Chapter 224: I Think I Know
Junho ran through the corridor where cloudy dust mixed with concrete particles was settling down.
He was definitely slower than when he was carrying normal equipment.
But it was still about the speed of an ordinary person sprinting one hundred meters at full speed.
- The indoor ambush succeeded and multiple enemies are panicking! Be more aggressive! Run, Junho! Faster!
For a moment, he felt as though he could hear the Redrock Academy instructor shouting.
In merely a few seconds, after crossing more than twenty meters, Junho swung the machete toward the heat signatures visible through the wide-angle night-vision goggles.
Puhk! Sgak! Kwa-jik!
The four standing behind those who had been turned into chunks of meat by the K413 fragmentation grenade instantly had their heads and upper bodies split apart and severed.
“Aaagh!?”
“Fuck, shoot! Shoot him!”
Among those who had failed to regain their senses after the gunfire and grenade explosion, several pulled their triggers.
BANG! Tatang! KWABANG!
Gunfire exploded through the corridor once more.
But there was no way their aim could be accurate.
Instinctively, they fired toward the flashes and smoke bursts.
And Junho was the only one not carrying a flashlight.
“Ghk!”
“Ack!”
In the end, the bullets they fired mostly missed or hit their own comrades.
Even so, because they were firing into a narrow corridor, several rounds struck Junho, whose body was by far the largest there.
Puhk! Pupuhk!
Standard 5.56mm rounds and lead pellets from air rifles slammed into the Dragon Scale.
At such close range, even an ordinary person—or a special forces operator—would have suffered serious shock.
But Junho only felt as though someone had lightly punched him.
Tatak! Tak!
Toward the human silhouettes and heat signatures faintly visible through the smoke, Junho pulled the trigger of the Glock 17.
The distance was only around ten meters.
There was no possibility of missing.
In an instant, two people collapsed with subsonic rounds embedded in the middle of their foreheads and one of their eyes.
“Ugh... huaaah....”
Puhk!
After putting a bullet into the back of the head of a bastard wriggling across the corridor floor in panic from the continuous gunfire and explosions, Junho scanned the corridor still submerged in darkness through his wide-angle night-vision goggles.
There were no more moving heat signatures.
The building was so large that the remaining bastards appeared to have fled inside the shops.
Junho slowly rose over the obstacles.
Then, while walking toward where the remaining men had likely escaped, he spoke quietly.
“Manager, are you ready? A few of them will probably head your way.”
- Confirmed. We’re ready.
Fwish! Drip, drip!
Hearing Yoon Seolhee’s answer, Junho flicked the machete once, shaking blood and chunks of flesh from the blade.
There were still around thirty minutes left before sunrise.
Everything had to be finished before then.
***
The Nami Island looters forced the people they treated like slaves to live packed inside a hanok-style building directly beside the food court.
There was only one usable entrance.
All the others had been blocked with piled obstacles, while the windows had been sealed with wire mesh or wooden planks.
But there was no way the people there—barely twenty or thirty meters away from the food court where a reaper had descended and was carrying out a massacre—could fail to hear the gunfire and explosions.
“W-What is that? Gunfire? Did someone shoot?”
“Something exploded.”
“Huaaang....”
As the people whispered nervously in extreme tension, several of the few children there began crying.
“Hey, shut that brat up already!”
“I-I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
At someone’s shout, the young woman who was apparently the child’s mother panicked helplessly.
Although they were people who had watched countless others—fellow tourists and workers from this place—die before barely surviving and being forced to live like slaves, even among them a “hierarchy” existed.
And at the very bottom of that hierarchy were the young children who consumed food while being unable to contribute anything.
“Hhk... Daeun, shhh. Don’t cry, okay? Stay quiet. Okay?”
“Hng... ngh, hic.”
As her mother cried and the gazes of the adults concentrated on her, the child—about seven or eight years old—nodded while holding her breath in fear.
“Seriously, why are you acting like that toward a child?”
“Daeun’s mother. Calm down, calm down.”
Several older women comforted the child and her mother.
Meanwhile—
“Tch, fuck. They all know damn well why those brats are being kept alive, and they’re still pretending to be nice people....”
A middle-aged man acting as one of the looters’ “overseers” glared at the scene and muttered irritably.
“......!”
At those words, several nearby people flinched.
But that was all.
Pretending not to hear, they desperately avoided looking toward the children and instead strained to peer outside through the gaps between the nailed planks.
