Free Web Novel“You bastard!”
One of the men drew something.
A collapsible baton.
The other men, cowed by the earlier shockwave, drew theirs in unison and surrounded the boy who had released the pulse.
The man in the skeletal helmet raised his baton high.
Bang!
I had no desire to attract attention, but in this case, a single bullet was worth more than any speech.
Everyone turned to look—at me, at the space just above my hand, and at the pistol still faintly smoking from a single shot into the air.
“What the hell are you doing?”
The man froze and barked a sharp question.
“Looked like you were about to beat someone to death.”
“And how’s that your damn business?”
I holstered my pistol and slowly walked toward them.
They outnumbered us eight to two, but I wasn’t worried.
We came from a more powerful organization, and more importantly, those kids were valuable to us.
Ignoring the men, I looked at the kids—especially the boy who had released the shockwave.
First-year high schooler, maybe third-year middle schooler at most.
The others looked around the same age, some even younger.
“Back off.”
One of the men warned me.
I ignored him and asked the boy:
“You. Are you an Awakened?”
The boy hesitated.
He was watching the adults nervously.
I whispered in a low voice:
“Don’t worry. If something happens, I’ll take responsibility.”
Only then did the boy nod.
“Yes.”
He added, “I’m Awakened.”
I heard footsteps.
Probably the man in the skeletal helmet.
“Little punk.”
The only way he could realistically threaten me was if he drew a gun.
But that wasn’t going to happen.
If he had, Cheon Young-jae, who was stationed at the entrance, wouldn’t have stayed still.
And then I heard it.
Whoosh—
The baton slicing through the air.
Swish—
I drew my axe and swung it along the anticipated arc.
Clang!
The axe handle and the baton collided in midair.
To someone like me, the jolt through my fingers and palm was a familiar sensation, almost nostalgic.
To someone who’d never clashed weapons before, it would be pain.
I saw the man’s face twist in agony through the dark visor of his helmet.
I twisted my wrist, tore the baton from his grip, reversed the axe, and slammed the flat of the blade into the side of his helmet.
Crack!
The helmet’s side shattered, and the man was knocked off his feet.
He staggered back up and removed the broken helmet.
A hideous scar ran across his left eye, but I felt nothing about it.
He stormed toward me.
Probably meant to look intimidating.
Whack!
“AAAGH!”
He picked the wrong person to mess with.
After taking a couple of solid blows, he dropped, squirming on the ground like a bug hit with insecticide.
I turned to look at the other men, who still clutched their batons but didn’t move.
No one spoke.
Then I turned to the other gazes fixed on us.
“Don’t worry.”
The gunshot had done its job.
Combat personnel with rifles rushed into the drill yard.
I stared at them calmly and said,
“You know where we’re from, right?”
It might be cheap, but belonging to a powerful group does come with convenient privileges.
*
The abused Awakened were mostly youths.
They were relocated from their cramped barracks to temporary shelters beside the train.
The picture was clear enough.
“They gaslighted them.”
Woo Min-hee had just arrived, yawning as she spoke.
“It’s not just common—it’s textbook. If you can’t control someone by power, the only way to use them is to destroy them psychologically. Cheapest method? The same one you saw. Violence-based mental domination.”
Most so-called domesticated animals—cattle, horses—are physically stronger than humans.
But humans control them through skill.
Tak Min-su’s group had achieved complete psychological domination over the children.
Militarized communal living, routine fear, corporal punishment, degradation—and most critically, destruction of self-worth.
The instructors constantly referred to the children as “monsters,” reinforcing the idea that they were less than human and worthless.
“Annoying bastards.”
It was rare for Woo Min-hee to show discomfort, but she did.
Naturally, we met with Tak Min-su again.
“Those kids are our property.”
This time, Tak Min-su didn’t bother to hide it.
To them, the Awakened were commodities.
“People are property now?”
Min-hee’s voice was laced with restrained fury.
Tak Min-su glanced around, trying to figure out who she was, and Pyo Won-sang answered cautiously.
“This is Director Woo Min-hee. Former head of the Incheon Research Institute.”
Tak Min-su seemed to recognize the name.
That hardened face softened ever so slightly.
Still, he had that old-man pride—the kind that wouldn’t allow himself to look inferior.
“...Those children are the backbone of our defense. Without them, we couldn’t have protected so many people.”
Even when his motives were obvious, he tried to pivot.
But Woo Min-hee wasn’t one for that kind of naïve deflection.
“So that’s why you abused kids barely old enough to be your grandkids?”
“If a few must suffer so the many can live, that’s how it should be. Besides, when they grow up, we’ll compensate them...”
“We’ll be taking them.”
Woo Min-hee was being her usual, bulldozing self.
Screeee—
She scratched the glass top of the old desk with her hooked metal fingers.
