Chapter 25

Descending the Mountain (1)

Although we gained control over the mountain range, that didn’t mean we reigned supreme over the entire range. We had only driven off our rivals by putting up a defensive battle at the unit stationed on the highest peak.

“Recent investigations by the troops.”

Minjae hyung said as he spread out a military map. A military map showing the terrain around our unit. It was covered in countless mysterious X marks.

“Sergeant Lee Minjae? What are these markings?”

It wasn’t just me who was curious, Gwang-il asked.

“Places where monsters were recently sighted. From this, we can roughly estimate how many monsters are in the area.”

“Uh, there seem to be a lot of marks.”

“You noticed well. In reality, it’s probably exactly that many.”

“Ah.”

Quite some time had passed since we defeated the chieftain, but

lizards were still raiding the unit by the day. Since they didn’t come in large groups, repelling them wasn’t too difficult, and in fact, it helped the troops level up.

“But the number scattered throughout the mountain range is far greater than that?”

“Yeah.”

Minjae hyung let out a deep sigh as he looked at the map.

“I don’t know if there’s some kind of hole somewhere that keeps spewing out monsters… but if what the soldiers observed is true, the number of monsters isn’t decreasing, it’s increasing.”

“So we’re steadily hunting the ones that flow into our unit, but the total number is actually going up?”

“That’s how it is. And recently, there’ve been reports of seeing grotesquely shaped monsters besides lizards. At least we have information on lizards, but other monsters might be even more troublesome.”

Even with lizards, knowing their weak points is what makes them manageable.

If you don’t know where the weak points are, they’re monsters that are nearly impossible to deal with unless you have the firepower of marksmen.

Looked at another way, even just having weak points you know about makes lizards the lesser evil.

The enemy’s combat strength might be more troublesome than we thought.

At that point, there was something that made me curious instead.

“Sang-ah team leader.”

“Yes?”

“How did you make it all the way to this unit?”

Lee Sang-ah and the roughly twenty survivors in her group.

How did they break through that mountain range to get here?

“Well…? Of course there were monsters, but not as many as you’re describing now. Since our numbers were small, we hid our presence as much as possible and moved carefully. The monsters we occasionally ran into were only one or two at a time, so we managed to deal with them somehow. They weren’t those lizard monsters, though.”

Hiding their presence…I wasn’t sure if that alone could really let them avoid monster attacks.

“Think about it.”

Minjae hyung cleared up that doubt.

“We spotted the people climbing the mountain range the day after we took down the chieftain.”

“Ah.”

Of course.

The lizard chieftain had gathered the lizards of the mountain range to hunt us and launched an attack.

We repelled it, as a result, the number of lizards roaming the mountain range had sharply decreased right around the time her group set foot on the mountain range.

Looked at another way,

“If we had tried to climb the mountain range a few days earlier… ugh. That’s creepy to think about.”

Unfortunately, we couldn’t expect that kind of coincidence this time. Our unit had a lot of people, and we had no small amount of supplies to move, so sneaking through wasn’t an option.

Engagements would be inevitable.

“Hah. I’m fairly confident when it comes to defensive battles at the unit, at least.”

“Leaving the unit and descending the mountain range is going to require resolve.”

There was no choice.

Leaving the unit and moving was a necessary situation. All we could do was prepare as thoroughly as possible.

“Vehicle maintenance is complete.”

While I had been busy preparing things in the mess hall, a soldier who used to be a vehicle mechanic came to report.

Following him, I saw several vehicles lined up in the distance. Military Retonas, large trucks called deuce-and-a-halfs. From civilian vans to medical transport vehicles.

“We brought out every vehicle we could mobilize.”

“Fuel’s not an issue, right?”

“Just in case, we hadn’t been using the fuel that was already in the vehicles. Going down the mountain and moving a bit shouldn’t be a problem.”

I’d been worried because the unit’s generator consumed a lot of fuel, but it seemed the other soldiers had also anticipated that we’d eventually need to use the vehicles.

“For now, we’ve loaded everything we can. Hopefully they’ll be of help in engagements with monsters.”

