He had said he wouldn't sleep, but his body refused to listen.
At some point before dawn, Donghoon lost consciousness. It was less like falling asleep and more like shutting down. He knew that when tension exceeded its limit, the body could forcibly shut itself down. He had seen it in a survival video. Knowing that hadn't been enough to stop it.
When he opened his eyes, a hazy light was coming through the gap in the window. He couldn't tell whether it was morning or afternoon. The sky in this world didn't tell time.
Donghoon sat up. His neck was stiff. His back hurt. That was the price of sleeping against the wall on the office floor.
The hammer was still resting on his lap. Apparently, he hadn't let go even in his sleep.
Donghoon listened. It was quiet. The scraping and crying sounds he'd heard during the night were gone. The novel had said Crawlers were nocturnal. During the day, they hid in dark places. If that was true, now was the time to move.
He pushed the desk away from the door and stepped into the hallway. The building was quiet. He went down the stairs and looked outside from the first-floor entrance.
The city looked the same as yesterday. Collapsed buildings, cracked roads, a gray sky. Nothing had changed. There was no reason it would have.
Donghoon walked.
He needed water. Two of the four bottles of water he'd taken yesterday were already empty. He could make it through today with the remaining two, but there would be nothing left for tomorrow. He needed to find a way to secure water over the long term.
In the novel, the protagonist went around convenience stores and supermarkets in the early days to gather supplies. Then he built a system for collecting rainwater at his base. Donghoon would have to do the same.
He walked two blocks. A small supermarket came into view. Half the sign had fallen off, but the building's structure remained intact. The shutter was down. Donghoon grabbed the bottom and lifted. It was stiff with rust, but it rose. A noise came from it. Donghoon stopped and surveyed his surroundings. There was nothing there. It was daytime, after all.
He went inside.
The supermarket was a mess. Shelves had fallen over, and products were scattered across the floor. But there was something strange.
There was no water.
The bottled-water section was completely empty. Not a single bottle remained on the shelves or floor. Other drinks were still there—soda cans, juice boxes, sports drinks. But the bottled water was gone.
Someone had taken it.
Donghoon stopped. His heart beat a little faster.
Someone had been here. They had come to this supermarket and taken all the bottled water. And they had done it in a fairly organized way. It wasn't the sign of someone rummaging through the shelves. They had specifically picked out the bottled water.
There were survivors.
No. There had been survivors. He didn't know if there still were.
Donghoon looked around the supermarket more carefully. Some canned food remained. Three cans of tuna, two cans of saury, and one can of Spam. He took everything and put it into a plastic bag he'd found.
Then he found something on the floor.
Writing.
Someone had scratched words into the supermarket floor tiles with some kind of object. Dust had covered them, so Donghoon hadn't noticed at first. He crouched down and wiped away the dust.
'Don't go west. Beneath the rift.'
Five characters and three characters. Donghoon stared at the writing for a long time.
It meant not to go west. Because it was beneath the rift. Was the rift in the sky to the west? When he'd seen it from the rooftop, Donghoon hadn't checked its direction. With no sun visible, he had no sense of direction.
Whoever had written this knew the directions. They also knew that beneath the rift was dangerous.
It was the same in the novel. The monster density was highest directly beneath a rift. That made sense, since the monsters descended from it. The protagonist in the novel established his base as far from the rift as possible.
Donghoon stood up.
The person who wrote this hadn't learned it from the novel. They knew from direct experience. Someone who had gone west and returned alive. Or someone who had come from the west.
But he had no way of knowing when the writing had been left. It could have been yesterday or a month ago.
Donghoon left the supermarket.
As he walked, he paid closer attention to his surroundings. Things he hadn't noticed before began to stand out.
An arrow had been painted on a building wall. A red arrow, probably sprayed on with paint. It pointed east—the opposite direction from west. Donghoon followed it.
He walked another three blocks. The arrows appeared from time to time: on building walls, utility poles, and the sides of overturned cars. Someone had marked the route.
Then Donghoon stopped.
There was a barricade where the arrow pointed.
Two cars had been parked crosswise, with sheets of metal and wooden boards attached over them to form a wall. It was about two meters high. A person could climb over it, but it would be difficult for a Crawler. A building stood behind the barricade. It was four stories tall, and every window had been boarded up.
A base. Someone's base.
Donghoon stopped in front of the barricade. He debated whether he should make his presence known. If there were survivors, he needed to meet them. He needed information: the exact state of the world, how much time had passed, and the distribution of the monsters.
But there was no guarantee the survivors would be friendly.
It had been the same in the novel. In the early days of the ruin, people helped one another. But that changed with time. Once supplies ran short, people became more dangerous than monsters.
Donghoon didn't climb over the barricade. Instead, he circled around it. There was more writing on the building wall beside the barricade.
'Survivor base, Sector 3. Hostile acts will be punished by death.'
Donghoon read the words and took a step back.
