Hiding a House in the Apocalypse-Chapter 147.2: Mountain Lord (2)

Click, click.

While taking pictures, I felt a sense of unease.

The kind of unease that sparks suspicion.

Mutation hunting isn’t exactly our specialty.

Even without hunters, others could do it. Mutation hunting was considered a second-line assignment.

There were too many monsters to kill. Deploying alpha teams like us for mutations was seen as a waste of resources.

Still, we had hunted a fair number of mutations.

That’s how infested the battlefield was with them.

Drawing from that experience, I examined the footprints.

Oversized feline-like tracks immediately grabbed the eye, but the spacing between prints, the direction, the depth, the sudden appearance and disappearance of the trail...

Based on my experience and instincts, these footprints didn’t add up.

“What do you think?”

When it came to mutation hunting, Kim Daram had seen and accumulated more cases than I had.

After old-school hunters were pushed to second-line duties, she oversaw hunters mainly assigned to hunt mutations in the suburbs.

“Not sure.”

She seemed to sense the oddity too.

But perhaps due to experience, she didn’t immediately doubt the footprints themselves like I did.

Instead, she knelt on the cold snow, putting her face nearly to the ground, and carefully inspected the tracks from multiple angles.

“······.”

That’s one of the reasons I liked Kim Daram.

When it came to work, she was thorough and meticulous.

She lacked flexibility and imagination, so she’d never make a good commander, but as a frontline field agent, few could match her.

“As you can see, the depth of the footprints is suspiciously uniform. See that sloped section? Given the size of the prints and stride, the mutation’s weight should exceed three tons. But even when it stepped down the slope, the depth remains the same. That’s not natural.”

She stood up, scanning the surroundings sharply.

“Maybe someone faked it?”

“I agree.”

It’s not uncommon for humans to cosplay as mutations.

Even before the war, the world was chaotic enough, and there were always those willing to exploit the confusion for personal gain or revenge.

Communicating with the drone operator, we began a full search.

The target wasn’t the mutation footprints anymore — it was the corpses of the warlord’s soldiers.

Kim Daram pulled a brutally mutilated body from beneath the snow and laid it out on the frozen field.

The rookie hunters and soldiers with us visibly grimaced in disgust, but Kim Daram calmly inspected the corpse.

“Hmm. This one was definitely eaten by a beast. But judging by the bite marks and the way the flesh was torn, it wasn’t the owner of those giant footprints.”

“What kind of animal?”

“Probably a wild boar.”

“I see.”

We continued the search.

After an extra hour, we uncovered the hidden truth behind the tiger tracks.

“Definitely humans passed through here.”

There were more than fifty scattered corpses, but none of them had any ammunition.

The number of guns was suspiciously low too.

What few guns remained were all outdated and in poor condition.

One relatively intact rifle was missing its firing pin.

Someone had probably staged it to mislead others, but the missing firing pin only deepened my suspicions.

“Any smoke rising nearby?”

I wanted to be sure.

Soon the drone operator reported back.

“No smoke detected, but there’s a settlement nearby. Cross-referencing with pre-war maps, it matches a village location.”

Pre-war Korea was definitely wealthy.

Even up here, in this mountainous region, they had paved # Nоvеlight # concrete roads.

The broken streetlights buried in snow pointed the way, and we followed the road ahead.

Halfway there, the armored car jolted hard.

Backing up and digging through the snow, we found a spiked barricade.

If an ordinary vehicle had driven over it, the tires would have been shredded.

Evidence of human presence kept piling up, and soon we arrived at the mountain village.

A school, community center, beef retail store, post office, local bank branch, and so on.

It might have been a mountain village, but on the surface, it had everything.

Some hunters moved to disembark, but I had Kim Daram stop them.

There was no need to get out of the vehicle.

We had the power.

“All residents of this village must gather within thirty minutes where we can see them. If not, we’ll designate this location as an artillery strike target. Repeat, all residents must...”

One lesson I learned from China.

If you have the means to threaten, use it.

The Chinese military didn’t start by slaughtering their own people indiscriminately.

Countless accidents and casualties hardened them into that.

