Chapter 155: The Owner of Paradise
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 155: The Owner of Paradise
At dawn, Paradise was safe enough that its streets could easily be called "perfect for a stroll," bathed in a soft, gentle glow.
A wide road stretched between the towering outer walls, flanked by neatly swept sidewalks.
The cars that once cluttered the area had long since been cleared away, and regular cleaning kept the streets pristine.
Of course, since the zombie rush began, dried corpses and shriveled bloodstains now marred the pavement.
The lights mounted on the outer walls cast a soft, secure glow over the sidewalks and roads, which ironically made it much easier to see the faces of the zombies crowding the streets.
This was especially true for the intersection nestled between the Safe Zone, the restaurant district, Trimage, and the Level 3 Apartments.
This intersection was the main stage.
Anyone looking out the windows of the Level 3 Apartments had a front-row seat to the battle unfolding at the intersection.
And so, almost everyone was watching.
Midnight.
Normally, it would be time to sleep, but who could rest easy after seeing the words "Zombie Wave"?
Unless they had collapsed from sheer exhaustion after being awake all day, no one could easily fall asleep. Even knowing the outer walls would protect them, the sheer ferocity of this wave was unlike anything they had seen before.
Of course, watching wouldn't conjure up a solution.
There was nowhere to run, no way to escape the sea of zombies surrounding the outer walls.
All they could do was what every other survivor did.
Pray that the zombies wouldn't start pounding on the walls.
And hope that, just like before, they would simply pass on by.
So, they watched.
The Hunting Squad.
The Eagle Five Squad, the doctors, the nurses.
And the residents.
In the middle of that wave of zombies.
They watched a lone surfer, riding the tide with leisurely, lofty grace, carving through the waves and pushing upstream against the current.
The residents had gathered in the Level 3 Apartments to get a closer look.
Crowding around the windows, they secured their spots and stared out, utterly spellbound.
"Everyone... can you see this?"
Among them, Lee Yu-ri was not about to let this moment slip away.
As a pro streamer, how could she not broadcast such a monumental moment?
Even if she were about to be eaten alive, a true professional would turn on the stream first.
To have such a perfect vantage point and not capture this scene on stream would be a disgrace to her profession.
"That's... our Owner Oppa."
"Gasp!"
"The Owner! No... the Captain!"
Everyone watched with bated breath, their palms sweating.
No matter how they felt about the man—the Owner of Paradise—everyone gathered here knew one simple truth: they would only survive if he did.
Shouldn't we stop them?
Shouldn't we go out and help?
Their hearts screamed those questions, but faced with the overwhelmingly terrifying wave of zombies, no one dared to utter a word.
"Lieutenant Colonel Ahjussi. The Captain is out there fighting. Shouldn't our Hunting Squad go out and help him?"
Only Lee Yu-ri blurted out whatever came to her mind without reading the room, but Oh Yoon-seop remained unfazed.
"He will return alive. That is the kind of man he is."
"Tch. No fun."
Every time his sword flashed, a small gap opened in that massive wave.
Though the gap was instantly filled,
another would appear, and then another.
The wave, which had seemed as endless as the ocean no matter how much he scooped out, finally began to thin after one hour, then two.
"When did their numbers drop so much?"
The zombies had clearly packed the entire stretch from the far end of the street all the way to the intersection.
Yet, when they looked toward the far end now,
there were no zombies left at the edge of the intersection.
It meant he had slaughtered that many.
Corpses were piled high like mountains at the intersection, to the point where he was now fighting while stepping over mounds of dead zombies.
"Doesn't he get tired...?"
"This is our Paradise, everyone! Come to Paradise. Capable people are very welcome. People with Coins are welcome too. Just the other day, the Eagle Five Brothers—they aren't very strong, but they got in through the general laborer track."
"...Excuse me. We're the Eagle Five Squad, not the Eagle Five Brothers."
"Hey, neither of those is right. And excuse me, we're not general laborers, we're the sub-Hunting Squad."
"Right, sorry. I'm bad with names. Anyway, Zombie Apocalypse? People who played that game for a long time are welcome too. As long as you can be of help to Paradise, you can live comfortably, do your job, and have your safety guaranteed—just like me and everyone else here."
The battle was rushing toward its climax.
At first, people had cried foul, asking if it was a cheat, if such a thing was even possible, or if it was staged.
