NOVPUBMessage from COOKIEMONSTER18: Seriously, my mother. Seriously. She’s so stupid I could hit her.
Message from COOKIEMONSTER18: People like her are the biggest problem. It’s obvious to anyone that the commander is lying, but she believes his words like they’re religious doctrine!
Inside the U.S. military camp near Daegu Airfield, remnants of American soldiers and civilians who couldn’t evacuate after the war remained.
It was true that, even after the war began, transport planes had sporadically airlifted military personnel and civilians from the Daegu camp to their fleet in Okinawa.
The problem was what came after.
This was now the fourth year since the war began.
Even a superpower, armed with an overwhelmingly favorable geographic position—what would have been called a map hack advantage in gaming—was staggering and collapsing under the weight of impending doom.
A country like Korea, which no longer held any strategic value, wasn’t even a consideration.
Fort Segnol.
The fortress of the abandoned Americans was slowly dying.
The surrounding area had already been eroded by the spreading waves of the Rift in Yangsan, and they were under constant threat from hostile civilians, zombies, and even monsters.
The commander of the fortress kept misleading people, claiming that a transport plane would be arriving soon—but that transport plane hadn’t shown up in two years.
A boy around Sue’s age had accessed the camp’s communication logs and discovered that the fleet they believed to be waiting in Okinawa had already withdrawn from Asia.
But instead of believing him, the adults branded the boy a traitor—he was Chinese—and exiled him from the camp.
Message from COOKIEMONSTER18: At this rate, we’re all going to die.
Message from COOKIEMONSTER18: Skelton, you have to convince my mom!
Convincing Rebecca wouldn’t be easy.
From what I had experienced, she was a simple person.
She held onto one or two goals and fixated on them stubbornly.
She had no real interest in anything outside of what she had decided for herself, nor did she try to change.
It had taken me over a year just to ease her hostility toward me.
And that had only been possible because I had unilaterally extended goodwill toward her.
Once she trusted someone, she became a reliable ally.
But convincing that Rebecca again? It wouldn’t be simple.
In the past, I would have outright refused.
But I liked to think I had gained some experience.
Yes, experience dealing with people.
I asked Sue to set up a conversation with Rebecca.
Message from COOKIEMONSTER18: Skelton! It’s been a while! You’re still alive, right?
It was only text, but I could tell her Korean had improved.
Time to put my well-honed skills as a veteran forum user to use.
SKELTON: I’ve been eating so well lately I think I’m getting fat.
Message from COOKIEMONSTER18: Really?
SKELTON: I even had fried chicken yesterday.
Message from COOKIEMONSTER18: I want fried chicken too.
SKELTON: How’s it going over there? Is it a good place for Sue’s education?
Message from COOKIEMONSTER18: Not as good as I expected, but it’s okay. More than anything, it’s safe.
SKELTON: So, you have no plans to leave?
Message from COOKIEMONSTER18: No. A plane to America is scheduled to come here.
SKELTON: I see.
Message from COOKIEMONSTER18: My husband is coming soon.
SKELTON: Really?
Message from COOKIEMONSTER18: Yes, he said he would come.
SKELTON: When?
Message from COOKIEMONSTER18: I don’t know exactly. But I have to stay here and wait for him to come someday.
Message from COOKIEMONSTER18: It’s a little tough, but...
I didn’t continue the conversation beyond that.
There was no need.
It was enough to understand why Rebecca was clinging to the camp.
Sue had been right.
Rebecca was staying in a doomed refugee camp because of false hope.
Objectively, her hope was impossible.
This wasn’t just my opinion. It was a fact.
Since working with Ballantine and maintaining regular contact with Necropolis, I had naturally come to understand the internal situation in the U.S. far better than before.
The United States as a federal entity had long since collapsed.
Even state governments were falling apart.
A few well-established state governments were barely holding on, but their collapse was only a matter of time.
Gangs, insurgents, and warlords ruled the land.
Refugee waves from failed states were crashing into the last strongholds, threatening to bring them down as well.
In the past, the U.S. had built a border wall to keep out Mexican refugees.
Now, Americans were building walls to keep out other Americans.
Even without the human conflicts, over 700 small and large Rifts had opened across U.S. territory.
Rift erosion, monster outbreaks, rampant mutations, the zombie plague—
Any lesser nation would have already been wiped out by this level of catastrophe, but America was barely holding on.
The idea that the U.S. government would send a long-range transport plane to rescue a mere 200 people stranded in Korea was nothing short of delusional.
But even if I explained all of this, Rebecca wouldn’t listen.
She was someone who fixated on what she wanted to believe.
Convincing her was impossible.
SKELTON: No matter what I say, your mom won’t listen to me.
Message from COOKIEMONSTER18: (Sue crying) Then what do we do...?
Message from COOKIEMONSTER18: I don’t want to die here. I want to live longer.
“······.”
Persuasion wasn’t the only way to move people.
In fact, persuasion was one of the least efficient methods.
SKELTON: I have an idea.
This translation is the intellectual property of Novelight.
Message from COOKIEMONSTER18: (Sue shocked) Really?!
SKELTON: Do you know the movie The Truman Show?
Message from COOKIEMONSTER18: No.
SKELTON: We’re going to put on a little play.
Message from COOKIEMONSTER18: A play?
SKELTON: In other words, we’re going to run a con.
When you think about it, us hunters were all a type of con artist.