Punished by death. The words stuck in his mind. This wasn't something an early survivor had written. There were rules, sectors, and force to enforce them. An organized group.
And the expression 'Sector 3.' If they had divided the area into sectors, a considerable amount of time must have passed.
As he backed away, Donghoon thought.
There had been no system of sectors in the early days of the ruin in the novel. The protagonist didn't establish a base and begin gathering people until several months after the ruin. But here, there were already sectors, barricades, and rules.
The timeline didn't match.
Donghoon had opened his eyes yesterday. It had felt as if the ruin had just begun. He thought of the term grace period. But this barricade couldn't have been built in a day or two. The spray-painted arrows and the writing on the supermarket floor had also required time.
This world hadn't just fallen into ruin.
Donghoon looked around again. The landscape that had seemed like nothing but ruins began to look different. The extent to which the buildings had collapsed. The degree of rust on the vehicles in the road. Weeds were growing through cracks in the asphalt. He hadn't noticed them yesterday. He'd been too confused to see them.
This hadn't happened a few days ago.
Several months? No, longer than that.
Donghoon thought of the supermarket again. The supermarket with all its bottled water gone. Most of the canned food had been taken too. The convenience store had been the same. His ability to find water there yesterday had been pure luck. Most of the supplies had already been collected by someone else.
Donghoon stopped walking and looked up at the sky.
The rift was still there. A black hole. A wound embedded between the clouds.
In the novel, the rift had opened on the first day of the ruin. And it hadn't closed. It had remained open. As long as the rift stayed open, monsters would continue to descend.
Donghoon recalled the novel's timeline. The protagonist's story began on the first day of the ruin. A twenty-four-hour grace period. After that, Crawlers, Howlers, and the higher ranks above them appeared in order. The protagonist experienced the entire process from the beginning.
But Donghoon hadn't started at the beginning.
He had been dropped into a world where time had already passed.
The grace period was already over. Crawlers and Howlers were already in this world. Maybe even monsters of higher ranks.
"Fuck."
Donghoon muttered the word.
That didn't mean the novel's knowledge was useless. Monster weaknesses, survival methods, ways to secure a base—those were still valid. But he didn't have time to prepare methodically from the beginning like the protagonist in the novel. Donghoon had been dropped into a game already in progress. While still at level one.
Donghoon moved away from the barricade and decided to return to his base. It was too soon to approach the survivors in Sector 3. He knew too little. First, he had to figure out how far this world had progressed.
On the way back, Donghoon entered a building. The first floor had once been a café. All the glass was shattered, and the tables and chairs had been overturned. A calendar hung on the wall. Donghoon looked at it.
There was a date on the page—the last page that had been turned. It was three years after the date before Donghoon had fallen asleep.
Donghoon stared at the calendar for a long time.
Three years.
Three years had passed since this world fell into ruin.
Donghoon took his hand from the calendar and stepped back. The strength left his legs. He leaned against the wall and slowly sank to the floor.
Donghoon searched his memory. He remembered the flow of time in the novel. He had pulled it out to read whenever he was bored. He had read it dozens of times.
In the first year after the ruin, the protagonist established a base and began leading a group of survivors. In the second year, he came into full-scale conflict with higher-ranked monsters. In the third year, he began to approach the secrets of the rifts. And in the ending, the protagonist closed the rift.
Donghoon knew the ending. He even knew how to close the rift. But that was the story of the novel. He still couldn't be certain that the novel and this world were truly the same.
Donghoon closed his eyes.
He had the novel's knowledge. All the way to the ending. But there was no guarantee this world was exactly the same as the novel. He would have to clash with reality and find out.
Donghoon opened his eyes.
It was fine. A manual was only meant as a reference. Reality was always different from the manual. Donghoon knew that. He'd seen it hundreds of times in survival videos.
Having a manual was good. If things were different, he would adapt with his own body.
Donghoon stood up. Carrying the plastic bag of canned food, he headed back to his base.
When he returned to the base, he entered the fourth-floor office. He closed the door and pushed the desk in front of it. Sitting on the floor, he opened a can of tuna. It took him a while to cut the lid open with a utility knife.
He thought as he ate.
He didn't have enough weapons. One hammer wouldn't cut it. In the novel, the protagonist acquired an axe early on. From a fire station. A fire axe. Light, sharp, and sturdy. Donghoon needed to find a fire station too.
He also needed to strengthen the building's defenses. Some kind of structure that could block the stairs. If he could seal off the space between the first and second floors, it would be harder for monsters to climb up.
Donghoon finished the can of tuna and took a sip of water.
Then he heard a sound.
During the day?
A scraping sound. From below the building. The first floor.
Donghoon held his breath.
Crawlers were nocturnal. They hid in dark places during the day. That was what the novel had said.
But the first floor was dark. The shutter was down, and even if the windows weren't boarded up, the building's structure left places where little light could enter.
A Crawler had been hiding on the first floor. While Donghoon was using this building as his base, it had been right below him.
