Chapter 163: The Inverted Pyramid of the Lotte Hotel Faction
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 163: The Inverted Pyramid of the Lotte Hotel Faction
When playing a zombie apocalypse game, once you max out all your stats to level 10, there isn't much left to do. So, wandering around looking for various events becomes your daily routine.
Survivor NPCs are scattered all over the place anyway, and whenever you visit a new area, an NPC event is almost guaranteed to be waiting for you.
Among those, I've experienced plenty of faction infiltration events.
When there's a fairly large faction nearby or not too far away, but you don't want to start your own...
...you just grab a weapon, head over, and start mindlessly causing trouble.
From the faction's perspective, some subhuman monster has suddenly shown up and started tearing things apart. At first, they react out of anger, but in the end, most of them surrender to the guerrilla with overwhelming stats.
That's just human psychology.
When they're in a crowd, they act tough, thinking they're strong. But the moment a single individual—or a tiny group—overpowers that crowd, they bow their heads and drop to their knees as if they had never acted up in the first place.
Even if they could win if everyone fought to the death.
It's because they'd rather minimize their immediate losses and move on, rather than gamble on a low-probability bet.
Well, the fear of losing their own life in that low-probability gamble is probably the biggest reason.
Anyway, after causing a scene like that, I would always sleep over or stay for a few days before moving on.
Is there a reason? Not really.
I was just wandering around to see events.
No matter what you do or how you do it, if you get involved with survivors, some kind of event is bound to trigger.
Out of all those events, the most common one was, unsurprisingly, an ambush event.
Honestly, when you're practically begging them to kill you, they'd have to be complete idiots not to attack.
Only a tiny minority would actually submit and let me go peacefully. Most of the time, they'd remember their numerical advantage, think, Maybe we can take him? and launch an ambush.
It makes sense.
My usual method of defeating a crowd was using high mobility to pick them off one by one.
They only surrendered because they couldn't hit me. So, their most basic, common-sense thought would be: If we can trap him so he can't move, won't we win?
To be honest, you don't even need my 100,000 hours of experience to set up this kind of event.
If you beat the absolute shit out of an annoying bastard, don't apologize, and then just lie down in his house to sleep completely defenseless, anyone who isn't a total dumbass would grit their teeth and try to get at least one hit in.
It's basically advertising for them to hit you.
In other words, it's a legitimate setup for an ambush.
"Boss. Is it really okay for us to sleep here?"
We had the entire suite floor of the Lotte Hotel to ourselves.
I took one room, while Oh Yoon-seop, the Hunting Squad, and the Eagle Five Squad shared the others.
Since there were so many of us, it would be a tight squeeze even in a suite, but sleeping too far apart could be genuinely dangerous.
"Set up a watch, and don't eat anything they give you."
"Yes, sir."
"Get some rest. I'll see you in the morning."
And there was another reason I decided to stay the night.
With that in mind, everyone headed to their rooms.
I went into my room, but then took the elevator back down to the lobby.
Even though it was evening, the lobby and the rest of the hotel were bustling.
They had been living without electricity or running water, but now that power was restored, they had a lot of changes to make. No wonder they were busy.
I was curious about something.
Hotels like this usually have over thirty floors.
I saw on the elevator panel that this one went up to the 32nd floor.
Normally, the higher the floor, the better the room.
Humans naturally prefer high places, instinctively associating being above others with superiority.
Even now, the floor we were staying on was the 32nd, where the suites were located.
But earlier, I had clearly seen the lowest-class members of this faction packing their bags and heading down the stairs.
Which meant they had been living on the 32nd floor.
Did the lower class live on the high floors in this Lotte Hotel?
Of course, once a zombie apocalypse hits, normal societal perceptions are bound to change.
The only reason people valued high floors was because elevators solved the inconvenience of climbing up. But with the power cut, that was no longer an option.
And taking the stairs was no joke.
The emergency exit lights in the dark stairwells also relied on electricity, and climbing up and down 32 floors every day was practically hard labor.
It was highly likely that the high-ranking members of this faction lived on the lower floors.
I wanted to confirm that.
"What brings you..."
One of the people who had seen my face earlier hesitantly approached and asked.
He had clearly drawn the short straw, stepping forward out of fear that I might start shooting mindlessly again.
Looking around, I could see the busy people keeping an eye on me, trying to get away as quickly as possible.
"What floor do the guest rooms start on?"
"They... start from the 5th floor..."
"Is that so?"
I headed toward the stairs.
Realizing I was heading for the 5th floor, he tried to stop me.
"Uh... excuse me... over there is..."
