18. Antlion Mart (4)
The sight of six men playing rock-paper-scissors to decide who would go first was pretty pathetic.
Of course, as a man myself, I could understand a man's brain sometimes being ruled by his dick. I knew it couldn't be helped.
But I couldn't understand a whole group of them pulling this shit together.
Enough to find it kind of disgusting?
So I left that spot. And I decided to kill all of them.
If I left them like that, those bastards would spend their Coins. I couldn't let that happen.
The good news was that the ones who'd eaten Coins were waiting in line to rape.
So they probably wouldn't draw skills right away. So I replayed the situation from a little earlier.
The three who'd been underground. The shock guy had definitely used a skill.
But the ones coming down from above hadn't collapsed from the shock. They'd just flinched at the same time.
Same with the blindness. He'd definitely seemed to cast blindness. But they hadn't gone blind—they'd all just squinted.
On top of that, the one who'd refused to rape earlier had told the leader he needed to stay near him.
Inferring from that, the outline was roughly coming into focus.
Probably a skill where the people around him share the damage he takes. That's my read, for now.
That much would explain why those guys had been swaggering around so boldly. It also explained why they'd moved in groups of ten.
They'd be taking damage at one-tenth, right? Then even damage that should cause instant death would end as a light wound.
I'd roughly gotten a feel for it. So the first thing to do now was kill that one first.
Fortunately, the six were waiting in line to rape. Ah, two had already started.
But the ones who'd eaten Coins earlier were talking to each other while they waited.
These bastards were planning to spend their Coins on draws while they waited. Fuck.
No. I couldn't let that happen. I couldn't let them spend Coins recklessly. Spending Coins takes an instant.
So I pulled out the gun right away. Then I went behind the ones about to spend Coins, raised the pistol, and pulled the trigger.
A silent bullet.
The one shot in the head wouldn't even know why he'd died.
Even when I reloaded and fired again, the ones around him didn't realize the two were dead.
"Huh!?"
One of them noticed belatedly, but he died too.
"Aaaagh!"
When the three beside him suddenly died, the last one screamed, and the two men who'd been thrusting into the women turned their heads.
And what those two saw was a bullet hole appearing in the fourth man's head.
"Fuck!"
"Wh-what the hell!"
The two men hurriedly pulled their bodies out of the women's pussies and floundered.
But before those two could do anything, they died one by one.
They died without even having time to use a skill. Even if they had any, those skills probably wouldn't have helped much. They hadn't even gotten a chance to use them.
The fog guy died too. The one with the strength died too.
Now all that remained were the distribution guy and three others.
Those ones gathered together and approached this way, scanning the dead and their surroundings with uneasy eyes.
Four of them.
Could they withstand gunfire by distributing the damage?
I didn't know. But I'd find out by trying. If they didn't die, well... I'd just shoot until they did.
Those guys didn't seem to understand why the six here had died.
They probably couldn't even imagine a gun. Since there'd been no gunshot, they'd think it was a skill.
That's how human perception works.
I approached those guys.
They might have a skill that could detect me, but if they did, they'd have noticed me from the moment I came down here earlier.
So I got close, raised a different gun, and aimed near the distribution guy's temple.
Distribute, huh? Could he really distribute a gunshot that pierces the skull?
I pulled the trigger with a bang!
No, when I pulled the trigger, there was a bang!
And at the same time, the four collapsed and four message windows popped up.
Ridiculously, all four had died at once. Because of the distribution skill.
A hollow laugh escaped me. It was absurd.
Seriously. What the hell had these guys believed in to act so bold? When they couldn't even block a single bullet?
Would they have survived if there'd been ten? If there'd been more of them, would it have just ended with a throbbing head?
But I don't know that. Because the one who'd had the skill is dead.
Well, there might be a similar skill somewhere in the world. It might even come up if I draw.
Anyway, exactly ten message windows had definitely popped up. So all of them were definitely dead.
Now the only ones alive in this basement were me and the two women who'd been getting raped.
I scratched my head and thought for a moment, then turned around. Then I went to where the two women were and just shot them both.
Done. That's it. Now I was the only survivor down here.
My Coins were at 389. Doing the math, killing everyone here had gotten me 196 Coins.
Hmm. How many Coins had those three had? They'd had around 120 or so.
Well, it doesn't matter. Who had how much isn't important. They're all mine now anyway.
I sighed. Killing people didn't even make me tremble anymore.
