Hiding a House in the Apocalypse - Chapter 398



Only Noblemtl

Episode 398 161. Seat (2)

It was as if he was telling me to listen.

As expected, the disgruntled looking man met my eyes, looked around, made sure no one was there, and approached me.

“Kang Jeong-woo. That bastard isn’t the chief justice.”

“What are you talking about?”

“No, not Kang Jung-woo either. That bastard. He’s a completely different guy.”

The man suddenly put his hand into his bosom, felt around for a while, then took out something wrapped tightly in old, black plastic and showed it to me.

It was an old magazine called The Law Journal.

As if trying to vent his long-held joy, the man showed a page of the magazine with a smile that was inverted and wrinkles engraved over the years.

[Regarding the legal nature of consumer loans and common mistakes in practice – Kang Jeong-woo, head of the Yeongdeok branch of Daegu District Court]

There was a picture of a man wearing a neat suit and glasses attached to it.

“This is the real Kang Jung-woo.”

What on earth is this guy trying to tell me?

After thinking about it carefully, I realized that while I was working, this man was sneaking glances at me and trying to stay by my side.

Are you sure you’re just hanging around here to show me this?

“That bastard whose life itself is a lie. That bastard. He’s got company with that conman, Chief Kwon. What does a mere chief know? Come on. Don’t you find it funny when you think about it?”

He muttered again, putting the magazine in his bosom.

“You seem like a high-ranking person, so I think you should know the truth about that conman.”

As I glared at him coldly without responding, the man seemed to finally notice my discomfort and, while looking at me, tried to keep his back straight as he turned around to walk away.

I watched the man leave in silence.

The defender, who had just returned, approached me, glaring at the man with an emotionless gaze that felt even more menacing.

“what’s the matter?”

“No, it’s nothing.”

The cell phone rang.

A text message came from Hunter Headquarters.

This is a regular report.

To summarize, there is nothing wrong with the current situation.

However, the control cable connected to the sentry gun was cut by artillery fire, so a repair team was sent.

Sentry guns have also been changed to be operated strictly manually due to the possibility of monster attacks on precision machinery, especially semiconductors.

“······Something like this happened.”

I gave the Defender a brief summary of what had just happened.

“okay?”

The defender took out a cigarette.

“Do you want to smoke?”

I declined the cigarette and waited for his opinion.

“Phew.”

The Defender spoke after slowly exhaling white smoke.

“It’s a common story in shelters. Shelter director? Evacuation center director? Of course. In the past, only those who had been hired before the war could become shelter directors, but they weren’t particularly popular. It was an honorary position. But later, when the government gave shelter directors autonomy, things changed.”

“This is what they mean when they say that an honorary position has become a hat.”

“Yeah. That’s why it became so popular that later on, there were even people who falsified their academic backgrounds and careers to become shelter directors.”

The cigarette in Defender’s mouth burned with a reddish glow.

“I don’t think it will be easy.”

“what?”

“It’s inevitable that there will be a lot of scammers in South Korea. There were a lot of people who committed career fraud. To be honest, it’s much easier now than before the war. You can’t even search Naver. How much worse must it have been for there to be a separate bulletin board on Palenet asking for personal information?”

Was there such a bulletin board?

It seems like it happened, but it doesn’t seem like it happened.

Well, humans, regardless of age or gender, are creatures who only want to see what they want to see.

“Regardless of what that man just said, it’s true that the director has been vetted once. He must have been the chief justice, right? He may be dead now, but when he was the director of the shelter, there must have been at least one or two lawyers, judges, prosecutors, or other legal professionals in the shelter.”

“I heard that a person called the office manager was helping out.”

“······I guess they did some basic testing.”

What the Defender is worried about isn’t such trivial things as the past.

His gaze always looks at what is alive, that is, reality.

“The real problem is something else.”

“The real problem?”

“The public sentiment is not good because of this incident. Everyone went to the front lines prepared to die, but if twenty people die like this, no matter how long you serve as a major, people will start talking behind your back.”

We investigated thoroughly, but found no special evidence.

The only way is to go beyond the ruins where the fanatic is hiding, but that’s not something I’m supposed to do and I wouldn’t ask anyone else to do it.

Instead, I decided to send a team of Hunters, including a regular Awaken who had recently been fitted with a portable Necropolis transmitter.

“I’ll do my best, Captain!”

The person in charge of the resource is Kim Han-na, call sign Tanenbaum.

“Don’t overdo it.”

Before leaving, I met with Kang Jeong-woo one more time and discussed a few things.

“That apartment. It feels too protruding. Besides, the cult likes to attack the same place it has attacked before. So why not give it up and relocate it to a point that connects to the other side?”

“I totally agree with your opinion, Captain, but I’ll stick to it just this one more time.”

As I had vaguely expected, Kang Jung-woo seemed like a person with a clear opinion.

