Hiding a House in the Apocalypse-Chapter 148.4: Painkillers (4)
They react to three things above all:
Territory.
Sound.
And the death of a fellow.
When a human enters their territory, they only send a few scouts.
From the darkness, monsters with multiple pale gray legs came in single file.
I slowly stepped backward and spoke into the communicator.
“Cease fire. Cease fire. Set all control levers to safe. Hyeongdo, confirm.”
“Yes, Captain!”
“I told you to drop the ‘Sir.’”
“Yes, Captain!”
I adjusted our pace.
To choose the place where I would collide with the creatures hiding in the dark.
That moment came next.
The leading Spiderling leapt at me.
Compared to the dancer-type minions, it was so slow it looked like slow motion.
Of course, when it came to these things, the poor performance of individual units didn’t matter—their numbers were their greatest weapon.
I raised my pistol and pulled the trigger.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
The ones rushing in fell to the ground with holes in their torsos, crumbling into particles of light.
I could feel the new hunters watching me.
“Wow...”
“Holy shit.”
“Cowboy?”
Watching the Spiderlings vanish like they were vaporizing themselves, I spoke.
“We’re not cowboys from a western. What I mean is, we don’t need to worry about the enemy shooting first. Focus on deliberate hits. Once your accuracy improves, speed will follow naturally.”
I led the rookie hunters into the crevice of the power plant.
This time, Kim Hanna came along too.
Noticing her body trembling slightly, I asked,
“First time in a field like this?”
“...Yes. There aren’t nests inside the rift... There aren’t any infiltrators there.”
“The ones you fought inside the rift are far inferior to this.”
Once again, Spiderlings surged out from the dark.
Maybe they sensed the death of their comrades—there were twice as many now.
Estimating roughly, it had to be several hundred.
That’s too much for a single human.
But we have tools.
“Hyeongdo.”
“Yes, Captain.”
Shim Hyeongdo stepped forward.
Strapped to his back was a canister of separable flammable agents.
Every time he pressed the ignition button, two different substances mixed from separate pipes and burst into a deathly flame that burned nearly everything.
Fwoooosh—
A hellfire, true to its name, burst forth in front of us, and within it, hundreds of Spiderlings dissolved into either ash or light.
“Fall back. Re-enter in 10 minutes.”
Peeling it back is a tedious task.
But the more we invest, the more the success rate and survival rate skyrocket.
There’s no reason to skip it just because it’s boring, bland, or repetitive.
We’re not gladiators in an arena—we're hunters fighting for our lives.
And simple, repeated tasks like these offer a bit of courage and confidence to those afraid of battle.
“Can’t we just go in and wipe them all out at once?”
Someone’s pride was already kicking in.
“Go in alone and drag them out, then.”
“Ah, yeah, that’s... kind of hard.”
The cheeky one managed to make the others laugh.
Even Kim Hanna, smirking behind me, wasn’t an exception.
She’s growing used to the battlefield.
“Kim Hanna.”
Let’s try a little test.
“Yes, Captain.”
“Think you can show me what you’ve got?”
Caught off guard, Kim Hanna looked around at the others, flustered.
“...”
I hoped she had grown.
“Uh... well...”
As usual, she searched for an excuse to run, but eventually, she met my eyes, bit her lip gently, and nodded.
“I’ll try...”
Thud!
A powerful shockwave pounded the darkness like a war drum.
Inside it, we saw it.
Visible lines spreading out like a spiderweb.
Thud!
Another shockwave erupted, and the lines turned into white flames with substance, incinerating everything within them.
As hundreds of light particles ascended in competition, Kim Hanna turned to me.
“Captain!” freēnovelkiss.com
That smile... was the most beautiful I’d seen in a long time.
*
“Is that... true?”
I believe change causes a chain reaction.
When Awakened, who had always been cynical, heard that Kim Hanna—once averse to combat—was joining the mission to take the power plant, the core objective for New Seoul, his face twisted in disbelief.
“No way, her?”
“Her?”
“There’s no way she would do that.”
“Did she take something weird or something?”
We just needed to push one step further.
“Captain, are you serious?”
As soon as I stepped out of the building marked “Main,” Lee Haru followed me.
Though wrapped in bandages, the bruises on her face would likely linger for a while.
No wonder—those injuries came from being beaten ruthlessly by a grown man using the butt of a pistol.
But the fact she wasn’t cowed by that violence... I considered it a strength.
I shook off my brief prejudice and smiled as I answered.
“If you want, you can observe it yourself.”
“Really?”
I figured Kim Hanna wouldn’t like it, but having a witness might help her establish herself among the regular Awakened.
As expected, when Lee Haru arrived, Kim Hanna turned to me, protesting.
“Why... why is she here?”
“To witness your performance.”
