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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: Xrecker
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The men began their story.
They hadn’t been imprisoned all at once but at different times, so their accounts varied.
One person might know something the others didn’t.
Listening to their stories, they were able to piece together what had happened to the Cockroaches.
That day.
The day he had severed the Cockroach Leader’s hands and gouged out his eyes.
That day, the Cockroach Leader’s authority vanished.
The hundred or so Cockroaches, or rather, the eighty or so remaining after he’d dealt with them, were thrown into chaos.
There were about a hundred able-bodied men. He wasn’t sure if they took care of the elderly and children, but including the women, it was a large community of at least several hundred people.
Raiding a single convenience store each day wouldn’t be enough to sustain them.
The Cockroach Leader, who had been leading these raids, was incapacitated.
So, who would take charge?
Who would decide the raid targets, who would act as bait, and who would distribute the spoils?
It was a position of significant power.
Whoever held that power could control the entire community.
It also meant civil war.
The thugs, vying for the vacant position of power…
They split into two factions: those who wanted to install the Cockroach Leader’s wife as the new leader, and those who wanted a new leader altogether.
The faction advocating for a new leader lacked a central figure, but their unity seemed to have been strong.
It made sense; each of them probably fantasized about becoming the next leader, wielding the power to distribute resources, so their motivation and cooperation would naturally be at their peak.
On the other hand, the faction supporting the wife consisted of those who had benefited greatly under the Cockroach Leader.
This meant that if they lost power to the opposing faction, they would fall from grace.
They weren’t supporting the wife because they liked her or because she had exceptional leadership qualities.
They were doing it for their own survival.
A fight broke out.
Both sides suffered heavy casualties.
It seemed the faction advocating for a new leader had been particularly hard hit.
Despite their high motivation and cooperation, they lacked unity because everyone wanted to be the leader, and they ended up being beaten and scattered.
They fled, looting many of the supplies the original Cockroach Leader had hoarded, or destroying them by setting them on fire before leaving.
The remaining supporters of the wife, fearing being picked off one by one by the fleeing faction, didn’t dare pursue them. They were left with barely any food and a dwindling number of people to feed the remaining hundreds.
Too many had been injured in the fighting.
Amidst all this, the Cockroach Leader’s wife, under immense stress, drank heavily and stabbed her near-death husband to death.
From her perspective, if they hadn’t attacked him, they could have continued raiding stores and enjoying their privileged position.
But the Cockroach Leader had miscalculated.
He hadn’t understood how quickly and efficiently he could slaughter them.
That single miscalculation had led to all of this, and the Cockroach Leader’s wife, blaming both him and her husband, who was no longer even human, stabbed him in a fit of rage.
And then she had come to him.
To stab him to death as well.
She had gone from a position of power and comfort to having everything crumble around her in a single day.
The depth of her resentment was evident in the fact that she had killed her husband and then come to kill him.
They said that human greed was endless, and people repeated the same mistakes.
The men who had come for the wife after she’d been knocked unconscious…
They hadn’t looked well.
Those few men were likely the limit of the Cockroaches’ remaining fighting force.
The tattooed pigs, the thugs, and those who, while not initially thugs, had become thugs through the thrill of looting and abusing women – the Cockroach Leader’s forces had crumbled like dominoes.
Consumed by internal strife and conflict.
That was why the thugs guarding the warehouse where the men and women were imprisoned had suddenly disappeared.
The men escaped from the unguarded warehouse, rescued the women, and came to them.
After hearing their story and discussing amongst themselves, piecing together what had happened, they stood up.
“I understand. You’ve been through a lot. Now get some rest.”
“Yes, hyung.”
“Okay, Sung-hoon.”
The men bowed their heads to him.
The expressions on the others’ faces, including Jung Eun-seo, had changed.
They seemed both bitter and relieved.
Jun-hyuk asked,
“Then what about the… the… victims who are still there?”
“What about them?”
Jung Eun-seo looked at Jun-hyuk.
“We’re not a charity. We can’t save everyone. We’re barely surviving ourselves.”
Her words silenced the others.
He was also a little surprised.
Was this the same woman who had skated around, handing out ramen to people?
Jung Eun-seo looked at the escaped men and said,
“There’s a lot of work to be done here. Don’t think we took you in so you could relax. Find something to do, each of you. Understand?”
