As You Believe, So It Shall Be (1)
The naked humans hung crucified, dead. In every direction my flashlight beam swept, their faces were twisted in agony, terror, and the bite of freezing cold. Each exposed body somehow managed to look almost reverent even as it bled out.
“All of them…” Yeyeun started to speak, then swallowed her words. My little sister had her gun raised too, watching warily.
Centurion. I knew the Bible mentioned several, but the most famous one was the saint who stabbed Jesus in the side with a spear. The man called Longinus. Sometimes he was considered just another soldier, but that wasn’t what mattered right now. The real problem was that this scene went far beyond a simple “Oh, people with split sides nailed to crosses.”
A variant that looked like a sniper-turned-shooting-athlete who fired weapons shaped like spears. A zombie that had earned the name Centurion and tried to kill me and my sister. There were far too many suspicious coincidences to chalk it up to pure chance.
But there was no time to dwell on it. This was an execution. And yet it didn’t feel like a simple execution either.
“Did… did people really do this?”
“I don’t know.”
Yeyeun looked at me, seeking an answer, but unfortunately I had none to give. Still, one thing was certain.
Suddenly my sister covered her flashlight.
“Oppa.”
If I strained my ears, I could hear footsteps. Yeyeun’s senses were too dull to catch them, but we weren’t. Step. Step. Step.
I carefully hoisted the zombie whose skull I’d split open onto my shoulder, making sure its blood didn’t soak me. While my sister pulled Yeyeun back, we crouched low in the darkness. We slipped around the corner into a recessed alcove. Unless they came all the way around, they’d never spot us.
From that spot, my sister, Yeyeun, and I left the split-headed zombie behind and watched the chamber lined with crosses from a place where no light reached. Multiple sets of footsteps echoed at once. The overwhelming stench of blood and the pools of it would mask our scent anyway. What mattered now was presence.
I held my breath. My sister, whose stealth was far higher than mine, moved to my side without making a sound. Only Yeyeun was fidgeting anxiously. I gripped her shoulder and kept listening.
The sound of footsteps on stairs. They were descending a long flight. As I held my breath, Yeyeun’s long fingers suddenly brushed across my skin. What the fuck? What is she doing right now? No matter how much she wants me, this is definitely not the time.
Just as I started to panic, her hand slid up my neck, reached my ear, and stopped. Then came the soft sound of her breathing right against it. A moment later, her slightly husky yet still pleasant voice—low for a girl—filled my ear.
“The stairs right ahead lead to the main building.”
You should’ve said that sooner. I shot her a glare, but Yeyeun looked like she couldn’t see anything in the dark. No reaction at all. Anyway—main building stairs. I didn’t know what was coming down them, but it wasn’t alone. Multiple footsteps. Not the usual dragging shuffle of ordinary zombies. Humans? Or intelligent variants? But they weren’t talking, which was strange for people.
As I kept my ears pricked, a thought crossed my mind. Should I just charge out? If they’re human, I can beat the answers out of them. If they’re zombies, I’ll just kill them. Why am I even overthinking this? Overthinking is Ahyeon’s thing, not mine. Didn’t the GOAT of judo, Tae Woo-ham, say that true strongmen don’t need to think? And I am strong.
“Hyeon—”
The sound faded into the distance. I rose to my feet. I had stealth, but I didn’t bother hiding my presence. I stepped into the light.
They were holding flashlights. At the sound of my footsteps they turned their heads toward me. But by the time they saw me, it was already too late.
The instant my back foot touched the ground, I rolled forward hard.
Tadol
The world narrowed for an instant, then snapped back. At the peak of acceleration I locked the leg I’d meant to extend and slammed it into the floor. If I kicked them now, they’d die. Not me—them. But I needed information, so killing them outright would be inconvenient. I had to leave at least one alive.
Instead, I used a body slam. I drove my shoulder forward like a battering ram.
Crrrrack!
I’d held back just enough. The bastard I hit flew backward and smashed into the wall. The clatter of falling stone chips hadn’t even stopped before I opened my mouth.
“Wh-what the—”
They shouted and drew their guns at the same time. My eyes widened. I recognized those guns. They had the same style as the air rifle Yeyeun had given me. The moment I saw the competition-grade structure, I knew. What the fuck? How do these bastards have guns?
Then again, of course they would. If I had bullets and a gun, I’d use them too. Assuming they even worked properly had been the mistake. At least they were all handguns. Whether powder or air-powered, I couldn’t tell.
They moved. I reacted on instinct. I swung my fist at the closest one—the one who had aimed first. A sharp crack rang out as I broke his neck clean through the bone. Before the broken-necked man could even fall, another gun was aimed at me. But my sister was faster. She emerged from the darkness and pulled the trigger.
Kakaang!
