“Oh? Here you are.”
“Were you looking for me?”
After I failed in my goal of finding the missing humans.
Just like when I went outside,
I used [Assistant Chef] to fly over the Wall and return inside.
“Yeah. You were nowhere to be seen, so I came looking for you... I didn’t expect you to be back in the room again, though.”
“Ah... I just went out for a bit.”
“Is that so? I didn’t think you were in any state to be wandering around, so that’s unexpected.”
And the moment I returned to the room,
Park Junggu said,
“Well, that doesn’t matter. Anyway... I’ve been told the people from Southern Branch have finally arrived.”
“Is that so. They’re quite late.”
“I heard they were attacked by monsters on the way. In any case, it seems the meeting that’s been pushed back for days will finally open. I was looking for you because I thought you should come as well.”
The reason I came here in the first place was to take part in that meeting.
Only now was that matter finally getting underway in earnest.
So.
As we left the building and moved toward the meeting—
“What do you think about what I said back then?”
“...Hmmm.”
“I got the feeling you really didn’t like it at the time. In the end this whole thing needs strength... and the one who has that strength isn’t me, it’s you. Whether it’s done or not is for you to decide.”
The story about persuading them with force.
Back then, I’d thought that kind of method was far from my style.
“...If it works, that is.”
But now it was different.
“Yes. It’s not something I absolutely can’t do.”
“You’ve thought well.”
Now, it was different.
Because I’d gained a reason to break through that place
no matter what method I had to use.
And to do that,
I had to turn the humans here into military strength.
“With force...”
Even so,
my head was still weighing the odds.
“The question is whether that kind of method will actually work.”
“On my own it would’ve been absolutely impossible. But if you lend a hand, Youngjun, there’ll be more than enough strength.”
“...It’s not that I think we’re short on strength.”
It seemed Park Junggu had completely accepted the logic of strength.
But as for whether the others would be the same—no one knew.
However.
We didn’t have time to talk about that at length.
“There we are.”
We had arrived at the center of Central Branch.
At the building with the massive conference hall.
****
“It feels like it’s been a month since we all last met. It must have been hard for you to come all this way... thank you for gathering.”
The meeting between the branches was held in a wide conference hall.
People were seated around a large, round table.
On the chairs sat the representatives of each branch.
Behind them, those they’d brought along as escorts and assistants stood ramrod straight, hands clasped behind their backs.
While Yunseong, who had come forth as Central Branch’s representative, said this and that,
I looked around.
“Hmph... It was a hassle, but I had to come to check the Wall anyway.”
The first one to catch my eye
was a man with a nervous-looking face, sitting and occupying one corner.
If it was as Junggu had explained earlier,
that man was—
‘Representative of Eastern Branch...’
And at the same time,
[Kim Jongdu]
[Lv. 27 Architect]
[Skill]
[Fortress Construction]
[Fortification]
[Construction Command]
[Trait]
[Ultra-Fast Construction]
‘The one who made that [Wall].’
He was the very person who had gone around and personally built those massive Walls
where the humans of Gyeonggi Province were living.
‘The one who contributed most to the survival of the humans in Gyeonggi Province.’
People often talked about how strong the Chair was.
But from my point of view as someone from a different region,
the reason the humans here had been able to survive was entirely thanks to that guy.
His right to speak here was probably just as powerful.
Since I heard he had the job of Architect, I’d imagined a rough, burly face, but
rather than that, he oddly looked like a nervous, fussy elite.
And.
Next to him...
“General, you’ve ended up attending a meeting with no time to rest. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Somehow,
his face looked a bit familiar.
A face I had seen just recently.
‘That guy is...?’
When I had run down south.
I saw an old man leading the group I’d found there.
‘That old man who was being attacked by monsters back then.’
I’d wondered why people were suddenly being attacked all the way down at that southern end,
but it seemed they’d been humans from Southern Branch.
...Anyway.
Between the “General” form of address and all,
‘...A military uniform?’
I hadn’t paid attention when I saw him last time.
The old man was wearing an old-style military uniform that looked like it had some years on it.
To call him a soldier...
As far as I knew, the soldiers of Gyeonggi Province, with no exceptions like the Legion, were all wiped out.
“Why do people call him General?”
“Hm? Ah. You mean General Jo? There’s no special reason, he was literally a general before.”
“Before?”
“Yeah. I think he said his rank was brigadier general when he was discharged? It’s been quite a while since he left the service, but since everyone in that group calls him ‘General,’ other people just followed the title.”
A general, huh.
For a mere enlisted man like me, that was a rank quite far removed from me...
‘If he’s retired, though.’
Then he wasn’t much different from an ordinary old man.
Several people’s gazes stuck on me.
