Chapter 80
A Daegu-born survivor, Taesik happened to spot a family trudging around near Daegu Station with their belongings bundled up in armfuls.
As he watched them quietly, he noticed a young man following behind them.
They weren't even heading to the department store; they were making their way beneath the station.
'Why are they going only in the direction of the station?'
What on earth could there be to see at the station?
Intrigued, Taesik kept his distance and stealthily followed the man and the family.
The place they reached, holding their breath, was none other than the area leading toward Daegu Station's platforms.
Taesik cautiously followed them inside, then nearly screamed in terror at the sight unfolding before his eyes.
"Oh, fuck... What the hell is that?"
In the middle of the tracks, which should have been dark and empty, a sinister train stood conspicuously stopped, looking as if it had just leaped out of a movie.
A missile turret that looked ready to fire at any moment jutted from the roof, while a chilling grinder occupied the front.
In front of that train, numerous survivors stood in line with suitcases and backpacks.
Taesik cautiously approached and tapped the shoulder of a middle-aged man standing at the very back.
"Huh?"
"What is this line for, anyway? And what is with this terrifying-looking train..."
"You don't know this train?"
"...I don't."
At Taesik's question, the middle-aged man answered with an excited look.
"It's a train to the Capital Area Safe Zone! You haven't seen the post on the gallery?"
"The gallery... But Daegu Station is perfectly livable too. You're saying everyone in this line is planning to leave?"
"Of course we are."
At Taesik's blank expression, the man clicked his tongue impatiently.
"Good grief, how does a young man not know what's going on in the world? You don't know that everything outside Daegu Station has already gone to hell? Just look at Dongdaegu Station—people are dying left and right, or so they say..."
"Huh?"
This was all news to Taesik.
Ever since people had started gathering at Daegu Station and he had secured enough to eat and live on, he'd spent his time on the gallery chasing sensational bait instead of Daegu news.
Come to think of it, he thought he'd seen a similar post yesterday.
The gallery's deputy moderator was coming to Daeguㅡ
"If you get on that, it'll take you to the area directly below Yeouido Safe Zone, supposedly the safest place in Korea right now. Demi-humans live there, and Yeouido provides them with tons of support, so hurry up, get in line, and board!"
"I... I'll think about it."
The man was brimming with excitement, but Taesik snorted and backed away.
No matter how safe their destination was supposed to be, boarding that menacing missile-equipped train looked unsettling.
Besides, Taesik had a different calculation.
Even after the apocalypse, Daegu Station had been comparatively safe thanks to its decent defenses, and had managed to hold out.
'Right. Let everyone who wants to go board the train. Once they're all gone, the rest of us can live around this wide, safe Daegu Station.'
If they held out that way, there would be fewer people, which might make it easier to survive.
Taesik didn't join the line; he stood with his arms crossed, leaning against a pillar in the corner of the platform.
Looking around, he noticed that some of the other people seemed to have had the same thought as him; instead of joining the line, they were watching those who did.
They had decided to wait for that sweet moment when everyone hurried onto the train and they could claim the empty Daegu Station all to themselves.
But then, just as the line of people was growing longer—
"Aaaagh!"
Crash—!
Someone came rolling horribly down the stairs connected to the outside of the subway station, making a tremendous racket.
He must have taken quite a tumble, judging by the noise, because his forehead was slightly scraped.
People looked at him sympathetically.
'Did he perhaps miss a step?'
Taesik clicked his tongue and watched, but the man who had fallen to the floor lifted his blood-covered face and began shouting.
"They're outside the station... Those monster bastards have invaded!"
"...Huh?"
"M-monsters...?"
"Really...?"
At that desperate, horrifying scream, the faces of the people filling the platform instantly went pale.
The murmuring abruptly stopped, and a deathly silence hung in the air for a moment.
Whiiiiir—!
Something tore through the heavy silence with a loud noise.
The first to react wasn't human.
Three drones flashing blue lights shot out of the train like bullets.
Of course, they weren't ordinary drones.
"What the hell is that...?"
Guns hung all over the undersides of the drones.
They were unmistakably combat-capable drones.
Fwoooosh-!
Without a moment's hesitation, the drones cut through the air and flew at terrifying speed toward the stairs outside the station, where the bloodied man had just tumbled down.
Watching the sleek yet menacing drones launch, Taesik felt cold sweat run down his spine.
'Ah... So something really did show up.'
Even the train, which had been sitting quietly, began to react.
The horde of monsters outside, and the train's drones that had immediately launched to protect the people.
Sensing that something serious was about to happen, Taesik hid in a corner.
"Phew..."
Real monsters.
He had seen them from a distance before, but this was the first time he'd ever been directly exposed to such danger.
Bang!
After several gunshots rang out from outside the station, noise came from the stairs again.
Thud-! Boom-!
They were loud, but they weren't the sound of someone missing a step and tumbling down.
'Footsteps...?'
The footsteps coming down the Daegu Station subway stairs were heavy and evenly spaced.
They were far too heavy to be human footsteps.
As the footsteps drew near, Taesik covered his mouth with one hand and cautiously leaned out to identify their source.
"...Gasp!"
"Eek...!"
What emerged from the darkness was a gigantic monster standing three to four meters tall.
