Hiding a House in the Apocalypse-Chapter 152.1: Records (1)

A monster that controls other monsters.

That was a claim hard to accept—whether in academia or on the battlefield.

The prevailing theory, supported by countless testimonies and records from us hunters on the front lines, was that monsters weren’t biological beings in the traditional sense. They were more akin to machines programmed to fulfill specific purposes.

Indeed, monsters tended to behave according to the behavioral diagrams we had categorized them into.

For example, those we classified as small-class infiltration types didn’t disappear even in Earth’s environment. Instead, they embedded themselves deep within human territories, setting up outposts. In contrast, the combat-type medium and large-class monsters were armed with tremendous power and combat capabilities, designed to break through the kill zones humans had erected in front of the rifts.

But even those couldn't breach the kill zones. That’s when the Kraken-types, the colossal ones, began to appear.

With their arrival, smaller and weaker countries—or even relatively less fortified rifts—began to fall, and the Great Cataclysm commenced.

Around that time, whispers of a monster that controls other monsters began to circulate.

“According to them, monsters launched a pincer attack from three directions. The first two were somehow repelled with aerial support, but during the third wave, the entire fortress was overrun.”

Vast territory. Overwhelming population.

China, arguably the most vulnerable to the rift crisis, employed a regionally adaptive defense strategy.

They fortified the core regions—Beijing, Shanghai, the heart of China—with nigh-impenetrable kill zones powered by wealth. Other average areas were guarded by average kill zones. But in the sparsely populated, expansive territories, instead of pouring money into kill zones, they built fortresses that managed and contained multiple rifts.

Each fortress had its own air force, artillery, and elite hunters. Instead of immediately responding to rift eruptions, they’d let monsters take over no-man’s lands. Then, once the combat-type monsters, excluding the small ones, had decayed or disappeared, they’d move in to clean up the remnants.

Yes, ash-gray erosion zones expanded every time a medium-class combat monster perished. But since these were in uninhabited areas, it wasn’t considered a significant issue. This fortress system was praised as a brilliant solution for low-population-density regions.

The Chinese gave these fortresses names like Shanhaiguan, Jiange, and Huluguan, invoking famous historical strongholds. They proudly called the chain of these fortresses the New Great Wall.

Their system influenced other powers like the United States. Soon, Americans began building Chinese-style fortresses named Fort Something in their own low-density zones.

But then one of those fortresses fell.

It was hard to believe.

These fortresses were supposed to be impregnable. Monsters—supposedly incapable of thought or purpose—were not known to launch targeted attacks. For such creatures to suddenly and deliberately destroy a fortress contradicted everything we knew.

The Chinese government blamed the collapse on internal failings rather than external causes.

It was later revealed that a significant portion of the building materials and construction funds had been embezzled by a Party official. He was sentenced to death and executed shortly afterward.

But in the end, it’s people who defend fortresses.

Even if the structure itself was subpar, it had been manned by elite soldiers, powerful hunters, and cutting-edge military equipment.

Apparently, there were some within the Chinese military who shared my doubts, because they sent us a survivor from that very fortress—known as Jiange.

Naturally, they spoke in Chinese.

The first interpreter was Lee Sang-hoon, but he quickly gave up, complaining about the thick regional dialect. He handed the task off to Kim Daram instead.

I read through the combat records left by the survivor.

Though I held no particular grudge or bias against China, I couldn’t help but suspect they were lying.

It was hard not to.

They claimed to have killed 57 monsters in a single battle.

That’s not an impossible number with the right gear. But that wasn’t the issue.

The problem was that it’s virtually impossible to encounter 57 monsters in a single engagement outside a kill zone.

Their fortress managed four rifts. The nearest was 35 kilometers away. The farthest? 78.

No matter how many coincidences stack up, the idea that 57 monsters—not one or two—would all march on the fortress at the exact same time just doesn’t add up. Not by logic. Not by theory.

But the survivor went even further.

They said over 200 monsters surrounded and attacked the fortress.

If 57 was already a stretch, 200 was outright fantasy.

“They’re lying.”

Lee Sang-hoon expressed his disgust immediately.

He despised the Chinese.

Like a European merchant seeing a panda for the first time, he assumed the Chinese were lying—again.

And to be fair, deception in monster battle reports was widespread.

Why? Simple.

Monsters leave no corpses.

Even with cameras becoming cheaper and smaller, it’s impossible to record every second of a battle.

No matter how advanced human tech gets, we’ve yet to invent an omniscient point-of-view camera.

Monsters can also disable electronics. Their power is so strong, they can fry hard drives—devices that have toppled countless politicians and celebrities—beyond recovery.

“No need to listen any further, Park Gyu. These bastards are just trying to cover up their own screw-ups.”

Lee Sang-hoon's prejudice aside, the report itself was full of red flags.

Even accounting for night combat, the footage was sparse. What clips remained were so unclear, it was impossible to tell what was happening. The number of survivors was also suspiciously low.

And ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) that’s odd—because monsters don’t normally hunt humans.

Unless you invade their territory or fight them in designated kill zones, they tend to ignore us.

Their true goal is the expansion of erosion zones, not our extinction.

Humanity’s annihilation is merely a side effect.

As often quoted: “Humans build factories to make profit, not to destroy ecosystems.” Monsters are no different.

A Chinese interpreter, working under our command structure, suspected internal betrayal.

“All the survivors belong to the New Revolutionary League. Scum of the worst kind—greedy, angry, always complaining. That embezzling official was one of them. Maybe they orchestrated this to erase the evidence.”

