RATATATATATANG!!!
Gunfire rang out.
Even though they were probably reservists—civilians, not active-duty soldiers.
Just how well-trained were they?
The moment the order came down, there wasn’t a shred of hesitation in the process of aiming their barrels at us and pulling the trigger.
...Of course.
Even so.
KAGAGAGAGAGANG!!!
“Tch.”
Those bullets...
didn’t do us any real damage.
“This got complicated.”
“Yeah.”
The instant the bullets started pouring down,
one man stepped forward instead—pushing ahead into the storm.
TIDIDIDIDIK!
Countless rounds
ricocheted off in every direction, failing to punch through the military uniform that covered his entire massive frame.
“What do we do? Please give the order.”
“Unfortunately, it looks like we won’t be avoiding a fight.”
I sighed inwardly,
then brought my hand to my waist and spoke.
“First, we get out of here. If anyone blocks us, we punch through.”
With that,
I was about to draw the two kitchen knives hanging at my waist,
[Dokgogu-style] and [Black-Chung-style].
But then—
Swoosh....
“Hey now.”
“Put them away.”
Two arms shot out,
and stopped my hand.
“What?”
“We understand the order. But.”
The two people who blocked my hand as I tried to draw my knives—
Corporal Gwangil and Corporal Seo Suhyeok—spoke with faint smiles.
“Do you really need to step in for grunt work like this, Sergeant?”
“Sergeant Shin, just rest and watch. We’ll handle it.”
And as I watched the two of them,
a thought crossed my mind.
They noticed.
A fact I hadn’t told anyone,
except the medics.
About my condition.
The state my body was in right now—
wasn’t normal.
I was going to keep it hidden.
If the unit saw me weakened, it would hit morale.
That was why I’d been hiding it as much as I could.
On the faint hope that time might fix it, I hadn’t even told the officers.
I’d tried my best not to show it...
but—
“Sergeant Shin, act like an old-timer and keep your head down in the back.”
“You’re already pissed your end-of-service leave got cut—nobody’s gonna complain if you half-ass unit work.”
They’d noticed anyway.
That wasn’t possible unless they’d been paying close attention to me all along.
I let out a dry laugh.
“Fine. Sorry, but I’m going to need you two to work.”
“Come on, work?”
“This is our job in the first place.”
And then, at that moment—
RATATATATATANG....
“Alright, then.”
Enemy gunfire poured in again,
and Corporal Gwangil walked straight into the middle of it, shoulders squared.
“I’ll escort you to the exit. The three of you follow behind me.”
He slipped a hand into his coat,
pulled out a massive gauntlet and a helmet, and put them on.
“Hoo....”
A helmet shaped like a mask—similar to a gas mask.
And a pair of gigantic, thick gauntlets nearly the size of a small person.
RATATATANG....
A man armored head to toe in military gear
took the bullets and marched forward in silence.
“...What the hell.”
Those soldiers hadn’t hesitated to point their guns at people.
They were trained well enough that it was hard to believe they were reservists.
“That is...”
But cracks began to form in their faces.
THUD, THUD....
“That giant...!”
Bullets kept pouring down,
and he took every last one of them—
“Guns aren’t working!”
as Corporal Gwangil threw himself into it.
*****
Their commander, Lieutenant General Kim Myeonghwan, had vanished at some point,
and we tried to break out while facing the soldiers who were trying to block and suppress us.
“T-This...!”
...Saying it like that makes it sound like we were the ones getting crushed,
but that wasn’t really the case.
“Monster...!”
THUD!!!
“Guhk...!”
With one casual swing of his fist,
Corporal Gwangil sent the soldiers firing their guns—and even the people around them—flying in one sweep.
“I’m saying this just in case—don’t kill them if you can avoid it!”
“...Yes, sir.”
After hearing my order, Corporal Gwangil moved like bullets didn’t even hurt,
just trudging forward without a word.
“Damn it... stop him no matter what!”
“H-How are we supposed to ‘no matter what’ that?!”
If medieval warriors were seeing a tank for the first time, would it feel like this?
One soldier screamed with a bloodless face.
“How the hell are we supposed to stop that?!”
The bullets they were pouring out
couldn’t even do the kind of damage an arrow would do to a tank.
“Aim for the ones behind him!”
“With how big he is, even that’s hard!”
He was already huge, and after rapid growth post-awakening,
Corporal Gwangil’s body was tough and massive enough to hide all three of us behind him.
That man marching forward in silence—
the pressure alone wasn’t any less than dozens of tanks rolling in.
RATATATATATATANG!!!
“S-Spare me....”
THUD!!!
“Gk....”
Even though Corporal Gwangil was walking slowly just to account for us behind him,
they couldn’t slow his advance even a little.
The Legion’s combat uniform.
Its defense was already famous.
Even right after we came down from the mountains, it had been able to stop a bullet or two.
Now, after research and development by the production crew led by Lee Sanga,
it boasted defense strong enough to withstand even heavy barrages.
...Of course.
Withstand doesn’t mean block everything.
It was suppressive fire from dozens of soldiers.
No matter how good the uniform was, it wasn’t enough to reduce the damage all the way to zero.
If it were that strong, me, First Lieutenant Kim, and Corporal Seo Suhyeok wouldn’t need to hide behind Gwangil in the first place.
And yet the reason he looked so fine—
Sssrrk....
That presence.
That black, dark presence settled around his body.
It looked like the influence of [Madness].
As I moved behind him,
I flinched at the sight of it.
Is that... spreading?
Gwangil’s [Madness] was power I’d seen for a long time.
I knew it made him stronger.
But until now, it had only ever swelled close to his body.
Not anymore.
Sssrrk.
That black, ominous presence I thought stayed only around his body
spread wide into the space around him—
“What is that black aura?!”
