Chapter 404: Chapter 404
It was a day of thunder and lightning.
In a ruined city, we prepared for a decisive battle.
The mission objective was a single monster.
It was positioned at the center of the city.
The city itself was arranged in concentric circles around a single statue, and at every entry point leading inward stood powerful mid-to-large-class combat-type monsters—stationed like imperial guards, as if protecting their emperor.
Ironically, at the exact spot where the statue of the resisting people once stood—the symbol of that city—a shimmering rift had appeared ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) like fate itself, gazing down upon our civilization, already ruined and yet to be ruined.
Toward that city of death, humanity prepared its final counterattack.
"This is Pool. Target eliminated and road secured. Proceeding to next operational area."
"Alpha One. A13 target neutralization confirmed. Moving to next point."
"Incoming transmission from Chinese Air Force. Entering designated airspace. Commencing bombardment of target zone now."
Forty-five Korean hunters, seventy-three Chinese hunters, and over five hundred Chinese troops were deployed in this operation.
A small force, but only the absolute elite had been selected.
The target was a large-class monster suspected of controlling other monsters.
No clear photos, no video evidence—nothing had ever been found. But based on survivor testimonies, the Chinese military believed it existed. They brought the matter to me.
Why choose me, not a scholar?
Because they knew I wasn’t the type to obey authority.
At the time, the “academic community” was dominated by a mainstream faction, wrapped in unverifiable prestige, much like in other fields. Their theory claimed the idea of a thinking monster was as absurd as saying rabbits live on the moon.
I reached my conclusion based solely on survivor testimonies, evidence, and personal experience.
At the time, we had Kang Han-min and Na Hye-in—both Awakened.
Using them as the main force, we devised a plan to take out the monster leader stationed in front of the rift.
Chinese survivors, burning with vengeance, provided detailed information at the cost of their lives. Despite internal strife that left their military in disarray, they committed their remaining forces to the operation.
Thus, humanity’s counterattack began.
Everything went smoothly.
Advancement and territory control proceeded as scheduled. Priority targets were eliminated, unexpected survivors were rescued, and even an unidentified large-class monster was sighted by the frontmost unit.
What if we had gone just a bit farther?
Disaster struck without warning.
"I... I can't. I can't go any further. Something’s wrong with my body."
"I'm sorry. My vision is blurry... I can't stand. Someone help me up."
Kang Han-min and Na Hye-in, the ones leading the assault, retreated right in front of the unidentified monster.
With our two Awakened anchors gone, the entire plan we had built with the Chinese teetered on collapse.
"What are you going to do?"
Ignoring Kim Daram’s question, I yanked off my headset and stormed out of the command room.
It was a day of thunder and lightning.
Most memories of that day have faded like wet newspaper, but the storm—that weather—remains preserved in my mind in eternal clarity.
That day, I tasted defeat against a monster for the first time.
I woke up in a hospital bed.
The last memory I had was returning to my room and browsing the internet, when a sudden fever and pounding headache hit me. I collapsed onto the bed and passed out.
"What time is it now?"
She said I had slept without stirring for twenty hours.
My physical condition wasn’t bad.
In fact, I felt oddly refreshed.
Seems like fatigue had really piled up in my body over time.
After a quick trip to the bathroom, I found Cheon Young-jae and Kim Daram standing by my bedside.
Kim Daram checked my complexion with concern.
Judging by the look on her face, I must’ve looked alright.
Even before I answered, the worry faded from her expression.
“...Thanks to you, I slept well.”
Being able to sleep that soundly in times .
I might’ve had a nightmare toward the end, but so what?
It’s been a month since the monsters began their full-scale offensive.
We’ve been holding them off with relative ease.
Like baseball—whenever someone tosses a pitch, we strike it clean.
But the situation isn’t good.
The signs of deterioration are clear. People can’t stay in a high-tension state for long.
In the Necropolis that Ballantine risked his life to bring us, the posts are filled with criticism toward the New Seoul government. Our board too has been flooded with calls to expand the Citizens’ Committee, along with accusations of Woo Min-hee’s incompetence.
The reason I’d stayed up deleting and blocking posts all night was to clean up these clearly organized—likely manually written—public opinion manipulations.
One more concern is Woo Min-hee’s mental state.
She was forced to take the role of New Seoul’s leader, but she’s neither strong-willed nor particularly responsible.
She did stand up for us against Jeju once, but as the situation stagnated and dissatisfaction from below grew, she rapidly burned out and lost interest.
“She didn’t show up to today’s meeting either?”
She skipped yesterday too.
Typical of her, really—but she’s the representative of New Seoul now.
Behavior only puts her position at risk.
Until now, she’d dodged accountability with titles like “Director,” but there’s no one left who doesn’t know she’s the leader now.
I contacted her directly, but got no response.
Why, with so many monsters near the rift, haven’t they launched a full-scale assault?
Wouldn’t they be able to crush this city of ruins in a single wave?
I wondered the same thing.
But looking at the current situation... maybe they don’t need to.
Even just sending in small numbers gradually is enough—the human empire is rotting and crumbling from within.
“Skelton, are you alright?”
Hong Da-jeong and Defender came to visit.
She looked thinner, but not in noticeably poor health.
She hesitated, then leaned in and whispered.
“You and Woo—are you, like, a thing?”
“I mean, there are rumors.”
Who the hell started that?
It has to be Kim Daram.
There’s no one else. It’s 100% her.
Even if Kim Daram were dead, it’d still be her fault.
I was about to call her when Defender’s voice cut in.
He was staring out the window.
I knew what he was looking at.
The distant voices of the protesters had been echoing in for a while now.
