48 Episode 48 - This is My Territory, Part III (1/2)
Chapter 17. This is My Territory, Part III
Translator: Khan
Editor: RED
7.
'Fuck, damn it…'
”Goddamn it.”
A man was walking in the hallway of a dark five-story building quietly, as there was no light on. He was a filthy man. He didn't know when he had last washed, and skin frozen and torn in cold weather made the man's look even worse.
”It's really fucked.”
His name was Kim Hyun-seok. He was twenty-six years old this year, and up until a few months ago, he was a man with a handsome face and a slim figure. In addition, he was full of heart-warming expectations for a new world as he got ready for a trip to Europe in 2017.
It was December 31, 2016, when his everything changed. A new world had begun.
'Why the hell did this happen?'
However, it was not the new world Kim Hyun-seok was waiting for. Suddenly, a monster appeared and the world became hell. The monsters that appeared made food of humans and enjoyed eating them alive more than anything else.
The survivors were also the same. Looting, rape, arson… There are even some lunatics eating human flesh.
He thought that there would be nothing more like hell than this. But that idea was shattered with the appearance of a furry crocodile.
'The world is over.'
The giant furry crocodiles, not one, not dozens, but hundreds of eerie crocodiles began to move around like a tsunami, sweeping through everything.
Even in the middle of them was a larger crocodile than the two buses combined. A ridiculous monster with yellow eyes spewing huge flames with its mouth was there!
'Damn it…'
Kim Hyun-seok, who had seen the monster, shuddered. He also recalled that he had pissed his pants when he had seen the monster.
'It's over now. The world is over.'
In his trembling, an unspeakable wave of despair swept over himself, and in his despair, Kim Hyun-seok was overtaken with the desire to escape this hell.
'If I lived like this…'
He thought he would like to face a peaceful death that no one would know about, somewhere in this building.
So Kim Hyun-seok started anguishing over the terrible choice.
'Huh?'
It was a sense of smell that had been made extremely sensitive by hunger for days that stopped his agony, and the soft scent tickled his sensitive nose.
'Coffee?'
The smell was coffee. It was a smell he knew well, and something that could not be found anywhere after the monster appeared.
'Why coffee?'
Unknowingly, Kim Hyun-seok headed for the place the odor was coming from. His footsteps stopped at an office which used to be a calligraphy institute before the monster appeared.
A man was enjoying a coffee under the translucent window in the office, framed in the sunshine that penetrated the window.
It was a very peaceful appearance, totally disparate. For Kim Hyun-seok, peace was no longer part of the world.
When Kim Hyun-seok saw this scene, he froze. His brain stopped working in this ridiculous situation.
The screaming of his stomach woke him up.
For a few days, the only thing he had eaten was a lump of snow, and the coffee flavor roused his appetite.
”Huck!”
Kim Hyun-seok was most surprised by the loud noise, while the man looked at Kim Hyun-seok in a coolly.
”Hey, hey...” At this moment, the only words that came to mind in Kim Hyun Suk were, ”Do you have anything to eat?”
There was no such thing as a sense of shame.
It had been such a long time ago since he had a proper meal. What he could call food among the things he has recently eaten was a triangle Kimbab which had been trampled by someone at a convenience store, where everything else had already been stolen five days ago.
”Please... please.”
The man looked at him at such a desperate request. The cold eyes of the man met Kim Hyun-seok's eyes. At that moment, Kim Hyun-seok could see that the man in front of him was a monster that was not lacking compared to the most terrible monster he had ever faced.
'Is he a monster? A monster that looks like a person?'
”Are you a survivor?”
”Yes?”
”Where do you live?”
”Oh, well…” At the sudden question, Kim Hyun-seok came up with the answer he had to. ”Gwangmyeong City! I live in Gwangmyeong City, my name is Kim Hyun-seok, and I am twenty-five... no, twenty-six.”
The man took a chocolate bar out of the inner pocket of his jacket. Kim Hyun-seok's eyes widened.
”This is the information fee. I will give you one more if you tell me what happened in Gwangmyeong City, and everything you've seen and heard.”
8.
”It is about three meters long, and its exterior appearance is like a crocodile, but it has fur like a wolf instead of armor-like leather, and it lives in groups like wolves.”
A Wolf-crocodile...
Kim Tae-hoon, who finished explaining about the newly appeared monster, looked up at the crowd.
Kim Soo-ji, Yang Jung-hwan, Lee Soo-young, and Jang Sung-hoon, four people looked at their smartphones and had a stiff expression on their faces.
”And this is the one in the center.”
Four people looked at the photo file that had been transferred to their smartphones. In the picture was a Wolf-crocodile that was too big to be compared to a normal Wolf-crocodile.
Other pictures even showed him breathing out the fire. It was the leader of the Wolf-crocodiles.
”There is a Mutant Wolf-crocodile between the leader and the subordinates that is an intermediate boss. It is not externally distinguishable, but it has orange eyes. You should look at the color of their eyes when you're dealing with them. Red and orange grades are different levels.”
The existence of a Mutant Wolf-crocodile was overshadowed in front of the existence of a flame-spewing crocodile
”These three kinds of monsters, a total of over four hundred, are moving toward Bucheon.”
At the end of the story, Kim Tae-hoon looked at the crowd. No one had spoken to Kim Tae-hoon, or taken their eyes off their smartphones.
'A very different type from the Black Snake we dealt with last time…'
'The number of the group is over four hundred, we almost died just dealing with a crazy Black Snake…'
'If it comes into Bucheon, there will be some kind of damage.'
'If four hundred monsters eat half a human being a day, twenty thousand people will be prey in ten days. Bucheon was lucky. Bucheon was very lucky. The city of Gwangmyeong has only a small population left.'
They knew that yellow-grade monsters were moving towards Bucheon City, so Kim Tae-hoon moved in person to scout. But they didn't know that the yellow-grade monster was not a single individual like a Black Snake, but a leader who led a huge crowd.
The situation was quite different from the one for the Black Snake. That was why they couldn't speak. They couldn't talk about it because they were looking for a new solution to deal with the new situation.