Long Live the King (2)

The president lay dead without so much as a twitch. The eight holes punched through his face looked utterly grotesque. The first shot had killed him outright. My sister and I would die from a bullet to the head too, so there was no reason a president should have been any different. Yet Ahyeon, as if venting her rage, emptied the remaining seven rounds straight into his face. Her eyes twitched the whole time.

It was fucking terrifying.

Click. Clack!

Kang Ahyeon ejected the empty magazine, slipped it into her vest, and slapped in a fresh one. Spending so much time with her made it easy to forget, but my sister was unmistakably, profoundly insane. She was the girl who had stabbed our parents to death. The girl who could slit a throat right after putting on a convincing crying act. The girl who could pull the trigger with tears still glistening in her eyes while pretending to be afraid.

It hit me all over again just how scary she was. I knew she wouldn’t stab me in my sleep, but watching her calmly reload still left me with an uneasy feeling.

Still, that didn’t mean the points I’d gained would vanish. Five whole points. Considering the Serpent of Eden had given the same amount, the System clearly rated taking down the president as a feat on par with killing that monster. If the rest of the bodyguards we hadn’t spotted had been here, it probably would have been that difficult. They would have taken several bullets themselves. We might have even died.

We had guns, confidence in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠our skills, and solid stats, but we hadn’t seen the full extent of what those bodyguards could do. In that sense, this outcome was undoubtedly the best possible result.

I created a distraction, and my sister fired. I hadn’t exactly planned to distract him… No, that wasn’t right. Of course I had planned it. Everything had gone exactly as intended. Did they really think a predator with my level of intelligence wouldn’t have calculated that much?

I casually gave my sister a thumbs-up.

“Nice work. You saw my signal, right?”

“…Huh?”

Her eyes widened in confusion. She stared at me blankly for a moment, then gave an awkward laugh.

“Ah, ahhh… Y-yeah. That’s right. Oppa sent a signal… Hehe.”

It was a little suspicious, but I didn’t let it show. No need to rock the boat.

“Let’s see…”

The pistol had a familiar shape. I hadn’t noticed while it was pointed at me, but its blocky design was similar to mine, only smaller.

The president hadn’t managed to fire a single shot because Ahyeon had been so fast. All three magazines were completely full. The pistol was quite compact, though not as small as my sister’s subcompact. A bit too small for my hands.

“Ahyeon.”

“Yeah?”

“You take it. We can stock up on ammo here and you’ll be able to keep shooting for a while.”

“Oh, really?”

She beamed and accepted the pistol and magazines I handed over.

“Anything else?”

“Want to check his jacket?”

“Yeah, go ahead.”

I searched his pants while she stripped off his jacket and patted it down. All we found was a flashy Zippo lighter and some cigarettes. The bastard had been a heavy smoker. Nothing else turned up. Not surprising. A man in his position would have had his secretary or bodyguards carry everything for him.

I sighed and kicked the corpse, then looked at the window floating before me.

The System seemed to be waiting, as if asking whether I really wanted to plunder him since I still had points left. After a brief moment of thought, I made my choice.

I invested boldly. When I thought about it, Greed had always been my most reliable ally. Before defeating the Preacher, it had given me Athletics. After that, it handed me the Preacher’s martial arts and countless other skills that made me stronger. It might feel wasteful since buying something decent from the Shop required fifty points, but raising Greed’s level was something I had to do sooner or later.

And my judgment had been correct.

An additional skill appeared as if it had been waiting for me.

…[YES]…

I chose Predator’s Gaze.

My stats had risen by two points in Strength, two in Agility, ten in Intelligence, and four in Perception. On top of Gamilbokgeom, I had even gained an Oratory perk. Killing the president had been the right call.

I tilted my head back, gazing at the ceiling as I let out a heated breath. Ah… So this was the view a genius saw. Everything in the world felt refreshingly vivid. For some reason I still couldn’t mentally calculate how much 113 hectares was, but everyone’s brain worked differently. If my sister was good at simple arithmetic, I excelled at intuition, observation, and split-second judgment. It had always been that way.

From the moment I first herded zombies into a room, to when I summoned the Serpent of Eden to fight the Preacher, to the moment I killed the serpent. And from the perspective of my intellect, only one thing remained.

The underground laboratory.

I closed and locked the stairwell door we had come down through.

“Oppa, what now?” my sister asked. I pondered for a moment.

Ransack the lab. Loot the armory. Escape and run. That was the most logical plan. The problem was that our car was quite far away, moving every weapon in the armory would be difficult, and the same went for the lab. We had no idea what was inside or who might be waiting.

But a certain intuition struck me. If I were the president, wouldn’t I have prepared at least one escape route down there? I glanced at my sister.

“We need to take everything useful from the lab.”

