The Apocalypse Regressor's All-Purpose Shelter

Vrrrrr.

The multipurpose electric cart came to a stop inside the tunnel.

“Let’s go.”

At Kim Jaemun’s command, Choi Hyunwoo and Baek Suho climbed out and followed after him.

The three ran through the damp, dark tunnel.

Back in the past, this place had been called the “sealed tunnel.”

But it was no longer sealed.

This was the place where, before the regression, Junho had discovered Choi Jeongwoo’s corpse lying dead alone while carrying his daughter Choi Jiwoo’s Koromi backpack.

Now it had been modified into a route connecting Gahyeon-ri directly to the shelter side.

Of course, it was impossible for outsiders to enter the tunnel from outside.

Just like the shelter’s main entrance gate and the hidden passage near the industrial road, the outside only appeared to contain a rusted steel door abandoned for years and blocked off by piles of trash and junk.

Still, leaving a tunnel this useful completely abandoned would have been wasteful.

Large vehicles might not fit, but small electric carts and personnel could move through it easily.

So Junho had installed CCTV systems, converted the entrance into an electronically controlled access point, and restricted its use exclusively to the shelter combat teams for situations exactly like this.

***

Tap tap [N O V E L I G H T] tap tap...!

The sound of footsteps echoed through the tunnel.

Barricades had been placed throughout the passage in case outsiders ever broke in.

Four T1 turrets disguised beneath piles of discarded furniture and trash had also been installed along the route.

- Six hostile targets resuming movement. Approximately 540 meters from the tunnel.

- Master Lee Junho. Confirmed arrival at Point A.

- Shelter member Lee Junhyeok. Arrived at guard post. Conducting surveillance alongside shelter member Park Sunhee.

- No abnormalities at tunnel entrance. Team B will move into position immediately upon exiting the tunnel.

'This is insane. Completely insane.'

Listening to Akina’s reports and instructions through his earpiece, Choi Hyunwoo inwardly clicked his tongue in disbelief.

Back in Bucheon, whenever Junho’s group moved, there had always been one or two people piloting drones and relaying information through radios.

But the shelter AI called Akina was on an entirely different level.

Kim Jaemun and Baek Suho hadn’t been exaggerating at all when they called it a cheat code.

- Opening tunnel entrance door.

Clank!

“Move, move!”

The three rushed through the steel-reinforced tunnel door and sprinted toward their assigned position.

The location was one of the villas Junho had once prepared as a safe house in Gahyeon-ri.

After extensive modifications, the villa had been converted into a forward outpost and observation post.

A perfectly camouflaged firing position had even been built on the rooftop.

The three hurried upstairs and entered the concealed bunker constructed inside a modified reinforced-plastic rooftop water tank.

From the outside, it looked exactly like the ordinary blue rooftop water tanks commonly seen throughout Korea.

But inside, sandbags and dirt-filled sacks had been stacked to create ballistic protection, and narrow firing slits had been cut into the structure.

- G04 G05 combat standby complete.

The report came in that the two G1 ground attack drones that had followed them had finished concealing themselves in the brush near the corner by the sealed tunnel.

“Let’s see.”

Kim Jaemun checked the laptop and monitor installed inside the water-tank bunker.

The screen displayed split footage in real time: drone-camera feeds tracking the six intruders, along with PTZ camera footage from the mountaintop guard post overlooking both the rooftop and the industrial road.

- I’m in position too. Everyone get ready. Fire immediately once I give the signal.

- Don’t shoot the guy in the black cap. We need him alive.

- Hostile targets arriving in ten seconds.

Junho’s voice came first from the position above the tunnel ridge, followed by Akina’s report.

Click. Click.

The three aimed their air rifles toward the tunnel entrance a little over a hundred meters away and pulled back the bolts.

Soon, the six electric bicycles carrying the intruders rounded the corner and arrived at the tunnel entrance.

“Hm?”

But instead of continuing forward, the intruders stopped and began doing something again.

- Looks like they’re about to launch another drone. What should we do? If they fly it there, they’ll be able to see all the way into inner Gahyeon-ri.