Their growing numbers are one reason Woo Min-hee keeps skipping meetings.
“...While some of us are risking our goddamn lives fighting cultist bastards.”
Defender met my gaze.
A name I didn’t know.
Judging by the tone, one of his teammates.
“He did something stupid. I told him to go easy and kill fast, but he didn’t listen. Ended up getting marked by Beom-baek—got headshotted.”
“Yeah. The bastard who attacked that Hunter team you rescued.”
There was a murderous gleam in Defender’s eyes.
“I’ll kill that son of a bitch... no matter what.”
After the siblings left, Cheon Young-jae returned.
“Senior. This what you wanted?”
He brought a satellite internet terminal and a laptop.
The doctor recommended I rest for three days.
I won’t take all three, but I’ll take one.
mmmmmmmmm™: Captain M9’s Seoul Update! (32)
Not that I planned to spend it reading M9’s garbage posts.
Still, out of habit, I clicked a trending post and ended up reading one of his.
Scanned it—total trash.
But it got popular... because of the photo.
There was a pretty woman in it.
Ji Young-hee, resident of The Hope, casually showed up in M9’s photos.
Not the main focus, just her profile or passing shots, but my trained eyes saw the pattern.
It was clearly staged.
Animals. Babies. Beauties.
The holy trinity of internet traffic.
Ji Young-hee may have fallen, but I doubt she’d date someone like M9.
Still, if he finds a puppy somewhere, he might complete the trifecta.
Even a mutant one wouldn’t matter.
After all, M9 once “accidentally” threw his own pet off The Hope’s balcony.
Elsewhere, Baek Seung-hyun posted for the first time in a while.
dongtanmom: ShintoBuri... ShintoBuri... yum yum...
The title alone made me sigh.
Shouldn’t she have snapped out of it by now?
There’s barely anything to chew out at sea, so why all the yum-yum nonsense?
Anyway, leaving behind this sickening yet familiar world of internet friends, I headed to the English board.
It’s another trash dump, but since their collapse is slower than ours and there are a lot of former pro-hunters here, there’s some value.
For the first time in a while, I used the Viva! Apocalypse! board for its proper purpose.
Though I did flex a little “authority.”
SKELTON: VivaBot, I’m really sorry, but could you feature my post?
SKELTON: It’s for a good cause, I swear.
A bit of back-and-forth, but VivaBot relented in the private channel.
VIVA_BOT014: Then I’ll open a new discussion tab. Highlighted!
A new thread was created.
The topic: “Large-Scale Offensives.”
With survival-critical prizes sponsored by the collapsing Melon Mask company via drones.
VIVA_BOT014: Melon still thanks you, Skelton!
When rewards are involved, posts flood in.
As always, 70% trash, 29% bluff, and maybe 1% worth reading.
That 1% is where the gold is.
I found a few interesting users and started reading.
Danpool833: That’s how Kansas fell. Experts predicted large-scale offensives, but they never came. Just small groups invading periodically—too tough for light arms. The National Guard repelled them.
Danpool833: We held for three years. Then riots broke out. Starvation. Exposure. Corruption. It all unraveled.
Danpool833: Protesters attacked soldiers. Soldiers fired back. The city burned. Looting and rape everywhere. In the end, a gray swarm passed over the abandoned defenses without resistance.
Danpool833: That’s how my hometown ended.
yari-magic: Large-scale offensives are a myth.
yari-magic: They say it happened in China, but knowing them, probably lies.
yari-magic: Never heard of one in India.
yari-magic: The world was already at its limit before monsters showed up. They just lit the fuse.
yari-magic: The age-old cycle—war, depopulation, recovery—collapsed. Medicine let people live too long.
yari-magic: Lifespans extended, but it was like feeding cancer cells.
yari-magic: Monsters didn’t destroy us. We destroyed ourselves.
A bit too ideological.
Started strong, then veered off.
A European voice chimed in:
L-V-R-M: Large-scale offensives did happen in China. Documented—undeniable.
L-V-R-M: In the beginning, yes.
L-V-R-M: But lately? Nothing. No recent big events.
L-V-R-M: If one had, it’d be on Live! Apocalypse! in seconds. Like Twelve Square—just filming it guarantees views.
L-V-R-M: Yet cities keep falling.
Seems like everyone’s thinking the same thing.
Plenty of people share my view.
But agreement alone doesn’t solve the problem.
But who can provide one?
Even I, who’ve spent half a life fighting monsters, can’t find a clue.
My suggestion: kill the General-type.
But how do we find it?
The world’s mostly wrecked. Drones crash constantly. Satellite photos are useless with the fog from the erosion zones.
Can we really send someone?
I was about to head back to the Korean board, carrying my unresolved frustration, when one comment caught my eye like a spell.
Zebusika: If there’s some boss-type monster that thinks, shouldn’t we just piss it off?
A throwaway comment from a third party in a thread debating why no large-scale assaults have happened.
No one paid attention to it.
And yet it caught me.
Maybe because of what Woo Min-hee told me.
That the General-type fears me.
Fear alone doesn’t imply other emotions, but fear is something only a being with a sense of self can feel.
Emotions are the offspring of the ego.
Not such a foolish thought after all.
As I stared at the drifting keyboard war in a daze, my phone buzzed.
“Boss. We found something weird near Seoul Station.”
A blurry, hard-to-identify photo arrived.
A monster. A large-class one.
Unlike anything I’d seen.
It looked like the queen of termites—ashen gray, grotesque—sitting atop the rails of old Seoul Station like a throne.
I couldn’t be sure, but—
“Wait. Get me Woo Min-hee. Tell her it’s urgent.”
This one... could it be a Screamer-type?