The so-called “hostile civilians” we face are far more dangerous than the term suggests.

Someone coming at you with pure intent to kill.

After facing such pure malice a few times, the word “civilian” quickly disappears from your mind.

I wasn’t saying these villagers were hostile, but better to be cautious.

Our lives come first.

“Gunner!”

At Kim Daram’s order, the vehicle’s operator fired the 20mm autocannon into the village.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

The shells, heavier than any handheld weapon’s bullets, smashed a house into a cloud of dust.

Soon after, we saw them.

Pale figures crawling out of the ruins.

No tigers among them, of course.

*

There are places in Korea called clan villages — settlements where everyone shares the same surname.

This village was one of them.

It seemed a few elderly residents stubbornly clung to the village.

There were some younger men and women too, but judging by their foreign appearances, they probably weren’t related to the clan.

They kept glancing at the elders, suggesting an unseen hierarchy.

I exchanged a quick conversation with Kim Daram.

“There were cases where clan villagers defied evacuation orders and stayed behind. Most ended tragically, but somehow this community survived.”

“Who were they up against?”

“Mutations more than raiders. Clan villages are usually in rural areas, where mutation cleanup is poor. There were even cases of entire villages being wiped out, one by one, like being picked from a fridge.”

“Lovely.”

Kim Daram frowned deeply.

“But their numbers are kinda in-between.”

Excluding the foreigners, there were only about a dozen villagers.

Meaningless to me, but to Kim Daram, it stood out.

“A proper clan village would have at least fifty people. But they’re down to this?”

“Two winters.”

“Hmm.”

We ended the small talk and moved on to questioning the villagers.

“We’re not leaving.”

One elder declared stubbornly.

“No one’s taking you anywhere. Don’t worry.”

Kim Daram smiled brightly, but even to me, her face looked pretty terrifying.

In the tense atmosphere, the villagers brought out their belongings.

“This is everything.”

Phones, tablets, notebooks — that’s all.

No ammunition or guns in sight, their intentions clear.

But we weren’t after weapons anyway.

Soon Kim Daram identified the warlord responsible.

“Lieutenant General Lee Jae-young.”

An unfamiliar name.

“Surprisingly, he was a civilian defense official.”

“A civilian? Not a military academy graduate?”

“Yeah. One of those rare talents who outshines elites without the pedigree.”

“A gifted one, huh.”

“Still, the cult probably helped his rise too. He wasn’t seen as a major threat, but he managed to pull off a heavy blow.”

Kim Daram closed her notebook and sighed.

“That’s it. Operation complete.”

That’s how it often goes.

What seems like a big job often ends anticlimactically.

But something still felt unresolved.

The tiger.

The cause of all this fuss.

“The tiger?”

I asked the villagers.

Since we had guaranteed we wouldn’t confiscate any more supplies, they seemed friendlier now.

“Who made the tiger tracks?”

The villagers glanced at each other.

Not confusion — concealment.

I was about to push when Kim Daram stepped forward.

“God, stop wasting our time. We’re being generous by not pushing harder. Now hurry up and answer!”

The kind of sharp hostility she packed into each sentence — the old, slightly cute Kim Daram never had that edge.

Anyway, the villagers finally caved and brought out their secret.

The truth behind the footprints.

They had made them.

Using a giant replica of a feline paw, they stamped tracks around the area.

Seeing such huge prints, raiders and scavengers would stay away.

“So that’s the Mountain Lord’s secret.”

Kim Daram chuckled, looking at the “Mountain Lord’s paw” they used.

“······.”

I had suspected it.

But—

“Daram.”

“What?”

“Doesn’t this paw seem... way too high quality?”

The texture, the detailed pores, the traces of thick fur — even under a sloppy black coating, the craftsmanship was clear.

It wasn’t something mass-produced.

It looked like something processed from a living creature.

“Where did you get this?”

I waved the paw, larger than my face, at the old men.

After some hesitation, a man raised his hand.

“There was a tiger.”

His speech was broken.

Clearly a foreigner.

Instead of facing us, he nervously looked toward the villagers, then motioned to Kim Daram that he had more to say.

After a brief talk outside, Kim Daram gestured to me.