But now, even those who had been throwing around all kinds of wild theories were starting to worry about him.
No matter how strong he was, he was still human, and humans inevitably grow tired.
Unless he could unleash waves of sword energy like in a video game,
doing everything by hand meant hitting the very real wall of physical stamina.
Standing atop the mountain of corpses, the man lowered his sword toward the ground for the first time.
Even that posture looked magnificent.
At least, from a distance.
At the peak of a mountain of zombie corpses,
looking down indifferently at the zombies crawling up toward him, he looked like a conqueror who had claimed the summit.
"So cool..."
"Our Owner Oppa's face is nothing special, but looking at him from afar like this, he's really handsome. My type? I think I might secretly have an ugly fetish... but Owner Oppa isn't actually ugly. He's just average-handsome, right? What? You say I'm sucking up to him too much? Sucking what, you guys?!"
While everyone's attention was briefly diverted to Lee Yu-ri,
the man leaped.
In less than ten seconds, he had latched onto the outer wall, scaled it, and stood atop the roof that served as the ceiling.
"Huh?"
Just as confusion washed over everyone—
Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat!!!!
In the dark of night,
the faint, soft glow of the streetlights turned into a guillotine as blindingly bright flashes erupted, raining down upon every zombie illuminated below.
"Whoa!"
"Gasp!"
"Those things actually shoot?!"
"...."
The chat reaction was no different.
It was a shorter, far more intense impact than the beautiful sword dance that had lasted over two hours.
Less than five minutes after the guns began firing, the shooting stopped.
There were simply no more living zombies detected within range.
Once again, Lee Yu-ri spoke for all the viewers,
as well as the residents watching from the Level 3 Apartments.
"If he was going to do that, couldn't he have just shot them from the start?"
"..."
"..."
This time, no one could argue.
But even if they couldn't argue, they couldn't help but admire it.
The Paradise Gallery and the stream chat, which had been in a frenzy over the Zombie Wave, flipped in an instant.
Of course, this didn't change the reality that the Zombie Wave was still ongoing elsewhere.
But for those living near Paradise, it was a massive shock—and an immense relief.
-----------------------------------
I gave up on farming.
"Ugh, shit. I can't do this."
Sitting on the roof of the Residential District, the view was spectacular.
The battle had only taken place here, but the Defense Turrets were installed all along the Paradise Outer Wall.
If the Defense Turrets had activated everywhere, it meant zombie corpses were littered across a stretch of at least four kilometers.
Maybe those other areas would be easier to farm.
But here, there were simply too many corpses piled up from over two hours of fighting to even think about digging through them.
"I'll just leave it and do it tomorrow."
Today was the last day of the zombie rush.
No one would be brave enough to come here and steal the corpses anyway, and the Zombie Wave wasn't completely over yet.
Since I had completely wiped them out, the chances of more zombies coming this way were low, but you never knew.
"At least the performance is guaranteed."
The Defense Turrets.
I had set them up and only ever thought about testing them out someday.
Ideally, I had hoped the Drug Cartel bastards from the Yongsan US Military Base would defy my expectations and launch a preemptive strike so I could use them. But since I had crushed them before they could, I hadn't found a scale worthy of using them until now. This was a perfect opportunity to test their performance.
They were pretty useful.
As for the cost of 1 Coin per shot, since the Coins obtained from zombies had increased this time, it didn't seem like much of a loss.
In fact, wouldn't my net Coin earnings actually increase?
It looked like there were quite a few Level 2 Zombies mixed in there, too.
And even if the Coins were a zero-sum game, this was still a guaranteed win.
Items, Enhancement Stones, meat.
The materials, all of which could be turned into money, were piling up.
Even trash items would yield Enchantment Stones through Predation.
Rare items would yield Enhancement Stones.
And Zombie Meat would provide meat.
I couldn't wait to see how much loot I'd gotten.
I had already upgraded one of the warehouses into a freezer, but it felt like even if I built another hundred-pyeong warehouse behind it, it would still be packed to the brim.
I opened the Paradise Gallery.
I was curious to see how other people were holding up.
"Huh?"
I saw posts discussing clips of me that some third party had uploaded.
I turned my gaze toward where the camera would have been.
The Level 3 Apartments came into view.
"She did a great job doing something I didn't even ask her to do."
The employee I hired for promotion was doing her job exceptionally well.
I felt like I should give her a reward.