K-Drama 'duty after school' Webtoon ending (Spoiler Alert)

 

K-Drama 'duty after school' Webtoon (Spoiler Alert)

The identity and ending of the sphere in the original webtoon

An unidentified creature in the form of a sphere that is believed to be from outer space. In the story, it is usually called a cell. The unit of counting is 'mari'.

It suddenly appeared in the skies over the world 132 days before the SAT exam, and no one knows why or for what purpose.

They are divided into large, medium, and small according to size, and large ones divide to make small ones. The small ones are about 1 meter in size, and the exact size of the large or medium ones is not known.

Judging from the picture in Episode 1, medium and large have different sizes, but medium seems to be about the size of a single-family house in the size of a car, and large seems to be about the size of a 10-story apartment building. However, there seem to be many larger ones than this, as they vary so much that altitude and perspective are ignored.

The large ones float in the background of the scene, and some of the medium ones float, but most of them seem to crash to the ground at the point of splitting. Most of them are pressed against buildings and are embedded in apartment rooftops or walls. There is also one behind Seongdong High School. The medium-sized ones are not active, so they are kept a few meters apart as a safety line. The small ones are more active and can be easily distinguished from the medium ones.

The structure itself is very simple, with a shell surrounding the outside and a small core in the center. The space in between is filled with an unknown mucus, as depicted in episode 24. There are corners that literally resemble the structure of a cell. The large ones are not allowed to be touched worldwide because of the danger, and we know very little about them compared to the medium and small ones. Occasionally, they are bombed, which is the process of splitting them apart so much that they fall to the ground.

Smalls have both the vision to find and track humans and the hearing to flee at gunfire. They also have intelligence, as evidenced by their ability to run and hide when shot. Confirmed in episode 26.

Large and medium cells are immobile and do not attack humans unless they make contact first. According to the show's description, upon contact with a Medium cell, a number of spiky tentacles protrude and pierce the body of the contacted person, killing them. These tentacles are sharp and hard enough to sever a person's limbs or neck, killing them in one fell swoop.

Smaller cells use two to four tentacles for self-mobility and actively attack humans. They appear to be more agile than the average human. In addition to its tentacles, the Small also has a method of attack that involves engulfing a person and absorbing them into itself. In this case, rather than absorbing the entire person, they seem to cut or stab the body while enveloping them inside. In episode 6, Gyungbuk was only decapitated while his entire upper body was enveloped.

In the drama, the medium-sized cells create tension by coexisting with dangerous objects, while the small cells function as antagonists that actively attack. This is why in the drama, Jung-hyung's cell subtly disrupts the boundaries by saying that it is safe to stay two meters away, but in fact, Jung-hyung had split the small cell in the school and attacked Kim Deok-joong and killed the periodic soldier. This is likely thanks to Joong-hyung killing Jang Young-hoon earlier in the day and getting nourishment from his blood.

He doesn't do much, but when he does, he turns the game on its head. It started by appearing and bombing on the first day and continued to do so in episode 18, when it bombed the ground in swarms.

While the small cells are the most active and frightening of the bunch, they're also the most ridiculous.

In episode 19, a small cell is shown bouncing around on the cover of a truck without doing much damage, apparently unable to cut through metal or weak against thick fabric. In episode 19, it is surprisingly unable to penetrate a glass front door, and it has been kicked, pushed, and thrown by kids before, so it feels like it has a surprisingly small mass.

In episodes 21 and 22, however, it crashed into a running Pocha, scorching the windshield and horrifying the drivers[7], and threatened the students by lightly piercing the overturned car with its tentacles. In episode 25, the newly introduced Pocha and its occupants were attacked by a swarm and nearly wiped out. It may be that a vehicle of the size of the K-511 knows how to exploit weaknesses, or it may be that the scene in episode 19 was simply a case of being bounced off the vehicle and not being able to use its strength.

The only known way to kill it is miniaturization. If you destroy the tiny nucleus inside a small cell, it will no longer divide and die in a small explosion. Destroying the nucleus of a small cell can be done with the power of an ordinary rifle bullet. However, they are often described as quite tricky to deal with, as they are highly mobile and difficult to hit while moving, and if you miss, they will quickly overrun or escape.

It is said that grenades, mortars, and crematoriums are even less lethal if you don't hit the nucleus accurately. It seems that explosive weapons don't make the fragments smaller, which means that if you get caught in the explosion, you won't be able to stop it, or that shallow fragments won't penetrate the nucleus reliably. (In fact, even light body armor dramatically reduces the fragment killing power of grenades and shells.) So you can only aim and shoot at them one by one with a gun. But even with firearms, it's not easy, and even when the troops are lined up and the machine guns are firing, many of the rounds just miss and the nukes are described as hard to hit.

