The so-called Cultural Revolution, brought about by Mao Zedong, has long carried the infamy of being synonymous with the destruction of civilization by fanatical mobs—a byword for vandalism.

In the past, theories supporting the Cultural Revolution were little more than the flimsy arguments of state-sponsored scholars, but as the century turned and China experienced rapid growth, more pragmatic reinterpretations began to surface one by one.

The most radical among them argued that while the Cultural Revolution had indeed destroyed countless cultural assets and traditions, precisely because of that it was able to shatter the deeply entrenched, rigid, and archaic caste-like practices that had made society so inefficient.

A so-called rebirth through destruction.

This theory went on to explain why nations like Korea or Vietnam succeeded, while those with heavier traditional legacies, such as Thailand or India, developed more slowly—emphasizing the lingering remnants of old customs.

The theory stood out as bold and fascinating, though rife with logical leaps and a tendency to downplay the devastating consequences of war.

I recalled this long-forgotten theory when a knight appeared before us, and when I first laid eyes on him.

A man with a body of solid, overwhelming muscle, covered in tattoos that reached up to his neck, led a group into our territory. Just the sight of him alone was enough to intimidate an ordinary person.

“So you really were here.”

His name was said to be Oh Hee-tae.

He belonged to the new ruling class called Knights, created by Jeon Si-hoon.

The faint glow in his eyes marked him clearly as a Knight, but even without it, his imposing figure, the well-armed troops behind him, and the massive Mutation dog bound in chains left no doubt that he was no ordinary man.

“You’re the famous Old School Hunter, Professor?”

The man stood before me with arrogance beyond confidence, glaring down at me without the slightest trace of goodwill.

Especially telling was the way he deliberately dredged up the archaic term Old School Hunter. His intentions were obvious.

“Yes.”

I gave a faint laugh as I replied.

Oh Hee-tae studied me intently.

What he sought was my anger, no doubt. But unfortunately for him, I wasn’t the kind of man to snap at such petty provocations, nor was I impulsive enough to waste my breath responding to situations I’d experienced countless times before.

When I said nothing, the Mutation dog at his side growled.

Its bared teeth showed it didn’t like me much.

Oh Hee-tae turned his head and gave a sharp “shh,” and the beast dropped its gaze and flattened its ears, cowed. Clearly it had been beaten into obedience.

I felt eyes on my back.

From the nagging of Kim Daram, it seemed the children had come to see the Mutation dog.

I glanced behind me.

There was Dongtak with his close friend, and just behind them, another small child who resembled Woo Min-hee. The kid’s expression was blank, yet curiosity shone through as he stared at the beast.

“This here is a permit given to me by Si-hoon.”

Oh Hee-tae held out a certificate.

I didn’t bother to read it carefully.

The document was meaningless once he invoked Jeon Si-hoon’s authority.

As expected, Oh Hee-tae summarized it for me anyway.

“In short, it’s a warrant to requisition a former Old School Hunter.”

“Requisition, you say?”

I let my displeasure show.

Not out of real anger, but very deliberately. A warning, so he wouldn’t cross the line.

Naturally, as I expressed that displeasure, I was also considering our relative strength.

We would win.

It wouldn’t be hard.

It wouldn’t be hard at all to kill every last one of them.

Of course, that might mean turning Jeon Si-hoon’s entire faction into enemies.

Fortunately, Oh Hee-tae, despite his looks, didn’t seem to be a hot-headed type.

“······You may find it unpleasant, but Hunter Park, you are [N O V E L I G H T] a former Old School Hunter, and therefore you still have a duty to answer the call of the state. As you know, the entire country is under emergency measures against the Peninsula in Incheon right now. So······.”

“What’s your point?”

“I came to request you to eliminate the monsters occupying an important stronghold.”

“Understood.”

Though I had shown my displeasure, I didn’t reject the command itself.

I accepted easily.

Oh Hee-tae raised an eyebrow.

Perhaps he hadn’t expected me to agree so readily.

“It could be dangerous work.”

“That’s fine. It’s an order from the state. I know Si-hoon, too. We’re all struggling in these times, aren’t we? Just don’t call me too often. We’ve got our hands full here as well.”

That was the end of our conversation.

