In the end, First Lieutenant Kim and I came to a similar conclusion.
But the process was full of problems.
Even though I hadn’t made my call yet,
he decided whether we would cooperate with Seoul and spoke up—on his own.
“Why did you do that?”
“......”
“You should’ve been glad, if anything, First Lieutenant Kim.”
An action completely different from what he’d said before we came here.
When I asked him seriously, First Lieutenant Kim answered in a trembling voice.
“......I didn’t do it for any clear reason.”
“No clear reason?”
I couldn’t help frowning.
Back when the Legion was first formed, it was only a little over a hundred soldiers and about twenty survivors.
But now, the number of people under the Legion, and the number of people within the Legion’s sphere of influence, is enormous.
“You made a unilateral decision about something that determines all of their fates, and you’re saying there was no clear reason.”
“Youngjun... haven’t you felt something strange since coming here?”
“...?”
Something strange.
Well—
“There’s a lot. Especially the number of Awakeners.”
For a survivor population this big, the number of Awakeners was low.
That was the strangest part, most of all.
I wanted to ask about that reason right away, but—
“If I ask about it, I’ll have no choice but to expose that I’m looking with the ‘Eye.’ I figured it was something I had to learn slowly.”
In the society of Awakeners, peeking at someone’s information is a massive insult.
In a world with no legal protection, individual power is everything you need to survive.
Trying to figure out that power can be taken as an attempt to threaten their life.
It’s embarrassing to say it out loud, but—
by the standards of this era, I’m an absurdly shameless bastard.
“Did you pull that stunt because of that? You don’t even know why it’s like that yet.”
“......”
“I don’t know whether you knew, First Lieutenant Kim, but...”
I’d felt some discomfort too.
I was planning to get to the bottom of it one way or another.
Even so, the reason I hesitated back in that room was—
“They... weren’t lying.”
It was a fact proven by Han Iseo’s words as well.
It felt like we’d jumped a bit too far down the list of priorities, but—
they really were in a position that could be called the legitimate successors of the Government of the Republic of Korea.
At the very least, they believed that themselves.
‘Even wanting cooperation wasn’t a lie.’
Sure, the way they said it was a little forceful.
Sure, they acted like they wanted to bring us under them.
But—
“The people in that room were sincerely trying to find a way to get through this crisis.”
If we used their legitimacy well, negotiations with other human forces we’d face in the future could go more smoothly.
And the political problems inside our own group—what First Lieutenant Kim was worried about—would become easier to solve.
More than anything, the one thing humanity is absolutely short on...
Numbers.
They could fill that gap.
Going “under” them could become a problem, sure.
But a cooperative relationship close to integration would’ve benefited us, too.
“...That’s not the discomfort I mean.”
“Huh?”
“No, maybe it’s just my mood.”
But—
even after everything I said, First Lieutenant Kim didn’t seem to regret refusing that cooperation.
“There was a decisive reason I did what I did earlier.”
“...What?”
“I thought it might’ve been a coincidence, so I wasn’t saying anything... but the more I think about it, the stranger it gets. Normally I should’ve reported it from the start, but I’m only saying it now. The truth is...”
And then—
when I heard what First Lieutenant Kim said, my eyes went wide.
*****
Not long after I wrapped up my conversation with First Lieutenant Kim,
someone came to see us.
“...Salute.”
“Salute.”
We returned the salute.
Because—
“Lieutenant General Kim Myeonghwan.”
“It’s without First Lieutenant Kim Hyeon-seok, but I’d like to talk with you for a moment... would that be alright?”
The visitor was a soldier we’d met here in Seoul—
Lieutenant General Kim Myeonghwan.
“...Whew. I’m sorry.”
In the lodging he visited, it was only me, the two Squad Leaders, and a few soldiers.
After confirming First Lieutenant Kim wasn’t here, he let out a small sigh and bowed his head to us.
“I had no intention of deceiving you.”
“I understand. If you did, you wouldn’t have mentioned Jang Youngwoong’s existence in the first place.”
A big reason I’d suspected Seoul had a separate leader during that meeting was what he’d told us.
He’d been the one to mention that Seoul had a hero.
“Haa... It’s a shame. Feels like a weird misunderstanding happened because I said something unnecessary.”
He seemed worried that things had gotten tangled up because of that remark.
“It’s not like that, so don’t worry, sir.”
“...Hm?”
“Even without what you said... we probably would’ve noticed quickly that there was another leader.”
