Exodus Arcadia (4)
I finally noticed the sense of unease. Kim Chae-hyun had claimed he was from the market, but the label Presidential Security Service Agent told a completely different story. How could the acting president have gotten so lucky as to recruit a Presidential Security Service agent to work under him? It didn’t make sense. If anything… it was far more plausible that the actual president had escaped for some reason and was hiding out there.
And when I thought about it, it wasn’t strange at all. Had the current president really been elected without any influence from the cult? Believing there had been none felt more unrealistic. I didn’t know what the cult’s public image was like, but unless every other citizen had banded together to cast their votes for a different candidate… the current president had to be either a cult member or someone backed by the cult. And such a president would certainly know about the cult. Which meant the government would have come near the cult as well. I had no idea how much they knew about this whole Rapture mess, but regardless of how much they knew, Exodus Arcadia housed both the president and the government.
“Ha.”
Suddenly this whole thing felt like it had blown up into something massive. All I wanted was to look around the zoo, grab some snacks at the amusement park, and ride a few attractions. Instead, this guy drops a bomb of information on me and then dies. I felt a surge of petty resentment toward Kim Chae-hyun and started kicking his corpse with the toe of my shoe before flipping him over. Besides the pistol that had rolled across the floor, there was another one.
◈ Decent power, easy to conceal
◈ Lower power, excellent for concealment
Two pistols. I wasn’t exactly an expert on guns, but the shooting knowledge crammed into my head started chattering on its own. A standard pistol and an outdated but high-quality one. Normal firepower and low firepower. But both looked perfect for hiding. I picked up the two pistols.
Should I give one to Kang Ahyeon? I wasn’t sure what to give her, but there were several extra magazines.
“Whoa, it’s like an armory in here.”
What this meant was simple. Even if I had somehow disarmed him without killing him, Kim Chae-hyun—who possessed the Aspect of the Wolf’s Glance—would have pulled out a pistol and shot me in the back of the head at the first opportunity. My shooting skill, which had reached the highest level, confirmed that even I would die if I took a pistol round to the head.
I wondered if a bulletproof skin trait would show up later.
I stuffed both pistols into my pockets and raised my rifle again.
“Hey.”
“Y-yes?”
“I told you I had a lot of questions, didn’t I?”
They swallowed hard. Both the guy whose nose I’d broken and the one who was still intact trembled in fear as they looked up at me. I spoke to them quietly.
“Shall we find out which one of you wants to live more?”
And that was how I learned that even with a broken nose, a person can talk just fine if they really try. The two of them insulted each other, tried to fight, and desperately tried to say anything that might help them. It was quite entertaining to watch them compete to be more useful by spitting out information. A strange sense of satisfaction, I suppose. In any case, the two men whose names I never even learned sweated buckets and told me as much as they possibly could.
The route to Exodus Arcadia. What lay along that route, the condition of the two bridges leading to Exodus Arcadia, how the security was set up, and what and how much was there.
“Where’s the armory?”
Since they didn’t have the information I really wanted, I had to ask directly like an idiot.
“Are there any other secret paths?”
The armory was located inside the island, in the VIP storage room of the resort. There were no other secret paths. In the end, the harvest wasn’t that great. Well… maybe not completely useless?
“Oppa, it looks so good on you. You look totally cool.”
“I do wear clothes pretty well, don’t I?”
“Yeah, yeah! Absolutely the best! I’ll take pictures!”
There were a whopping seven smartphones. My sister claimed the one with the best performance as her own. We couldn’t contact each other with them, but… she had always wanted to own a smartphone at least once. She used it to snap photo after photo of me, and I played along, striking various poses for her.
“Handsome! Sexy! The best!”
The photos captured me wearing the leather jacket Kim Chae-hyun had been wearing just moments ago. The black leather jacket fit my body perfectly. Even his military boots were exactly my size. On top of that, she got his Taekwondo skill, his Aspect of the Wolf’s Glance, and two pistols. At this point, I could almost consider Kim Chae-hyun a friend.
…No, we were friends originally. He always envied me because he lacked talent compared to me, but deep down he genuinely wanted to be my friend…
“Oppa?”
“Huh? Yeah?”
“What are you thinking about so hard?”
I blinked a few times before answering.
“Just wondering what we should do about Exodus Arcadia.”
“Ah, right. That’s important too.”
After taking about two hundred photos, my sister put the smartphone away. She had relayed all the information. When the Rapture struck, the government had rounded up the cult members who had fled Gucheon Village by car. And the reasonable inference that such a government would be targeting the cult leader. We hadn’t explicitly revealed that my sister and I possessed special powers… but at the very least, they knew the cult leader was an entity that consumed believers to produce goods. My sister had been there when I told them that.
“They probably don’t know the cult leader is a zombie, right?”
“They wouldn’t know he’s dead or a zombie. They probably just thought he could use that power even while alive and wanted to make use of it.”
