Hoarding In Hell [EN]: Chapter 264

264. Sky Fortress (1)

Hyun-woo dipped his feet in the waves.

The waves, lapping at his ankles, tickled as they swept over the coral grains beneath his feet.

Hyun-woo wiggled his toes, splashing water to the side. Seo Ji-hoo subtly moved away, frowning.

“I’ll request hazard pay for this water play.”

“Do you think we’re here for fun?”

“We’re definitely not here to splash around.”

The seawater Hyun-woo splashed at Seo Ji-hoo was stained crimson with blood.

Another wave crashed violently. Fragments of fish-men tangled around his calves and toes.

The island they were on was a small coral island, out of place on the East Sea coast.

Because it was in the sea, it hadn’t been officially named yet and was simply called a marine dungeon.

Warships and patrol boats surrounded it menacingly.

Recently, there had been civilian casualties from monsters, and a Flood alert had been issued in the area, so the heavy security was only natural.

Even though it was summer vacation, it was hard to find people on the beach.

Hyun-woo sighed.

“Hmm, I was looking forward to the summer sea.”

“Hot sun, sandy beach, coral reefs, colorful fish. What more could you want?”

“Fish that are human-sized and have arms and legs, and they’re trying to kill me with spears and knives? And I had to tear them all apart, covering myself in fish scales and guts? And I’m going to stink like fish for a week?”

“That’s why I told you to dress properly like me. I warned you.”

Unlike the heavily armed Seo Ji-hoo, Hyun-woo was dressed casually.

T-shirt, shorts, and summer sandals. If that was all, Seo Ji-hoo wouldn’t have said anything to Hyun-woo. Hyun-woo often went around shirtless anyway.

“You could have at least taken off the tube around your waist.”

“What am I supposed to do? I can’t swim.”

When Hyun-woo heard that the dungeon to be investigated was underwater, the first thing he prepared was an adult-sized inflatable tube.

It wasn’t strange that Hyun-woo couldn’t swim.

There were plenty of people who were physically capable but couldn’t swim. Floating on water is a matter of confidence and technique.

But Seo Ji-hoo found it hard to reconcile the fact that Hyun-woo couldn’t do something with reality.

“Then split the sea in two. If you sink, just kick off the bottom and jump up.”

“Easy for you to say. The tube is better.”

“It wasn’t useful at all in the end, was it?”

The tube was only used until Hyun-woo reached the coral island. In fact, Hyun-woo could have jumped that short distance. Besides…….

“I didn’t even think it would be a dungeon in the first place…….”

“I told you. Well, the appearance was clearly that of a dungeon.”

An alien space that didn’t fit in with the surrounding scenery, that was the most noticeable feature of a dungeon entrance.

The coral reef in the sea was a plausible backdrop, but it didn’t fit the East Sea, so I thought it was definitely a dungeon entrance, but I was wrong.

This coral island was just an artificial structure inhabited by fish-men monsters.

“Originally, it didn’t come above the surface and was only about the size of a room deep in the sea. But one day, it suddenly grew and rose to the surface.”

“Hey, then what about the Flood in the first place? If it wasn’t a dungeon entrance, there would be no Flood.”

“It wasn’t a Flood in the first place.”

Seo Ji-hoo grumbled as if he was wronged.

The reason he refused the Flood suppression order was simple. It wasn’t a Flood from the start.

In addition, it wasn’t even a dungeon.

But the government didn’t believe the report that the coral island wasn’t a dungeon entrance.

The result was the arrest of the leaders of the Almighty Alliance.

Hyun-woo turned on the video on his waterproof phone and compared it to the coast.

The video was taken at night.

It started with soldiers turning on searchlights and pouring bullets into the sea.

A huge number of fish-men were rushing to the coast, shouting incomprehensible words. Most of them died on the beach from the magic bullets given to the soldiers.

“If you only look at this, you might misunderstand it as a Flood.”

“Yes. But even though the boss monster didn’t appear, it subsided on its own. But a few days later…… the sea is wide open. Even though the surrounding area was surrounded by nets, some of them cut the nets and escaped.”

“And they attacked civilians?”

“Yes.”

Seeing how easily they were defeated by magic bullets, it could be inferred that the monsters came from a 2-star to 3-star dungeon.

“If it’s not a Flood…… it’s a large-scale raid.”

Seo Ji-hoo frowned and carefully opened his mouth.

“A raid? Monsters have never carried out a planned raid before.”

A Flood is a phenomenon in which an excessive number of monsters pour out of the dungeon at once.

There is no order or purpose.

But the monsters in the video had a certain direction and their movements were coordinated.

If there hadn’t been soldiers supplied with magic bullets, the damage would have been several times greater.

“Does that mean monsters are getting smarter?”

“I wish they were just getting smarter.”

Hyun-woo muttered, looking at the blue sea.

The scenes he had seen in hell were coming to his mind.

“What if this coral island is a kind of outpost?”

“……An outpost for what?”

“I don’t know, but there might be a lot of these things in that blue sea, waiting for a chance to crawl out. And they’re slowly testing the waters.”

What Hyun-woo was thinking of was the Fallen Empire.

The nation of monsters created by the Ratmen.

In the future, monsters will form nations and use strategies. If it’s just a simple tribal society now, the nation will be a different scale.

The signs of increasing difficulty were clear.

It was difficult to establish a foothold on land, so the symptoms were delayed, but the signs were already appearing from the sea.

Soon it will appear.

Not from the sea, but from the sky.

It was three days later that Hyun-woo received an urgent call from the Blue House [the executive office and official residence of the South Korean president].

***

“General Min So-ha, it’s been a while.”

As Hyun-woo entered the Blue House’s main gate, Min So-ha, who had come out in advance, distorted her face.

