Free Web NovelLately, it seems like every dog and pig has joined the board, and with them came a surge of ridiculous posts—many of which, bafflingly, get a lot of upvotes.
Just look at the current top trending one, this so-called “Community Skepticism” manifesto.
Let’s take a look at a few of them.
JjukumiSpicyChickenMemory: Why learning about life through online communities in school will ruin your future.
“From the start, the people on those boards were all twisted. Twisted people giving twisted opinions makes it sound like the truth. If you stay in those places long enough, you kick away any chance at a normal life. You end up thinking everyone but you is an idiot, lose faith in society, chase some fantasy ‘big win,’ age into irrelevance, and become an unemployed nobody.”
“......”
A completely hollow rant, the grumbling of someone who's clearly never committed to anything in their life.
But this post isn’t judged by content alone.
Posts on the board live or die by their comments, likes, and the temperature of those comments.
And this bullshit somehow drew a surprising number of endorsements.
GrubManju: fr fr
Criopod8: for real, the board mass-produced hikikomoris
8th Division - Sgt. Kim Young-han: The world’s been screwed ever since it got connected by LAN.
Lol, I'm out, good one: Even without the war, this country would've gone to hell thanks to online communities.
HermesClub: Back before the war, I didn’t even consider forum rats to be people. Who’d have thought I’d end up on one myself? Couldn’t have imagined it five years ago.
...
...
It’s only natural that we veteran board users would feel wounded by this shift.
Even...
IamJesus: ?
Even the legendary madman IAmJesus had his berserk button pushed.
But these days, he’s a nobody on the board.
No one remembers him.
A few older users might try to name-drop him now and then, but it’s like a storm in a teacup.
The new crop brought in by Melon Mask’s "Open Viva! Apocalypse!" initiative don’t show an ounce of respect for their seniors.
So we don’t help them either.
FittingModelHeeya: Looking to meet right away ❤️
Anyone who’s been around the board long enough would, without fail—even the senile ones or those driven mad by the erosion zones—think of one name upon seeing this post: Sunbi.
Too obvious. Too transparent.
The post likely includes a photo hinting at the author being a woman, and the address where help is requested is probably crawling with shady men prepping clubs and plotting some nasty crime.
If this is happening inside Seoul, it probably won’t escalate to murder, but outside the city?
People disappearing and dying isn’t even surprising.
Ever since Melon Mask unleashed that cursed “Full Public Access Viva! Apocalypse!” move, prostitution and crime exploded.
To the point that even I, as an administrator, gave up.
In this damned system where users can create IDs infinitely, there’s only so much us volunteer mods can do.
The board is as chaotic as Seoul itself.
Still, I have to fulfill my duty as an oldbie here.
“......”
Taptaptap
umchang: (Eomchang) No way anyone’s dumb enough to fall for this scam, right?
I believe it’s the duty of us old users to teach proper internet manners and etiquette to the juniors.
But then...
“?”
Something pops up.
Something I know all too well.
No, someone who’s the most important person to me right now.
Anonymous68: Heeya, where are you? Where can we meet?
It’s Kang Han-min.
He’s practically drooling in the comments on this nonsense post.
No way. This bastard—
Weren’t you the internet pro, not me?
FittingModelHeeya: Oh my~ Anonymous68~
FittingModelHeeya: You know how to send messages, right~? Let’s talk there~ ♡
Anonymous68: Yes! I’ll message you now ♤
“......”
Is he doing this on purpose? Or has he completely lost it?
Being an Over-10-Level Awakened doesn’t make you immune to the Rift’s mental disorders.
Maybe the burden and responsibility got to him, and he’s going through a phase.
Even celebrities and politicians fall hard from a single moment of impulse or negligence.
And knowing Kang Han-min since school, he was never exactly airtight.
Sure, I’m a bit miffed he didn’t call me if he had this much free time for dumb crap—but now that I’ve seen this, I can’t just let it slide.
