Since Cain killed Abel, there are few acts that provoke as many conflicting opinions and thoughts as murder.@@@@

    Especially when it comes to groups that are forced to commit murder—soldiers, police officers, executioners, and so on—there are so many arguments and theories that even an entire book would not be enough to cover them.

    In our case, the Old School Hunters, we categorized murder as a secondary issue and approached it accordingly.

    Just like how Diderot placed the concept of God under the category of natural sciences in the Encyclopedia, rendering divinity itself meaningless, we too didn’t directly tackle the subject of murder. Instead, we defined it as one of the auxiliary actions that accompanies operations.

    The regulations we learn at school contain no approval of murder.

    As I recall, the only clauses that could justify killing someone were:

    The right to eliminate those who obstructed our mission, such as hostile individuals.The right of hunters to defend themselves if attacked during their mission.

    These two points could be considered the foundations of our justification for killing.

    Like the law, which leaves much room for interpretation, it’s important to understand that there are no direct provisions in our regulations for punishment or consequences for murder.

    Of course, murder for personal reasons, rather than as a necessity of the mission, is punished by laws outside our regulations, such as Chinese or Korean laws.

    What’s certain is that we had no qualms about killing people.

    To be precise, there was no need for deep judgment.

    The judgment was made once.

    Was the person in front of us an enemy or not?

    There was always the condition that they would act hostile, but in actual situations, any signs of hostility were immediately neutralized.

    Most of the neutralization work was handled by our Chinese military allies, but in urgent situations or when their forces were lacking, we assisted and eliminated secondary targets. There was no question about this.

    Anyone who obstructs our mission, which is aimed at eliminating monsters—the enemies of humanity—is not much different from the monsters themselves.

    It had been a long time since I’d taken off my uniform, but I still stood by that philosophy.

    In my eyes, the man and woman in front of me, babbling on, were enemies.

    They were raiders who had boasted of killing many people and had actually committed gruesome murders.

    In this world, the basic requirement for judging a human being as an enemy is just that: they’ve killed people.

    One thing that puzzled me was the excessively transparent attitude of the man in front of me, who appeared to be at least ten years younger than me.

    Was he thoughtless? Or had drugs clouded his judgment?

    He was thoroughly absorbed in telling his own story, never deviating from his own perspective.

    His level of intelligence didn’t even reach the average, let alone the basics of survival.

    His vocabulary was poor, and the language he used felt stuck in the past, like someone still caught in the war.

    “We’re going to Incheon. I’ll find my parents, and if I can’t, I’ll just work my ass off. I’m done with this life. Killing people, stealing their stuff, scaring people...”

    He winced, perhaps realizing the frostbite on his nose and face, and pointed at it for his girlfriend to see. The woman, while still observing me, didn’t seem much different from him.

    “Hahaha! Look at Kyung-jin’s face! She looks like a freak.”

    They had just barely escaped death, yet they laughed loudly enough to make the whole container shake.

    “Can we stay for a day? Do you have any leftover fuel?”

    The man asked confidently, making it clear that he only used respectful language when it was necessary. His attitude was absurd.

    But I wouldn’t kill them here.

    As much as I hated the idea of blood and corpses, I hated the idea of unnecessary violence more.

    “Tell me everything. Which gang were you part of? How did you end up here? Where did you get a snowmobile?”

    I steered the conversation towards what I wanted to hear.

    “We were in Sejong City.”

    “Sejong City?”

    It had been hit by nuclear bombs.

    Twice in a row, and to make things worse, chemical bombs had been dropped on it.

    While Seoul had also been bombed, the concentrated attack on Sejong was much more emotional.

    The attack by China on Sejong City was literally a strategic bombing meant to wipe the entire city off the map, with overwhelming firepower.

    This had also been the location of all the administrative and military operations in South Korea, which is why so many officials were killed.

    I didn’t know the full details, but I had heard that bunker-busters—anti-bunker missiles—had been deployed to pierce even the underground shelters.

    As a result, Sejong City became a death zone, with nothing left.

    The heart of South Korea had been literally obliterated.

    “You’re telling me there was still something left there?”

    “No. When I first got there, there were still people living. The neighborhood was a mess, but the underground bunkers were pretty well made, huge even, with electricity and hot water.”

    “Is there a gang there?”

    The man nodded.

    “King is the leader there.”

    “King?”

    “The leader of the gang. No one knows his real name.”

    The woman, standing next to him, coldly added:

    “He’s a disgusting pervert. He only takes pretty, well-built girls and makes them live with him. He does all kinds of twisted things. If he gets tired of them or they upset him, he throws them to his subordinates.”

    “How many people are in that gang?”

    “I can tell you, but...”

    The man glanced at me.

    “I feel like you keep asking questions. Can you give us some fuel? I still haven’t heard your answer.”

    “I can spare about half a gallon of synthetic oil.”

    “What’s a gallon?”

    “Half a can.”

