Chapter 135: Late Bloomer = Weak for Now
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 135: Late Bloomer = Weak for Now
Under the current circumstances, the most rational choice was to subdue Jeon Jae-jung.
This was because the Predation success rate had risen to 30% upon killing him, and simply attempting Predation now had a 40% success rate with the cooldown shortened to 7 days.
"This makes me a little greedy, though."
Actually, accepting him as a "Resident"—the safest way to obtain Late Bloomer—was safe for acquiring the skill, but not a very safe choice for our Paradise. So, I had leaned toward killing him. However, Level 9 Predation was more than enough to change my mind.
"If I subdue him, turn him into canned food, and attempt Predation once every seven days, it should take about three weeks."
Since we have doctors to hook him up to IV drips so he can't die, that part should be fine. As long as I prevent him from biting his tongue to commit suicide, it shouldn't be too difficult.
My mind had changed after seeing Level 9 Predation, but...
The most important question was whether I could pull it off with a 100% success rate.
So, for now, I approached him with the mindset of killing him if things went south.
As I drew closer to the War Memorial, I felt a jarring downgrade in my movements.
Of course, subduing Jeon Jae-jung would be effortless the moment I was under the effect of Base Invincibility.
If I launched a surprise attack from behind, it would be an incredibly easy fight.
But this area was right on the awkward edge of the Safe Base's boundary.
Of all places, Jeon Jae-jung was near the War Memorial, meaning I had to ambush him without the benefit of Base Invincibility to capture him.
Well, even so, it remained an undeniable fact that my stats were higher than anyone else's here.
Level 4 from the Predation effect.
Level 3 from Sex!
Even just adding the Level 6 Rest Bonus from Base Invincibility brought me to Level 14. With food doping and the hot spring healing bonus, a Level 16 state was guaranteed.
I cleared my mind of idle thoughts.
Stepping out of the Base Invincibility zone made me realize that all my worrying up until now had been such cowardly, play-it-safe behavior.
It wasn't like me.
I had faced countless near-death crises while playing for 100,000 hours.
Even with the game's advantage of being able to restart upon death, I had treated the zombie apocalypse as my actual reality, playing with the mindset of absolute survival while always attempting bold, daring plays.
But perhaps, because it was ultimately a game, the instinct that I could respawn had been deeply ingrained in my mind.
Now that I was in reality, even though I had a literal get-out-of-jail-free card that allowed me to survive once through Base Invincibility, I had unconsciously been playing like such a coward.
I steeled my resolve once more.
In the first place, back when I had neither these stats nor these insanely broken cheat modes in the zombie apocalypse, I had still played exactly the way I wanted.
Just like back then.
Activating "Cat Step," I swiftly approached Jeon Jae-jung, who was blending into the horde and slaughtering zombies.
Jeon Jae-jung didn't have any notable skills other than his Level 8 "Late Bloomer," but his raw, overwhelming stats alone gave him more than enough combat power to beat down the zombies buffed by the Blood Hour effect.
But compared to me, he was still lacking.
Even overwhelming stats require experience and technique to be utilized properly.
Even I, with 100,000 hours of experience killing zombies, still had room to refine my movements into a more precise trajectory. So how could Jeon Jae-jung compare?
To my eyes, his attack paths looked incredibly awkward and inefficient.
There was no need to hesitate.
Even with Base Invincibility turned off, my hunting cheat modes were Level 9 and Level 7.
In the past, I was a one-trick pony who relied entirely on my base-type mode, so I used to get scared, knowing I'd drop to the level of a total loser the moment I stepped outside.
But I wasn't that same person anymore.
"Die, you fuckers!"
"Become my stacks!"
"See this? This is the difference in our levels, you motherfuckers!"
Jeon Jae-jung was slaughtering the zombies in a state of trance.
There were so many zombies around him that he didn't seem to have the leeway to notice me.
I slipped behind him as naturally as breathing.
I didn't pay any attention to his lackeys.
Since Jeon Jae-jung had jumped into the middle of the horde relying solely on his stats and was now completely surrounded, his lackeys had no room to help him.
And even if they could, they wouldn't dare fire their guns at their own boss.
Holding the Scalpel, I stabbed him in the shoulder from behind.
"...!"
The Scalpel slipped in silently, slicing through Jeon Jae-jung's bulky, well-worked muscles as if cutting through tofu.
"Huh?"
Jeon Jae-jung, who had been raising his stabbed arm, froze.
He realized his arm wasn't moving the way he wanted.
By the time he turned his head in confusion, it was already too late.
Riiip!
"Aaargh!"
The agonizing pain of having his half-severed arm ripped raw from his body made Jeon Jae-jung roar.
"Wow. This thing's performance is insane."
That was what a scalpel was meant for.
To slice through a patient's flesh in an operating room.
For that purpose, the Level 4 Scalpel was practically a god.
Even for me, this sensation was a first.
It penetrated the flesh and tore through the muscle without the slightest resistance. I had stabbed him carelessly, so it must have hit bone, but it sliced right through the bone without any resistance either.
Since it was already half-severed by the Scalpel, ripping it off was easy, no matter how high Jeon Jae-jung's Strength stat was.
Even if he possessed Level 7 Strength, I had twice that amount.