Everyone blamed human error for the fortress’s fall. That was the narrative.

I agreed. But something still felt off.

I glanced indifferently at the exotic man with sharp features who couldn’t speak our language and asked the interpreter:

“Is it true the monsters attacked in a group?”

The man nodded with visible fear.

“Why would they group up?”

The survivor answered hurriedly. The interpreter relayed his words.

“There was a leader.”

“A leader?”

“Yes. A big one. It looked like a giant beetle. Didn’t move—just watched from afar as the others attacked.”

No one believed him.

I didn’t either.

But three months later, I remembered his testimony.

China’s entire fortress line—their proud New Great Wall—was wiped out.

We tried to locate that survivor again.

He was gone.

With no further information, we were left facing that unknown entity—

A monster that commands other monsters.

We devised the best possible countermeasures with our limited resources.

They weren’t very smart.

We needed data.

*

The government’s asset warehouses stored not just food, fuel, and machinery—but surprising things too.

Including backup servers for internet portals.

“We still have domestic records on the general-type monster after your retirement, sir. But for international data, we’ll need to dig through the portals.”

Even foreign services often had Korean servers.

Hosting commonly accessed data in-country was faster than responding to trans-Pacific queries.

After all, if your site loads slowly in Korea, you’re not serious about business.

Apparently, these servers were included in the asset registry.

Maybe the government intended to rebuild Seoul to its pre-war state.

“Just give us a moment, Captain.”

While Woo Min-hee’s tech team worked on the server restoration, I thought back to what she’d told me.

“The reason Han-min Kang can destroy monsters in such large numbers...”

As a level-10 Over-Awakened, she had insight into powers I didn’t fully grasp.

That included Han-min Kang’s, known as Korea’s strongest Awakened.

“He can sever the connection between monsters and the rift. Monsters draw life from the rift—like machines that need power. His ability disrupts that link with a wave pulse.”

That might’ve been what Kim Hanna was referring to.

When Kang appears, monsters shatter into particles of light.

“The general-type uses a similar power. Even the strongest Awakened revert to normal humans. They don’t vanish like monsters, but the nullification wave inflicts massive stress.”

Summary:

General-type monsters possess a power that temporarily seals Awakened abilities.

Not just that—they cause serious psychological damage to Awakened individuals.

Compared to the macrophage-type, which uses guided homing projectiles with “living recognition” to hunt Awakened, the general-type is even more threatening—it can neutralize multiple Awakened simultaneously.

It’s valuable intel.

But not very useful to me.

I’m not Awakened. That kind of power doesn’t affect me.

I always approached things differently.

To me, it was just another hunt.

Identify the pattern. Pinpoint the location. Set up an ambush and drive the thing back into the rift.

It nearly worked once.

Only an unexpected ability ruined it at the last moment.

But that’s the past.

If it can think, it won’t fall for the same trick twice.

If it evolved, then so must I.

Human evolution comes from records.

“Captain. Almost done. Want to test it?”

“Yeah, just a sec.”

I opened my laptop and launched a browser.

After a brief sandglass icon, the screen appeared.

The moment I saw it, I was struck with nostalgia.

This was the internet I remembered, from before I became familiar with it.

“You’ll be able to access high-traffic pages. Low-traffic ones might not have been mirrored.”

“That’s fine.”

There was an old site that veteran hunters frequented.

It was supposedly created by an international organization—something like the International Hunter Association.

Before the Awakened era, it was quite popular.

Hunters from around the world posted about monsters, mutations, and countermeasures.

[ 404 Error! Target not found! ]

Unfortunately, the site had long since perished.

Maybe even before the war began.

I hadn’t visited it in years.

Still, there was hope.

“Can you restore this site? I remember it had Korean portal cooperation.”

The tech expert blinked and answered:

“Yes, we can.”

“How much?”

“Hmm. This might take a while. Looks like it’s linked to a café system. I’ll do what I can.”

Promising.

I remembered how our mentor Jang Ki-young kept updating hunter intel even after leaving the order.

His website was called HunterNet.

It looked like an early-2000s blog—no gimmicks, no features. Just a plain archive.

Hardly anyone used it.

Just as I thought.

[ no.882 ]

That was the last post ID.

Not even a thousand posts on the whole board. It felt like a forgotten government website.

Only Jang Ki-young and Joo Seul-gi were active.

For reference, Joo Seul-gi was his assistant. She died in a nuclear blast when the war started.

The posts...

[ no.882 ] Joo Seul-gi: Guards of “The Guard”! Unite! We’re collecting signatures to clear our mentor Jang Ki-young’s name!

[ no.881 ] Joo Seul-gi: Guards of “The Guard”! Unite! We’re collecting signatures to clear our mentor Jang Ki-young’s name!

[ no.880 ] Jang Ki-young: My trial is this Friday. If you’re one of my students, please write a petition to the judge.

...

Mostly about events and signature drives.

No monster or mutation info, sadly.

“Hmph...”

Just like my mentor.

Didn’t disappoint.

Clack-clack.

Still, I kept scrolling with dead-fish eyes like poking a dead kid’s broken toy.

Near the end, a familiar name caught my eye.

[ no.22 ] Han-min Kang: Oh! I didn’t know this site existed! o_O Whoops~! Han-min Kang reporting in~!! UwU

He’d actually posted here.

Even though he was supposedly the golden boy.

An amusing idea popped into my head.

I asked the technician:

“Hey, this site’s linked to the portal, right?”

“Yeah, it is.”

“Can you pull up search records?”

“Whose?”

I pointed to the name.

“This guy.”

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