When an invitation came from Seoul.
I’d expected there would be survivors still alive on this side.
And since they were calling themselves the government, I’d figured they might be a fairly large faction.
But even so.
A design a little different from ours.
And yet, people wearing that exact same style of military uniform we used to wear.
“......A uniform?”
“Besides us...... there were soldiers still alive.”
No way.
I hadn’t expected we’d meet soldiers.
After the day of the collapse.
A lot of people died, but the ones with the highest fatality rate were soldiers.
Because the malice involved in this collapse, for some reason, had tried to suppress humanity’s force.
Gangwon and Gyeonggi both.
The only soldiers who survived this collapse were a handful of deserters who ran from their units—and us.
“No, look closely.”
For a moment I thought we’d found an exception.
But Corporal Seo Suhyeok muttered in a low voice.
“Those people aren’t active-duty.”
“Huh?”
At that, my gaze went to the soldiers’ chests.
On the insignia there was a gold mark.
It was a mark I knew.
I’d bought a few myself.
And it was the same mark that had been stuck on the cap Junhyeok—one of my juniors—had bought me.
“Veterans...... reservists.”
Reservists.
It might even include civil defense.
They weren’t active-duty soldiers—they were an army made up of people who’d already been discharged.
“Salute.”
And then.
One of them stepped forward, saluted, and spoke.
“Excuse me, but may I ask who your representative is?”
A man speaking in a crisp, squared-off posture with a K2 rifle slung over his shoulder.
And stepping forward at those words was, naturally, who you’d expect.
“I’m First Lieutenant Kim Hyeon-seok.”
The outward-facing commander of our unit.
First Lieutenant Kim.
This was the reason he’d taken on that role in the first place.
If we ever ran into other soldiers, the officer should be the one to step forward as the representative.
......I just hadn’t expected that reason would start paying off now, of all times.
“First Lieutenant Kim Hyeon-seok...... it looks like you came from the Gangwon direction. May I ask the reason for your visit?”
“We received an invitation.”
“......Are you the Legion?”
The man asked carefully.
When First Lieutenant Kim nodded to that—
“Salute! We’ve been waiting for your visit.”
The man saluted at attention, then turned and motioned inward.
“Please come inside. We’ll guide you.”
“......Guide us.”
The word Legion coming up wasn’t exactly surprising.
If they’d been listening to our radio broadcasts ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) and knew about the faction in Gangwon, there was nothing strange about that.
But separately from that.
We still didn’t have a clear grasp of the situation.
Slowly.
First Lieutenant Kim turned his head and looked at my face.
As if asking.
‘Is it okay to follow them?’
I looked over the soldiers around me.
And a moment later, a window appeared in front of my eyes.
{Ingredient Identification}
[Primates - Human]
I checked just in case.
‘At least...... they’re not monsters.’
If that’s the case......
‘Let’s go.’
I nodded at First Lieutenant Kim.
Even if there was a chance they were more subversive than we thought, we had to run into it first and find out.
Even if it was a trap, the ones who came here were few—but they were soldiers you could count among the best in the unit.
We’d be able to escape somehow.
“We’ll accept your guidance with thanks.”
“Yes. Then this way.......”
The barricade blocking the road was cleared away.
The soldiers standing guard stepped aside and opened a path for us.
As I moved inward, following the soldier guiding us,
I studied their appearance closely at the same time.
‘......Are these really reservists?’
In my head, the image of reservists was, how do I put it.
More sloppy.
I haven’t even been discharged yet, so I wouldn’t know for sure, but still.
You know the image you see on variety shows.
Throwing casual speech at active-duty drill instructors...... fooling around...... that kind of image.
They’d still be reservists, sure.
But.
“.......”
“.......”
Even as they watched us pass, they stayed at attention and kept their eyes scanning the area.
It looked like their discipline was being maintained properly.
‘They feel like real soldiers. Maybe even more than our unit.’
We did still carry a military-unit identity.
But to be honest, that identity had been getting blurry for quite a while.
We were a surviving unit in name.
But the 423rd Battalion we’d been in wasn’t even a proper combat unit.
‘A small unit up in the mountains to protect the radar...... we had more manpower for facility maintenance and radar management.’
If it weren’t for the [Combat Engineers], even if we seized military equipment, we wouldn’t have been able to operate it properly.
Maybe the few artillery crews would’ve fired a gun or two.
Running a main battle tank would’ve been unthinkable.
And the equipment the combat engineers operated had been modified in all sorts of ways.
Weird horns, saw blades.......
There were aspects that pulled it out of a “military unit” atmosphere.
But compared to that.
‘They’re different from us.’
Even the barbed-wire fence that had blocked our way in.
The emergency lights flashing there, the armored personnel carriers.
It felt like I was looking at the pre-collapse military exactly as it was.
Like—
‘As if...... I’ve gone back to the time before the collapse.’
The buildings around us hadn’t changed much either.
A military presence is inherently out of place even in normal times.
But from my position, someone who’d been a soldier before the collapse, it genuinely felt like I’d gone back to before it all happened.
Still.
Looking at it, I thought this.
‘If they aren’t active-duty, then the fact there are soldiers at all isn’t actually that strange.’
It would be a similar case to Jo Beomseok and the Southern Branch.
A group that retook military equipment and operates it.
Retaking a military base is never easy, but.
