Chapter 84 – LV.Fourteen Orc Vampire Oh Haengbok – [Two]

Park Taeyang hesitated at the forefront, with Oh Haengbok following behind. On the way to his house, gray ash fell from the gray sky, but neither he nor Oh Haengbok paid it any mind.

Oh Haengbok knocked on Park Taeyang’s door and called for his parents.

“Anyone home?”

No matter how much he called, the parents didn’t come out, so Park Taeyang told him to open it.

Only when the door opened slightly did Oh Haengbok finally regain his senses. He was about to argue with this kid’s parents, and he couldn’t leave the brat here.

“Go downstairs for a bit, okay?”

After giving that instruction, he entered Park Taeyang’s house alone.

Park Taeyang’s parents were inside the house.

Oh Haengbok saw the knots tied around the necks of the man and woman and the rope tied to the curtain rail by the window above.

The faces of Park Taeyang’s parents, with their tongues hanging out, were already bluish-purple. Even an outsider could tell it was too late to save them with artificial respiration or the like.

Stunned, Oh Haengbok left the house. He took Park Taeyang, who was standing anxiously at the stairs, and returned to the taekwondo studio.

And as days passed, with his parents not returning, Park Taeyang showed signs of anxiety. Oh Haengbok tried hard to console the boy who had lost his parents.

“Taeyang? Your parents didn’t abandon you. But…”

What he said next was impulsive.

“Think of me as your new dad now. Okay?”

Park Taeyang, who had been staring blankly at him, nodded. Seemingly greatly comforted by those words after being so anxious, tears even welled up in his eyes.

Oh Haengbok patted his shoulder and said.

“Go inside and have some snacks. When you’re sad, chocolate is the best, so I’ll give you chocolate flavor.”

Many things continued to happen. At some point, there was an incident where a kid was eating snacks outside the taekwondo studio alone, and a young man from the villa across the street, whose eyes lit up at the sight of the snacks, snatched them away.

Oh Haengbok considered thoroughly beating up the guy who stole and ate the kid’s snacks, but seeing his nearly half-dead state, he sighed deeply and proposed.

“I’ve been busy lately looking for provisions. How about I feed you some snacks and you work with me?”

His name was Lee Yul. Later, perhaps trying to follow Park Taeyang, who had taken Oh Haengbok as his adoptive father, he even changed his own name to Oh Haengun, saying he would serve him as Hyung.

That guy, knowing he owed his life to him, did his best to help with the work. And so the group grew, and continued to grow.

It became frequent for people from other villages to come to this village to plunder provisions. Each time, the survivors of the village relied on Oh Haengbok, who was clearly the strongest to anyone’s eyes.

In return for leading the defense and protecting people during each raid, he could obtain a little food to feed the kids. So Oh Haengbok did not refuse the role of village protector.

He also negotiated with the supermarket owner who had locked the supermarket door, saying people were trying to take all the goods. He succeeded in persuading him to distribute the food that might soon rot to the people, in exchange for personally protecting those goods.

Taking on various tasks like this, before he knew it, Oh Haengbok had become the leader of the village survivors. After that, he continued to gather people, find food in abandoned buildings, distribute it, and everyone struggled to survive.

But even that soon reached its limit.

It had been a long time since all the food from the surrounding abandoned houses and commercial areas had been scavenged, and ultimately, no government rations ever came. There was no restoration of electricity, not even a radio broadcast saying help would arrive soon.

Even Oh Haengbok himself was in a situation of having gone hungry for days. While struggling to feed the kids, he understood the feelings of Park Taeyang’s parents who left first, leaving only the child behind. He thought it would indeed be better to die. And that it would be good if others ate his own flesh that would appear.

It was a thought mixed with a bit of self-sacrifice and a lot of despair. He had too many responsibilities and no way to fulfill them.

It would be easier if he just died.

Yet, paradoxically, what kept him from dying was that he had too many responsibilities to die for. He had too many mouths to feed, and for the sake of feeding them all, he couldn’t just abruptly leave this world alone.

He thought with bloodshot eyes. Like other villages did to us, should we also raid another village…?

But since everyone seemed to lack the energy to march, he set that thought aside. It was a time when nothing remained but to slowly die like this.

Oh Haengun came with lifeless, yet utterly astonished eyes and shouted.

“It’s a Mammoth!”

Oh Haengbok was dumbfounded. Had this guy gone crazy from starvation?

“What Mammoth…?”

“Such a thing exists! Come and see, Chief!”

Urged like that, Oh Haengbok had no choice but to follow. With the determination to curse him out if he was really hallucinating and causing this fuss.

And there was the Mammoth.

A creature walking on the paved road, it really was a Mammoth. Such a huge, furry elephant?

Truly, even without knowing much biology, it was a monster for which one could list ten reasons why such a creature couldn’t exist in the Mortal Realm. If a land animal were that big, it would be inefficient because eating and eating more would never be enough, and with that size, it couldn’t support its own weight and would be crushed by gravity and die on its own.

Yet, there it was, alive and well, a monster covered in fur, stomping through the village.

The first thought Oh Haengbok had upon seeing that monster was, how much meat would be on that huge body.

The villagers seemed to have the same thought. Everyone seemed to have already tried to hunt that monster.