Its entire body was covered in rock-like muscles, and bizarrely, a huge single eye occupied more than half its face.
At the monster's appearance, everyone inhaled sharply, then covered even their mouths and noses with their hands to silence themselves.
It was different from ordinary monsters.
Instead of charging madly into the station, it slowly swept its enormous single eye over the humans who had failed to hide and the train.
Perhaps feeling somewhat intimidated by the train's turrets, it couldn't bring itself to enter farther into the station.
Suffocating silence.
But the tension eventually became too much, and one person spoke first.
"C-crazy! Everyone, run!"
"Aaaah! Where... Where do we go...?"
As soon as one person shouted, the station became a madhouse.
Hiss-!
People threw down their luggage and screamed as they rushed toward the train's open door.
In truth, only the braver ones were capable of doing even that.
Taesik and several others hiding behind pillars sat frozen on the floor, their legs trembling like aspens.
'My legs...!'
It was three or four meters tall, for crying out loud.
Its muscular body looked as though even knives couldn't pierce it, and judging by the vibrations each step produced, it was overwhelmingly powerful even compared to the monsters Taesik had seen or heard about before.
'They say even in dungeons, the boss is usually something like a giant wolf monster... Then what is that?'
It was at precisely the moment the monster slowly twisted its arms upward and prepared to leap at the people.
Hiss-! Clunk!
The door of Car No. 1, the very front car of the train, opened wide with a heavy sound.
"...What is that now?"
And astonishingly, another monster emerged from inside the train.
At least, that's what Taesik thought.
It stood on four legs and carried an enormous gun barrel on its back.
To Taesik, who had played a few games in the past, it looked exactly like a monster.
...Actually, it also reminded him of something else.
A Dragoonㅡ
This one also made heavy thudding sounds whenever it walked, though not as loud as the gigantic monster.
It had unusual mass.
Then someone leisurely walked out beside it.
A young, slender figure walked out with a long spear as tall as herself resting on her shoulder.
To Taesik's eyes, the silhouette looked unmistakably like a delicate young girl.
'W-why is that girl carrying a spear toward the monster...? Sh-should I stop her?'
As Taesik was inwardly aghast, the one-eyed monster snorted contemptuously at the scrap-metal monster and girl blocking its path.
It stretched out its long arms, tore a bench out of the station, gripped it like a club, and swung it savagely.
"Th-that crazy bastard tore out a bench—!"
The moment Taesik swallowed his scream, the battle began.
"Fire."
What came from the girl's mouth was an extremely calm command.
At the same time, the cannon barrel of the Dragoon-like monster aimed at the one-eyed monster.
Kwoooong-!
A shell blasted from the Dragoon's cannon at a speed invisible to the eye, seemingly striking the one-eyed monster in the shoulder.
Probablyㅡ
Taesik had squeezed his eyes shut at the frightening sound and hadn't seen it, but when he opened them, the monster was clutching its shoulder.
"Kwoooargh-!"
Kwoooong-!
The monster instinctively thrust the bench in front of itself to block the second shot, but the shell smashed the bench apart and blew away its fingers as well.
No matter how big it was or how tough its muscles were, it was no more than a sheet of paper before that firepower.
But perhaps because it needed to reload, the Dragoon that had fired twice backed away.
"Ah..."
Taesik let out a voice of dismay.
The one-eyed monster reeled and lost its balance from the impact of the shell.
It seemed as if all they needed was one shot—one decisive blow at this momentㅡ
Tap!
At that moment, the girl kicked off the floor and leaped high into the air.
She sprang lightly and soared straight up to the face of the one-eyed beast, more than three meters above the ground.
She was fast and light.
Terror clouded the giant eyeball.
The sharp spearhead drove straight into that grotesque eye without the slightest deviation.
Squelch-! Crunch!
"Oh my—!"
"Aaaagh!"
"Kwoooargh!"
The sound of the spearhead piercing the monster's eye and burying itself deep inside rang through the station.
The sound and gruesome scene were so horrific that the onlookers screamed as though they themselves were monsters.
Afterward, the girl pulled out her spear, landed lightly on the floor, and shook the weapon clean.
Thud-! Crunch!
The three-to-four-meter monster toppled to the floor without managing a single proper act of resistance.
The suitcase lying where it fell was crushed beneath its massive body as well.
"Wow..."
"Oh..."
Silence descended over Daegu Station, which had been filled with screams.
The people who had fled into the train with the monster on their heels cautiously poked their heads out to check the situation, and Taesik, who had watched everything from behind the pillar, couldn't close his gaping mouth either.
Just then, the girl who had dispatched the one-eyed monster in a single stroke turned toward the Dragoon and spoke.
"Let's go help them up there too."
Then the girl quickly climbed the stairs with the golem.
...On closer inspection, perhaps because she didn't want to expend the effort of climbing the stairs, she went up while half-riding on the golem.
It wasn't only the train that was terrifying; the person who had emerged from it was formidable too.
Then one of the people in line said that the girl was the engineer of this train.
Hearing that made Taesik doubt Daegu Station's safety, but the train looked even more trustworthy.
'...Should I get in line too?'
Taesik found himself glancing toward the inside of the train for no particular reason.