“You could’ve subdued them before they fired. You shot late on purpose.”
“To subdue them as fast as possible, that was the best option.”
That wasn’t wrong.
In reality, with that single shot, the soldiers who had just pushed in were all rendered combat-ineffective.
The problem was that this wasn’t just combat-ineffective.
“With an explosion like that, there’s no way people who aren’t awakened can endure it.”
“I aimed it so it would detonate at range. They won’t all be dead.”
“Even if it’s not all of them, you’re saying there will be deaths!”
Human death.
Even putting my personal feelings aside—
with humanity’s survivors so few now, it was something we had to avoid however we could.
“Sergeant Shin, you told us to avoid hurting people when possible.”
“You knew and did it anyway?”
“Yes. I knew. But.”
When I glared at him with anger,
Corporal Seo Suhyeok answered flatly.
“As for Gwangil... if you told him to die, he’d do it without hesitation. But you know me. I’m not like that.”
“......”
“I plan to follow your orders most of the time. But on certain things, you make strange calls. The clearest example is when human lives are on the line. If I think about it, it feels like a similar situation to back then.”
Back then.
The first time I clashed with him, it had been like this.
When I stepped up to save soldiers who were about to get caught in an explosion,
he’d pointed out that my life—our Legion Commander’s life—mattered more,
and that I shouldn’t have stepped into it.
“Back then, Sergeant Shin, your judgment was right. Because you’re someone who can even sacrifice your life for your subordinates, we can follow you.”
“So you’re saying it’s not right now?”
“I don’t dislike that side of you even now. But.”
He looked at the soldiers lying there, groaning.
“They aren’t your subordinates.”
“.......”
“To beat this world, I understand that the more living humans there are, the better. Like you said, we avoid harming humans who don’t strike first. But we’re the ones who got attacked. They don’t fall under ‘humans who don’t strike us first’—the category you told us not to harm.”
Only then did I realize something.
I’ve been fighting monsters for too long.
In Gangwon Province, the Legion had become so strong that hardly any humans dared attack us.
Gyeonggi Province was already unified under a single human force.
Fighting humans—
felt alien to me.
...Even the fact that sometimes you had to cut down other humans.
“...Even so!”
“I get why you’re shaken. They wear similar uniforms, and you even spoke with Lieutenant General Kim Myeonghwan. But don’t forget.”
He pulled out his other firearms, too,
checking their condition as he spoke.
“We’re soldiers. And so are they.”
“.......”
“You know this. Soldiers go to the battlefield prepared to die.”
He turned his head and looked at the barrier blocking us.
“They were prepared to die, too. And we’re trapped in here because of them.”
Outside, a hundred-plus Legion members would’ve started moving to rescue us.
But the structure of this underground bunker was extremely complex.
Judging by how thick that barrier was, it would take a long time for them to reach us.
“We don’t have the leeway to worry about them... honestly.”
“......”
I ground my teeth and thought.
It pissed me off beyond belief, but—
This time, he’s right.
Just like he said,
we didn’t have room to spare.
“I know you hate seeing people die. But...”
He raised his sniper rifle toward the barrier,
studied it carefully, and muttered.
“Right now, just focus on escaping. The Legion needs you. Not the lives of strangers who we’ve never even seen before and are attacking us.”
At that,
I dragged a hand down my face and answered.
“...I’m sorry. I got worked up and my judgment slipped.”
“There’s nothing to apologize for.”
“You’re right. Keep casualties to a minimum if possible... but if you have to, don’t hesitate.”
“Yes, sir.”
When I said that,
Corporal Seo Suhyeok gave a slight shrug,
then pulled the trigger on the sniper rifle he’d been aiming at the barrier.
TAAAAANG!
A shot that seemed abrupt and pointless.
But I understood why immediately.
“Good. Looks like it’s working.”
That absurdly hard, thick barrier that even Corporal Gwangil had struggled to break—
now had a huge hole punched clean through it.
“Suhyeok... what did you do?”
“Eh. I’ve got my own know-how.”
Corporal Gwangil stared, eyes wide.
This was a wall that a level-30-plus Gwangil had been struggling with.
No matter how strong a marksman awakened person was, opening a hole that big wasn’t supposed to be easy.
Just like Gwangil, this guy too...
Unlike the version of him I’d known back then,
he’d grown by breaking down a wall.
BANG, TAAAAANG!
Corporal Seo Suhyeok fired a few more shots like it was nothing.
Each time, more holes opened up in that impossibly hard wall.
“This should make it easy to break, right?”
“Ha-ha! Of course.”
No matter how thick and hard a wall was—
KWAHHHHHANG!
once a few big holes were punched through it,
it couldn’t stop Corporal Gwangil’s massive gauntlets anymore.
“Let’s go, Sergeant Shin.”
“...Yeah!”
The wall that was supposed to take a full minute to break collapsed in just seconds,
and we pushed forward beyond it.
*****
Like that,
we smashed through several barriers
and kept advancing, subduing every soldier that charged us.
Then a problem came up.
“...Which way from here?”
“......”
This underground bunker was huge and complicated.
We’d only been here twice.
Up until now it had been mostly straight,
but at some point, I definitely remembered turning several times while moving.
“Should we just break through upward?”
Corporal Gwangil tilted his head and looked up.
“Isn’t that ceiling wall the same material as the barrier?”
“It looks like it. If Suhyeok and I work together, I don’t think we can’t break through.”
