episode_0084

“Do-Hoon, you came earlier than I expected? I thought you’d be back in a few days.”

It was something I heard as soon as I entered Hayura’s room with the old man.

What was a bit funny was that the person I hadn’t seen in a long time was saying something like that, so it just sounded like an annoying remark.

As if she knew everything. Arrogantly. As an old lady.

“What does it matter to you when we come? And you seem to think that you and me are your pets or something. Can you stop thinking like that?”

“Huh, I wish I had known that Dohoon’s tastes were like this. Ah, even if I had known, it would have been too much. Hehe.”

Hayura stared at me as she said those words. I could tell what she meant by that when I saw her slyly crossing her arms and emphasizing her useless fat.

And it wasn’t a funny attack. It was just the kind of idea that would come out of an old lady’s head.

“Well, that’s true. You can fool your appearance, but you can’t fool your age.”

“What did you say…?”

I chuckled at the sight of Hayura’s smile disappearing from her lips as if her mask was breaking.

“I accept the offer then. I want to hear the specific details.”

“Ha…”

The old man intervened appropriately to prevent the situation from escalating into an argument, completely preventing it from happening.

Nice, sir.

It seemed like Hayura had a lot to say back to me, but she couldn’t ignore the fact that the big shot like him was making a move.

The details of the request that the old man had accepted were revealed one by one by Hayura, and we were able to make a rough plan of how to proceed.

*

“4 days later.”

“Okay, how are you going to pack the supplies?”

The old man, me, and his old unit members decided to leave at dawn four days later. According to Hayura, they were also adding superhumans, so quite a lot of force was moving.

Just from that alone, I could tell at a glance how dangerous it was and how it was a request that could not be completed with just simple preparation.

“First, I should ask the experienced people. I don’t know what I’ll end up with if I just bring a knife like I usually do.”

“That’s an unusual idea for an old man.”

“What do you mean I didn’t answer?”

“Is it planned?”

I added with a small smile.

The old man looked at me with a stinging expression as if to say, “How could you say such a harsh thing to me?” But since it was true, I accepted it by giving him a blank expression.

“By the way, I told Hayura not to let me stand up. Why are you so impatient and can’t scratch?”

“That old lady keeps annoying me. She’s getting old and just keeps nagging at old men. She just keeps saying things that make people feel bad.”

The old man narrowed his eyes slightly at the words that came out naturally and blurted out.

“What, jealousy?”

“Mister, do you want to die? Do you think I would feel that way about that lady?”

“Ahem… No, in this situation, it’s like poking someone like this, right? ”

“Next time you say the same thing in front of me, I’ll stab you in the ass.”

The old man flinched and froze at the harsh words spoken. He poured out begging words like, “I won’t do it again,” and “Please forgive me.”

As I diligently crossed the shelter with the old man’s voice in the background, I naturally ran into the old man’s unit members.

“Hello.”

“Oh, Miss Danhwa! Sergeant Kwon was with you too?”

It wasn’t the lieutenant, but rather someone below him, and I found the way he treated me so polite and respectful.

Well, I said hello first because I knew they were that kind of people.

“Ah, what about this lieutenant?”

“The platoon leader is probably resting in the quarters right now. Are you leaving right now?”

“That’s why. This time, I decided to move together with you.”

“Really?”

The faces of the unit members brightened as soon as they heard that the old man was joining them. Looking at them, I could tell that they were in a situation where they had a lot of spare capacity.

“Of course, my partner too.”

“Ohhhh…!”

It seemed like the reaction was more dramatic than the news of the old man joining, but I decided not to pay much attention to it. Aren’t all soldiers like that? They like to just wear a skirt loosely around their waist.

“It’s still a bit dangerous. Are you okay? As for power, I just need a few more girls from the shelter to help…”

“This guy is no different from them. Where did all the experience I gained from working with him for 4 years go?”

“If you have Sergeant Kwon’s guarantee, you don’t have to worry. Miss Danhwa, I ask you to do a good job with this mission.”

“Yeah…what.”

I was about to feel bad because I felt like I was being looked down on, but the old man’s comment cleared up the misunderstanding, so I decided to just let it go.

“Can you give me some specific advice or tips that might be helpful?”

“Well, first of all, since regeneration is not average, it would be better to equip equipment that focuses on firepower. They aren’t the type of guys that will fall down right away just because their bodies have holes in them.”

First of all, it seems like the story is that the basic regenerative ability is similar to that of a Screamer.

“Is Matt’s House better than Screamer?”

