I had confirmed that M9 was alive, but knowing that my online friend would forever remain in an unstable position left a heavy burden on my mind.

And so, I’d been overlooking one crucial thing.

My pathological hunger.

Since I couldn’t gauge when or how exactly it would strike, I hadn’t been able to time it—only when sudden lethargy and futility surged over me, collapsing even my physical balance, did I realize I was suffering from a severe hunger episode.

That’s right.

I need to hunt a monster.

But the surrounding conditions aren’t favorable.

As the weather has gotten colder, the once-moderate refugees have turned irritable, now transformed into potential marauders capable of murder and robbery.

Even our neighbors are giving off a uniquely ominous air just from the look in their eyes.

Some middle-aged woman climbs the sandy hill that used to be part of the golf course every day to scout out our area. And the middle-aged man who used to just stare holes into us whenever we went out? Now he’s started tailing us all the way to the edge of our territory.

From their perspective, we must look like we’re eating well and living comfortably despite not engaging in active scavenging.

That’s largely Kim Daram’s fault.

I told her to dress more modestly, but she always has to wear something luxurious—designer down jackets or cashmere.

I could nag her, but I know from experience that nagging doesn’t work on Kim Daram.

No, ever since she had a kid, she sees me as a kid too.

What, having a baby turns you into an adult overnight?

If anything, she seems less mature than her own child.

The same goes for her husband.

Anyway, the number of reasons I have to go outside keeps growing as the environment becomes increasingly grim.

[Message from COOKIEMONSTER18: Skelton, can you drop by for a bit? I want to see your face.]

Rebecca and her daughter are asking for me more frequently these days.

Clearly, they’re running into minor and major troubles.

Naturally, I’m starting to get worried.

Now that Jeon Si-hoon’s staged a coup, the U.S. aid they were receiving must have been cut off completely.

Jeon Si-hoon is now playing king in New Seoul.

Like some Silla-era reenactment—over level 10 Awakened are royal-blood, regular Awakened are noble-born, lower-tier Awakened and Skull Brigade members are sixth-rank, and the rest are just commoners.

It’s absurd for anyone with a background in democracy, but we already knew there was a hereditary monarchy up north.

Thankfully, Jeon Si-hoon has focused solely on building his own kingdom. He hasn’t attacked neighboring groups or demanded tribute.

He has no reason to.

He already monopolizes all production infrastructure and resources, and the harsh winter is coming soon.

He only accepts those who submit and conform to his system. Unlike before, he no longer permits mass defection or group-level assimilation.

He’s making it clear that he won’t tolerate petty privileged classes like refugee leaders.

Anyway, that’s the state of things.

There are plenty of people who need me, and plenty of reasons to travel far, but in reality, it’s hard to leave my territory unattended.

The fragile peace is on the verge of breaking.

Just when you need even dog poop for medicine, not a single monster is showing up—despite us being north of the Han River.

Maybe if I head to the Paju Rift, I’ll find one, but how the hell am I supposed to get there?

With tensions rising day by day, blindly heading north just to catch a monster isn’t an easy decision.

Even if monsters can’t sense me, I can’t hide from the humans I’ve always feared most.

Still, it’s not like I can avoid going.

It’s a time-attack.

My life is the clock.

Unable to make a move either way, I was simply observing the situation around me when—

“Hey, you! What the hell are you doing?!”

A shout rang out.

I stepped out of the bunker to check the area.

Cheon Young-jae had his gun raised.

Clack.

I armed myself and cautiously moved out.

As expected—it’s the neighbors.

They’ve entered the territory we had implicitly agreed upon as ours and started scavenging.

That middle-aged woman who used to spy on us from the hill was among them.

When she saw us, she raised her voice instead.

“What’s the problem? Can’t we just step in a little?”

I exchanged glances with Cheon Young-jae.

For a moment, we had a silent consensus about killing them.

But this isn’t a decision to make lightly.

