January 14
While Kyoko and Huaxiu recovered at home, let us shift our gaze to the Korean Peninsula.
Seoul Special City, South Korea
10:00 p.m., January 13, 2026
One of the crown jewels of the world's great cities had fallen into wretched ruin.
Seoul, once a brilliantly lit metropolis alive with song and revelry, had long since been abandoned by its former splendor. Peace and prosperity were now nothing more than fading smoke. On the outskirts, in Gyeonggi Province, the stationed forces were facing pressure on an unprecedented scale. Hordes of infected numbering in the tens of millions were converging on Seoul from every province in South Korea, and the military strength that remained was no longer enough to stop them.
Just two weeks earlier, the South Korean military had possessed over 600,000 active-duty personnel, more than a million reservists, thousands of tanks, over five thousand artillery pieces, nearly a thousand aircraft, and a modernized combat system backed by advanced equipment. No one would have dared underestimate them.
Now, barely a hundred thousand soldiers remained fit for combat.
Military units across the country had been targeted and shattered. Much of their heavy equipment had been lost before the army could even fully mobilize. Weapons were in short supply. Logistics had collapsed. With the communications network severed, ground command could only issue orders by dropping written directives from aircraft, an absurdly slow and inefficient measure. Units fought separately, with too few men, too few supplies, and too little coordination.
Some of the Korean troops originally stationed along the Thirty-Eighth Parallel had managed to break through and return to Seoul. But even with their reinforcement, the defenders of the capital numbered only a little over forty thousand. In the face of a crippling manpower shortage, the Capital Defense Command's plan to call up reservists had met with miserable results. In the end, they had no choice but to merge what remained of the army with the police and fire departments and force them to fight together.
There were still more than two million people in Seoul.
That number had once been well over ten million before the outbreak.
Even now, managing such a massive population under these conditions was nearly impossible. Under suffocating pressure, a single spark could ignite a catastrophe. If that happened, the fragile social order South Korea had managed to preserve would collapse outright. And once that happened, the entire peninsula might well descend into a living hell.
Fear came on the winter wind, sharp with cold and thick with the stink of blood. All of Seoul was strung taut, like a bow pulled to its absolute limit. One more strain, and it would snap.
What remained of the Korean military enforced martial law with brutal rigor. Soldiers and police patrolled the streets. Even the standard of "a sentry every five steps and a guard post every ten" felt insufficient now. Second-line personnel in protective suits moved corpses one by one to designated disposal points. Pools of blood on the pavement had to be blasted again and again with high-pressure hoses before the original color of the streets could be seen beneath them. Across the city, alarms wailed and gunfire cracked at irregular intervals.
Chaos had become Seoul's defining feature.
Military rule was no real solution. It was only a temporary bandage laid over a mortal wound.
And when the hearts of the people lost hope, could even that feeble flame still be sustained? The spread of cults had given those terrified by the apocalypse a kind of crude psychological shelter. The Korean authorities had tolerated such groups for years. Now they no longer had the ability to suppress them at all.
At the edge of the city, powerful searchlights burned so fiercely that it seemed as though they had trapped the sun itself in place. Beneath that glare, an unbroken chain of Korean defensive lines was pouring out fire.
K808 and K806 wheeled armored vehicles raced back and forth across the battlefield, transporting personnel at desperate speed, as overworked as delivery riders on endless shifts. The moment one task ended, another began.
More than a hundred tanks and armored vehicles were unleashing their fury. K2 Black Panther main battle tanks and K21 infantry fighting vehicles served as Seoul's steel wall, standing bodily between the capital and the vast ocean of infected. Their 120mm CN08 smoothbore guns and 40mm autocannon tore apart great numbers of enemies, but against hordes in the tens of millions, such destruction was still no more than a drop in the sea.
Blasted corpses flew in all directions. Dust rolled skyward in choking sheets.
The infected were not mindless.
Or perhaps it was more accurate to say that those directing them were not mindless.
Their masses advanced in dispersed formations. Different types of special infected had been divided into separate clusters, clearly deployed with intent.
