1.

The advent of monsters destroyed the civilization of mankind in a moment. In such a land where civilization was destroyed, humans became beasts and monsters.

"Spare, spare me..."

So was Gwangmyeong.

The sudden emergence of monsters brought down everything: electricity was cut off, communications paralyzed, and gas and oil, which enriched and warmed mankind, became fuel for burning mankind.

Those who survived barely or luckily in such a world became monsters to survive.

"What is it? A man?"

"I thought you were a girl because you are slim, but you are a man! Shit, I have lost my strength."

"Oh, you son of a bitch, if you get caught, you get caught meekly! How dare you run away?"

Four men surrounded a man in the cold, desolate forest of buildings.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, please spare me—"

It was not difficult to understand what the situation was like. And it was not difficult to predict what would happen in the future, either.

One of the four men kicked the head of the man who had fallen on the ground with their military boots, like kicking a soccer ball.

"Khuck!" The man screamed and tumbled over.

It was the poor, pathetic scene, but the man, who had kicked him rather than feeling sorry for him, trampled over the man's pathetic chest with his foot like he was trying to break his ribs.

Puck!

The scrawny man curled up in pain and fear.

The four men began to talk, looking at the man under their feet.

"You look like a real girl. Damn, I ran like crazy, as I wanted to taste you."

"What shall we do? Should we just kill him here?"

"Just kill him, and we can't even use him even if we get him to the hideout anyway, can we? We can't rape him."

"Maybe there's someone who likes him."

"Isn't that what you like?"

"What do you think I am?"

"Be quiet, we'll all be done if the monster comes after hearing the noise."

The man, who was in a frightening conversation, forced himself to speak in a breathless situation. "Spare, spare, spare me…"

But it had a negative effect. One of the other men frowned at the man who somehow squeezed out his voice and was begging for his life again and again.

"Why don't we pull his tongue first, since he is so noisy?"

The man begging for his life shut his mouth at the eerie warning. There was a moment of silence.

It was thanks to the silence. Because of the sudden silence, they could hear another man around, who quickly approached their vicinity.

"Uh?"

"Who, who is it?"

The man's appearance was unique. He was wearing a dark blue suit with a black leather guard and vest, and he looked like a member of a police SWAT team.

But he was not a member of a SWAT team, and there were many differences from a policeman. What he was carrying on his back was the most eye-catching. He was carrying something that anyone could see was a Sword.

If it had been before civilization had collapsed, he would have looked like a costume player, or an actor in a drama or a movie. In addition, it was not abnormal in a city of lawlessness where civilization had collapsed.

That was why everyone was nervous.

A strange-looking man in such attire would only have made their eyes frown before civilization collapsed, but now they did not know what the strange-looking man in the outfit would do.

"Who are you?" one of the men asked.

Instead of answering the sound, the man raised the thing he was holding in his hand. Then he tapped it lightly with his left hand.

Click!

It was a K5 pistol that chambered with a click, instead of replying.

"Gu-gun?"

"Cr-crazy!"

They didn't see it when they looked at it from afar, but as soon as they heard the loading sound, the four men knew that it was a gun and began to retreat in horror.

The fact that there was nothing they could do with the four of them in front of a gun, was not something they should have experienced.

Only one of them remembered what he should say in front of the gun.

"W-we belong to Messiah! Messiah!"

It was a kind of frantic attempt.

At the threat, the man holding a gun made a slight frown on his brow. He seemed to know the word "Messiah."

Is that why? That kind of frantic attempt became a threat immediately.

"If you touch us, our organization will not stay still!"

"Yes! If you touch us, you'll die!"

No less childish, it was really a threat worse than kindergarten children would do.

But unexpectedly, the front-facing gun was lowered.

'Di-did it work?'

'We're saved!'

At the same time, the four men breathed a sigh of relief in their hearts.

'Uh?'

And one of them saw the eyes of the man who had pointed the gun at them go black.

Ping!

At the same time, three out of the four men who made sighs of relief fell to the ground with the sound of whipping wind.

Thud!

They fell with a hole the size of a small finger in their temples, vomiting a mixture of the brain water and the blood out through the hole.

"Huck!" As soon as the remaining one recognized this, he pissed his pants, gasping in fear.

"Messiah… I guess that's where the naming sense of survivors is."

The man with the gun, Kim Tae-hoon, put the gun into the holster on his right thigh when he spat out a word through his bitter laugh. Then he approached the man who had collapsed after losing strength in his legs. He said, "I have a question."

The man answered in a mournful voice, "Spare, spare me…."

2.

