Hiding a House in the Apocalypse

The flames burned all through the night.

If not for the rain that fell at dawn, it would’ve consumed the entire mountain. The fire spread with terrifying force.

I salvaged some food, guns, and a bit of ammunition.

The next morning during breakfast, someone asked what had happened to the others.

I hesitated for a moment.

Should I tell the truth, or lie?

The hesitation didn’t last long.

I told the truth.

“They’re all dead. Just got unlucky.”

Not much of a story, really.

Back in pre-war days, it would’ve been no different than hearing about some bombing in the Middle East and a few locals getting blown up. No one gave a damn then either.

No one cares about the fate of a few old folks who burned to death.

Still, the reason I hesitated even for a second before saying it aloud was because... I had a feeling this kind of thing might keep happening.

This one was easy enough to explain. But in the long, long road ahead, there will be people and events that prod at our sense of right and wrong.

And the one who’ll end up choosing, unless something changes, will probably be me.

When it gets colder, when the frost hits for real—more choices will come. Harder ones. Dirtier ones.

I was staring blankly at the slowly fading green of the mountains, half-lost in the bitter taste of tea and the weight of it all, when—

“Skelton-nim.”

Ballantine came looking for me.

*

Right after my trip to Seoul, Ballantine and I had a chat about Necropolis.

Ballantine still seemed convinced that Necropolis was a miracle built on the genius of someone called Deadman_working, but he didn’t outright reject my theory that the “waves” Necropolis uses aren’t ordinary radio signals, but voices of the Rift.

“...Well, the Rift is full of unexplainable crap. I mean, we've had monsters popping in and out like it’s a revolving door, but not a single one has been scientifically understood. Might as well ask the guy himself. Not that I expect a reply.”

Turns out, the reply came yesterday.

“Came quicker than expected. He seemed surprised too.”

Together, we read the message from Deadman_working.

The sentence, written in English, automatically translated the moment we pressed the key. Just like that, it became something natural to read and process in our language.

Message from Deadman_working: Yeah, it’s probably a frequency from the Rift. Total fluke of a ‘discovery.’

Deadman_working was not the type to hoard knowledge or cloak himself in mystique like some guru.

He laid it all out, straight and clear.

Ballantine had contacted him because he was running into problems integrating Necropolis’s signals with Viva! Apocalypse!

Viva! Apocalypse! uses cutting-edge satellite tech to provide high-speed internet access.

Sure, it’s only about half the speed of pre-war LAN connections, but its rock-solid infrastructure and consistent post-war performance are the reason Melon Mask became the world’s most successful entrepreneur.

Necropolis, on the other hand, is a product born from nothing—ignoring every known law of science, like it ripped a chunk out of magic and forced it into reality. Because of its very nature, it can’t handle much traffic. It's barely functional.

Let me borrow Ballantine’s words for a clearer comparison.

“If Viva! Apocalypse! is the Han River, Necropolis is the dirty runoff in a storm drain.”

Trying to merge the two was a huge technical headache for Ballantine.

He struggled with it alone until finally, he reached out to Deadman_working. And surprisingly, just like his initial reply, the answer came back fast and direct.

“He’s not normal, that one. Even if it was just a fluke, being able to interpret and utilize those Rift signals like that... that’s genius. A guy like me couldn’t even dream of it.”

I’d sensed it before, but Ballantine was slowly stepping out of John Nae-non’s shadow.

He still considered John Nae-non a great creator, but his gaze had long since shifted to this mysterious figure, Deadman_working.

You could tell from the way he spoke about him—his eyes, his tone.

Ballantine saw Deadman_working as his second role model. Maybe even a god.

A kind of reverence only someone deep in the world of networks could feel.

Something I’d never understand.

Anyway, Deadman_working shared the same concerns as Ballantine.

Message from Deadman_working: I’ve been thinking about that too. How to increase Necropolis’s bandwidth. It might be dominant in the SNS scene now, but it’s nowhere near Melon Mask’s services.

Message from Deadman_working: I mean, come on. People used to watching YouTube and TikTok aren’t gonna be satisfied reading a few lines of text.

Then, he made a proposal.

Message from Deadman_working: I heard you’re living with Skelton.

