A Survival Guide for a Counselor in the Apocalypse Chapter 80

Chapter 80

 

At the moment, the leader’s head was severed…

Just as I exhaled, thinking it was all over and that only cleanup remained…

A signal flare exploded behind us.

Red. Red. Red.

Multiple flares burst simultaneously, like madness itself, and everyone’s gaze snapped toward them.

A bad feeling crawled up my spine as I turned around…

Our entire special unit had already been slaughtered.

What? How? Why?

It was so sudden. Too sudden.

“Uh… ah!”

Someone screamed hysterically and fired another red flare into the sky.

From beyond the forest, as if some trigger had been pulled, countless mutated variants came rushing out…

And the leader, whose head had been torn off and was floating in midair…

Slowly turned its body.

On that body…

There was a face.

“…What the fuck is that?”

A face.

A face attached directly to its torso.

It looked this way, its mouth stretching into a grotesque grin.

“The gate… the gate’s breaking! Fuck, the gate!”

That was the beginning of the disaster.

Literally, the beginning of catastrophe.

 

***

 

Hell on earth.

It was chaos so severe that calling it a battlefield would’ve been kinder.

No one maintained order.

Everyone just struggled to survive.

Most of the special unit consisted of key personnel…

So when they were wiped out, this outcome was inevitable.

I immediately grabbed the communicator and shouted:

“Lee Hoin! Answer me! Are you alive?!”

The moment I remembered he had been deployed in the special unit, I shouted.

So please, don’t tell me you’re dead.

But my voice was swallowed by the screams pouring through the communicator.

I wasn’t the only one yelling for someone to survive.

“LEE HOIN!!”

I shouted again.

Let it be a hallucination, I don’t care.

Just answer me, you bastard.

 

—

[…I’m alive.]

—

 

Amidst the screaming, his voice finally came through.

Alive… and yet you didn’t answer earlier?

The suffocating pressure in my chest eased slightly.

Lee Hoin was alive.

As for Johanna…

If she were silent in the middle of this chaos, then…

She was either dead or alive, but critically injured.

Commands finally came down…

But by then, two gates had already been breached.

Too late.

If the response was this delayed…

Then yes.

 

—

[It seems we may have reached the worst-case scenario! Haha!]

—

 

Worst-case scenario.

Goddammit.

I moved.

Crushing the ones climbing up, pouring water to stop them.

Then I shouted into the communicator:

“FOUR HOURS!”

We just had to last four hours.

Hold it together.

Everyone, both sides, just four hours, and we’d return to our original world.

This was just a stage.

“JUST HOLD FOR FOUR HOURS!”

For a moment, silence fell over the channel.

Then the noise returned…

Still filled with cries for help…

But now, at least, there was direction.

Four hours.

That’s all.

A structured chaos.

Explosions erupted everywhere.

The number of people screaming for help decreased…

Not because we were winning…

But because fewer people were left alive to scream.

Grinding my teeth, I pushed back the enemy at the wall.

When the third gate fell…

We abandoned the wall.

Instead, we retreated into the first barricade zone built behind it.

A temporary measure.

We needed a solution.

At this rate, we were nothing but rats in a trap.

We only needed four hours…

And yet we couldn’t even last that long.

At that moment…

The thing we saw earlier floated up above the wall again.

Still grinning from ear to ear.

Looking down at us.

What the hell are you smiling at, you bastard?

As I frowned at it…

Someone suddenly grabbed my shoulder and yanked me back.

 

***

 

The medical unit was in full emergency.

Johanna had returned unconscious.

Her limbs were intact…

But that was the only good news.

Her vitals kept dropping as if her organs had ruptured.

Even with multiple people attaching magical devices and working nonstop…

Her condition didn’t improve.

At the center of it…

Shin Yerim, barely sane, kept performing CPR, gasping for breath.

‘No…’

No. No. Please.

Tears streamed down her face as she desperately tried to restore Johanna’s heartbeat.

They managed to stabilize her pulse…

But now internal damage was the issue.

She needed surgery immediately…

But there was no one available to perform it.

The medical unit was already overflowing with patients.

‘…Like this…’

Is this how she dies?

Just like this?

You?

 

—

“Everything we do is done with the acceptance of death.”

“When others stake their lives, how can I value mine more?”

“For those who gave their lives for Hermadion, I must be the first to offer mine.”

“That was my first knight’s oath.”

—

 

Yerim collapsed over her.

“Li… liar…”

Lie. Lie. Lie.

There’s no way you die like this.

You–you…

‘Because of me…’

She staggered back as others rushed in with equipment, then collapsed to the ground, sobbing.

The bangs Johanna had insisted she tidy up now did nothing to hide her crumbling face.

Everything…

Everything…

‘A nightmare…’

This was a nightmare.

An impossible nightmare.

 

***

 

I staggered as I was yanked back.

“…Leon?”

I called out in confusion, but he said nothing, dragging me deeper inside the inner fortress.

“Follow me.”

I asked why multiple times…

But he didn’t answer.

He stopped in front of a room.

Inside were worn, unused-looking furnishings…

Clearly old, yet untouched for a long time.

Why here–

“Listen carefully to what I’m about to say.”

He spoke.

“Kill me.”

…What?

“Absorb my story. Summon me.”

I stared at him.

At Leon Wolf.

At his gaunt face.

At the man who had complained endlessly…

Now looking like someone who had foreseen this moment thousands of times.

My master.

“With things as they are, everyone dies.”

“And absorption cannot take long.”

“I heard you’ve absorbed a skill before.”

“…What are you saying?”

“You’re better than the other brats.”

“At least you’re clever enough to understand interests quickly.”

“My story isn’t anything special.”

“It’s nothing but a blood-soaked battlefield.”

“So–”

“Wait. Wait!”

I cut him off.

I knew this scene.

This moment.

I had known it would come.

Thoughts flooded my head…

From realizing I never expected it would fall to me…

To the bitter awareness that I had subconsciously anticipated this…

And avoided acknowledging it.

And now…

I understood why Shin Yerim had vomited after absorbing his story.

Why did she choose death?

I understood.

This…

“…You’re telling me to kill you?”

This wasn’t like killing an enemy.

He was sacrificing himself.

Choosing death to pass something on to me.

Perhaps…

To protect me.

Leon Wolf looked down at me.

The veteran of countless battles.

The stubborn old man.

My teacher.

He looked at me with eyes that had already accepted everything.

“…What does it matter if you’re ready?”

“I’m not.”

His sacrifice would only be completed if I killed him.

Not someone else…

Me.

For my survival.

For my gain.

I had to kill a living person…

Who was offering his heart to my blade without resistance.

“Are you insane?”

This was madness.

Absolute madness.

He looked at me.

Guilt. Regret. Lingering attachment.

All mixed in his eyes.

“I’m not doing it.”

Even as I pushed his hand away…

We both knew how this would end.

“I said I’m not doing it!”

I shouted.

This was insane.

Let’s find another way.

There has to be another way.

But my master…

The old man…

Simply stood there quietly and said:

“Muyeong…”

There’s no one else.

So do it.

Something rose in my throat.