You Reap What You Sow (5)

Once, Sion Mountain Fortress had truly lived up to its name. The village right in front of it belonged to the cult, and that village produced excellent soldiers. They hadn’t received proper military training, but there was a university that raised specialists in every kind of sport. It was a prestigious athletics school in its own right. They had even produced national representatives in shooting and archery multiple times. Everything existed to survive the Rapture. The trained soldiers would protect Sion Mountain Fortress while the nobles, royalty, and ordinary citizens remained safely sheltered. That was the grand picture the cult leader had painted. She had probably intended to reign there as queen and turn it into humanity’s last holy sanctuary.

If only the holy warriors hadn’t betrayed her. If only the insane monster called the Serpent of Eden had never appeared between the village and the fortress. If only the Preacher in Building 2 hadn’t gone around spreading death.

Still, something always remains. Building 1 held an enormous stockpile of food, weapons scattered here and there, and it had been tightly controlled so no infections broke out. That was why neither I nor my sister had imagined Sion Mountain Fortress could end up like this.

I was honestly shocked. Sion Mountain Fortress, Building 1. A luxury apartment complex where high-end wooden doors separated each unit, where expensive paintings hung along every corridor leading down the stairs, where even the elevators were top-class—the kind of ultra-luxury housing you’d only see in wealthy neighborhoods. A true residence for nobility. And now it had become a nest for zombies.

I walked through it with a machete resting on my shoulder.

The newly plundered skills were all useful. Climbing, parkour, stealth, tracking—two novice ranks each—plus two novice shooting skills. I had learned a lot from them. Novice-rank skills didn’t grant me any stats, and plundering the same grade again raised the skill’s rank. Full Plunder didn’t have a cooldown like I’d expected. And now that Full Plunder was available, I could choose whether to activate it or not when the condition was met. I had discovered quite a few things, but… the situation wasn’t good.

Looking at the floor soaked in dried blood, a message surfaced.

Two short lines from my Insight. The massacre had happened seventeen hours ago, but my sister and I hadn’t known. We had been resting inside the penthouse the whole time. I had killed their ammunition supply and talents like Choi Jae-wook, but I couldn’t figure out what the hell had happened to turn the place into this nightmare. Had some insanely strong bastard charged in and infected them all? Or had they tried to flee from us and run into zombies instead? There were no clues. Only carnage.

No quest appeared. It would have been nice if something popped up, but nothing did. Probably because I was bound to my own Perception; I had to witness something or encounter a situation that would trigger a quest myself. Nothing special had appeared even when my sister gave me “care.” If it had, I would have stacked up rewards or raised my Plunder level. Ten meters, easy. I was confident. If my sister used her wrist snap just right…

“Oppa.”

“…Yeah?”

I had been lost in thought when my sister called me.

“What are you thinking about so hard? Were you thinking about Ahyeon?”

She wasn’t wrong. But admitting it felt embarrassing, so I shrugged like it was nothing.

“Are you crazy? Why would I be thinking about you?”

“Then maybe you ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠were thinking about Ahyeon’s hands… or maybe your personal toy.”

“…Are you talking about that?”

“Mhm.”

“You perverted bitch.”

“It’s fine because we’re family. Or does oppa get embarrassed when Ahyeon touches it?”

“…No?”

Honestly, I wasn’t sure. It felt embarrassing, yet it also felt okay. At least by the time she stroked me before bed, I had grown used to accepting it without much thought. She ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠said it was fine because we were family… but was it really? I didn’t know. I had never had a normal family. Even now, nothing about us was normal.

I let out a short laugh.

“So why did you call me?”

“I hear something from below. It’s pretty far.”

She added the last part in case I was being too cautious. I glanced at her status window.

Her Perception of eleven far surpassed mine. Her hearing, sight, and even smell had long since left the realm of ordinary humans. If my sister said something, I couldn’t ignore it. If it had just been zombies, she wouldn’t have bothered mentioning it. Or she would have said outright that she heard zombies. Which meant there was something else.

“Let’s go, then.”

The time for avoiding danger and surviving like herbivores was over. We had to stay cautious while seizing every advantage we could. That was how we would survive in this fucked-up world.

