Junho stood still with the notebook held up toward the camera lens and waited.
About a minute passed.
Creak. Clunk.
A section of the ceiling—made from the modular paneling commonly used in offices and storage rooms—opened up, and a stainless-steel ladder came down.
Like they were telling him to come up.
But instead of climbing right away, Junho smirked to himself.
'What an obvious little trick.'
Pretending to check his watch, he wrote something else in the notebook and held it up toward the camera again.
[Have someone go up to the roof right now and look toward Songhwa High School. You’ll see a drone in the sky. If I’m not visible on this building’s roof within five minutes, they’ll conclude you people harmed me. You know what happens next.]
Junho tore off the page with the first message and held both sheets side by side toward the lens.
Then he tapped at the radio clipped to his tactical vest, as if he were using it.
It was a bluff, of course.
The signal still couldn’t reach him, so communication was impossible—but the survivors on the eighth floor had no way of knowing that.
A few more minutes passed.
“...Come up. Slowly. But if you attack us first, we’ll fight back too.”
A grown man’s voice came down, tense and full of strain.
Only then did Junho step toward the ladder.
But even then, he didn’t climb up immediately. He sent the mini drone up first.
“Aaaah!”
“What is that!?”
Crash! Bang!
Startled by the mini drone shooting upward, men and women burst into frantic voices and noisy commotion.
Only after fully confirming the situation above through the drone did Junho climb the ladder.
The survivors stood four or five meters back from the ladder, staring at him.
They were armed with knives, wrenches, a fire axe, and makeshift spears made by taping screwdrivers to the ends of wooden clubs with blue duct tape.
Just looking at him, it was obvious his build was far from ordinary. He was dressed all in black, wearing a bike helmet, and on top of that, he was carrying what looked like a real gun.
Tension and fear were written all over their faces.
To show he had no intention of attacking, Junho raised both hands to shoulder height, then slowly moved one hand and removed his helmet.
“Ah...”
Only after his face was visible did the survivors show any sign of relaxing.
Junho’s face, put kindly, was just clean and presentable. Put less kindly, it wasn’t especially distinctive.
But in a world where almost nobody could wash properly anymore, it was hard to find a survivor with a face as clean as his.
That was why the eyes of the survivors standing a few meters away with weapons in hand—especially the younger women—shifted in a subtle way.
“As I said, I just have something to do on this building’s roof for a little while. I have nothing against any of you, and I’m not going to hurt you.”
“H-how are we supposed to believe that?”
At the voice he’d heard from below the ladder, Junho turned his head.
A grimy man in his thirties stood glaring at him, his long hair tied back in a ponytail, patchy beard untrimmed, gripping a wooden club with a large butcher knife fastened to it.
“Well. How do you believe it... maybe like this?”
“...?”
The instant the man narrowed his eyes—
Junho let his hands fall naturally as if he were shrugging, then flashed a drawing knife from his tactical belt and threw it like lightning.
Twang!
The drawing knife flew so fast it was almost impossible to follow, and struck the weapon in the man’s hands.
The force behind it was so strong the man had no choice but to let go of the club.
“Ahh!”
He let out a short cry and stumbled back a couple of steps.
“Oppa!”
“B-boss!”
Only then did the survivors realize what had happened, and chaos broke loose ~Nоvеl𝕚ght~ among them.
Into that confusion came Junho’s calm voice.
“I could’ve hit your head. And this is faster.”
The survivors whipped their heads around in shock, and Junho tapped the Glock 17.
“Do you believe me now? If I’d wanted to, I could’ve killed all of you the moment I came up here.”
“......!”
“Anyway, there are about three minutes left. Are you sure this is fine? If I’m not seen on the roof, my people will move immediately.”
“Ah!”
“W-what do we do!?”
The ponytailed man, standing among the stunned survivors, hurriedly spoke up.
“I believe you. I do. Go on up. T-this way!”
Junho followed behind the man as he hastily led the way, and more than ten survivors parted left and right like a receding tide.
***
Installing the portable relay was extremely simple.
That was thanks to Choi Jeongwoo, who had taught him how to do it after working field jobs for a mobile telecom company right out of high school.
Beep.
After connecting the battery he had brought in his backpack and switching the unit on, Junho spoke in a low voice.
“I’ve connected the relay. Can you hear me?”
- ...Signal confirmed. Location: 338-1, Moku-ri. Jaeseong Building rooftop. Relay H06 operating normally. Latency 18 ms. Packet loss 0 percent. Communication bandwidth secured at 60 Mbps.
“Hoo...”
Only after hearing Akina’s emotionless voice did Junho finally let out a breath of relief.
“Send two drones this way. Have one update the aerial map and the other start recon surveillance.”
- External work drones number 05 and 06 departing now. 08 and 09 entering rapid charge.
