Apocalypse Hunter

Chapter 98: The War in Shane (Part 3)

Killing someone with just a curse was very difficult.

But, if you established a taboo and allowed Heaven to punish those who violated it, sometimes people died. Just as a curse and a taboo were different, so were a curse and a punishment from Heaven.

‘Bang!’

“Argh!”

“Wh–What? What’s wrong!”

A wayward bullet hit one of the gang members, and a bullet exploded and blew off the eyeballs of a boy who had been aiming his gun to shoot.

There were too many misfortunes happening all at once to think that it was just due to equipment malfunction.

The children shooting at the civilians felt a strange cool air was surrounding them.

‘Whirl! Bang!’

“Ahh!”

“Wh–What…”

A gust of wind, seemingly out of nowhere, knocked over a stone from the roof of an abandoned building and fell on a boy’s head. Seeing their comrade dead with a broken head made the children drop their guns and tremble in fear. The children who had killed the innocent were dropping dead all over the place.

Faced with many terrible things happening all around them, the children remembered the voice of the wind that had just whispered in their ears.

“Wh–What?… Could it be because of that whisper?”

“There’s no way… It can’t be…”

The children tried to ignore the chilly voice stuck in their heads. They had killed many innocent people, and now the punishment was coming their way. Each of the children scattered all over Shane was confused in their own way.

They did not fully comprehend what was happening, but what was clear was that they were cursed. Out of nowhere, stones would fall from the sky, a perfectly fine building would collapse, and their guns would jam.

They would see a Reaver from afar, shoot and then find out that he was actually one of the members of their team. Sudden hallucinations were rampant, and the Heavenly Punishment came to all, either through reality or through their minds.

The children were either going crazy or dying one by one by the hands of the Heavenly Punishment, and not from the Reaver’s counterattack. In the wild confusion, the children fled from the mysterious curse and headed to their respective leaders. The leaders were leading their own groups and surrounding the central government in a triangle formation.

The Reavers were all on guard, with their machine guns installed next to open windows, ready to shoot any gang members approaching the building.

The central government in its current state was an impregnable fortress, but at the same time, the Reavers were like rats trapped in a jar. If they could take over the central government, the gangs would win the fight against the group.

“Turian! Something’s attacking us!”

“I heard…”

The leaders were gathered in the basement of an abandoned building near the Central Government Complex, and the other children were arriving one after another. There was a noticeable decrease in the numbers. Since the leaders had a larger goal and weren’t distracted by revenge, the Heavenly Punishment had not come for them.

Turian had felt something attacking them when he heard the whisper in the wind, and he had just been notified that there was significant damage.

“It’s because you guys cared about something so petty. I will judge all of your behavior according to the family’s law later.”

Turian growled feeling annoyed that the important work had been delayed due to such a trivial matter. Once the first guerrilla operation was successful, the members were supposed to gather at a rallying point, but they were being delayed because they were wasting time on unimportant things.

The two young successors of the other two gangs were annoyed as well, and they scolded the members of their teams in a similar manner to Turian. More than fifteen people were killed by the mysterious misfortunes, and not from the fight against the Reavers. But for now, at least there were more children remaining than dead.

“It looks like everyone who’s supposed to be here is here”

“I think so, too.”

“True for us, too.”

Whether they realized it or not, the other two gang leaders were acknowledging that Turian was now in control. Everyone knew that it was foolish to fight at the location.

“From now on, engaging in private retaliation is prohibited. If anyone does anything stupid, I’m going to pull their eye out.

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Everyone nodded at the chilly remark. There were about sixty children gathered at the second rally point. Some held the AR they had stolen from the Reavers, but most had the usual five to seven long-range guns.

“Listen carefully. Their weaponry is way above ours. There is no chance of winning in an all-out war.” Turian remained calm while judging the situation. “The only way is to blow up the building and bury them in it.”

The best way was to neutralize the Reavers was to destroy the place where they had gathered. There was no other alternative, and direct confrontation was a long shot.

However, that strategy was unacceptable to at least one person.

“No.”

“What?”

It was the successor of the Sheriff’s gang who opposed Turian’s plan.

“That’s where our organization’s history is. I can never agree to blowing it up.”

The successor of the Sheriff’s gang shook his head with his face grim and twisted. In fact, even though they had lost the Central Office Building to the Group, it was still the most important building to them and a symbol of the Sheriff gang’s control over the city.

“Do you have another idea? If you have an alternative plan, let me know. They’ve set up the machine guns at the front. Are you going to face them head-on?”

“Shut up! If we were going to destroy your family’s house, you would say no, too. I know that you’re suggesting this without hesitation only because it is not your building.”