Using intimidation tactics to deceive monsters was our core strategy.
Now, I would try the same against Rebecca.
Not with guns—
But with the internet.
*
Before the war, deepfake technology had caused a huge social controversy.
With advanced AI, people could manipulate real-time footage of celebrities and politicians, mixing them with fake news to skew public opinion.
Even Movie! Apocalypse!—an experimental feature in Viva! Apocalypse!—was, in a broad sense, a kind of deepfake technology.
But I didn’t need something that sophisticated.
What I needed was a series of convincing, but completely fake, images and videos showing U.S. soldiers arriving at the former American base near my territory.
I had played around with AI-generated images back when they were briefly popular on the forums.
So, as a test, I tried generating a few images using an AI tool.
The setup required three key components.
First, background images of the military base.
Second, old photos of U.S. soldiers from existing databases.
And third, a transport plane stationed on a military airstrip.
I already had plenty of background images of the base saved on my phone, and I could take new ones anytime.
The military photos were easy to find—there were countless images from past wars and post-war operations floating around online.
I selected an image of soldiers in combat gear stepping out of a helicopter at an airfield.
As for the transport plane?
I had the perfect material.
A while ago, I had taken photos of a transport plane that had landed en route to Jeju.
It was American-made, so I wouldn’t even need to edit it much.
With all the raw materials ready, I fed them into an AI image synthesis tool and got to ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) work.
The process was simple.
Adjust composition, lighting, time of day, add the right keywords—
Click.
“······.”
Now to check the results.
Since AI images could often blur details like a half-remembered dream, I needed to review them carefully.
And already, I noticed something strange.
“Hm.”
A perfectly fine soldier had six fingers instead of five.
A well-known issue with AI image tools.
I saved the ones that looked good and tweaked the tags or regenerated the images for the ones that didn’t.
“······.”
Click. Click. Click.
I wasn’t drawing the images myself, but getting exactly what I wanted still required a lot of time and effort.
To outsiders, it might just look like mindless mouse-clicking, but producing a proper AI-generated image wasn’t as easy as it seemed.
Just like how baseball players manipulate the seams of a baseball to throw different pitches, AI-generated images had to be fine-tuned with subtle adjustments to a few key tags.
There was a reason people called themselves AI illustrators.
Once I had the images I needed, I sent them to Hong Dajeong.
She was skilled at what was commonly called Photoshopping.
“What is this? You want me to touch up these photos and make them look real?”
“Yeah. I need you to fix this guy’s six fingers and turn them into five. Can you do it?”
She was the only person in my territory who did nothing but eat, so I had to make use of her when I could.
“It’s important. Do me a favor.”
“······I don’t know what you need it for, but okay. I’ll try.”
There was no trying. She had to do it.
“Alright, I did what you asked. Does it look good to you?”
Dajeong might have been useless outside of combat, but I had to give her credit—she worked fast and delivered results.
“Excellent.”
I wasn’t one to give compliments easily, but she deserved it for this.
“But Skelton... what are you using these for?”
“Hmm, I want to help someone.”
“Who?”
“Remember the sniper who used to live near us?”
“Oh, them?”
“Yeah. I want to help them out a bit.”
“I see.”
Her response was lukewarm.
Well, that was expected.
Rebecca and her daughter were my neighbors, not the Defender siblings’.
I had made sure beforehand that neither side trespassed into the other’s territory, but if I hadn’t been there as a mediator, one of them would no longer be alive.
“If it’s your plan, I hope it works out. Let me know if you need anything else.”
“Thanks.”
Dajeong’s work was a crucial part of the next step.
It was the key prop in the grand play I was about to stage.
Now, I needed one more thing.
Multiple satellite devices.
Aside from my main satellite device, I had three more.
Some might ask, Why the hell does one person need four satellite devices?
But a seasoned internet veteran like me would say, Of course I need them.
Because the number of satellite devices I had was equal to the number of alter egos I could create.
I had four.
Which meant that Skelton could operate as four separate personas.
Originally, I had planned to distribute these extra devices to Ha Tae-hoon and the others in my territory.
But after delaying it for various reasons, I started questioning whether giving them away was even necessary.
In the end, holding onto them had been the right choice.
“······.”
Taptaptap.
[ Welcome to Viva! Apocalypse! ]
It was time for my second online persona, CRAZY_HORSE, to take action.
Using the auto-translate function, courtesy of Melon Musk’s technology, I manipulated public perception on the English forums.
CRAZY_HORSE: U.S. Army troops arriving in Korea.jpg
A deepfake-fueled fake news post.
Just like in Korea, English-speaking users tended to ignore posts with no comments.
It was time for my third account to step in.
“······.”
Taptaptap.
[ Welcome to Viva! Apocalypse! ]
My third online persona.
roxanneGIRL: Wow?! Why are U.S. troops in Korea?!
As the name suggested, this persona was female.
Her role was to hype up the post.
roxanneGIRL: Is this really Korea?
roxanneGIRL: I can’t believe it. How did they get there?
Of course, a mere two-person exchange wasn’t enough to make this massive play seem real.
After all, sockpuppeting wasn’t just a problem in Korea—Western users did it all the time too.
That’s where my fourth online persona came in.
Dr.emiless: ?
Dr. Emiless.
Unlike the others, this persona was—
Dr.emiless: Hhhhhhmmmmmmmm.
—skeptical.
