Free Web Novel"Are you sure this is okay?"
Pyo Won-sang was against me meeting Jeong Dae-kyung.
I didn’t know his exact reasons, but I’d picked up through other channels that things hadn’t ended well between the two of them.
Well, he did try ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) to persuade me with his own version of the truth.
That Jeong Dae-kyung was a brutal tyrant who executed people on a whim, and the group surrounding him was no different—dangerous, ruthless types.
It was certainly enemy territory.
And absolutely full of risk.
But this was the reason I had come here.
Codename: Princess.
I had to meet him.
I spent some time preparing my gear and waited.
Familiar footsteps approached.
Woo Min-hee.
She stood beside me while I inspected my handgun, and quietly spoke.
“Have you ever heard of the elephant’s final journey?”
At that moment, the first thing that popped into my mind was a photo of an elephant sticking its trunk into a toilet bowl.
But that couldn’t be it.
The moment I saw her face, I was sure I was right.
Still gazing into the distance. Still with that look of resignation.
The closer we got to the end of the journey, the calmer and quieter Woo Min-hee had become.
She used to chat often with M9, but starting from the Second Shangri-la, she mostly shut herself in her room, rarely showing her face.
You might ask if she was spending time online, but that didn’t seem to be the case either.
She did nothing.
Sometimes she’d come out and sit quietly in the passenger lounge, eyes softly glowing and empty at the same time, silently watching the landscape drift by, unmoving for long stretches.
“...Not really.”
Now, right before meeting Jeong Dae-kyung, I didn’t feel like talking about heavy topics.
Women are definitely quicker than men at picking up on subtle emotional cues.
Her expression shifted—slightly, but with an unmistakable weight.
“You’re going to meet Jeong Dae-kyung, aren’t you?”
I must’ve slipped.
I tried to cover for it immediately.
“Well, yeah, but I also wanted to hear about the elephant...”
But we all know Woo Min-hee isn’t the type you can sweet-talk so easily.
“No, it’s fine. You seem busy. Meeting that man... that’s not something you can do without being ready for it.”
She was still unpredictable, hard to read, and most of all, delicate in a way only she understood.
That’s probably why so many men had either been abandoned by her or failed to keep up with her.
If I borrowed Kim Daram’s words, she’d be called exhausting—but I know something Kim Daram didn’t see, or maybe chose not to see.
“That’s not something I can help with, but—good luck! Say hi to Jeong Dae-kyung for me!”
That her sensitivity... is tied to her kindness toward others.
I looked at the clock.
Time to go.
Just like Woo Min-hee said, this wouldn’t be an easy meeting.
It was something that required resolve.
I was the only one invited.
I had to face Jeong Dae-kyung alone.
The invitation came from him, but I was the one who accepted.
“...”
Even so, I accepted it.
The biggest reason was the promise I made to Kang Han-min.
But I also think my obsessive curiosity—a part of me that’ll never be fixed, even at death—played a big role too.
Jeong Dae-kyung.
He’s human.
On the outside, by his actions, biologically—undeniably human.
But there's something monstrous in the aura he gives off.
No one else seems to agree with me, but that doesn’t matter.
A flame of hatred burns eternally in my chest.
That flame whispers to me:
He’s a monster.
Stone-piled tombs, chambered tombs, terraced stone mounds.
Terms from my school days briefly flashed through my mind.
His kingdom was nestled in the shadow of these somber burial grounds, now converted into a kind of tourist area.
Even before the war began, this region had already fallen into decline.
Thousands of people now lived there in clustered villages, motels, and dormitories.
Above them all, Jeong Dae-kyung’s palace stood tall—looking down on the lesser masses from its artificial perch. freeweɓnovēl.coɱ
The palace wasn’t elegant—it was a gaudy tourist hotel with cheap roof tiles slapped over a concrete building.
“We’ll be closing the windows now. Please bear with the heat.”