"Nothing to it."
It was off the charts.
The power of a cheat mode was capable of instantly subduing even a guy who had monopolized everything from the start and grown strong with an insanely broken mode of his own.
And that was with only a single, still-developing hunting cheat mode active, without even half of my main base-type cheat mode's effects applied.
Feeling reassured, I proceeded to dismantle Jeon Jae-jung.
"Aaargh!"
"—! Jae-jung hyung!"
"Fuck! Who the hell is that guy?!"
"Get him!"
I saw his lackeys rushing toward me, but I didn't bother paying them any mind.
The sheer volume of zombies blocking their path was not something they could easily break through with anger alone.
Granted, there were quite a few of them who had retreated to this area where only the elites were gathered, but the number of zombies they had dragged along with them was equally formidable.
"Shoot! Fuck, shoot him!"
"But if we do, the King will..."
"Avoid him and shoot, goddammit!!!!!!!"
As if mocking their words, I grabbed Jeon Jae-jung—who had already lost both arms and one leg—and held him up toward them like a shield.
"Don't shoot!"
Of course, I wasn't in a position to leisurely put on a human butchering show here either.
The surrounding zombies had already encircled Jeon Jae-jung and me, closing the distance so fast that we were about to be buried under them before we could even get bitten.
Holding Jeon Jae-jung, I leaped up, stepping on the heads of the zombies as I dashed toward the entrance.
"See ya."
In many ways, I was leaving Yongsan with a massive haul today.
Aside from the guns and ammo, this had served as an opportunity to test my own combat power alongside securing Jeon Jae-jung's mode.
To honest, since stats above Level 10 were uncharted territory for me, I hadn't been able to easily gauge them.
So, even though my skill levels and stats had been steadily rising, I hadn't paid much attention, simply thinking of them as "above 10." Yet, before I knew it, I had reached a level where I could exert as much power as I used to under Base Invincibility, even without it.
And the moment I stepped inside the Safe Base's boundary with Jeon Jae-jung, the difference became starkly apparent.
"Hmm. I should go out and stretch my legs once in a while."
I needed to adapt to this difference.
Knowing my exact state and how to utilize it.
That was what I had always done.
"Fuck... Who the hell are you?"
Jeon Jae-jung asked me.
It was a bit grotesque to hear him speak with only one leg remaining, but thanks to his high Stamina, he didn't seem to pass out easily.
"Me? Why do you care?"
I used "Noona's Hands Are Healing Hands" to stop the bleeding from his severed limbs.
No matter how high his Stamina was, he would definitely die if he kept losing blood from wounds of this scale.
"What do you want?"
Even in this situation, Jeon Jae-jung handled things calmly.
As expected of someone running a drug cartel, his ability to seek a way to survive even in an extreme crisis was quite impressive.
If it weren't for me, he would have made an excellent villain.
"What do I want? Your skill."
"..."
"You shouldn't have set up camp in Yongsan. If you had gone to a place like Pyeongtaek to farm and met me later... well, it still wouldn't have worked out for you. But I'm grateful. Thanks to you, I can start stacking my stats early with the Late Bloomer skill."
Since talking any further wouldn't be productive anyway, I gagged Jeon Jae-jung.
I hadn't brought it for this purpose, but I pulled out a ball gag meant for women from my backpack and strapped it onto him.
"..."
"...No, you bastard. Don't look at me like that."
I had no idea why something like this was in my backpack, but it came in handy.
On my way back, I saw that Yongsan was crawling with zombies.
Their weapon storage had been raided, their drugs were gone, and I had just pulled out the most crucial pillar of their zombie-fighting force. All that lay ahead for them was ruin.
If they somehow survived all this and threw a fit trying to rescue their boss, I'd actually have to respect that.
"Let's go home."
It had taken a while.
The drug cartel was just that massive.
And this might not even be the end of it.
Although they said this was their headquarters, the remaining branches wouldn't disband so easily.
But at the very least, drugs wouldn't be circulated by other bastards within my territory anymore.
As we left the noisy Yongsan behind, silence returned once more.
I offered Jeon Jae-jung some advice.
"Pray that the surgery goes well with that 40% chance. If it fails, I hear it hurts like hell."
Unable to contain myself, I decided to use it on the way.
[Predating Jeon Jae-jung's mode, "Late Bloomer (8★)".]
"Ah, how anticlimactic."
While I had hoped to get the mode quickly, I had assumed the 40% success rate meant I'd likely fail, so I had been constantly worrying about where to tie him up and how to keep him alive.
But to think I'd succeed on the very first try.
Jeon Jae-jung stared at me with an unreadable expression.
I raised the Scalpel and stabbed him in the flank.
"Mmph! Mmph!"
I felt him thrashing in agony.
I tossed his bleeding body right into a gathering of zombies.
The zombies instantly reacted to the sound and the scent of Jeon Jae-jung's blood pooling nearby.
"Good luck."
I couldn't help but feel it was a rather anticlimactic end.
If someone were watching this on a broadcast, they might feel disappointed by the lack of tension and the absence of the "canned food" they wanted to see.
But reality is different from staged broadcasts.
Relieved that I didn't have to drag any trash back home, I made my return with a light step.