They were survivors who’d made it in Seoul—where the survival difficulty should’ve been the highest.
If it was them, it wouldn’t be strange if they somehow succeeded.
Yeah.
Up to this point, you could still let it pass without calling it strange.
“Good lord...... look over there.”
“......What the hell is that.”
What I couldn’t accept
was what started appearing next.
The soldier in front guiding us somewhere.
And as I followed behind, I looked around at the scenery here...... the scenery of Seoul.
That scenery was...... shockingly overwhelming.
There were buildings that were damaged to some degree.
It wasn’t like the old days, with countless people and cars rushing around.
But.
“......Good lord, does this make any sense?”
“This is...... still intact.”
Seoul’s scenery was
far too ‘ordinary.’
‘It hasn’t changed even a little...... from how it looked before the collapse.’
The Seoul we remembered.
It was being preserved exactly as it had been.
*****
Not long ago.
The moment I returned from Gyeonggi, I toured the cities in Gangwon.
I think we endured this collapse pretty well.
But the result of struggling and clawing our way through it
was that the cities looked significantly different from the past.
Some cities had been destroyed, and others were developing in totally different styles to match the changed era.
But.
Not here.
‘No way.’
The scenery of Seoul from before the collapse.
Except for the fact the electricity wasn’t on, it was so intact you could barely even tell it had gone through a collapse.
‘Is this...... even possible?’
If it had suffered the same kind of collapse we did,
the buildings downtown would’ve been used as breeding grounds for monsters for a long time.
Then, in power struggles between monsters—or during attempts by humans to retake the area—there would’ve been cases where they outright collapsed.
For Seoul’s scenery to be this intact, it had to be one of two possibilities.
One: unlike us, the number of monsters that appeared on the day of the collapse was extremely small.
Or two......
‘They overcame this collapse by a method close to a miracle.’
So efficiently, so overwhelmingly,
that the city’s facilities never took major damage.
‘Neither is a highly convincing case.’
Looking at Gyeonggi.
The collapse that hit us didn’t discriminate by region.
Just because Seoul is the capital of the Republic of Korea doesn’t mean monsters would’ve gone easy on it.
And even if that weren’t the case.
For Seoul’s survivors to have suppressed the monsters this perfectly......
That was, of course, even more unbelievable.
‘......I’ll find out which it is soon enough.’
They were the ones who invited us here.
Soon, we’d hear the details.
“This way, inside.”
“For now we followed your guidance, but why here?”
“Ah. You weren’t told. This is where our commander is.”
Commander?
“There was a lot of discussion on our side about whether the Legion from Gangwon would accept our invitation, but...... that person expected you would come, and has been waiting nearby.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes. They’ve been looking forward to this meeting very much. So...... inside.”
A building being used like an outpost.
We opened the door and went inside.
‘A commander.’
That meant someone high up in the military.
But we also had our commander, First Lieutenant Kim Hyeon-seok.
‘In the first place, our 12th Corps and the Capital Defense Command are completely different units.’
Even if the commander coming out of their side held a higher position,
there was no reason we had to be intimidated.
Thinking that,
as we opened the door and stepped inside—
“Ahh! I’ve been waiting!”
What greeted us was a man who looked to be in his fifties, with a bold, boisterous impression.
And.
At what came out of his mouth, me and the unit couldn’t help going silent for a moment.
“I am Lieutenant General Kim Myeonghwan, commander of the Capital Defense Command.”
“......I’m First Lieutenant Kim Hyeon-seok.”
Only then
did I understand how those reservists could maintain discipline this thoroughly.
First lieutenant and lieutenant general.
‘Same “lieutenant,” but.......’
Unlike us, where every officer except First Lieutenant Kim had died,
this Capital Defense Command—
‘......The gap is pretty big, isn’t it?’
That Legion Commander......
Their commander was alive.
*****
The soldiers who came out to meet us after we arrived in Seoul.
And the representative of those soldiers was none other than the commander.
‘The Capital Defense Command is a corps-level organization.’
In other words.
Unlike us, who only named ourselves the Legion as a guild name—
they were...... the real deal, a true “corps commander.”
“To be honest, I thought soldiers in other regions would have been wiped out completely.”
He was a lieutenant general.
When someone like that appeared,
we couldn’t help feeling uneasy.
Even if it was a different unit.
The difference in rank wasn’t normal.
‘He might try to press us with that authority.’
We were still maintaining a military-unit identity.
So if they were soldiers too, then something extremely natural for soldiers—
they might try to force the principle of superior-subordinate obedience onto us.
Of course.
That didn’t mean we intended to quietly bow under that authority.
Even if he ordered us to submit, we had no intention of obeying meekly.
‘If he comes at us like that, the relationship is bound to break.’
The representative of the survivors we’d met first in Seoul.
It wasn’t desirable to start off on bad terms from the very first meeting.
“And yet...... not only is there a unit still alive, you even broadcast something like that radio.......”
If the conversation flowed in that direction, it would be a disaster.
With anxiety lodged in my chest, I watched his face, tense—
“On top of that, you even have the capability to come directly to Seoul like this.”
The man—well past fifty—made a face full of excitement,
and as if overcome with emotion,
his cheeks flushed, he grabbed First Lieutenant Kim in a tight embrace and said—
“You’ve done something truly incredible! Truly......!”
‘......Huh?’
Tears
were pooled in his eyes.
From emotion.
