Hiding a House in the Apocalypse-Chapter 107: Home

I reached a stream.

It was the height of summer, and the water levels were higher than usual.

Following the stream, I made my way toward a lonely hill rising in the distance.

Back in the early days of the war, it had been a barren wasteland—not a single tree in sight.

Now, it had transformed into a lush landscape, covered in grass, shrubs, and even fully grown trees.

Despite being scorched by nuclear fallout, nature had reclaimed it within just a few years.

It was nothing short of awe-inspiring.

Now, it was time to cross the stream.

Normally, I’d use a shallow ford, but with the increased water levels, the stepping stones I always used were submerged.

Still, the current wasn’t strong, and the water wasn’t deep.

Following past experience, I simply waded across.

An incline appeared before me.

"..."

I checked my pistol and began ascending slowly.

There was no reason for my bunker to have been compromised.

But still, a lot had happened in the past month while I was in Jeju.

The Legion faction had collapsed, and now unleashed hunters could have stumbled into my territory.

Cheon Young-jae and Ha Tae-hoon were powerful hunters, but a single unlucky bullet could kill anyone.

I had to stay prepared for all possibilities.

Silently, I moved toward my territory.

At the end of the incline, I took cover behind the trees.

Carefully, I peeked past the slope to get a view of my bunker.

It was a sight I had seen countless times before.

But something was off.

"...Huh?"

This wasn’t what I expected.

"What the hell is this?"

I muttered without thinking.

What was supposed to be my hidden sanctuary was now surrounded by a massive concrete wall.

I quickened my pace.

As I approached the wall, the low rumble of an engine filled the air.

Bwaaaaang—

A drill excavator.

The sound of heavy machinery rumbled from behind the wall.

And in between the engine noise, I heard voices.

"Stop! Stop! That’s enough!"

Cheon Young-jae’s voice.

The moment I recognized it, I shouted over the wall.

"Cheon Young-jae!"

A brief pause.

Then, a distant murmur of confusion.

"Huh? What the hell?"

I shouted again.

"It’s me! Park Gyu!"

This time, his response was clearer.

"What?! Senior Park?! You're back?!"

"Yeah!"

"Hold on, stand in front of the gate. There's a camera."

"What? This is my house!"

"Just do it, man."

Grumbling, I walked toward the entrance.

"Huh?"

I stopped in front of a door I didn’t recognize.

It looked like a repurposed industrial entrance, but well-built.

There was a shadowed gap where a hidden camera was likely installed.

The moment I stepped into view, a beep sounded.

Clunk—

The door unlocked.

An automatic door.

And not just any—a heavy-duty electromagnetic lock.

"Hmmm."

Not bad.

Whoever did this had decent skills.

Beyond the door, familiar faces waited—sweating and exhausted from hard labor.

"Ha Tae-hoon. Cheon Young-jae."

My senior and my junior.

"How did you get here?"

"Why are you back so soon?"

They had a lot of questions.

But first, I needed some answers of my own.

I raised a finger and pointed at the massive concrete wall.

"Okay. What the hell is this?"

*

The fire crackled softly, logs breaking apart as the flames consumed them.

Three hunters sat around the fire, each holding a beer in one hand.

Skewered fish were roasting nearby, arranged in a tight circle on sticks, mirroring the group around the fire.

"...Is that so?"

I had been through a lot—but so had they.

"It was those academy bastards."

Not long after I left for Jeju, a group of intruders infiltrated my territory.

Strangely, they didn’t take or destroy anything.

The raid happened during a heavy downpour at midnight—no doubt timed to use the bad weather as cover.

Yet, instead of looting, they searched only the dummy bunker I had built long ago and left without exploring further.

One overly curious intruder accidentally tripped a tripwire I had set up years ago, but since it had been left unattended for so long, it failed to detonate.

Still, the fact that a trap existed was enough to convince them to retreat.

And the final nail in the coffin?

At the center of that abandoned bunker, standing proudly on an elevated stone platform like a throne—was a single toilet bowl.

A relic I had deliberately placed there long ago.

The intruders saw this, assumed my bunker had been long abandoned and filled with traps, and left without a second thought.

It was delayed karma for all my past preparations.

The next day, Ha Tae-hoon, who had been living near Rebecca’s hut, noticed a mess of footprints.

He quickly notified Cheon Young-jae.

"See? You’ve got great instincts, Senior. Or maybe you’re just lucky."

Neither of them could leave like I had.

Nor did they want to uproot their lives and start over somewhere new.

So, they came up with a third option to secure my territory.

That option?

A concrete wall.

A massive one, surrounding my entire domain.

