Chapter 29: I Beat Up Old People, Too.
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 29: I Beat Up Old People, Too.
I first began to vaguely suspect this when I joined the Seongsu Autonomous Organization.
It was when I killed the Tattooed Thug in the Hunting Squad and received a Hidden Quest.
"They're giving Points for this?"
Killing an NPC.
It was an action that had its own meaning, even in a zombie apocalypse.
After all, NPCs were also living beings surviving the zombie apocalypse. The fact that they were alive among the zombies meant they possessed a decent amount of strength, supplies, and a fortified base.
Naturally, taking down a group of survivor NPCs could be much more difficult than just killing zombies.
Once you overthrew them, you could take all their supplies, so it came with its own reward, in a way.
But here, the reward wasn't just those incidental spoils. It directly rewarded me with Points—a currency only I, the Server Host, possessed.
And those Points were a type of currency that couldn't be obtained through other means, like killing zombies.
That was when I did a bit of deduction.
Even if Points could only be used to raise Mode Levels, the amount required was far too high for me to use them as freely as I wanted.
Would the system only give out such simple quests?
Or did I have to wait?
Or did I have to search for them?
What if quests were generated in connection with events? What if I could earn Points from them?
That thought became firmer after I saw Zombie Rush, a user's personal mode, manifest as a Main Quest in reality.
Couldn't I receive quests from various minor events that others might just brush past?
After all, this was what I was best at, having logged 100,000 hours of playtime.
Rather than just slaughtering everyone, if I played along with the event, wouldn't there be a hidden story?
Wouldn't a hidden event trigger?
Even with the basic, cliché early-game events, I was the type of guy who would play through them dozens or hundreds of times, putting up with frustratingly tedious setups that others would abandon, just to squeeze out every drop of content.
My suspicion had now turned into a conviction.
"How much food do we have left in Room 201?"
"About four boxes, around 15 kilograms of meat in the freezer... and about 30 bottles of water."
"That's fine. They couldn't have stuffed themselves with all of it anyway."
"Huh? Did those people eat it?"
"Probably?"
"..."
Kim Ji-hee's pace quickened slightly.
In contrast, I walked at a leisurely pace.
The quest description said to deal with the raiders because the food warehouse had been plundered, but in reality, the old folks who had moved into the studio apartments had simply gone into Room 201—the room I explicitly told them not to enter—and helped themselves to the stockpiled food.
Of course, that was still something they absolutely shouldn't have done.
Since they had promised to stay quiet.
But I knew that was a lie from the start.
Would people who left their homes because they ran out of food really think about going outside to fight zombies for supplies when there was food right in front of their eyes?
All they had to do was break the digital door lock and walk in to find a mountain of it.
They probably hadn't even calculated the possibility of there being no food inside.
They must have figured they could just make up some excuse later.
So, in essence, I had traded a portion of food equivalent to one of the twice-daily Medium Food Rations for 2 Points.
No matter how I looked at it, it was a profitable trade.
On top of that, some "Safe Base-Exclusive Automatic Door" or whatever was also on the line as a reward.
The front door of the building was completely broken, and blocking it with a mattress every time had been a chore, so this was a highly desirable reward.
Before long, I arrived home.
Even from outside the building, the smell of grilling meat and noisy chatter drifted down.
If left like this, it would soon become a prime gathering spot for zombies.
"Go inside."
I sent Kim Ji-hee into the first-floor apartment and headed upstairs.
The door to Room 201, which had been locked with the digital keypad, was wide open.
The door lock had been dismantled and thrown on the floor, and the neatly organized food inside Room 201 was noticeably depleted.
Compared to the numbers Kim Ji-hee had mentioned earlier, about a quarter of it was gone.
"Whew."
I'm glad they took a lot.
Even if I'm a psychopath, being a petty, cheap psychopath doesn't feel great.
If I got angry over them taking one or two Hetbahns, a kilogram of meat, or a couple of water bottles, it might make me look like the weird one and leave me feeling awkward.
Not that I wouldn't have gotten angry anyway, though.
The door to Room 202 was open, and the same went for Rooms 301 and 302.
They were all empty. When I went up to the rooftop, I found ten old geezers gathered together, throwing a drinking party.
They were grilling meat, using the portable stove that Kim Ji-hee and I had left behind after eating.
"Oh, the young man is back?"
A middle-aged man, his face flushed red from alcohol, approached me as if he had been waiting.
Since the recent Medium Food Rations had started including a mix of soju and beer, it was probably the perfect setup for them to throw a drinking party.
"About Room 201 on the second floor. When we tried the door, it just opened right up."
