Leaving Yeouido
We docked the boat at the pier beside Wonhyo Bridge and headed back to the apartment where our group and the resistance were staying.
Of course, we kept the fact that we'd secured a boat and an escape route to ourselves.
There were still people nearby we couldn't fully trust.
"How'd it go? Anything happen?"
"Nah."
"No, nothing happened."
"So why'd you tell us to keep an eye on An Gyeongsu?"
"Just a bad feeling."
"About what?"
"Hard to put into words right now. It's just a gut thing."
I took a moment to pull Suho and Jaeyeol aside and ask about An Gyeongsu, but they said nothing unusual had happened while I was gone.
"Oh, right. What about your quests?"
"They cleared. Not just ours — everyone's."
"What the hell did you go off and do by yourself?"
"You're better off not knowing."
There was no need to mention that I'd gone and killed more than ten people, so I brushed it off and headed back to where the others were gathered.
"Yes, Captain. We'll do that. If you ever need our help, please don't hesitate to reach out. Yes, we'll contact you if we need anything as well."
"Is that Captain Son Gijun?"
"Yes. Captain, one moment — I'll put Juhan on."
"You really don't have to hand it over..."
I took the phone from Lieutenant Kim Mihi, who had been on the line with Captain Son Gijun, and answered.
No real need to say it right now, but it wouldn't hurt for him to know.
Though... would the words even come out?
That Yeouido was going to fall soon.
"......"
—Kang Juhan?
Figures. Heaven's secrets stay sealed, huh.
"Captain."
—Yes.
"I think staying in Yeouido is going to be dangerous."
Oh. That much got through.
—What do you mean by that?
"Just a feeling I have. This place is too dangerous. There was a spawning ground at the hospital, insects at the department store. Who knows what else is going to crawl out next."
—A spawning ground?
"Ah... so you didn't know..."
The call ran longer than I'd expected. I kept pressing the point that Yeouido was dangerous.
But we weren't talking about one or two people — there were hundreds of them. Getting that many people to leave somewhere was an incredibly dangerous and difficult proposition.
The safest way to move them would be for Captain Son Gijun and his soldiers to escort small groups at a time, but that would take far too long. And convincing people to abandon the relative safety of the National Assembly wouldn't be easy either.
"What'd he say?"
"Said he'd look into it. They're still sending rescue requests to headquarters, too."
"It's not like they're walking here — they'd be flying in by helicopter. Why won't they just send a rescue chopper?"
"Hell if I know."
As Jihye and Gihun peppered me with questions after the call, Lieutenant Kim Mihi raised her hand between them like a student asking a question.
"I understand saying Yeouido is dangerous. But if we leave Yeouido, where exactly are we supposed to go?"
"......"
For a moment, I had nothing.
Because I didn't know either.
If I'd read the webtoon all the way to the ending, I might have had an answer. But in the chapters that had been published, there was never any mention of a place being safe.
What was stated clearly, though, was that not long after Baek Sihyeon's group left Yeouido, the island became a place where no one lived anymore.
That was why I was saying Yeouido was dangerous.
But thinking about it... maybe things would be fine.
We'd already dealt with the spawning ground. Captain Son Gijun and some of his soldiers — and some of the resistance fighters, too — had reached a level where they could fight the insects even without guns. And I'd wiped out the leadership that had been completely unprepared for the coming threats. On top of that, the resistance, which had been nearly annihilated, was still intact and had established a covert cooperative relationship with the military.
Maybe, unlike in the webtoon, these people could survive.
And if they went further — if they kept getting stronger and stronger until they made all of Yeouido safe?
That was probably impossible.
No — even if they pulled it off, they wouldn't last long.
There was no way to supply the enormous amount of food the people at the National Assembly and the resistance would consume.
Unless someone figured out how to find where the shops appeared.
Originally, Kim Seojeong was supposed to receive the boat key as a quest reward, and Baek Sihyeon's group would end up fleeing Yeouido by boat after being driven out by hostile soldiers.
So I'd expected some forced situation that would push us to leave Yeouido.
But what was this?
It was peaceful. Way too peaceful.
"Hwaaaah...!! Augh... no matter how much I sleep, I'm still tired... haaah...!!"
I rubbed the tears from my eyes after a massive yawn and looked out the window, watching people from their teens to their sixties fighting zombies.
