Chapter 6

“Uwaaack!”

Yeom Il-jung, whose eye had been pierced by Pyo Wol’s finger, screamed continuously and struggled. But Pyo Wol grabbed Yeom Il-jung’s neck tightly with his other hand, holding him still.

His right index finger was still inserted into Yeom Il-jung’s eye.

A mixture of white fluid and red blood was flowing from Yeom Il-jung’s eye. At the gruesome sight, many of the children squeezed their eyes shut.

Although they were filled with Poison Qi from months of isolated life, they were still just immature children.

They had instinctively gathered power and formed groups, but no one here was mentally prepared to kill the other children.

That was the difference between them and Pyo Wol.

Pyo Wol was someone who had survived the harshest environment.

He was prepared to willingly kill other children in order to survive.

The result was the finger stuck in Yeom Il-jung’s eye.

“Say it again. What did you say?”

“Ugh, ugh!”

Yeom Il-jung strained to break free from Pyo Wol’s grasp, but he couldn’t budge.

While the other children had vaguely waited for the iron gate to open, Pyo Wol had trained his body. For growing children, that difference was immense.

“Let go of him! You crazy bastard.”

“Fuck! Let him go, now.”

The children who followed Yeom Il-jung surrounded Pyo Wol.

At that moment, Pyo Wol pushed his finger deeper into Yeom Il-jung’s eye.

“Kuaaack!”

Yeom Il-jung’s desperate scream echoed through the underground cavern.

The children who had been about to charge were stunned by the chilling sight. Pyo Wol’s action was far beyond their imagination.

They had never once imagined that someone their own age could possess such a venomous heart.

In Pyo Wol, they saw a venomous snake.

A small, poison-filled snake that would never let go once it bit.

No one dared to try and stop Pyo Wol. They felt that if they stepped in, they would suffer the same fate.

Just then, So Yeowol stepped forward.

She approached Pyo Wol.

“He’s not in a state to answer. Let him go.”

“Why should I?”

“He should have gotten the message by now.”

“What about the food?”

“No one will touch your share. Right?”

So Yeowol’s last words were directed at the other children.

No one opened their mouth to answer, but their intentions were conveyed to Pyo Wol.

Only then did Pyo Wol pull his finger out of Yeom Il-jung’s eye and release his grip on his neck.

“Huuuh!”

Yeom Il-jung collapsed on the spot, covering his pierced eye with his palm.

Suddenly one-eyed, he glared at Pyo Wol, clenching his teeth.

“You, you bastard…”

“Why, do you want your other eye to end up like this too? If you want to be blind, come at me anytime. My fingers are strong enough to pierce your other eye as well.”

“You crazy… bastard!”

Yeom Il-jung ground his teeth.

He wanted to beat Pyo Wol to death, but Pyo Wol dominated the atmosphere in the cavern.

The other children were already overwhelmed by Pyo Wol’s presence.

It was impossible to expect a reversal in this kind of atmosphere.

In the end, Yeom Il-jung had no choice but to clutch his injured eye and retreat.

Pyo Wol watched him for a moment, then took only his share of the food and backed away. So Yeowol whispered to him.

“What are you going to do now? You’ve made enemies of them all.”

“Even if I didn’t, we would all become enemies eventually.”

“What do you mean?”

“……”

Instead of answering, Pyo Wol shrugged and walked away.

The children in front of him stepped aside.

Pyo Wol passed them and climbed onto the roof of a nearby building.

The building’s roof was the most advantageous spot for monitoring the area.

With his act against Yeom Il-jung, Pyo Wol had turned all the children in the underground cavern into his enemies.

He chose the highest place so he could watch for any children approaching stealthily, even while he ate.

The food in Pyo Wol’s hand was a rice cake.

It seemed to have been made a long time ago, as it was very hard and tasteless. But Pyo Wol ate it silently, chewing without a single complaint.

Sitting on the roof, he could see the surrounding landscape in more detail.

‘This is a test. A test to filter out the useful children.’

Throwing children one by one into a space completely cut off from the outside world was clearly a process to filter out the useful ones.

