Chapter 148: 1.5 Times Faster

“Got it. I’ll be there soon.”

—Yep. But for now, this stays between you and me, right, boss?

“Yeah.”

—Understood.

When Junho ended the communication, Baek Hail casually asked, “Why? Something happen?”

“It’s nothing major. I’ll tell you separately later.”

“Yeah?”

Baek Hail looked doubtful at Junho’s answer, but soon nodded and turned his gaze away.

“Anyway, there are a lot of girls here. Ah, is that young lady Assistant Manager Yoon? Special Forces?”

“Yes. Her skills are no joke. She helped me a lot a few years ago too. Oh, and unlike an amateur like me, she’s a real firearms expert, so she’ll be helpful to you too, boss.”

At that moment, Yoon Seolhee felt the two of them looking at her and approached.

“Hello, sir. It’s nice to meet you. My name is Yoon Seolhee. I’ve been dispatched here under Representative Kang Baekho’s orders from Kangho Resort.”

At her endlessly polite greeting, Baek Hail’s face brightened.

“Well, it’s good to meet you. I’m Baek Hail. I fix machines here at the shelter, do construction work, that kind of thing.”

“Boss Hail is our shelter’s mechanic and engineer. He made every air rifle I use, and the ones we’ll be sending to the resort. Most of the KP9 replicas and equipment you’ll be using from now on were also made by him.”

“Ah, I see. That’s truly impressive. I’ll be in your care from now on, sir.”

“Sir, my foot. Don’t worry about that. If you need equipment, weapons, anything at all, just tell me. I can handle most things.”

“Understood, sir.”

“Anyway, you worked hard getting all the way here.”

While Baek Hail smiled warmly at Yoon Seolhee, who remained polite to the very end, Junho told Park Deokcheol to look after the Blossom members until dinner, then boarded the electric cart alone.

***

After completing a full-body disinfection at the shelter entrance, including his clothing and equipment, Junho quickly showered and headed for the control room.

“You’re here, boss?”

“Yeah.”

Given the matter at hand, Junho skipped greetings with Yoon Youngsu and sat down in front of the main monitor.

“You said the government uploaded a video? What site? Is it American?”

Before the regression, Junho had heard that even after the apocalypse began, there were a few internet sites that kept operating for quite a long time. All of them had headquarters or servers in the United States or Europe.

However, before the regression, after three or four months had passed since the apocalypse began, Junho had never accessed the internet again, so he did not know the details.

“Well, about that. It’s the National Library archive.”

When Yoon Youngsu said that while opening a new bag of potato chips, Junho narrowed one eye.

“What? You mean Korea’s National Library?”

“Yes. Right now, it’s the only thing in Korea running stably. There are a few other sites, but they all work and then don’t work, on and off.”

“...Fine, let’s say that’s true. Then were there people normally using that library archive? Is there a board or something?”

“Yes. Look.”

Yoon Youngsu worked the keyboard, and under a huge, blunt banner that simply said “Board,” dozens of post titles appeared.

“Maybe one or two posts a day? I think a little over fifty people use it. All of them are Earthlink users like us.”

There were very few people in Korea subscribed to Earthlink, the low-orbit satellite communications service, so the fact that roughly fifty of them were still alive and accessing the internet was a little surprising.

But in Korea, a small country where high-speed internet infrastructure had already been laid nationwide, someone subscribing to Earthlink at all meant most subscribers were either quite wealthy or lived somewhere remote enough that wired internet lines did not reach them.

It might have been only natural that their survival rate was higher than other people’s.

“Usually, it’s mostly people whining about their lives, bullshit, nonsense, and pointless crap. Even if they’re unstable, G-site or wiki boards still have more users. Or people just go straight to the American wiki. But this morning, this post went up.”

Yoon Youngsu clicked the post at the very top.

The author was <Government of the Republic of Korea>, and it had been posted a little after nine in the morning.

“When I saw the username, I figured some lunatic had posted more garbage, but apparently that wasn’t it.”