“As you know, the area we’re in charge of doesn’t have any proper pillboxes or defensive facilities. There’s no place else to focus.”

Kang Jeong-woo stared at a man of similar age next to him.

“What do you think, Director Kwon?”

Office manager.

It’s a title that’s hard to hear these days.

I remember it as a term referring to a person hired by a lawyer or law firm to bring in cases, but I had a silly question as to whether a former chief justice would still be attached to a court office even after it collapsed.

Anyway, this person appears to be the same Director Kwon that the ticking man whose name I don’t know mentioned earlier.

Although he was not as handsome as Kang Jeong-woo, he had a dignified and respectable appearance and a gentleness that was rarely seen in men his age.

He stared at me.

The moment our eyes met, I was a little surprised.

It’s a gaze that looks at me as I am, without being discouraged or trying to show off.

I felt, well, a sense of spaciousness.

“Well, I think it would be right to follow General Park Gyu’s opinion since he is the expert.”

Kang Jeong-woo was quite troubled by Chief Kwon’s words.

It seems like he usually relies a lot on the person named Director Kwon.

Still, as a leader of a group, he had a clear opinion.

“There is only one place in the vicinity that can provide a focal point, so I will focus more on troops and defense.”

Kang Jung-woo decided to maintain the status quo.

Well then, I’ll just say what I have to say.

“Then I would like the Hunter Team to be on standby at the rear as a reserve. That is correct. I will notify the Hunter Team accordingly.”

A day has passed.

Another accident happened.

The fanatics stormed the apartment building along a route very similar to yesterday’s, killing about 27 shelter supporters stationed there.

However, unlike before, they were on high alert, so there were casualties among the fanatics, and a rescue request was made in a timely manner. The hunter team, including Kim Hanna, successfully provided timely support and chased away the fanatics.

Kim Hanna reported seeing something monster-like among the retreating cultists.

However, there was no room to worry about another large group of monsters coming from the north.

When I returned to the shelter in question again, I had destroyed about 50 monsters that had approached through the kill zone with artillery support and had wiped out the remaining two with the dumb tank.

Because there were so many of them, the battle lasted for three and a half days, and some of the monsters even climbed onto the bridge.

Those who had been talking about monsters being weak were speechless when they saw the gray-white entity standing tall on the bridge, on the border between the living and the non-living.

After discussing with other departments the early restoration of the collapsed kill zone, we headed to the shelter area where the problem occurred.

It was 3 o’clock in the morning.

Since Cheon Yeong-jae hadn’t slept a wink throughout the battle, I let him rest and called the Defender to head to the shelter area.

As expected, the leader of the shelter has changed.

Kang Jeong-woo, who had been in charge of the shelter for the past four years, was unanimously dismissed and another person took over as director.

The new director was younger and stronger than Kang Jeong-woo, but he didn’t have Kang Jeong-woo’s refined demeanor.

“Another attack with monsters. We need to move the Hunter and attack them preemptively.”

I had no intention of agreeing with his opinion and no time to waste on such petty local warfare, but fortunately I had the Defender.

“Those guys, roughly. I’ve figured out where their den is. Where they’re hiding, how they got here, it’s easy to figure out.”

The Defenders already had plans to eradicate the fanatic.

Defenders required one Hunter team with a regular Awaken for monster countermeasures.

Agreed.

He is already a master of interpersonal combat, and fanatics are the enemies of defenders.

As I left the shelter operations room, I thought I should have a meeting with Kim Byeong-cheol.

The monsters’ offensive is progressing more steeply than expected.

Now, even if I wanted to help, I don’t have time to help.

We must find a way to resolve this vulnerable defense line within Kim Byeong-cheol’s capabilities.

It was with that thought that I was about to get into the jeep.

A man with a memorable, negative outlook appeared before me.

He’s the man who told me the story about Kang Jeong-woo.

“What did I say? Kang Jung-woo. That bastard. I said he’s a conman?”

“······.”

Even though I ignored him from the front, the man laughed out loud as if he found something so delightful and blurted out words that I hadn’t even asked him.

“I’ve been waiting for this day. I’ve been waiting for this day. For that conman’s true nature to be revealed.”

“Go your way.”

Showed his irritation.

Only then did the man step aside from me.

It is a human thing for someone to rise and fall.

I personally couldn’t understand why people were wasting their emotions on trivial matters, hating others, and feeling pleasure from the downfall of others when the human world itself was on the verge of collapse.

Still, I felt a little interested, so I asked the shelter officer who was present.

What happened to the guy named Kang Jeong-woo?

“That old man was right. Kang Jung-woo, or what should I call him now? It seems he was just waiting for the reputation of the shelter director to be shaken. When people were questioning him, he held up an old magazine and asked if he was really Kang Jung-woo.”

“So?”