“......”
Taptaptap
umchang: (Eomchang in heat) wya?
I’m going too.
*
Most of Seoul {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} is a ruin.
People are packed mostly south of the river, in government-established residential zones. Outside those zones? Still ruins.
But if you’re determined, it’s not hard to set up a hideout in one of these wrecks.
There aren’t many zombies or monsters roaming around anymore. The threat of cultists or looters has lessened too.
Of course, lone-wolf resistance or small unit skirmishes are always a risk, but people who set up in the outskirts usually don’t come unprepared.
“There’s a woman in the building, yeah. But there are two more behind it, and one more on the third floor behind a broken window. One of them’s got a gun, the others have a crossbow and a bat.”
The “FittingModelHeeya” crew is just another garden-variety criminal gang.
Wiping them out with Cheon Young-jae wouldn’t be hard.
The problem, as always, is Kang Han-min.
He might flake.
This is the internet, after all.
Even if it’s people behind it, there’s always a layer of digital abstraction. Easier to break promises than in real life.
For now, we wait.
“Do you really think he’ll come? Here, of all places?”
Cheon Young-jae’s been “dating” some “female user” online recently.
I think it’s probably a guy, but hey—he’s into it, who am I to say?
“You think someone like Kang Han-min would fall for such a cheap trap? Even someone a bit slow would find it fishy if they were told to come all the way out to this crime zone, right?”
Says the guy with his own embarrassing situation.
If he’d spent even a tenth of that keen critical sense on himself, he’d have realized his “emotionally connected female user” has more hair than sense.
Anyway, we had to monitor the situation.
Cheon Young-jae and I watched from behind a crumbling building as we scoped out the FittingModelHeeya gang.
No need to explain much.
Just your run-of-the-mill, exploitative scum.
Sure, most of New Seoul is built around evacuees from shelters and Jeju—but everyone knows there are quite a few looters-turned-citizens mixed in too.
After the city got crowded, they started screening people—but when Woo Min-hee was in charge, anyone who didn’t openly act hostile or admit to being a criminal got in.
You really think scum like that are going to pull their weight in a factory or field?
“Hm. Hang on.”
Cheon Young-jae sniffed the air.
He looked at me.
“Senior, you smell that too, right?”
I nodded.
A faint foul stench in the air.
Probably the smell of rotting human flesh.
“Wanna check it out?”
Even before the war, murder was a serious crime—and now, it still is.
If anything, the presence or absence of murder is a clearer moral barometer these days.
Beating someone up and stealing? Maybe forgivable.
But torture? Murder?
That calls for blood.
We found the body in a drainage ditch.
A naked man, dumped in a sewage canal, rotting away.
The tattoo on his back said he wasn’t exactly a model citizen in life—but the signs of brutal torture made the manner of death undeniable.
I checked my phone.
Message from FittingModelHeeya: Where are you right now?
“......”
Taptaptap
umchang: Got caught at a checkpoint. They’re questioning me. Just wait a little longer!
Message from FittingModelHeeya: Okay, I’ll wait~
I thought for a moment.
We could wait and see if Kang Han-min shows up—but then again, he might not.
Internet promises are like Schrödinger’s cat. Anything goes until observed.
“Should we move in?”
It wouldn’t be hard.
Cheon Young-jae and I could clean them out in five minutes.
He cracked his knuckles and stretched his neck.
“Can I kill them?”
“If it’s necessary.”
We checked our weapons.
Clack.
Cheon Young-jae handed me a rifle.
I chambered a round and loaded the mag.
We’d avoid shooting if possible, but if they fired first, we’d have no choice.
We’re not heroes. fɾēewebnσveℓ.com
But we’re not villains either.
We can kill, and stay cold, if our goal demands it.
I checked my axe and peeked around a broken stone wall to calculate our entry.
Raised my hand.
Halt signal.
Cheon Young-jae silently stood beside me, eyes locked on the same spot.
