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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: Xrecker
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…I’d never seen a helicopter this big. I hadn’t even seen one like this when I was in the military.
The US military commander said, “CH-47 Chinook. This is what we’ll be using to transport weapons from Camp Humphreys to the Lincoln. It’s 51 feet… ah, about 15 meters long, and the front and rear propellers are… about 30 meters? It can carry 10 tons of cargo or people.”
I looked at Sung Ga-yeon. She furrowed her brow and said, “It’s hard to convert feet to meters. I just multiplied by 3. What?”
…I hadn’t even known there was a unit called feet. I lowered the corners of my mouth and gave her a thumbs up. I turned my gaze from Sung Ga-yeon, who was pouting, and looked up at the Chinook again.
Two propellers. Thirty meters from end to end. Ten tons of air transport. …It was enormous.
Inside the hangar, where the sunlight cast a square on the ground, stood four Chinooks side by side. No wonder the white building looked so big from the sky. It was because it was housing four of these monsters. Were there fighter jets in the white building next to it?
The US military commander said, “We were lucky. Quite a few of the Chinook pilots survived. We can operate two at a time.”
I looked up at the helicopter and muttered, “…That’s… fortunate.” It would be nice if we had one of these. I didn’t know where we would use it or where we would put it, but it just looked so cool. The thick, streamlined body was almost intimidating. I’d only seen something like this in the movies.
…Four Chinooks…
“Are there more of these?”
The US military commander nodded. “There are four more. In the next hangar. There are also fighter jets, but we don’t have any pilots who can fly them. They were all lost on D-Day.”
I slowly nodded and looked at Sung Kyu-hyuk. “Don’t we have helicopter and airplane pilots in Seorae Village? Captain Park and Captain Kim.”
Sung Kyu-hyuk leaned in and whispered in my ear, “The Chinook requires a crew of three. It would be difficult for Captain Park to fly it alone. The fighter jets are probably F-35s, but I don’t know if Captain Kim can fly them properly. He was discharged at a young age.”
…Hmm. So it wasn’t a yes or a no, but a maybe. They had the equipment, but no one to use it… I smacked my lips and nodded. Four large transport helicopters that could carry 10 tons at a time. Two of them were operational, so 20 tons at a time. So they were planning to transport the personal firearms and explosives from the Pyeongtaek military base with these.
The problem was the people. The two Chinooks could only transport 60 to 70 people at most, even if they were packed in tightly. There were 400 people. They would have to make several trips. They didn’t know the situation with the Lincoln or the carrier strike group, and even if they transported the people, the remaining people would be exposed to danger. It would be difficult to divide the troops for defense. If the firepower was divided, they would just be easy targets to be picked off one by one when the monsters were attracted by the helicopter noise.
I looked at the US military commander. “So, how can we help you?” We had come out to talk, but even after seeing the transport helicopters, I still didn’t know what the US military was planning to do. They weren’t just going to transport supplies, and they weren’t going to divide their forces in two. If I could think of that, there was no way the US military commander couldn’t.
The US military commander nodded and said, “In the mountains and forests north of Camp Humphreys. According to our reconnaissance drone’s infrared footage, that’s where the animals are forming a wave. I’m sorry, but the monsters you fought yesterday were just a small fraction of them.”
That made sense. I had killed a cat and encountered a pack of dogs, but that couldn’t have been all of them. The mountains and forests. They were enormous just by looking at them. They must have been teeming with them. I nodded and waited for him to continue.
The US military commander said, “We’re not going to sit around and wait for them to attack. We’re going to form a commando unit and exterminate the monsters in the forest.”
Sung Ga-yeon, who was translating, trailed off at the end. All of our special forces members looked up at the US military commander. I was looking at him too. I could feel my eyebrows knitting together.
…Did he just say exterminate?
“…You mean you’re going to kill all the animals in the mountain wave? Do you even know how many are in there?”
The US military commander smiled. “That’s the goal. There are countless large and small animals in those mountains and forests. We won’t be able to kill all of them. Our targets are their leaders.”