One of the reasons I’d participated in that meeting was to check the state of the other survivors.
Either way, I {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} would’ve checked Jang Youngwoong’s status window soon enough.
And with that level, it would’ve been obvious he wasn’t just some ordinary moderator.
“...I see.”
But.
However he took my words—
“As I thought. Looks like the Legion already had some information about us.”
“....”
He seemed to be misunderstanding and thinking we’d been gathering information on them.
I was about to deny it, but Lieutenant General Kim Myeonghwan waved his hand first and opened his mouth.
“Ah, don’t worry. I’m not trying to scold you.”
“...Pardon?”
“It’s been a year in different regions, hasn’t it? You’d need to find out whether another force is trustworthy or not, so digging into someone else’s information isn’t exactly a sin.”
After saying that, he hesitated for a moment.
Then, scratching his cheek as if embarrassed, he said—
“Truth is... we did it too.”
“...What do you mean?”
“Well, I’ll be honest. We also had some information gathered about the Legion in Gangwon. Without you knowing.”
“......!”
At that,
me and the soldiers all widened our eyes.
Like he said, gathering information on us was understandable.
But—
“Why are you telling us that...?”
“It feels like I’m deceiving you, and it leaves a bad taste.”
Secretly collecting information about another force—
to the people of that force, it’s something that could feel pretty unpleasant.
So it was surprising that he would bring it up himself.
“You saw the people sitting in that meeting room, right? Aside from me, most of them are former civil servants, politicians, heads of this-or-that civic group. They’re all pretty sharp.”
“Sure looked like it.”
“To them, it was a calculation that it’d be better for those people to stand as representatives instead of Jang Youngwoong... but to be honest, I never liked that plan from the start. Why do people have to deceive each other when we’re all the same kind of people?”
Even if he was a soldier, he was a lieutenant general—high enough that I assumed he’d be deeply political.
But—
“I’m a soldier, and you’re soldiers too. Rather than deceiving each other and doing calculations between soldiers... shouldn’t we be straightforward? Reveal what needs to be revealed! Cooperate honestly—wouldn’t that be right?”
This man...
seems far more bold and open than we expected.
“Anyway, I came to see only you because... for some reason, First Lieutenant Kim seems to be overly suspicious of us.”
“Ah.”
“In the end, it’s true we deceived First Lieutenant Kim to a degree. But... honestly, the other people in that room are good people too. Everyone’s doing their best to cooperate to survive this era together. And their identities are all legitimate.”
Back in that meeting, First Lieutenant Kim had pressed them on whether their identities could be trusted.
That wasn’t the real reason he refused cooperation, but—
Lieutenant General Kim Myeonghwan seemed to care about it a lot.
“Of course, we’re planning to prepare the kind of proof First Lieutenant Kim demanded. Believe us. Vice Minister Yoo Jinhwan is, legally speaking, the only person who could serve as the Presidential Acting Authority.”
“Acting Authority.”
At that,
Corporal Seo Suhyeok spoke with his arms crossed, a disgruntled look on his face.
“For someone going on about the president, it felt like a pretty distant ‘acting’.”
“Well, that’s true.”
Lieutenant general and corporal.
Considering the gap in rank, it was an outrageously insolent attitude, but Lieutenant General Kim Myeonghwan didn’t seem to mind.
“He’s putting on airs as someone high and mighty right now, but... truth is, at first, even he felt a huge burden about taking that seat.”
“...Pardon?”
“The vice minister position isn’t something the president picks—civil servants get promoted into it. If you get technical, that man was just a civil servant who was good at his job. He’s confident in his own work, sure, but being the Presidential Acting Authority and all that is a different matter. In the beginning, he resisted fiercely.”
“...I-Is that so?”
“He only accepted it because he realized that position helped reassure people. Even now, he probably doesn’t like it much.”
That was unexpected.
With how he called himself the Presidential Acting Authority and all, I’d assumed he was the type blinded by power.
Seems that wasn’t the case.
“I understand why you’d find us suspicious. Still... what First Lieutenant Kim showed today was a bit much, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, it was.”
“We’ll bring proof, but I’m worried that even if we present it, he might still refuse cooperation. I don’t know what your relationship with First Lieutenant Kim is like, but... I’d appreciate it if you’d talk him down.”
He said it with a sigh.
“It’s become a hard era. Even if survivors cooperate, it still wouldn’t be enough, but instead we doubt each other and deceive each other... I don’t think anything good comes from that. The forces that already left—fine, we can’t help that. But the ones who remain... we have to cooperate somehow if we want to survive.”
