Uninvited Guests (1)

I sped away from the resort island where Exodus Arcadia stood, driving for a long time. Crossing roads that were still clean but slowly accumulating fallen leaves, the advantages of this all-terrain vehicle became strikingly clear. The driving feel was completely different from a pickup truck—much more stable and secure. As I drove, I could definitely tell the difference. The fact that it was bulletproof probably helped too. The body barely vibrated at all, the engine was quieter than expected yet incredibly powerful. Satisfied, I steered the vehicle down the now-familiar road.

I'd gained a lot from this. I'd lost some things too, of course.

“Uuuuugh.”

Still, the really important stuff remained. Like the car. Or the guns.

“Uuuuugh.”

Or the Holy Knight’s sword. Food and medical supplies as well.

“Uuuuughk.”

“What the hell are you doing…?”

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“Ah.”

While I was thinking, the strange noises my sister was making started to grate on me. When I looked over, she was tangled up in her seat in a bizarre position. Her exoskeleton was half peeled off.

“I-I was trying to take this off…”

“You crazy girl, you’ll hurt yourself. I’ll pull over so you can take it off after.”

When I clicked my tongue, she let out a silly “ehehe” laugh.

—Bang! Bang!

Ignoring the distant gunfire, I pulled the car over onto the shoulder in a suitable spot. We were quite far from Exodus Arcadia now. A place where launching an ambush would be difficult. There, we stopped the vehicle and sorted through everything we’d salvaged.

“The space is huge. Way bigger than the pickup truck.”

“Right! Once we lighten the load a bit… we might even be able to fit a mattress in here.”

The biggest thing we’d obtained was this vehicle itself.

A massive vehicle with traversal power worthy of its all-terrain name. It seated four and was solidly built with full bulletproofing. The cargo bed was much larger than a pickup’s, and its huge tires showed no signs of damage despite running over zombies multiple times.

“I won’t have to worry about getting attacked while I sleep anymore.”

That was its most standout advantage. It was bulletproof, and once locked, there was no way to get in from outside. We could sleep comfortably in any situation. No need to stand guard. It could block at least small arms fire no matter what. Of course, that didn’t mean it was invincible. There were probably variants strong enough to flip a vehicle like this without much effort. A direct hit from anti-tank weaponry would end it too. So we’d still need to hide ourselves at least a little before sleeping. Still, among all the vehicles I’d seen or obtained so far, this was unquestionably the best.

And that wasn’t all.

The latest rifles we’d taken from the dead bodyguards. The five pistols they’d been carrying. And on top of that, the semi-automatic shotgun one of the bodyguards hadn’t managed to use in time. I set down the competition-grade shotgun I’d received from Yeye in the cargo bed and picked up the semi-automatic one instead. Clack. Clack-clack! I pulled the bolt, squeezed the trigger, and adjusted the front and rear sights while aiming. Was the lack of a dot sight meant to make it easier to draw and stow? As I was thinking that, my sister’s eyes widened and she spoke up.

“Hey, oppa, isn’t that the gun from that movie?”

“Movie? What movie?”

“You know, the one with the hitman guy…”

A movie. The one I’d watched in the cult leader’s penthouse.

‘It’s an Italian classic.’

A voice echoed in my mind. My eyes widened.

“…Huh? Is it really that one?”

Oh, yeah. Now that I thought about it, the shape was exactly the same. So this… was the U.S. Marine Corps standard issue. Once again, it really showed that the Presidential Security Service was basically a military organization. As I examined it, knowledge about the shotgun flooded into my head. Its durability to fire up to 25,000 rounds, relatively low recoil, and the convenience of being able to load and fire various ammunition types without modification. Not bad at all.

After checking the shotgun, I struck a slightly excited pose, and my sister naturally pulled out her smartphone and took a bunch of pictures. I felt like a real hitman. It was a ridiculously cool gun. I especially liked how the stock folded to make it more compact. Damn it, Presidential Security Service. Giving away gear like this—how much did they even have left?

The rifles were excellent too.

“Wow, these guys are just… well, they are bodyguards, so I guess it makes sense?”

Equipped with dot sights, vertical grips, and suppressors. The barrel was short, and everything from the grip to the trigger and stock was specially designed. The pistols looked fairly ordinary, but with such special rifles, there was no need for the pistols to be anything extraordinary. Or maybe they just didn’t have better ones in stock. Either way, it was a win for us.

“Oppa, can I take a pistol? The same one as you…”

“You already grabbed one, so why are you asking?”

“I wanted to get your permission first.”

“Take it.”

Our equipment needed some adjustments. To wear it with the exoskeleton, we’d have to use ammo belts instead of bulletproof vests. My sister couldn’t wear either a vest or a belt properly anyway. As we sorted through our gear, the sound of gunfire gradually died down. It was the sound of Exodus Arcadia’s life being extinguished. Just like the heartbeat monitor in the movie we’d watched together in the cult leader’s penthouse—the sound that signaled someone’s life ending.

Silence fell.

The laboratory and resort. The vacation island and the paradise where the President had hoped to make a comeback. All of it had collapsed. I stared in the direction of the island and muttered.

“…It’ll be hard to visit an amusement park-like place again.”

“Amusement park?”

“Yeah, it was fun, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, it was super fun.”

“Now that I think about it, I feel a bit regretful. Maybe I should’ve played more.”

It was only after leaving that I realized just how miraculous that place had been. Electricity. Staff to run the facilities. Fine dining. They were all wonderful memories. Even though the President had tried to use us, and had clearly been willing to kill us or experiment on us (presumably). It had been worth enduring all that.

A sigh escaped me without thinking. As I lowered the rifle hanging from its sling and rested my hand on the stock—

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“Well?”