He had spent nearly three hundred million won just on high-end industrial drones and spare parts—units with close to an hour of flight time, mainly intended for reconnaissance and surveillance.
After the apocalypse began, he had planned to use only ten of them for the first year or so and keep the other ten in reserve.
But they were already deploying drone number nine in real field operations.
The only reason number ten’s packaging still hadn’t been opened was because surveillance over their shelter and the shelter safe zone was being handled with relatively cheap modular drones instead.
Even so, far too many drones were in the air today.
And because he knew exactly why, Junho asked Akina a question.
“What’s the situation with Junhyeok and The First Apartments?”
- Beginning analysis.
About ten seconds later, Akina’s voice came again.
- Shelter member Lee Junhyeok: standing by for combat on the rooftop of Building 2, Edutown Apartments. Combat drones A01 and A02 standing by for flight.
- Friendly target Song Gijun and 33 others: standing by for combat on The First Mart rooftop and in Buildings 3, 4, and 5 of The First Apartments. Combat drones G04 and G05 standing by at firing points.
- Caution targets near Edutown Apartments: 32. Moving along projected route. Estimated to reach The First Mart in approximately five minutes. Expected to encounter friendly targets and combat drone G04 currently waiting in Building 4 of The First Apartments.
“...Right.”
Junho swallowed the words he’d been about to say—to ask for footage from the drone monitoring that side.
Even if he saw what was happening over there from here, there was nothing he could do.
Today, of all days, he had to trust Song Gijun, the search-and-extermination team, and his younger brother Junhyeok.
And also Yoon Youngsu and AI Akina, who were running some of the shelter’s systems in idle mode while handling control and monitoring for all kinds of drones.
“I really need to set aside a day and upgrade the servers and AI computing system too...”
Muttering under his breath as he recalled something Yoon Youngsu had said not long ago, Junho was approached carefully by someone.
“Uh... are you done?”
At the words of the ponytailed man who had come up to the roof with him, Junho nodded.
“Yes. I’m done.”
“Then could you leave now? And before that, the promise...”
“I keep my promises. And I’ll leave, so don’t worry.”
“Ah. Right.”
At the ponytailed man’s uneasy stare, Junho pointed at the sky.
“See that? My people sent drones this way.”
“...!?”
The ponytailed man and several of the survivors who had followed him to the roof all turned at once in the direction Junho pointed.
At a glance, two tiny black dots were flying toward them—small enough to mistake for birds.
“One of them will scout the area around here, and the other will hover over this building and watch the surroundings. If something happens, they’ll tell me. So I’ll stay here a little longer. We should talk too.”
“What? Uh, that sounds a little different from what you said...”
The ponytailed man looked troubled, and the women beside him stepped in.
“Oh, come on. Just hear him out, boss. He’s obviously from somewhere else, and it’s not like knowing each other would hurt. He doesn’t seem like a bad person.”
“Exactly. And this guy’s got a gun and all that flying stuff too.”
“Oh. R-right? Then maybe that makes sense.”
Junho found the reaction a little strange.
In the apocalypse, the strongest bastard was king.
Which meant women, usually weaker than men physically, were almost always in a dominated position in most survivor groups—not on equal footing like this.
Still, they were clearly still afraid of him, but willing to talk.
Having confirmed that much, Junho pulled a pouch out of his backpack and showed it to them.
“Do any of you need this?”
“What is it?”
A woman who looked somewhere in her late twenties, maybe, though her face was partly hidden by a mask, showed immediate curiosity.
Junho opened the pouch and showed her the contents.
“Anti-diarrheals, painkillers, antibiotics. There are also water-purification tablets in here—ones that make water drinkable.”
“Really!? If it’s painkillers, would they help with menstrual cramps too?”
“Of course.”
At Junho’s answer, not just the woman who had spoken first but the others who had been hesitating and watching the room all came crowding forward.
“There are sixty pills of each, so they should last you a while.”
“Wow! Thank you. Seriously, thank you, oppa.”
When Junho handed over the entire pouch, the woman bowed deeply at once, then pulled off her mask and smiled with her eyes.
Bare-faced and grimy, but with the kind of face that would probably be pretty if she cleaned up.
Then the other women followed suit, one after another, taking off the scarves or masks wrapped around their faces.
“Jeong Seyeong, for fuck’s sake. There you go again, acting sly.”
“Oppa! Where did you come from? Is that a real gun?”
“A ton of zombies went past under our building earlier. Those were following you, right? We could hear them all the way up here—it was terrifying.”
“But wow, this guy’s body is insane. Our boss still has a belly.”
“Hey, it’s almost gone. I’ve dropped fifteen kilos in six months.”
“True. Boss looks pretty good these days.”
The women all looked somewhere between their mid-twenties and early thirties. Then the ponytailed “boss” and the other men started speaking too.
“So if you’re the boss, what kind of shop in this building do you own?”