Message from Deadman_working: If it’s not too much, could you do me a favor?

The favor?

“It’s about the Rift,” Ballantine said, his voice low.

“He wants us to measure the frequencies near a Rift.”

Now I understood why Deadman_working mentioned me before dropping the request.

Classic ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) Deadman.

He was asking for something extremely difficult—and dangerous.

Back during the war, you might’ve had Kill Zones and troops guarding the Rift. But now? The areas around breached Rifts are monster havens.

That kind of terrain is known as overruned zones. I’ve never seen one up close, but footage from India showed them teeming with even more monsters and alien lifeforms than the Rift I stayed in for a month.

And this guy wants us to just waltz in there, unarmed?

“Can’t we just send a drone?”

“If it were seven or eight years ago, maybe. But now? Monsters react even faster to drones than they do to humans.”

“Ha... goddamn.”

Ballantine clicked his tongue in frustration.

I can’t say I’ve seen all his facial expressions, but this was the first time he looked that openly disappointed.

No, more than disappointed—he looked crushed.

But this is no simple favor.

Only top-tier Awakened like Kang Han-min or Na Hye-in could even dream of stepping into an overruned zone.

For unblessed people like us, it's a death sentence. Forbidden territory.

“Ha... if things went well, Deadman_working said he’d engrave our usernames on the new upgraded Necropolis gate...”

“What did you just say?”

“Huh?”

“Just now—did you say something about usernames?”

“Oh, that?”

Every person entering Necropolis sees a line etched above the gate.

[For F. Sawyer, M. O'Connor, and the Lovely Red.]

No one knows who Sawyer, O’Connor, or the “Lovely Red” are.

But the hundreds of thousands of Necropolis users know those names.

“You’re saying our usernames would be up there next to theirs?”

“I’m good,” Ballantine said with a laugh, waving his hands.

“......”

Let me think for a moment.

*

“Hey. What’s gotten into you, calling me first and all?”

I called Woo Min-hee and explained the situation.

“What? You want to explore the Rift zone?”

I started off with some flowery academic bullshit—pure curiosity, scientific passion—then got to the real reason: Necropolis.

To boost the persuasion factor, I threw in a little exaggerated account of how much effort I’d already put in.

“I haven’t slept in a month... trying to understand the link between Necropolis and the monster frequencies...”

“......”

“Well, I guess you’ve always had that kind of academic fire in you.”

Screeeeech—

With a teasing grin, she added:

“Or is it narcissism?”

“...Zhuge Liang?”

“Bye~.”

The reason I had no choice but to reach out to the ever-annoying Woo Min-hee is because her team is the only one with the experience, knowledge, and power to pull this off.

She’s part of the “Alpha Team” alongside Kang Han-min and Na Hye-in, and they’ve brought back countless results from deep inside the Rift.

If she helps, the exploration around the Rift won’t just be a pipe dream.

No—it’ll be easy.

I’ve never been to an overruned zone, but I’ve seen plenty of similar places in China.

After a long and torturous conversation, she finally agreed to help.

“But seriously, I’ve been meaning to ask. Why the hell do you love mom jokes so much? Even elementary school kids don’t say that shit anymore. You’re literally the one person who shouldn’t be making jokes like that.”

Sure, she threw in some nagging, but I’m not the kind of weak-hearted guy who crumbles over a bit of that.

Thanks to Viva! Apocalypse!, I’ve gotten stronger.

Anyway, now that Woo Min-hee’s on board, I’ve got nothing holding me back.

I’d already been thinking I should do something big before winter hits.

It might be dangerous—but can it really compare to the risks and sacrifices our John Nae-non took on?

The problem came from inside.

“You serious? The internet again?”

I never expected everyone to understand me.

I get that some people take issue with how obsessed I am with the internet and the virtual world.

“I’m not trying to stop you. It’s just... feels like you’ve got your priorities backwards.”

Oddly enough, the one who spoke up was Ha Tae-hoon.

A guy who usually avoids confrontation and keeps things smooth and neutral. For him to say something like that... he must’ve been holding it in for a long time.

This translation is the intellectual property of Novelight.

It wasn’t a grudge built up over a day or two.