Quietly, I contacted Kim Daram over the radio.

“Hey, let’s hold a quick meeting.”

*

Use of force is often described as a last resort, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be.

If violence is the most efficient method and leaves no lingering problems, there’s no reason it can’t take top priority.

Still, the reason violence tends to be delayed is the real-world complications.

The group we’re currently clashing with is made up of about ten people.

Three families, aged mostly in their forties to sixties, based on how they refer to each other—they seem like relatives.

No children, but they have one high-school-aged male.

They’ve got six combatants, and even the women appear capable of using crossbows—specifically, the ones known as Judge-Killers.

Their firearms are mediocre.

About five automatic rifles, unknown number of pistols.

Honestly? They’re not strong opponents.

Even without Kim Daram stepping in, just Cheon Young-jae and I could wipe them all out in one night with a planned ambush.

We’d let them be because they didn’t pose a threat, and there was a mutual, unspoken recognition that we were neighbors. More importantly, even if we took them out, someone else would likely move in—or worse, we could end up at odds with their unknown allies.

But now they’ve crossed the line.

Once that line is crossed, it crumbles fast.

They’ll keep crossing into our zone for resources, then boldly wander right up to our doorstep. And once they’re convinced we’re weaker than them, they’ll strike.

It seems brazen and foolish, but according to Cheon Young-jae, it’s a strategy that often worked back in the refugee shelters.

“When a woman like that walks around unarmed, even if she crosses the line, you can’t easily shoot her. That’s just how Korean sensibilities are. She knows it. That’s why the boldest woman takes the lead, stirs up tempers while infiltrating the area, and gathers intel to share with the rest. Then they strike first.”

Cheon Young-jae muttered as he looked toward the neighbors.

“She’s done this before. Definitely not her first time raiding someone.”

It’s a reasonable assumption.

Anyone who wasn’t like that probably wouldn’t have survived this long.

But this time, they picked the wrong target.

Cheon Young-jae isn’t a saint, and neither am I.

Sure, I’ve mellowed out and become more human, but at my core, I’m selfish.

Unless it’s a monster—my sworn enemy—I always put my own life first.

If there’s even a chance that this stubborn woman’s behavior is prelude to a preemptive strike, then the course of action is obvious.

Annihilation.

I don’t want to be like Defender, but fights between survivor groups don’t end unless one side is completely wiped out.

Leaving survivors behind only breeds future avengers.

Of course, this kind of plan requires everyone’s agreement.

“Do we really have to go that far?”

Kim Daram’s opposition was expected.

She’s endured her ~Nоvеl𝕚ght~ share of harsh times, but most of her life was spent within the boundaries of a comfortable society.

She likely doesn’t understand—nor has she tried to understand—the raw desperation of bottom-tier survivors.

Still, her hesitation isn’t born solely from ignorance.

She’s capable of being cold and rational when needed.

I can vouch for that, as her partner.

What’s holding her back is her son.

She probably doesn’t want to show her kid that she wiped out another group just to feel secure.

If I were in Kim Daram’s shoes, I’d be struggling with the same dilemma.

“Can’t we just talk to them?”

Cheon Young-jae gave a bitter smile.

“If we do that, they’ll go even more rogue.”

“What if we just shoot at them to scare them off?”

“That’ll only make them more cautious. We’ll end up complicating something that could’ve been simple—or worse, taking losses on our side.”

This isn’t a conversation we’ll resolve today.

“This is enough talk for now.”

This is more an emotional clash than a theoretical one.

I understand both Cheon Young-jae’s and Kim Daram’s positions.

What we need is time.

Kim Daram is stubborn, but not so stupid that she’d sacrifice practicality for pride.

What she wants is probably just time.

If the other group’s actions continue to cross the line and everyone agrees there’s no alternative, she’ll come around.

Skkk—

It’s not a pleasant thing to have some idiot pretending to harvest crops with a sickle while glancing our way just meters from us.