KWABANG...! Tatang...! Bang...!
“I think something really happened out there.”
One man muttered while trying desperately to look outside through the cracks, though there was no light at all and he could barely see anything.
KIIIIIIIIING...!
At that moment, a sharp mechanical noise rapidly swept past the building they were inside.
“Uwah!?”
At the large and eerie sound, the man fell onto his backside.
“W-What was that? What was that sound just now?”
As everyone became even more terrified and fell into confusion—
“...Ah!”
A rather young-looking man suddenly widened his eyes and stepped forward, unable to hide his excitement.
“A d-drone! It’s a drone!”
“A drone...?”
“Yes! That sound just now sounded like a drone flying! No! I’m sure of it! That was definitely a drone!”
“You mean those flying drones? Why would there be...?”
“No, those bastards have drones too, don’t they? They probably launched them from the food court. Fuck, making a fuss over nothing....”
At the middle-aged overseer’s words, the young man rapidly shook his head.
“No, no! It’s different from the ones those people have. Besides, theirs are all small models, so they can’t even fly in weather like this!”
“R-Really? Then what the hell is it?”
When someone asked, the young man—whose former hobby had been flying drones—spoke excitedly.
“S-Someone else came here!”
***
Immediately after Junho cut the island’s power and communications systems—
The three people who rapidly arrived at the Nami Island dock in an inflatable boat from the mainland roughly two hundred meters away remained waiting there for the moment while supporting Junho as he moved from the hotel toward the food court.
While Choi Hyunwoo, who had served in the Marines and was familiar with this kind of landing operation, stood watch around the area—
Yoon Seolhee and Park Deokcheol controlled the A2 drones to draw the attention of the looters heading toward the hotel where the power room was located and attack them, while Junho finished them off.
And once Junho entered the food court where the looters lived and engaged in combat, they once again scattered the bastards’ attention using the drones.
Originally, the plan had been for all four people to secure positions simultaneously and launch a nighttime assault.
But because there were other survivors on Nami Island living in a separate location, they chose this method instead.
It was to prepare for the possibility of a hostage situation.
In a place like this—where they had never been before and where thick trees made it difficult to understand the building layout in detail—it was absolutely forbidden for everyone to recklessly storm in or enter the buildings at once.
“Mr. Hyunwoo, take the area over there near the stage. Mr. Deokcheol, take position on top of that monorail.”
“Yes!”
As the two moved to their assigned positions, Yoon Seolhee concealed herself in the grass between the food court and the hanok-style building.
Biiing.
The muzzle of her K1A submachine gun fitted with an ordinary laser pointer aimed toward one of the food court’s entrances.
It was something they had received from Major Lee Seokjin’s unit in Deokso in exchange for twenty modified air rifles from our shelter and several thousand tungsten rounds.
It was a normal unsuppressed model, but on an island like this where zombies could not come whether gunshots rang out or not, firing openly posed no problem.
“.......”
Repeatedly glancing at the thermal imaging feed sent by the reconnaissance drone hovering above the food court, Yoon Seolhee focused all her attention on the rear entrance.
According to the information Junho obtained, the food court where the looters stayed had a tremendous number of entrances.
But Park Gyumin, the ruler of this place, had closed all of them and normally used only three.
And at the front entrance where Junho had entered, Park Deokcheol was waiting atop the rail of a sky bicycle ride.
The rear entrance was covered by Choi Hyunwoo.
And this hidden passage used secretly by the staff—a doghole and escape route—was assigned to Yoon Seolhee herself.
Naturally, if the bastards inside fled from the food court, this was the route they were most likely to use.
Bang!
And just like one of the many simulations Junho had prepared before they departed for this place—
The hidden passage burst open, and three people rushed out in a panic with flashlight beams.
The instant she saw the reddish human shapes appear on the black-and-white screen, Yoon Seolhee instantly decided target priority, aimed at the shoulder of the person in front, and pulled the trigger.
BANG!
The target’s upper body jerked violently as he began collapsing, and Yoon Seolhee reflexively fired at the arms and shoulders of the second and third targets as they shrank back.
Tatang! Bang!
The distance was roughly twenty-five meters.
There was no way a former Special Forces NCO firing a weapon equipped with a laser pointer could miss.
The three men who emerged from the hidden passage all dropped their flashlights and guns before collapsing onto the ground.
“Down! Down!”
Papapapapak!
