IBSSSCEA Chapter 54

Chapter 54

 

“Do, do we really have to kill them?”

Sehun asked carefully as he withdrew the barrier.

“They don’t seem that dangerous… Maybe we could just leave them…”

“No matter how cute they look, man-eating monsters are still man-eating monsters.”

Baek Yi-heon, the principled one, replied in an unexpectedly stern tone. He placed his large hand on Sehun’s head, who looked a bit downcast.

“Close your eyes if it’s hard to watch.”

“Yes, Hyung…”

Sehun covered his face with his small hands.

Meanwhile, Baek Yi-heon swung the dragon’s fang once, swiftly.

A crescent-shaped blue mana shot out, slicing through the two monsters that were belatedly trying to flee.

Thud—.

Transparent white and green magic stones fell to the ground.

“They’re too low-level to even bother picking up.”

I shook my head in disappointment.

As the monsters disappeared, the remaining fog also began to dissipate.

“We wasted time because of those useless creatures.”

“One strange thing is, why are there monsters in these uninhabited mountains?”

Unlike the grumbling Choi Kkang-kang, Yu calmly raised a question.

‘That’s right. With even hikers gone now, there shouldn’t be any humans here…’

As I was thinking this, the mist cleared to reveal a small village of less than ten houses in the distance.

“……!”

‘When did we come to a place like this?’

It seemed we had arrived here after getting lost in the fog.

However, what made me tense wasn’t the existence of the village.

There was a yellow light on in one of the old cabins amidst the ruins.

“What…”

Judging by the disappearance of Yu’s third eye, it wasn’t a monster.

Then, it must be human.

I started to feel more tense than when the low-grade monsters appeared.

Because when you encounter something in a place like this, the scariest thing isn’t monsters or ghosts, but humans.

I secretly took out a small MacGyver knife from my hip sack and gripped it.

Creak—.

The door of a shack a little distance away opened with a loud noise.

And what appeared through it was a very small foot wearing a sock.

Its owner was a short, hunched elderly person.

“Oh my. I heard voices and thought I’d finally gone deaf… Honey! Honey, come out and see!”

“What? What voices in these mountains… Huh?”

Two elderly people with white hair opened their mouths in surprise at the sight of our group.

We were just as surprised.

However, I quickly regained my composure and sharpened my gaze.

‘In these deep mountains… just an elderly couple living alone?’

They didn’t seem to have any combat ability, but it was very suspicious.

This is exactly the kind of situation you need to be most careful of in a ruined world.

As a fan of apocalyptic and survival stories, I was all too familiar with the cliché of kind-looking elderly people betraying you.

Ignoring the elderly couple who looked glad to see people after a long time, I opened my mouth in a cold tone.

“We should get going…”

“There were isolated survivors here.”

“Noah… did he foresee this and lead us here?”

“You… I mean, Nunim. You’re kinder than you look?”

Huh?

I looked up in surprise.

The others were looking at me with admiring gazes.

Even Choi Kkang-kang had a look that said, ‘I’ve misjudged you.’

‘Damn. I just wanted to pass by pretending not to notice.’

Haven’t they watched any apocalypse stories? Not even American TV shows?

The cliché where a kind-looking elderly couple pretends to welcome the protagonists only to backstab them!

This is the cliché of all clichés in apocalyptic stories!

…But I couldn’t make such a cynical statement while everyone was looking at me with such sparkling eyes.

Finally, with a heavy heart, I opened my mouth.

“Y-yes. It must have been hard for you two elderly people. …Let’s go see for now.”

💎

That’s probably because those bird-like monsters are the type that eat corpses.

However, there’s no need to tell them that detail.

Baek Yi-heon asked the elderly couple with a serious face.

“So you’ve been trapped in the mountains this whole time?”

“Yes. Fortunately, there’s plenty to eat. As you can see, we’re in a small village at the foot of Jirisan.”

The grandmother said with a toothless pronunciation.

“When it rains a lot in summer, or when the ground freezes in winter, we can’t move an inch. So it became standard to store at least 6 months’ worth of food.”

“We have 3 years’ worth of kimchi, 1 year of rice. The fermented soybeans we made last winter are still plentiful.”

Beans are an excellent source of protein. With that much, they could easily last a year even in these mountains.

Baek Yi-heon nodded in relief and asked again,

“Do you know anything about the situation outside?”

“Of course, we heard it on the radio! The TV was working for a while too.”

“Originally, twelve people lived in this village, but none of the folks who went down the mountain worried about their children in Seoul have returned.”

The old man said with a gloomy face.

“As you can see, we’re not in a condition to go to Seoul now. Our knees hurt…”

“And then even the radio went out. We thought something terrible must have happened…”

Then, as if they had been holding back this question for a long time, the elderly couple asked urgently.

“How is it? Seoul? Other regions? …Our daughter and her husband live in Daejeon, but we can’t reach them by phone.”

We looked at each other for a moment, unable to find words to answer.

The elderly couple couldn’t hide their disappointed expressions.

“It will be alright.”

Yu calmly said, joining her hands and holding her beads.

“They say no news is good news. I’m sure your daughter evacuated safely.”

There was a power in her voice that calmed people’s hearts.

Seeing her in her legal robes, the elderly couple quickly put their hands together and kept bowing their heads.

“Ah, yes. If the monk says so, it must be right.”

Then, smiling warmly at us, they said, 

“If you’re passing through the mountain, why don’t you rest here for a bit?”

“Yes. Since you’re here, you should at least have a meal before you go.”

“No, we couldn’t. In these times when food is scarce…”

“Ah, don’t worry about old folks like us! We’re more likely to die of old age than starvation!”

The grandmother chuckled, making a typical elderly death joke.

“Our fermented soybeans are so delicious! We’ll make you some cheonggukjang soup, so eat it warm and take a nap before you go!”

…Why are they showing such kindness?

When I glanced at Sehun with suspicious eyes, the quick-witted boy quickly nodded.

[(Messenger) Avatar ‘Lee Sehun’ casts ‘Lie Detection Lv4.’]

[(Messenger) Avatar ‘Lee Sehun’ casts ‘Evil Discernment Lv5.’]

Sehun, who had his eyes closed for a moment, gave me a small nod.

It means they both passed.

However, I still couldn’t shake off my suspicions.

The flaw in Sehun’s abilities is that humans are changeable creatures.

No one can guarantee that today’s ally won’t become tomorrow’s enemy.

With the painful memory of being deceived by monsters at the temple, I opened my mouth to refuse the offer.

“No—”

“Cheonggukjang! That’s my favorite! Thank you so much!”

But an excited voice interrupted.

It was Choi Kkang-kang.

While I glared at him, he obliviously bowed his head cheerfully and exclaimed.

“We gratefully accept your offer!”

💎

Thank you for reading! ♡