"Why?"
"Ah... the 5th floor is a restricted area..."
"What's up there? Something good?"
"No. No, it's not that."
When I pulled out my pistol, he flinched and backed away in a panic.
Hearing that it was a restricted area only confirmed my suspicions.
I could have used the elevator, but since it required a key card, I just walked up the stairs.
The door to the 5th floor was firmly shut.
I grabbed the handle and pulled.
The door opened easily.
It wasn't even locked. Why the hell were they making such a fuss?
The 5th floor was no different from any other ordinary guest floor.
A long hallway stretched out.
Rooms lined both sides.
Since it was a hotel, the hallway itself looked luxurious, but the rooms were just standard.
I walked down the hallway and opened the nearest door.
It was locked, of course, but it gave way when I forced it.
I heard something break, but whatever. Not my problem.
Stepping inside, I saw a woman walking out of the bathroom wearing nothing but a robe.
"...Who are you?"
"Me? A guest."
She was somewhere between average and pretty.
The fact that she was wearing nothing under the robe gave her some bonus points, making her look slightly more attractive, but my standards had been raised too high by Kim Ji-hee for her to appeal to me.
"Who is it?"
"I don't know. Come here."
The man emerging from the bed behind the bathroom wall was completely naked.
"Ah, fuck."
"What the hell? Who are you?"
"I told you, a guest."
"Why the fuck did you open someone else's door..."
"I was curious. Is this the floor where the big shots of this faction live?"
"You opened it knowing that? You son of a bitch. What floor are you on?"
Guess I was right.
Figures.
It was fascinating.
This was a structure you wouldn't easily see in the US, where most zombie apocalypses are set.
Of course, the US has big cities and hotels too, but usually, those stories start in sparsely populated rural areas. Even when they reach the cities, survivors rarely live in high-rise buildings like hotels; they tend to settle in large residential housing complexes instead.
Living in a high-rise building like this came with its own built-in exhaustion.
That's why these guys couldn't use the high floors and instead treated the lowest floor as a symbol of power.
"Me? The 32nd floor."
"You crazy motherfucker. How dare a bottom-feeder from the lowest floor barge into the 5th floor?"
"Looks to me like the lowest floor is right here."
"You son of a bitch. Get over here."
The guy suddenly flew into a rage upon hearing my floor number.
He either didn't know what had happened outside, or he just didn't know who I was.
Judging by his unfocused eyes, he might have been high on drugs.
I couldn't stand the sight of him stomping toward me with his dick swinging, so I kicked him.
"Urgh!"
"Kyaah!"
Because the doorway was narrow, he flew past the woman and crashed down, knocking her backward with him.
The floor was carpeted, so they probably didn't hurt their heads, but the woman's robe fell open, completely exposing her breasts and the curve of her thighs.
"Not a bad body."
Her breasts looked fake but they were big, and while she had a bit of a cute tummy, she was far too good for that guy's tiny dick.
I left them like that and walked back out.
Drawn by the commotion, people from the neighboring rooms had stepped out and were watching.
"Guess the soundproofing sucks too. Must be noisy at night with everyone keeping a Cum Dumpster."
Just because it's a hotel doesn't make it nice.
What's the point of the name?
The people living here are packed in like chickens in a coop.
They can't even complain about the sounds of horny couples every night, and ironically, the lower-class people get to live in the nicer rooms.
And you can't even say the 5th floor is convenient just because it's easy to walk up and down.
Well, the absolute highest class probably renovated the auditorium on the 2nd floor or something.
"Hotels are kind of trash."
Of course, things would change now.
Now that the power was back on and they could use the elevators, a restructuring would take place.
But that was only because they had joined the Safe Base. Once again, I felt glad I had come here.
A zombie apocalypse world without a Safe Base.
So this is what a modern apocalypse looks like.
A space reeking of human filth, a stench you'd never smell in Paradise.
Even in the worst of situations, people still managed to scrape by in these cramped spaces without water or electricity.
I headed back up to the 32nd floor.
Even though it was a suite, it wasn't much different.
Since the lowest class had been living here, there were still uncleared messes and lingering smells.
"Here is your meal."
"Ah, thanks."
Before long, the hotel staff brought food and left it in the room.
I took it, went inside, and lay down on the bed.
Not wanting to use blankets that someone else had slept in, I pulled out the sleeping bag I had brought and lay down.
There was a bed, but unless it was the luxury bed I had back home, it wasn't very comfortable anyway.
After closing my eyes and catching some sleep, I woke up to a sound.
Whispers were echoing outside the door.
"Are you sure he's asleep?"