Since there was someone they’d never seen before sitting here, they were probably wondering who I was.
But seeing me standing behind Park Junggu, it seemed they simply assumed I must be from Northern Branch and let it go.
“Before we start the meeting...”
And then.
The old man’s gaze stabbed toward me.
“Who are you?”
To that question,
the one who answered wasn’t me but Junggu.
“An Awakener who joined our branch not long ago.”
“Joined... he doesn’t look like he belongs to our Guild, though.”
“Yeah. If it were up to me, I’d have him join the Guild right away, but... General, you know how it is. Things are such that we can’t right now.”
“...Hmm. In a situation like this, to take in a new person and bring him all the way to a place like this...”
He looked at me with suspicious eyes.
But fortunately, he didn’t point anything out beyond that.
“For now, our Northern Branch’s food production is going to increase greatly...”
After that, as if it were the routine of this meeting,
an exchange of information between each group went back and forth.
How much food production one branch had.
That one group of some branch had been annihilated by a monster attack, so the number of refugees had increased, and so on...
It was the sort of business talk between people actually doing the work
that was hard for me to insert myself into.
And.
When the conversation had ripened to a certain point—
“Ahem. Since we’re all gathered, there’s one proposal I’d like to make.”
Park Junggu rose from his seat and opened his mouth.
“This cold that’s covering all of Gyeonggi Province right now... it’s only getting stronger.”
“Well, isn’t that something we all already know?”
As Junggu stepped forward like that,
the guy called Architect tilted his head and asked.
“Yeah. You all know it... but I think that statement is half wrong.”
“...?”
“Because we don’t know anything about the cause of that cold.”
At those words,
the Architect’s brow furrowed.
“You don’t mean...”
“What you’re thinking, yes. They say the forces from Central Branch who went to investigate the cause all went missing... but even so, stopping the investigation isn’t the right call. I believe the groups that remain now should gather their forces and carry out a proper investigation. It’d be even better if, in the process, we could find out what happened to the missing people.”
At that,
not only the leader who had come with the Architect but also—
“That’s far too dangerous an idea!”
most of the people present here pushed back.
“Dangerous, huh. Isn’t leaving this cold that keeps getting worse as it is even more dangerous right now? As time goes by, the environment will become more and more unfavorable to us. My thought is that while we can still move around even a little, we have to investigate its cause.”
“That’s only if this cold keeps getting worse.”
The Architect spoke with his arms folded.
“This cold got worse the moment winter came. On the flip side, when winter ends and spring... and summer come, it could weaken again.”
“...”
“If we can just hold out until then, the situation could improve again. The Walls I built for each region aren’t going to collapse easily, so enduring isn’t exactly °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° hard for us. Am I wrong?”
This Architect was the person who had created the environment
that allowed humanity to survive in these conditions.
His abilities were specialized above all else in defense and protection.
And maybe because he had those abilities,
his judgment about a situation like this seemed heavily skewed toward the defensive side.
“What does Central Branch and Southern Branch think?”
As Eastern Branch stubbornly opposed,
Junggu turned and asked the others.
“For us...”
Speaking for Central Branch,
the one who answered was Yunseong.
Although he had taken on the role of representative for now,
compared to the representatives of each branch present here, he was basically a nobody.
With a timid attitude, he shook his head.
“I think our forces are far too small. We’d be making another expedition into the place where the Chair and the elites were wiped out... at least right now, Central Branch won’t be a major fighting force.”
“Whether your group is a fighting force or not isn’t what’s important. The Association’s decisions are supposed to be made after hearing each branch’s opinion. Setting aside whether your strength is this or that, I want to hear your view.”
“My view...”
At those words—
“Well, actually...”
Yunseong parted his lips like he wanted to say something,
then swallowed the words and shook his head.
‘...?’
I wondered what he’d been about to say,
but it didn’t look like he had any intention of telling us, and with a sigh, Yunseong continued.
“As I said, if we had sufficient forces, trying to attack it wouldn’t be a bad thing. But not with the Association’s current strength. There’s no way we could take on something the Chair failed at with the forces we have now.”
“...I see.”
That made it two branches who had given opposing opinions.
The last place Junggu turned his gaze to was Southern Branch.
“What do you think, General?”
“Hmm... I should have said this earlier.”
Receiving that look,
the old man, Jo Beomseok, spoke with a calm attitude.
“We were attacked by monsters on the way here.”
At that, people asked in puzzlement.
“Being attacked by monsters is...”
“Well, isn’t that something that happens all the time?”
“This time was a bit different. Those monsters were driving us toward the southern end.”
“...!”
“You’re saying you were herded by monsters?”
“That’s right.”