“Do we have to do that? The result’s gonna be recorded anyway.”
“Plenty of people won’t believe even a verified record with a witness. Besides...”
I turned toward Lee Haru, standing off in the distance.
Kim Hanna frowned and slightly shook her head, clearly annoyed, as Lee Haru waved between the soldiers.
“Go, Big Sis!”
Kim Hanna’s face flushed red.
She lowered her head and turned away, but even the tips of her ears were burning.
“You’ll be seeing her a lot from now on.”
“Not like I wanna be friends...”
“You don’t have to be.”
Kim Hanna looked up at me.
Recalling an old scene that now only existed in memory, I continued,
“But it’s your territory. If you want to survive in it, you need at least some recognition.”
Click—
I checked my firearm and stepped forward.
“Remember. We prove ourselves through results.”
The operation began.
We’d wiped out a large number of Spiderlings yesterday.
Recon confirmed that no other monsters were inside the spider-type nest.
Even the monsters occupying the northern and eastern sections of the power station didn’t respond.
Everything was going our way.
Unless something unexpected happened, this wouldn’t be too hard.
And if something did go wrong, we’d just retreat.
We had everything in place.
Thunk!
I pressed a button, and Christmas-light-sized bulbs lit up past the darkness, carving a glowing line.
“I said it yesterday too—don’t cross that line. If you must, leave your guns behind. You all know why.”
We’d left it behind after cleanup yesterday.
To avoid triggering detonation—one of the monsters’ powers.
Some hunters had grumbled that it was childish, but keeping distance in the middle of chaos is no easy feat.
Even veterans have been caught off guard by that skill in the heat of battle.
If you get caught with a loaded weapon when it triggers, expect at least serious injury.
Most just die instantly.
Instructions must be clear and simple enough for a seven-year-old to understand.
From the darkness, pale gray minions surged forward.
Easily several hundred.
“Hyeongdo.”
Shim Hyeongdo stepped up with his Inferno.
I stood behind him, axe in hand, guarding his flank.
“Begin.”
No sooner had I finished than the Inferno spewed fire.
The state-of-the-art motor on his back roared to life.
Vrrrrrr—
As death’s flame spread, it swept side to side, and everything caught in its dance of fire flailed helplessly.
Of course, some survived and began approaching.
That’s what I was here for.
Crack!
I split through them, protecting the flamethrower operator with my twin axes.
Shunk!
No mistakes allowed.
“First wave eliminated.”
Hearing the secondary hunter’s report, I gave the next command.
“Prepare for breaching.”
Soldiers raised their rocket-launcher-style weapons.
The target: the pale structure we marked yesterday with red paint—the web of the spider-type.
If we could blast a hole in that, nothing would separate us from the Spiderlings holed up inside.
It was the textbook way to eliminate a well-fortified spider-type nest.
“Breaching!”
Fwooooosh—
The rocket blasted off, striking the grotesque structure as it coiled upward.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The ground shook with successive explosions, dust clouded our vision, and soon, a {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} black hole appeared before us.
Shine the light.
“Monster confirmed!”
The prey revealed itself.
Thud!
Sure enough, once exposed to our line of sight, it awakened from its slumber with a shockwave.
“Kim Hanna.”
“...Yes.”
I looked at her.
Even if she’d trained for a day or two, old fears die hard.
I saw her eyes.
“....”
They were trembling—badly.
It made me wonder if everything we’d done until now had been pointless. She was overwhelmed by fear.
Was she always like this?
No.
If she lacked courage, she would’ve never stepped into the rift.
She had courage.
She’d stared into a world that wasn’t ours for a year and didn’t go mad.
“You okay?”
“I... I’m sorry, Captain...”
She was gasping so hard, I thought she might need a tranquilizer.
I could feel the hunters’ eyes.
And the eyes of someone even more important to her: Lee Haru, watching from behind us.
“I’m right here. No matter what happens, I’ll protect you.”
“Captain...”
“Can you neutralize the field?”
“Um, Captain. I mean, sir.”
Kim Hanna grabbed my arm, trying to steady her breath.
“There’s something I haven’t told you.”
“Tell me.”
“I...”
She lowered her head and shuddered violently.
“I can hear the voice...”
“...”
“You know what that means? That people who hear the voice... disappear.”
“Is that so.”
“They say that voice is from the monster’s leader. That if you can hear it, it means it’s whispering to you... That you’ve become a monster...”
“That’s nonsense. Just a myth.”
“N-no, it’s not. Heeyeong, Yeongbang, Jongchun... they were all close to me... and after they heard the voice...”
Tears fell from the shadowed outline of her lowered face.
“They vanished...”
Another sound emerged from the darkness.
The second wave of Spiderlings.
