“Everything loaded properly?”

“Yes. We focused on medicines, firearms, and ammunition. But, boss.”

“What?”

A subordinate who had been with him for many years—close enough to be no different from a blood brother—spoke cautiously to Viktor Volk Choi.

“Do you really need to go to Korea personally? Those bastards from the 5th Combined Arms Army don’t look stable.”

The 5th Combined Arms Army was one of the core forces of Russia’s Eastern Military District, a unit responsible for the Far East region’s mobility and defense.

Of course, they had not escaped the massive infection disaster either, so both their troop numbers and firepower had been severely reduced.

Still, because they possessed powerful equipment such as armored vehicles, infantry fighting vehicles, and attack helicopters, the people who had effectively “taken over” the Vladivostok harbor district could not help remaining wary of them.

“Really? But what exactly can they do?”

“Excuse me? What do you mean what can they do? If those bastards attack us, we’re screwed, aren’t we?”

“How? There are too many zombies in the city for vehicle movement, so what, they’ll send attack helicopters or something?”

“Uh... probably, yes?”

At his subordinate’s answer, Viktor Volk Choi smirked and placed a cigarette between his lips.

He stopped the subordinate who tried to light it for him and lit it himself before exhaling smoke.

“If they send helicopters, then what? What are they going to do with them? You think they’ll attack the harbor and oil storage facilities? Listen, Lyosha, my brother. The 5th Combined Arms Army wants fuel too. Those bastards can never attack us. And if they send helicopters? You think we’ll just sit still?”

“Ah...”

“Just wait. Within two months, they’ll be wagging their tails at our side like dogs. Now that the Fokino base troops have become our brothers, Vladivostok and the Far East belong to us.”

The Vladivostok base of the Russian Pacific Fleet—which contained naval ports, shipyards, and submarine maintenance facilities—had long maintained close ties with the Volcano Group.

When the world collapsed, those ties had briefly weakened, but officers dissatisfied with the new command structure had launched a rebellion with Viktor Volk Choi’s support and seized the base.

As a result, the Volcano Group supplied them with food, daily necessities, and fuel, while they provided firearms, ammunition, and naval power in return, forming a mutually beneficial relationship.

Moreover, the leader of the officers who had seized the naval base, Lieutenant Colonel Sergey Chernikov, had been Viktor Volk Choi’s friend since childhood.

Viktor had continuously supported him ever since he was a junior officer.

There was no possibility that Sergey Chernikov, who was more grateful to Viktor Volk Choi than anyone else, would betray him in a ruined world like this.

And more importantly, he understood perfectly well that naval power alone was not enough to survive in the current world, and that he needed to stand together with Viktor Volk Choi, now the head of the Volcano Group.

So whether it was the 5th Combined Arms Army or anyone else, the moment they approached their “territory,” including the harbor, they would be blown apart by missiles or anti-aircraft guns.

“The zombies controlled by that damned Baba Yaga won’t approach our walls anymore. Instead, they’ll move inland. So, brothers.”

Looking around at the organization members gathered in the tanker’s day room, Viktor Volk Choi spoke almost like a declaration.

“If we want to keep surviving, we have no choice but to go out to sea. And among all places, Korea. Why? Because the brother who saved us, Lee Junho, is there? Yes. That’s right.”

At those words, every one of the burly gangsters clenched their fists or nodded heavily.

Nobody knew how he had predicted it or how he had warned them, but there was not a single person who did not know that they had survived thanks to Lee Junho—the man Viktor Volk Choi acknowledged as a true brother.

“But that’s not the only reason. There’s another reason just as important. The place capable of refining the fuel we possess is there. And our Busan brothers have already secured some of those facilities.”

Korea’s oil refining and petrochemical technology ranked among the best in the world, and when it came to that industry in Korea, the name that came up was Ulsan.

And Ulsan was extremely close to Busan.

Under Viktor Volk Choi’s orders, the Volcano Group’s Busan branch had recently secured several oil-refining and petrochemical facilities in Ulsan.

In other words, there was now a very clear reason to head to Ulsan in Korea—not only to confirm whether Junho was alive and repay the debt they owed him.

And now that he had completely pacified Vladivostok harbor and the surrounding region, Viktor Volk Choi had decided to personally lead two LR1-class tankers with deadweight capacities of eighty thousand DWT to Ulsan.

One of those tankers had also been loaded with massive quantities of supplies, including medicines, firearms, and ammunition.

“Brothers, believing we can survive in this world by ourselves alone is arrogance. That dead pig bastard and the dogs beneath him already proved that. You want to live like that and die!?”

“Ни за что!” (“Not a chance!”)

Remembering the former boss and his faction whom they themselves had killed, everyone shouted in unison that they absolutely did not.

They were crude, simple-minded mafiosos, but even they understood that living that way meant they would not last more than a few years.

They did not want to spend a few years indulging themselves like those old bastards who had already been near death anyway, only to become zombies or end up as food for them.

“Exactly. That’s why we’re going to Korea. We’ll help the brother who saved us there, and we’ll find some way to survive in this damned world!” 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

Viktor Volk Choi believed it.

That “brat” who had seemed extraordinary from their very first meeting, who alone had somehow foreseen the global catastrophe nobody else could have predicted and prepared him for it—

If Viktor helped him, then he too would help Viktor in return.

***

“Whoa...!”

Lee Wonoh’s jaw dropped open as he stepped down from the electric truck.

