Chapter 824: Land of Extremes (1)
Crackle.......
[Continental Front Army, 1st Army. Engagement with the monster forces positioned near the border has ended.]
[Good work. After completing maintenance, cross the border according to the operation plan and enter Russian territory.]
After the world’s barriers had completely opened.
The Legion members split into two directions and began advancing.
“Huff, huff.......”
“Hey, are you okay?”
Among them, the unit that had chosen to advance overland.
The Continental Front Army’s 1st Army had just finished its battle against the monsters that had been blocking a high mountain.
“Y-Yes, yes......? Ah. I’m fine. I’m just a little out of breath...... I’m sorry.”
“What are you apologizing for.”
And one of the soldiers of that Continental Front Army.
Private Lee Byungmin watched his struggling junior for a moment, then turned his head.
The place where they were currently positioned was a high mountain.
Because of °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° that, the surrounding scenery was clearly visible...... and in the places they had passed through.
“We’ve been fighting continuously like this, so of course you’d get tired.”
The corpses of the monsters they had defeated while passing through.
Were piled up as though they had literally formed a river.
***
The Legion’s forces were broadly divided into three.
Expeditionary Command, which remained with the Legion and handled supplies and overall operational orders while dispatching reinforcements later if support was needed.
The Pacific Front Army, which crossed the sea and entered the Pacific region.
And the Continental Front Army, which advanced into the Asian and European continents through overland routes.
Among them, the Pacific Front Army primarily traveled through the air using the fortress.
Of course, monsters existed in the air as well.
But the domain of the sky was broader and more vast than the sea and land combined.
To begin with, the density of monsters itself was not particularly high.
And even if there were monsters flying through the sky, the possibility of encountering an enemy powerful enough to threaten that fortress was extremely low.
At least until they arrived at their destination, there would not be much reason for any major battles.
“The 3rd Strike Force reports that the enemies at the destination have been annihilated!”
“Good. Then now we advance.......”
“Report from the reconnaissance unit, monsters that gathered after hearing the sounds of battle are blocking our expected route of entry.......”
“......Was the unit nearby the 5th Strike Force? Tell them to head there quickly.......”
“Report from the 5th Strike Force! They have begun engaging monsters that attacked from the rear!”
“.......”
The Continental Front Army was different.
Overland...... a unit whose primary method of movement was across the ground.
Because after the apocalypse, it would not be an exaggeration to call the surface world a paradise for monsters.
The advance of a large-scale army was not easy.
In the early days of the apocalypse, the Legion had operated as small units, hiding their presence as much as possible while avoiding the attention of monsters.
But that was only possible while their scale remained relatively small.
The movements of an army that had grown large could not easily be concealed, and naturally drew the attention of the monsters overflowing throughout the surrounding area.
That was not all.
If it had been a situation where only the unit members themselves needed to advance, they could simply have continued advancing while fighting.
But right now, they were transporting various equipment and supplies along with them.
Naturally, they could not use rough roads.
And for the supplies that would follow later, it was also necessary to secure the safety of the supply routes.
“Damn, there really are a hell of a lot of monsters......!”
“And we can’t even just ignore these bastards and keep going. We have to eliminate every single one of them as we advance.”
“I’m starting to think I should’ve volunteered for the Pacific Front Army.”
The Pacific Front Army was moving with more than enough supplies inside that enormous fortress.
For quite some time, they would not even need to concern themselves with securing a supply route.
The Continental Front Army had also departed with a large quantity of supplies, but transporting as many supplies at once as that fortress did was impossible.
In the end, in order to secure the safety of the supply routes, they had no choice but to eliminate as many threats along the route as possible.
‘If we can just secure the supply routes, we’ll actually be more stable than the Pacific Front Army.’
The Pacific Front Army carried a large quantity of supplies all at once, but its route of advance lay beyond the sea.
Additional resupply had to be considered almost impossible.
That might not matter for a short expedition, but this expedition was expected to continue for a long period of time, and the longer it became, the more unexpected variables they would encounter.
While the Continental Front Army could receive stable supplies through overland routes.
If the expedition became prolonged, the Pacific Front Army would eventually have to pioneer methods of obtaining supplies locally.
“According to the information from the scouts, the large bridge along the route we intended to use has already collapsed.”
......But well, that was a matter for the later stages of the expedition.
For the time being, it simply meant that the Continental Front Army had more work to do.
“It’ll take far too long if we go around that river. Is it impossible to just cross it?”
After repeatedly going through countless fierce battles, the unit entered Russian territory.
The staff officers and soldiers of the Continental Front Army’s 1st Army gathered inside a tent and put their heads together.