Such a process would never end with just one trial.

This process would be repeated several times, and it was clear that many children would die in the process.

He could consider cooperating with the other children to resist, but Pyo Wol didn’t believe the situation would unfold so easily.

Herding so many children into one place was their intention from the start. They would surely test the children in some way and drive them into danger.

Until now, they had not shown themselves, forcing the children to survive on their own. It was clear they would use the same method this time.

Making the children kill or suspect each other.

‘If that happens, everyone will become an enemy.’

If they were all going to become enemies anyway, it wasn’t so bad to become enemies a little early. It would allow him to see the situation a bit more clearly.

Pyo Wol stared at the scene unfolding in the underground cavern below for a long time.

＊＊＊

Food came down once a day, always at the same time.

When the food arrived, each group would engage in a war of nerves to get even a little more.

Food was directly linked to survival, and to increase their chances of survival even slightly, the children tried to secure as much food as possible.

As time went on, the animosity among the children grew more and more severe.

As it did, the presence of the children who acted as leaders of each group became more prominent.

Among them, the one with the greatest presence was, by far, So Yeowol.

So Yeowol led the children with a boldness that was hard to believe for a girl. After securing as much food as possible, she would eat the smallest amount herself. And she made sure to give a little more to the children who followed her.

Naturally, the loyalty of the children following So Yeowol was bound to be strong.

The next largest group was led by Kang Il.

Kang Il had a very quiet personality. He was so taciturn that he might not say a single word all day. Instead, he took meticulous care of the children who followed him.

He was the type to show his leadership through actions rather than words.

The group led by Go Young-san was full of strong individuals. Perhaps because Go Young-san himself had a quirky personality, the children who followed him had somewhat similar traits.

Finally, there was the group led by Yeom Il-jung.

At first, quite a few children followed Yeom Il-jung, but after seeing him lose an eye to Pyo Wol and be humiliated, many of them left.

Because of this, Yeom Il-jung held a great grudge against Pyo Wol.

Pyo Wol knew this, but he didn’t pay it much mind.

He would just take his share of the food and disappear somewhere.

Many children thought of Pyo Wol as a thorn in their side. But the brutal image of him dealing with Yeom Il-jung had left such a strong impression that they were reluctant to confront him.

They always monitored Pyo Wol’s movements.

To them, Pyo Wol was a person of interest. Countless children were on high alert about his every move.

Except when eating, Pyo Wol stayed holed up in the underground area where he had been confined.

He gathered all the corpses scattered in the Four Rooms into one room and cleaned the place up.

The other children couldn’t understand Pyo Wol, who stayed cooped up alone in the deepest part. The place where Pyo Wol had been confined was shrouded in the deepest darkness, making it impossible to see even an inch ahead.

To them, Pyo Wol, who had returned to such a place of his own free will, just seemed strange.

Pyo Wol paid no attention to the children’s gazes.

He had chosen the underground space where he was first trapped because he thought it was the safest.

The underground cavern was better for simple living, but it was wide open on all sides, offering no freedom of Movement Technique. No matter how secretly he moved, he couldn’t escape the children’s sight.

For that reason, Pyo Wol spent most of his time in the space where he was first confined, either training his stamina or building up his Poison Resistance by getting bitten by the snake.

He had spent so much time with the snake that he was starting to feel an attachment to it.

At some point, he no longer felt pain when the snake bit him. It seemed he had developed a perfect Poison Resistance, at least to its venom.

Pyo Wol rubbed the wrist where the snake had bitten him and came out.

As he emerged into the underground cavern, he felt furtive gazes from all around. The other children were watching him now that he was out.

The children looked at Pyo Wol, who had chosen a different way of life from them, with hostile eyes.

They didn’t try to understand Pyo Wol, who lived alone without forming a group. But Pyo Wol himself didn’t care about their gazes and looked up at the ceiling.

It was almost time for the food to come down.

The leaders, like So Yeowol and Kang Il, were already out where the basket descended.

Perhaps because they were leaders, they appeared quite mature.