And they had used up almost all of the supplies in storage to build it.

"Don’t tell me... you used up all the cement?"

The moment I pointed this out, Cheon Young-jae raised his hand.

"I knew about a hidden cement stash."

He casually took a bite of his roasted fish and continued.

"Jung-ho told me about it."

Ah.

Defender.

Of course.

Unlike me, Defender was well-connected.

He probably knew more about my surroundings than I did.

For all I knew, he might have even known about the old men's territory—the one I had once fled from in terror.

"I handled most of the construction."

This time, Ha Tae-hoon spoke up.

His work was impressive—even from a carpenter’s perspective like mine.

So I had been curious who had led the project.

"Didn’t I tell you before? My father ran a construction company."

"They actually teach this stuff?"

"My dad thought college was a waste of time. He wanted me to learn on-site."

"Pretty open-minded."

"Nah, he just had that self-made businessman’s arrogance. Thought college grads were useless."

"And yet, you still ended up in the academy?"

"That was my mom’s doing. Thanks to her, I became a hunter instead. But looking back, I guess that’s the only reason I survived."

He wasn’t wrong.

Hunters weren’t just combat-trained—we had fought and bled in the warzones of China.

We had learned survival the hard way.

For a while, we sat around the fire in silence.

Eating our grilled fish, sipping beer.

It tasted a bit off—but within tolerable limits.

I stared into the flickering flames, lost in thought.

There was something strange about all this.

Me, sitting among others, feeling comfortable.

Even... safe.

No, not quite safe.

More like... reassured.

Looking back, I had always worked in teams.

Back in school, we moved as one.

On the battlefield, we had to fight in perfect synchronization.

I had spent years in collective survival.

Maybe... this solo survivalist ideology I had clung to was never really my thing.

I still believed solo survival was statistically safer than group survival.

But circumstances had changed.

And stubbornly clinging to old beliefs would only get me killed.

The world had changed.

So I needed to change too.

There was no point in dying stubbornly over an outdated idea.

Survival itself was the only thing that truly mattered.

Jeju had taught me that lesson well.

The method didn’t matter.

Only the result did.

I leaned back in my camping chair, relaxing as time flowed by.

"Alright, I’m heading out."

The gathering dispersed as Cheon Young-jae got up.

"Huh? I thought you lived here?"

"Nah. I’m still staying in the lower district."

"Isn’t that dangerous?"

"No mutations go there. Safer than dealing with people, actually."

He flashed a cryptic smirk before vanishing into the night, heading toward the outer wall.

Now, it was just me and Ha Tae-hoon.

The atmosphere turned slightly awkward.

After all, he was my senior.

Before the silence could stretch into discomfort, he suddenly spoke.

"I still live there, you know."

"Rebecca’s hut?"

He nodded.

But his tone suggested he wasn’t happy about it.

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"I don’t like wooden houses."

"It’s not that bad, though. Comes with a sauna."

"Koreans should live in reinforced concrete."

"Huh. Thought traditional homes were thatched roofs and tiled houses."

"Not anymore."

"Come over to my place sometime."

I decided to check out his hut.

A lot had changed.

The most noticeable change was the wooden deck, complete with chairs and a table.

But looking closer, there were far more subtle but critical modifications.

The place was now rigged with high-tech surveillance equipment—motion sensors, cameras, and security systems, installed with paranoid precision.

Even the steep slope behind the house was lined with tripwire-linked Claymores.

A stark contrast to my own approach, which relied on natural terrain for defense.

And then, I noticed the biggest change of all.

The sauna room was gone.

"Wait, hold on—"

My once-beloved sauna had been repurposed into a drone storage unit.

"Senior Ha, you’re not using the sauna?"

"Nope. Blood pressure's too high."

He glanced at my shocked expression, then smirked.

"What? Was I not supposed to get rid of it?"

"No, I just... thought you’d actually use it."

At that moment, I understood everything.

The one who had turned my hidden sanctuary into a fortress...

It was this man.

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Ha Tae-hoon had taken the lead in remodeling my territory to his own liking.

"Let me show you something good."

He led me inside his house.

This translation is the intellectual property of Novelight.

Near the terrace, I saw a shelf neatly stocked with familiar weapons.

A mortar launcher.

"A mortar?"

Hunters rarely used military-grade weapons.

Most of us stuck to rifles, and anything heavier than a machine gun was considered impractical.

Why?

Because when high firepower was needed, Awakened abilities were much more efficient.

In other words, artillery was always left to the soldiers.

And in fact, the military killed far more monsters with cannons than we ever did with guns.

"Got it as a throw-in when I bought some drone bombs."

"Will we ever need it?"