Nobody knows how her prosthetic arm works without any visible mechanics, but for anyone who feared her, it was warning enough.
In the frozen silence, Tak Min-su let out a long sigh.
He knew the situation wasn’t in his favor.
Too much of a power gap to protest.
Still, Tak Min-su didn’t back down easily.
The years he’d lived—maybe it was habit, maybe inertia—but something kept him talking.
“Director.”
He sighed again, this time with resignation.
“Your point is valid, but you shouldn’t judge the world so simply.”
“Sorry?”
“That’s just how it is.”
“What is?”
“You can’t let kids with that kind of power get cocky. The stronger they are, the more they need to be watched and restrained—to keep them from getting ideas.”
Woo Min-hee’s eyebrow twitched.
I gestured slightly where she could see.
Thankfully, she took the cue.
Her silence allowed Tak Min-su to continue.
“Why do you think scholars in the Joseon and Goryeo eras kept the military under their thumb? People with power can’t be given privilege. They always cause problems. That’s just how the world works.”
There it was.
That inevitable line: “That’s how the world works.”
I don’t know where people get the nerve to toss that phrase around like they understand it.
But I knew the heart of this conversation.
“Mr. Mayor.”
I stared straight at him.
“We’re taking the children. That’s not up for debate.”
“Don’t be ridiculous—”
“Let’s instead talk about what we can do for you.”
I had my own calculations.
The fake gunfire over the speakers, the poor conditions, the abusive control over their so-called ‘precious’ Awakened—it all pointed to a system on the verge of collapse. freewёbnoνel.com
I figured he’d be willing to trade if we offered a substitute.
Because anyone could see Tak Min-su’s faction was running out of options.
Sure enough, after showing visible displeasure, he consulted in hushed tones with the other elders.
Then, after straightening his collar, he spoke with as much dignity as he could muster.
“We’d like to request certain supplies in return.”
He handed over a document.
Pyo Won-sang skimmed it and nodded.
Tak Min-su turned his gaze from Pyo back to me.
“...And we’d like you to take care of a monster.”
*
“This is seriously fucked,” Cheon Young-jae muttered.
It mirrored my thoughts exactly.
What was squatting in that requested weapons depot wasn’t a mid-size type or even a loudmouthed extinction-type.
It was infiltration-type—a small-class monster we’d encountered more than any other.
But this one was especially troublesome: the spider-type infiltration class. And there weren’t just one, but two of them overlapping in the same zone, plus a necromancer-type in the rear.
That made it a triple-monster convergence zone.
The worst part?
The area we needed to reclaim was a munition storage site.
Tak Min-su claimed it held a few hundred shells, but according to the intel Pyo Won-sang had, the military base warehouse held over ten thousand shells.
Even if they were just 105mm howitzer rounds, hearing “ten thousand” gives the phrase a whole different weight.
“If you clear this, I’ll hand over the children without any further conditions.”
He made it sound like he was making a sacrifice, but in reality, it was a deal where only he profited.
In this era, thousands of artillery shells meant you could {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} do practically anything.
Just a few dozen would have smaller factions groveling; a few hundred could break even the strong ones.
At the very least, it’d be enough to defend a ragged place like Shangri-La.
“...You going to do it?” Cheon Young-jae asked.
While I was silently prepping, Woo Min-hee approached.
She wore her usual flashy attire with a white lab coat thrown over it.
She wasn’t in combat gear—proof she wouldn’t be joining the operation.
“You don’t need to go through this personally. We can still get the kids out without it.”
She stared at me and added:
“No point in risking your life in a dump like this, right?”
She was worried about me—not that she’d say it out loud.
The spider-type had been nesting here for quite some time.
Not an easy fight.
But was it an impossible mission? No.
Back in Seoul, I’d regained most of my former skill. And watching Tak Min-su and everything about him, I started to feel a kind of... clarity.
Some of the abused children were going to be there as well.
Including the boy who’d released the shockwave earlier.
His name was Kim Jae-seok.
“It’s dangerous,” the boy whispered cautiously.
He looked at the thuggish men in the distance, head wrapped in bandages.
“Lots of my friends got hurt bad.”
I ignored him and tightened the harness straps on my gear.
The boy spoke again.
“Even you might struggle, Skeleton. You don’t owe them anything. They’re not worth it.”
Despite myself, a faint smile tugged at my lips.
“You know who Skeleton is?”
I asked.
The boy’s gloomy eyes, always weighed down by fear, suddenly lit up with age-appropriate wonder.
He nodded, eyes full of admiration.
“Of course. Who doesn’t know you?”
“...Is that so?”
For the first time in what felt like ages, I felt the tiniest bit of reward in this hollow journey.
“Wait here a bit.”
I glanced at Tak Min-su glaring at us coldly from behind.
“So just clear out the monsters in that sector, right?”
Tak Min-su nodded, then hesitated, trying to add a condition.