Listening to Yoon Youngsu, Junho read the post uploaded by <Government of the Republic of Korea> with sunken eyes.

The body itself was not long, so he finished reading it quickly, then played the low-quality 360p video as well.

“.......”

After watching the roughly two-minute video to the end, Junho spoke to Yoon Youngsu, who was staring at him with an unusually serious expression, unlike his normally cheerful self.

“The government did upload this.”

“Right? I knew it....”

“But it’s bullshit, nonsense, and a garbage post.”

“Yep...?”

Junho replayed the middle of the video, the part where fully armed soldiers marched somewhere that seemed to be the Jeju naval base.

“Look at the soldiers’ faces.”

“Their faces? Why would—huh?”

Yoon Youngsu noticed something and widened his eyes.

“Do those people look active-duty to you?”

“No. Now that I look closely, they look really worn down. Most of them are in their mid-thirties or over forty? Whoa....”

Yoon Youngsu pushed up his glasses as he looked at the monitor, dumbfounded.

And then.

“Right. Nine times out of ten, they aren’t active-duty. Ha. Those government sons of bitches. So that was all a lie.”

Junho was dumbfounded too.

Today, he had learned a “truth” he had not known before the regression.

“Huh?”

As Yoon Youngsu tilted his head, Junho spoke calmly.

“The recapture operation. That is absolutely going to fail. I told you once before, right? In the prophetic dream I had, the government tried to recapture the capital region....”

Junho told Yoon Youngsu what he had heard around this time before the regression, while replaying the scene of soldiers boarding warships with the naval base in the background.

“...They said the main units of the Republic of Korea Armed Forces and Special Forces had gone to Jeju. The rumor was that those units were being reorganized to recapture the capital region.”

“Whoa. Then that was a lie? In reality, they rounded up people on Jeju who had completed military service and enlisted them?”

“Exactly. No wonder it didn’t make sense.”

In the early stages of the crisis, several main units of the national military had rushed in to reclaim Seoul too hastily and been brutally crushed.

To begin with, the main strength of the Republic of Korea Armed Forces was all stationed within a few dozen kilometers of the capital region, and most of them had been wrecked early on. So what main units had gone to Jeju with the government?

On top of that, they had said there were as many as one hundred thousand combat troops, excluding the navy. Was he supposed to believe that half of the little over two hundred thousand active-duty army soldiers had survived and gone to Jeju?

Even if the Marines were included, Junho had thought before the regression that the number did not quite make sense.

And now he had learned the truth for certain.

“In reality, there probably aren’t even tens of thousands. And most of them are probably reservists or civil defense.”

“Doesn’t Jeju have Marines?”

“It does. But if you were them, would you send the Marines, your best elites, to the mainland right now? Those government bastards?”

“Absolutely not. They haven’t even completely reclaimed Jeju yet.”

In that situation, the government officials who cared only about saving themselves would never put the few remaining active-duty Marines into a mainland recapture operation.

Those soldiers had to protect them, not the people.

“Fucking bastards....”

Junho cursed the government officials who were not shown in the video, but who had probably already been raising glasses in a safe place at the time that scene was filmed, certain of their success.

Because he knew that most of those reservists and civil defense men boarding the warships with rigid expressions would die or become zombies.

And the bigger problem was that their sacrifice would not be the end of it.

“Youngsu.”

“Yes.”

At Junho’s heavily sunken voice, Yoon Youngsu straightened his posture.

“Let’s make as many turrets and attack drones as we can. And we can mount rifles on the turrets instead of air rifles, right?”

“......!”

Yoon Youngsu flinched, then soon nodded.

“Yes. Turrets are fixed, so it should be possible. But rifles have much stronger recoil than air rifles, so Baek Sensei will probably have a harder time than me. He may have to redesign them from the beginning. But what are you going to do about the noise? We’re short on bullets too.”

The biggest reasons they had mounted modified air rifles on the shelter’s turrets and attack drones were noise and ammunition.