And the infected were conducting ranged attacks against the Korean military as well. Infected birds swooped down from the sky carrying virulent contamination and dropped it directly onto Korean positions. On the ground, some infected had even managed to operate captured Korean equipment. In certain areas, the infected were fielding heavier firepower than the Korean defenders themselves.
Special infected capable of mental disruption, like the sonic variants, slipped close to Korean lines and interfered with their soldiers' minds. Corrosive fluids rained down from the sky onto the trenches and emplacements, boiling into thick smoke the moment they struck.
The K9 Thunder self-propelled howitzers and K239 Chunmoo multiple rocket launchers thundered like war gods in wrath. Their 52-caliber 155mm guns and their 230mm and 130mm unguided rockets saturated nearby regions with suppression fire, hurling out thousands of rounds each minute across dozens of kilometers.
More than a hundred surviving K30 Biho anti-aircraft systems roared skyward, their twin 35mm cannons cutting down large numbers of flying infected creatures.
Suicide drones darted across the battlefield in suicidal dives, seizing their moment and perishing together with the infected.
Some special infected managed to break through the military's kill zones and crash into the infantry lines. In response, K2-series standard rifles, imported MP5 submachine guns, K14 sniper rifles, and every other weapon at hand opened up in a deafening chorus, shredding those creatures into ruin within seconds.
What remained of the South Korean Air Force had been ordered not to sortie.
Then the front exploded into a fresh blaze: thermobaric bombs and white phosphorus munitions had been deployed. In the space of minutes, they turned swaths of land hundreds of meters wide into dead zones, reducing the earth to a blackened wasteland.
But still the infected came.
They advanced in relays, wave after wave. Minefields and barbed wire had become little more than inconveniences, easily filled and flattened by piles of bodies.
Slaughter and shouting, artillery fire and infected roars—beneath the cutting winter wind, there could be no peace.
Scenes like this had already become ordinary.
At first glance, humanity still seemed to hold the advantage.
But without factories, without supply lines, without any avenue left to replenish what they spent, where could the military possibly find enough ammunition to continue? Hundreds, even thousands, of tons of munitions were being consumed every day. The infected attacked in staggered waves, deliberately grinding down Korean ammunition reserves. Weapons wore out and broke, and there was no real way to repair them. In practice, they had become disposable tools.
Once the ammunition ran dry, this so-called safe zone would not endure a single day longer.
Inside Seoul, basic living supplies were being distributed in rationed batches. People were routinely attacked the moment they managed to secure food. Those who managed to join the military had it somewhat better, at least they received provisions through the chain of command. But as for the refugees from outside the city...
Although countless apartments and homes stood empty, their original residents dead or fled elsewhere, the government still refused to let the refugees move into them. They were not even allowed to remain in the streets. Instead, they were dumped into tent camps near the front, where their daily rations were just enough to keep them barely alive.
If the infected broke through the lines, those refugees would be the first to die.
Animal infected and special infected were infiltrating the city through every gap they could find. In the vast underground drainage system beneath Seoul, worms, rats, and other infected vermin had already spread far and wide.
The fall of Seoul's safe zone was no longer a distant possibility.
It was right in front of them.
Those with any sense at all were already looking for an escape.
Capital Defense Command, Seoul
Security there was airtight. Dozens of heavily armed soldiers guarded the uppermost conference room.
Inside, several people were discussing one thing only:
How to flee.
They were doing so in front of South Korea's current president, Jeon Jung-seong himself.
In fact, he was the main advocate for the retreat.
"The present crisis is beyond our ability to resolve," said a brigadier general, addressing everyone in the room before snapping a salute toward Jeon Jung-seong. "The Capital Mechanized Infantry Division and the 8th Division have both suffered losses exceeding half their strength. Ammunition is critically low. Power and water are on the verge of failing completely. Mr. President, please give the order."
Others echoed him in turn, all urging the evacuation of Seoul.
Seeing that the room was leaning in the direction he wanted, Jeon Jung-seong assumed a grave expression and spoke in measured tones.
"It is not that we refuse to withdraw. The questions are how, by what route, to where, and how to reduce the risks and losses to their minimum. I trust all of you have considered these issues over the past several days. Let me hear the opinions of the professionals."