Oh Hee-tae said he would inform me of the schedule later. He took a long look at our terrain, as though trying to commit it to memory, then dragged the Mutation dog along with his men, disappearing back into the wasteland.

But the matter wasn’t over yet.

“I just tapped into their comms.”

The Defender still lived near our territory.

Though the time was near for him to return to Dies_Irae, there had been no summons yet, and the Defender siblings felt no particular need to leave, so they remained in the vicinity.

“Though I doubt it was even proper wiretapping. Their comms were basically raw transmissions without even basic encryption. Da-jeong only tidied up Oh Hee-tae’s messages. Check them out when you have time.”

Defender let me hear the recorded transmission.

In it, Oh Hee-tae’s true thoughts were laid bare, stripped of the politeness he had feigned.

Inside my bunker, I quietly listened to the so-called Knight’s words.

“He’s not all that, is he? Professor? Fuck, he just looks like a hack.”

“If I get my hands on him, I could kill him in five minutes.”

“Still, he was at the peak of the Old School Hunters. You can’t just smash into him head-on. Si-hoon wouldn’t like it either. Wasn’t it Si-hoon who brought him in?”

“Even if that old bastard can jump and crawl all he wants, he won’t walk out of there alive.”

“Didn’t the local warlord say it? That warehouse has two Dancer-types in it.”

“Dancer-types are traditionally the natural enemy of Old School Hunters—especially melee specialists. Professor may have been famous for close-combat once, but even he won’t handle Dancer-types. It’s all about matchup.”

“He trembles against just one—how’s he supposed to face two? He’ll die there.”

“Me? For me, Dancer-types are nothing. Don’t even need to raise a force field. Just torch their path as they come and they’ll burn.”

I’d already sensed it, but Oh Hee-tae was just another young Awakened unwilling to acknowledge me.

The final recording carried his true intent.

“To be honest, I don’t believe any Old School Hunter ever killed a General-type. He just lucked out. Kang Han-min must’ve helped him. Otherwise how could that monster have died to some clumsy axe swing?”

He denied our kind.

He wasn’t the only one.

Once upon a time, the entire world denied us.

It had quieted recently, but thanks to Jeon Si-hoon’s new class system, the Awakened had revived their superiority complex.

I had no desire to curse them for it.

They were different from us.

If anything, it was a good thing.

The boy’s clumsy scheming had given me the breathing room to prepare.

The first thing I did was contact Dies_Irae.

“You know Oh Hee-tae?”

I didn’t want to openly make him my enemy, but the way things had escalated was in no small part due to Dies_Irae’s loose tongue.

If he had just brushed it off or claimed ignorance, this wouldn’t have advanced so quickly.

“That Knight bastard? He came to see you, didn’t he?”

Dies_Irae admitted it without hesitation.

That was his strength.

Dies_Irae might be brutal, even psychopathic, but he wasn’t the sort to pile on ridiculous excuses to cover an obvious lie.

I had no intention of pressing him further.

There was no point in demanding guilt or accountability from a hollow man whose very soul was consumed by survival instinct.

I asked only what I wanted to know.

“The location of that warehouse with the two Dancer-types.”

“Fine. I’ll send it by message.”

“Alright.”

“Sorry for the late notice. Should’ve told you sooner. But I don’t think you’ll die over this. You took down a General-type, didn’t you? Two small ones should just be a warm-up for you.”

“Understood. Just send the message. I need to prepare if I don’t want to die.”

“Okay.”

This is why I dislike Dies_Irae.

To him, friends on the board are trophies to collect—but if they ever threaten his survival, he discards them without hesitation, and sometimes even preemptively strikes first.

Faced with Oh Hee-tae’s threat, he tucked his tail instead of showing even a hint of defiance. Very much in character for him.

Still, he had enough attachment to me to provide the intel I wanted.

One lesson was clear.

Dies_Irae was not to be trusted.

A man who had already sold his soul to the demon of survival was capable of anything.

He’d toss aside even his own group like garbage if their survival clashed with his own.

I checked the warehouse address Dies_Irae sent me.

A warehouse that looked perfectly ordinary.

With the Defender siblings’ help, I reached the warehouse front and surveyed the surroundings.

It was night.

At this time of year, white snow covered everything, blurring the line between erosion zones and untainted ground.

But at night, in areas dirtied by the grayish tint of infiltrating small-types, that ashen glow spread through the darkness, faintly illuminating everything around.

