"The entrance looks different."
From the moment Kim Daram stepped out of the jeep, she looked annoyed.
That was when I knew.
This wasn’t going to go the way I planned.
"Oh, that toilet."
I forced my voice to stay flat.
Daram wasn’t Woo Min-hee.
She had been jealous of Woo Min-hee back in school, but it was never about her—it was about the life she had.
While Kim Daram clawed her way up from rock bottom, desperate just to keep moving forward, Woo Min-hee did whatever the hell she wanted and still ended up in the same ranks.
Their personalities had always been different, but time had stretched that gap into something irreconcilable.
Daram had married young, had a child, became a mother.
Woo Min-hee? Still a free spirit, floating through life on her own terms.
The years had made them polar opposites.
She watched me boot up my laptop, eyes narrowing when I logged into Viva! Apocalypse!
"You got satellite internet too, huh, sunbae?"
Her voice held zero interest.
That was the moment I realized something:
My forbidden records—my buried memories—
Might mean nothing to her.
So I changed tactics.
If she was going to be indifferent, I needed to show her something she couldn’t ignore.
Something from the beginning.
I clicked play.
A grainy war-time video flickered onto the screen.
SKELTON’s Beatbox (3).
My earliest—and quite possibly my most hated—recording.
On screen, a younger me swayed to the beat, face obscured by a mask, letting loose a half-trained, yet earnest beatbox routine—
"Boom-chik! Pak-chik! Chiki-chiki pak-chik!"
For whatever reason, this video had been universally despised.
I figured Kim Daram wouldn’t be any different.
"Oh, this."
She let out the flattest response imaginable, checking her watch mid-sentence.
"You used to practice that all the time back in Beijing, huh?"
No reaction.
But I wasn’t about to back down.
I threw more at her.
All my old posts.
Years’ worth of pointless ramblings from my time as SKELTON.
SKELTON (Daily Life): Tried making a wool felt figurine~
SKELTON (Cooking): 5-minute ramen review
SKELTON (Humor): What happens when a crocodile cries? Crocodile!
SKELTON (Commentary): Why the hell would anyone move into The Hope? It’s obviously a rushed construction job!
SKELTON (Memories): Believe it or not, I used to be kind of a big deal once.
Some of these were two, three years old.
Yet, looking at them now, it was like watching low-resolution footage of my own past.
I could feel everything.
The moments I wrote them.
The emotions behind them.
And more than anything—
The longing.
Back then, there were more users. More friends.
Life was a little better.
Back then, I wouldn’t have had to meet Kim Daram like this.
The truth was—
I was afraid of her now.
"This is basically what the Unified HQ does."
It wasn’t.
Not even close.
But that was it.
Not a single ounce of interest.
The only time she showed even a flicker of reaction—
Was when her gaze landed on the saber on my wall.
Kim Pil-seong’s old Chinese dao, still inscribed with the characters for Invincible.
She stared at it for a long moment before speaking.
"Did he challenge you to a duel?"
"......And that’s why I’m still here."
"Figured. He was cocky as hell. ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) Kept asking me where you were. Said that if you fought again, he’d win this time."
She talked more about him than she did about anything I had shown her.
On her way out, she finally paused.
"I’m heading to Seoul."
A bad job, then.
Something dangerous enough for her to bring it up at all.
"Might die."
That wasn’t my problem.
"If I do, someone else will take my place."
She looked at the saber again.
"There are plenty of people like Kim Pil-seong out there."
"......"
"I’m the only one keeping them in check."
Kim Daram knew me well.
She didn’t try to threaten me.
She didn’t make empty promises.
She just laid out a realistic, possible future—one that was very bad for me.
"What?" I muttered. "If you die, am I supposed to expect the second and third coming of Kim Pil-seong knocking on my door?"
"A lot of people still have delusions about the Golden Fleece, sunbae. And then there’s Professor. The school alumni acknowledge you. But the academy graduates? Not so much."
"Let them come."
"They won’t fight fair."
"...Tch."
That was the real problem.
Daram brushed her fingers over the edge of her eye patch.
"Don’t worry. If I don’t die, nothing happens."
She turned away.