At a signal from his superior, a young officer rose first.
"Mr. President, we should evacuate by sea. Our fleet is still stationed offshore, and if we requisition additional civilian vessels, we can carry more people and more supplies. That will reduce losses. We can withdraw to the safe zone on Jeju Island. There are still intact military units there."
The moment he finished speaking, he was fiercely opposed.
One officer yanked off his cap and burst out with a curse.
"Are you out of your mind? Did those chaebols who were just punished buy you off? Going by sea would get all of us killed! Everyone knows the monsters out there have already mauled the U.S.–Japanese fleet so badly that the Americans were forced to launch three high-yield nuclear warheads!"
Another officer added, "Gentlemen, we do not have much time. The time bought for us by the soldiers on the front is precious. We must move fast, or it will be too late."
Then someone else said, "Air transport is our best option. Eight C-130H/J Hercules transport aircraft, the presidential Boeing 747-8, various transport helicopters, plus civilian aviation assets—taken together, they can evacuate more than a thousand people to Jeju, along with some of our supplies."
"I think—"
Why did no one suggest withdrawing overland?
Everyone in the room had the same answer:
If they could have broken through the infected on land, they would not need to flee in the first place.
In truth, they had entertained that hope several days earlier. They had even pinned some wishful expectation on their nuclear-armed neighbors just beyond the Thirty-Eighth Parallel. But the conditions were too harsh, and those "comrades of the same race and blood" had no manpower to spare. So that possibility had died quickly.
One by one, the officers presented the arguments they had prepared beforehand.
In the end, all eyes turned to Jeon Jung-seong and Lieutenant General Su Yong-chang, commander of the special warfare forces. These two men held the greatest authority in the room: one the head of the civilian leadership, the other the commander of the air transport forces.
The two exchanged a glance and instantly understood one another.
In fact, the decision had already been made. They had settled on an aerial evacuation before the meeting even began. Orders had already gone out to prepare the Air Force.
The meeting was only a test—to see how the others would react, and to identify any lingering dissent.
Then Jeon Jung-seong gave the order.
"Tell the Air Force to make ready."
"Loyalty!"
At the president's command, every officer stood and saluted as he left the conference room.
With only three hours for final preparations, the evacuation was put into motion at the airport.
Before boarding, Jeon Jung-seong paused in the wind and snow and looked back toward Seoul. Emotion filled his voice as he addressed those around him.
"It seems I must leave Seoul. Leave the capital built with such care by generations of presidents. Leave the resting place of those who came before me. If Seoul is destined to fall one day, then I ought to die beneath the Blue House itself, so that above I may answer to past presidents, and below to the people of this nation. Do you think my heart is full only of grief at this moment? Do you think it is regret that overwhelms me? No! What I cannot bear is this—that once I go, even my death will have no proper place to lie. Of our seven cities and eleven provinces, soon perhaps only one province will remain. I have failed everyone..."
"Mr. President, this is beyond the power of any one man," someone hastily replied. "Your decision is unquestionably the best one. Preserve the people, and the land may yet be recovered!"
"Yes, Mr. President…"
Everyone chimed in on cue. There was more empty performance, more ritual reassurance, and only after all that did the entire group finally board the planes.
First came the C-130H/J Hercules transports.
Then the KF-16C/D fighters took off to provide escort.
After them came the transport helicopters.
And at last, the presidential Boeing 747-8 lifted into the air.
Its engines roared so thunderously that, for a moment, they drowned out even the artillery fire at the city's outer defenses. Before long, a great formation of over a hundred aircraft was heading southeast toward Jeju Island.
"Hmph. Those cowardly, self-preserving bastards. Sooner or later, they'll get what's coming to them."
Watching the dignitaries and the powerful flee into the night, General Jang Hong-hyeon, commander of the Army Headquarters and the man left behind to hold the line, turned away without another word and returned to the command center.
The night was beautiful in its own terrible way. Tracer rounds and white phosphorus arced through the darkness like fireworks. Gunfire and artillery never ceased. Once again, the infected assault had been held.
