I once read on the internet that the ones who end up hating their country the most aren’t the people stuck at the very bottom, but those who climb from the bottom all the way up.

At the bottom, you may groan in poverty and pain, but the whole surrounding world is already stained with the same misery, so you hardly feel it. But climb higher, and like looking out from a tall building, the country’s corruption and contradictions come starkly into view.

Maybe it’s only from there that you can glimpse the highest floors you’ll never enter, and that envy curdles into hatred of the entire nation.

The Jeon Si-hoon I knew was an utterly ordinary boy, born into a modest, not particularly fortunate life, until he stumbled on the gift of the Awakened powers.

The second time I saw him, he’d grown—body and mind both. But he wore a cynical smile, exaggerated, artificial, as if he wanted me to notice.

Kang Han-min, for all his flaws, had insight—an ability to see what others could not.

He saw something in Jeon Si-hoon, and without condition handed over all of Seoul to him.

Time has only proven Kang Han-min’s judgment right.

Jeon Si-hoon walked a path of self-destruction.

He declared himself king, browbeat neighboring groups, divided people into classes, drove them like slaves, even started a war—but he didn’t succeed in a single one of those things.

Everything was half-baked, and it ended in the unchecked tyranny of his Awakened subordinates.

That Seoul–Sejong war, which began with such bluster, turning more and more against Seoul—it’s the most Jeon Si-hoon kind of outcome imaginable.

Even without air power, even outgunned, Sejong’s soldiers steadily pushed his troops back and reclaimed the surrounding territory.

“That guy’s just... average. How should I put it? He just feels ordinary,” Kim Daram said of him.

And yet we know from history how ordinary evil can warp into something more horrifying than any grand villain.

That Jeon Si-hoon called for me.

Using Kang Han-min’s personal ID, no less.

It was not a call I could refuse.

Maybe all of this was part of Kang Han-min’s grand design.

But I won’t meet him.

I have no reason to.

I’m no doctor, no shaman. Meeting him would yield nothing good.

If Jeon Si-hoon finds me, so be it.

I no longer cling to life the way I used to.

Taking Mark Two in, taking in Gold’s grandson—those choices were tied to my thinned-out will to live.

If I were still the man who once burned with the will to be humanity’s last survivor, I’d never have burdened myself with them.

Everything is tangled.

Between me and Jeon Si-hoon, there’s something faintly positive. But for the rest of humanity, he’s been a nightmare on a global scale.

Last winter, when no snow came, suddenly a record-breaking cold snap descended on the peninsula.

[ –22°C ]

Its effects would not be small.

Maybe not as severe as the last one, but people were worn down. Even I, once the most determined to be the last of humanity, now looked on life with skepticism. What hope could others have?

A line I’d once read in the Necropolis drifted through my mind.

Mangae3213: There are only two kinds of survivors left. Those about to die. And those who’ll die a bit later.

And Jeon Si-hoon was the biggest reason why.

Running the country at his whim, starting wars, introducing a caste system—that was bad enough. But his greatest crime was smashing the last hope left in people.

They had believed—without a shred of doubt—that he would gather the remnants of Korea as Kang Han-min’s successor, the new savior.

Instead, he betrayed them in the worst way.

That betrayal was worse than war, worse than privilege, worse than personal corruption.

Even the vile Jeju Committee, liars though they were, never openly shattered people’s hope.

Now hope was gone.

Humanity with hope can touch miracles. Humanity without hope simply breaks.

...

Dressed in winter gear, I looked around at dawn.

Part curiosity, part necessity.

Supplies were scarce. Resupply, unlikely.

With the threat receding, Dies_Irae’s faction had begun pressing Defender.

We had to provide for ourselves.

Fuel and food were top priorities.

First I headed east, into the old men’s territory.

Brrrmmm—

I rode Baek Seung-hyun’s motorcycle. I hadn’t used it in a long time, but it was tough, practically maintenance-free. They said it could run on cooking oil if need be.

The elders’ extermination was no surprise. Endless unspoiled snow stretched out, confirming it.

Bound by their generation, hating the young, the elders who prolonged their lives that way were gone.

At least they tried to keep dignity to the end.

Dozens were buried, or waiting to be buried. The ones digging their graves lay cold and still now, like empty bottles scattered on the floor.

...

Nothing left.

Only poverty, deprivation, despair.

Beside one corpse was a long suicide note and a family photo—an old man, his son, a grandson. I didn’t read it. Didn’t need to.

I gathered what I could—tools, mostly.

A hand axe, a power cutter, batteries—loaded them onto the bike.

Bzzt—

The communicator crackled.

Defender’s.

He preferred the communicator to a radio, upgraded its range so he could use it even from his base. It was damn useful.

“Yeah. Sorry I missed you earlier. Dies_Irae had me help with an execution.”

“Execution?”

“Well, they call it that. Really, they just drove some slaves out and hunted them down. Said there wouldn’t be enough mouths fed otherwise.”

