The Shop Appears and a New Villain

Was this what they called a golden age of peace?

"Nice..."

For the first time, several days slipped by without any particular events.

Of course, we hadn't just been eating and lounging around.

Through relentless effort, they could finally start pulling their own weight.

Thwack!!!

Thunk!!

Spears and blades punching clean through zombie skulls.

It wasn't Suho or Jaeyeol doing it — it was Jeongyeon and Huijin, two of the three college girls.

"You can send more in!"

"Alright, here they come again~"

"Kraaagh!!"

"Kraaaaaagh!!!"

"Kraaagh!!"

"Kraaaa!!!"

The moment Mingu opened the door he'd been holding shut with his body, zombies poured through.

Until yesterday their aggression and activity had been dulled, but starting today they were back to their original selves.

"There's too many of them!"

"Help us out!!"

"You two go too."

"Yes!"

"Yes!"

"Again?? Let me rest already!!!"

With more zombies flooding in than expected, Nari, Seonye, and even Jihye — who'd been resting — grabbed their weapons and charged in to face them.

The women who had struggled even against zombies with reduced aggression and activity had finally figured out how to use their bodies.

This was an extremely important change.

Men adapted quickly to the physical abilities boosted by their stats after moving around a few times, but for the women that process had been painfully slow.

Because they lacked faith in themselves.

Can I really move like this?

Can I really go toe-to-toe with a zombie?

If I make even one mistake, I'll turn into one of them.

That self-doubt had kept them from properly using physical abilities their stats had already enhanced more than enough.

But once they overcame it, everything changed.

"Nari, the chest!"

"Yes!"

"Unnie, over here too!"

"Just wait a second!!"

While Nari and Seonye stabbed the charging zombies' chests with a field shovel and a spear to hold them back, Jihye finished them one by one, burying her axe in their heads.

Jeongyeon and Huijin handled them just as skillfully, dodging the charging zombies like expert matadors while thrusting and swinging their weapons.

"They've gotten a lot stronger."

"And they've lost their fear too."

"It's a good change."

I nodded in agreement with Suho and Jaeyeol, who were just standing there watching even though the women were fighting zombies.

They really had gotten a lot stronger.

Thanks to the five stat points earned from clearing the church and hospital quests, Jihye and Nari — and the other girls as well — had become as strong as Yeonghun and Jaemin had been when we first arrived in Yeouido.

Of course, those two had gotten even stronger since then.

The random weapon boxes from the church had played a big part too.

Excluding me, we'd cracked open a total of eleven boxes, and four of them had yielded usable weapons.

A hand axe, a sword, and two spears.

I handed all the weapons out to the girls.

Jihye got the hand axe, Seonye and Jeongyeon got the spears, and Huijin got the sword.

Nari was planning to use a bow as her main weapon once the shop appeared, so she inherited the field shovel I'd been using.

Speaking of which — the girls were one thing, but wasn't I getting a little too strong?

With Stat Amplification active, my Agility now climbed all the way to 20.

On top of that I had Mook, which was practically worth a skill on its own, and I'd stockpiled 950P in shop points.

Add up every shop point our whole group was holding and it came to 5,630P.

At that level, arrows wouldn't even be the issue — we might be able to buy something genuinely useful.

Speaking of which, why hadn't any quests been popping up?

Not every quest was serious and dangerous, and it wasn't like everyone received the same quest at the same time the way things had gone so far.

If that were the case, the protagonist's party would all have been as strong as Baek Sihyeon.

Whether it was the same quest or a different one, people received personal quests on an individual basis.

In the webtoon, Baek Sihyeon, Yu Eunseol, and Cha Suho had all gotten more quests than everyone else, or cleared quests that others couldn't, and that was how they'd pulled ahead of the rest of their groups.

But so far, not a single person in our party had received a personal quest.

Was it because we were growing too fast?

"Hello? Yeah. Yeah?! Hyung!!"

"What?"

"Something showed up at the three-way intersection!"

At Jaeyeol's words after he took the call, I grabbed Mook from where it was leaning against the wall and took off running.

