Ch.153Season 2 – Prelude to Counterattack

The divine spear carved from Mount Everest had shattered.

However, the human rebels’ moment of joy was short-lived.

“We need to evacuate the underground village people immediately.”

After descending underground, Shinwoo immediately assessed the situation and informed everyone who had been on the surface.

After all, the underground village—the last stronghold of the human rebellion—had been exposed.

He was saying they should quickly evacuate everyone before the next attack came.

Additionally, perhaps because it was his first Divine Tool Release…

“Whew…!”

“Father, your body!”

“It seems I used up all my power in that last attack.”

Shinwoo’s body quickly returned to its original human form.

This meant that if another massive spear attack like before were to fall on the underground village, there would be no way to stop it.

“Everyone hurry to the underground village!”

“Yes!”

“Understood, Father!”

“Um, but what about the time machine…?”

“Ah… then some of you stay here and keep watch. I’ll quickly bring everyone here.”

“Brother! I’ll help too!”

“Yeah, thanks Lia… Huh?! Your body?! No, before that, your clothes…!”

“Hehe. I grew bigger. How do I look? Pretty?”

The personnel who remained at the time machine would stand guard until the underground village people arrived.

Meanwhile, those who had visited the underground village would go back down and bring up the roughly 1,000 citizens to the surface.

Of course, the immediate concern was Lia, who was naked due to her enlarged body…

“For now, please wear this, Mother.”

“Wow! Thank you, son.”

“It’s nothing…”

Leon quickly snatched the cloaks that his younger sister Cria and Cartina had been wearing and covered past Lia with them.

Was she always this carefree and mischievous in the past?

While Leon sighed deeply at his immature young mother, the current Empress Lia was staring blankly at them.

“Mother…”

“…We’ll talk later, son.”

Empress Lia gazed sadly at Leon and past Shinwoo when he was still normal for a brief moment.

Then she quietly turned away with her two daughters and half-son.

“?! Shouldn’t we catch them?”

“…No. There’s nothing to gain by catching them, and if we fight here, we’ll only suffer more damage.”

“Is that so?”

“Leon! For now, stay here with Yurian and guard the time machine! Cartina should be around here somewhere! She’s not someone who would die from just that!”

“Yes, understood! Father.”

“Father, let’s quickly head to the underground village.”

“Yes, Jaewon. Let’s go.”

In truth, Shinwoo also had much he wanted to say to Lia who had become Empress.

But as if the timing wasn’t right yet, time wouldn’t wait for the two of them.

***

The underground village that had once faced destruction.

The current situation in the underground village was absolute chaos.

“Everyone must evacuate to the surface!”

“Please exit through the dimensional gate in an orderly manner!”

“T-the surface?!”

“If we go outside, won’t we all become monster food? Is this really the right decision?”

“But we can’t just stay here and be crushed to death!”

The National Authority-Level Hunter from China.

Through Xiaoling’s ability, a dimensional gate connecting the underground and the surface had been created, but the villagers were far from safely escaping through it.

When suddenly told to go to the surface where they could become monster food, everyone was too frightened to listen even to the orders of Dorothy, the village leader.

“Is there even another place to live outside?”

“Captain Dorothy! The people in this village are just children and the elderly!”

“If we go outside with these people, you might survive, but the rest of us will all die!”

Dorothy couldn’t argue with the villagers’ words.

Because everything they said was true.

Even if they managed to survive by going to the surface, what would they do next?

It would take far too much time to establish another settlement like the underground village.

From the Imperial Army that would pursue them while they fled from future Han Shinwoo’s grasp, to the monsters currently living on the surface.

It was practically impossible to defeat them all and save all the residents here.

“But if we stay here, we could be crushed to death again!”

“That might be better!”

“What did you say?”

“Rather than being eaten alive by monsters outside or being taken by the Imperial Army for strange clinical experiments, being crushed to death would be much less painful!”

“Just cut off the oxygen coming into this underground area, and we can all die peacefully!”

“So… you all want to commit suicide here?”

Dorothy asked the villagers in disbelief.

The only response was silence.

A somehow affirmative silence that echoed throughout the underground village that would soon be abandoned.