Ha Tae-hoon and I are different people.

Different backgrounds, different regions, different ways of life.

He used the internet, sure—but he never sank into it.

He saw it as a useful tool, nothing more. Like any normal person would. He never got lost in it.

By pre-war standards, he’d fall neatly into the category of a healthy, functioning adult.

“Didn’t you build this whole damn bunker to survive?”

He wasn’t wrong.

I spent three years building this place from scratch, so I could ride out the apocalypse more comfortably than anyone else.

But people change. Their thoughts shift.

“True,” I said. “But think about it, Tae-hoon.”

I didn’t want to argue or try to convince him.

Who gets persuaded by words anymore?

I just spoke my mind, quietly.

“Even if I die, wouldn’t it be nice to have one or two stories to smile about before I go?”

Yeah, sure. I admit the odds of dying are ridiculously high—but I’m not factoring that in.

There was a saying from a pre-war spiritualist: even in an instant death, a person sees the entire course of their life flash before their eyes.

Either way, I wasn’t changing my mind.

“...You’re the boss around here. I’m just saying it ‘cause I’m worried.”

Ha Tae-hoon sighed and muttered to himself.

Probably thinking about what would happen to this place if I died.

It could become a problem, yeah.

But—

“Tae-hoon.”

I stepped closer to him.

“I’ll come back.”

I won’t fail.

And with that, the schedule for the Rift expedition was set.

Just two of us would go.

Me and Ballantine.

This was a different situation from Necropolis.

We couldn’t take everyone. We shouldn’t take everyone.

Our territory had already been exposed more than once, so we needed stronger defenses than before.

More importantly, this mission was for us.

Ballantine joining wasn’t part of the original plan.

Exploring the outskirts of the Rift—an overruned zone—is dangerously risky.

It’s not just the mutations or monsters.

There are those native otherworldly species that appeared even before the monsters did. Freakish beings that crowd the Rift's edges.

Scholars once assumed they were local fauna of another dimension—natural, in a way. But that theory was long since disproven.

Because beyond the Rift, there’s nothing alive.

The other side is a realm of pure death.

Not even a single bacterium can survive in it.

No new theories came after that chilling discovery.

The war broke out, and rendered everything else meaningless.

Personally, I think those otherworldly species are probably prototypes.

Experimental monsters—test batches, tweaked to adapt to Earth’s environment. Designed to multiply their grotesque pale-gray forms.

You can tell just by how they’ve changed—docile at first, then steadily more savage, as if evolving specifically to exterminate humans.

In short, there’s a high chance we’ll run into things I’ve never seen before.

So before setting out, I made sure to sit Ballantine down and explain everything.

The danger of otherworldly lifeforms. The extreme conditions. The unique madness that leaks through the erosion zone and drives people insane.

But Ballantine—he really is a man of the apocalypse.

“Let’s do it,” he said.

Not a flicker of fear in his expression.

“To hell with it. Worst case, we die, right?”

His resolve was firm. Not taking him would’ve been disrespectful.

Still, I made what preparations I could.

“If anything happens... is there someone you’d want us to contact?”

Realistically, I have a better chance of surviving than Ballantine.

It’s a bit shameful, but true—if we were in danger, I’d be forced to prioritize myself.

Even with Woo Min-hee’s support, the mission won’t stop being risky.

“...Hmm.”

Ballantine’s eyes drifted to the side.

He seemed to be thinking hard.

Then finally, he opened his mouth.

“I guess... maybe my ex-wife. She might already be dead, though.”

“You were married?”

“Yeah. Long before the war. We were divorced before everything went to hell.”

“Oh.”

“It’s fine. We both screwed up. Still, I confirmed she was alive before the Penguin Gang left. So there’s a chance she still is. I think she’s living with another guy now, though.”

Ballantine gave a vague, weary smile.

“Still. I’m her ex-husband. If someone’s gonna send the obituary, might as well be me.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

I took a photo.

A solo shot of Ballantine.

He stood in front of our territory, flashing a V-sign with an awkward smile.

Far in the background, Sue walked by and gave us a quick glance—like a small, unintended detail in the picture.

“Skelton-nim, aren’t you gonna take one?”

“Me?”

I smiled faintly.