Having a friend is a good thing.

Watching that friend grow into someone remarkable is even better.

IAmJesus: My father always said his church wasn’t built by his strength alone.

IAmJesus: It was because he had help—competent people beside him—that the church grew so large.

In that sense, IAmJesus is my greatest pride, standing in contrast to Jeon Si-hoon.

IAmJesus: Of course, he always bragged that ninety percent of the church’s success came from his charismatic sermons, but if you ask me, it was half dying patrons who entrusted him with their fortunes, and half the sharp deacons working under him, that made the church possible.

IAmJesus: Park Penguin feels like that kind of person—someone who could become my strength.

Not mine, precisely, but King’s younger brother—or more accurately, his son.

At least there’s one thing in him that resembles King.

IAmJesus: Especially in times like these.

SKELTON: Something wrong?

IAmJesus: No, nothing you could help with. As King said, these are burdens I have to shoulder myself.

SKELTON: Human relationships?

IAmJesus: As expected of Skeleton! I’ll give you one maem-maem!

SKELTON: (Skeleton) Go on. Spit it out.

IAmJesus: It’s just... you know, the kind of disillusionment that creeps in when you stay in a position too long?

SKELTON: Hm... Is that all?

IAmJesus: Skeleton, hurry up and make SkeletonNet already. I’m dying of boredom here! Anyway, once I finish what I’m working on, I’ll ask for advice then. King told me himself—if things get hard, I should turn to you. 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

SKELTON: (Skeleton)

He wants to solve things on his own first.

If he needs help, he’ll reach out.

Just as King once did.

Since the message board was gone, the only leisure left was trading chatter over radio. We discussed the reasons behind Park Penguin’s failure.

Plenty of opinions flew around, but Cheon Young-jae—who had been seriously considering relocation—voiced something that lined up with my own thoughts.

“I think the problem was that he stayed in the same place too long.”

Koreans get bored easily.

They tire quickly and crave change—that’s in their nature.

That’s how the Republic of Korea ended up creating one of the fastest, most efficient e-governments in the world.

In fact, the excellence of Korean administration has been praised countless times, especially by those who had spent time in sluggish places like the UK.

Yes, Park Penguin made mistakes.

Yes, he grew arrogant compared to the past.

But I agree with Cheon Young-jae—the real reason for his fall was simply that he lingered too long in one spot.

Now Park Penguin would begin his second life as IAmJesus’s subordinate. But that’s his story.

In the bigger picture, our own story was racing toward its endgame.

You could see it just by looking outside.

As the snow melted away, the bare Korean earth showed its true face.

The ashen curse left nowhere to flee, nowhere to hide.

Even in our territory, far from any Rift, at least thirty percent was already covered in that pallid gray.

This despite our constant vigilance in exterminating infiltration-type small breeds.

Seoul, long swallowed in mist, was said to have gone fully ashen—not only Gangbuk, but Gangnam and the surrounding towns and counties.

Across that gray earth, grotesque creatures of kinds never seen before were wandering beneath the sun.

In Sejong, they now reported monster hordes gathering from the southern provinces.

I hadn’t paid much attention to the regions, but the countryside had been exposed to erosion for a long time. Now it resembled China or India—consumed, altered.

We were surrounded by gray.

The Rifts were slowly and surely closing off our air.

One question lingered in my mind.

It wasn’t unrelated to the killing intent I’d been nursing toward Jeon Si-hoon.

As everyone knows, monsters scale their strength in proportion to the human population around a Rift.

That’s why nations with massive populations and land—China, India, Africa—were the first to collapse.

But humanity’s numbers have dropped lower than ever before.

The so-called apex of the ecosystem, reduced to less than ten percent of its peak.

Even that ten percent was an optimistic number.

Before Viva! Apocalypse! shut down its Korean board, one North American user estimated humanity at five percent of its former peak.

It might be less by now.

South Korea once had forty million people. Now it was questionable whether even a million remained.

The destruction of New Seoul had slashed that number further.

Supposedly, there were still many living near the Tower in Seoul, but few knew their fate—and fewer cared to ask.

All that filtered out were chilling rumors: that the gray fog of Seoul teemed with grotesque monsters breeding unchecked.

The problem is simple.

With humanity reduced this far, why haven’t the Rifts stopped attacking?

Why do they keep spawning new types like Extinction-class, pushing to annihilate a species that’s no longer a threat?

At this pace, Earth would become a gray planet in three, maybe five years.

This aggressive policy of the Rifts flatly contradicted our old theory—that Rift intensity scaled with population.

Maybe Kang Han-min’s influence was involved.

He seemed intent on reducing humanity to numbers comparable to when Homo sapiens first diverged.

What he was doing inside the Rift now, no one knew.

Woo Min-hee monitored outside, Na Hye-in inside, but neither gave us clarity.

The only revealed piece of Kang Han-min’s plan was Jeon Si-hoon.

From the beginning, Jeon Si-hoon had been hand-picked by Kang Han-min to rule New Seoul.

What he aimed to achieve, no one knew.

Maybe even he didn’t.

Still, he moved faithfully along a plot someone else had written.

He destroyed the fragile stability we’d clawed together atop ruin, and now he locked himself in that cursed Tower, playing out bizarre tragedies like the gloomy hero of a fable.