“The storage facility must be retaken—”
I turned my back before he could finish.
As if on cue, my team approached.
First was Cheon Young-jae.
Then the girl with anger issues Kang Han-min had assigned to us—Go Hee-seol.
Up close, she looked oddly cute and young, but something was definitely off.
“Let’s just kill them all. Kill them now,” she muttered.
As expected of a reject—she carried one too: a junk-tier Hunter weapon called a Blader.
I immediately had it switched.
“What’s this?” she asked.
A machete.
“You swing that thing in a munitions depot and we all go boom.”
“But I’ve never used melee weapons before...”
I drew my axe, spun it with a light flourish, and said:
“Get used to it.”
That wrapped up the team roster.
Unlike Seoul, forming a full Hunter squad was a luxury here.
One more joined.
“...What now.”
It was Woo Min-hee.
Still in her usual outfit, she’d armed herself and joined us like it was the most natural thing in the world.
“You need a Heavy, don’t you?”
“You okay?”
“Yeah. Not planning to use waves this time. I’ll follow your lead.”
She gave me a cryptic smile.
Something was different about her.
Why the sudden change?
Still, her joining had one clear effect.
“....”
The previously rabid Go Hee-seol suddenly went quiet.
“Shall we get started?”
As I’ve said—this wasn’t hard.
The previous team had already cleared the zombies.
The maze built by the spider-type had also been mostly cleaned up.
“Multiple minions ahead!”
Ignoring Go Hee-seol’s panic, Cheon Young-jae and I charged through with axe and machete, clearing out the minions while tracking the traces left by the previous operators.
Soon, Cheon whispered their positions:
“Over there, and over there. They’re almost stacked on top of each other. Necromancer-type is in the rear, but it’s got no minions, so we can probably ignore it.”
I nodded and said clearly:
“Alright. We pull back.”
I immediately gave the order to withdraw.
Woo Min-hee grinned and quietly retreated first.
Go Hee-seol, on the other hand, looked bewildered.
“Why retreat? Huh? The target’s right in front of us! I can neutralize them!”
“No need.”
What we promised Tak Min-su was to deal with the monsters in the area.
We confirmed that in front of him.
But I had no intention of handing over artillery shells to someone like him.
I took out the prepped plastic explosives, attached them to the wall, and left.
If the recon team was right, the bulk of the shells the dead children were trying to recover were in the opposite building.
When we got back, Tak Min-su was already far away.
About 450 meters away.
That distance told me everything I needed to know about who he was.
A man who didn’t want a single scratch on himself but still wanted to reap every last reward.
Maybe it was that kind of greed that had already poisoned our world long before the rift.
I checked the time.
[02:45]
I walked toward him.
Tak Min-su asked:
“What is it? You’re done already? I didn’t even hear any gunfire—”
Before he could finish, a soft explosion echoed from the warehouse.
His face twisted in real-time.
BOOM!
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!
A chain of explosions erupted behind me.
I turned around.
Flames burst through the roof, scattering bright sparks that pushed back Shangri-La’s dusk with an oddly picturesque beauty.
“What the hell did you do?!”
Tak Min-su shrieked at me.
I asked him calmly:
“Is there a problem?”
“I said reclaim the warehouse, not blow up the goddamn shells!”
I held up my phone toward him.
“In this recorded conversation, you clearly said to ‘deal with the monsters.’ Nothing else.”
His voice started playing back from the phone.
“This is bullshit!”
He lunged at me like he was about to grab my collar.
Shhhk—
I drew my axe and raised the sharp blade toward his face.
He froze.
I rotated the axe just enough to let him see his own face reflected in it.
Then I said:
“A deal is a deal. That’s the world’s way, isn’t it?”
“You son of a bitch! You fucking—!”
“Isn’t that just how the world works?”
Woo Min-hee’s soft, cackling laughter echoed through the sky as the fireworks made of shells lit up the quiet mountain countryside.
As his men dragged Tak Min-su away, I stood beside my team and watched the out-of-place fireworks.
“Definitely,” came a voice beside me.
I could feel Woo Min-hee’s gaze.
But I wasn’t ready to meet her eyes yet, so I kept mine fixed on the flames.
Then her voice, laced with a soft nasal chuckle:
“You’ve definitely changed.”
“Me?”
She nodded, eyes reflecting the glow of the firework-like explosions.
“...Yeah.”
I don’t know.
But I suppose change is something others feel first, not oneself.
Still, I don’t think this change in me is a bad thing.
The old flame of hatred still burns strong within me.
But at some point, I realized—
Another fire had quietly begun to burn in me.
Small.
Cautious.
But warm.
The next day, a report came in: Shangri-La A3 was shrinking.
That Tak Min-su’s people knew it was coming wasn’t surprising.
It’s just...
A kind of inevitability.
A law of the world.
