Particularly troublesome were attempts to infiltrate secretly through the mountains rather than roads. However, the allied forces’ leadership and soldiers laughed at these efforts, believing the infiltrators would be naturally eliminated by the treacherous Korean mountains and the monsters within them.

“Those fools!?”

“The monsters… they’re gone?”

Listen well: expectations lead to betrayal. The allied forces should never have expected anything from the monsters from the beginning.

Contrary to the allied forces’ expectations, the monsters that should have been in the mountains couldn’t become obstacles for the undead.

“Woohoo! Finding fresh corpses is super lucky!”

Instead, the Cult of Immortality could use the monster corpses in the mountains as supplies to replenish their undead army—a maddening situation from the allied forces’ perspective.

The reason why the monsters in the mountains couldn’t hinder the undead, and instead became part of their forces, was so simple that it would seem ridiculous to anyone hearing it.

“They… they all froze to death?”

“Monsters freezing to death? What kind of absurd news is that!?”

“That can’t be true!?”

As it happened, the monsters inhabiting the mountains couldn’t withstand the hellish Korean winter cold and died of hypothermia.

Since summers had been extremely humid and unpleasantly hot with heavy rainfall, non-native monsters assumed this was a warm region and didn’t prepare for winter. While native Korean creatures were busy preparing for the cold wave, monsters were preoccupied with fighting and territorial disputes within the mountains. By the time winter arrived, except for a few perceptive ones, most monsters either froze to death or starved from not storing enough food for winter.

Native creatures and Koreans instinctively knew how harsh Korean winters could be and the necessity of winter preparations, so the allied forces had wrongly assumed monsters would prepare similarly.

“Emergency! Emergency! Extreme emergency!”

“Deploy mountain troops to search the mountains immediately! Launch surveillance drones!”

This news triggered an emergency response not only among the allied forces at Ulsan Airport but also within the Cult headquarters, which was in the midst of a general election.

They immediately deployed drones imported from the United States and mountain troops trained for such contingencies to search for detachments sent by the Cult of Immortality, and somehow managed to eliminate them.

“Now we have to monitor the mountains too?”

“Our front line has expanded.”

However, the Balhut Cult now recognized that monsters would no longer serve as an effective buffer zone, and realized that the monsters wouldn’t regain their position as a third force until winter passed.

Not all monsters in the mountains had frozen to death, but since they were all holed up in caves to survive the Korean winter, the only force that could stop the Cult of Immortality’s detachments entering through mountain routes was the Balhut Cult.

“Found them.”

“Yes, let’s go eliminate them.”

Therefore, they established a mountain response team dedicated solely to the mountains. These teams used drones for reconnaissance to first locate enemies and then deployed to eliminate them—an efficient elimination system.

Of course, one might wonder how they had access to drone weapons in this apocalypse, but the Balhut Cult had already secured the right to import American war equipment through exchanges with the United States.

Using drone weapons imported from America, monitoring the mountains was entirely possible, and this method had actually been commonly used by the Korea Forest Service even before the apocalypse.

The Forest Service had long used drones’ aerial reconnaissance capabilities not only to rescue stranded hikers but also to catch illegal poachers, illegal harvesters, or illegal dumpers.

Using the Balhut Cult’s administrative authority, they could easily find former Forest Service personnel, and from those who had worked in national parks, they could learn the know-how used at that time.

“Get out of our territory!”

“Thanks to you, I’m hiking multiple times a day even in this winter!”

With this transferred knowledge, the trained mountain response teams could successfully defeat undead armies traversing the mountains, allowing the Balhut Cult to counter all of the Cult of Immortality’s strategies.

This kind of confrontation continued until the general election ended and Bahamut attended the international organization meeting, with the allied forces and the Cult of Immortality exchanging moves and maintaining a stalemate.

“By now, a negotiation delegation should have appeared.”

But from the Balhut Cult’s perspective, this meaningless fighting was continuing.

They knew they couldn’t move before winter ended, but weren’t they just taking hits at this point?