“…Leaders?”
The US military commander nodded. “We’ve identified three of them. A white-furred monster dog. And a wild boar. And finally, a bat. They are all huge, but there is a particularly large individual of each. We call them the leaders.”
…Leaders?
The US military commander turned and started walking, gesturing for me to follow. He said, “As you can see from the Chinooks, our means of transportation are aircraft. It’s important to take out the dog and wild boar leaders, but we absolutely must prevent that giant bat from blocking the sky.”
I followed him towards the barracks and asked, “So when you said exterminate, you meant killing those three big ones, not all the animals.”
People followed closely behind us, trying to hear our conversation and the translation. As the hangar doors closed behind us, I listened to Sung Ga-yeon’s translation.
“You could say that. If possible, we hope to reduce the number of animals in the process, and if possible, we really do hope to kill all the animals in those mountains.” The US military commander glanced at me and smiled. “We can’t just set the whole mountain on fire. If it spread to the residential areas, it would cause great damage to the village survivors who had managed to endure D-Day.”
I slowly nodded. Then I asked, “I saw the dog leader yesterday.” The white-furred giant, which I thought must have been an ordinary Jindo dog before the apocalypse. It was almost the size of a detached house.
“How big are the wild boar and the bat?”
The US military commander smiled. “The dog leader appeared in the residential area yesterday. Because it’s weak.”
“…Weak?” That thing the size of a house?
The US military commander nodded. “It’s the weakest of the leaders. It’s presumed to have maintained its power among the animals that bite and eat each other because it travels in a dog pack. Nevertheless, it was pushed down to the bottom of the mountain and was eating the human monsters in the river. That’s why you were able to see it yesterday. But the wild boar is different.”
As we climbed the stairs of the barracks, the US military commander said, “That thing is at the center of the animal wave. As if it were the master of the mountain. If that thing comes down, it will be a catastrophe.”
…So it was bigger than the dog. From the sound of it, it was bigger than a decent-sized elephant. A crazy monster was in the mountains.
“Then what about the bat?”
“They’re in a cave.” The US military commander said and then smiled.
Why was he smiling?
“It seems there wasn’t a cave of that size in those mountains. The bat swarm gathered in the middle of the mountain range, and eventually, they dug into the ground and made a cave for themselves. They’re holed up in there. But we’ve successfully observed them several times.”
They dug their own cave?
I followed the US military commander into the conference room and asked, “Is the bat big too?”
The commander glanced at me. “You just saw the Chinook…” Sung Ga-yeon trailed off again.
I stopped walking. …Did he just say Chinook? …The bat?
The US military commander sat down in a chair. He babbled something in English to the white American soldier next to him, and the soldier went outside. The US military commander gestured for me to sit down and smiled. “It’s hot, so I sent someone to get some canned Coke from the vending machine. Do you have any preferences?”
No, man. Coke wasn’t the problem right now. I pulled out a chair and sat down, resting my elbows on the table. My hands were clasped without me realizing it. I looked at the US military commander and asked, “You said you could handle them. How were you planning to deal with them?”
The US military commander smiled. “We have SOC-R Riverines. And Camp Humphreys is next to a river.”
Sung Ga-yeon and Sung Kyu-hyuk’s faces brightened as she translated. And I had no idea what a Riverine was. What the hell was that?
Sung Kyu-hyuk, seeing my expression, whispered in my ear, “It’s a military boat called a gunship on water. It’s equipped with nine heavy weapons, including a minigun. The crew also has their own personal firearms and support weapons, and it has immense firepower for its size.”
…I didn’t know that.
The US military commander said, “Since we have a river where we can operate the Riverines, firepower is not a problem. The only problem was that we couldn’t go deep into the mountains.” He looked at me and smiled. “Until you came along.”
…Ah. Now I understood. …He was forming a commando unit. What he was saying was that he wanted me to go into the mountains and lure the leaders to the river. So that the boat called the Riverine could unleash its heavy firepower and finish them off.
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