“They’d die soon enough on their own.”

“They’re paranoid like that.”

“Right. Maybe it’s time you got out of there.”

“I’m considering it. You’re running low too, right?”

“Yeah. I’m outside now.”

“In this cold?”

“Hate to ask, but you know any caches?”

“There’s one... about fifteen kilometers from you.”

Defender gave me a location.

Close, but unfamiliar.

The east had always been Legion territory. The warlords had been wiped out, but remnants remained, turned into small-time raiders.

They had chosen neither Seoul nor Sejong.

But I needed supplies.

The temperature rose to –15°C. Still cold, but clear skies, no wind.

I didn’t stop by the bunker. Fuel for the motorcycle was fuel, after all.

Instead I stashed the things I’d gathered in the old men’s zone, hidden off the path.

Traveling an unfamiliar road never felt good.

But cutting the first trail in endless snow carried its own strange, special weight.

The air froze my nose and cheeks, but it was like fresh air was seeping into the long-shadowed corners of my heart.

I drew it in deep.

It wouldn’t reignite my fading will to live, but as Park Ha-eun once said—it was stimulation.

Once a trivial word, “stimulation” mattered to me now.

A signal.

My body and soul were separated, wandering apart, but stimulation was the signal that let them recognize each other, tie back together.

If only to not lose myself, I’d seek out such jolts from time to time.

But I wouldn’t end up like that broken man.

At the end of an untouched trail of snow, I arrived at Defender’s cache.

I nodded.

It was a former warlord hideout.

The people here were all dead.

Their corpses had long rotted, leaving bones. But the bullet holes and shrapnel scars on the container-and-plywood shack showed how the battle had gone.

Defender and his sibling had attacked together.

At least three FPV suicide drones, mortars, Defender’s ambush.

I counted twelve corpses, maybe more.

On a wall, ragged unit flags still fluttered—remnants of their origin.

The cache was beneath a corpse.

“The only one lying face up,” Defender had said.

There were five bodies inside. Four intact enough, one shattered into pieces.

That one had been booby-trapped.

He’d wired grenades to tripwires under the bodies. If anyone tried to flip them over, the grenades would go off.

Two years old, the grenades might not work anymore—but I wasn’t going to test it.

The face-up corpse was halfway between skeleton and mummy, dried stiff in the freezing air.

Even dried, corpses stink.

Not just human—animal corpses, too. The stench never leaves you.

I hooked a robe to its foot and tugged.

An animal might flip it too, [N O V E L I G H T] I reasoned.

It was the right one.

Beneath it was a hidden passage to the basement.

There were more traps, but with Defender’s directions I slipped through.

Inside, with an old boiler, were some ammo, food, and precious fuel.

Kerosene—not my usual, but useful for small generators.

Canned food too. Even dog food.

Another mouth to feed was a burden—but too late now.

Baduk was family, and like Gold, smart. He got along with Mark Two, didn’t show any real malice toward humans.

I packed the supplies and returned to the bike.

...

That shiver again, crawling down my spine.

Something was there.

Slowly, carefully, I turned, full of killing intent.

My senses were different now.

I could detect monsters.

A gray, alien shape stood upright on two legs, staring at me.

A Reaper?

No. Not like that brief appearance of the so-called annihilation-type human-sized thing.

This had a humanoid form, but its reverse-jointed legs and ghastly five-fingered hands made it something else.

It stared.

Though “stared” was the wrong word—monsters had no eyes.

But its head was fixed on me, unmoving, as if it knew I was there.

I bent and quietly set the supplies on the ground.

Its head shifted.

Its “gaze” followed the sound exactly.

So it had hearing?

That thought flickered—then its head split open in a grotesque mouth, gaping wide.

In that instant, a lifetime of battle-honed options flashed before me.

And then vanished.

“Kreeeeeeeeech!!”

The noise tore through the air.

Not enough to burst eardrums, not a sonic weapon, but the most revolting sound I had ever heard.

Before the echoes even faded, I charged.

Crack!

The axe struck its skull.

But unlike any monster before—it tried to dodge.

It failed, of course, but that act alone was something no monster had ever done.

On the ground, it dissolved into golden light.

But its five human-like fingers spasmed like a centipede’s legs as it disintegrated.

The hunger filled was welcome—but the fear filling me drowned it out.

The deadliest enemy of humans is always other humans.

That creed had long lived in me, unchanged.

And now the rifts were birthing things that looked like us.

Whether by Kang Han-min’s influence, or the rifts’ own answer to a problem, or both—I couldn’t know. But I knew my choice had been right.

Humanity’s extinction was creeping on, slow but unstoppable.

I loaded the bike and left.

“Kreeeeeeeech—!!”

More horrific shrieks rang through the abandoned zone.

Like the rifts themselves laughing at the end of our species.

By the time I reached my territory, the sun was setting.

And I read that sunset differently.

It was the twilight of humankind.