And I found myself speaking.
"I can help. Once."
She smiled.
"It’ll take a day. That okay?"
*
The Armored Vehicle.
A familiar click-clack of metal.
Kim Daram was checking her weapon.
A 12.7mm Anti-Monster Rifle—
“Babyshot.”
It was the same rifle she had always used back in the day.
A failed attempt at a domestic hunter weapon—classified as junk along with the Blader.
It was lightened as much as possible, but still weighed over 10 kilograms.
Reliable, but inaccurate at long range.
High firepower, but no automatic fire.
The kind of useless weapon most people wouldn’t even pick up.
Yet, she had thrown away her German rifle to keep using it.
I had asked her why once.
She had laughed.
"I want to take down medium-class monsters too. With you, we can."
And now she had pulled it from storage.
But something wasn’t adding up.
"Can you even use that anymore?"
She was missing an eye.
You couldn’t shoot like that.
A sniper needed depth perception.
She needed two eyes.
Against monsters, precision was everything.
Even if her eye patch was a fake, that scar—that deep gouge—was real.
There was almost no way her eye had survived that.
Kim Daram just shrugged.
"I’ll shoot by instinct. If I miss, I die. Simple."
She said it casually.
"What about Dongtak?"
"His dad will take care of him."
"Your husband’s still a surgeon?"
"The demand’s insane. Half of it’s for military wives and mistresses wanting a new face."
She smiled.
A different smile.
Not one she ever showed me.
I looked at her scarred face.
He could fix everyone else’s faces, huh?
Just not hers.
The vehicle stopped.
Seoul.
Underneath a faded, bullet-ridden sign that once read "Digital Something District."
The Legion camp loomed ahead.
Hunters in chaotic, mismatched gear gathered as we stepped out.
"Team Leader."
"Captain Kim."
"Kim-team!"
Kim Daram had a squad.
And from the way they looked at her—
They trusted her.
Defender leaned in, grinning.
"Skelton, huh? Didn’t expect to see Kim ‘Team Leader’ Daram acting all sunbae-sunbae around you."
He had been silent the whole ride.
He didn’t say it out loud, but his expression thanked me.
"What’s with the leg? Fake injury?"
"Something like that."
He smirked.
"And yet, here you are."
I shook my head with a wry smile, staring at the back of Kim Daram’s head.
“Well, yeah. No one can withstand Captain Kim’s pressure. But she really is an incredible person. To have achieved this much deep in enemy territory... she’s been through some terrifying conspiracies too.”
“Conspiracies?”
“They thought they could take her lightly because she’s a woman. A group of men tried to gang-rape and kill her.”
“...That so?”
“They all ended up dead by her hand, but one of them managed to hit her eye with an axe.”
“An axe, huh...”
“There are a lot of guys playing ‘Professor’ out here. Especially the academy graduates.”
Defender glanced toward a darkened corner of the camp, where a group of men were watching us with calculating eyes.
Academy graduates.
When the demand for hunters became too great to be filled by school-trained professionals alone, they set up short-term training facilities and mass-produced hunters.
Jon Nae-non was one of them.
“How’s their combat ability?”
“They’re better at hunting people than monsters.”
As we talked, Kim Daram turned toward us.
Defender and I immediately looked away, pretending we hadn’t been saying anything of interest.
She gestured for me to come over.
Limping slightly, I approached.
She glanced down at my leg. “Can you run?”
“If I push myself.”
“You won’t need to. I’ll make sure of that.”
She raised a hand, signaling to the people behind her.
A group broke away from the crowd and walked toward us.
“Sam!”
Song Yoo-jin.
Not just her—there was also Level 4 Awakened Lee Ho-yeon, who I had roamed Seoul with before.
“What the hell are you guys doing here?” I asked.
Song Yoo-jin gave a bitter smile and sighed. “That’s life, isn’t it? Layoffs, job changes, restructuring. Happens all the time, Sam.”
Kim Daram, watching the conversation, interjected, “They were under Woo Min-hee. She got rid of everyone she didn’t need.”
“That so?”
“She claims she’s keeping only the elite to seal the Rifts, but I’d bet she was just running low on resources. The fewer mouths to feed, the bigger her share.”
