Ch.4646. The Road to Pohang (2)

After numerous battles with mutant zombies, the advance team led by Jeong Dong-geon managed to secure a location that served as a gateway to Pohang.

“We somehow made it to the intersection, but it’s more devastating than I expected.”

They had successfully secured the area near the crucial Yeongil Bay Road intersection for the Pohang operation. Once they completely secured this intersection, they could establish a safe path for the expedition team to reach Pohang.

If they secured the intersection ahead, they could proceed straight on Geonpo Industrial Road toward POSCO, or take Yeongil Bay Road toward the Hyeongsan River and Pohang Airport.

Jeong Dong-geon was thinking this as he personally took up binoculars to scout the intersection area, when:

“Is this really Pohang? Wasn’t it supposed to be a bigger city than ours?”

“This must be Pohang. The map app shows this is Geonpo Industrial Road leading to Pohang.”

Jeong Dong-geon sympathized with his subordinate’s disbelief, but the evidence on the smartphone application confirmed this was indeed Pohang, so he had no choice but to believe it.

However, Jeong Dong-geon himself seemed troubled, his eyes trembling as he couldn’t tear them away from the binoculars.

And for good reason, as the Geonpo Industrial Road intersection, which could be considered the entrance to Pohang…

“What are those spider webs?”

The routes leading to Pohang were blocked by numerous spider webs.

Preparing for potential threats, Jeong Dong-geon and his troops didn’t approach, but he could sense something ominous about those spider webs.

‘Has a new mutant really appeared?’

He couldn’t hide his troubled thoughts, wondering if a new mutant had been born in Pohang as Bahamut had worried.

However, as the commander, he knew that if he showed anxiety, his soldiers would become frightened too, so he deliberately maintained a calm appearance and spoke as if everything was fine.

“I don’t know either. But we know what we need to do now. Let’s select a site where the expedition team can stay.”

“Understood.”

Though he wanted to investigate those spider webs immediately and learn what was happening inside Pohang, Jeong Dong-geon suppressed his troubled feelings and decided to carry out his duties as the advance team.

As the advance team, they needed to select a safe site where the expedition team could rest, so Jeong Dong-geon ordered his subordinates to secure a safe location.

As they began searching the area or scouting with binoculars:

“By the way, the Pohang community mentioned there’s a survivor camp in a building near Geonpo Industrial Road. Have we found the camp yet?”

“We’re still searching. But doesn’t the presence of these suspicious spider webs suggest that survivors in this area have already fallen victim to whatever made them?”

“That’s possible.”

While looking for a safe location, they also began searching for local collaborators in Pohang.

Jeong Dong-geon mentioned the survivor camp near the intersection that he’d learned about from internet communities, and his subordinate replied they were searching but suggested the possibility that the camp had been wiped out.

He cited the suspicious spider webs they hadn’t seen in Gyeongju as evidence, leaving an ominous implication that a new mutant might have been born in Pohang.

Jeong Dong-geon nodded heavily, unable to deny his subordinate’s words.

Even he thought those unknown spider webs seemed to herald the birth of a new mutant.

“Worst case scenario, it’s possible all the survivors in this area have been wiped out.”

“That would be truly the worst.”

Considering even the worst possibilities, they continued searching until:

“I found them! Commander! Survivors! They’re alive! They’re alive!”

“Understood.”

Fortunately, they were able to discover survivors.

At the soldier’s cry that they were alive, Jeong Dong-geon gathered the soldiers who had been searching and headed toward the location of the survivors.

“They really are alive.”

Most of the survivors were in a weakened state, but they were still alive and well.

Jeong Dong-geon found a survivor who could still speak, and approaching a female survivor who still had some strength left, he opened his mouth.

“Are you alright?”

“W-who are you people?”

“We’re…”

However, when Jeong Dong-geon approached and questioned the female survivor, she looked at him and his subordinates with a fearful expression.

Seeing the female survivor asking who they were in a trembling voice, Jeong Dong-geon fell into momentary contemplation.