The president had anticipated much of this situation. He had known what would happen if I killed Oh Jin-uk. There was no way someone like him wouldn’t have prepared a contingency. Maybe there were some incredible items he had stashed away inside. Just thinking about it made my heart race.

What the president had overlooked was our true capability. He had assumed we were simply good at shooting. He had thought our power was still within human limits. And… he had been overconfident in his own strength.

‘Yeah, I can flip the board anytime. For now, it’s better to follow his words rather than cause trouble…’

That was what he must have thought. With my Agility, skills, and Tadol, I could have overwhelmed him easily, but he had genuinely believed he held the advantage. All thanks to Gamilbokgeom’s ability to ignore rational resistance and grant charm and persuasiveness to speech.

But now that he was dead, it no longer mattered. I had already stolen Gamilbokgeom anyway.

I met my sister’s eyes, swiped the keycard through the reader beside the door, and heard the lock disengage. We stepped inside. The first thing that caught my eye was a long corridor stretching ahead. My sister raised her rifle, and I did the same, taking the lead. I moved while taking in everything with my expanded field of vision.

Metal-reinforced doorframes. Laboratories with one-way observation windows. Scattered documents, filth spilled across the floor, bloodstains here and there. A stark white facility with no maps or signs. And in that place, I saw a familiar face.

“Oppa… this person…”

It was someone I remembered seeing before. A lay believer who had prayed at the church. The body that hadn’t been cleaned up had vomited blood, its eyes bloodshot, the back of its head blown open. A single 5.56 rifle round, exiting from the front. My Tracking and Shooting skills confirmed it. This person had been executed.

The traces of experimentation hadn’t even been worth cleaning up and remained exactly as they were. Test tubes full of blood tied to wall-mounted blood collectors and centrifuges had gone cold. Beyond the large corridor lined with such laboratories and detention rooms, a metal door on the far side opened to both sides.

My widened field of vision caught movement. A black shape rushed toward us. The instant I saw it, I twisted at the waist and shoved my sister aside with my shoulder.

“Kyat—!”

Before her scream could even ring out, I drew the Holy Sword and brought it down, layering it over the Saint’s Shroud. The longsword reinforced by the armor on my arm could even stop rifle rounds. The black figure slammed into it.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

Kagagagagagang!

A jarring metallic screech rang out as my body was driven backward. My weight was within normal limits. I wasn’t the type to fall from a hit I had properly received. My strength was certainly high, but even so—being pushed back like this from a single strike?

The moment my back touched the floor I sprang back to my feet and finally identified the attack that had come at me. It had been a push kick. But the power behind it was not something a human body should have been able to produce.

How?

I soon learned the reason.

It wasn’t the push kick itself that was special. It was what she was wearing. Adding twenty points to Strength. I didn’t know how strong the woman in front of me had originally been, but it was enough to put her on par with me.

The memory of a certain item I had once seen in the Shop flashed through my mind: U.S. Marine Corps Combat Exoskeleton Prototype | 300 points. I had no idea how they had obtained three hundred points, but they must have bought it and reverse-engineered the design.

I shook out my arm and looked at the woman, whose face showed surprise. Her hair was tied up neatly, and she wore something bulky over her suit. Blood was smeared on her cheek, and she held a rifle with an empty magazine. The tactical vest over her body armor was completely empty.

The bodyguard who had been silently glaring ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠at me while catching her breath seemed to realize what our presence here meant.

“…Haa.”

Her voice carried irritation, regret, and a mix of other emotions. She tossed the rifle aside with a clatter. As I heard it roll across the floor, I rolled my eyes, weighing my options.

What I needed to do. What I wanted to do.

I decided to live the way I wanted. The reward right in front of me was simply too great. I couldn’t just let her go.

“Ahyeon.”

“Yeah.”

“Go on ahead and clean up.”

“Okay~”

My sister moved away. Lee Chae-rin didn’t try to stop her. Once Ahyeon had disappeared back the way Lee Chae-rin had come from, the bodyguard finally met my eyes. She was competent. No matter how much I had provoked her, she had never crossed the line and had kept her distance. She had observed us. And through that observation, she had realized exactly how dangerous we were. That was why she knew blocking my sister would be meaningless.

Instead, she simply stared at me as if she couldn’t understand my actions.

Click, click, clatter.

I set down my rifle, shotgun, and the Holy Sword. I unholstered my pistol and let it drop. All I had left was my body armor, the Saint’s Shroud, and my leather jacket. I took up a stance.

Taekwondo.

Light, bouncing steps. When Lee Chae-rin saw my posture, her eyes widened, then she let out a small laugh.

“What a ridiculous bastard.”

She raised her fists with a smirk. Without exchanging a single word, while people were being slaughtered by zombies right above our heads and chaos was spreading across all of Exodus Arcadia, we finished preparing to kill each other with smiles on our faces.