Yeom Il-jung was glaring at Pyo Wol with his single eye as if he wanted to eat him alive. But within his fierce gaze, there was also a fear of Pyo Wol.

Kang Il and Go Young-san were wary of Pyo Wol but didn’t show any particular hostility. The only one who showed her feelings honestly was So Yeowol.

“What’s so great about a place where you can’t even see what’s right in front of you? Why don’t you stop playing alone and join our group?”

“I believe I’ve already answered that.”

“Don’t answers change depending on the situation?”

Despite Pyo Wol’s blunt words, So Yeowol didn’t lose her smile.

In fact, her gentle smile was dazzlingly beautiful.

Perhaps because she had been eating well and living comfortably, So Yeowol’s face had filled out. As she gained weight, her stunning beauty came to life. Her beauty was a great help in leading her group.

In fact, a significant number of those who followed So Yeowol were smitten by her beauty.

Pyo Wol looked at So Yeowol silently.

Honestly, she was pretty.

He was a man, too.

Though young, he was mature enough to perform a man’s duties. If it had been before he entered this place, he would have been captivated by So Yeowol and followed her.

But the hellish time of the past few months had instilled in Pyo Wol a strong sense of patience.

He had also become incomparably more thoughtful than before and had come to doubt everything around him.

He still didn’t trust the children here. No, he couldn’t trust them.

It was then.

A heavy sound came from the ceiling, and the basket of food descended.

All the children’s eyes naturally turned to the basket.

Kang Il muttered.

“We won’t have another idiot like Gu Ji-pyeong, will we?”

Gu Ji-pyeong was the name of a child who had died recently.

He had made a plan to Escape to the outside by riding the basket. After all the children had taken their food, he climbed into the empty basket. But when he was about two-thirds of the way up, those above cut the rope holding the basket.

In the end, Gu Ji-pyeong fell to the ground and died a gruesome death.

For three days after that, the basket did not come down.

During that time, the children had to starve.

It was a clear warning.

If something like this happened again, they would starve again.

Having learned an expensive lesson, the children no longer dreamed of escaping by riding the basket like Gu Ji-pyeong.

Thud!

Finally, the basket of food landed on the ground.

The expressions of the children who checked inside the basket changed.

“Why is there only this much?”

“The amount has decreased.”

“What is this?”

The smile vanished from So Yeowol’s face, and the other leaders couldn’t hide their bewildered expressions.

In this enclosed place, securing food was more important than anything else.

At a glance, the food had been reduced by about a quarter.

One might think it wasn’t a big difference, but for the children who were barely satisfying their hunger, it was a small enough amount to make them think of starvation.

The fact that the leaders themselves couldn’t hide their bewildered expressions was proof of this.

In the darkness, a red Qi swirled in Pyo Wol’s eyes.

‘So this was it.’

He had thought they would filter out the children in some way, but he hadn’t expected them to choose such an extreme and primal method.

Already, a grim atmosphere could be detected among the children.

So Yeowol and the leaders exchanged glances.

Until now, they had shared the food fairly. Although the amount was insufficient, they could at least fill the stomachs of the children who followed them to some extent. But with the amount of food reduced like this, filling their hunger was unimaginable.

It would be a relief if it ended here, but Pyo Wol predicted, based on their behavior so far, that the food would be reduced even more.

“I’ll just take this much.”

Pyo Wol took exactly his share by eye.

Even by feel, he could tell it was significantly less than before.

The eyebrows of So Yeowol and the other leaders twitched. Until now, they had tacitly acknowledged Pyo Wol’s share. That was how strong an impression Pyo Wol had made.

But now, the situation had changed.

Even the small amount Pyo Wol was taking felt like a waste. The only reason they were just watching was that this was the first day the amount had been reduced, so they didn’t have a firm grasp on the situation.

In their minds, there was a sliver of hope that although the amount was reduced today, it might return to normal tomorrow.

That was why they let Pyo Wol go, even though they looked at him with displeasure. But Pyo Wol knew.

That such good times would never come again. And just as he had guessed, the food decreased noticeably every day. And one day, a terrible incident that should never have happened occurred.