"Maybe. If someone attacks us with mortars, we’ll need to fire back."

"Do you even know how to use it?"

"Learned from some soldiers."

Ha Tae-hoon then guided me inside.

The interior was surprisingly untouched—almost identical to when Rebecca had first built it.

But the house itself wasn’t what he wanted to show me.

A large blueprint was spread out on a table bigger than the bed.

"What’s this?"

Ha Tae-hoon grinned proudly and pointed at it.

"My new house."

I studied the design.

It was a detailed plan for a one-story, reinforced concrete home.

At the bottom, I spotted a signature—Ha Tae-hoon’s, written in meticulously neat handwriting.

"..."

It was surprisingly professional.

No, it was beyond professional.

I had experience with construction myself, so I knew.

The design complexity was no joke.

For a pre-war construction company, this would be a standard project.

But for an amateur carpenter?

This was a massive challenge.

Even something as simple as plumbing was difficult for me—I had barely managed to install a toilet on an exposed rock platform.

This?

This was on a whole different level.

"Once the outer walls are done, I’ll start building."

Ha Tae-hoon crossed his arms.

"Like I said, Koreans should live in reinforced concrete."

"Cheon Young-jae lives in a tin-roof shack, though."

"He could live in a cave if he had to. The guy can’t handle being around people."

"Cheon Young-jae?"

"He might seem easygoing, but he doesn’t trust anyone. PTSD or something. He can’t put 100% faith in other people."

"That’s... unfortunate."

"Still, it’s useful to have him outside. If we’re ever attacked, it’s good to have eyes on the perimeter."

I nodded. That was true.

But there was one thing I was curious about.

I glanced at the blueprint again, then asked:

"Did you learn all this at home?"

Ha Tae-hoon ran a hand over the blueprint, then let out a bitter chuckle.

"In the end, kids always take after their parents."

He pulled out a cigarette, lighting it with a practiced motion.

"I cut ties with my father a long time ago. But even now, I can feel his influence in me."

His plan wasn’t just about his house.

He intended to upgrade our entire settlement—plumbing, water supply, everything essential for long-term survival.

For someone like me, who had accepted the shift from solo survival to group survival, this was a huge advantage.

I had already planned to improve my plumbing if more people moved in.

Rebecca and Sue were good neighbors.

But ultimately, the more capable your allies were, the better.

Rebecca had her skills—hunting and carpentry.

Sue had her strengths—scouting and sniping.

But in a small community, it was better to have specialists than generalists.

Maybe that was why Dies Irae was so selective about recruits—they had experience running a long-term group.

"Well, that’s everything I wanted to show you."

Ha Tae-hoon smiled and gestured toward my bunker.

"Now, shouldn’t you go check on your sweet home?"

I narrowed my eyes.

"You didn’t mess with it, did you?"

"Of course not. Who would touch it when those academy bastards might return at any moment?"

He patted my shoulder.

"Go enjoy your place. It’s been a while."

Despite everything, he was still my senior.

A bit untrustworthy at times, but always there when it mattered.

I met his gaze and said, sincerely:

"Thanks, senior."

"Tch. I hate being called that."

He smirked, then nodded.

"Anyway, welcome back. Having you on our side makes things a hell of a lot more reassuring. We’ll talk about Jeju later."

I left him behind and headed toward my bunker.

With every step closer, I felt a strange excitement—

Like a kid walking into an amusement park for the first time.

Yeah... a lot had happened.

Too many choices, too many unnecessary truths I had been forced to witness.

Kang Han-min.

Could a person change so much?

I had also formed a connection with Na Hye-in.

If she reconnected to the internet, we’d be able to talk again.

As for that bastard Sparrow from the Red Archive forum...

Someday, I’d pay him back for what he did.

But for now, I almost felt grateful.

After all, he indirectly led me back here.

Creeeak—

The heavy door swung open.

I stepped inside, descending the irregularly shaped steps I had deliberately designed to trip intruders.

At the bottom, I stood still for a moment.

Gazing into the darkness.

Once, this pitch-black abyss had terrified me.

Once, I had thought of it as fate.

But now?

Now, this darkness wrapped around me like a comforting blanket.

I was home.

No, not yet.

Click.

I powered on my computer.

The screen flickered to life.

Welcome to Viva! Apocalypse!

"...Heh."

My fingers danced over the keyboard.

SKELTON: (Breaking News) SKELTON HAS RETURNED!

I refreshed the page, over and over.

No replies yet.

But it didn’t matter.

Leaning back, hands clasped behind my head, I let out a deep breath.

"Haaah..."

Yeah.

I was finally back.

Back home.