NoveLight ™
My bunker’s location was carefully chosen after surveying countless sites across the country.
The main bunker is situated on a hill that’s more of a large knoll than a mountain. The rear of the hill forms a steep cliff-like slope that drops into a valley, while the opposite side features a seemingly gentle incline. In reality, the rolling terrain is littered with small mounds that disrupt visibility.
It’s not exactly ideal for defense, but it’s perfect for evading detection.
The hill provides excellent vantage points for observation, a handy bonus.
In short, the terrain prioritizes stealth and reconnaissance over raw defensibility.
That the people Cho Sung-yong brought didn’t venture into my area was only natural.
At a glance, the area appears barren and devoid of anything worth investigating. It’s an unremarkable patch of land, with no apparent reason to dig deeper.
They concentrated their search near the old U.S. military base with its abandoned airstrip and spread out westward and southward.
Day One:
They pitched tents and lit fires.
While food was scarce, unlike Seoul, this area had plenty of material to burn. Judging by their behavior, they seemed pleased with that.
However, as night fell, the temperature plunged to -18°C.
Day Two:
The group began searching nearby villages.
A small group of middle-aged women wandered close to my territory. They didn’t find anything.
They hovered near one of the dummy bunker entrances but didn’t do more than that.
The entrance was sealed with dirt and rocks. Finding it would’ve required shovels and effort, but the cold, cutting winds unique to my area eventually drove them away.
“What is this place, a graveyard? Why does it feel so eerie? And what’s with this damn wind?”
This was one of their comments, picked up by my surveillance devices.
Day Three:
They completely lost track, wandering far off the mark.
This time, they ventured into the expansive rice fields and wooded hills to the east, far from my bunker.
Ironically, Cho Sung-yong’s truck returned to the golf course that day.
People started voicing complaints and frustrations.
I couldn’t hear their words directly, but it wasn’t hard to guess what they were saying. They were likely pleading for an end to this pointless mission.
The truck’s attached loudspeakers boomed across the area:
“Please remain calm, dear citizens. A bus will be arriving shortly. Just hold on a little longer. Warm homes and meals await you!”
Afterward, Cho’s truck left the scene, followed by the lightweight armored vehicle that had been parked in the middle of the golf course.
What remained were the 100 or so civilians he had brought along.
At that point, I still couldn’t understand Cho Sung-yong’s intentions.
Why had he released nearly 100 people into the wilderness?
Why was he going to such lengths to capture just me?
While paranoia might explain part of it, I suspected there was another reason.
Day Four:
The bus didn’t come.
Not a single radio transmission.
Cho Sung-yong and his team had, quite literally, vanished.
The people left behind waited in makeshift tents, huddling around weak fires, clinging to the hope of a promised bus.
But slowly, and with growing certainty, they realized their fate.
They had been abandoned.
Cho Sung-yong had brought them here as a diversion, for his amusement, and then discarded them in the wilderness.
As they stood on the frozen ground, faces hollow and gaunt, they began to realize the truth.
They were expendable.
Amid the biting cold, their faces turned to one another, blank with shock and confusion.
Their voices rose in whispers and murmurs, seeking answers where none existed.
One by one, they began to break.
*
The first reaction from the people left behind was anger.
“YAAAAAAH! CHO SUNG-YOOOONG!!!!”
A furious shout echoed across the golf course.
Some of the armed men gathered and stared northward, their frustration plain on their faces. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but it seemed a few were strongly advocating for heading north to confront Cho Sung-yong.
While the men vented their rage, the women sat around dwindling fires, talking quietly or standing beside the men, arms linked, listening.
By the afternoon, the group had split into two factions.
Some wanted to stay and wait for Cho Sung-yong’s return, while others seemed determined to leave.
Voices rose in heated arguments on both sides.
While they clashed, I logged into the community forum.
I’d always been curious about one thing:
Who or what exactly are these "Pioneers," "Pioneer Corps," and "Pioneer Squads"?
At first, they all seemed like part of the same organization, but over time, I’d noticed nuances in their hierarchy and objectives.
SKELTON: What exactly is the "Pioneer Corps"? Does anyone know?
As a relatively unpopular user, I didn’t expect many responses right away, so I occupied myself with other tasks while waiting.
Beep.
The battery tester indicated that the Javelin's battery was fully charged at last.
After considerable effort, I’d succeeded in recharging it. Whether it would function properly still needed to be tested, likely at the Sniper’s hideout.
It wasn’t enough for the battery to simply hold a charge—I needed to see if the Javelin could maintain stable voltage over time.
I packed the fully charged battery into my bag and returned to my laptop to find a few comments had been posted.
