15. Antlion Mart (1)
The people in the hotel. People full of the will to live.
On top of that, they're good people. The kind who think of the staff, their families, their guests.
It would be a shame for people like them to die like dogs. Honestly, it would.
But still, leaving them all alive just like that is a bit much.
If I hadn't killed the two who were with Chloe, maybe not, but some living and some dying is a little unfair.
The problem is the method of killing. One bullet per person. Too wasteful.
I do have a decent number of bullets, but I can't just blow through them recklessly like that.
Isn't there a slightly more efficient way to kill them?
I did think about setting a fire. But I wondered whether, if they burned to death or suffocated that way, those Coins would even come to me.
What I need is Coins. Killing people isn't the goal.
My first skill really was good. There was nothing else like it.
But it can't be helped. Having only one skill means having to make a choice.
Meaning I at least have to decide between offense and survival.
A rifle. It'd be nice to have a rifle.
But a rifle still uses ammunition all the same. It'd be more convenient than now, but using it to kill these one-Coin people would still be a waste.
So for now I decided to just leave the people here alone.
Because it's inefficient. Because shooting them one by one is just too much of a hassle.
Should I wait until it comes out that Chloe is dead?
Then it'll turn into quite an interesting situation.
They'll be able to confirm the bullet wound easily enough, and when that happens everyone will panic.
Because it was a hotel room they believed was safe, and someone came inside and shot her dead.
Then the guests will suspect the staff, won't they?
I thought about that, then just dropped it.
Rather than wasting time here, it'd be better to go somewhere a bit more chaotic.
It'd be better to find someone who's been stockpiling Coins, like that yellow-haired guy I met at dawn.
That's more efficient.
Gangnam in the morning.
I'd been here every day, but today it felt like an entirely different place.
The surroundings already bright. But a street with no one in sight.
Can a Gangnam street really be this deserted? At this hour, no less?
Even if they were filming a movie or something, it probably wouldn't be this empty.
No matter how much cooperation they requested, they couldn't clear it out this much.
Yesterday it happened suddenly, and there were people who'd already come to work, so there would have been at least some people.
But everyone must have figured it out overnight. That coming to work today or whatever is a stupid thing to do.
If there is someone, that'd be legendary. I can't even guess how clueless they'd have to be.
Anyway, that seems to be why it's quiet.
A city emptied out when not even a day has passed since the message window appeared.
By now everyone ought to be seriously agonizing over whether something has gone very wrong.
Really, over whether they have to kill people.
Of course, there is an answer. You just kill someone who has already killed people.
Self-defense dilutes guilt. It might even erase it completely.
But there's a fatal flaw in that.
The fact that someone has already killed people means they've obtained Coins.
And that they've obtained at least one skill, even if it's a piece-of-shit skill.
Skills are good. Though, of course, there was that retarded skill where you imitate that voice.
No, seriously, no matter how much I think about it, I don't get that one. Why does a skill like that exist? Is there even a way to use it?
Anyway, that's the situation. So right now, people who already have blood on their hands have the advantage.
People who've killed once won't hit the brakes or anything; they'll kill as many people as they possibly can.
So where exactly would those bastards be?
To kill people with a skill, you have to go where the people are.
But people who value their lives will be holed up in safe places and won't come out.
Going around finding them one by one is difficult. So that isn't easy either.
In that case, I'll have to go somewhere they have no choice but to come out.
Holing up in a room would be safe. But they can't stay like that forever.
They'll need food. And for the future, they'll need to stock up on more.
So the place to go is obviously somewhere it's easy to get groceries.
So, like a mart?
But with things the way they are now, going to a mart is a foolish move.
It'll be crawling with bastards like me. It's probably become something like an antlion pit.
They'll have claimed it first and be lying in wait to catch and kill anyone who comes.
If I had a piece-of-shit skill, or if I were someone with no skill because I hadn't managed to kill a single person yet, then obviously I shouldn't go to a mart.
But not now. I absolutely have to go to the mart. Even if it's not a mart, I have to go where the bastards lying in wait like that are.
They're exactly the ones I've been looking for. Since I can get a lot of Coins with a single bullet.
I pulled up the map. And looked for marts nearby.
As it happened, there was one close by. So if I go just as far as it is from here to the police substation, I can get there quickly.
It's about 800 meters as the crow flies, so it'll take a bit longer than that.
Before heading that way, I go check on the ones I tied up yesterday.
Nobody escaped or died overnight, right?