It had taken only a moment for a crack to appear in the fragile solidarity they had been able to maintain. As the heir to the Sheriff’s gang became angry, the children of that gang started to turn hostile as well.

‘Click!’

“Watch your mouth.”

‘Click-clack!’

“You guys are talking nonsense. We’ve come this far, but you cannot give up this one building?”

With their guns pointed at each other, the air around them froze cold. It was natural to want to get back what you had originally, all in one piece.

However, if the sacrifices were focused on a single group, it would be psychologically difficult to accept.

With victory just around the corner, the excited children had forgotten what was really important, and in the midst of the commotion, no one noticed that a black shadow was heading for the central office.

————-

There was no shooting, but the atmosphere was tense. It was the successor of the Shandoo faction that put it to rest. He stepped in to mediate and de-escalate the situation by encouraging all sides to make small concessions.

They would destroy the Central Government Office, but Turian would give the Skull Family’s building to the Sheriff gang to use it as their headquarters, and the Shandoo gang would search and build a new headquarters for the Skull Family. Everyone had to give a little.

Fortunately, there was no internal friction, but they had lost time.

The operation was simple. The Sheriff gang would use the underground passageway to gain access to the basement of the Central Office and blow up the building by installing time bombs on each pillar.

When the building started to collapse, the Reavers would have no choice but to leave it. And if any Reavers succeeded in getting out of the building, the gangs would ambush them. The Group would be completely wiped out.

Simple, but possible only because they knew the layout of the enemy’s headquarters well.

The Reavers were waiting because they knew that engaging in Shane’s street battles would be disadvantageous to them. However, that decision was about to wipe them out in one fell swoop.

The head of a the Sheriff gang, who knew the building well, started to lead his team toward the underground passageway. Since killing civilians was banned, there was no more punishment from Heaven.

Each of the gangs took their positions, where the machine gunman of the Central Building could not see them, and waited for the right moment.

Any enemies who escaped the building collapse would be destroyed in the open plaza.

Holding their breaths, the children surrounded the area around the Central Office. Each person had chosen a unique spot to hide: in the abandoned buildings, under the buildings, on rooftops, etc.

But then, the children surrounding the front gate clearly saw someone walking out on the plaza.

There was only one person, and all the children knew who that person was.

His large build, gray skin and the gruesome tattoos on his face all revealed that he was the Chief Administrator of Shane and the leader of the Reavers. For whatever reason, he had walked out alone from the walls that had been protecting him.

In his muscular arms was an enormous M134, or the more commonly called mini-gun. Its weight aside, the mini-gun had a huge drum magazine attached to it. He stood alone in the square, holding the mini-gun that would not be usable without superhuman strength.

The gangs were already enemies of the Group. Perhaps thinking that there was no need for communication, he stayed quiet. The Reavers already knew that the gangs had surrounded the building and were looking for an opportunity to attack.

They just didn’t know where the children were hiding and couldn’t shoot.

A thought flashed in the minds of the children, especially the leaders of the gangs.

If one of them were to shoot and kill the brave brute, the honor of killing the leader of the Group would go to that person and his gang.

However, it was possible that the enemy was waiting for that moment. There was no way to know whether the Chief Administrator was a decoy, but what was clear was that an all-out firefight would begin the moment they shot him.

‘Couldn’t I just shoot him quickly and run away? Let’s shoot. Shoot first, think later.’

The desire for fame made the children’s eyes glint. If he fell, the Reavers would be practically destroyed.

Some children thought of a far future.

Children knew that they could not win the war against the Group. If the Group were to return, no one would make it out alive.

If they were going to die anyway, why not become heroes before dying? Why not free Shane now and then die, instead of just being a statistic among those who were killed in the war?

The thought was not only in the leaders’ minds, but also, in the minds of many other members. Shane’s Chief Administrator just stood there. It was almost as if he was daring them to shoot, and as Turian watched his gutsy move, he had a flash of insight.

When he realized that the other people would be thinking the same thing he was thinking about, he reflexively thought they should not shoot.

It was a trap.

“Wait, don’t shoot…”

‘Bang!’

Already, a spark had gone off on the roof of a building.

That was the beginning.

‘Rat-at-at-at-tat! Rat-at-at-tat!’

As soon as one person fired, others joined in, shooting a barrage of bullets. Blinded by their desire for fame, the children had voluntarily given up the advantage they had had in hiding. As if they believed that one more bullet would make them the one who killed the Chief Administrator, they fired their guns for a long time. At the end, they looked at where the bullets had landed. Even considering the possibility that some bullets might have missed because it was night, there shouldn’t be even a piece of flesh left after getting hit with that many bullets.

Although Turian didn’t make an announcement, he couldn’t believe the sight before him.

“W-w-what?”