“We’re already exhausted.”

“…!”

“It’s no different for the children.”

“The outside is already hell.”

“At our age… we’ve seen humanity lose to monsters as naturally as breathing.”

The elderly of the underground village had watched the downfall of humans, once the rulers of Earth, at the hands of monsters.

They had also witnessed the subsequent annihilation of the rebellion organized by the remaining humans, and now they were nothing more than old ghosts living simply because they couldn’t die.

So they wanted to rest now.

They wanted to give up their current lives as humans and live new ones.

But then…

“What about the children?”

“?!”

“…!”

“What happens to the children who have to die with you?”

“Miss Shina…”

Shina climbed onto the platform where Dorothy was speaking and frowned down at the humans who had forgotten their will to fight.

“The children said they want to see the sky!!”

At the child’s brief outcry, something began to stir in the eyes of the elderly who had wished for euthanasia.

“Do you really not want to go up to the surface anymore? Do you really want to die? Don’t you think you’ll regret dying without doing anything?”

“B-but even so…”

“If monsters spot us, we’ll all die…”

“Especially those Imperial bastards, they’re vicious monsters who devour human flesh and bones whenever they see humans.”

“Yes, rather than being captured by such creatures…!”

“No. The people in the Empire aren’t much different from you.”

The underground villagers who viewed those mixed with monsters like themselves as ‘monsters.’

And the people of the Empire who believed humans were unconditionally ferocious and terrible creatures.

Where did these stereotypes begin?

Shina didn’t know the answer to such difficult questions.

But she knew one thing for certain.

All those thoughts were wrong.

“From the moment I was born, I was taught that humans were evil, ferocious, and bad.”

“…?”

“From birth?”

“But that was a mistaken belief.”

After saying this, Shina let out a roar from the platform.

Then she transformed, growing black horns in a kaijufication that shocked all the underground villagers.

“Eek?!”

“M-monster!”

“No, before that, that appearance…!”

“I-it’s Han Shinwoo! Han Shinwoo’s child!”

“Huh? But Sister Shina…”

“Wasn’t a bad villain at all?”

Shina proudly revealed her identity in the underground village.

Yet, she didn’t cower at all.

Rather, to show that this appearance was merely external and that she was no different from them, the girl continued her speech with a pure heart.

“I believe that the people of the Empire and all of you here are not different at all.”

“Us and those monsters…”

“Not different?”

“In the Empire, we’re taught that humans are monsters. Meanwhile, here in the underground village, you’re taught that we Imperial people are monsters.”

But apart from slight differences in appearance or race.

If we can communicate, laugh together, cry together, and share various emotions, perhaps we can pioneer a completely different new path from what we’ve had until now.

“Don’t call us monsters. And please don’t be afraid of us.”

“…!”

“In return, we’ll do the same. Because we are all the same ‘humans.'”

“Us and you…”

“The same humans…?”

Of course, this alone wouldn’t be enough to persuade the underground villagers.

From the humans’ perspective, her kind, which had just begun to appear, would be heretical in itself.

Nevertheless, Shina had wanted to say these words while learning about humans.

The first attempt might be clumsy and a failure.

But if they kept moving forward, perhaps they could succeed in this ‘challenge.’

“How can we and you…!”

“E-even if we’re different! Sister Shina is our friend!!”

“…! You kids…”

That’s when it happened.

The three little musketeers of the underground village who always played with Shina.

Among them, Park Hyeok, who had claimed to be the leader of the trio before being overshadowed by Lia, stood up abruptly and took Shina’s side.

“I don’t want to die like this! I want to see the sky! And if I have to die, I want to die doing something!”

“T-this little brat…!”

“I-I want to go outside too!”

“Me too! Princess Laira said if we go to the Empire with her, she’ll give us lots of delicious things!”

“…Fools.”

Following suit, Alfonso and Aya also stood up, supporting not only Shina but also Laira who was quietly standing behind her.

Laira simply smiled quietly at the children’s actions.

“Let’s all fight together.”

Laira, who had followed her sister Shina onto the platform, crouched down and made a proposal to the entire underground village.

“Rather than dying miserably here, you should at least do something for the children! You old geezers!!”