Nothing particularly dangerous was going on.
They were just cleaning up the zombies that had started climbing over the walls surrounding the apartment complex and the cars blocking the entrance.
The second inflection point had hit yesterday, and the zombies that used to only know how to run could now clamber over low terrain.
Not quickly, of course — more of a clumsy, sluggish scramble — but even at that pace, if they kept coming over all night, you'd wake up every morning to a ridiculous pile of zombies inside the complex.
And if this little apartment complex was like this, the National Assembly had to be in far worse shape.
Still, at least there were no zombies being produced by a Zombie Queen with physical abilities far beyond the normal ones. That was something to be grateful for.
"Ah... come to think of it, they left after this..."
Wait a second.
The church, the spawning ground, the insects, the resistance, the conflict.
I'd been so focused on all that crap that I'd forgotten the most important thing.
The reason Baek Sihyeon's group — who had been cooperating with the soldiers — suddenly turned against them and got driven out of Yeouido.
When I was reading the webtoon, I'd only cared about the dopamine-hit scenes. But now that I was living it, no change mattered more than this one.
I snatched up my phone and tapped the call icon to dial Captain Son Gijun — only for a message to pop up.
Service unavailable in this area.
Shit...!
I bolted back out onto the veranda, threw open the window, and shouted.
"From now on, nobody drinks the tap water!!!!"
The people clearing out zombies looked up at me.
No time for a detailed explanation.
"Oppa! The phone isn't—"
"Nari! Don't drink any water from now on! Stop everyone from drinking water! And fill up every container you can find — as much as possible!!"
"What are you talking about?!"
"If you drink the tap water... augh! Just trust me, it's bad!!"
"O-Oppa! Where are you going?!!"
"The National Assembly!"
The words wouldn't come out for this either.
How the hell was I supposed to explain it?
No idea. Just get to the Assembly first.
"Graaah!!"
"Graaaaah!!"
"Graaah!!"
"Hah... hah..."
I got to the National Assembly as fast as I could.
They were just as swamped here, busy clearing out the zombies that had climbed the walls overnight.
Thanks to that, nobody noticed me hopping the wall and slipping inside.
Not that it was hard — the place was so sprawling you could sneak in whenever you wanted if you put your mind to it.
Once I was over the wall and out of sight, I just walked around openly.
Honestly, not that many soldiers or civilians had seen my face, and everyone was too busy fighting zombies to care.
Still, just in case, I pulled the T-shirt in my left hand up over my nose and kept my face covered as I moved.
"Teams Two and Three, left side! Team One, with me — we clear those ones and push right!"
"Graaaaaah!!!"
"Graaaah!!!"
"Graaah!!"
"Graaaaaah!!"
"Graaaah!!!"
Found him.
Thud! Thwack!! Thwack!! Thud-thud-thud!!
Conveniently positioned behind the zombies, I swung Mook without mercy and cleaned up nearly ten of them in seconds.
"......"
"......"
"......"
"......"
"Captain. Got a minute to talk?"
"......"
"What? Want me to kill more of them?"
"Ah, no... but how did you even..."
"That's not important. Let's find somewhere quiet."
We moved to a secluded corner out of sight, and I launched into a rapid explanation.
But since I couldn't explain it in words or writing, I had to use a special method.
That method was good old charades — the kind you'd only see on old variety shows.
"Whooosh— gulp! gulp! gulp! Guaaaaah!!!!"
I mimed turning on a faucet, catching the pouring water in both hands, drinking it, then stretching both arms forward like a zombie and making a grotesque noise.
Perfect.
Couldn't have done it better.
So why was he looking at me like that?
"......"
"Captain?"
"What exactly are you doing right now?"
"Come on, how do you not get this?! Watch carefully again!"
"Click— whooosh!! What's this?"
"You're turning on water?"
"Good. Next. Gulp! Gulp!"
"You're drinking it."
"Right. And then — guaaaaaah!!!"
"....A zombie..?"
"Bingo! Now connect the dots!"
"You turn on the water and drink it. And then a zombie.... Drinking the water turns you into a zombie?!"
"Click-click-click—"
I made sound effects with my mouth while miming lifting a faucet handle. Captain Son Gijun clapped his hands and jabbed a finger at me as he shouted the answer.
"Tap water!!"