The Group’s Chief Administrator was standing tall, in tattered clothes and with numerous holes all over his body. He had clearly been shot, and there were even bullet holes left intact on his body.

It wasn’t even the case that he had died standing up.

“Th-That’s… What the hell is that…?!”

Turian was looking at the Chief Administrator, who was incredulously turning his head to check the location of the gunshots.

The power to escape death given by Asura. For the first time, they were witnessing something that was already dead and could not be killed. And since their locations had been revealed, they were expecting the Central Government to fire back, but the place was chill-inducingly quiet.

Just as everyone believed the Administrator would sort out the situation.

He aimed the mini-gun, not toward the location where the children had been hiding, but at the buildings themselves.

‘Wi-ii-ii-ing!’

The mini-gun started spinning.

‘Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa!’

The 7.62mm bombs were launched.

‘Bo-bo-bo-boom!’

They weren’t regular bombs. Every bomb exploded with a blue flash of lightning as soon as it hit the building.

The bombs in the mini-gun were the same as Zin’s 7.62mm Buckshot. The bombs were filled with blue chip powder inside a tan jacket and would create a grenade-level explosion with every hit.

The Group’s financial resources allowed such expensive ammunition for a mini-gun, and the Administrator was given the monster mini-gun along with the 7.62 millimeter buckshot wing.

With the mini-gun, even a regular bullet was enough to turn a large monster into a honeycombed pool of blood.

This 4,000-shots-per-minute monster was spitting out buckshots not at monsters, but at the buildings, and shredding them apart like paper.

‘Booom! Boooom!’

“Ahhhhhh!

“The building’s coming down!”

The building, with its roots of pillars destroyed, crumbled and crushed the children who were hiding inside. The Chief Administrator just pointed his mini-gun and tore down the surrounding buildings.

‘Bo-bo-bo-boom!’

In a massive explosion, the buildings collapsed one after another. He was just swinging his mini-gun filled with explosives. The surroundings were completely destroyed, and the children were buried before they could run away.

Since the time of the gangs, the buildings around the Central Government Office had already been destroyed as a way to prevent assaults, and no one lived in the neighborhood. As a result, there was no loss of civilian life.

The cost of the children’s rebellion that day was that them confronting the Group’s power, its weapons, and its financial resources and losing their lives.

——————-

The children in the underground passageway were aware of the trouble above ground. The pressure of having to carry out their mission quickly made the children impatient. Fortunately, the underground passage was known only by the family of the Sheriff heir-apparent, and it seemed that the Group had not even bothered to clean up the basement of the Central Office, which was full of junk and trash.

The task was simple. Install explosives on each underground pillar, lay out a long fuse, ignite the bombs, and then leave quickly.

The Sheriff’s successor, Jarot Sheriff, was still feeling reluctant about what he was going to do. It was hard to accept the reality that he had to destroy the symbol that had stood for their family’s domination over this land for a long time, but the children were carrying a lot of equipment and following him.

“Once we get rid of the Group, the first thing I’m going to do is beat up Turian.” It had never sat well with him that a young guy was acting like he was the shit just because he had some intelligence and some balls. Once this war was over, there would be another war.

He guessed that the other people were probably thinking the same thing. Bitter enemies in the same boat could not last forever. It was only logical to assume that the leaders would come up with a different agenda once they drove out their common enemy.

However, Jarot was already thinking about it even before the win.

‘Boom! Bo-Boom!’

“I think things are bad, boss.”

“Crazy bastards! They’re not supposed to fight! Why the heck are they fighting?

He gritted his teeth because he felt like the two other leaders were ruining the plan. The underground was wet, and the air was sticky. Jarot wanted to complete his mission as quickly as possible and get out of that unpleasant, humid place.

“We’re here.”

When Jaroth arrived, he whispered to his men following him, “We don’t know what’s in there, so take out your weapons.”

“OK.”

‘Clunk!’

With a nervous look, all the children pulled out their weapons, meant to protect themselves against the Reavers in hiding, but it seemed like Jarot had something else in mind.

“Creeeeak!”

They pushed the bookcase in the narrow crevice blocking them and descended to the third basement level of the Central Office. The space, which had been used as a parking lot in the past, was now filled with a lot of junk and concrete byproducts.

And most of all, there were white bones all around.

Of course, the children turned pale at the sight of the white bones strewn all around them. A glance was enough to tell that there was an enormous number of white bones in the area.

“Uh… Wh-what is this place?”

“Can’t you see? The Group must have buried the people they killed here.”

It was a lie. This was the place where the Sheriff gang had disposed of corpses. This was where they had thrown away the ones who had defied them, owed them a lot of money or were hopelessly addicted to drugs.

Because the area was usually locked, and the entrance completely blocked, only a few members knew about the existence of this space.