If they started firing ordinary rifles several times louder than air rifles, it was obvious zombies would swarm in. On top of that, even Junho and Junhyeok barely had enough 5.56mm rounds to use themselves.

“It’s fine now. Even if we fire from the guard posts, the gunshots won’t carry well beyond one kilometer. And there are no longer any targets inside that range that can threaten us.”

“Ah! That’s right! You took over everything around here, boss!”

That was exactly why Junho had somehow pacified every area within three or four kilometers of their shelter and safety zone.

At least in and around their shelter, even if they fired ordinary rifles, zombies or looter groups would no longer come swarming.

“We’ll have to raid a reserve-force unit for ammunition.”

Namyangju did not have any combat units that could be called main forces, but it did have a reserve mobilization division.

And Junho had already confirmed the location and scale of that mobilization division when he was building the shelter.

Of course, since it was in the capital region, there was a possibility that most of its supplies had been consumed after the apocalypse began.

'If that were true, the Daeseong syndicate bastards wouldn’t have planned to raid it before the regression.'

There was no way a national-level organized crime syndicate, one that had high-ranking public officials and influential figures from Guri and Namyangju with them, would have planned something like that with no information.

They must have done it because supplies were definitely still there.

“Well, that’s something you’ll handle, boss. But why suddenly make more turrets and drones and mount rifles on them?”

Yoon Youngsu tilted his head.

They had already cleared almost all the zombies around the shelter, and even if a looter group came, their current setup would be more than enough to repel them.

But the regressor, who knew the future, stared at the monitor with a hardened face and spoke quietly.

“Those soldiers are going to Incheon, Busan, and Ulsan. And most of them will die or scatter. And then....”

“......!?”

“The weapons those soldiers used will flow into survivors’ hands.”

Around this summer, firearms used by the national military would begin circulating among survivors.

And on top of that.

“A lot of weapons will be released in Incheon and Busan in particular, and they’ll spread quickly. And from above, the military units stationed along the fence line will come down.”

North Korean soldiers or people from the North never crossed the fence line.

But the military units whose duty had been to guard that place even amid the chaos would eventually leave their assigned sectors and move south because of the food problem. That would happen this year.

Of course, before the regression, no one had lived here until Junho discovered the shelter site, which had been a pension then.

But unlike before the regression, his territory had expanded, so he could not exclude the possibility that they might pass nearby.

Most decisively.

“Even if they don’t come to us, military units will pass through Yeongho-ri and the Bukhan River side. So we need to prepare.”

Until now, he had not known the exact timing, but now he could roughly infer it.

Junho had to “upgrade” the combat power of their shelter.

That was also why he had brought combat personnel led by Yoon Seolhee.

“Stronger and more complete than we are now... we need to upgrade.”

Yoon Youngsu was nodding at Junho’s words when something seemed to occur to him, and he hurriedly spoke.

“Oh, but boss!”

“......?”

“Since we’re at it, let’s upgrade Akina too.”

“The AI?”

“Yes! While you were gone, I did a rough pass at it, but our computing resources are honestly right at saturation. Even the drone control process has to handle sensor feeds and trajectory calculations at the same time, and if we add more turrets on top of that... whew! Plus there’s the power issue too. At minimum, we need an acceleration module like a dedicated inference NPU....”

“Enough. So what exactly do I need to do? And we have spare equipment and parts.”

“We need to use those when something really goes wrong with our server and system. It’s impossible to get new equipment and parts now, isn’t it?”

“...So?”

“You said you opened a route to Gwangju this time, right? There’s a data center I know over there. Originally, they were planning to finish setup and open in the second half of 2024, but as far as I know, the equipment and facilities were already all brought in. So please go raid it. Then we can definitely upgrade. I’ll take responsibility and make our Akina’s performance 1.5 times faster. It isn’t red, so three times faster is impossible.”

Yoon Youngsu’s eyes sparkled.

Apparently, they needed to properly upgrade not only the shelter’s offensive power, but the entire shelter itself.