Choi Ki-soon was a survivor of the monster outbreak.

There were two ways that survivors of the monster outbreak could survive: kill monsters or kill people.

He was the latter. He gathered people together and lived with the people who gathered in the world of lawlessness as an outlaw.

Rape, looting, murder.

They committed the most atrocious crimes that would have justified the revival of the death sentence, if the Korean judicial body was still existing. No, they did more than just eating, because eating after the monster outbreak was more difficult than anything else.

Those who survived in the lawless city and enjoyed lawlessness began to gather in one place. That was how the Messiah group was born, which plundered their own race, not monsters, to survive in the monster world.

It was a group that used all kinds of means and methods to survive, rather than teaching means and methods.

"That's all I know. Please, please, spare me."

Choi Ki-soon, a member of such a Messiah, became a mild sheep in the face of death.

"I will not forget this grace if you save me. I will never be bad again. I will be good." He made a commitment that would be childish.

A short memory of three days ago passed through Kim Tae-hoon's mind, as he looked at Choi.

The starting point of the memory was the moment when Kim won the victory against the Flame-spewing Crocodile and swallowed its monster stone in return for becoming the winner.

---

"Boss, it's an emergency."

When Kim ate the monster stone and everyone in the Mac Guild flocked around and shouted like thunder at their win, Jang Sung-hoon appeared with a grim expression.

"The green-grade monster has disappeared from the map."

He spread his expression to Kim with only a few words.

"The one in Gwangmyeong City."

At the moment of hearing that, there was no such thing as victory in Kim's mind anymore. Immediately after breaking through the door of a nearby coffee shop, he heard more details from Jang there: the green light that was located in Gwangmyeong City suddenly disappeared.

The time needed to look at Daedongyeojido was not so long. After that, Jang told Kim the number of cases he assumed.

"It has either a good skill to disappear from the map, or it moved out of the searchable range at a tremendous speed.

"Or someone else hunted him. I guess it's one of these three things."

Three possibilities.

However, there was only one option that Kim could choose for those three cases: to quickly enter Gwangmyeong City and look at the situation. It was a natural move.

If a green-grade monster had the ability to disappear from the map, it meant that they could not deal with it using only Daedongyeojido, and the solid castle Mac Guild had built could become a sand castle overnight.

Of course, they had to take a risk and investigate.

If it had fled, he had to check it out, because he had to secure the solar power plant in Gwangmyeong City, and do a preliminary search before that.

'There is nothing strange about having a stronger Awakener than me, because each Awakener has a different rank of ability at the beginning, and if he has a strong relic…'

Finally, if an Awakener had destroyed the green-grade monster, he also needed confirmation.

'Maybe he is the one who killed me in the future.'

The existence of an Awakener who could remove a green-grade monster in a short time could be more dangerous than a green-grade monster. So, Kim entered Gwangmyeong City after preparing immediately.

That was three days ago.

---

In the meantime, Kim explored and searched Gwangmyeong City as secretly as possible. He avoided fighting with monsters and contact with survivors.

A little while ago, Kim was convinced that at present, there was no green-grade monster in Gwangmyeong City, nor was any Awakener expected to have killed it. That was why Kim showed up now.

"Really, I'll be really nice if you spare me."

After returning to reality after the recollection, Kim looked at Choi, who had become a mild sheep seeking mercy in front of himself. Looking at him, Kim made a slight nod. "You may go."

At the gesture, which was not too much to say for the world, Choi jumped out of his crouch.

"Thank you, thank you very much."

Choi, who became free as such, seemed not to be relieved and stayed guarded, slowly moving away from him. After getting far enough away, he started to run away hard, muttering softly of his resolution.

"You're dead, you son of a bitch!"

Kim Tae-hoon did not even look at Choi.

"Hey, hey!"

The man, who had been hurt by the four and who had barely stopped his bloody nose, was sitting quietly in the corner near Kim.

He was a slender, thin man with a womanly build and lines that could be mistaken for a woman from a distance.

"You can't let him go." Even his voice was reedy thin.

He said in a thin voice, "If you let him go, he will get revenge on you. He will bring in a group called Messiah and surely punish you! Some of Messiah's men have guns!"

At the warning, Kim checked his watch on his left-hand wrist before answering and replied bluntly, "I know."

There was no threat to Kim. In other words, the most dangerous factor in Gwangmyeong City was Kim, and he did not want to shirk from this danger.

"That's why I let him go. I'll have to talk to you now. Tell me everything you know."

Kim did not want to give endless mercy to the fragile man in front of him. Kim was also a man willing to become a monster to survive in a world dominated by monsters.