At the same time, many began patching the hole we’d made, spraying pale webbing to close the gap.
“Captain.”
The hunters’ stares intensified.
I let out a silent sigh and centered myself.
Images of Kim Daram, Woo Min-hee, and countless peers, juniors, and seniors I once knew flashed through my mind.
“...You can overcome this.”
I said something I didn’t mean.
The kind of line I hated most.
I imposed hope on someone else—hope I didn’t believe in.
“Captain.”
“That’s for later. For now, let’s get through this together.”
Kim Hanna looked up.
She wiped away tears that hadn’t fallen yet and nodded.
And then—
Thud!
Another shockwave erupted from beyond the dark.
“Everyone down!”
Bang!
Intimidating.
The monster triggered a repulsion field with its shockwave.
As a cold wind brushed past my cheek and a bullet grazed my face, I shouted,
“Neutralize!”
Thud!
Our Awakened unleashed a shockwave.
Two pulses collided in mid-air, pushing against each other.
The field was being neutralized.
In that fleeting gap, I opened fire again.
Bang!
This time, the bullet didn’t bounce.
I switched my control to auto and yelled to everyone.
“Attack!”
Ratatatatata-bang!
All weapons opened fire.
Without its repulsion field, the monster was nothing.
Under a storm of synchronized fury, it collapsed and crumbled into beautifully ephemeral light particles.
“Captain!”
Kim Hanna shouted to me.
No, it wasn’t time to celebrate yet.
A Spiderling had snuck up behind her.
It leapt.
“....”
This could be bad—
*
The weather was finally warm enough, so I’d opened the window to ventilate the hospital room.
“......”
I was injured.
Nothing serious—just some bruising and a twisted ankle.
It happened when I threw myself to protect Kim Hanna.
To be precise, I hurled my axe mid-air while throwing myself forward, and with that one strike, I took out two charging Spiderlings.
As a result, I landed poorly and twisted my ankle.
Naturally, Kim Hanna wasn’t hurt in the slightest. She made it back safely, supported by Lee Haru, and rejoined the group.
A happy ending, if you could call it that.
On the table beside the hospital bed was a gift Kim Hanna had left, along with a handwritten note.
— Get well soon, Captain! From Hanna.
Her gift was painkillers.
Absurd as it was, white anti-inflammatory painkillers in this world were more precious than gold by weight.
She said she used to fake sickness a lot to get them from hospitals.
It was such a “Kim Hanna” kind of gift, and it made me smile without thinking—but I couldn’t bring myself to fully smile anymore.
“......”
I’m not Awakened, but I know.
I know what that voice means.
Chime—
A soft, clear bell sound rang as the door to my private room opened.
Standing there was none other than my junior, Woo Min-hee.
“Senior. How’s the leg?”
“It’s nothing. A couple days’ rest and I’ll be fine.”
“I see.”
Woo Min-hee sat down in the caregiver’s chair, bending at the waist.
“Thanks to you, everything got handled cleaner and faster than anyone expected. Even the regulars are starting to stop being stubborn. They’re volunteering to go back out into the field.”
She smiled.
“As expected of the Professor, huh?”
“......”
I had nothing to say.
Regardless of the good results, my heart felt heavy.
In the silence, Woo Min-hee noticed the pill bottle and note on the table.
“Oh, is this that girl’s gift? These are painkillers, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow... even with how rare they are. Did you maybe steal that girl’s heart too, Senior?”
She joked, but I responded with a dead serious tone.
“She shouldn’t be on the battlefield.”
Woo Min-hee looked at me with a questioning expression.
“She said... she hears the voice.”
“...Really?”
“She might just vanish. Like that girl from the Lighthouse.”
I know.
I know I’m saying things someone like me should never say.
“I can’t show her any special treatment.”
Woo Min-hee echoed the exact logic I’d been clinging to.
“You know why you can’t, right?”
I turned my gaze to the open window.
“...It’s cold. Can you close it?”
She moved her hand, and the window shut as if it had a will of its own.
“Like I said before, it’s just the first time that’s hard. Just that one first time. Once you get past that, the rest is...”
“I get it.”
Woo Min-hee looked a bit surprised, then got up from her seat.
With a shallow sigh, she spoke.
“Let’s grab a drink sometime.”
“......”
“It’s been what—six years and three months since we last drank together?”
“Has it?”
Woo Min-hee gave a soft smile.
“No matter how drunk you get, don’t try to show off with beatboxing or anything like that, okay?”
She stood by the door, gave a little wave with her hooked hand.
“If you’re hurting, take the painkillers. They actually work pretty well.”
I looked at the bottle blankly.
Is there such a thing as a painkiller for the soul?
If there is... someone, please tell me.
The sourc𝗲 of this content is free(w)𝒆bnov(𝒆)l