“It’s unsettling, but we’ll have to trust it.”

The reason we went this far to mobilize vehicles. It was to use them in battle.

‘The area below the mountain is unfavorable territory for us.’

If that was the case, then we had to force the terrain into our favor.

At least, none of the monsters we’d encountered so far had any ranged attack methods. We planned to set up the massive vehicles as barriers, using them as makeshift barricades.

“Please take care of protecting the other survivors.”

“Yes. You all, stay safe as well.”

One unfortunate point was that the survivors who had joined recently still hadn’t awakened.

Even so, it was realistically impossible to stay in the mountain range any longer, so we had no choice.

After entrusting the survivors who hadn’t awakened yet to Sang-ah and seating them in the vehicles positioned in the safest spots,

“Open the gates.”

“Let’s go.”

Creeeeak…!

A small military base located deep within a fog-covered mountain range.

At last, the main gate of that base opened.

* * *

“Warriors, this way!”

“Send the vehicles carrying survivors to the inside first!”

The moment the narrow main gate opened and we stepped outside the base,

we formed up according to plan. We weren’t used to battles that involved awakened individuals to begin with. Naturally, executing complex formations was difficult, so the formation we set up was simple.

‘Tank, DPS, healer. In RPG games, that’s the classic formation.’

The vehicles forming the outermost wall.

Around them, the warrior squads.

Further inside, the ranged and rear-support awakened. And at the very center, the vehicles carrying the survivors. It was simple, but precisely because it was simple, its effectiveness was intuitive.

While the warriors and vehicles blocked the enemy, the mages would attack from behind.

“The problem is that we don’t know from which direction the ambush might come.”

“We’ll have to have the warriors positioned near the vehicles respond flexibly to that.”

Watching the soldiers build the formation, Gwang-il muttered.

“It would’ve been nice if we could just ride in the vehicles and descend quickly.”

The road descending the mountain range took several hours even by car.

On foot, it would easily take half a day…In terms of speed, riding in the vehicles was obviously faster, but,

“I told you, it’s too dangerous.”

“Khmm. Just airing a small complaint.”

More than half of the road leading down from the mountain range where our unit was located was rough, unpaved terrain.

On top of that, the road was narrow, and in many places, two vehicles couldn’t pass side by side. Not only was the road rough, but most sections didn’t even have guardrails.

If an accident happened, you’d fall straight down the mountain cliffs. Since our unit was basically the only one that used this road, even when it was maintained, all they could really do was clear weeds and rocks, the quality of the road itself couldn’t be improved much.

‘The drivers said they always had to drive carefully when going up and down the mountain.’

They didn’t even let rookies drive on the mountain roads.

Only after seeing some level of driving skill, and if it still didn’t seem good enough, they’d just reroute them to maintenance duty instead. That was how treacherous the road was.

If we got ambushed by monsters while riding in vehicles at speed on a road like this, we’d immediately plunge off the cliffs below. Rather than that, the judgment was that it would be safer to deploy the vehicles in positions where we might be ambushed, use them as barriers, and advance slowly.

“Formation established.”

“Move out.”

We began our descent at a brisk pace. Since everyone was now awakened, even a fast jog didn’t tire us easily.

For me, a cook, it was just a level where I didn’t tire easily, but the warriors could probably run fast enough to beat Olympic medalists.

“Still, it’s pretty quiet near the unit.”

As we moved while maintaining a perimeter around the vehicles, one of the soldiers muttered.

Indeed, the area near the unit was practically our territory.

So far, it was quiet, but…

“This won’t last.”

Sure enough, just as I predicted.

Rustle…!

Only a few minutes after leaving the unit and starting our descent, we heard a strange sound. This was a mountain range that was practically half-wild to begin with.

If only it were the sound of animals’ footsteps.

“There.”

From far off in the direction the sound came from, we could see black shapes rapidly approaching.

“Everyone, weapons up!”

“Stay calm.”

“It’s no different from fighting at the unit!”

The senior soldiers encouraged the troops, and the soldiers raised their weapons.

Soon, from within the forest, obscured by trees, from the shadows inside…

“Kaaaah!”