"Correct!!"
From that point on, I could explain things in words.
"It might not be happening right this second, but it will soon. You'll either go bleeeegh!! or uurgh! and cough up blood and check out for good."
"Then what do we do now?!"
"For now, stockpile as much water as you can and hold out on that while you search for a shop. There's a Safe Zone Setting Ticket you can buy there, and once you have that, you can install a Water Purifier Filter. You'll need to buy the filter too, of course."
"I assume it's not a regular water filter."
"No. You have to buy the one from the shop and install that."
I gave him a quick rundown on how to use the shop, then threw in a pro tip.
"Even a one-pyeong zone is enough. Set a safe zone somewhere that has running water, install the Water Purifier Filter there, and put in the smallest generator — then you'll have water."
"We need a generator too?"
"Phones are already down. Electricity won't be far behind, right?"
"Point taken... But if the facilities supplying the tap water shut down, won't all of this be useless?"
"I'll handle that part. More importantly, catch a dog or a cat and give it water every morning. I feel bad for the animals, but you can't exactly experiment on people."
"Understood. But where can we find a shop? They've disappeared."
"I don't know either. Nobody knows where they'll show up."
"So we can't just stay in one place. Either get strong enough to go hunting for shops, or get stronger naturally while searching for them."
"Exactly. And one week. Shops only last one week. There's no timer showing how much time is left, so the moment you find one, get people there as fast as possible and use it. Food and water, plus the things I mentioned — those are the priority. Start getting greedy for other stuff and you'll end up living a very different life from the one you have now."
After meeting with Captain Son Gijun, I went back to the apartment and explained everything to our people the same way.
And just like that, we had a reason to leave.
In the webtoon, after the contaminated water started flowing, Baek Sihyeon's group clashed with the soldiers who had monopolized the bottled water people had risked their lives to stockpile. They called out the injustice of it.
It wasn't just a simple protest, either. Discontented people started gathering around Sihyeon's group one by one, and the numbers swelled fast.
So the soldiers had no choice but to kill them or drive them out.
Leave them alone and you'd just end up with another resistance faction.
But now things were completely different from the webtoon. We had to leave Yeouido to help ensure that the soldiers and civilians at the National Assembly — and the resistance here — could keep getting a steady water supply.
"Uncle, come with us!"
"No. If I tag along, I'll just be a burden."
"What are you talking about?! That's not true!"
"He's right! Come with us!"
"It's fine. I'll stay here. I owe you all a huge debt, but I also owe the people here a debt I couldn't repay in a lifetime."
Yeonghun wanted his uncle to come with us.
But Yeonghun's uncle knew his presence would only hold us back, so he refused.
And he couldn't abandon the people who had shared his rage over his daughter's death and fought alongside him against the soldiers.
"Will you come back?"
"......"
At Lieutenant Kim Mihi's question, Yeonghun looked at me with desperate eyes.
His uncle was the only family he had left now.
But I shook my head.
"I can't give you a definite answer. There's no way of knowing what situations we'll run into from here on. But I hope we meet again. Take care of yourself until then."
"You too, Juhan."
And just like that, we left Yeouido — before the contaminated water even started flowing.
This was much earlier than when Baek Sihyeon's group had left Yeouido in the webtoon.
So should we hit the water treatment plant in Seongsu-dong first instead of Apgujeong?
No.
The water would cut out from the pumps shutting down when the electricity failed long before the treatment plant stopped operating and the water supply was officially halted.
And I'd leave that for a quest.
No way I was throwing away a juicy quest like that.
"Graaaaaah!!!"
"Graaaaah!!!"
"Graaaaaah!!"
"Graaah!!!"
"Graaaah!!!"
"Graaaaaaaah!!!!"
"Hyung!!! Are we seriously doing it like this?!"
"Oppa! We're gonna die at this rate!!"
"Hey! Who moves this recklessly?! Let's get somewhere safe and rest first!!"
"Hah! Hah! Hah!"
"Huff! Huff! Huff!"
After leaving the apartment, we ran without stopping.
With a massive horde of zombies hot on our heels.
Just when everyone looked like they couldn't run another step, we reached the pier near Wonhyo Bridge. I untied the mooring rope and climbed onto the boat.
Then I called out to the others as they came scrambling toward me.
"Hey. Get on."