The three men nodded, slightly intimidated.
“Yes, we understand.”
“Okay.”
Jung Eun-seo then left the calligraphy academy.
Jun-hyuk and Hoon also seemed surprised by her attitude.
…Hmm.
He patted Hoon on the shoulder and left the academy.
He said to the three men,
“She’s not usually like that. But she’s right. There’s a lot of work to do here, so find something and get to it. And get along with everyone. Got it?”
“Yes, hyung.”
“Understood.”
He grunted in acknowledgment of their polite replies, then left the calligraphy academy and walked towards the elevator.
The elevator was stopped on the 10th floor.
Jung Eun-seo… she should still be on guard duty.
She must be under a lot of stress.
He knew where she had gone.
He called the elevator and went up to the 10th floor.
Then he went straight to the rooftop.
Sunlight streamed brightly onto the rooftop.
Nothing had sprouted in the vegetable garden yet.
But seeing the grandmother, So-eun, and Hoon’s wife working together, leveling the soil and watering it, filled him with a sense of warmth and contentment.
Jung Eun-seo was standing apart from them, by the edge of the roof near the railing.
She was leaning against the wall, looking out into the distance, and she looked somewhat forlorn.
The grandmother, So-eun, and Hoon’s wife waved to him, and he waved back, then approached Jung Eun-seo.
“…Are you okay?”
Jung Eun-seo glanced at him and lowered her head.
“I’m sorry, Sung-hoon.”
He chuckled.
“Why are you apologizing? There’s nothing to be sorry about.”
He took out a cigarette, lit it, and offered it to Jung Eun-seo. She smiled faintly and took it, lighting it with his.
Click.
Exhale-
The smoke dissipated.
Jung Eun-seo said,
“…I don’t understand why I’m like this. Why am I so angry? Everything makes me angry and frustrated.”
Hmm…
He couldn’t imagine how Jung Eun-seo was feeling.
The Cockroaches had chosen to become cockroaches. No one had forced them.
But it was Jung Eun-seo who had brought them out.
Was she blaming herself for her brother’s death?
If so, was she consumed by self-loathing?
He wondered, but he couldn’t know for sure.
He could only stand beside her, a fellow smoker, sharing a cigarette.
“Eun-seo.”
Jung Eun-seo looked at him.
He said,
“I like you, Eun-seo.”
Jung Eun-seo’s eyes widened slightly.
He chuckled.
“No matter what you say or what decisions you make, I’ve never thought you were wrong. And I never will.”
Exhale-
The cigarette tasted good.
“No one did anything wrong. Not me, not you, no one.”
He pointed into the distance and said,
“Except for those Cockroaches.”
Exhale-
He blew out a puff of smoke as he spoke.
Jung Eun-seo didn’t answer.
She just looked away, staring into the distance.
“Huu, haa.”
It was taking more and more Accelerates to get back to the subway entrance.
That meant he was venturing deeper.
He wasn’t sure how many were left inside, but their numbers had noticeably decreased.
He needed to start looking for a new hunting ground.
A place teeming with them, like the subway.
Level 22.
Using both melee and ranged weapons had significantly increased his leveling speed.
He put 8 points into Sense, raising it to 19, and returned to the supermarket.
Including the practice arrows, he had probably shot at least 300 arrows so far.
Perhaps because of that, he was getting much faster at drawing and aiming.
He would get even faster with more practice.
He hadn’t tried any bows other than the Gakgung, so he couldn’t be certain of the difference, but he really liked the Gakgung he was currently using.
Even if the skill took care of hitting the target, a certain amount of draw weight was necessary for the arrow to reach its target.
Even when he shot from quite a distance, almost 100 meters, the arrow flew with surprising power and pierced through heads.
It meant the bow was guaranteed to deliver enough power to penetrate a skull from 100 meters away.
Considering the skill, it was a guaranteed one-shot kill within the maximum range of the bow.
So, what was the maximum range?
He had cleared out all the nearby human beasts, and it was difficult to determine the maximum range in the winding alleys of the underground shopping center.
He wasn’t going to lure a human beast, use Accelerate to create distance, and then test it; that was too much trouble.
He would find out eventually.
Satisfied with the performance of the bow and his skill, he returned to the supermarket.
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That’s a copy of the last chapter.
Fixed. Sorry for the inconvenience. I mixed the chapters
No prob 👍