The old man stroked the armrest of his chair
and muttered, as if recalling that time.
“We were too frantic to notice then... but thinking back on it, we were getting closer to the source of that cold.”
“That is...”
“I think it’s a fairly likely guess... that what attacked us might very well have been the very beings causing this abnormal phenomenon.”
“...!”
Surprise spread among the people.
They knew nothing at all about the cause of this strange climate.
Whether it was the work of living monsters,
or whether it was caused by some other reason entirely—they hadn’t even known that much.
‘And now they’ve gotten information that it’s [monsters].’
So it was understandable that they were shocked.
“What that implies is simple. This abnormal phenomenon isn’t just the result of a season... it’s something being done by beings that have a will.”
“I-Is that really true?”
“And those beings attacked us. Which means they’re hostile toward humanity.”
Folding his arms,
the old man spoke with a cautious air.
“In truth, there were a lot of other strange things. For example... if they could just kill us, they could’ve left it at that, so why they tried to drag us that way, and the one that saved us as well...”
“The one that saved you?”
“Yeah. Let’s skip that part. Anyway, the important thing is that the threat Junggu warned about really exists, and that it’s not friendly to humanity.”
Hearing that,
Park Junggu’s face brightened, while on the other hand, the Architect, Kim Jongdu,
frowned slightly.
—This is it! This is it!
Park Junggu said in a low voice.
—“This is it,” you say... even if that person helps, that’s just Northern Branch and Southern Branch. The ones opposed are Central and Eastern. It’s two to two, a tie.
—No, it’s not a simple two to two. As you know, Central Branch right now is practically an empty shell. On the other hand, in terms of fighting strength, Southern Branch is next only to Central.
—Is that so? I just assumed it’d obviously be Northern, since you’re here, Junggu.
—Well, I am the strongest when it comes to fighting, but... that’s not what matters. If we talk about the strength of the group as a whole, Southern Branch is quite strong. Especially that old man—he has tremendous influence.
I hadn’t realized when I saved him,
but he seemed to be far more of a big shot than I’d thought.
—Last time he said he was absolutely against a reckless attack with no proper operation or forces in place, but it looks like that attack he suffered has changed his mind. If that man gives weight to our side, the whole story will change!
He was so happy his mood showed plainly.
Park Junggu was grinning from ear to ear.
“General, do you agree with Northern’s opinion?”
In contrast to him, the Architect, Kim Jongdu, looked uneasy.
“Hm? What do you mean?”
“What do you mean, what do I mean. You suddenly explained the enemy’s threat to us, and you said you were attacked as well... so it sounds like you think we should go and subjugate them.”
“Hm? Ah. So that’s how my words sounded.”
At that,
after thinking for a moment, Jo Beomseok opened his mouth.
“No, I’m still opposed to that plan.”
“...What?”
Up until just now, Park Junggu had been smiling.
His expression twisted sharply.
“I do agree with part of what Junggu said. Whatever is at that source is certainly a threatening existence.”
“As expected of you, General! Then we definitely have to subjugate it...”
“But that doesn’t mean I agree with setting out on a subjugation that might not even be possible.”
Cutting Junggu off like a blade,
the old man, Jo Beomseok, spoke.
“My view is the same as last time. I have no intention of launching a reckless attack without a proper operation or sufficient forces.”
Grit.
Grinding his teeth, Park Junggu spoke.
“If we leave those bastards alone, we’ll all end up freezing to death.”
“We don’t know that. As Jongdu said, the climate might recover again when summer comes.”
“Even if summer comes and their power weakens, why don’t you consider the possibility that we’ll all have frozen to death before that!”
“...Hmm.”
“To barely even understand a threat like that and then just say we should endure... you call that an argument...!”
According to Junggu, this old man was the person with the greatest influence in this room.
Just the fact that he’d voiced a contrary opinion made things quite miserable already.
“Junggu, what you’re saying isn’t wrong.”
But.
That wasn’t the only problem.
“But you’re leaving out one premise.”
“...?”
“The military units... that are still in Gangwon Province.”
When I heard that,
the thought that came into my head was—
‘Why is that name coming out here.’
“They’re observing the situation in Gyeonggi Province, and they said there’s a high likelihood the Wall will open within three months.”
“...Why bring that up all of a sudden.”
“Why? You said we wouldn’t be able to hold out until summer, but I’m saying we don’t even have to.”
The old man had just put forward an argument
against our plan.
And the reason for that opposition was...
“Until the Wall opens... and [Legion] comes to help us!”
The very...
“The only thing we have to do is hold out until then. At that level, it’s not something we can’t do, is it?”
“...”
...the fact that it was the very [Legion] I had raised with everything I had.