Surprisingly,
what he was saying matched exactly what I’d been thinking all along.
Lieutenant General Kim Myeonghwan genuinely wanted cooperation.
Even though he was a high-ranking soldier, he came in person to a place with only soldiers like us and tried to talk—just that alone showed how much effort he was making.
“Um... I have something I’m curious about.”
“What is it? If you’re curious, ask anything. I’ll answer within what I know.”
“Then... what kind of person is Jang Youngwoong, exactly?”
“Ah.”
At Corporal Gwangil’s question,
Lieutenant General Kim Myeonghwan gave a small chuckle and answered.
“Do you know there are people like that?”
“What kind of people?”
“Survivalists... the kind of group they call that.”
*****
Survivalists.
Put simply, they’re people who prepare in advance for a crisis that will come someday.
Disasters like earthquakes, or war—
they make preparations for situations where their survival would be threatened.
In Korea, where urbanization has advanced so far, they were pretty rare.
Some people even treated them like delusional patients.
And, according to Lieutenant General Kim Myeonghwan—
“He was preparing for the end before the end even came.”
That early-thirties man we’d seen in the meeting room.
Jang Youngwoong was one of them.
“I don’t know if it’s because he’s just naturally diligent or what, but his preparations were thorough. Thorough enough that when the end actually hit... he could share what he’d stocked with other people.”
In the early days.
Right at the moment when most deaths occurred,
Jang Youngwoong shared the preparations he’d already put together.
He began actively responding to the end, leading the people who gathered around him.
And then—
“His responses were, truly... I can’t describe them as anything but possessed.”
At least from what Kim Myeonghwan saw,
Jang Youngwoong always made the optimal choice.
No matter what powerful enemy appeared, he responded and resolved the situation perfectly—like he’d known in advance.
‘...Impressive.’
Lieutenant General Kim Myeonghwan told us a few examples.
Even to us, Jang Youngwoong sounded like someone with extraordinary ability.
“He believed that to respond to the end, all survivors in Seoul had to cooperate.”
When about seventy percent of Seoul’s citizens had died,
he devoted himself to rescuing and unifying all survivors in Seoul in earnest.
“At first, there was a lot of conflict. Honestly, for him, conflict with humans like us probably bothered him more than monsters. I’ll say it now, but... even I didn’t get along with him at first.”
“Really?”
“He suddenly showed up and told me to fulfill my duty as a general and all that. I thought, who the hell are you to give orders?”
In that process, he used the survivors with high status to form various survivor organizations.
He made Yoo Jinhwan—a vice minister-level figure—into the Presidential Acting Authority to create a banner that Seoul people could gather under.
After retaking military bases to secure equipment, he rebuilt the Capital Defense Command under Lieutenant General Kim Myeonghwan.
“At first it was like that, but... well, as time passed, everyone ended up acknowledging him.”
Time went by,
and more and more people gathered under him.
The end that seemed like it would only stop when everyone in Seoul died, in the end—
“That man... he’s the hero who kept us alive.”
A miracle so absurd it bordered on impossible—
Seoul’s population succeeded in surviving at ten percent.
*****
“Then I’ll be going.”
“Yes, sir. Safe travels.”
“I’ll ask the others to approach you more favorably as well, so... talk to First Lieutenant Kim for me.”
After seeing Lieutenant General Kim Myeonghwan off,
me and the soldiers returned inside the lodging.
“This is complicated.”
“Yeah. It is.”
Lieutenant General Kim Myeonghwan, of course—
and the other figures in Seoul, whatever the details, were sincere about overcoming this end.
But at the same time—
‘What First Lieutenant Kim said is bothering me too.’
It wasn’t just one or two things that bothered me.
I’d never thought a meeting with other forces would end easily,
but this trip to Seoul had far more things I couldn’t make sense of than I expected.
‘For now, the important thing is... tomorrow’s meeting.’
Either way,
in that second meeting, we would decide the direction of cooperation with them.
We might effectively unify into a single guild.
We might remain separate guilds that help each other occasionally.
...Or we might become outright hostile.
‘In that room, I’ll have to confirm what that discomfort was.’
And then,
right as I was thinking that—
FLAP!
“...!?”
Something translucent tore through the building wall and entered.
When I focused my gaze,
what was there was—
-COO?
A pure-white, translucent bird,
holding a letter in its beak.