From a high hill nearby, I scanned the area.

There were more than five such patches visible at a glance.

That’s why erosion spreads so fast in places without humans.

Normally, whether small-types were present nearby or not wasn’t a critical factor when planning an operation. But with the discovery of a new variant, it had suddenly become very important.

The Dungeon-type.

People still point to Necromancer-types or Spider-types as the representatives of infiltrating small-types, claiming their prevalence proves that the Crack hasn’t changed. But that’s an ignorant take.

Those two types need no replacement.

They’re already firmly entrenched as the standard infiltrators. Why would the Crack bother making a new type?

Anyone who claims otherwise has clearly never looked at the failed experiments the Crack produced before Necromancers and Spiders—things like Crown-types, Beetle-types, Crawler-types, Triangle-types, and so on.

Even now, the Crack continues to produce new forms to eliminate humanity. And at the center of it all is Kang Han-min, the so-called “Savior” who hopes for the preservation of humankind, yet seeks to slaughter most of it to achieve that goal.

“Wait here. I’ll scout first.”

“You sure? We could use a drone.”

“Drones will only wake them.”

“Isn’t it dangerous? They’re Dancer-types.”

“It’s fine. I’ve got a trick.”

I left Defender behind and stepped into the warehouse.

The gift from Jeong Dae-kyung remained the most precious boon ensuring my survival.

True, my body now required the periodic killing of monsters, but that was unavoidable.

There is no rear line left in this world.

Every moment of life, every phase of our existence, is a battlefield.

Even now, hidden in this warehouse, I had a trump card of a hunting tool I’d built back in Seoul.

Slowly, I passed the thralls that hadn’t sensed me, and confirmed the monsters’ location.

There.

Beyond the faint gray glow in the darkness, a Dancer-type stood motionless. And just twenty meters further, another Dancer-type faced it, as if the two were stone statues locked in silent opposition like twin guardians.

“······.”

This was a death sentence.

If the two awoke at once, not even Skeleton himself could survive.

This alone made the mission deadly in the extreme.

But human malice is fouler than any monster.

Oh Hee-tae wouldn’t be content with simply throwing me against two Dancer-types.

His true aim was to see the symbol of the Old School disgraced in pathetic defeat.

Perhaps he even had cameras set to capture my butchery.

The more pitifully I died, the better propaganda it would serve him.

If he could erase the myth of Skeleton, all the better.

He would surely use every means at his disposal to make it happen.

Yes.

My enemies here weren’t just the two Dancer-types.

I might also have to face Oh Hee-tae, his merry band, and even that Mutation dog.

Defender’s voice came through.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“You weren’t answering, I was worried—”

“I’ll check a little further.”

“Where?”

“There’s a spot I want to confirm.”

Choosing to scout at night was for a reason: to gauge the position and density of erosion zones.

Yes.

The Dungeon-type.

I had already considered it, and this region seemed ideal for one to appear.

Dungeon-types usually manifest underground, forming amorphous tunnels.

They aren’t dangerous in raw combat, but their true threat lies in their ability.

And for all that Oh Hee-tae and the other so-called Knights may be Awakened, numbers win wars.

No matter how powerful an Awakened, when faced with multiple monsters that recognize humans as enemies and begin to hunt, there’s little they can do.

Their powers amount to little more than those of a single small-type.

Awakened or Old School, it doesn’t matter—against many monsters, neither can do much.

In the end, brute force of numbers is what decides it.

Following the spark of hatred that guided me, I found the basement entrance.

A tunnel.

The strange, gray-tinged darkness was nearly identical to what I’d seen before.

“······.”

I stepped forward slowly.

Shiiing—

Axe in both hands.

I walked for who knows how long before I felt it.

Shhhk—!

A transparent blade tore through the darkness, angling for my lower abdomen.

Clang!

I knocked aside the killing strike and spun around instantly.

“Defender.”

“Yeah.”

“Mind giving me a hand?”

As always, I remembered: goodwill doesn’t always yield good results, and malice doesn’t always bring bad ones.

In war, so-called great victories are never forged by superiority alone.

A battle remembered as a great victory always requires the enemy to play their part as well.

Oh Hee-tae may want to kill me, a relic of the old world, in disgrace.

But I will turn it into my opportunity.