One of Jeong Dae-kyung’s subordinates rolled up the dark-tinted windows.
I wished the SUV had air conditioning, but something like that would be a luxury in this half-broken vehicle. freёwebnovel.com
I looked out through the glass at the passing street.
There were people.
The area didn’t look too bad on the surface.
It wasn’t as organized as New Seoul, nor did it thrum with vitality like King’s city, but there was a subdued stability—people living quietly, making ends meet.
The residents seemed decently nourished.
Most were lean, but not in a sickly, North Korean way.
The markets were piled high with various goods, hinting at the abundance of this so-called Shangri-la.
I’d heard Jeong Dae-kyung’s group was a tight-knit organization with strong cohesion.
That came from one of the armed groups stationed near the city’s edge—people who had once lived in this city.
They were disheveled and sickly, but their hatred for the place they came from was venomous.
“Bunch of brain-dead morons. Say one bad thing about Jeong Dae-kyung and they’ll tear you apart like you’re a dog.”
“They don’t even have gulags like North Korea. Still, they praise him nonstop.”
“Feels like those cultist fanboys on the general board. Worms.”
I’d seen something similar before.
From my comrade, Kang Han-min.
He too was worshipped as something godlike.
Maybe it’s not that strange, considering the absurd powers these people possess.
Honestly, the palace was pathetic.
It looked like they’d done their best with a nonexistent budget.
The whole place was painted in mismatched colors that didn’t suit the old building, decorated with statues and paintings that had no clear origin or meaning. Even in the middle of the day, neon signs flashed annoyingly.
At the entrance was a red carpet like the ones at film festivals.
Torn, dirty, worn-down.
Jeong Dae-kyung stood beyond it, waiting for me.
“Welcome.”
He led me to his office.
Outside the door, his family—faces I’d seen in photographs—stood in a row, waiting to greet us.
They smiled warmly and offered greetings when they saw me.
“My family,” he said.
I had no comment.
Jeong Dae-kyung smiled fondly and stepped into the office.
Now it was just the two of us in that mismatched, overdecorated space.
I stared him down from up close.
Human.
He looked human.
That monstrous feeling I’d sensed in front of the train was nowhere to be found.
Was it just my imagination?
Or had I unknowingly been swayed by Prophet’s suspicions?
One thing was certain: Jeong Dae-kyung’s eyes held that same shadowy gleam as Woo Min-hee’s... or Kang Han-min’s.
With a dry chuckle, he began to speak.
“I never imagined it. That Hunter Park Gyu I once worked with... would turn out to be the Professor. A legend.”
Back then, he wasn’t important.
And even if he had been, in an era when Chinese spy networks had infiltrated every layer of Korean society, I couldn’t afford to reveal information about someone like me.
The government may have discarded me like a chewed-up piece of gum, but to someone out there, there was still flavor left.
Especially for China, which still clung to its Old Hunter system—people like me were valuable assets.
They’d tried to scout me more than once.
“I never meant to hide it. But government policy and regulations required it.”
Jeong Dae-kyung nodded.
“I understand. I do.”
I stared at the name tag on his uniform.
A deliberate move.
I hadn’t said it aloud yet, but I needed to choose the name I’d use going forward.
Jeong Dae-kyung noticed my gaze and smiled.
“You can call me Brigadier General Jeong Dae-kyung.”
“...What happened to him?”
A dangerous question.
But one we had to face if we were to define our relationship properly.
This wasn’t something to be glossed over.
Fortunately, Jeong Dae-kyung didn’t get angry or even look annoyed.
In fact, he wore a strange little smile, as if he’d expected it, and sipped his coffee.
“Where to begin? His bad luck, or my good fortune?”
There’s no precise starting point.
For both Jeong Dae-kyung and the man who would become him—Lee Haeng-taek—Jeju at the time was chaos incarnate.
No one knew if war would break out. If it didn’t, then what?
