“The elementary school, The First Apartments, and now the people we rescued from Lower District too. They still haven’t fully come together, right?”
“...I’ve got nothing to say to that.”
Kim Seokhwan looked apologetic, but Junho shook his head.
“No. I’m not blaming you, sir. I expected that. But if they’re really going to unite as a community bound by fate, then they need to stake their lives on something together.”
“S-so that’s why, this time, you’re staying out of it and making us fight on our own?”
“Yes. Of course, we’ll provide the air rifles and ammunition. The drones too. So.”
Junho tapped the map again and went on.
“The people in Edutown have no idea we’re watching everything from above. But we know when they move, where they’re headed, and how many there are. With air rifles and bows, you can stop them just fine. Right?”
Song Gijun met Junho’s gaze and answered confidently.
“Of course. On top of that, we outnumber them by a lot, and we’ve got more weapons too—guns, bows, all of it. We can wipe out every Edutown bastard that comes at us, and then hit back ourselves. Sure, some people might die or get hurt. But if we don’t do this with our own hands, we’ll just split apart and start fighting each other again.”
“You’re right, Gijun. Absolutely right. We ought to protect our town with our own hands.”
“That’s right. Depending on how things look, I’ll send my son too, so use him however you want.”
At Song Gijun’s explanation, Kim Seokhwan gave a heavy nod, and even Go Jeongnam voiced his agreement.
Then Junho spoke again.
“But, gentlemen.”
All three turned to look at him.
“I said I wouldn’t take part in the fight against Edutown. I never said I wasn’t going to fight at all.”
“Huh?”
“T-Then...?”
Under their puzzled stares, Junho slid his finger across the tablet screen.
The aerial map moved past The First Apartments and Edutown Apartments, then tilted down over Moku-ri.
A cold light in his eyes, Junho spoke quietly.
“While you fight Edutown, I’m going to hit the Kookje faction myself.”
Before regression, the decisive reason he had been forced to choose death in the middle of downtown Namyangju had been the Kookje faction, a real organized-crime syndicate.
Along with Han Changsik’s Hanchang Development—still barely clinging to life in the basement of that country house—they were, if anything, the true enemy.
To Junho, this fight was real revenge.
***
The next day, the Gahyeon-ri community received twenty low-spec air rifles produced at the shelter, along with two thousand rounds.
The men chosen to use them were all adult males who had completed military service and had family living at Gahyeon Elementary.
Which meant the people handed air rifles would have a hard time getting any funny ideas.
Crude as it was, their families—the ones they had protected and not abandoned even in a world like this—had effectively been made into the rifles’ safety catch.
Since every one of them had been through the military, they were able to zero their sights and complete their test firing immediately and without issue. The next day, they headed for The First Apartments by the narrow mountain path that ran through the country-house neighborhood.
Only around a dozen people were left standing guard at The First Apartments, and most of the residents had already pulled out.
Plenty had cried their eyes out at having to leave behind the home they had struggled so hard to buy.
But everyone knew it had become impossible to keep securing water and food there, and more than anything, that without Junho’s support, there was no way they would have made it through this winter.
So the roughly three hundred survivors packed only what they absolutely needed and moved into vacant homes inside the safe zone, where walls had been built out of shipping containers and wrecked cars.
“All right, put the drones on standby at the designated positions.”
“Understood.”
At Yoon Youngsu’s voice in his earpiece, Song Gijun climbed up to the apartment rooftop through the cutting wind and prepared four drones and a rapid charger.
These drones would operate in two-drone teams in case anything went wrong—one to watch the area around Song Gijun and his men, the other to tail the enemy.
The general-purpose drones, originally agricultural models but modified to carry cameras with thermal imaging, were actually pretty useful, aside from their short flight time of around twenty minutes.
“From here on, the tablet and laptop will show split-screen feeds—our drone cameras on one side and the PTZ cameras on the other. You can control the drone we left there from your side too, but we’ll basically handle it.”
“Understood. That’s easier for us too.”
The “female” drone pilot on the other end had flying skills far steadier than those of the resident who claimed to have flown drones as a hobby for years.
