Chapter 182: Yoon Hyung-sik's Zombie Studies 101
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 182: Yoon Hyung-sik's Zombie Studies 101
Yoon Hyung-sik was a guy with rock-solid convictions.
"I am a scholar who studies zombies."
His voice dripped with so much resentment, you'd think his entire family had been slaughtered by zombies and that wiping them off the face of the earth was more important to him than his own life.
"I will absolutely complete my research on zombies and make a name for myself far and wide."
Well, maybe not. It actually just sounded like a run-of-the-mill desire for fame.
Not a bad goal, though.
Honestly, in a zombie apocalypse, having any kind of goal was a rarity in itself.
Intrigued, I decided to watch him for a bit.
"Any Level 1 weapon is fine. However, I need them to have the 'Zombie Damage +1' option. Ideally, they should only have 'Zombie Damage +1' and no other stats."
The eccentric Yoon Hyung-sik was requesting weapons with very specific conditions from Kim Ji-hee.
"Hmm. I've sorted out about fifty for now. Will these do?"
"Heavens! Fifty of them?! My goodness, what kind of place is this to have so many weapons? Would it be alright if I took a look inside?"
"Oh, absolutely not. You aren't a Resident... wait, you aren't even that yet. You're Level 3. Neither Level 3s nor non-residents are allowed inside the Large Warehouse."
"Ah... what a shame. Truly a shame. But that is quite alright. To think weapons are provided simply upon request... I never imagined such a perfect, dream-like laboratory existed. I should have come here much sooner."
"Yeah. Why didn't you?"
Yoon Hyung-sik said he had already known about Paradise.
Although his starting location wasn't Seongsu-dong, it was just across the bridge and relatively close. Once his Safe Base reached Level 10, he had simply holed up inside to continue his experiments.
Naturally, there was no way he could have remained ignorant of Paradise.
Granted, being inside a Safe Base didn't automatically mean everyone knew about Paradise.
If you didn't interact with anyone, you might miss the news. But these days, recruiting others to Paradise offered clear benefits to the recruiter. As a result, some people actively solicited anyone they saw fighting zombies on the street, handing out business cards and asking if they wanted to join.
Even though Yoon Hyung-sik lived and experimented in isolation, he had run into these recruiters a few times, which was how he knew.
"I certainly thought it was an appealing faction. However, I've never been fond of belonging to any group. Even back when I played Zom-A, I don't think I ever grouped up with other survivors. At most, I would occasionally collaborate with laboratories or factions dedicated to researching the laws of the world."
I could guess his reasoning.
People who played Zombie Apocalypse had massive egos, for lack of a better term.
Because of their extensive playtime, they fundamentally distrusted others.
Especially fellow players.
In fact, whenever a fight broke out on the Zombie Apocalypse Gallery, the most common, go-to insult was always, "How many hours do you have in this game?"
In any other RPG, that was the equivalent of asking for someone's level or combat power.
Naturally, many Zombie Apocalypse veterans spent their time just idling around in-game for no other reason than to pad their playtime.
I suppose I was one of them, in a way.
It wasn't that I had nothing better to do; rather, the game's mods were so advanced that almost anything you could do in real life could be done in Zombie Apocalypse. Ultimately, I just found it more comfortable to live inside the game than in reality.
Movies, TV shows, novels...
I had no idea how the developers of Zombie Apocalypse pulled it off—whether they actually bought the copyrights or what—but they had copied all of those media into the game via mods, allowing players to farm and enjoy them.
Without that, spending virtually every waking hour in Zombie Apocalypse—aside from the three or four hours of sleep I got in the real world—would have been impossible.
In any case, players with significant playtime tended to be incredibly stubborn, refusing to listen to anyone else, and preferred to play solo.
Yoon Hyung-sik was undoubtedly one of them.
The fact that he was still alive despite obsessing over one thing like a madman and indulging in his eccentricities was proof enough.
To make matters worse, this bastard hadn't even raised his stats for shit.
Compared to the Eagle Five Squad, who had thousands of hours under their belts, his stats were practically those of an ordinary civilian.
His Strength stat was literally 1.
His Agility and Stamina were moderately high at around 3 or 4, which meant he had deliberately lowered his Strength.
It was practically a certified badge of insanity.
"If I had known a place like this existed, I would have sprinted here. Lowering my Strength was an incredibly painful process... but here, I wouldn't have even needed to do that. Haha..."
With his slightly hunched neck, he pushed up his glasses and chuckled. He looked like an absolute weakling, but in this world, looking like a total scrub was actually the ultimate proof of a hardcore veteran.
