Webnovel Author In The Apocalypse World-Chapter 368: The People Below

There didn't seem to be any other immediate threats.

Kim Haru let out a small breath of relief.

"Let's prepare to go down."

He gently patted Fuzzball and made his decision.

Fuzzball meowed in response.

The owl, having received its command, snapped its head back to its original position.

Without even bothering to spread its wings, it simply took a long step forward and descended from the top of the stone forest.

The moment they started descending, the people below became even more frantic.

Other than an old man and a young man standing at the front, the rest of the group quickly backed away in panic.

As they neared the ground, the tightly packed stone formations made it difficult for the massive owl to maneuver properly.

Feeling restricted, the owl spread its wings wide, and the surrounding rocks instantly came crashing down with loud cracks and thuds.

This 𝓬ontent is taken from freeweɓnovel.cѳm.

The space suddenly became much larger.

Kim Haru: "..."

Alright, he was starting to understand why there were random open spaces in certain parts of this stone forest.

It seemed that this group of people was already familiar with the routine.

Not a single person was hit by the falling rocks.

They had instinctively moved to just the right spots to avoid getting crushed.

Sliding down the owl's tail, Kim Haru made sure not to stray too far from his mount.

Having such a massive creature standing beside him gave him a sense of security.

If anything went wrong, being close to the owl would make escaping easier.

With that in mind, Kim Haru turned his attention to the group of people.

Now that he was closer, he could get a better look at their general condition.

Had he not already encountered the people outside the Pyeongseong Safe Zone—who had confirmed that this world once had a level of technology before the apocalypse—he might have thought he had traveled back to some prehistoric era just by looking at this group.

The clothing of the people in front of Kim Haru no longer showed any signs of modern industry.

Large pieces of plant fiber and animal fur were roughly wrapped around the important parts of their bodies, leaving their arms and lower legs exposed, which were coated in a layer of brown mud.

Only the old man at the front had a cloth headband tied around his head, barely keeping Kim Haru from assuming that these people were truly primitive.

After the massive owl landed, the crowd no longer dared to make any noise.

Even their whispers came to an abrupt halt.

When they saw Kim Haru descend from the owl's back, they let out a brief gasp of surprise but immediately clamped their mouths shut, afraid of disturbing him.

Their expressions were filled with fear.

Kim Haru's gaze swept over them.

Then, he looked at the owl beside him and at Fuzzball, who was lazily squinting its eyes in his arms.

He had more or less figured out his current situation.

There probably wasn't any immediate danger, but the main issue now was whether he could find a way out of this strange place.

His gaze turned to the elderly man and the young man standing at the forefront, but he didn't speak.

He was already standing there under the scrutiny of so many eyes instead of hiding in a corner—wasn't that proof that the people from the Pyeongseong Safe Zone had influenced him?

However, expecting him to take the initiative to greet these unfamiliar faces?

That was asking too much.

Kim Haru wasn't worried that the silence would drag on.

Sure enough, after exchanging a glance, the elderly man and the young man—who had both been bowing their head respectfully toward him—realized that he had no intention of speaking first.

The old man hesitated, then slowly raised both hands above his head and began to walk toward Kim Haru with unsteady steps.

His pace was even slower than a snail's.

As he moved, the surrounding people held their breath, not daring to make a sound.

After taking two cautious steps and seeing that Kim Haru made no move, the old man finally gathered a bit more courage.

He took a few more steps forward, stopping right in front of Kim Haru, and finally spoke:

"Y-you… why… are you here?"

His voice was dry and slow, the short sentence coming out in a halting, stuttering manner.

Some of his pronunciations were even slightly off, as if he hadn't spoken in a long time.

His gaze toward Kim Haru was filled with apprehension.

Kim Haru frowned.

His memory was quite good, and he immediately noticed something strange—when he was above the stone forest earlier, the voices of these people had been speaking a language he couldn't understand.

At first, he thought it was just the distance making it unclear.

However, hearing the old man speak now, he realized he hadn't been mistaken.

This place had its own dialect.

The "common language" spoken by humans outside the cliff—understood by the people from the Pyeongseong Safe Zone—seemed to be known only by this old man.

And judging by how difficult it was for the old man to speak, it was clear that it had been a long time since anyone from the outside world had come here.

However, Kim Haru remembered that when Jo Sungmo introduced this cliff, he mentioned that even after the apocalypse, some ability users had been curious about this place and attempted to explore it—none of them ever made it out.

Did those people die the moment they fell in, or had they never even reached this place?

Kim Haru once again suspected that he might have actually traveled to another world.

The old man in front of him was still anxiously waiting for his response.

While observing the old man's reaction, Kim Haru pointed upward. "I fell from above. Is there a way back?"

The old man: "!"

The old man fell to his knees with a loud thud in front of Kim Haru.