And there was no choice but to be impressed by how calmly she kept reporting the enemy’s direction of movement while also telling their side the best firing positions, factoring in every variable.
“They’re starting to move along the expected route now. You see them, right?”
“Yes. I see them.”
Song Gijun and the men from the search-and-elimination team stared at the screen with tense eyes.
The PTZ cameras recently installed on the rooftop had a daytime visibility range of a full kilometer.
Which meant they could see in fine detail whenever anyone came out from the Edutown Apartments, just over five hundred meters away.
“Judging by the numbers, today’s probably just a final route check and a look at what’s going on over here. For a bunch of gangsters, they’re weirdly thorough.”
“......”
“Still, thanks to those guys, the zombies in that neighborhood have gone down quite a bit. They even killed an Alpha for us. Huh?”
“What is it?”
“Looks like today’s market day after all. About thirty more just came out of Edutown Building 1.”
The moment Yoon Youngsu finished speaking, the tablet showed footage from one of the shelter’s high-performance drones.
Just as she said, a little over thirty men were on the move, each carrying a weapon.
“Holy shit. Those bastards?”
“W-What do we do?”
“What do you mean what do we do? We fight.”
The men from the search-and-elimination team began murmuring in alarm at what they saw.
“What do we do now?”
Even Song Gijun was slightly rattled, though he tried not to show it as he asked the question.
“I already reported it to the boss. He says he’s heading out with Junhyeok now.”
“What? I heard Mr. Junho wasn’t getting involved this time.”
“That’s right. Junhyeok is just supporting you. The boss says he’s going to Moku-ri.”
“What?”
This time Song Gijun couldn’t help letting his shock show openly.
“What about scouting? How many more gangsters from this Kookje faction do you think there might be? Hell, before that, do you even know where their base is?”
“Of course we do. We installed a relay, solar panels, and batteries on the rooftop of the apartment you’re in a while back, remember? We can send drones all the way near Moku-ri Station anytime now.”
“Ah...”
“Anyway, you know the tenant rep’s building in Edutown? The Cheongsan Building. That’s where the Kookje faction’s staying. It’s close to the nightclub too.”
“Then the route to get there...?”
“We already used the drones to figure out exactly how those Kookje gangster old men have been coming and going. Heh.”
“......”
Faced with Junho’s thoroughness combined with advanced technology, Song Gijun was left speechless.
Then again, someone that prepared was exactly the kind of man who could wipe out dozens of EoktenZ punks by himself and eventually crush Hanchang Development too.
“All right, all right. It’ll take about twenty minutes for the Edutown guys and those gangsters to get there. Everybody move to the positions we told you about in advance and get ready. If you just hold the line, you win. Guaranteed.”
“Understood.”
After the call ended, Song Gijun turned to his men.
Some were apartment residents who had been fighting alongside him from the start.
Others were people who had been living at Gahyeon Elementary.
If the world hadn’t turned out like this, they probably would have lived their whole lives without ever knowing one another’s faces.
But now, as one community, they had to fight together so their families could live.
“You all heard that, right? Let’s move. Don’t get hurt. Let’s all make it back and see each other alive. Keep your ears open at all times, and if anything happens, report it over the radio immediately.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Let’s live. Let’s meet again alive.”
At Song Gijun’s words, the heads of household of the apocalypse—fathers and sons, men whose precious families were safe inside the Gahyeon-ri community—hardened their resolve.
***
“Make sure you lock the rooftop door. And if anything happens, get inside the safe house.”
“Yeah, don’t worry. You be careful too, brother.”
“Right. More importantly, you good on food and sleep?”
“Totally. If I sleep with Purdy in the sleeping bag, he’s warm as hell. Heh.”
Junho kept talking over the radio with Junhyeok, who had already been holed up with Purdy for three days in the safe house on one of Edutown’s upper floors.
Now that some of the Kookje faction’s members had joined Edutown while armed with actual firearms,
Junho had judged there was a high chance something would happen within the week, and had sent Junhyeok and Purdy to the safe house set up on the top floor of Edutown Building 2.
The Edutown survivors had not been able to open it.