“The unit members themselves are awakened, so there’s no problem, and combat equipment such as tanks has also been modified to be amphibious, so it is possible. The problem is the communication towers we brought for communication with Expeditionary Command. They’re extremely large and sensitive pieces of equipment, so if they enter the water, there’s a risk they could malfunction.......”
“That’s why I told you we should just make those things modular. Then we could’ve loaded them into the modified transport vehicles and moved them as they were.”
“We already concluded from the designs that it was impossible. If they were ordinary communication towers, that would be one thing, but since these things have to make communications reach all the way to the other side of the Earth, a lot of magic and shamanism that the engineers can’t handle got involved. If we touch them wrong and they stop functioning, we’ll be in serious trouble.”
A variable that had not existed in the original operation plan.
The soldiers continued wracking their brains in order to solve that variable.
“What about a bridge? I remember we made something like the bridge that connected Chuncheon to Bimana without much difficulty.”
“At the moment, it does seem like that’s our only option. But the amount of bridge-installation equipment we brought is limited. Considering that something similar could happen later, we’ll have to recover the bridge after the unit crosses. It’ll be a little unfortunate in terms of securing the supply route.”
“It can’t be helped. Pass the information on to the supply unit that’ll depart later and tell them a semi-permanent bridge needs to be installed there, while we continue advancing for now.”
“Yes.”
Only after that round of meetings ended did the soldiers begin moving again.
And while watching that scene.
The person responsible for the Continental Front Army...... Corporal Jeon Gwangil stepped out of the meeting tent, let out a sigh, and thought.
‘Feels like at least ten variables show up every single day.’
That meeting just now was not the first.
There were so many variables in this expedition that similar meetings were being held at least two or three times every day.
It was unavoidable.
When civilization was still alive, even enemy territory followed the methods of civilization to a certain extent.
If a bridge broke, people would be inconvenienced, so they repaired it, and if you followed roads, they were made to lead toward large cities.......
The very way of life of that civilization controlled the variables.
That was no longer the case.
The world after the apocalypse had become a paradise for monsters, and the types and habits of those monsters were so diverse that one could not even dare to predict them.
Land that had remained under the hands of those monsters for a long time had, in most cases, changed so much that almost none of its old appearance remained.
‘At least the circumstances were a little better when we conquered the Korean Peninsula.’
Since it was Korean territory, they possessed complete geographical information.
And even when variables appeared, there were many cases where they could respond plausibly through information provided by Legion members originally from the local area or surviving local collaborators.
But this was a foreign country.
Foreign land about which the Legion had no information whatsoever.
Since they could not even obtain such collaborators here, their ability to respond to variables was inevitably reduced.
......In other words, conversely.
‘If we can quickly join up with the local awakened, things will become much easier.’
That was precisely the current objective of the Continental Front Army.
The scene witnessed by their Legion Commander, Sergeant Shin Youngjun.
Among it, the locations and information of the survivors who had been included.
‘A considerable number of survivors remained in Russia.’
A large-scale survivor population meant that they were people who had succeeded in building enough infrastructure for survivors of that scale to remain alive.
There was a high possibility that they possessed not only a considerable amount of information, but also supplies needed by the Legion members.
Right now, the Continental Front Army.
And among them, the first objective of the largest force, the 1st Army, was precisely to join up with those survivors.
There were survivors around Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, and Laos as well.
But most of them did not exist in particularly large groups.
In most cases, fewer than a thousand survivors were scattered apart and surviving on their own.
The smaller the number of survivors, the higher the difficulty of surviving in that land.
And especially when they had failed to form a large group, the difficulty of survival increased even further.
And yet, the fact that there were still people surviving in those lands meant that those small numbers of survivors were extremely capable individuals.
Those who were surviving on their own were probably each skilled enough that even the Legion’s elite soldiers could not afford to look down on them.
‘Even so, they can’t compare to sheer numbers.’
Even if every single one of them was a warrior capable of fighting a hundred enemies.
That was still only one against a hundred.
Even if there were one hundred of them, they would not amount to ten thousand.
The expedition ahead would be a harsh journey, and carrying it out using only the power of the Legion members was far too inefficient.
If there were large groups of awakened people locally.
They needed to join up with them and secure the Legion’s supplies.
And then use those large groups of awakened people as combat forces as well, gradually increasing the size of the army.
That was why the Continental Front Army that had departed from China split its forces in two once again.
The larger of those forces was the 1st Army.
And one of the reasons that 1st Army had headed toward Russia was precisely to make contact with those large-scale awakened groups as their highest priority.
“C-Corporal Jeon Gwangil!”
“Hmm?”
“I think you need to come see this!”
......But.
Naturally, that process was not easy.
“That is.”
Corporal Jeon Gwangil moved in response to the soldiers’ call.
He frowned as he looked at the scene spread out before his eyes.