The sound drew closer. The stairs. It was coming up.
Donghoon gripped the hammer.
His heart sped up. His hands trembled. It was the same as yesterday at the convenience store. But yesterday, he had run away. Today, there was nowhere to run. This was his base. If he lost it, he would be starting over from the beginning.
The sound of it climbing the stairs. The second floor. The third floor. It was getting closer.
Donghoon stood behind the desk he'd pushed in front of the door. He gripped the hammer with both hands.
The Crawler's weakness in the novel was the back of its neck. Its hard outer shell was thin only at the back of the neck. But he couldn't strike the back of its neck from the front. He had to get to its side or behind it.
How could he do that in a cramped office?
Donghoon quickly scanned the room. Desk. Chair. Cabinet. One door.
He stood beside the door. When it opened, he would hide behind it. Once the Crawler entered, he would strike the back of its neck from behind.
Donghoon moved the desk away from the door. It made a noise. The scraping below stopped. Then it sped up. It was coming up. Faster now.
Donghoon pressed his back against the wall beside the door. He raised the hammer over his head.
The door opened.
No—the door was shoved inward. With tremendous force.
The Crawler entered.
It was the first time he'd gotten a proper look at one. Human-sized. No, slightly larger than a human. It clung to the floor on all fours. It had no skin. A black outer shell covered its entire body, like the shell of a crustacean. It had no head. More precisely, there was no distinction between its head and torso. There was a mouth at the front. Only a mouth. No eyes were visible.
It was exactly as the novel had described. It relied on hearing instead of sight. Because it had no eyes.
The Crawler entered the office and stopped. It slowly turned its head—if it could be called a head. It was listening. Searching for Donghoon's location.
Donghoon held his breath. His heart felt ready to burst. Could it hear his heartbeat? He didn't know. The novel hadn't gone into details like that.
The Crawler took a step forward, moving away from Donghoon, toward the window.
Now.
Donghoon burst out. He had no time to worry about the noise. He brought the hammer down on the back of the Crawler's neck, where the shell was thin.
A heavy impact traveled up his arm.
The Crawler shrieked. If it could be called a shriek. The sound was like tearing metal. His ears hurt.
One strike wasn't enough. The Crawler twisted around toward Donghoon. Its foreleg—or arm, or whatever it was—swung at him. Donghoon backed away and dodged. His foot caught on a chair. He nearly fell, but barely regained his balance.
The Crawler charged. It was fast. Donghoon rolled to the side. He got up from the floor and raised the hammer again.
The Crawler crashed into the wall. It seemed to have lost its sense of direction. Donghoon's roll had made noise in several places. To something that relied on hearing, echoes were confusing.
Donghoon didn't waste the opening.
He circled behind it again and brought the hammer down. The same spot. The back of the neck. This time, he felt the shell crack. Black liquid splattered out. He couldn't tell whether it was blood or bodily fluid.
The Crawler collapsed. Its legs folded beneath it, and it sprawled flat on the floor. It was still moving. Its legs scraped at the air.
Donghoon struck a third time.
The movement stopped.
Donghoon took a step back, still holding the hammer. His breathing was ragged. His whole body trembled. Black liquid coated his hand.
It was dead. He had killed it. Donghoon.
Donghoon leaned against the wall and slowly sank to the floor. He couldn't let go of the hammer. His hand had stiffened and wouldn't open.
He sat there for a long time.
His heartbeat gradually settled. The trembling eased. Donghoon looked down at his hand.
There was a strange feeling.
One he couldn't quite explain. His hand felt warm. It could have been the adrenaline. It was normal for the body to heat up after a fight. But this felt a little different. It wasn't simply warmth. It felt like something was flowing from his fingertips toward his elbow. It was different from blood circulation. A sensation he couldn't explain.
Donghoon shook his head.
Adrenaline. A physical reaction after his first battle. Nothing more, nothing less.
Donghoon stood up. He had to dispose of the Crawler's corpse. If he left it there, it would start to smell, and the smell could attract other things.
He dragged the corpse down the stairs and threw it outside on the first floor. It was heavy. About the weight of a person. Wiping away his sweat, Donghoon climbed back up to the fourth floor.
Black liquid stained the office floor. He opened the cabinet looking for something to clean it with. There were stacks of documents and a towel. He wiped the floor with the towel.
As he cleaned, Donghoon thought.
In the novel, the protagonist began to change after killing a Crawler. He didn't realize it at first. A few days later, he discovered that he could run faster, that he was stronger, and that his senses had sharpened.
Donghoon looked at his hand again.
The sensation from earlier had already disappeared. It was an ordinary hand, callused from the military and nothing special.
It must have been his imagination.
Donghoon threw away the towel and went to the window. He looked outside. The gray sky. The black rift. The ruined city.
A world three years after the ruin.
Donghoon muttered,
"If it's been three years... what's out there now?"
There was no answer. Of course there wasn't.
Donghoon picked up the hammer again.