It had not been fitted with an ordinary front door, but a specially made blast-resistant door with four separate locks.
So it was still serving as both a safe house and a forward unmanned surveillance post.
But with a clash between Edutown and The First already set in motion, that place now had to become a manned post capable of taking an active role.
So on a moonless night, Junhyeok had put on night-vision goggles, thoroughly searched the stairwell with a mini drone, and only then entered the safe house.
The secret had been kept so tightly that no one besides the brothers and Yoon Youngsu even knew about it.
Because if Junhyeok’s position were somehow identified by the enemy, he could end up trapped in there alone.
Of course, they had also sent along a helper to support Junhyeok’s fighting and survival with Purdy.
That helper was the new attack drone, the masterpiece created by Yoon Youngsu and Baek Hail.
“And A1? You checked it one more time, right?”
“Of course. Loud as hell, but we’re launching it from the roof anyway, and the wind’s strong today, so nobody’ll hear it. By the way, you said the accuracy goes to shit from the height of these apartment rooftops, right?”
“Yeah. That’s the downside. But it’s fine. We didn’t build it with accuracy in mind anyway. It’s purely for suppression.”
The A1 was an aerial attack drone capable of firing an air rifle while hovering in place.
But unlike the G1, which operated on the ground and was heavy enough on its own,
the A1 had a maximum payload of only ten kilograms, making it relatively light, and in flight, recoil was extremely difficult to control because of high-altitude wind direction and wind speed.
On top of that, its flight time while shooting was only around ten minutes, and because of weight limits, it could only carry a small compressed-air tank with enough capacity for about thirty tungsten rounds.
In other words, in terms of efficiency, it was absolutely not something that deserved high marks.
But—
“If both drones fire thirty rounds each and even just a quarter of those hit, nobody’s crawling out of there. If you keep moving between the upper floors and firing from cover, it’ll be hard for them to even figure out where the shots are coming from.”
“That part’s insane. Counting me, there are only really three shooters, but the people getting hit will think there are five or six at least.”
That was exactly why, despite all its inefficiencies and flaws, Yoon Youngsu and Baek Hail called it a masterpiece, and Junho sincerely agreed.
The short flight time was easy enough to deal with by swapping in fully charged batteries whenever needed.
And at the same time, they could switch out the magazine and air tank too.
That was why Junhyeok had taken six extra drone batteries, six dedicated magazines, and six spare air tanks with him.
The A1 had one objective only:
In environments full of concealment and cover—dense mountains, apartment complexes, urban areas—it was meant to ignore accuracy entirely and simply dump rounds downrange to maximize confusion and fear.
“If things go bad, let the A1 cover you and just run with Purdy. I’ve got a G1 waiting near the armored vehicle, and it’ll head in to help too.”
“Okay. Brother, looks like it’s starting. Over.”
“Right. Over. Whew...”
After cutting the line with Junhyeok, Junho took a breath and started moving.
The only sound in the empty mountain foothills was the cold, rough wind scraping across bare branches as he climbed fast.
There was no path to speak of, but he felt no difficulty at all.
The Kookje faction gangsters had already been using this route, and there was no way a man whose physical abilities had already gone beyond the human norm would struggle with it.
Besides, he wasn’t alone.
“There are no threat targets within a three-hundred-meter radius. You may continue moving.”
AI Akina was backing him up through the drones.
“Distance remaining to final destination: 3400. At current speed, estimated arrival in 46 minutes.”
“Three o’clock from Master Lee Junho’s direction of movement. Four private homes are located 220 meters ahead. No threat targets observed, but proceed with caution.”
“Distance remaining to final destination: 640 meters. Point A, where the final destination can be visually observed, is 170 meters ahead.”
With AI Akina giving him perfect reconnaissance and guidance, Junho kept climbing without rest for nearly an hour.
At last, he reached a ridgeline overlooking the most developed commercial district and entertainment area in this region, centered around Moku-ri Station.
And for the first time since his return, in this second apocalypse he had to live through, the urban core of the apocalypse spread out before him—
a place with a population of one hundred fifty thousand, and accordingly swarming with zombies in the tens of thousands.