‘This isn’t Gyeongju. And the Balhut Cult doesn’t have a good reputation publicly.’

If this were Gyeongju, he would have proudly introduced them as the Balhut Cult.

But this was Pohang, not Gyeongju, and the Balhut Cult’s reputation outside of Gyeongju wasn’t very good.

Most Korean communities considered the Balhut Cult to be a pseudo-religious cult that had greatly expanded its influence by exploiting the current apocalypse, and they wouldn’t believe claims that the Balhut Cult wasn’t a pseudo-religious cult.

So how should he introduce their affiliation? As Jeong Dong-geon briefly pondered this:

“We’re military from Gyeongju.”

“M-military?!”

He explained that they were military from Gyeongju.

It wasn’t actually a lie.

Jeong Dong-geon and his troops were elite soldiers selected by the Balhut Cult, and they were indeed operating in a proper military fashion.

Moreover, they all wore the same attire and fine uniforms, had protective gear to protect their bodies, and carried standard firearms.

It wouldn’t feel out of place to introduce themselves as soldiers.

“So you’ve come to save Pohang?”

“Yes. We’ve come to attack Pohang and rescue our compatriots living there.”

The female survivor couldn’t dare doubt them based on the appearance of Jeong Dong-geon and his troops, and she misjudged them to be Korean military forces coming to save Pohang.

Of course, her judgment wasn’t entirely wrong.

In fact, Jeong Dong-geon and his troops were indeed coming to attack Pohang and rescue the citizens living there, and they were indeed military from Gyeongju—it’s just that the master of this military was the Balhut Cult, not the Republic of Korea, so what Jeong Dong-geon said was technically true.

“Oh, God! It seems you’re still in heaven! Finally! Finally, the military we’ve been waiting for has arrived!”

“…”

Jeong Dong-geon couldn’t respond to the female survivor’s desperate cry.

Could he tell this woman, who had been waiting with only faith in the government’s military despite her weakened state, that this military was actually the Balhut Cult’s army and that the god she was looking for wasn’t that god but the dragon god?

Jeong Dong-geon wasn’t so tactless, nor was he so unconscionable as to shatter her expectations.

“Keuph!”

The same was true for his subordinate who had been quietly listening from behind.

With an awkward expression, he couldn’t bring himself to tell the female survivor—who was praising the heavenly god and the now-defunct Korean government—about their affiliation, the name of the dragon god they served, or the name of the organization they belonged to.

After the female survivor had been loudly praising God and the government for a while, Jeong Dong-geon steeled himself and said:

“Perhaps it’s thanks to divine guidance that we can save you all.”

“Yes! It truly is divine guidance!”

He responded appropriately.

If he were to say they came to Pohang on the orders of the dragon god Bahamut, it wouldn’t be entirely wrong, would it?

Right now she was in a state of mental weakness and confusion, so he thought that if they calmed her down in a safe place and let her cool her head, she would soon become rational.

What was more important to Jeong Dong-geon now was why a survivor camp had been set up here.

“So, what happened that left you in such a weakened state?”

“I-it’s, it’s spiders! Yes, spiders!”

“Spiders? Calm down. You’re safe here. Please explain calmly.”

In response to Jeong Dong-geon’s question, the female survivor cried out “spiders” as if in a state of confusion, and thinking that her statement needed further explanation, Jeong Dong-geon calmed her down.

He took out an emergency chocolate bar from his bulletproof vest pocket and handed it to the female survivor. After unwrapping it and eating the chocolate, the female survivor finally seemed to calm down and stop her confusion.

Then she calmly explained what had happened in Pohang so far.

“The survivor camps in Pohang were divided into three locations. The Hyeongsan River camp led by Seo Un-jae, the camp established at Pohang University campus led by Professor Ha Jin-woo, and the Marines. We were a small camp that fled after failing to form a large camp centered around Ms. Baek Seol-hwa at Pohang Airport.”