Every time she mentioned Woo Min-hee, her face twisted slightly with emotion.
She really, really hated her.
Not that I blamed her. I could count on one hand the number of people who actually liked our dear Min-hee (20).
“I’ll give you a quick briefing.”
Kim Daram led me into a tent.
Inside, an old, slightly faded map of Seoul was spread out on the table.
“We’re in Gasan-dong right now. We’ll be clearing our way straight north along the road.”
The map had several areas circled in red marker.
“Monsters?”
She nodded.
“There’s a lot of them.”
There were at least ten marked zones, but she looked unbothered.
“Don’t worry. They’re just monsters.”
“...You do realize most people would find that statement strange, right?”
“Which is exactly why I called you, sunbae.”
“...”
“We’ll clear everything from here to the National Assembly in Yeouido in one go. But for now, get some sleep. We start at dawn.”
“That’s a two-day job.”
“Labor laws don’t count rest time as part of working hours.”
“...Have you ever worked a part-time job?”
“Me? Of course not.”
The source of this c𝓸ntent is freewebnøvel.coɱ.
“Then maybe don’t go quoting labor laws.”
“Why so serious all of a sudden?”
“...Never mind.”
No point arguing with someone who had never worked a day in retail.
At least she had set aside a personal tent for me.
Inside, there was clean drinking water, coffee, snacks, toiletries, towels, even a phone charger and spare batteries.
We had worked together for a long time, and she was still just as meticulous as ever.
A good partner in battle.
Even if she’d traded her combat gear for suits and had changed in a lot of ways, she was still the best ally I’d ever had on the battlefield.
That’s probably why I searched for her when she disappeared.
Of course, now that she was here, I really wished she wasn’t.
I sat inside the tent, listening to the murmurs outside.
“This is ridiculous. How the hell are we supposed to clear from here to Yeouido in a single day?”
“We have to. The Unified HQ boss wants to give a victory speech at the National Assembly by Memorial Day.”
“That why he’s been cosplaying as Park Chung-hee?”
“Nah, he says he’s going for Che Guevara.”
“...Isn’t Che Guevara a guerrilla fighter?”
“Either way, it’s impossible in a day. Even if D-Zone is relatively safer than the others, do you know how many reported monsters there are?”
“Well, they think it’s possible. Why else would they send Kim-team out here and even drag in the leftover scraps from the old National Committee?”
“...Fuck. We’re gonna be building a mass grave tomorrow.”
I had a pretty good grasp of the situation now.
Kim Daram’s superior had made some grand promise, expecting her to make it happen.
And to pull it off, she had come to me.
The whole limping act and the Skelton persona was just a waste of time.
From the beginning, she had every intention of bringing me along.
Just like how I knew her limits, she knew mine.
The monster locations and numbers on the map made it clear.
This was a job only we could do.
*
The next morning.
Operation time.
“Sunbae, ready?”
Kim Daram came to my tent, fully geared up.
I had already finished preparing. The last thing I did was secure the harness holding my twin axes.
She studied me with her one remaining eye.
“You heard them talking last night, didn’t you?”
I knew what she was getting at.
She had heard it too.
How impossible this mission was.
She had slept in the camper, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t heard all the complaints.
I smirked slightly and nodded.
“...Yeah.”
“How many did we kill in one day back in Beijing?”
“Thirty-four... no, thirty-five.”
“This is less than half that. No hostile civilians, no fanatics.”
I nodded again and pushed aside the tent flap.
The sky was still dark, only the faintest hints of dawn creeping in.
Beneath it, dozens of faces were watching.
They whispered among themselves.
“Who the hell is that guy?”
“Been getting special treatment since yesterday.”
“No idea.”
Kim Daram hadn’t told them about me.
I suppose that was considerate in its own way.
I still didn’t want to do this.
But at this point, I had no choice.
And strangely enough... I felt a little excited.
“...Shall we begin?”
How could I not be?
The best partner I’d ever had was back.
And we were about to slaughter monsters.
It was something I never thought I’d do again.
And above all else—
Tonight, my flames of hatred would feast without restraint.