“There’s no end to them. Yeah.”
There was an endless procession of monsters.
***
‘White...... They look like jelly.’
They had encountered large groups of monsters many times before.
Not merely many. During the expedition alone, they had already fought groups of monsters numbering at least one hundred thousand on three separate occasions.
But.
“......They’re enough to remind me of the zombies in North Korea.”
“Monsters filling the entire horizon.......”
There had only been one other time in the Legion’s long history of battle when they had seen numbers on that scale.
And there was another problem.
“Wasn’t there originally supposed to be a major city here?”
“There...... was.”
“There isn’t even a trace of the city.”
The soldiers frowned as they unfolded their map.
An old Russian map obtained nearby.
“No, it’s not just the city...... even the mountain that’s supposed to be here is gone.”
According to that map, a fairly large city should have been located here.
But the scene before them now was a flat plain filled with monsters.
Not even a single ordinary building could be seen.
No matter how old the map was and how outdated its information might have been, this was beyond anything that could be explained.
While the soldiers were looking at the scene in confusion.
“The scouts have returned!”
“Ah......!”
Those who had been moving ahead of the other Legion members.
The scouts returned to make their report.
“We were pretty confused when we first saw it too.”
“The terrain being different from the map was one thing...... but we couldn’t understand how there could possibly be so many monsters. But.”
The scouts who had finished their reconnaissance returned with dark expressions and began their report.
And.
“Those things...... were dividing.”
“Dividing?”
Corporal Jeon Gwangil’s face hardened at the report.
“Yes.”
Aside from their white, jelly-like appearance, the monsters each had different forms.
The scouts had seen some of those jellies wriggle before splitting into two.
The jelly that had split in two then rapidly grew as time passed, becoming another entirely separate individual.
“They seem to absorb mana from the atmosphere or from objects and grow rapidly, and once they grow to around the maximum amount that a single individual can contain, they divide.”
“I see...... So the reason there can be that many of them is because they divide on their own.”
“The speed at which they divide is absurdly fast. They seem to eat the surrounding objects and convert them into mana with incredible efficiency. And despite how easily their numbers increase, the strength of each individual isn’t particularly weak either.”
There was not even a trace of the nearby city.
And now they could understand why even the mountain that had originally stood there was gone.
Those monsters had probably devoured all of it and increased their numbers using the mana contained within.
“And according to the report from the mages attached to the reconnaissance unit.......”
“Hmm?”
“There is a high possibility that those things are some kind of colony organism.”
“Colony?”
A mage from the reconnaissance unit stepped forward and spoke.
“Those monsters. Their forms are all different, so they look like separate individuals...... but we could only feel one kind of mana from them.”
“Isn’t that simply because they’re the same species?”
“No. As you know, we mages are somewhat sensitive to mana. No matter how similar individuals of the same species are, there are minute differences in the mana they contain. It’s like a kind of fingerprint. But there were absolutely no such differences among those things. In other words.......”
“All of those things are effectively one individual?”
“Yes. And the mana that feels exactly the same seems to be connected between them. I suspect that the larger the number of individuals in that colony becomes, the stronger each individual also becomes.”
An organism that divided at a rapid speed.
And the more it divided and increased its numbers, the stronger each individual became as well.
“What the hell is that. There’s no answer to something like that.”
“We thought the same thing. If a life-form like that had existed since the early days of the apocalypse, it wouldn’t be strange if the entirety of Russian territory had already become land that no longer existed...... so it probably wasn’t active from the beginning.”
An absurdly unreasonable rate and method of growth.
And this world had not simply left such unreasonable things unchecked.
“It was probably sealed until fairly recently.”
A being containing that degree of power would be sealed by the power of this land.
Probably until relatively recently.......
Perhaps it was a monster that had only begun to act when the final barrier opened and the seals throughout the world weakened one more time.
Hearing that, Corporal Jeon Gwangil frowned.
‘If it only started acting recently...... then there must have been a time when it could’ve been suppressed early.’
Their current numbers were enormous, but they could not have numbered that many from the beginning.
𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎
It meant that this might have been a disaster that the awakened of this land could have defeated if they had responded just a little faster.
‘No. It’s not like every group would have someone with detection abilities like Sergeant Park Taejun.’
Looking at the scenery where human civilization had been devoured, the thought of what the awakened of this land had been doing did cross his mind.
But he shook his head and looked into the distance.
What had already happened was not important.
What mattered was what they needed to do now.
“......Unless the survivors we need to meet were lucky enough to be pushed somewhere near the south.”
And.
The Legion had only just crossed the border and entered Russia.
And in the middle of that, they had encountered those monsters.
“They’ll be beyond those monsters.”
The survivors targeted by the 1st Army.
Would be on the other side of that enormous number of monsters.