While simultaneously informing the others of the situation, Yoon Seolhee pushed through the grass and ran toward the fallen bastards.
“Ghh....”
Puhk!
Just as one bastard was trying to pull out a pistol with his left hand, Yoon Seolhee’s outdoor shoe smashed hard into his jaw.
Soon after kicking away the guns the bastards had dropped, Yoon Seolhee pointed her weapon at the two remaining men trembling violently and spoke quietly.
“Situation contained. Three captured.”
- We’re done here too.
Hearing Junho’s voice—steady as ever despite having entered the building alone and eliminated more than ten armed looters—Yoon Seolhee’s lips curved slightly in relief.
***
Fifteen dead.
Eight critically wounded.
The rest lightly injured or otherwise unharmed.
Of the more than thirty Nami Island looters, over half had either died or been reduced to a state where death was only a matter of time, resulting in total annihilation.
The assault force consisted of only four people.
And two of them had not even directly fired their guns after entering the island.
The drones had only eliminated three or four people who came outside.
Most of the deaths had been caused by a single person.
And that reaper stood beneath the morning sunlight that was beginning to rise brightly as though the heavy rain throughout the night had been a lie.
“.......”
Silently staring at the critically wounded and captured looters, as well as the gathered people in the open space before the food court.
“What about the government? What happened to the government?”
“No! I mean, all of you are soldiers, right? Then somehow you should have—”
Quite a number of survivors were aggressively confronting Yoon Seolhee and Park Deokcheol, who looked relatively approachable.
Was it logically possible for them to act like that when the other side held guns and more than ten people had died?
'It’s entirely possible.'
The world had already collapsed.
And expecting humans who had barely survived life-threatening danger to all remain cold-headed and rational afterward was not even worthy of being called a joke.
Of course, most wore expressions full of shock and fear as they looked at Junho and his group.
But among them were people who, while not as insane as the looters, had still partially lost their minds and were spraying spit everywhere as they unleashed not survival instinct but greed.
“Fuck! Why did you only come now!? Person in charge! Where’s the person in charge!?”
Junho looked at the middle-aged man protesting more violently than anyone else.
According to Choi Hyunwoo, who had broken down the barricades and rescued these people, he was supposedly the leader—or at least the loudest voice—among the people who had lived like slaves on Nami Island.
But Junho knew.
Among people who had been ruled by others in an environment like this, those who reacted in such excessively dramatic ways almost always belonged to a very particular category.
Step. Step. Step....
Junho had already removed the Dragon Scale, but compared to the survivors who had barely eaten properly, his physique was overwhelmingly larger.
As he walked forward, everyone’s gaze focused on him.
“Hey, do you know who I am? I—”
The man who had been pointing at Park Deokcheol while the latter wore an awkward expression slowly turned his body after sensing the atmosphere suddenly becoming strange.
“......!?”
The middle-aged man flinched when he saw Junho standing several meters away, silently staring at him.
“I think I know who you are.”
“...What?”
The man widened his eyes at the casual speech coming from the much younger-looking Junho.
But he did not dare continue speaking.
Because anyone who was not an idiot could tell who the leader here was.
“Aren’t you the bastard who cooperated with those fuckers and sold people out?”
“......!!!”
At Junho’s words—spoken while glancing toward Park Gyumin’s group lying bound on the ground after being shot—the middle-aged man’s expression completely changed.
“You looked like you were in the same situation as everyone else, but you got extra food through the back door. They probably also told you they’d let you join them if you cooperated well enough, whether through threats or gaslighting.”
“W-What...? N-No, I’m not—”
The middle-aged man stumbled over his words after being hit directly in the weak spot and having the truth exposed.
“Those kids over there. The little ones.”
Junho shifted his gaze slightly to the side and continued.
“You were the one who said they should keep them alive for now, right? According to those bastards, they originally planned to throw them all away, but one of the sla.ves. came up with a good idea. And I think I know why you did it.”
“Ghk...!”
The middle-aged man inhaled sharply, his face instantly draining of color.
Junho stared at him with eyes that seemed to flicker with cold flames.
“You planned to keep raising the kids so later, if something happened or you needed to distract zombies, you could use them as bait, right? Kids are slow, and unlike adults, when they see zombies they freeze in place, you disgusting piece of shit.”
At the regressor’s words—someone who had already seen and experienced that nauseating situation before—the face of the trash who had abandoned being human long ago turned deathly dark.