Like how I’d once carved through a building’s ceiling in Gyeonggi Province to advance,
the two of them could probably do something like that easily.
“No. If we do that wrong, the whole facility could collapse.”
“Hm. But if it’s us, couldn’t we still get out alive somehow?”
At that,
I shook my head.
“We’d be fine.”
“You’re worried about the Seoul troops? I don’t fully agree with what Suhyeok said earlier, but there’s no need to show that much consideration to people attacking us—”
“No. Not them.”
“...Huh?”
“There are others besides us and Seoul.”
“...Ah.”
At my words,
Corporal Gwangil murmured like he’d realized.
“North Gyeongsang Province and Gyeonggi Province.”
“Yeah, dumbass.”
Somewhere in this bunker, there were still people from North Gyeongsang Province and Gyeonggi Province.
If it were only enemies in here, I’d smash the ceiling without hesitation and escape, but—
“We can’t drag those people down with it.”
“Understood.”
Unfortunately, that option was off the table.
And while we were forced into an inefficient escape route—
[Squad 12 to B-1. Squads 8, 10, and 14 to B-4!]
SHHHK!
briefing voices echoed through the facility,
and each time, barriers opened and soldiers poured in from beyond.
“Those bastards don’t get tired, do they?”
“How many soldiers were even staged in this cramped underground bunker?”
THUD!
RATATATANG....
Of course, we weren’t going to lose to them.
Seo Suhyeok’s bullets shut down their weapons,
and Gwangil’s fists knocked them out fast.
But—
“Sergeant Shin.”
Corporal Seo Suhyeok spoke while collecting ammunition from the soldiers’ pouches.
“...We can’t keep fighting like this.”
“Yeah.”
In a straight fight, we probably wouldn’t lose.
But their objective was extremely simple.
[Squad 9 holds at point B-6, then merges with Squad 11 moving at point B-8 before engaging. The objective is not to kill the enemy. Prolong the engagement as long as possible and accumulate their fatigue!]
“For real. They’re not even trying to hide it.”
They were trying to grind down our stamina.
Soldiers with guns were, even lowballing it, stronger than an awakened person in the early teens.
Even if each skirmish was small,
each one chipped away at us.
And that wasn’t all.
Every fight also drains Suhyeok’s ammo.
Corporal Seo Suhyeok’s firearms were special models manufactured by the Legion.
Naturally, their ammunition was also special.
But those rounds were now completely depleted.
So after each engagement, he was collecting and using soldiers’ ammo like this.
Which meant his firepower was ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) weaker than before.
The longer the fighting continued, the more we weakened—little by little.
This was...
This isn’t a battle method for army versus army... human versus human.
It was more like—
the way weak humans hunt a monster that’s overwhelmingly stronger than them.
Minimize losses while draining the enemy’s stamina as efficiently as possible.
Don’t commit everything into one battle.
Take time, step by step, shaving down the enemy’s strength.
No matter how strong a monster was, eventually it got tired and fell.
A tactic that could drag something far stronger than humans down to a level humans could handle.
Seoul’s awakened combat power was nowhere near enough... but most of the monsters had already been exterminated. Some of them must’ve been really strong.
I’d honestly been a little curious how these Seoul forces had driven off the monsters on this land with only a minimal awakened roster.
But—
“I didn’t think I’d learn the answer by being on the receiving end.”
It felt like I was seeing part of their method.
And on top of that—
[Don’t hesitate! They are reluctant to kill allied forces. As long as you don’t resist violently after being subdued, you won’t lose your life—so commit to combat aggressively!]
“...Using our goodwill like this, huh?!”
They were even exploiting the fact that we didn’t want to kill them unless we absolutely had to.
Corporal Seo Suhyeok wouldn’t hesitate if necessary,
but he was still following my order to avoid killing as much as possible.
The enemy seemed to have noticed, too, and attacked with just enough intensity that it would be “possible to end without killing.”
I thought of the owner of that voice—
the one issuing the briefings echoing through this facility.
Lieutenant General Kim Myeonghwan...
I didn’t want to admit it, but—
he was steadily and efficiently
hunting us.
If there was one saving grace for us—
“Communication is actually audible.”
“It’s better than nothing if we can predict when they’re going to charge.”
Their communications were fully audible to us as well.
The reason was simple.
“They can’t use wireless communications.”
After the day the world ended,
all wireless communication stopped being usable.
If what Minjae said is right... as radio waves travel far, mana warps them and corrupts them.
The only thing still usable was short-range wired communication.
That was why computer-like devices could still function at all.
They couldn’t use radios either, so they were pushing orders through wired speakers in the base.
Of course,
even if we could hear them, it didn’t feel like we could do much about it.
I’d thought the advantage was simply knowing when they’d come in, so we could prepare...
but—
“B-1 was where fewer enemies showed up. B-4 was where three squads appeared...”
“...?”
Apparently,
that was just my thinking.
“They sealed off sectors A-19 through E-20... B-6 was closer to where we are than B-8... and judging by when they pushed in, the distance between them is about five minutes...”
“What have you been muttering about this whole time?”
Someone was trying to do something with those transmissions.
“First Lieutenant Kim?”
“Hm. Guys.”
Our unit’s commander.
The one I’d always thought was just a figurehead.
“Let’s go that way. If we do... I think we can figure something out.”
It was First Lieutenant Kim.