The weather was cloudy, but the building hidden cleverly among dozens of trees and thick overgrown brush beside the steadily flowing Bukhan River was, quite literally, perfect.

“Like I told you before, this used to be a watersports dock. Right now, only a few boats come and go every week. You see that dock over there?”

“Yes, yes.”

Following Junho’s guidance, Lee Wonoh kept glancing around nonstop.

“That’s the only place we use when docking boats.”

“The Deokso soldiers and the Gwangju people? The ones coming by boat?”

“Yes. I’m closely connected with all of them. You can think of them as allies.”

“Understood. So when they come here, we help them with work and take care of them?”

“That’s right.”

“Haha. Sounds just like receiving customers at the karaoke bar. That’s me and my girls’ specialty, isn’t it?”

“You could say that.”

That was one of the important reasons Junho had brought Lee Wonoh and the Welcome Karaoke Bar people here, but he only gave a light nod.

No matter how ruined the world had become, treating allies disrespectfully just because of their former line of work could still come across badly.

“The leisure sports center building is two stories tall and pretty spacious, so there’ll be no problem living here. The solar power setup is almost identical to Jaeseong Building too. Come inside first.”

“Yes. Ah, but those girls really...”

Lee Wonoh turned his head with an expression that was half irritation, half embarrassment.

The karaoke hostesses who had relocated with them were running around laughing and chattering like they were on a picnic.

“I’m sorry. In times like these, seriously... I’ll give them a stern talking-to—”

“No. You can just leave them be.”

“Huh?”

At Lee Wonoh’s puzzled expression, Junho pointed toward the low mountain surrounding the dock, the roof of the leisure sports center, and the sky above.

“There are two PTZ cameras here, just like the ones we installed at Jaeseong Building. And drones are monitoring the area right now too.”

“Ah...”

“And you see that bridge over there and the area across the river?”

“Yes.”

“We’ve got cameras on the bridge too. Nobody lives along that riverside anymore. An Alpha cleaned the entire place out and then moved north along the river.”

“Mm...”

Lee Wonoh’s face instantly stiffened when he realized what Junho meant by “cleaned out.”

Even if it had been a small village, it meant everyone there had either become zombies or been devoured by them.

“Of course, you don’t need to worry about zombies or looters. There are four turrets here. Two covering the road we came in from, and two at the dock. And then there are those.”

“Holy shit...!?”

Following Junho into the leisure sports center, Lee Wonoh’s eyes widened.

The reason was the two G1 attack drones inside.

They were compact in size, but their appearance screamed weapon.

“Our operators monitor things twenty-four hours a day, and if something happens, they’ll remote-control those. According to our calculations, even if several hundred zombies attacked all at once, we could wipe them out within five minutes. Unless the military sends in an entire company with heavy weapons fully intending to destroy the place, there’s nothing to worry about.”

“...Sniff!”

“......?”

Lee Wonoh’s eyes suddenly reddened while Junho was speaking, and he unexpectedly started choking up.

“You already took care of us all this time, and now you’re even giving us a place this good to live... I really don’t know how to repay this kindness... Sniff! Thank you so much, Mr. Junho.”

Seeing Lee Wonoh tear up, Junho shook his head with a faint smile.

“It’s nothing. Your karaoke-bar people helped us a lot too.”

And that was true.

If Lee Wonoh and his employees had not stepped up during the D-Mart recapture operation, they might have been forced to fight several times more Moku-ri zombies.

They probably still would have annihilated them, but they would have consumed an enormous amount of ammunition in the process.

If there had been even more zombies packed into the mountain pass back then, the modified air rifles would not have been enough, and they would have been forced to bring out the K2s and AR-15s.

And if they had fired unsuppressed K2 rifles, the zombies would obviously have pinpointed the source of the gunfire rather than the artillery impact zone and flooded directly toward them.

The firearms used to kill zombies would instead attract even more zombies.

There was a reason Junho had limited the engagement distance to around three hundred meters, set up more than a hundred meters of obstacles in front of the mountain-pass barricade, and relied on modified air rifles and suppressed KP9s.

“If you hadn’t timed those flashbangs perfectly back then, things would’ve gotten ugly. Setting off the Claymores at the right moment was nice too.”

“Sniff. Hearing you say that makes me feel a lot better. Anyway, we’ll work hard. Please continue taking care of us from now on too, Mr. Junho.”

“Same here.”

Returning the polite bow Lee Wonoh gave him, Junho was reminded once again that forming a good relationship with him and the Welcome Karaoke Bar people had truly been the right decision.

People who knew how to be grateful and tried to repay kindness however they could—people who understood that goodwill was not an entitlement—were extraordinarily rare in the apocalypse.

That alone made Lee Wonoh a pretty decent person.

And because he was that kind of man, Junho expected him to handle this “middle waypoint” well too.

Right then—

Beep.

Together with the electronic tone, Yoon Youngsu’s voice came through.

- Boss, boss. We just got communication from Gwangju. They say they acquired some important information.

“Hold on a second. What is it?”

After excusing himself and stepping aside briefly, Junho listened as Yoon Youngsu continued.

- They secured several survivors from Seoul over at Namhansanseong. But those people apparently came through Guro and then Gwangmyeong.

“......!”

Junho’s eyes widened involuntarily.

People who had moved from the Guro area to Namhansanseong at this point in time?

There was a very high probability it was them.

The cult called the Final Judgment Society—the same cult Junho had briefly stayed in, and the same place Baek Hail and Baek Sua had been forced to remain because of Baek Suho.