Crunch!!!

Mook smashed through a zombie's temple and drove all the way into the crown of its skull, hurling the body into the wall.

"Everyone grab some food. We're heading back."

I couldn't remember the exact prices, but with the points we had now, we might be able to snag something really good.

Which meant we needed to use the shop before anyone else.

Everything the shop sold was limited in quantity, after all.

It was truly surreal.

The sight of a massive rhombus-shaped crystal radiating blue light planted right in the middle of the street.

"What the hell is that??"

"It's so pretty..."

"Hyung, do you know what that is?"

"......"

Was it because I still hadn't confirmed it was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the shop?

Even looking right at it, I couldn't bring myself to tell Jaeyeol it was the shop.

So this was how Hong Gildong must have felt.

This was ridiculously frustrating.

"I'll go take a quick look."

"Hyung! It's dangerous!"

"Don't you see all those zombies?!"

"Just wait a second. If we go with you, we can draw their attention—"

"It's fine."

"Hyung!!"

"Oppa!!"

"Kang Juhan!!!"

The distance from this building to the center of the three-way intersection where the shop stood was about twenty meters.

No — factoring in the shop's size and range, it wouldn't even be fifteen.

Taat!!

I threw open the window and leapt straight down from the second floor.

Thud—

Ah, I really needed to raise my Durability.

That put a serious strain on my legs.

"Kraaagh!!"

"Kraagh!!"

"Kraaaaaaa!!!"

"Kraaaagh!!!"

The instant I hit the ground, zombies swarmed in from every direction.

Whooosh!!!!

Mook swung through the air with a heavy roar and split the skulls of the zombies blocking my path.

Taat!!

I shot forward, slipping through the collapsing bodies, twisting and weaving as I lightly deflected the grasping hands of the zombies charging at me — and before I knew it, I'd arrived.

Inside the safe zone that spread out around the shop.

Thud— Thud— Thud—

The zombies no longer came at me.

They started wandering the streets again, glancing around as if I'd simply vanished.

I strolled forward at a leisurely pace and pressed my raised hand against the crystal glowing with blue light.

Colder than I expected.

"Of course."

No sooner had I answered than a cascade of photos, each smaller than my palm, unfurled before my eyes.

"No."

No need to check the usage guide separately.

I already knew all of it.

Photos of the items currently for sale filled a screen roughly fifty-five inches across, and tapping a product with a fingertip made the photo expand forward, revealing the item's name and price.

Along the left side, categories were sorted so you could browse by type.

But there was no need to dig through them one by one.

Not if you already knew the name of what you wanted.

"Search. Skill Reinforcement Ticket."

The photos before my eyes gathered into one place and vanished, replaced by several images that looked like long gift certificates.

I lightly tapped one with a fingertip, and the photo expanded as the product name appeared beneath it.

5,000P.

That would wipe out nearly every point we had.

Then how much was this one?

Not a bad price.

Assuming we still had points left after buying everything else, that is.

Arrow prices weren't bad either.

"Ammunition. Bullets. Guns. Pistols. Bombs. None of those... Water Purifier Filter and generators."

As expected, the prices weren't cheap.

The one-year Water Purifier Filter only gave you about a five percent discount.

Bunch of crooks.

Still, the generators weren't priced too badly.

Whether it was the Water Purifier Filter or the generators, the efficiency was almost too good.

They could purify water a zombie had used to rinse its mouth and spit out, and even the notoriously inefficient solar generator performed well enough that you could burn through electricity without a care in the world.

And you didn't need any specialized installation skills or hassle.

Just buy it and register it.

But there was a prerequisite for using any of them.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

You could only register them in a place where a Safe Zone Setting Ticket — 10,000P for just thirty pyong — had been used.

And that place also had to have water and electrical infrastructure already in place.

On top of that, once you used a Safe Zone Setting Ticket, you couldn't recover it the way you could with a filter or a generator.

If hostile people took it from you, you'd be handing it over for free.