    “What’s with the complicated words?”

    The man pulled something out of his pocket.

    It was dried meat.

    I didn’t know what kind of meat it was, but it wasn’t made before the war.

    The stench from the dried meat was enough to make me wonder if it had failed the hygiene inspection before the war, and I could smell the pungent odor that would’ve been enough for it to be banned from sale.

    He tore it in half and handed some to his girlfriend.

    He chewed the jerky and gave a wicked smile.

    “3,000 people.”

    “Really?”

    That’s nearly the size of a military unit.

    “Not everyone’s a raider. Some of them were captured elsewhere.”

    “Slaves.”

    The woman added.

    “Yeah. A lot of slaves, a lot of us underlings, a lot of people high on drugs, and even more like the military. There are some scary old men, but other than that, we’ve got everything.

    The man with the face of a raider suddenly lunged at me, only to bury his face in the snow.

    He was bowing to me.

    "Please, please. Just let Mi-jin live."

    He pleaded with a desperation I hadn’t heard from him before.

    When a person begs me, it doesn''t make me reconsider my thoughts.

    Once someone is labeled as an enemy, they are just a target to be eliminated, not someone to negotiate with.

    How many comrades and friends have died because of petty whims?

    To avoid repeating that same mistake, firmness—no, perhaps it’s better to call it ruthlessness—was essential.

    I could pull the trigger countless times.

    But—

    “Is it because of the child?”

    I asked, a question I hadn’t planned to ask.

    I wouldn’t have asked this question seven years ago.

    The man shook his head.

    Lying face down in the snow, he mumbled with a smiling face.

    “I don’t even know who she is. I told you. It’s a damn shitty neighborhood.”

    He looked up at me.

    He was begging for mercy, mercy that wasn’t even his to ask for.

    I looked at the woman.

    She, however, didn’t seem willing to accept that mercy.

    She ignored me and pulled the man up from the ground, slapping him so hard that it echoed, then kissed him.

    “... Hah.”

    I felt my heart grow cold.

    “Leave.”

    The couple, who had narrowly escaped death, hurriedly made their way toward their snowmobile.

    I followed them and heard their conversation.

    “Where are you going?”

    “I told you. We’re going to Incheon.”

    “Are you going to kill more people there?”

    “I won’t anymore. I mean, if I have to, I will. But I don’t know. I won’t join any more gang groups like that. You’re a soldier too, right? You know how it goes? When you’re alone, it’s impossible, but when you’re in a group, you do things you wouldn’t normally do.”

    “...”

    For a brief moment, I actually sympathized with the words of this young man.

    I raised my rifle and took a step back.

    The man got on the snowmobile, and the woman climbed on behind him, glancing at me cautiously.

    After a moment, the snowmobile roared to life and tore through the snow, leaving my territory behind.

    It wasn’t over yet.

    There was a reason I had let them go.

    I had a calculation.

    The snowmobile had barely any fuel left, and the little fuel they had was siphoned off while delivering food. No matter what, they would soon run out of fuel and freeze to death in the -22°C cold.

    But the temperature had risen slightly.

    It was now -18°C.

    Though they were still the same people...

    Even so, the faint warmth of the sun felt real.

    With my eyes closed, I felt the sun’s rays briefly on my eyelids as I listened to the fading roar of the snowmobile. It wasn’t long before the sound stopped.

    They had run out of fuel.

    I watched, expecting the inevitable.

    The result was clear.

    They would try to arm themselves and attack me.

    They would try to kill me to pave the way for their survival.

    In a world on the brink of collapse, humans were no different from beasts.

    “?”

    The result that unfolded before me was unexpected.

    The young lovers, who had chosen the path of murder as their way of life, didn’t head towards my territory.

    Instead, they hobbled away, leaning on each other, trudging through the blizzard-covered tundra.

    I could hear their refreshing laughter, even from afar.

    Vroom!

    The couple appeared before me, now on a motorcycle, having somehow made their way through the snow.

    They stared at me.

    I tossed a gallon of synthetic oil and a package containing some hand warmers and a little food in front of them.

    “What, what’s this?”

    “Incheon’s that way. If the road’s covered by snow, use the signs and abandoned cars to guide yourself. There should be a new sign marking the turnoff for Incheon.”

    “Why are you doing this all of a sudden?”

    I glanced at the woman, who had been hostile towards me all along.

    She wasn’t particularly pretty, but she definitely had a cute side to her.

    I spoke as I looked at her.

    “There’s a child.”

    I watched them leave.

    The snowmobile, now fueled with the lifeblood of survival, zipped through the tundra with more energy and grace, disappearing from my sight.

    I turned my attention back to my bunker.

    Have I grown old?

    Or has wearing the armband, even for just a short while, made mercy become second nature to me?

    I don’t know.

    I just hope this moment of whimsy or weakness doesn’t come back to haunt me.

    It had been three years and three months since the war began.

    The days were growing warmer.