“Mr. Kang Jung-woo couldn’t answer. In this situation, silence is considered as acknowledgment. In legal terms, is it called ratification? Anyway, taking responsibility for the loss of two lives, Mr. Kang Jung-woo took off his clothes with the person he always went with, Chief Kwon.”

“Where are you now?”

What would you do if you knew the fate of a man?

“He would have gone to the front lines as a private. They say he volunteered for the most dangerous position.”

From that night until dawn, the sweep team led by the defender ambushed nearby areas and wiped out the cultists who were raiding the shelter area.

In the process, the Defender discovered that the fanatic was in possession of military equipment from the time.

Clear evidence has emerged that the fanatics were supported by the Legion.

But the monster that led me here was nowhere to be seen, and coincidentally it appeared in a place I never expected.

It’s hard to believe, but while the Defenders were wiping out the fanatics, a small group of fanatics with monsters attacked the outskirts, and in the process, the veterans of the shelter killed not only the fanatics but also the monsters.

At the center of it all was, surprisingly, a fallen man named Kang Jeong-woo.

*

When I visited him in his hospital room, he was already on the verge of death.

Next to him, a man named Manager Kwon, who was also growing old, was holding his hand with a pensive expression, watching over the last moments of his friend who had gone through the destruction together.

According to the story, Kang Jeong-woo was hit by three bullets that bounced off the reflective field, but he still managed to advance and blast away the necromancer type with the low-level hunter weapon called the Monster Killer issued by the military.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not.

Kang Jeong-woo looked at me with his dying eyes and tried to force himself up.

Despite Chief Kwon’s attempts to dissuade him, he, like a stubborn man, crawled up and raised his upper body. He looked at me and started talking about his complex – one that he probably considered more serious than his own death.

“Jong-taek is right. I am not a judge. Of course, I was not the chief justice. I was just a senior student who dreamed of becoming a Supreme Court Justice.”

The man smiled bitterly, the shadow of death hanging over his face.

“A senior who was a Supreme Court Justice ignited a fire in my heart. I still remember that. The look in his eyes and the words he spoke to his juniors at school 30 years ago when he encouraged them to dream.”

The nurse came in.

When our eyes met, she slowly shook her head.

I was listening to the story.

That the only treatment they gave was to barely suppress the pain with narcotic painkillers.

The man’s story continued in an uncomfortable atmosphere.

“I studied for a really long time. Even now, when I close my eyes, the table of contents for each subject and the related key clauses come to mind clearly.”

Perhaps the knowledge of that time provided an answer to the qualification test that was poured on him when he was appointed as the head of the shelter.

“But it didn’t work out. When I turned 30, I quit studying and entered the court. But you know.”

The man burst into laughter.

“I was so foolish. The judges were all the same.”

“In what way?”

“Most of them end up as reputation dealers. They take off their clothes as reputation dealers.”

I don’t understand what the problem is.

“To become a chief judge, you must have at least graduated from a junior high school or something. Chief Justice? These gentlemen graduated from a junior high school or something. They passed the bar exam while still in school, and they did so well that they were in the top tier of the Judicial Research and Training Institute. Let alone a Supreme Court Justice!”

The man coughed violently, but did not stop talking.

“It was something that only the most talented among them could do······.”

Blood was seeping out of the gauze covering his torso and his mouth at the same time.

Death was urging the man.

“Without even knowing that, this ignorant guy was in his thirties, thinking he would become a Supreme Court Justice, but he was cramped up in that stuffy, hot goshiwon in Sillim-dong, holding on to his textbooks and casebooks. Not knowing that even if he succeeded, he would never reach where he was trying to go.”

The man turned his head towards me.

But his eyesight seemed to have already disappeared.

Those blurry pupils weren’t looking straight at me.

“But I guess I still had regrets. When the war broke out and they were selecting the shelter director, I saw that he was trying to fulfill a dream he had long since lost······.”

The vital signs screamed.

The man fainted.

Soldiers and survivors who were at the scene relayed detailed accounts of the situation at the time.

Cross-validation results show that Kang Jeong-woo, or rather this unknown man, defeated the monster.

“······Director.”

Manager Kwon muttered sadly as he touched the convulsing man’s hand.

Although the truth has already been revealed, it seems that to Chief Justice Kwon, that man was the eternal Chief Justice.

“He was a much better person than any chief justice or even a Supreme Court justice.”

Chief Kwon said to the departing day.

“I, a former chief justice, can vouch for this.”

It seems that there was another story hidden in the series of events.

Time is limited.

Beep- beep- beep-

The call rang again.

I asked him.

“Why did you hide it?”

Chief Kwon answered with a sour look on his face.

“Judges are often lynched for no reason.”

I left my seat.

The last words of a dying man were heard in the hospital room.

“Majority opinion, minority opinion, common opinion, precedent······.”

His name was not revealed until the end.

Hiding a House in the Apocalypse Episode 399