The Returner

Chapter 465

“Fire! I said fire, godd*mmit!”

Du Gyeong-Sik heard the high-pitched urgent cry stabbing him in the ears and swore inwardly .

‘F*ck me, everyone here knows already that we gotta fire our weapons, so can’t you just shut up for a second?!’

They weren’t some rookies here, so what gives? Every single person in this place had been fighting nonstop for the past two months while risking their lives everyday . So, some idiot trying to micromanage such soldiers was getting on Du Gyeong-Sik’s nerves .

‘F*ck . ’

He knew that it wasn’t the commander’s fault . No, the fault lied with his own mind that got easily irritated and dissatisfied by every little thing .

Du Gyeong-Sik sucked in a deep breath .

The handle of the MG-50 gripped tightly in his hands felt so cold right now .

“You punk, what the hell are you doing?! I told you to fire, dam*it!”

Du Gyeong-Sik’s bloodshot eyes glared at the one busy shouting at him .

“What are you looking at?!”

“Bloody hell, stop sh*tting in your pants and start giving us proper commands, will ya? Can’t you see that the monsters haven’t even reached the riverside yet?”

“They are within the firing range, aren’t they?!”

“Firing at them from this distance won’t even leave a scratch on them . If you are our superior officer, then calm down and act like one, alright? I mean, how can we concentrate and keep fighting when a commander is too scared and can’t even think straight?”

“What the f*ck?! Are you done with running your mouth off, you punk!?”

Du Gyeong-Sik turned his head away and stared back at the battlefront . The enraged swearings kept coming from somewhere behind him, but he paid no heed .

‘What a f*cking moron . ’

He understood it . He certainly could .

Everyone, including that commander, had been stuck in this hellish battlefront for the past two months so none of them were in the right frame of mind at the moment . Du Gyeong-Sik might have spoken like he was better off than the commander, but even he’d lose his rationale and start firing blindly the moment those d*mn monsters reached the riverside .

‘How many have I killed so far?’

Du Gyeong-Sik chuckled helplessly .

How many monsters did he kill so far, you ask?

Nope .

He was more worried about how many of his allies he inadvertently killed while firing his weapon blindly .

But then again, the situation was so bad that even a murderer like him had to keep holding onto the MG-50 . Manpower was in a crippling shortage at the moment, and so did their firepower .

‘…Now!’

Du Gyeong-Sik gritted his teeth and pulled the trigger . The MG-50 might have been secured to the ground with a stand, but once it got firing like this, he couldn’t help but feel his whole body shaking around alongside the recoil .

While feeling his arms shaking around, Du Gyeong-Sik roared out .

“Diiiiiiiieeeee!”

The MG-50 could easily penetrate through a steel plate if you could hit it properly, yet against the monsters with thick hides, he had no choice but to feel how insufficient the weapon’s firepower was .

Every one of those d*mn creatures boasted the defensive capabilities exceeding an armoured personnel carrier . No one would be mad enough to use anti-aircraft firearms like MG-50s when APCs or tanks were barging in . Yet, Du Gyeong-Sik had to do exactly that .

At least, he was in a better position than some others .

Nearby him were many unfortunate souls who had to do this crazy thing while only relying on personal firearms like K-3 or K-2 . Sure, it might seem like a complete waste of energy, but when hundreds of people fired guns at a single monster, they would be able to at least stop the creature in its tracks if not outright damage it . After all, it’d be hard to ignore the kinetic energy contained within the shower of that many bullets even if the damage inflicted was negligible at best .

And when that stopping power was demonstrated…

Piii-shung!

Along with a clean whistling noise, a shot entered into the monster’s wide open maw .

Ku-aaaaaah!

The common sense of ‘strong skin doesn’t equal strong innards’ also applied to the monsters to some degree . Of course, that was all comparatively speaking; even the innards of the monsters weren’t as frail as that of Earth’s creatures .

“Aim for the eyes! The eyes!”

‘I know, godd*mmit!’

That was easier said than done; did the commander think this gun was a sniper’s rifle or something?

If it was that easy to aim for the monsters’ eyes with such large-sized guns, then they would’ve swept the monsters aside by now .

Du Gyeong-Sik had to suppress a tide of expletives trying to jump out of his mouth and gripped the gun hard enough to nearly break his fingers while changing his aim from here to there .

Monsters began emerging from the river water like a swarm of ants .

Never mind a few times, he had already witnessed the same sight dozens, hundreds of times by now but even then, he felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up every time it happened . However, that didn’t mean he hadn’t gotten used to it . Also, the pressure bearing down on him hadn’t lost its edge yet, either – the pressure of knowing that, even if this attack was one of many that happened so far, failing to stop it would mean his life would be in a serious danger .

“Uwaaaaah!”

The muzzle spitting out flames towards the approaching monsters clattered against the hump set up below and didn’t go down any further . The hump had been set in such a way to prevent any potential friendly fire, but his muzzle had lowered enough to hit this installation .

‘Dam*it!’

This also indicated that the first defensive line had been broken through . It felt like a sharp blade had been thrust under his chin, but he ignored this f*cked-up feeling to the best of his abilities and continued to fire away at the monsters that he could see .

All he could do for now was to believe in the others .

“Let’s go!”

It was right then, a loud shout came from somewhere below his position .

Ability users from the KSF and other countries were now rushing out to fight the monsters off . They jumped over the barricades and dashed forward, and Du Gyeong-Sik watching them felt something well up inside his chest .

Here he was, being subjected to a maddening level of terror and pressure while doing something as basic as sitting back and firing his gun at the distant target . Yet those people were actually rushing towards the monsters with nothing but their own bodies as their weapons .