Roka_hun: Isn’t it the organization that manages the Pioneers?
keystone: Those bastards? Yeah, they’re the ones who manage the Pioneers. Total scumbags, every one of them.
unicorn18: What about your SUNBI account, lol?
“…It’s not me,” I muttered.
The clearest explanation came from the user known as "Reporter Hyung."
Whether he’d seen my post or had been planning to write about the Pioneer Corps independently, shortly after my question, he uploaded a detailed post titled:
Reporter Hyung: About the Pioneer Corps.txt
What I’d vaguely suspected was now confirmed in stark clarity.
The Pioneer Corps wasn’t a bold organization reclaiming wastelands and bringing life back to barren lands, as its name might suggest.
It was a disposal unit—a group tasked with selecting and discarding surplus people from the cities by dumping them in hostile, uninhabitable territories.
Colonel Choi, the group Defender and I dealt with, and now Cho Sung-yong—they all fit within this framework.
They’re a system designed to throw useless humans into wastelands where they’d tear each other apart.
Cho Sung-yong likely didn’t start out this way. As the saying goes, a small thief grows into a great thief. He probably began with smaller acts of disposal and gradually escalated to the point where he now casually discarded entire groups of people into the wilderness.
The abandoned group was still out there, debating their next move.
Should they head north? Or stay and wait for the bus?
A man who insisted on staying was especially loud and aggressive, his actions and demeanor radiating hostility.
Perhaps cowed by his intensity, the others failed to reach any consensus and eventually retreated to their tents.
Another day passed.
Someone must have died during the night.
I saw people carrying a stiff, frozen body out of a tent and hauling it over the ridge.
The death seemed to galvanize the group. Those advocating for leaving gained momentum, and most people sided with them.
By the end of the day, only about ten people remained. This number dwindled further until, finally, there was only one man left.
It was the same man who’d shouted so loudly the day before that his voice had echoed across the entire golf course.
He was likely in his fifties, with a broad, sunken face that hinted at past weight he’d lost. His thin frame belied an odd vitality; every movement was exaggerated, brimming with energy.
He hurled curses at the departing group before settling beside a fire next to his tent.
Was he truly waiting for Cho Sung-yong to return?
What unwavering faith.
I suddenly found myself with an unexpected neighbor, though I didn’t attempt to make contact.
There was always the possibility that he was a plant, a trap set by Cho Sung-yong.
If that were the case, it presented an opportunity of its own.
I could test how he would react to the sound of a generator at this range.
Colonel Choi’s group had been too close for meaningful observation, and during the last cold snap, my smoke signals had been too obvious.
What concerned me most was the noise.
While I could barely hear the generator from his position, there are people in this world with sharper hearing than mine.
Waiting for the Perfect Weather:
The temperature remained below freezing, though it had steadily risen in recent days. The man held out stubbornly in his solitary tent.
How much food did he have left?
Not much, from the looks of it.
I saw him boiling one of those protein bars that tasted like dog food, mixed with budding weeds of indeterminate origin in a scavenged pot.
That evening:
Dark clouds gathered in the north, and sleet began falling after nightfall.
The bad weather I’d been waiting for had arrived.
I started the generator.
How would he react?
He didn’t.
Even as the generator roared to life, powerful enough to make my bunker vibrate, he didn’t so much as flinch.
I stepped outside to observe him.
Amid the falling sleet, the generator’s sound was faint, nearly drowned out by the wind and rain.
But then, gunfire rang out in the north.
Bang! Bang-bang! Bang!
The man was listening to the gunshots.
Gunfire from the north—the direction his group had left, the people he had once traveled with.
The next morning:
The storm passed, and a bright, clear day greeted me.
The temperature had risen dramatically, the thermometer now reading 10°C.
Amid birdsong, the man emerged from his tent.
He stood still for a long time, gazing northward, before suddenly breaking into song.
It wasn’t a pop tune but something more akin to a classical aria.
He wasn’t particularly good, but it seemed to be a song he enjoyed.
After finishing his performance, he picked up a stick, climbed the ridge, and began surveying the golf course.
Moments later, he crouched down and started clearing away grass.
Curious, I looked through my binoculars.
“Huh?”
Beneath the overgrown weeds was a hole.
Even I hadn’t known it was there.
Not just one—he methodically uncovered several holes, restoring the golf course to its pre-apocalyptic state.
The man started playing golf.
His swings were impressive.
Even as a layman, I could tell he was skilled.
But the neglected course was a poor stage for his talents.
His ball frequently landed in overgrown grass, ricocheted off branches, or disappeared into craters filled with garbage from the abandoned U.S. military base.