Fortunately, none of that had happened. All three were still there, though their water was running low and the place smelled a bit.
I refilled their water.
These are the ones who create the conditions that let my skill activate.
They must not die. They have to keep resenting me endlessly in that state.
I go back outside and walk toward the mart.
Invisible and giving off no presence, I walked as casually as if I were taking a leisurely stroll.
193 Coins. Not many.
At this rate, how exactly am I supposed to do the 1,000-Coin draw and the 10,000-Coin draw?
It's a remarkably meticulous system.
If you choose mass slaughter, survival becomes impossible. Even moving around leisurely like this would become impossible.
You'd have to hole up somewhere like I did at the hospital and just wait for someone to come.
Of course, once I found someone, killing them would be easy. That wasn't the problem.
But it would be inconvenient. It definitely would be.
Above all, if survival isn't guaranteed, then mass slaughter to collect Coins becomes meaningless.
You'd just end up busting your ass earning them and then handing them out to someone else, wouldn't you.
While I was walking along thinking about that, I arrived at the mart before I knew it.
A mart that was obviously not open. But I could see a shattered glass wall. Enough for a person to get through.
Did someone come and go overnight? Did some quick-witted person already risk their life and make an attempt?
If I didn't have the Invisibility Skill, this would be a place I shouldn't enter unless someone was threatening me with a knife.
But I went in without hesitation. What reason did I have to hold back?
Though, when I actually stepped through the glass wall, I did flinch a little.
Because belatedly I thought something like, "Couldn't a skill detect me and kill me on the spot?"
But fortunately, nothing like that happened. Except that the smell of blood hit me from inside.
In just one day, I'd gotten used to this smell of blood.
The lights weren't on, but it was bright outside, so the interior was clearly visible, and thanks to that I was able to spot the corpse of a man collapsed on the floor.
Oddly enough, the man had fallen facing the direction of entry. There wasn't anything dropped around him or anything.
That means he died not long after coming in.
The cause of death is.... Hm. I'll have to get a bit closer. I can't tell from here.
I didn't touch the corpse. Someone might still be watching this place right now.
No, if it were me, I would be. Definitely.
This is an antlion pit, after all. Or like a spiderweb strung between branches.
It'd be right for someone to be watching so they can appear the moment anyone gets caught.
So I went around to the opposite side and looked at the dead man's forehead, and I could tell the cause of death right away.
There was a round hole in the man's forehead. On top of that, the wound had been cauterized by something, so it wasn't even bleeding.
What could it be? Stabbed with a heated metal rod? That could leave a wound like this, I guess?
Or, like what I did, if something like an iron nail was driven in, it would feel like this.
Except the hole is much bigger. Big enough that calling it a nail is a bit of a stretch.
At this size, it looks like it'd be about the thickness of a thin rebar. Do they use something like that, maybe?
Anyway, there was only one corpse. Was there really only one person who went out and acted overnight?
That can't be right.
Now, looking at this scene, I try to infer the situation.
Who broke this glass wall? Some bastard who came in first and was lying in wait to kill?
Or the bastard lying dead here?
With the glass door smashed like this, would it really be right to go in through here?
Probably not. Even I, using Invisibility, had a moment of alarm. So barring something unusual, going in here isn't normal.
In that case, it turns out this dead bastard is the one who smashed the glass wall and came in.
Then the bastard waiting inside heard the glass breaking and came this way. And then killed this man.
Hm. I'll just have to look around. Guessing like this doesn't make anything certain, after all.
So I look around the interior. It doesn't matter if there's no one, and it's good if there is.
Because I can just kill them.
The inside of the mart was in quite a mess. Meaning there were a lot of useless things scattered on the floor that couldn't be eaten.
And looking from inside, it was also a bit strange that the mart shutter was closed.
The place isn't even properly cleaned up, and the shutter is down?
Come to think of it, after what happened yesterday, there was no way the employees had neatly finished closing up the store before leaving.
So someone must have just shut the place in a hurry. That seemed about right.
As I looked around some more, I found several other bodies.
And traces of blood dragged across the floor.
Seeing that the blood had dried, it seemed like it had been a while. At least, it didn't look like they'd died today.
Looks like something did happen here. Though, it'd be stranger if nothing had happened.
And while I kept looking around like that, I heard a thud! thud! sound and footsteps.
From the direction of the moving walkway. So I went over and saw three men coming down from the upper floor. Looking pretty bold.