Having a lot of points meant nothing if you didn't have the strength to protect what you bought — you'd just be doing someone else a favor.

"Kang Juhan!! Are you okay?!! What the hell happened?!!"

"Ah, it's safe here! This is a shop! Everyone come over!"

I'd forgotten about the others while checking the shop, so I called them over and we all looked through it together.

Kim Jincheol's group, who'd been watching the shelter for us, also dragged Elder Choi along and stepped into the safe zone surrounding the shop.

"Something like this... actually exists..."

"With this, we don't have to worry about anything from now on, right??"

"Not quite. You need points to buy anything from here, don't you?"

"Ah...."

Kim Jincheol, Lee Dongsu, and even Lee Hyeongmin — the doctor we'd kidnapped from the National Assembly — were all absorbed in examining the shop.

But there was something they still didn't know.

The shop appearing didn't mean life was about to get easier.

People with power would do just fine, but those without it were about to face something far more horrific.

"You're going to need to be even more careful from now on."

"Excuse me?"

"What do you mean by that?"

"To use the shop, you need points, and you can secure those points through quests. But there's one other way to get points."

"What's that??"

"Murder."

"Wh... what?"

I could say this out loud, huh.

Maybe because I'd already killed people before?

Anyway, good timing.

"If you kill someone, you can take the points they were holding."

"Then..!"

"They'll take them. The people with power. And the people without power will have them taken."

"Ah...."

"Then you can't just hand them over freely? Like, I give you my points or something?"

I shook my head at Suho's question from beside me.

"That doesn't work."

"So we each have to spend our own points separately?"

"That's not it either."

"Why not?"

"There's a joint purchase system."

"Joint purchase?"

"Pick something expensive and try saying 'joint purchase.'"

"Joint purchase."

The moment Suho finished speaking, a message appeared before all of our eyes.

This was how multiple people using the shop could pool their points to buy something together.

The catch was that it only worked for people currently inside the shop's safe zone.

So if a really large number of people wanted to use the joint purchase system, they'd have to go through the hassle of cycling in and out to participate.

But that wasn't what mattered right now.

Two major quests had vanished, and with them, the points we could have earned.

Jaeyeol, who should have gone dark, was perfectly fine, and Kim Jincheol — who was supposed to hide in the building we'd turned into a shelter and gun down soldiers heading to check the shop — had never become a resistance fighter.

It wasn't just the points that had shrunk. The stats and rewards available in Yeouido had been cut down too.

I'd received a decent amount of compensation myself, but the protagonist's party hadn't.

Did that mean the protagonist's party was weaker than what I knew?

"Juhan-hyung."

"Yeah?"

"Over there."

"......"

I turned my head to follow Jaeyeol's gaze toward the street where zombies were still wandering.

The soldiers and survivors at the National Assembly, the church, the resistance, and the survivor group centered around Jaeyeol.

In the Yeouido episode, those four survivor groups were the main ones that appeared.

No other survivor groups showed up.

But maybe because I'd stopped the resistance from forming and kept Jaeyeol from going dark—

New bastards had shown up.

BOOM!!!!

A massive hammer, heavy enough to look like two of Gihun's heads stuck together, slammed into the ground, splattering the flesh and blood caked on it across the pavement.

Behind that hulking figure, more than ten people wiped the blood from their weapons, either glaring with sharp eyes or smirking.

And I couldn't hold it back.

I couldn't stop it.

The smile spreading across my face.

The corners of my mouth that kept climbing higher with pure delight.

"Why aren't the zombies attacking here?"

"That's..."

"Whatever. Drop everything you've got and get the hell out, you men. Unless you want to die."

Yeah. This was it!

For the first time, I actually liked that perverted god.

If something got pulled out, you had to fill the gap with something else.

Well done, you twisted bastard of a god.

But now what?

"Hey, you bastard who keeps grinning! Get over here!"

"Me?"

"Yeah! You—"

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"I'm here. What?"

"Ah... that's... AAAAAAARGH!!!!"

I was going to suck everything dry before the protagonist could take a single bite.