One look at those twitchy eyes, and you can tell—they’re scoping us out. Counting how many fighters we have, how many rifles, where the weak spots are.

Yes, they outnumber us.

But only just enough to be dangerously mistaken.

I’ll talk to Kim Daram again tomorrow.

I was thinking that, trying to suppress the killing intent bubbling up inside, when—

Something shiny zipped past the edge of the golf course.

A handmade armored vehicle.

One belonging to some of the more powerful people in our area.

Not exactly welcome visitors.

In the near future, they might end up making even worse demands than our annoying neighbors.

But for this moment, I had the thought—maybe they could be a decent solution.

*

“So you’re saying the folks next door keep sticking their heads in and eyeballing your side of the fence?”

The remnants of Minsik’s faction had set up camp about 1.5 kilometers from the golf course, in an apartment complex.

Close enough that we could see them, and if we really wanted to, close enough to snipe them.

Their numbers were around 200. By New Seoul standards, that’s a nothing group, barely worth mentioning—but north of the Han River, in the land of losers, it was enough to throw some weight around.

Right now, they were still in the middle of recovering from their losses in Seoul and searching for their missing comrades. As such, they hadn’t tried to exert influence over us yet—but once they were settled, they’d surely start making unreasonable demands, little by little.

Anyway, these guys gave out K-WalkieTalkies—each embedded with a unique personal ID number they’d hacked and modified—to every group they made contact with, supposedly for registration.

I remember our neighbors got one too.

From their perspective, it wasn’t a bad deal—after all, you can’t exercise influence without a means of communication.

And according to Cheon Young-jae, after taking one apart, it looked like there was also a Chinese-made GPS tracker hidden inside.

At any rate, I used the radio to contact Minsik’s remnants and asked them to deal with the issue.

“Can’t you guys just work it out on your own?”

Okay, first off, the guy responding to us was trash-tier.

Usually with thuggish types like these, they’re sweet at first and turn nasty later. But Minsik’s remnants were annoying and standoffish from the get-go.

From his voice, he sounded young. If they’re letting a clueless rookie handle this kind of communication, it says a lot about how disorganized they are.

Their leader must’ve died in the recent mess, and if so, the whole group was probably shattered.

Thankfully, someone else listening in cut in.

“Where are you located?”

A familiar voice.

But I couldn’t quite place it.

Still, I gave them our location.

While they were on their way, I shoved the tracking chip back into the radio that I had removed earlier.

Too lazy to solder it properly, I just jammed in some crumpled trash to hold it in place. Whatever. It'll probably work.

Roughly two hours later, a DIY armored vehicle with crude steel plating began rolling toward our territory.

All the while, our pain-in-the-ass neighbors kept prowling along our borders, grating on my nerves.

“Who are you?”

The voice from the loudspeaker attached to the armored vehicle boomed out.

I climbed up the slope by the trench and waved my hand.

Running countless simulations in my head—what to say, how to negotiate.

Then—

“Huh?”

A bewildered voice echoed through the speaker.

Soon after, the vehicle door swung open and someone strode out.

A younger-looking guy, presumably his subordinate, followed after him in a hurry, fumbling with a rifle. But the man in front—he took off his sunglasses and stared straight at me.

“Captain?”

It was only then that I remembered whose voice it was.

Sim Hyeong-do.

That Hunter from the academy.

“You’re Captain Park Gyu, right?”

After he joined the Hunter organization with Kim Han-na, Lee Haru, and the others, I’d lost all contact with him—so running into him here was completely unexpected.

Looks like he ended up with Minsik’s faction.

Well, in a world where the government’s collapsed, there’s no real point in drawing battle lines between yours and mine.

As I shook hands with him, I felt—for once—like luck was on my side again.

“You’re alive.”

But this guy—

There was something strange in his eyes.

The look of someone about to ask for a favor.

Sure enough, he hesitated, then asked carefully:

“Are you still hunting monsters these days?”

I nodded.

“Yes.”