I took the lead going down, and my sister followed close behind. I had reloaded the magazines with ammo left in the penthouse—four magazines total, including the ones in my belt and ammo pouches. My sister swept her rifle in every direction. The stairs were sticky. Sometimes with blood, sometimes with flesh. They were horribly tacky.

Clang. Clang. Every time I stopped at a corner, I tapped the wall with the flat of my blade. I killed the zombies drawn out by the sound.

Crunch. Crack!

When I blocked with the Saint’s Shroud wrapped around my left arm, my sister drove her bayonet into their heads. If there were too many, I drew the machete without hesitation.

Slice. Thwack!

The swung machete reliably severed zombie necks and smashed skulls. Even as we listened to the sound of heads splitting sideways and bodies collapsing, we never let our guard down. No matter how strong my sister and I had become, we weren’t invincible. One bite and we would die. So we advanced with care.

The silver lining was that after we left the penthouse and slaughtered an enormous number of zombies on the stairs, there weren’t many left in sight. But it was starting to feel ominous.

“…There are too few.”

The number was far lower than the residents of Building 1 I remembered. Still, I didn’t overthink it. The answer would be below, where my sister had heard the noise.

We kept descending, lower and lower, until we reached it.

“Is this the place?”

The grand auditorium on the first floor. A place I had only entered a few times, reserved for Building 1 residents to receive intimate prayer sessions with the cult leader.

“…Yes. This is it.”

I heard my sister’s strangely subdued voice as I opened the tightly closed door. The stench of blood washed over us. It was so thick that even I felt dizzy for a moment, vertigo rising. Kang Ahyeon thrust her rifle barrel through the gap in the open door and froze. That Kang Ahyeon. The girl who had stabbed our parents to death, who flirted with me, who had stabbed a woman’s face with a kitchen knife until she died. That Kang Ahyeon froze.

I quickly stepped in front of her, left arm raised, and blocked her path.

“…Ah.”

I froze too. I had only seen the auditorium in video footage, but it looked the same as usual. Velvet carpet, wooden chairs, a platform raised half a floor, and the cross on that platform. Everything was the same—except for one part that differed from my memory.

In their doctrine, Jesus and the cult leader were considered the same, so the cross of the New Heaven Rapture Mission Church had always been empty. Carving Jesus onto it was taboo, an act of blasphemy. But today, someone hung red on the cross that had always been empty.

“Fuck…”

We didn’t know much about the zombie infection. The government had failed before proper research could be conducted, and even if they had succeeded, the results were never shared. But we could guess. The traits we had seen in movies, comics, novels, and various media. The methods everyone agreed were entirely possible.

If zombie blood, saliva, or any bodily fluid entered through mucous membranes or wounds, you turned. The most natural way. I believed that, so during fights I was careful ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠not to let blood enter my wounds, eyes, or mouth. I thought there might be people who hadn’t been careful enough and turned after getting blood in their mouths or eyes.

But… what if someone went beyond carelessness and actively sought out that blood and flesh?

The answer stood before our eyes.

My sister and I approached the cross. In front of it stood a man holding a Chinese cleaver. No, it wasn’t a man.

An acolyte—one who assists the rites. Even though it was a zombie, when it saw us it didn’t charge. Instead, it stretched out a bloodstained, twisted hand. In its palms rested two lumps of flesh. Blood pooled in its cupped hands and dripped steadily.

I stood beside my sister and looked at the figure hanging behind the zombie. There was a saying: you reap what you sow. The cult leader had deified herself, calling herself the second coming of the Lord, the savior, and one with the Holy Spirit. She claimed to be another Jesus, the shepherd who would lead the lambs through the coming Rapture.

Even in death, the cult leader could not remain a simple corpse. The cult leader—whose head I had split open with my own hands—hung on the cross, her face intact but everything below it brutally mutilated. Her grotesquely exposed naked body had been sliced and carved in places until it was skeletal. In a way, it made sense. When you remembered that at the Last Supper Jesus had called the bread and wine his body and blood.

“Oppa… this is…”

And when the followers saw the corpse of the cult leader who had equated herself with Jesus and even changed her name, what else could they have done? They had simply done as they were taught.

I knew the name for it.

“…Eucharist.”

They had eaten her bread and drunk her wine. That was the end of the New Heaven Rapture Mission Church fanatics. The ones who had destroyed the world and spread a plague that should never have existed were killed by their own faith.