With a shrill scream, a lizard burst out. Several more lizards followed, revealing themselves one after another.

“As planned, use the vehicles as cover.”

The warrior squads raised their weapons and took positions behind the vehicles.

The vehicles used as cover were supposed to provide the first layer of defense. The plan had been to deal only with enemies that came around the barriers, but, contrary to our expectations, the vehicles failed to serve as barriers.

Crunch!

“Krk…!”

The lizards dug their sharp claws into the unit’s transport trucks,

then used the claws embedded in the vehicles as leverage to launch their bodies. The monsters vaulted straight over the vehicles.

‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’

Thinking the vehicles would serve as barriers had been nothing but our own delusion.

Ordinary civilian vehicles, to those things, they were no more than paper-thin walls that could be cleared with ease.

“Damn it, I knew this would happen.”

“Don’t rely on the barriers! Warriors, reposition!”

Seeing that, the warriors hurriedly changed positions.

Now that the barriers couldn’t be trusted, the area the warriors had to cover widened.

“Krk!”

Soon, the monster that had leapt over the vehicles first hurled itself into the inner formation.

One of our marksmen raised his gun as if to fire at the monster, but,

Tap!

I quickly reached out and pushed his barrel downward.

“Stick to the plan. Don’t fire your guns.”

“B-But—”

The base we’d been in before was terrain favorable for our defense.

A defensive battle leveraging the overwhelming firepower of the marksmen had been nothing but advantageous.

‘This place is different.’

The mountain range, with trees blocking the view, severely limited our ranged firepower.

That alone would have been manageable, but, the real problem was the inherent penalty that firearms have carried since ancient times.

“The gunshots will draw the monsters in.”

It was the loud report of gunfire itself. If it were only a small number of monsters, we might still be able to prevail even in unfavorable terrain. But if monsters started swarming in at the sound of gunfire…

“Then it’ll really be game over.”

“But the formation—”

“We anticipated that the vehicles might not be much help. Trust the warriors and the mages.”

In fact, the warriors were already throwing themselves forward to deal with the lizard that had leapt into the formation.

We had warriors waiting inside precisely for situations like this. And unlike marksmen, mages could modulate their firepower to fight with far less noise.

“We can win this.”

The monsters that had ambushed us numbered more than a dozen and that wasn’t all.

Once a battle started, noise was inevitable. It was smaller than gunfire echoing across the mountain, but still loud enough to draw in nearby monsters. Drawn by the noise of battle and the monsters’ shrieks, more monsters swarmed in.

There were now more monsters than the initial ambush.

At the base we’d been in before, this number wouldn’t have posed much of a threat.

The core of our base’s defensive success had been long-range firepower, something made possible by open lines of sight and multiple defensive facilities. In contrast, these monsters had entered our formation in nearly pristine condition.

They were definitely a threat, but…

‘It’s not like we came unprepared.’

It wasn’t as though we had nothing ready.

I shouted to the troops.

“Eat your combat rations!”

A somewhat out-of-place order for the middle of a desperate battle.

“Yes, sir!”

“They say to take the combat rations!”

As if they’d been waiting for it, the soldiers widened the distance from the enemy slightly and moved. Hands went into ration pouches, and the soldiers pulled something out.

It was…

‘Jerky.’

Dark red jerky wrapped in small pieces of paper. Even in the heat of battle, the soldiers tore open the wrappers and stuffed the jerky into their mouths.

Of course, it wasn’t ordinary jerky.

『Low-Grade Cook’s Secret of Primate Preparation』

『This dish is made with ingredients imbued with mana. The effects of the dish are enhanced.』

『This dish has been made as preserved food. Almost no degradation of stats occurs over time.』

『Upon consumption, all stats increase by 5.』

『Upon consumption, the mana of ‘Steel Lizard’ infused in the dish seeps into the body. Physical resistance increases drastically.』

“Heh! It’s been a while since we’ve had a fun fight!”

“Tonight’s dinner is in hell!”

“Kieeeeeeek!!!”

The dish I had made myself.

The first real deployment of our combat rations.