A little overwhelmed now, Junho addressed the owner, who looked about thirty-five.
“Ah, me? I run the karaoke bar here. These girls work there as hostesses, and this one’s one of my staff.”
***
This year, Lee Wonoh was thirty-six.
He was the owner of Welcome Karaoke Bar, and at the same time, the landlord of Jaeseong Building itself.
The youngest son of a wealthy family that owned over ten apartments and several commercial properties in Seoul and the greater metro area, he was one of those silver-spoon types who lived well off the rent from this building—left to him as inheritance when his father died a few years ago—plus the profits from the karaoke bar he ran himself.
“...This place is close to the subway station, you know? There are five apartment complexes around here, plus a ton of studio and two-room places, so it’s a great location. Even with the recession, business at our place wasn’t bad. But then...”
Now that he was less tense than during the first meeting, Lee Wonoh talked a lot.
But since Junho currently knew almost nothing about Moku-ri, bits and pieces that were worth hearing kept dropping out of the story.
So he listened patiently.
“...The foreign girls trusted me enough to come all the way from Pyeongtaek. And Seyeong and Suji had both worked at my place for almost a year. Maybe you know this already, maybe not, but in this line of work, people almost never stay at one place that long. So I...”
Lee Wonoh had been hit by the apocalypse just after barely seeing off the last regular customers, who had partied past seven in the morning for the summer holiday, and while he and his staff were about to start cleaning up.
After escorting the final customers out and going back to the waiting room to rest for a moment and get ready to leave, he’d ended up trapped in the karaoke bar with three women who had also been getting ready to head home.
Partly out of responsibility—and partly, by his own telling, because he still had no idea where the nerve had come from—he had taken one employee with him, sprinted to a motel, and brought back the women who had been sleeping there dead to the world.
“There was a lot of water, drinks, and food at the karaoke place. So we just held out on that.”
Since it was a business that prepared food to serve as drinking snacks, the large commercial refrigerator had been stocked with all kinds of ingredients.
And because the fitness center had been empty that morning, they had taken all the food from there too, so three men and six women living together hadn’t had any major problems.
More than anything, because he personally ran a business in a building he owned, trying to cut down on the karaoke bar’s electric bill from all the lighting had turned out to be a stroke of genius—he had installed solar panels and a 20-kilowatt ESS battery.
Just being able to keep using refrigerators and various electrical appliances had massively increased their chances of survival.
And as for water, they had hundreds of bottles of commercial drinking water, plus the large rooftop water tank, which they had been rationing carefully.
“With a building this good, didn’t other people try to take it?”
“They did. That’s why we set up the staircase between the seventh and eighth floors like that. We damn near died putting that together too.”
“Hmm. If someone clears the obstacles on the stairs to the eighth floor, the zombies in the PC café will attack them. So you built it a little sloppy on purpose.”
“Huh? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. You really know your stuff.”
Lee Wonoh looked genuinely surprised by the regressor’s sharp observation.
“And what about the secret route here?”
“Oh, before I inherited the building, I used floors seven through nine for a big club-style pickup bar. Back then that was where the stairs inside the business were. The place crashed and burned, so I rented it out, and I just used modular panels to rough in the old stairwell spots as storage rooms on each floor. That’s why they were easy to break through.”
It was only possible because it was his own building—one he knew inside out and could quietly bend the rules in.
“But... why did you come all the way here, Mr. Junho?”
At last, the question he had been waiting for.
The eyes of the Welcome Karaoke Bar survivors fixed on him and lit up.
“You know the Kookje faction, right?”
“...!”
“Those gangster bastards!?”
Not just Lee Wonoh, but the two male employees and the hostesses too all flinched hard at Junho’s answer.
There was no way people working in Moku-ri’s nightlife district wouldn’t know the only real organized crime group in the area.
But then Junho followed it with:
“I came here to wipe them out.”
“What!?”
That left them even more stunned.
And right then—
- Final destination reconnaissance complete. Submitting report.
Communication came in from AI Akina, who had been circling the area, updating the aerial map, and conducting close reconnaissance on Junho’s final target—Cheongsan Building—and its surroundings.
- Large number of B-class targets identified on the first and second floors of the final destination. Exact count unavailable.
- Multiple survivors are occupying floors four through eight. Male and female mixed. Exact number unavailable. However, at least ten are armed. One minute ago, an armed target was confirmed on the eighth floor carrying what is believed to be a Type 85 suppressed submachine gun.
- In addition, personnel armed with a Benelli M4 shotgun and a QSW-06 suppressed pistol have also been identified.
“......”
Junho’s eyes turned cold.
Other than the Benelli, both of those weapons were Chinese-made.
And both were fitted with suppressors.
And Junho immediately realized how some backwater metro-area gang could possibly have gotten hold of firearms like that.
'The Kookje faction...'
Looks like this fight wasn’t going to be easy.