“Who’s that?”
“Kang Han-min.”
“What... that’s Kang Han-min...?”
Yeah.
Kang Han-min actually showed up to this dumb, absurd scene, dressed in a ragged tracksuit.
*
“What the hell... what is this?”
Cheon Young-jae was clearly more shaken than I was.
He and Kang Han-min were five cohorts apart—they wouldn’t have even crossed paths in school, let alone in battle.
And long before he graduated, Kang Han-min became the Awakened messiah.
I’ll spare you the details of the government propaganda that followed.
Let’s just say: the myth of Kang Han-min, the Savior, was mostly manufactured by the state.
Even his appearance was drastically upgraded.
Makeup and lighting don’t just work magic on women.
They can transform a man too.
Media coverage of Kang Han-min—not to mention his own calculated image—carried an almost holy aura.
And now here he was, in ragged street clothes, looking completely raw and ordinary.
No wonder Cheon Young-jae didn’t recognize him.
Still, the fact that this symbol of the times had fallen for a scam like “FittingModelHeeya” and showed up like a fool must’ve felt like the sun rising in the west.
“No way. This is real?! He’s supposed to be at the Rift...”
“Let’s just keep watching.”
I figure I know Kang Han-min better than Cheon Young-jae does.
He had a warmer heart than mine.
I know he had feelings for Na Hye-in, quietly.
And that he’d reached out to other women too—and been rejected each time.
Maybe those attempts were his way of trying to save himself from the ruin I saw in his dorm.
He was always more proactive about women than I ever was.
When he moved out of the dorms and into the Chinese settlement, people who disliked him gossiped that he was switching mistresses and living a messy life.
“He probably lost his virginity to a prostitute.”
A classmate who really hated him once said that. The words still stick in my memory like shattered glass.
“What do we do?”
Cheon Young-jae narrowed his eyes at the building.
It shouldn’t be a big issue.
No random thugs can do anything to Kang Han-min.
Even among Over-10 Awakened, he’s considered another level.
The shockwave from his awakening alone could knock them unconscious or drive them insane.
But there’s a variable.
Drugs.
If they got him to ingest a strong sedative or sleep agent, things could get dicey.
Places like this often deal in spiked drinks.
And sure enough, Kang Han-min followed one of the thugs inside.
“Yes. I brought it. What? What did I bring? Yeah. Canned food. Right.”
The way he chuckled... he looked exactly like a poor guy caught in a spider’s web.
“......”
I have no idea what he’s thinking.
Why is he here? Why’s he doing this idiotic thing?
Either way, he’s the most important person to me right now.
If there’s even a 1% chance he gets hurt or killed, I have to act.
“Let’s move in.”
I stepped forward.
Cheon Young-jae followed.
Aside from an infrared sensor by the entrance, there weren’t any major surveillance devices.
There were two entrances to the three-story building where the woman and thugs were holed up. One was blocked by wreckage and junked cars. The other was guarded by a thug with a walkie-talkie.
Only one guard—but not to be underestimated.
His position was in direct line of sight from others inside the building.
If contact is lost, they’ll know something’s wrong.
Sure enough, the guy kept his radio on and was regularly checking in.
Gotta admit, he had some experience.
But today, he picked the wrong opponent.
I looked at the building.
Behind it, rusted gas pipes and a storm drain ran along the exterior wall.
Probably long past their prime, but—
“What do you think?”
“It’ll hold. Should be fine.”
More than sturdy enough to carry one or two people.
I climbed the pipe first.
Didn’t take long to reach the rooftop.
Cheon Young-jae followed like a leopard, leaping up the pipe.
I grabbed his hand and helped him up, then scanned the rooftop.
Unguarded.
And then we heard it.
“Wait, why are you doing this all of a sudden? No, I didn’t do anything wrong...”
Kang Han-min’s flustered voice drifted out of a window.
“......”
I’ve got a bad feeling about this.