The sharp gunshot pierced straight through their skulls. Two heads burst open in succession and rolled across the floor. I twisted my body toward the next bastard who was aiming at me with both hands on his pistol and fired off a textbook-perfect spinning back kick. The man who took it square in the face didn’t even manage a groan before he hit the ground. Instant death. Or a caved-in face. Either way, he was finished.
One left.
In that instant I saw the gun barrel aimed at my head. I raised my left arm, wrapped in the Holy Knight’s suspicion, following the bullet’s trajectory.
Thump. Kaaang!
It was powder after all. The gunshot wasn’t loud, but the impact sound was dizzying. The moment I felt the bullet ricochet, I planted my front foot and leaped forward like a pouncing beast.
“Wha—”
Superman punch. The jump punch I’d seen so often in my favorite mobile game smashed straight into the shooter’s face. A wet crunch of shattering skull rang out as he flew backward. He crashed into a cross, toppling it, and lay still. He probably wouldn’t be moving again. Ever.
“Ahyeon, I’m going to get information, so don’t shoot.”
Before my sister could fire at the guy I’d shoulder-checked into the wall, I spoke up. She quickly lowered the rifle she’d already had aimed.
“Information?”
Her tone suggested she doubted he’d know anything, but it was worth a try. The bastard was panting, barely managing to stand, when he tried to pull another gun. I snatched his wrist.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
Crack.
The feeling of his wrist crumbling in my grip was closer to dry kindling than bone. Breaking anything else would be easy. I ignored his bursting scream and grabbed him by the throat.
“I’m going to ask questions now. I’ll only ask once. If I don’t like the answer, or if you don’t answer, I’ll break something else.”
The guy looked up at me, panting in terror. He seemed around my age, but he was in terrible shape. Gaunt from hunger, heavy dark circles under his eyes from lack of sleep. Anyone could see he wasn’t living like a normal person. I could roughly guess why.
I recalled the copy. If there were intelligent variants, they might herd or control humans. And sniping required a good head on your shoulders. I asked while keeping that suspicion in mind.
“A human body has a shit-ton of places that can break, you know? Think carefully before you answer.”
No reply came. I hadn’t broken anything else yet. Instead, I gave him a proper question.
“Who are you? What were you doing here?”
Huh. He’s not answering. I stared at him blankly for a second, then pressed down hard on his broken wrist.
“Aaaagh!”
The scream burst out along with tears. I listened quietly.
“Next will be the ankle, the other wrist, or a finger. Any of them will hurt like hell. So…”
“W-we… we are believers! We’re not apostates, n-not… hic, hiiik, hiiiiiiik!”
His pronunciation was slurred. At the end it crumbled under pure terror. That wasn’t the answer I’d expected. He seemed so frightened he was babbling nonsense. Even I’d be scared if some guy started beating people to death with fists and feet, but had he lost the ability to think straight? At this rate he’d die. Well, if you don’t eat properly your brain stops working, but this badly? Should I go easy on him once, change my approach, or just break something else? I was still debating when—
“…Hyeon-ah.”
Yeyeun called my name softly. I frowned.
“I’ll handle this, so stay out of it. I know it looks cruel, but in a world like this—”
“That’s not it. It’s not that…”
Not that? “What? What is it then?”
“…I don’t know.”
You don’t know? What the hell does that mean? Then why are you calling me? I turned my head in confusion, only to see Yeyeun shouldering her rifle and aiming. Not at me—at the direction behind me. She hadn’t even drawn her weapon when I was beating those men earlier. Now her finger was on the trigger.
I glanced sideways at my sister. She was doing the same—rifle shouldered, expression deadly serious. What the hell had appeared?
The Centurion? No, that couldn’t be. If it were, it would have attacked already. Then what?
I spun around quickly. The madman who’d slipped from my grasp was crawling away, but I didn’t chase him. There was no time anyway. I froze at the sight before my eyes.
What I saw was… something completely unexpected.
It was a person. To be precise, it was people.
“…What the fuck.”
A whole group of them. At least forty people. At my current level, that number wasn’t an absolute threat. If they’d all been holding rifles it might be different, but most carried hammers, crowbars, shovels, blades, or baseball bats. We even had guns on our side. So there should’ve been no reason to worry.
Yet the moment I saw them, I couldn’t move. I only knew that something was terribly, horribly wrong. So wrong that I stood frozen, unable to twitch a muscle. At the same time, I realized something.
Maybe the crosses, the fake Jesuses nailed to them, and the blood collected from their sides… had all been for these bastards.
That gut feeling left me completely paralyzed. And it made sense.
Because every single one of them was smiling.
All with the exact same expression. Not a single difference. They didn’t even blink.
Even as the sound of the fleeing man climbing the stairs grew distant, none of them moved. The unbearable silence finally got to me and I snapped.
“…What the fuck are you looking at? You here to watch a show?!”
“Hyeon-ah…”
“Oppa…”