This was a guy who had survived without ever intending to kill a single zombie, choosing instead to wander around beating them with a spoon.
I immediately appointed him as Paradise's Chief Researcher. After packing the weapons into the Level 3 Backpack provided as research support, Yoon Hyung-sik prepared to head back out.
"Do you happen to have any beef jerky?"
"Yes. How many do you need?"
"Hmm... I expect to be out for about a month. Would asking for thirty pieces be too much?"
"...Thirty? You're going to survive a whole month on just that?"
"I would also appreciate it if you could pack three 500ml bottles of water for emergencies."
"..."
"If I eat too much, my stats will increase. I need to maintain my diet."
He was a certified lunatic.
Seeing how he was eager to leave immediately without showing much of a reaction to Paradise, I realized that even if a multi-server had opened back in the game, our paths would have never crossed.
"Well then, I shall be off."
Watching him set off for a month-long expedition with nothing but a pile of weapons, the onlookers stared at his retreating back with expressions of sheer disbelief.
Everyone gathered here was probably thinking the exact same thing: He's going to die before the day is out.
"Is that what happens when you cross the 10,000-hour mark?"
"Maybe we look just as crazy to normal people."
The Eagle Five Squad muttered among themselves, looking slightly traumatized.
A few members of the Main Hunting Squad, who had paused to watch while on their way to work out, nodded in agreement.
That was probably exactly how they felt whenever they looked at the Eagle Five Squad.
On one hand, they probably thought, What is wrong with those weirdos? But on the other hand, they couldn't help but wonder what kind of insane feats those guys had pulled off in Zombie Apocalypse to be so incredibly laid-back.
The Eagle Five Squad turned their gaze to me.
"Nah, even the Captain isn't that unhinged."
What the hell are they talking about?
Setting aside whether the eccentric Yoon Hyung-sik could actually conduct his research, the crowd dispersed while debating whether he would even make it back alive.
---
I monitored Yoon Hyung-sik's research through his perspective screen.
I was curious.
How exactly did he plan to conduct his research?
Although he had refused to become a Resident to avoid raising his stats, I had signed him up for a Level 3 Membership, which allowed me to view his feed.
"Hmm. Let's organize our thoughts, starting from scratch. Alright, Hyung-sik. If we assume a standard Level 1 zombie's base stats are all 1... during the first Blood Moon, their stats were temporarily buffed. Then, at some point, they weakened to what must have been 0. Is a stat of 0 even possible? I don't know. But assuming it is, this recent Blood Moon permanently buffed them, bringing them back up to 1. If so, why are the zombies around here the only ones with stats of 1? Judging by their movements, zombies in other regions must have stats of at least 2. Is this the influence of Paradise, perhaps?"
He was muttering to himself as if holding a conversation with an imaginary partner, completely oblivious to the zombies around him.
Yet, almost miraculously, the zombies failed to notice him.
It wasn't because the zombies were stupid; rather, Yoon Hyung-sik was navigating their aggro ranges with terrifying precision.
"In that case, if we're dealing with Level 1 zombies with exactly 1 HP, this is the perfect environment for an experiment. My Strength is also 1. Should we assume a Level 1 weapon's attack power is also 1? But what about weapons that don't benefit from item scaling? Would that make it 2? Does it vary by weapon type? My main question is whether the system actually implemented such granular calculations..."
He was rambling, but he made valid points.
I had given up on trying to calculate damage formulas myself. Without visible damage numbers, trying to reverse-engineer the math based purely on item stats was practically impossible without developer data.
"But this world is different from the game. There's something here that didn't exist in the vanilla Zombie Apocalypse. What is it? Mods! No, wait, that's not quite right. In a way, anything that existed in the game's modding scene is bound to manifest here, right? Like the 'See Your Damage Mode'. In short, all I have to do is acquire that!"
"...He really is a lunatic."
I couldn't help but marvel at his thought process.
I had been expecting him to calculate the damage through some rigorous, scientific experimentation.
That was what I assumed he was going for.
I thought he was going to run hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of trials to gather a large enough sample size to deduce the underlying formula.
Instead, Yoon Hyung-sik was aiming for a far more direct and foolproof "Zombie Apocalypse" method.
He was operating under the assumption that he could trigger a Mode awakening based on his "Potential."
It wasn't entirely out of the realm of possibility.
Though the odds were astronomically low.
"This guy is the real deal."
I was genuinely looking forward to seeing what he would achieve in a month.