The same questions we had were the ones the government faced too.
Things finally settled after war broke out and the frontlines stabilized.
While Chinese submarines and warships silently waged war—sinking every vessel from the Yellow Sea to the Pacific, even the Magellan Strait—Lee Haeng-taek stepped into the Rupture for the first time.
He later said he’d considered suicide when he saw what lay inside.
“...You’ve seen it too, right? What’s beyond that place... it’s not something most people can bear. A few in our crew ended up taking their own lives from the depression.”
Fortunately, the work itself wasn’t as grueling or painful as expected.
Discrimination wasn’t entirely absent, but the Awakened and Hunters he worked with didn’t mistreat him.
I have a good idea why.
They probably didn’t have the energy to.
In a world with infinite weight and crushing despair, people live pressed down, barely breathing.
“I even got married in there.”
Jeong Dae-kyung gave a bitter smile.
“Married?”
“Think of it as a government-mandated match. No ceremony. No congratulations. One day, I signed some papers and ended up living with a woman who had a child. That’s just how it was. Oh—they’re not my family anymore. Worse than strangers now.”
To him, that “family” had left a deep scar.
Go Jun-hee had told me something similar.
But they weren’t the blade that wounded him.
They were the salt rubbed into the wound.
The blade... bore the name Jeong Dae-kyung, now worn by Lee Haeng-taek.
“...That man came into the Rupture too.”
“You mean him?”
He pointed to his nameplate and nodded.
“Yes. He was in the same grunt team as me.”
I stared, unable to comprehend.
“I don’t know the details. But people lived in Jeju—plenty of them. Then, one day, they were gone. Why do you think that is?”
“...”
“I don’t know exactly. Maybe he massacred them like the rumors say. Maybe he drowned them. At the very least, there had to be some kind of forced relocation. What I do know is that he was involved in the project... and he didn’t agree with it.”
Rumors of a Jeju massacre had been circulating since the war ended.
There’s even data to support it.
Jeju had about 700,000 people before the war. After the government relocated there, the population dropped below 300,000.
And at least 100,000 came from Seoul alone.
So where did everyone else go?
We’d never met anyone from Jeju here on the mainland.
A few users had accessed our forum from Jeju, but they vanished like smoke one day—feeding into the rumor’s chilling plausibility.
Anyway, Jeong Dae-kyung fell.
He became a manager for Rupture laborers—what people called “Rupture grunts.”
As a manager, he didn’t go inside himself, but for a once-elite soldier, a man once considered a future top commander of Korea, it was a humiliating demotion.
It looked like a punishment dealt by someone who hated him.
“...They say people reveal their true selves at rock bottom. That position was something I could only look up to, but not for him.”
The Jeong Dae-kyung I remembered was sharp, refined, from a good family—a soldier anyone would admire.
But the Jeong Dae-kyung who had fallen into the Rupture wasn’t the same.
“They told you to transfer, didn’t they? You dumb bastard. Why don’t you understand plain Korean? No wonder you’re over forty and still can’t manage your own life. Get back in the Rupture. Go in alone if you have to and make the delivery! That’s an order.”
And worse—he knew Lee Haeng-taek.
“Hey. Lee Haeng-taek! You’re laughing at me inside, aren’t you? Huh? Watching me hit rock bottom—you love it, don’t you? Yeah, bastard. Your wish came true. My life’s completely fucked. But listen... even rock bottom has a lower level.”
He smiled, pale and wide.
“I’ll ruin your pathetic life even more.”
Back to reality.
A different Jeong Dae-kyung exhaled a cloud of smoke with a heavy sigh.
His face flickered with emotions I couldn’t define—but what remained was a clear, relieved smile.
Looking at me with that expression, he said:
“Now that I think about it, he was probably the one who saved me.”
And in that moment, a chill ran through my chest.
The eternal flame of hatred inside me—wavered, like it had been touched by a breeze.
