Free Web Novel“What the hell happened here?”
“Ugh. Blegh...”
While the people who had been inside the market cleaned up the wrecked first floor and the parking lot, some of the residents from The First Apartments finally showed up.
“Whew! Back on that mountain path just now...”
While Daewoo’s dad explained what had happened, Junho stayed on comms.
“What about Han Changoh and the ones who got away?”
- Five total. They’re heading back the way they came. The gangster boss’s little brother is hurt pretty bad, though. He pulled the knife out, but he still hasn’t managed to pull the bolt.
- What do we do, hyung? Shoot?
That was Junhyeok, who had been waiting in position near the mountain trail with eyes on the Hanchang Development gang and the townhouse residents.
“Don’t hit them. Just fire from a distance and make it look like your accuracy dropped off. You can do that, right?”
- Okay.
“Good. You don’t have to shoot any people today.”
That was right.
When Junho had infiltrated through the market’s back door, just like Han Changoh’s group had, it had not been Junhyeok who shot the people crossing the parking lot after climbing over the wall.
- Boss, how’s the G1 performing? Pretty sick, right?
“Yeah. It’s good.”
From a position on the hill overlooking the market, under the firing control of Akina’s AI using the vehicle-mounted camera and high-altitude drone footage, it had all been the work of the G1 ground drone.
The G1 ground drone started with the one carrying the deadliest weapon—a hunting compound bow.
After calculating the intruders’ size and speed to rank them by threat level, it suppressed them by targeting shoulders and legs.
Of course, the gangster hiding in the brush and sniping at the rooftop with an air rifle had been identified through the aerial drone, and the moment his position was confirmed, the drone dumped five shots into him in quick succession and killed him.
Because he could have posed a direct threat to Junho.
“How much battery does the G1 have left?”
- A little over fifty percent. Lasts longer than I expected.
“It’s probably because it hasn’t been moving much and stayed in one spot.”
Even so, it had just spent nearly thirty minutes in a real combat deployment. That was a passing grade.
Even in a situation where it was fitted with heavy armor plates and constantly moving, it looked like forty to fifty minutes would be no problem.
- It’s shooting at what’s left of Hanchang Development right now. Since it’s firing from both sides along with the drone, I think those bastards believe there are a lot of us.
“Yeah. That’s what I want them to think.”
That way, Han Changoh and the handful of survivors who had barely escaped would report that the people who attacked them numbered at least four or five and were all armed with air rifles.
After this, they would not come sniffing around Sang-dong again—not around The First Market, and not around the apartment complex.
Which meant the only thing left was Jung-dong, where the largest number of survivors lived—and the largest number of zombies too.
Their zombies will slow down in winter and hole up indoors more. That’s when they’ll definitely ram straight into it.
For Hanchang Development, which had too many people to simply kill off the residents of every area it seized and instead needed to absorb them and keep them fed, it was the inevitable choice.
Of course, they had been growing potatoes, sweet potatoes, and other crops for meals and side dishes in the kitchen gardens and greenhouses of the country houses and townhouses.
But winter’s almost here, and that kind of stuff doesn’t just pop up in a month or two.
They had too many mouths to feed for it to be otherwise.
Sensing that the end of the Hanchang Development gang—the second major problem after EoktenZ in bringing Gahyeon-ri under his palm—was not far off, Junho walked over to the residents of The First Apartments.
***
“Man, anyway, you really went through a lot. This could’ve turned into a disaster.”
“Right. What would we have done if the market got looted?”
“No! Forget just saying that—you people should’ve come earlier. We were seriously about to die here.”
“Fuck. So the gang bastards run off, the zombies are gone, and only now you show up talking about how lucky it is the market didn’t get cleaned out? Isn’t that a little much?”
“Jesus. Some people risked their lives fighting, and some people are still worrying about what they’ll eat.”
“Well, would you look at this guy? You’re young, so what kind of mouth is that? If this market gets looted! Huh? Then everyone in this complex is going to—ugh!”
Tang!
The man in his fifties, red-faced and spitting as he talked, suddenly screamed and clutched at his ear.
“H-honey? Honey, what’s wrong!?”
The woman beside him—arms crossed, still wearing makeup and a pearl necklace even in a world like this—hurriedly grabbed her husband as he bent over with his hand pressed to his ear.
“Ah, ahh... my ear, my ear...”
“Your ear, why—eek! B-blood?”
Blood streamed through the gaps between the man’s fingers and quickly stained the concrete in front of the market red.
Step. Step. Step...
Junho ended the call, walked up, passed the middle-aged couple, and pulled the drawing knife out of the wooden post in front of the market.
“...!!!”
Only then did the others realize that Junho had thrown the knife and sliced off half the man’s ear, and their eyes went wide.
“M-my ear... ugh...”
“Oh God, honey... hey! You crazy bastard!”
The woman, pressing a towel to her husband’s ear to stop the bleeding, snapped her head toward Junho.
“You did this? You cut this man’s ear—”
Smack!
“Ghk!”
Apparently she had still been eating pretty well even in a world like this; the middle-aged woman had a good bit of flesh on her. She never finished the sentence.
“Guh... ahhk... uhh...”
Hit in the face by Junho’s palm, she collapsed to the ground and lay there bleeding from her nose and mouth, too dazed to get up.
Junho pointed the machete at the woman on the ground and at the husband hurriedly trying to help her up.
“You two out of your fucking minds? Want me to kill you?”
“Ghk!?”
“Ugh...”