Moreover, their forces were continuously being dispersed, and the troops stationed at the fortress were gradually decreasing.

From the allied forces’ perspective, with the troops stationed at Ulsan Airport continuously decreasing, they were seriously considering a ceasefire with the Cult of Immortality.

“Since we’ve been winning consistently, shouldn’t they be more exhausted than us?”

“That’s right.”

Still, they had successfully thwarted all of the Cult of Immortality’s trump cards and succeeded in their defense, which was indeed a victory for the allied forces, so they thought the Cult of Immortality’s leadership must be getting anxious.

Therefore, the allied forces placed their hopes on some kind of negotiation delegation to be sent to the Cult of Immortality, but…

“The undead are attacking.”

“Do they have unlimited resources? Don’t they ever get tired?”

Even the strongest humans would have their morale shaken by continuous defeats.

Moreover, while most soldiers were undead and might not notice the snow, the Cult of Immortality’s leadership was clearly human.

Being human, they naturally needed food, clothing, and shelter, and especially needed to consume large amounts of food for calories to survive this harsh winter.

Furthermore, to overcome the stress of war, they needed pleasure from delicious food, and the Balhut Cult was quickest to catch onto this fact.

“These guys. How much are they eating each day?”

While the Balhut Cult was worried about their own soldiers consuming too much food, wouldn’t the enemy side be having food problems?

“They’re undead. Undead don’t consume food.”

Of course, since the main force of the Cult of Immortality consisted of undead, one could say they wouldn’t have food concerns, but…

“Even with undead, don’t they have leadership and regular citizens?”

“Oh, that’s true.”

But the leadership, middle management, and citizens belonging to the Cult of Immortality were living humans.

Naturally, they too would require high caloric intake to relieve the stress of war, and would need even more food to withstand this severe cold.

“We’re fighting with winter gear, but it’s still too cold to move properly.”

Even with winter equipment, soldiers were complaining because of the cold wave hitting the Korean peninsula.

The allied forces’ soldiers were praying for a negotiation delegation to appear so they could establish a ceasefire agreement at least during winter.

“Commander.”

“Do you have good news?”

“No. Another detachment was discovered today. They seem to know no surrender.”

And the leadership was well aware of the gradually declining morale among the soldiers.

Jeong Dong-geon, commanding the entire Ulsan region from Ulsan Airport, asked Han Seong-geun to please bring good news, but the response was that the Cult of Immortality knew no surrender.

“Sigh. So no negotiation delegation will appear.”

“We left messages on the Ulsan community board suggesting negotiations, but they’re completely ignoring us.”

So it seemed fair to conclude that the Cult of Immortality had absolutely no intention of negotiating with the Balhut Cult.

Jeong Dong-geon sighed at Han Seong-geun’s report, but he had no immediate solution.

Rather, he felt somewhat perplexed.

‘They have no intention of negotiating. What exactly are they aiming for?’

Of course, he had expected some level of engagement since they had invaded another’s territory, and he thought they would use demonstrated strength to negotiate afterward.

But there was no negotiation, not even a negotiation delegation.

‘I don’t understand. Do they really intend to fight until one side is destroyed?’

Even so, fighting with the intention of destroying another faction required considerable determination.

And even if the Cult of Immortality destroyed the Balhut Cult, the benefits they could gain wouldn’t be that significant.

“We’ve never even seen the faces of their leadership. What is the source of this hostility?”

“I don’t know either.”

Jeong Dong-geon posed this unsolved question to Han Seong-geun, but Han Seong-geun also expressed complete bewilderment.

After all, the absence of even a negotiation delegation meant that from the Cult of Immortality’s perspective, they had no intention of talking with the allied forces, or more broadly, the Balhut Cult.

What grudge could they possibly have to reject the Balhut Cult so thoroughly?

“Then we have no choice but to force them to the negotiation table.”

In the end, Jeong Dong-geon’s only option was to use force to kick the Cult of Immortality’s leadership to the negotiation table before it was too late.