“Ah, if you’re talking about mutant-alpha… I guess so. It moves fast, so suppressive fire is often difficult. You can think of it as using Claymore as the default.”

“My back hurts. What else?”

“Ah! Captain!”

The timing was perfect. The highest ranking of the remaining men was Lieutenant Lee, so it was obvious who the platoon leader was.

“Oh, yeah. Sergeant Kwon, you’re finally going to join? Oh, really.”

The lieutenant greeted his subordinates and then looked at the old man with a complicated expression on his face.

I came to help him because he kept making death noises, but why was his reaction like that? I just said thank you and accepted it with a big bow, but it was too much.

I don’t know if he feels bad about getting involved in something dangerous, but from the perspective of someone who made the big decision to help, it’s better to just say thank you than to do something like that.

“Well, that’s what happened. You know my personality.”

“What about Mr. Danhwa?”

“Well, I’m trying to help you. I’m also your friend.”

“Um…”

The lieutenant had a complicated expression on his face. Judging from the reactions of the other unit members earlier, it was clear that they were grateful for the old man’s help, but it seemed that he was also feeling guilty about having dragged in an outsider.

“Just say thank you. Don’t make that face. It’s only us who are in trouble because we decided to help, right?”

“It’s dangerous… Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Danhwa.”

“It’s something that has to be tied up anyway.”

After the old man finished speaking, the three of us moved to a different place. We couldn’t have such an important conversation in a place where anyone could pass by.

“As you know, Gyeongseong, the capital of the Republic, is the most beggarly place in this land.”

This is how the place names in this world are. Some are similar to the place I was in, but some are completely different. Like the one with the name Republic of Korea instead of the name Republic of Korea.

“Because the population was so dense, the entire city was immediately sealed off when the incident occurred. The highways were jammed with cars trying to get out, the train tracks were jammed with people. The skyway was… I don’t know.”

“Let’s just skip over the familiar story and get to the main point.”

“For some reason, the mutants that were in the lab have flowed into Gyeongseong, and the current situation is that they are trying to cluster the mutants in Gyeongseong and spread them to the surrounding areas.”

“You act like you have intelligence.”

“It seems to be there, not as if it exists. I haven’t confirmed whether it’s influenced by past memories or if it learned on its own, but we’ve been taken by surprise before.”

Just hearing it gave me a headache. It’s not easy to deal with a Screamer who’s just stupid, but he has intelligence too.

“So how have you been responding so far?”

“Good question, Mr. Danhwa.”

At my words, the lieutenant closed his mouth for a moment as if choosing his words, then took a map out of his bosom and unfolded it.

“These are cities that promised cooperation with the group we belong to. Well, they are just survivor groups, so it’s a bit misleading to call them cities. Most of them are in the eastern and southern parts of the Gyeonggi area, with survivors from the Western Power Plant in the west and a group of deserters and local survivors in the north.”

Among them, the city that my uncle and I belong to was also crossed out.

“But?”

I couldn’t help but ask back, since that was simply information from the allies and not a countermeasure against those ruthless monsters.

“We can see that the base is set up in a city on the border of Gyeongseong, and Hayura’s superhumans work in rotation, and when special situations arise, we are deployed additionally to repel them, barely maintaining the status quo.”

Then he added, ‘Of course, the supplies are procured locally.’ It was obvious without asking that the supplies were provided by the survivor groups from the cities I mentioned earlier.

“You’re so ignorant.”

“As ignorant as they are, the effect is certain. Thanks to such demonstrations of power, there are even guys who somehow open the floodgates to this shelter and start trading.”

This seemed to be referring to a place like the night market that I saw when I first entered with the old man.

“How did you survive until now?”

“Up until now, the mutants have been passive. They often retreat when the mutants, including the Screamers, are wiped out.”

It seemed clear that something major had changed in the guys’ physiology, although I couldn’t tell you what it was specifically.

“Now it has changed actively. That’s what I mean.”

“Yeah, thanks to that, all the guys in the platoon are drug addicts.”

“It was like that before.”

“Oh my!”

The serious atmosphere was quickly resolved by the old man. Thanks to this, the expression on the face of the lieutenant, who had been frowning more and more frequently while explaining things, improved significantly.

“To put it simply, the ultimate goal is to deal with the platoon members who have turned into monsters.”

“If it were as easy as it sounds, we wouldn’t be doing this.”

“Can’t you make it easy?”

The old man spoke with a confident expression. He was an old-fashioned, haphazard man, but he always got good results, so his expression seemed trustworthy.

*

And the day before departure.

Hayura requested a private meeting with me, not with the uncle.