Slicing off half the husband’s ear wasn’t enough—he had sent the wife flying too without giving a shit whether she was a woman or not.
And now, with a blade still wet with blood and bits of flesh pointed at them, the middle-aged couple was too terrified to say a word.
Still aiming the machete at them, Junho flicked his eyes sideways and said,
“What are these people? You people hand out food even to worthless deadweight like these?”
“Well... for now, they are residents from the same building, and...”
One of the men from the market tried to answer, but Junho cut him off cold.
“Residents from the same building? So what do they do? What role do they have? Do they fight the enemy or guard supplies like you people ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) here do?”
“They don’t. That’s why starting today, we were planning to give everybody who does nothing only one meal’s worth of food a day.”
Daewoo’s dad stepped in.
At that, not just the middle-aged couple but several other residents stared with their eyes wide.
“N-no matter what, that’s too—”
“No, Daewoo’s dad! Then what about us—”
Shff.
Junho’s gaze, utterly devoid of emotion, turned on them, and everyone shut up.
He rested the machete on his shoulder, slowly looked over the residents, and said,
“People really are fucking disgusting. Do you have any idea that if I hadn’t shown up today, the market would’ve been wiped clean? Do you really not know these people here were about to get killed by those gangster bastards or dragged off? But you people hid and did jack shit, and now you come crawling out and what? Keep talking. Go on. Say more.”
“......”
Junho stared indifferently at a few of them who still looked unhappy and went on,
“What? You’ve got a problem?”
“...That’s not what I—”
“If it’s not, then shut the fuck up. Unless you want to die.”
The moment he finished speaking, Junho raised the machete.
Pow...! Thunk!
A tungsten round came flying in with the muted crack of an air rifle and buried itself at that man’s feet.
“Hhk!”
The man in his forties dropped to the ground, startled half to death.
“A-a gun!”
“Ah...”
All the residents flinched and looked around with terrified faces. A few of them even ducked behind other people or hid behind the wall.
To them, Junho said,
“Remember this: if you act like shit, you get treated like shit. If it were up to me, I’d shoot every last one of you, promise or no promise. Know that I’m holding back because of this man here.” freёwebnovel.com
The residents’ eyes turned to Daewoo’s dad, who, tense as he was, still did not avoid Junho’s gaze.
“You. Let’s talk. We still need to settle up.”
“...All right. But give me just a moment first.”
Daewoo’s dad gave the frightened residents a series of instructions.
He had already been highly respected among the survivors of The First Apartments, and after calmly assigning everyone their tasks, he came over to Junho.
“I’m sorry. They’re from other buildings, so they don’t know the full situation. They just heard the market nearly got looted and got scared.”
“Whether they did or didn’t is none of my business. If something happens, it happens here. If people die, it’s the people here who die.”
“......!”
Daewoo’s dad flinched at the sheer coldness of the words, then let out a sigh and finally removed the goggles and mask he had been wearing the whole time.
“Whew... you’re right. Which is why I was already planning to clear out Building 3 soon and gather all the surviving residents in one place. There’s still a decent amount of food left in the market, but in a month it’ll all be gone, so whether it’s the empty apartments or the rooftops, we need to start farming somehow, greenhouse style, and... why, why are you looking at me like that?”
He trailed off, catching the look on Junho’s face.
Junho had been staring at him. Then he finally spoke.
“Sorry, but what’s your name?”
“Mine? Ah, right. Everyone calls me Daewoo’s dad, so I guess you wouldn’t know. I’m Song Pung... no, Song Gijun.”
“......”
Seeing Song Gijun, the man he had searched for so long, left Junho speechless.
The hard hat, the goggles, the mask—because of all that, he had failed to recognize him until now.
And on top of that, Song Gijun did not look much like the man Junho had known before the regression.
Back then he had been shaggy with overgrown facial hair, and his eyes and expression had been nothing like this.
Normally, he would have been dragged off today by the Hanchang Development gang. After nearly a year of suffering every kind of hardship there, he must have ended up looking like a completely different person.
“So it was Song Gijun. That’s a nice name.”
“Oh? You think so?”
At Junho’s compliment, Song Gijun’s face brightened a little, and he continued.
“Actually, I only changed it not that long ago. I had an old name my grandfather gave me, but it was kind of... rough. Then before my grandfather passed away earlier this year, he told me he was sorry and said I could change it now, so...”
Listening to him, Junho finally understood why he had not been able to find the man over the last two years.
“...Anyway, so I filed for it last year, and this May I officially went from Song Punggi to Song Gijun. You have no idea how much grief that name caused me for over thirty years...”
Well, sure. Punggi by itself was unusual but not unheard of. But paired with the family name Song, becoming Song Punggi? He had probably been mocked for it his whole life.
“That’s why even the people I’m close with in the apartment complex just call me Daewoo’s dad. But... your name is?”
“Lee Junho.”
“Ah, so you’re Lee Junho. Anyway, Mr. Junho. I sincerely thank you for today. Thanks to you, we lived.”
Song Gijun bowed deeply and politely to him.
“You said you don’t need any food from the market, but please take some. Our apartment people aren’t so shameless they’d object to giving something to the man who saved all our lives. If it weren’t for you, it wouldn’t be a matter of losing food—we’d all have died or been taken.”
“Then I’ll take a few things. That aside, do you happen to know anything about Edutown?”
Through the CCTV in the safe house on the top floor of Building 1 at the Edutown apartments, and through drone surveillance, Junho already knew most of what was happening there. Even so, he asked casually.
And just as expected, Song Gijun’s expression immediately turned cold.