The middle-aged man spouted his bullshit with utter shamelessness.
Of course, since this was an old studio apartment building, the door and the lock probably weren't that sturdy. That's why it opened after removing a few screws.
But it was by no means in a state where it "just opened."
He was just treating me like an idiot.
He was basically telling me, "If I say it was like that, then it was like that, so just deal with it."
He even patted my shoulder. Perfect.
"We saw there was a ton of food in there. The elders had a rough time getting all the way here, you see. We should have asked you first, but since you weren't around, we just took a little bit to eat. Haha. You don't mind, right?"
The stench of alcohol reeked from him, and his eyes were half-unfocused. How much had he even drunk?
"Of course. I don't mind at all."
I offered him a smile.
Of course it was fine.
If giving away some food that would eventually rot anyway got me 2 hard-to-obtain Points, I would make the same choice every single time.
Even if it meant enduring a brief moment of frustration, like swallowing a dry sweet potato.
And so...
"Aaaargh!"
"It's fine and all, but you'll need to vacate the rooms for the next guests."
The rooms had to be cleared for the next guests.
Back at Seongsu Apartment, I had subdued a guy with slightly higher stats than me without even receiving the Base Invincibility effect.
There was no way I couldn't overpower a guy who was so drunk he couldn't even walk straight, especially while I was receiving the Base Invincibility effect.
As the man writhed in agony with his arm twisted backward, the laughing and chatting crowd turned their eyes toward me.
"Oh, don't mind us. Keep eating and enjoying yourselves. Those have already been paid for, so I won't take them back."
Regardless of their reaction, I went about my business.
This geezer had quite a lot to pay me back for.
I pulled out my dagger and stabbed his twisted arm.
If my blade had been swung to end lives until now, today it stabbed solely to inflict pain.
"Aaaargh! Argh!"
"Keep it down. How are the elders supposed to eat with you making all this noise?"
I stabbed his arm, his leg, his stomach, stabbing him repeatedly.
Blood splattered, spraying over my body which was already covered in dried blood from my way here, but I kept stabbing until he died.
"Whew. You motherfucker. That took too long."
When we first met and I heard him talking with that smile on his face, I had been dying to stab him to death right then and there, but I held back to confirm my suspicions.
If I had stabbed him to death back then, there was no way the rest of the old folks would have walked in so comfortably.
I might prefer this style of play, but my patience for dealing with bullshit isn't that great.
In a way, it was a contradiction.
Playing to enjoy these kinds of events was usually reserved for people who could grin and bear any amount of bullshit for days on end, but I only fit half of that description.
If the reward was good, I would endure it for the sake of capitalism, but when it came time to pay them back, I made sure to settle the score thoroughly.
I picked up the corpse and threw it down four stories.
Sizzle.
The noise that had filled the air was suddenly gone, leaving only the sound of meat sizzling on the grill.
"Elders, that's my food. The bastard who just died broke into my room without permission and dragged it out. You all ate it without knowing, right?"
How could the old folks, whose hands were trembling uncontrollably, possibly answer?
Seeing them nod, I found it quite impressive.
I didn't for a second believe the middle-aged man had done this all on his own.
Humans are evil.
In a zombie apocalypse, the saying "birds of a feather flock together" holds especially true.
Unless it's a group with a strict hierarchy, if they travel together, it's safe to assume they're of the same mind more than 90% of the time.
"Since you ate it without knowing, it would be petty of me to take it back... and I've already punished the thief, so please, eat comfortably."
"Y-Yes... thank you."
I sat down on the wooden bench and picked up a few pieces of grilled meat to eat.
"Mmm, grilled perfectly. Make sure to clean up well after you're done. Oh, right. How long did you say you were staying?"
"We... well..."
"I think you'll need to sleep here just tonight and vacate the rooms tomorrow. It looks like new guests will be arriving. That's fine, right?"
"...Y-Yes..."
I asked the middle-aged man who looked relatively younger among them.
Another scrawny middle-aged man nodded his head vigorously.
"I tend to sleep in, but when I open my eyes, there shouldn't be a single soul left in this building. Make sure it's cleaned up spotless, too. And fix the door you broke."
"W-We will do that."
"Yes, you'd better. I beat up old people, too. I cleaned this place up to use it as a studio apartment building, not as a graveyard for geezers, so please cooperate."
I could slaughter every single one of them right here.
They were all heavily drunk, and with the Base Invincibility effect active, taking them on nine-to-one would be effortless.
But even in this situation, I was thinking about what came next.
Could there be a follow-up quest?
If those departing elders yielded more Points...
Then I felt like I could send them off with a smile.