I believe it was all by Kang Han-min’s design.

Especially with lieutenants like Yoo Yang-seo at his side—my conviction only grew.

Even so, I had no regrets about refusing Jeon Si-hoon’s summons that day.

Everything has its time and place.

Had I gone to meet a cornered man then, my story might have ended there.

Meeting someone of his stature requires preparation.

This isn’t just my problem.

This is about what remains of humanity.

I need allies.

Frankly—I need allies on the scale of Sejong itself.

Nam Ban-jang has the ideal manpower and equipment I want, but he fights only for Sejong’s interests.

The rest of the world could burn and it wouldn’t concern him.

Static—

“When will you come? I’m waiting till my eyes fall out.”

From near Seoul, Jeon Si-hoon’s old friend Yeom Dda-wan was clamoring for action.

He was one of our most vital assets. That much I won’t deny.

But he couldn’t enter the Tower.

He claimed he’d do anything to find his friend, but Awakened can’t approach the Nemesis-type’s domain.

Not even Woo Min-hee or Kang Han-min could. What could Yeom Dda-wan do?

In the end, it came down to manpower and equipment.

The first step was to encircle the Tower with a military perimeter. And in the worst case—if my team failed—the Tower itself would have to be brought down.

Destroying the Tower would mean losing all the resources and foundations for humanity’s recovery inside.

But at this rate, we’d all be dead anyway.

Between survival and preserving knowledge, the choice is simple.

Survival comes first.

Personally, there’s only one perfect solution.

Bring along an Over Level 10 Awakened—someone like Woo Min-hee or IAmJesus.

They too would suffer Nemesis suppression, but unlike lower Awakened, they could still fight.

In my eyes, Over Level 10 Awakened stand on equal ground with the Nemesis-type itself.

Of course, getting either to join was nearly impossible.

I had to build the best team I could on my own.

The Defender siblings were good neighbors, but useless against monsters—and Defender himself, known by name as Hong Jung-ho, was too great a risk to bring into Seoul.

One stroke of bad luck and he’d spark needless conflicts.

By contrast, the team in Foxgames’ bunker, led by Kim Daram, was excellent.

And realistically, they were my only option.

It would be nice if Gong Gyeong-min returned, but that friend had declined in every sense.

Still, I’d knock on that door one more time.

“No. Why the hell would we go there?”

Naturally, my best partner, Kim Daram, rejected my proposal without hesitation.

I tried to reason with her calmly.

Especially with the world ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) truly at its end, and Jeon Si-hoon possibly stirring something inside the Tower.

No one knew better than I did that my thinking had begun to drift from reality.

But hearing it from someone else was another matter.

“Senior, you’ve changed. You’re not yourself. This is pure delusion—that Jeon Si-hoon is going to do something.”

Kim Daram was a pain in the ass, but she wasn’t wrong.

Depending on perspective, thinking that Jeon Si-hoon could end all remaining humanity from inside that Tower was nothing short of fantasy.

“Who cares if he’s turned into a monster? He’s stuck in there—let him rot. Why should we risk our lives for nothing? Besides, we’ve already done that once. I’m not doing it again.”

I tried to convince her, but her mind was made up.

I chalked it up to the influence of family.

Family gives you will to live, but it also makes you indifferent to threats that aren’t directly tied to them.

As they say, lie with dogs, wake up with fleas—Cheon Young-jae had taken on a lot of Kim Daram’s mindset from living with her.

“Jung-min’s pregnant.”

The moment I asked him to connect me to her, that’s what Cheon Young-jae said.

Good news.

A second generation.

For someone like me, stuck cleaning up other people’s kids, it was like a dream.

But the meaning hidden in his words was clear.

They couldn’t go.

Same reasoning as Kim Daram.

With family precious, they couldn’t gamble their lives elsewhere.

It stung, but Cheon Young-jae had already risked his life for me many times.

If I felt resentment now, I’d be shameless.

Sure, I had saved him too—but without him, I wouldn’t be alive either.

I had to respect his decision.

Though a part of me still felt bitter.

“Sorry, Senior.”

Cheon Young-jae had learned the world through the internet, but he still had basic tact.

“Sorry I can’t go with you.”

“It’s fine. You’ve already more than paid your share.”

“I think so too, but still...”

“...”

“I know it’s shameless, but Senior—you said you had connections in Sejong, right?”

“Yeah. That’s right.”

“We’re planning to head there. Think you could manage it this month?”

“I’ll look into it.”

“Thanks, Senior. Always respect you!”

I cut the comms and sat in thought.

It was disappointing not to use them, but unavoidable.

They had their own lives.

The strange one was me.

Me—the selfish bastard who lived only for himself—now playing the hero against some vague threat to humanity.

Just then, I got a call from Nam Ban-jang.

He was my contact with Sejong, but also in charge of the Necropolis transmissions.

A business relationship, sure, but we both had things we wanted. A fine partnership.

“Ah, Hunter Park Gyu...”

His voice was bad.

For a man who kept as much of a poker face as me, to sound that grim—something serious had happened.

And sure enough.

“...Number Two was attacked by assassins in Necropolis City. He’s missing.”

The King of Sejong—IAmJesus—had vanished.