My sister suddenly spoke.

“What do you mean, well?”

“We can just do lots of fun things from now on, right?”

She looked at me as she said it.

“There are tons of things we wanted to do besides amusement parks.”

“…Yeah, there were.”

That’s right. That’s what we’d said at the beginning. We’d visit the university my sister got into. Eat chicken and ramen by the Han River. Go to the sea. Do all the new things we’d never experienced before. Live happily like that. Now that the world had become like this, we could do it in ways that were only possible because of the apocalypse. All the things we could never have enjoyed before.

“So cheer up, oppa.”

My sister was comforting me. While comforting me, it felt like she was also saying this:

“You chose this path, didn’t you?”

“No matter what happens, Ah-hyun will stay by oppa’s side… okay?”

She smiled brightly and pulled me into a hug. Held in her arms, I paused for a moment to gather my words before nodding.

“First, let’s eat something! Ah-hyun is hungry.”

Feeling the warm body heat of my giggling sister.

The five points we gained from killing the President. My sister immediately invested all of them into her stats. She didn’t have a Shop (temporary) like I did, and there wasn’t anywhere else to spend the points, so it was only natural. She seemed to think Mechanical Engineering and Stealth would be useful for maintaining vehicles and firearms, so she raised those. Stealth went up three ranks, and after learning Mechanical Engineering, she raised it one rank to Basic. Thanks to that, her stats had increased significantly too. Agility by 6, Intelligence by 4, and Perception by a whopping 3. It really felt like the higher the skill rank, the more generously it handed out stat points.

My Greed had also reached level 9, so I could steal anything that wasn’t at the Master rank. Maybe I should start aiming for higher-grade skills from now on.

We’d gained a lot in various ways. But items and skills weren’t the only things we’d obtained from this incident. We’d learned a lot too.

First, there could be others besides us who had status windows. Although the fight had been resolved in our favor thanks to the surprise attack, and my method of attack had perfectly countered Oh Jin-uk’s regeneration, making it ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠easy. If I hadn’t had both the Heavy Swordsmanship and the Holy Knight’s Sword, it was a fight I could have lost. Oh Jin-uk, who was immune to regeneration and perhaps even had the power to control zombies, was that dangerous of an opponent. It would have been the same even without my sister. No matter how strong I was, I couldn’t have handled both the swarming zombies and Oh Jin-uk at the same time. Next time I meet someone with a system, I should consider striking first.

And next.

Perhaps the government was also involved in this Rapture bullshit. It was still just a suspicion, but with my genius intellect and intuition, it was practically confirmed. Otherwise, why would the President have gone all the way to Exodus Arcadia?

“Delicious.”

Watching my sister slurp down cup ramen with kimchi after pouring hot water into it, I organized my thoughts like this:

1. Exodus Arcadia was a joint facility between the government and the cult. It wasn’t far from Exodus Arcadia to the cult. Considering that the entire area around Gucheon Village essentially belonged to the cult, it would actually be strange if it wasn’t.

2. The President already knew about the zombie virus, and at least part of the government did too. Otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to approach it so easily. That proactive mindset to conduct experiments was something you couldn’t come up with unless you’d already experienced it. Above all, a laboratory like that couldn’t be built in a day or two.

3. The President and the cult leader were in a cooperative relationship, and the President knew well about the cult leader’s miracles. He knew that the cult leader’s power and miracles were something special, but that they could somehow be reproduced. Even my sister and I didn’t really understand how we’d ended up with this system. But the President had reproduced it. In the form of Madness, he had implanted the system into Oh Jin-uk.

Looking at all of it together, the picture roughly came into focus. I could even guess why the government had failed. At first I thought it was because the Rapture bullshit had happened too quickly and the variants were too powerful. But what if the President hadn’t taken proper measures and had instead pulled out and come here? Then a lot of things made sense.

“Ugh, I’m full.”

“You’re not eating more?”

“Ah-hyun can’t eat anymore. Oppa, you eat it…”

But what I still couldn’t understand was why on earth the cult leader had done all this. At first ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the cult had claimed it was a manipulation to expand their influence, but… was that really it? They were in a cooperative relationship with the President, and the New Heaven Rapture Mission Church—which supplied the government with reinforced exoskeletons and all kinds of equipment through its defense contractor subsidiary, and owned all sorts of major corporations as subsidiaries—why would they do something like this? I couldn’t figure it out. And the cult leader who could have told me had long since become a zombie.

I neatly finished off the cup ramen my sister had left and came to a conclusion.

“I don’t know.”

Whatever. It didn’t matter.

“Let’s get some sleep soon.”

“We have to brush our teeth first!”

“Yeah, let’s brush our teeth too.”

Later, maybe I should find a drum barrel or a large water container and fill it with river water. After brushing our teeth with my sister, we returned to the car, locked the doors, and lay down together. We wrapped ourselves in the sense of security that came from the large, comfortable cargo bed and its complete bulletproofing like a blanket.

“When we go to a city or shopping district later, we should pick up some blankets, pillows, and maybe even a mattress.”

“Ah, good. If oppa presses Ah-hyun down hard on a mattress, Ah-hyun will be so happy she might die—mmph—”

“Shut up, it’s noisy. Shh.”

I fell asleep holding my sister in my arms. Between us was only the cat doll she cherished so much.

Crack.

A cozy sleep without even dreams. I opened my eyes at the sudden sound tapping at my ear. In the darkness, my sister’s eyes, meeting mine, sparkled. With my expanded field of vision and heightened perception, I listened carefully.

Crunch. Rustle. Crackle.

The sound of leaves being stepped on. The sound of someone approaching the car while hiding their presence.

It was an uninvited guest.

My sister and I simultaneously grabbed our pistols.