Each time, he cursed loudly but never lost the look of pure joy fixed on his face.
Watching his exhilaration, I came to a conclusion:
This man wasn’t one of Cho Sung-yong’s lackeys.
He had stayed behind of his own will.
But why?
To wait for the bus?
Unlikely. He didn’t seem to believe in its arrival any more than the others did.
Perhaps his insistence on staying had been a lie—a convenient excuse to indulge in this solitary luxury.
Here he was, enjoying an 18-billion-won country club all to himself. A privilege even the wealthiest couldn’t have dreamed of.
Finally, after several missteps, he sunk his last ball into the final hole.
His solo round of golf was over.
“Alright!”
A triumphant cheer rang out, full of vigor.
But as he looked around, his expression began to fade.
No one was there.
No caddy, no gallery, no fellow players.
His smile wavered, then disappeared entirely.
Then, before it could fully vanish, he pulled a pistol from his pocket.
Still smiling faintly, he pulled the trigger.
Bang!
The last golfer collapsed.
Silence returned to the golf course.
A few sparrows gathered like spectators but quickly flew away.
*
Nothing in the world is truly useless.
Even a piece of human garbage like Cho Sung-yong could sometimes serve a purpose.
chouchou: Someone, please help. The Pioneer Corps is outside!
It was Chouchou.
I’d heard unpleasant stories about him.
After I left, he reportedly got into a fight with Dies Irae while trying to take the girl's corpse.
If other comrades hadn’t intervened, he might have been tossed into the flames along with the other bodies.
Though I wasn’t a popular user in the community—more of a lower-tier member—I was still part of it.
But Chouchou? He was no longer even considered a comrade.
Despite posting stories that would have easily gone viral in terms of views, no one was leaving comments on his posts anymore.
“...”
They said I wasn’t great at using the internet.
Maybe they were right.
But this time, I felt something—a hunch.
SKELTON: Who’s attacking your bunker?
For the first time, I commented on Chouchou’s post, which had been silently ignored by the community under some unspoken agreement.
chouchou: It’s a guy named Cho Sung-yong!
Chouchou responded immediately.
SKELTON: The commander of the 22nd Pioneer Corps?
chouchou: How do you know? Yeah, that’s him! It’s urgent, man. I’m in the Gimpo area—can you make it here?
SKELTON: That’s close. How did he find you?
chouchou: The sewer pipes! He kept talking about the smell of shit and then found me through that!
SKELTON: Did you mess with any of the corpses nearby?
chouchou: What the hell? This is urgent! No time for chit-chat! Where are you, Skelton? Are you nearby? Can you help?
I intentionally delayed my reply.
As expected, he messaged me directly.
Message from chouchou: I, uh… touched a woman’s body.
SKELTON: No, not that. Did you mess with their belongings?
While he tried to privately explain himself, I replied openly on the public board.
chouchou: Guns! I took their guns! But what’s this about a woman’s body? I didn’t touch anyone! Are you messing with me right now?
SKELTON: Sure thing~
I’d said what I needed to say.
Now the other users in the forum would know about Cho Sung-yong’s name and methods—including his bizarre obsession with tracking people through waste.
Chouchou, of course, was livid.
chouchou: Skelton, you son of a bitch! I’m on the verge of dying, and you’re messing with me? I know what you look like, man! If I survive this, I’ll hunt you down first! You little worm-looking piece of shit!
In the past, a comment like that would’ve made my blood boil.
But I’d gotten used to this. Like a dog that learns the tricks of its master after three months, I found it more amusing than anything.
Was that why I felt so calm?
SKELTON: Sure, sure~
Somehow, I’d reached a level of Zen.
And that Zen elicited a completely unexpected response.
Message from Defender: Ohhh~
“...?”
That was only the beginning.
Anonymous848: Damn, Skelton can get it done when he wants to!
Anonymous458: Why didn’t you show us this side of you earlier?
DragonC: Whoa, is this guy actually cool?
Dies_Irae69: Told you, didn’t I? Skelton’s a decent guy IRL.
keystone: Glad I unblocked him.
Applause rolled in like thunder.
It was the first time I’d received such a warm reception.
But amidst the praise, one message stood out—a name I hadn’t seen in a while.
Message from 183cm88kg18cm: John Nae-non .
“Huh?”
It was him. John Nae-non.
The self-proclaimed hunter-turned-storyteller who had long since faded into obscurity.
My heart sank.
What did this mean? Why was he back?
TL Note: Previously, I used "Chochol" in translations, but "Chouchou" feels more natural and aligns better with the stylistic tone of the name. Therefore, from now on, it will be "Chouchou."