‘Godd*mmit . ’

If he was being honest, he too was one of those people who felt much disgust towards the ability users . Before his enlistment, he thought that these d*mn ability users were living large without much effort simply because of the powers they were randomly granted through luck .

But now that he was here, such a line of thinking had been shattered into tiny little bits .

‘I definitely do not want to be like them . ’

Fighting from the back like this was already so difficult . So difficult, in fact, that he felt the urge to turn the muzzle around to kill everyone around him and then shove the gun in his mouth before pulling the trigger many times by now .

Yet those people had to stop the monsters with their physical bodies… That wasn’t something a sane-minded person could or should do .

‘Only they can do it . ’

Du Gyeong-Sik was not confident of doing something similar .

As such, all those who looked negatively at the ability users had no choice but to admit to their sacrifices . Somewhat ironically, now that a deadly crisis was upon them, the great rift between regular people and ability users was closing up .

“What are they doing?!”

This was almost like playing a computer game .

He was still firing away at the incoming enemies as if his life depended on it, which was true, but with every passing second, the number of monsters he could stop steadily decreased . No, to be more precise, the amount of resistance he offered hadn’t changed at all, but the number of monsters breaking through the defensive line he had set up was gradually growing larger .

Now normally in a game, you’d run out of lives and reach the ‘game over’ screen in such a situation .

Unfortunately, this wasn’t a game . Not a game where after playing for a little bit, he could turn it off and tell himself, ‘I’ll do better next time’ . What would end wasn’t some measly game but his life, and the fate of the world .

Who could even understand the pressure from knowing that?

“F*ck! We’ll all die at this rate! What the hell are they doing!”

Kwa-ka-ka-ka-booooom!

The moment he shouted out, TOT exploded on the other side of the river . A volley of shells rained down and in the blink of an eye, the opposite riverside got covered in the explosions of choking dust clouds .

And as an encore, the sonic booms of aeroplanes resounded out above his heads along with the eardrum-shredding noise of the air being torn apart .

The bombing raid had begun .

Boom! Boooom!

Du Gyeong-Sik had felt this many times before, but whenever bombing raids got underway, it seemed like the whole world would come to a dead stop . When those humongous explosions went off in the close-enough distance away, his ears would get numb and he couldn’t catch much sounds afterwards . At the same time, he even got the feeling that the world slowed down to a crawl .

While feeling this disharmony, which he had gotten used to by now, he continued to incessantly fire his gun away .

“They are always so bloody late, useless sons of b*tches!”

Even though he tried not to get angry, the situation didn’t permit that . The battle had been going on two months yet not once did he witness a bombing raid or shelling happen at the correct time .

Of course he understood that the air force and the artillery division weren’t the same as the infantrymen like him who could immediately launch the attacks as soon as spotting the enemies . But they had been doing the same thing for the past two months, so shouldn’t their reaction speed improve a little bit, at least?!

“No! No, it can’t be!”

Du Gyeong-Sik cried out in despair .

He could see the monsters still moving around within the choking dust clouds . Despite all those shelling and all those bombs exploding, the number of monsters that died didn’t seem all that high .

‘They are getting stronger . ’

He couldn’t quite understand how, but the monsters were getting stronger day by day . The level of attacks they couldn’t withstand before, they were now brushing it off with some light flesh wounds .

Thick rivers of blood flowed down and dyed the land pitch-black, but the important part was that the monsters were still standing on such a darkened ground .

Despair filled up Du Gyeong-Sik’s eyes .

‘Just what do you want from us…?’

They bombed, they shelled, they even mobilised every ability user under the sun to fight back, yet the number of monsters continued to only increase with every passing day . The spot in Pyongyang was endlessly spitting out more monsters even now .

The enemies shouldn’t be manufacturing monsters in a factory somewhere, so how could so many keep showing up without an end? Just how big was the demon world supposed to be?

Even if one brought together every single wild beast found on earth in one place, the number should still be lower than all the monsters that had shown up here so far .

To make matters worse, there were almost ten spots around the world as well .

‘Can we really win here?’

That was the fundamental question .

His mind hadn’t collapsed from terror and despair . No, he was far more clear-headed than ever before . And such a clear mind was asking himself that question .

Could they really win?

They did this much, yet the situation hadn’t improved at all . No, wait – the situation was steadily getting worse, instead .

‘For what purpose are we keep fighting back like this?’

There could only be one outcome .

They would keep fighting and fighting some more until losing all of their strength, then welcome the bitter and inevitable defeat . Even knowing that, he was resisting against the pressure heavy enough to break his mind to keep fighting away .

Just what would they gain after the battle comes to an end?

They would all die, anyway .

Maybe, getting defeated faster was a better way to lessen the pain overall?

Blood trickled down from his nose . He wiped it off with one hand and glanced behind him with bloodshot eyes .

‘Should I just shoot everyone?’

Maybe, for the sake of making things easier for him, he should just turn the gun behind him . The moment one part of the defensive line broke down, everything else would fall like dominoes, and when the line was gone for good, it’d become so much easier for everyone else, too .

It was right at that moment .

“Everyone, get down! Stop what you’ve been doing and get the f*ck down! It’s coming!”

It’s coming?

What’s coming this time?

His confusion didn’t last for long, though .

He turned around to look and found the first sergeant in command of this particular section already hunkering down on the ground while shielding his face, his elbows and tips of feet the only parts touching the floor .

‘It can’t be?’

That posture looked quite familiar . He had tried that position himself many times back in the boot camp, after all .

The beginning was a faint little flash of light .

Initially, it seemed like something was blinking in the far-off distance . It didn’t look all that big or impressive .

But that was an error in judgement .

The reason for the flash of light being so faint was because the location of the light itself happened to be really far away . And in that extremely far-off distance, something began rising up rapidly into the skies above .

< 465 . With something powerful and unmissable -5 > Fin .