They were stabbing the Mammoth with weapons prepared to face raiders, but the Mammoth had not a single wound.

Its hide seemed as thick as its size. They said no weapon worked. It simply trampled or knocked away a few people blocking its path with its huge trunk and tried to pass through the village as it was.

Wondering what had happened to the world and what that thing even was, Oh Haengbok did what needed to be done immediately.

“They said even arrows from a compound bow didn’t work at all. Bladed weapons like spears or knives?”

“Yes. Not at all.”

“Then, we have to use blunt weapons.”

Oh Haengbok picked up a construction sledgehammer. And for the meat, for the mouths he had to feed, he charged at the Mammoth.The closer he got to the mammoth, the more he felt its massive size. Even from a distance, it had seemed unreal, but up close, its scale was downright surreal.

Only then did fear wash over him. He hadn’t put anything in his mouth for days, so his heart should have been weak, yet his heart rate soared to a level he’d never experienced before.

Up ahead, the colossal monster looked this way.

Oh Haengbok gritted his teeth. Fine, kill me if you’re going to kill me. It might even be a relief. To psych himself up, he spewed curses.

“You’re so fucking loud when you walk around, just die already, you bastard—!”

It was his first curse in years. Perhaps because of that, just swearing alone could excite him.

He ran, his blood boiling.

The hammer swung with all his might in both hands struck the mammoth’s massive forehead. He felt something shatter through his fingertips. Of course, the mammoth didn’t die from one hit. So he struck twice, three times, even hitting its eye. ‘Bam!’

Blood gushed from there, soaking Oh Haengbok’s body, and his mind turned white with excitement. Without a single thought, he struck and struck again with the hammer.

And when he came to his senses, the mammoth had fallen. In front of that enormous corpse, he stood gripping the sledgehammer, covered in blood, panting heavily. People gathered around him.

He still remembered the cheers that erupted at that moment.

He also remembered what happened later. After felling the mammoth, Oh Haengbok became a monster. He seemed stronger, his canines grew long, and above all, the hair all over his body fell out, and his skin turned gray.

Oh Haengun and a few others weren’t shocked by the change. Or perhaps they were shocked but didn’t show it outwardly.

They simply, silently, vowed not to let there be only one monster in the world, smearing the mammoth’s blood on their own bodies. They said they would stand with their Chief.

At the time, they thought the mammoth’s blood had some kind of mutation effect. Truly, it was a time when they knew nothing.

Of course, aside from Oh Haengbok himself, no one else turned into this gray monster.

However, some people changed classes to Warrior, and others to Mage. Oh Haengbok changed class to Warrior.

And for reasons unknown to anyone, an event occurred where the Immortal Kingdom Rulebook—a game Koreans didn’t enjoy at all, and one no one in the village knew about—was placed right in the center of the village. According to that rulebook, this gray monster was called an Orc.

After that, there were incidents like Park Taeyang’s already bad personality becoming even more twisted, perhaps because he grew arrogant from his status as the powerful Leader’s adopted son, or like failing several times while trying to cultivate abandoned fields, but they ultimately managed to survive.

Now, over three years later, Oh Haengbok’s mind doesn’t remember well how desperate and painful it was back then. Even the desperation of preferring a quick death over slowly dying while betraying everyone’s expectations doesn’t come to mind easily.

Only the cheers after felling the mammoth and the triumphant chorus of hurrahs that echoed when he finally managed to coax people into harvesting potatoes from the fields remain in his mind.

Oh Haengbok thought. Those cheers and that chorus of hurrahs… it feels like it’s been a long time since I’ve heard anything like that recently.

Probably because there haven’t been many opportunities lately to do something praiseworthy. There haven’t been many chances to achieve another feat either.

Also, having caused so much trouble that he seems to have become the village’s headache now, Oh Haengbok wanted to hear those cheers again. He harbored a desire to accomplish something similar to back then, and even felt sympathy, wanting to help those French people.

That was why he, as the Leader, unilaterally decided on an act that offered no particular benefit to Happy Village—helping them.

Oh Haengbok contacted that French village and asked how they felt about crossing over to live in Incheon.

They also gave a positive response. They said they would gladly do so if it meant escaping their hellish land.

“That village said it has a population cap, right? They said if the village population set in the rulebook or whatever is exceeded, it’s a big problem.”

“Yeah. So they said if the population grows too much, they’d have to kick some people out.”

“But if there’s an upper limit, wouldn’t there also be a lower limit? If the population exceeds the setting, it’s a problem, but if it falls below…”

This fucking bastard has been nitpicking everything I say lately. Isn’t he trying to undermine my authority now by giving a warning in advance and then saying ‘I warned you’ if any problems arise?

Oh Haengbok spoke without bothering to hide his displeasure.

“Then just gather a few extra people as a precaution for any unforeseen circumstances!”

That village said they would first send thirty people as Oh Haengbok suggested, and they needed the help of Players from here to escort them.

He blew the horn trumpet to gather the village Players. Just seeing everyone gather at his single call was satisfying, and amidst that, Oh Haengbok shouted before them.

“Everyone knows that French village, right? The ones living there are trapped in that snowy wasteland, living pitifully! Today, we go to save them!”