A few armored personnel carriers might be able to take them all out, but there's no indication that they'll be used in combat. For a game that is heavily criticized for its realism, there needs to be a secondary explanation for why armored vehicles are so busy blocking key areas that they can't afford to set up operations, or why there is a miscommunication in the chain of command.

In the case of medium-sized cells, when attacked with anti-tank weapons, they explode into many smaller cells with a large explosion. It seems impossible to penetrate the nucleus of a medium-sized cell and remove it with a Hankyu, so the large ones are untouchable.

The large cells are not touched at all during the operation. It is mentioned that a large cell over the Pacific Ocean was attacked with a total of 13 different weapons, but it did not react, so its defense is much stronger than the smaller ones.

I could probably blow them all up with a fighter jet, but the thought of the grapes on the ground was a FAIL. All other air and sea weapons were sealed for the same reason.

The explosive power of the small is lower than it looks, just enough to slightly injure at close range. The fact that they don't create shrapnel seems to make them less lethal. However, when detonated on contact, they are destructive enough to instantly kill anyone caught in the blast.

The specific destructive power depends on the size, but medium and large explosions are described as very large. In episode 3, a medium-sized explosion blew up a building, and a large one blew up a city in the United States.

In addition to that, in the drama, tens of thousands of people were killed by the cells, so even a small attack would be a very deadly threat. Given that there are hundreds to thousands of formations in the city of Seoul, there is no answer.

The cells divided more and more over time. As depicted in episode 19, the more they divide, the smaller they become. A small medium divides into 8-10 smalls. The good news is that the total number of mesomorphs is fixed, not increasing, so once they divide, there are no more of them and they disappear. According to the description, they are more concentrated in mountainous areas than in cities, and they divide faster than in cities. It is speculated that they find the nutrients needed for division in the forests, and the divided (small) cells move toward the city center to attack. The task of the student reservists is to defend and destroy the divided individuals as they move towards the city center.

By the middle of the project, the method of medium cell disruption was born. The United Nations developed a new weapon, the MCS, which uses intense heat to force medium-sized cells to divide, and then shoots the small cells that divide to kill them. Because of the forced division, the small cells are temporarily immobilized in a cluster, which is why grenade attacks are effective at this time. To summarize: hit with MCS, then grenades, then grenade launcher, then finish with rifle. This MCS is a modification of a handheld anti-tank grenade launcher. The term "anti-tank grenade launcher" sounds strange, but it's actually an RPG-7. You have to be careful with this one, though, as there's a scene where you shoot a MCS and it fails to penetrate the nucleus, so it extends tentacles with a range of 10 meters, beyond the usual safety of 2 meters, and swings them around (!), killing anyone in range.

Anyway, once I started using it to wipe out the mesenchymal cells, the effect was obvious, as the population started to drop. The prospect of reducing the number of mesenchymal cells sufficiently would mean that only professional soldiers would be required to engage in anti-cellular warfare, giving the student reservists hope that they would soon be able to return home, to their families, and to their student status instead of being soldiers.

By the 74th day of the outbreak and the 13th operation, the regiment of Seongdong High School students alone had disposed of 1,000 animals, and the total number nationwide was said to be over 200,000. The number of felons has been reduced to almost half of what it was at the beginning of the outbreak, and in the cities, they have been nearly eradicated. With the alertness lowered, social functioning began to return to a quasi-peaceful level, and the student reserve army was finally demobilized. It was decided that non-combatants would be trained on a regular basis so that they could respond immediately in the event of a large-scale cell division. Radars are installed on the tops of skyscrapers to keep an eye on them, cell disposal units are stationed in each area, and as soon as signs of division are detected, a reserve force is organized and sent back to deal with them.

By the end of the operation (Episode 42, Nov. 7, 129 days into the outbreak), a total of 374,000 medium-sized cells had been dealt with in the country. Large cells have not moved at all for two months. In addition, two Seoul subway lines and 60 city buses have resumed service, and cell phone coverage has been expanded. Infrastructure is also being restored.

And according to the news in the last episode, the war is over for now as 90% of the small and medium-sized cells have been cleaned up, but they are on alert as the large cells have gone dormant. All student reservists went home by the end of the year, and schools reopened normally in March. The final scene fills in the gaps as we see whether the nearest megacell or a new super megacell has emerged.