The problem was that we still couldn’t tell whether the government was in a cooperative or hostile relationship with the cult leader. Either way, they would be hostile toward us, but there was still plenty to consider. Whether the captured cult members were fine, whether they were being treated decently and utilized as normal personnel, or whether they had simply been disposed of. The two remaining bastards didn’t know that either. They didn’t know where the armory was or what or how much was inside it.
“What are you going to do?”
“Hmm.”
There were a few options.
“Should we look for another amusement park?”
One was to leave. There was no need to fight or take on the risk, so simply leaving was an option.
“We could get hurt, we could die, and we don’t even know how many weapons are in the armory…”
Just as Kang Ahyeon said, we had no idea what we would find inside or whether we would find anything at all. But.
“There’s no guarantee these bastards won’t show up in our path again, and what they’re looking for isn’t unrelated to us either.”
I was the one who killed the cult leader. Even though he became a zombie, I’m the one who killed him. Above all, these people were connected to the military. Their supplies and weapons were on a completely different level from ours. The same went for their numbers. And.
“There’s an amusement park, a zoo, and a resort. We can restock ammunition and eliminate enemies. It’s dangerous, sure. But when has it ever not been dangerous? And… these guys seem to know more.”
How many people knew about the cult leader’s special power? Well, he was known to the public as a cult leader who performed miracles. But how many people truly knew what the cult leader could do, and that it wasn’t a simple scam but an actual miracle? And how many knew that such an ability wasn’t exclusive to the cult leader? How many knew there were people who could perform miracles through prayer and status windows?
It was impossible to know. They might know, they might not. Still, you couldn’t just leave uncertain threats alone.
“We need to look into this. Whether it’s dangerous to us or not.”
“But… they have the military?”
The problem remained. The only two entry routes were perfectly defended. It didn’t feel like we could just charge in with raw power. If it had been crawling with zombies and variants, we could have managed somehow, but our opponents were humans with guns. They had similar intelligence and capabilities to us. If we tried anything, there was a risk of being detected or counterattacked. Especially since we were ultimately inferior in firepower. Even with the advantage of a surprise attack, even after creating a smokescreen, my heart had felt like it would explode from tension the entire time we fought fourteen people. If we had to face them without the element of surprise, we could really die. We needed a different approach.
“What if we ask those people to let us inside?”
“We’d die.”
“Yeah, I thought so.”
“How about… can’t you make bombs? Make explosive vests, put them on those two, drive them inside, and detonate?”
“Huh? Ah, well, I could make some… but nothing powerful, and I don’t have the other materials.”
Explosives at the basic level seemed difficult. There didn’t seem to be a shop either. I did have access to the shop, but it was a temporary skill, and since there was no guarantee I could get it again, I wanted to save it.
“And there don’t seem to be any other secret paths.”
What should we do? I was deep in thought when—
“Ah.”
My sister suddenly made a sound.
“There is one.”
“What?”
“A secret path!”
“Huh?”
Did one of her skills suddenly become future sight or something? No, that seemed too short for—
“You said it was an island, right? If it’s an island… couldn’t we enter by boat?”
“…Huh?”
Now that she mentioned it, she was right. If it was an island, we could enter by boat. Especially since it was a resort island; it wouldn’t be strange for there to be motorboats or yachts. We didn’t have a boat yet, but that problem wasn’t too hard to solve.
“There was a lake in Gucheon Village, right? It was connected to the river.”
There would be boats there. Even if not, there were many places nearby connected by rivers. If we looked hard enough, we would find plenty of boats. And above all.
“A boat ride… sounds pretty tempting?”
“Ah, me too! I want to take a nap together on the boat!”
“A nap, huh. That sounds nice. We could eat something too.”
“Then… it’s decided?”
Killing two birds with one stone is called two birds, one stone. But achieving the goal of approaching the island by boat, gaining a chance to access the armory, enjoying the amusement park, and even going on a boat ride? This was four birds with one stone. There was no reason to refuse. So I drew the .22 caliber powder pistol from my waistband and said,
“Let’s go. Time to find a boat.”
First, let’s clean up these annoying bastards.
I ignored their pleading voices and pulled the trigger repeatedly.
*
After driving around the riverside village for a bit, we finally found what we were looking for. In the opposite direction from where they had come, at the mouth of the lake along the riverbank. As dusk fell, there was a boat docked at the pier of a quiet rural pension.
It was an inflatable boat propelled by oars. A decent-looking vessel moored right next to the octagonal pavilion.
“Oppa, should we sleep here tonight?”
“You just want to take a bath, don’t you?”
“Yes!”
“Alright then.”
Eat, shit, wash, sleep. Yeah, those were all very important. We had worked hard today, so we could afford a little luxury. Even as I laughed at the absurdity, I gladly followed my sister toward the bathroom.