But now that even the president had abandoned the city, could the people truly still find the will to defend this doomed fortress?
Nihonmatsu, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan
7:00 a.m., January 14
The commotion outside woke Kyoko.
She flailed at her blanket in irritation, only for the blanket to abandon her entirely and dump her onto the floor.
"Ow… that hurts…"
Kyoko, who had not cried out even when gravely injured the day before, now clutched her arm and whimpered like some fragile young lady. Her whole body was numb and sluggish. Her brain felt like it was lagging. It took a full moment before her thoughts finally caught up.
Wait.
Hadn't she tied herself up to stay awake last night? Why was she in bed now?
"Oh no. Did someone come into my house? Or did Huaxiu wake up?"
At that moment, every possibility flew through her head. Aliens. Intruders. Anything.
Anyone, that is, except her system.
[Kyoko, how could you forget me? It's only been two days, and you were already ready to throw me away? Waaaah… you heartless woman.]
The system suddenly appeared just as Kyoko was rushing to check on Huaxiu.
"When did you come back? I thought I'd never see you again."
Kyoko nearly cried with relief when the familiar system interface popped into view.
Before she had passed out the day before, she had practically been ready to compose her final death poem. Thankfully, she had not needed it.
[You really should be thanking me. If I hadn't left you that temporary cheat before I went offline, you'd already be in the afterlife watching movies.]
"So that wasn't my body mutating on its own? I see… Then thank you. Really. Thank you, my system."
Still dressed only in her thin pajamas, Kyoko bowed deeply to the glowing interface before her. The loose neckline of her sleepwear offered no resistance at all, exposing a glimpse of the pale apple-green bra beneath. Her skin was as smooth and fair as ever, without the slightest trace of scarring. There was nothing to suggest that just yesterday she had suffered such terrible injuries; even the bruises had vanished overnight.
"Did you check Huaxiu? How is she?"
The instant she straightened up, Kyoko urgently asked the question that mattered most. Huaxiu had been badly hurt too. Kyoko had done what treatment she could, but internal injuries were another matter entirely. She was no medical scanner. There was no way she could have known for sure.
Seeing Kyoko scramble to her feet without even bothering to put on slippers, rushing straight for the bedroom where Huaxiu lay, the system stopped teasing her and simply told her the truth.
[Your little girlfriend is fine. She'll just be weak for a few days. Since you fed her your blood, her body's been altered too. Once she finishes recovering, she'll be healthier and stronger than before. She just needs proper rest right now.]
Kyoko did not even react to the phrase "little girlfriend."
She stepped to Huaxiu's bedside, looked at the still-sleeping girl, and kissed her gently on the forehead.
Now that the system had reassured her, the weight in Kyoko's heart finally eased. Huaxiu's injuries were not life-threatening. What mattered now was keeping the room warm, so Kyoko hurried off to add more fuel to the stove in the next room. She absolutely could not let Huaxiu get cold.
Though, in truth, it was warmer than it had been in previous days.
After swallowing a hasty breakfast, Kyoko planned to go out and collect the spoils.
All three connected towers had now been cleared.
More than 31,200 square meters of interior space belonged to her.
The moment she opened the door, she found that the scorched corpses outside were gone. The system had already told her about all her own glorious achievements while she had been out cold.
Now there was almost nothing left for her to clean up. The system's service had been absurdly thorough. It had repaired the outer windows, cleaned away the structural damage, restored the building, and even finished collecting the spoils from the battlefield.
At this point, the floor was only a little smoke-stained. That was all.
Then the system displayed yesterday's total settlement:
[Today's exploration points: 402
Kill points: 3,807
Task points: 0
Recovery points: 834
Previous balance: 9
Total: 5,052 points.]
Kyoko froze for a second when she saw the numbers.
Then she broke into a grin so wide it was almost ridiculous.
That was a ridiculous amount of points.
Because the system had even cleaned up the battlefield for her, she had gained an enormous reward without having to do the exhausting aftermath work herself.
For the first time in ages, Kyoko felt something close to true financial comfort.
She almost did not want to work anymore.
Join here to read ahead.
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