After Junhyeok’s voice came Junho’s response.

- Start now.

The boss had given the order.

***

- Distance 120 meters. Wind speed 1.6. Estimated aiming deviation: 5 centimeters.

- Maintain angle. Wind direction unchanged.

- Fire.

“Hoooo...”

Receiving Akina’s firing assistance, Choi Hyunwoo and Baek Suho steadied their breathing and pulled the triggers.

THUMP!

With a heavy impact sound, tungsten rounds blasted out.

Inside the scopes, the targeted men’s upper bodies jerked violently backward before collapsing onto the ground.

“......!”

The realization that they had just killed human beings—not zombies—for the first time made both of them instinctively flinch.

But then—

- It’s been almost a year since the world collapsed, right? Do you really think there are any normal people left among groups roaming around armed with guns and blades?

- Not ninety percent. One hundred percent. Every single one of them is a murderer. Psychopaths addicted to killing.

- Anyone sane would move quietly and avoid attracting attention.

- So don’t feel guilty. If those psychotic killers aren’t stopped, innocent people die instead.

Junho’s words resurfaced in both their minds.

And the “other people” he had meant were the residents of Gahyeon-ri and the shelter members.

“......”

That was why the two of them—though in completely different places, in Namyangju and Bucheon—had been able to suppress the guilt of killing.

Because they had both witnessed, again and again, humans murdering and looting other humans instead of fighting zombies.

'If I don’t do it, everyone else could die.'

That was exactly why Choi Hyunwoo and Baek Suho had become members of the combat teams.

THUMP! THUMP! THUMP...!

The tungsten rounds fired by the three men struck three looters with perfect accuracy.

At the same moment, Junho—firing from the ridge position above the tunnel—dropped the remaining targets almost instantly with godlike rapid fire.

Five of the six collapsed motionless where they stood, apparently dead on the spot.

Only the man wearing the black cap survived.

After dropping his drone controller, he clutched his shattered leg and desperately crawled toward his electric bicycle.

- All hostile targets down.

- Recon drone maintaining perimeter surveillance. No abnormalities detected within 300 meters.

- I’ll handle that one myself. The rest of you retrieve their crashed drone and regroup at the tunnel entrance.

Hearing Akina’s report followed by Junho’s orders, the three climbed out of the water-tank bunker.

“......”

Choi Hyunwoo and Baek Suho both looked slightly dazed.

Their hearts had been pounding when they deployed, and they had genuinely felt tense.

But the situation had ended too quickly and too easily.

It barely even felt real that they had just killed people.

Kim Jaemun noticed immediately and gave a bitter smile.

“Too easy, right? Maybe not elsewhere, but this place has always been like this. Even if dozens came at us, it’d probably end the same way.”

“Ah....”

“That’s why I’m seriously grateful to Junho hyung. Outside Gahyeon-ri—or even back at the resort where I used to stay—something like this never would’ve ended so cleanly.”

At those words, the stunned expressions faded from both men’s faces.

“Let’s move. Hyunwoo, come with me to retrieve the drone. Suho, head into the villa safe house and inspect everything.”

“Yes, sunbae-nim.”

“Understood.”

Only now did the two men calmly nod like true shelter combatants.

***

“Hrrgh... ngh... guhhh...”

The black-capped man from Nami Island could barely stay conscious through the pain.

There had been no warning, no sound, no sign of anything.

Then suddenly his companions had all collapsed simultaneously with heavy impact noises.

And now he himself was crawling across the ground with his knee completely destroyed.

“F-fuck... what the hell... what the hell is this...?! Guhk!”

Even while screaming in panic, he desperately stretched toward the air rifle leaning against the electric bicycle.

THUMP!

“GAAAH!?”

The air rifle suddenly exploded apart.

His entire body froze.

Shaking violently on the ground from terror and shock, he suddenly heard footsteps approaching.

“Hhk...!?”

Turning his head with difficulty toward the sound, the man’s eyes widened in horror.

A massive man wearing combat gear completely unlike standard Korean military uniforms was rapidly descending the hillside.