The martial law in Korea had not yet been lifted.

The pretext was to eliminate Park Gyu’s remaining forces, but in reality, it was an opportunity to eliminate the deep-rooted evils of Korean society.

Moreover, the martial law seemed likely to continue for the time being.

“You bastard, follow me.”

“Huh? Aren’t we going to the Blue House?”

“We’re going to the bunker. Dr. Do Won-kyung is also waiting.”

At the mention of Do Won-kyung, Hyun-woo raised his lips.

‘It’s finally starting.’

Min So-ha didn’t see the smile as she walked ahead.

Min So-ha led him to a secret bunker buried in the basement of Bukhansan Mountain, a little away from the Blue House.

It was also a command post equipped with the infrastructure to command the entire army even if civilian infrastructure was completely destroyed.

Inside, Do Won-kyung, several officials from the Ministry of National Defense, and the President were waiting.

“Why is he here?”

Hyun-woo pointed at the President and said ‘him’. Min So-ha sighed deeply and said.

“He’s still the President, so we have to call him. He listens to you anyway, so he can’t do anything stupid.”

“Hmm, I don’t care.”

“Is the chatter over?”

Do Won-kyung tapped the desk as if knocking. When Hyun-woo sat down, Do Won-kyung skipped the greetings and instructed a staff member to play the video.

Do Won-kyung turned off the lights in the room to make it more focused and said.

“We’ve already finished the analysis, but let’s watch it one more time since Kang Hyun-woo is here.”

The video started with Northeast Asian children throwing tennis balls and catching them with their bare hands.

The ball drew an arc and was easily caught by the children, and the person filming the video was also enjoying it.

Then, the ball hit a child’s head and bounced up. Giggles erupted.

At that moment, a shadow suddenly fell from the sky. The surprised cameraman raised the camera.

The sky, which had been clear until just now, had turned black. As the surroundings darkened as if it were night, the children became frightened and quickly gathered around the cameraman.

The camera shook rapidly as the cameraman’s anxiety was transmitted.

Then suddenly, a bang echoed. A huge blob of mucus struck the vacant lot from the sky.

Green mucus splattered everywhere and the children screamed. And black shapes wriggling as they dug through the mucus began to crawl out.

The video, which had been filled with screams and shouts, ended by showing the ground.

“……This video was taken by a tourist in Ulaanbaatar [the capital of Mongolia] at around 11 a.m. today. It was immediately spread because it was being broadcast live on YouTube.”

Do Won-kyung muttered with a dark expression.

Blue House bunker.

The only people who had entered were Kang Hyun-woo, Do Won-kyung, Min So-ha, and a few defense officials.

Hyun-woo checked the current time.

3:44 p.m.

Nearly 5 hours had passed, but it wasn’t that slow for a Blue House emergency response meeting to be held due to another country’s situation. Korea was probably among the fastest.

“The video has been taken down from YouTube, and an embargo has been placed on the media.”

“Is there no possibility of manipulation at all?”

“Currently, we have no connection with the Korean Embassy in Ulaanbaatar. There is no one who can contact the local Korean residents. We have shared our opinions with the governments of the United States, China, and Japan, and they are the same. Either the communication infrastructure has all gone bad at the same time, or…….”

Ulaanbaatar was completely destroyed.

Mongolia is not a developed country, but the fact that the capital of a country has been destroyed overnight is shocking and terrifying.

Especially if no one knows what happened.

Even when North Korea was destroyed, it was clear that it was due to the Flood.

“Can’t you use satellite observation?”

“It was taken. But…….”

Do Won-kyung displayed a photo as if she knew Hyun-woo would ask.

The satellite photo taken over Ulaanbaatar was normal. The city was intact, and there were no roads that were cut off or burning. But if you looked closely, you could see something strange.

“The photo is cut off.”

From a certain point in the photo, there was a part that was cut off in a different way, as if a new photo had been added.

It became clearer when viewed as a large-scale photo.

The smoke flowing out of Ulaanbaatar was obscured by something. Like a awkwardly synthesized photo.

“Yes. Something is covering the entire city. According to the analysis, it’s roughly 18 kilometers in diameter. That’s 3/4 the size of Seoul [the capital of South Korea].”

“That’s big.”

“It’s not just big.”

Do Won-kyung showed a photo taken from a much greater distance with a stiff expression.

“I couldn’t understand why the situation in Ulaanbaatar suddenly broke out like that, so I looked through the photos of other regions from the past. When I checked…….”

In the photos, there were traces that Do Won-kyung had marked for each time period. It was subtly changing the map, like a snail leaving a trail of mucus very slowly.

“Something huge has been moving from the northern tip of Siberia to the Sea of Okhotsk, northern China, and Mongolia for about 56 hours. Most of them were sparsely populated areas, but it seems that no one has escaped from those areas yet. This is the first time it has attacked a densely populated area.”

Everyone’s expressions except Hyun-woo’s stiffened. Modern surveillance technology is beyond imagination.

It was shocking that they hadn’t realized this fact until now, even though the Mongolia-Siberia region was not very noteworthy.

“No, didn’t the United States know either? They would have been monitoring the hidden nuclear facilities in Siberia.”

Min So-ha asked angrily. Do Won-kyung shook her head.

“They were probably only paying attention to the nuclear facilities.”

“Or they were deliberately ignoring it.”

Min So-ha and Do Won-kyung looked at him at Hyun-woo’s answer.

Hyun-woo was struggling to suppress a smile. Hyun-woo believed that the United States had already discovered ‘it’ but ignored it.

Because even Hyun-woo would have done that.

Soon, ‘it’ will be named.

Skydrops, Rapture, Bungcheon…… but the official name in Korea is one.

The first mobile aerial dungeon, Sky Fortress.