“This guy says he knows where the tiger is.”

So there was still more.

Click—

I checked my weapon, but Kim Daram shook her head.

“The tiger’s dead.”

She stared at the foreigner’s back with a strange expression.

Seemed like there was a story there.

Maybe playing along with Kim Daram’s mischief would be good for rebuilding our senior-junior relationship.

Sure enough, there was a cave.

Collapsed barbed wire and abandoned portable toilets marked it as once human-used.

The moment I entered the cave, a fishy smell of death stabbed my nose.

A tiger’s corpse lay curled in the darkness.

A mutated tiger.

Its sheer size was terrifying.

“······.”

Both Kim Daram and I stood frozen.

If something like that attacked from the darkness?

I didn’t want to imagine.

It wasn’t something a simple axe could handle.

You can’t stop a charging trailer truck with an axe.

Click, click.

Despite the stench, I kept taking pictures.

Click, click.

“Senior. Aren’t you taking a few too many?”

Kim Daram muttered, but I ignored her and kept snapping from every angle.

Then.

Clatter—

Something caught my foot.

“?”

Bones.

The flashlight revealed a familiar human skeleton.

Human remains.

Kim Daram looked at the Vietnamese man.

“So it was true?”

He nodded.

“Yes.”

The story began in India, before its fall.

A baby female tiger, captured by poachers, ended up in a struggling local zoo.

Due to poor finances, the tiger received miserable care.

When war broke out, the zoo went bankrupt.

Other animals were transferred elsewhere, but the malformed tiger remained.

Then came a miracle.

Mutation — a curse for humanity — was a blessing for the tiger.

The legend of the Mountain Lord began.

At some point, the tiger was wounded.

Maybe by hunters, soldiers, or a determined tracker.

Wounded, the tiger stumbled into this cave.

When hungry, it raided the village.

With no proper firearms and isolation from outside help, the village was perfect hunting ground.

First it attacked cattle. When cattle ran out, it attacked humans.

The villagers resisted, set traps, but against a clever tiger, none of it worked — only harsher retaliation.

Cunningly, the tiger didn’t kill everyone at once.

It picked them off slowly, one by one, eating only what it needed.

Eventually, the villagers made a deal.

“······There were many foreigners here. Koreans, Thais, Bangladeshis. It was a rich village, growing Shine Muscats.”

They offered sacrifices.

They fed the tiger the outsiders they had invited.

Dinh, the Vietnamese man, was lucky.

The tiger died just before it would have been his turn.

He learned the truth much later, when an old villager drunkenly confessed.

Thus ended the story of the Mountain Lord.

No Siberian tiger.

No mountain gods.

No legendary super-mutant predator.

Just a filthy, despicable human tragedy.

“Still ended anticlimactically.”

Kim Daram handed Dinh an assault rifle and grenades.

His eyes widened.

“Is this okay?”

“No problem.”

Leaving the baffled Dinh behind, we departed the village.

“There was a young woman, right?”

Kim Daram said coldly, staring out the window.

“The old men probably kept her around for amusement. If they couldn’t feed her anymore, they’d have fed her to the tiger.”

“Have you considered that Dinh might be lying?”

When I asked, Kim Daram looked at me seriously for a moment — then turned away.

“······He’ll figure it out.”

Typical Kim Daram.

Not our problem anyway.

What mattered was that we had confirmed the Mountain Lord with our own eyes.

Even if, as she said, it was a disappointing ending.

As I gazed out at the snowy landscape, thinking how to spin today’s events into a new story—

“Hmm?”

Something flickered through the white forest.

“Ah.”

At the same time, Kim Daram said,

“They said the tiger... might have been pregnant.”

Right after she spoke, something massive flickered through the forest.

A pattern of black, yellow, and white mesh.

A tiger.

“Stop!”

“Senior?”

“Drone control!”

We halted the vehicle and scanned the surroundings.

Nothing visible. Nothing from the sky either.

Whether what I saw was real or illusion, I’d never know.

“······.”

The Mountain Lord is a story.

And that story isn't over yet.

This 𝓬ontent is taken from fre𝒆webnove(l).𝐜𝐨𝗺