“The bullets are getting stopped by it!”
Like a shield,
it was blocking bullets aimed at us behind him.
It didn’t have that function before.
And watching it, I knew.
Corporal Gwangil’s level is over 30.
That had to be part of some new power he’d gained.
Tap. Tap-tap.
“Ah... ah.”
Corporal Gwangil kept walking forward without a word.
The soldiers staring at him had reached the point where
they were just blankly pulling the trigger on guns with empty magazines.
“We’re out of ammo....”
Even after dumping every bullet they had, the enemy looked unscathed.
One soldier muttered in a despair-soaked voice.
“This can’t be real.”
“......”
“R-Right. That’s it. It has to be a dream. The dream where I get hunted by monsters every day.”
“A dream, huh.”
And then—
as for those soldiers—
“Then dream for a bit.”
Corporal Gwangil
swung his massive fist.
*****
“Gk....”
“Looks like this one’s the last for now.”
Corporal Gwangil said as he roughly tossed aside the soldier whose throat he’d been gripping.
A lot of soldiers had attacked us,
but with Corporal Gwangil stepping up, most of them had been subdued.
Did Jang Youngwoong run off somewhere else?
Not just Jang Youngwoong—Lieutenant General Kim Myeonghwan had also disappeared.
We decided not to worry about them and prioritize escaping.
I did contact the soldiers waiting elsewhere and told them to come support us, but...
This underground shelter was far too vast and complex.
It would take a long time to link up.
“That wall looks pretty thick.”
“I’ll break it.”
The moment Lieutenant General Kim Myeonghwan’s seal-off order went out, a barrier appeared.
We stood in front of that barrier blocking the corridor.
...But then—
THUD...!
“...Huh?”
Corporal Gwangil drove his gauntleted fist into the barrier.
He frowned and looked down at his own fist.
“What is it?”
“This... it’s tougher than I thought.”
At that, I couldn’t help but flinch.
“You’re saying that?”
“Yeah. Honestly, I can’t believe it either.”
Sure, barriers installed in bunkers tended to be thick.
But Corporal Gwangil’s brute force was far beyond “normal.”
For him to call it tough—
“Is it unbreakable?”
“Not that bad. But to punch a hole big enough for people to pass through will take time. At least over a minute.”
“One minute...”
Not a long time,
but in a situation like this, it could be fatal.
“Something’s off. Even if it’s a shelter built to withstand nuclear strikes, it shouldn’t be this hard.”
Then First Lieutenant Kim stepped up, touched the barrier, and spoke.
“Is it strange?”
“With Gwangil’s fist, he could rip steel like paper. If even he has trouble punching through it, this isn’t normal material. No matter how thick a wall is, that shouldn’t happen with ordinary matter. This is probably...”
“Something an awakened person made?”
“Very likely.”
Now that I looked,
even the walls around here—and this barrier—
looked strangely new for an old bunker facility.
“They probably built it after they took this place.”
“Even if they had few awakened people, they still had some. A production awakened person must’ve made it.”
“Making a material like this isn’t strange by itself. But...”
First Lieutenant Kim trailed off,
then frowned and muttered.
“Outside, where we were, there wasn’t a single defensive facility made out of this stuff.”
“...So the outside—the place you’d actually need to defend against intruders—was blocked with ordinary walls, but only the inside of the shelter, where you almost never need it, was made this sturdy?”
That was definitely strange.
No matter how much this shelter was their headquarters and last line of defense—
the place that would see the ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) most combat was the external defenses.
So that was where the investment should’ve gone.
No matter how important the capital was,
most of the Army’s strength was concentrated up front in Gangwon Province.
“So what’s the intent? This is like...”
First Lieutenant Kim stared at the wall with a bad look in his eyes.
“...like they expected people like us to try escaping from the inside....”
“...No way.”
Whatever their intent actually was,
this barrier was effectively stopping our escape.
“Even if it takes time, I’ll break it.”
“Do it.”
Just as Corporal Gwangil raised his fist again—
[Squad 3, entering Sector A-6!]
SHHHK!!!
An electronic tone echoed through the entire facility.
With it, one of the barriers behind us opened—
“Entry complete!”
and soldiers poured out.
[As of this moment, firepower restrictions are fully lifted. Do not recognize the enemies as ordinary humans—respond under the assumption they possess tank-class, or greater, defensive capabilities!]
“Everyone heard the order!”
Unlike the ones who’d just been blocking us—
these soldiers weren’t carrying ordinary anti-personnel weapons...
they had anti-armor weapons.
“Fire!”
One soldier shouldered a rocket launcher and aimed it at us.
Even Corporal Gwangil wouldn’t be able to protect us behind him from a rocket’s firepower.
Are you insane.
We wouldn’t die since we also had Legion-issued gear,
but if we took a direct hit, we’d still take real damage.
Of course—
“I’ll respond.”
“Good.”
That was if the rocket actually reached us.
Click.
From the moment the launcher was aimed our way,
Corporal Seo Suhyeok had already been aiming his pistol at them.
And the instant the rocket fired—
PAAAANG!
BANG!
at the same time,
Seo Suhyeok’s pistol jerked—
and that was enough.
KWAHHHHHANG!
The rocket they fired never even reached us.
It exploded after traveling only a short distance out of the launcher.
“AAAAAGH!!!”
“I-It hurts...!”
Naturally,
the ones caught in that explosion weren’t us.
It was them.
With a single shot, he’d subdued the soldiers trying to wipe us out.
It was a solid performance, but—
“You...”
I frowned as I watched.
“You could’ve stopped them before they fired. You shot late on purpose.”
“......”
A rocket blast was something even an awakened person like me would find burdensome.
What happened to the soldiers of the Capital Defense Command caught in that explosion...
didn’t need to be said.