The man was armed head to toe with specialized equipment like some kind of special-forces operator.

“Hah... fuck....”

Only then did the man finally understand.

He and his people had believed they were invincible.

But that belief had been a massive delusion.

They had merely been frogs trapped inside a well.

Monsters so overwhelming that comparison itself felt insulting had already settled in Namyangju.

And they had made the catastrophic mistake of provoking them.

The large man descended the hill in moments and approached him before pulling down his mask after checking the surroundings.

“......!!!”

The black-capped man suffered an even greater shock when he saw the revealed face.

It wasn’t filthy and unshaven like him and his companions.

It was unbelievably clean.

That alone looked utterly alien in this ruined world.

Ever since zombies that ate people had appeared and civilization collapsed, he had never once seen someone with such a clean face.

Even Park Gyumin—the owner of Nami Island who had sent him here—and the young men and women abused under the guise of “service” didn’t look this clean.

And so, more than the equipment or weapons, the man felt an indescribable mix of shock, terror, and envy toward that face.

As Junho approached him, the looter finally understood why.

Lost civilization itself—something impossible to reclaim now—still existed within that clean appearance.

“Hey.”

“Hhk!?”

But Junho’s eyes and voice carried nothing resembling civilization.

Only violence and savagery.

“There are two options. One: answer my questions honestly and die cleanly without pain. Two: get fed alive to zombies. Your choice.”

“......!”

The man immediately recognized it.

Because he himself was deeply accustomed to violence and murder.

Lee Junho was one of his kind.

No—

something even worse.

***

“The ones coming through the Daeseong-ri tunnel toward Yeongho-ri and the ones traveling down the Bukhan River are all from Nami Island.”

After cleanly keeping his promise, Junho continued speaking while looking over the assembled combat teams gathered inside the break room.

“The guy in charge is named Park Gyumin. Apparently he’s from the family that originally owned Nami Island, and he seized the place the moment the apocalypse started.”

Nami Island itself was enormous—large enough that walking a full lap around it took nearly an hour.

The island contained restaurants, cafés, supermarkets, even hotels.

And because the disaster had begun during a holiday period, countless tourists had been trapped there.

Naturally, an Alpha had emerged.

But Park Gyumin—direct descendant of a notorious pro-Japanese collaborator family far wealthier and more deeply rooted than ordinary elites—had illegally possessed firearms.

Using those guns alongside the island employees, he exterminated the Alpha and zombies and seized complete control of the island.

“And currently there are a little over a hundred survivors left on the island.”

“I heard there were over a thousand tourists there when everything started. But only that many survived? Ah... wait, don’t tell me...”

“Yeah. That bastard Park Gyumin killed the rest.”

“......!”

Junho reacted calmly because this kind of thing had been commonplace before the regression.

But everyone else looked visibly shocked.

“Even if they gathered every bit of food from the hotels, supermarkets, and restaurants, it never would’ve been enough to support over a thousand people for long. So anyone who wasn’t useful to the group was either abandoned or directly murdered. They also used people as zombie bait during raids on resorts and pensions near the island.”

“Jesus Christ....”

In other words, Park Gyumin and the Nami Island group were exactly the kind of vicious raider scum commonly found throughout the apocalypse.

“Anyway, they heard rumors about us and Gahyeon-ri. The people we eliminated today were a recon unit. If they judged us weak enough to handle, they planned to attack immediately.”

And now two such groups were still roaming around Namyangju.

More importantly—

“If the recon team doesn’t return to the island, there’s a high chance they’ll send additional forces.”

“Additional forces?”

“Seems their family’s influence in the region runs deep. Part of the local police force joined them too. Which means they’ve got firearms.”

A looter faction that had emptied out an entire police armory.

That was Nami Island under Park Gyumin’s rule.

“And since they didn’t come here with good intentions, there’s no reason for us to treat them kindly either.”

Those who come are never good.

No saying fit the apocalypse more perfectly than that one.

And Junho fully intended to repay them in kind.

Because when it came to violence—

he was confident he could be far more ruthless than anyone else.