‘Similar to our division into South Gyeongju and North Gyeongju. Three factions… no, if what she said had been realized, it could have been four.’

Pohang was divided into three major camps.

A camp established beyond the Hyeongsan River, a camp established at the university campus, and just the navy.

Lastly, a large camp could have been formed at Pohang Airport, but considering it failed, he could tell that quite a few survivors had survived inside Pohang.

From the division of large camps, Jeong Dong-geon could immediately think of South Gyeongju and North Gyeongju, but:

“But even with different affiliations, we cooperated with each other. We awakened those who could fight as Awakened and fought bravely to reclaim Pohang. When we attacked, other camps or the Marines would respond in kind.”

“So, you’re saying that all of Pohang was engaged in a war against zombies.”

“Yes. We all joined forces to reclaim Pohang, and we could actually hope that we were reclaiming Pohang.”

If there was a slight difference, it was that Pohang still had zombies as a common enemy.

The existence of zombies had brought unity to Pohang, and unlike Gyeongju with its North and South divisions, they could continue the war against zombies by cooperating with each other.

Regardless of faction, the citizens of Pohang had declared they would join forces to reclaim Pohang from the zombies, and they had actually made progress.

“If you’re in this state, it means Pohang hasn’t been reclaimed yet.”

“Yes. Shamefully, we also tried to form a large camp centered around Pohang Airport like the three major camps. We planned to use that as a base to reclaim Pohang together with the three major camps. But unfortunately, the camp failed before it could be formed.”

“By ‘failed,’ you mean…”

“A zombie appeared that was overwhelmingly stronger than mutant zombies. No, can we even call it a zombie? It turned Seol-hwa, the strongest Awakened in Pohang, into a bloody mess in an instant.”

However, the fact that they were here was evidence that the reclamation of Pohang had failed.

The female survivor said they had tried to form a large camp centered around an Awakened like other factions to unite Pohang Airport, but they had failed before the camp could be formed.

When Jeong Dong-geon asked why, the survivor seemed to have trauma about it, trembling with fear whenever she thought about that being.

She said it had defeated the strongest Awakened in Pohang in an instant.

“If it’s a strong zombie, could it be related to those spider webs?”

At Jeong Dong-geon’s question, the female survivor silently nodded in affirmation.

“When Seol-hwa’s Pohang Airport fell, our camp thought everything was lost, so we abandoned our existing camp and came here to escape from Pohang. However, the children and elderly died first, then young civilians, and gradually even the Awakened started dying. We managed to reach the intersection area, but the road to the tunnel was blocked by zombies, so we couldn’t go back or forward.”

She says they managed to escape to the intersection avoiding the spider, but they couldn’t escape further because they were blocked by the zombie horde that Jeong Dong-geon had encountered.

“How have you held out until now?”

It was remarkable that they had held out this long.

However, at Jeong Dong-geon’s words, the female survivor shook her head with a gloomy expression.

“We couldn’t hold out. Whenever we tried to gather supplies to survive, one by one, we were captured as prisoners by the new zombie.”

“Wait. Prisoners? Are you saying this zombie captured us as prisoners instead of turning us into zombies?”

She says they were taken as prisoners.

At the statement that zombies were taking survivors as prisoners, Jeong Dong-geon looked at the female survivor with a surprised expression.

The female survivor opened her mouth with a genuinely fearful, trembling voice.

“Yes. When we went to rescue them, that monster had wrapped the captured humans in spider webs, turning them into cocoons. We didn’t dare touch those cocoons, so we gave up on the rescue and just ran away.”

“At this point, it’s not a zombie but an alien.”

“Indeed.”

Jeong Dong-geon agreed with his adjutant’s lament.

It was to the point where one might think it’s not a zombie anymore but completely an alien, as it was behaving in a completely different way from existing zombies.

No, could this even be called a zombie?

Jeong Dong-geon could now understand what the survivor had said.

Even just hearing the description, it was hard to call it a zombie.