No guilt, no emptiness either. Just the thought that the smell of blood wasn't great.
Time to leave.
There didn't seem to be any need to stay here. Getting food wasn't urgent right now.
Then something suddenly came to mind. So I immediately brought out meat and started grilling it.
The smell of blood was masked by the smell of grilling meat. Meanwhile, the meat cooked up deliciously.
This is really insane. Grilling and eating meat in a place with corpses scattered all around.
But I pushed that thought away too. No need to dwell on it. So I focused on the meat.
After grilling and eating mostly beef until I was full, I felt a bit better.
Yeah. This is the taste. To get this flavor even in this kind of environment. Beef really is great.
By the time I'd grilled and eaten all the meat, it was around 7 p.m.
I'd need to find a place to sleep soon. Where would be good?
The first place that came to mind was the hotel. There was nowhere better, for starters. It was clean.
Though I didn't know what had become of it. Had Chloe's body been discovered? Surely it hadn't gone undiscovered this long?
I was curious, so I went.
Now I understood that saying. The criminal always returns to the scene of the crime, wasn't it?
That was exactly how I felt right now. I perfectly understood why that saying existed.
I left the mart and walked to the hotel.
Quiet surroundings. A city gradually darkening as the sun set.
No people. No one out walking around.
A day after the incident began. The chaos and fear were probably worse today than yesterday.
So staying inside unless necessary was the right call. They'd be holed up quietly, hoping someone would resolve it.
The government, the military, ah. The military is part of the government, so is that the same thing?
Anyway, it's strange that the military is quiet. At this point, shouldn't the military be doing something like martial law?
Martial law has been overused in weird ways, but originally it exists for situations like this, doesn't it?
Anyway, I arrived at the hotel like that.
And I saw that the glass door I'd smashed was blocked with junk and such.
A pretty shabby barricade, but it seemed effective enough. Blocked like that, no one could get in for now.
Of course, I could clear it away and go in, but that would be obvious immediately. They'd probably respond from inside too.
The fact that they'd blocked it like that meant there was a high probability they'd blocked all the other entrances too.
They'd essentially sealed themselves in. So no one could enter.
Ah. Too bad. I'd wanted to see the situation inside.
And this way I couldn't go in and sleep either.
So I gave up. I was curious, but not enough to risk going inside.
But was sealing themselves in like that the right move? Did they have enough food?
Oh, no. They could just go out another door and get supplies.
I thought about where to go. Then the dead guys in the mart basement suddenly came to mind.
Those guys had called each other by numbers. And those were clearly building and unit numbers.
In other words, they were residents of the same apartment building.
Yeah. That place would be good.
A thought suddenly occurred to me, so I went back to the mart.
And I searched the dead men's bodies. Pockets, bags, all that stuff.
And just as I'd thought, the guys had card keys.
Card keys with the apartment name printed on them. Some of them also had wallets, so through the backs of their IDs I could tell which building and unit they were from.
Nice.
These guys had clearly come for food. The men of the apartment had joined forces and come here.
Looking at the map, the apartment they lived in was right next to the mart.
So that's why they'd done something so bold.
With a mart overflowing with food right in front of them, they wouldn't want to lose all of it to someone else.
I carefully gathered the IDs and card keys.
The card keys didn't have building and unit numbers on them, so I found a pen and wrote them down carefully. That way there'd be no confusion later.
I'd gotten seven card keys, but only four had IDs that let me know the building and unit numbers.
So the places I'd be visiting now were those four.
The apartment would still have electricity and water. So staying there for a day wouldn't be too hard.
Maybe I could even stay a bit longer?
I'd have to go see to know.
I left the mart and went to the apartment right next to it. Then I looked at the map inside the apartment complex, took out a card key, and checked the closest place.
Building 103, Unit 518. Let's start here.
So I went to the front of Building 103. And I hesitated for a moment in front of the shared entrance.
If this just opened, it would draw suspicion, right?
So I went down to the basement. There'd probably be a door down there too, and that would draw less suspicion.
I went down to the basement, opened the door with the card key, and went inside.
Then I went up via the stairs. Taking the elevator felt off. With no one around, a button being pressed would be weird.
Like that, I went up to the fifth floor and stood in front of Unit 518.
Then, with the gun loaded, I held the card key to the front door.
The lock released with a beep-bloop.
But had that sound been heard? It probably had. There's no way a sound like that would disappear.
When I opened the door like that, a woman's voice came from inside.
"Honey?"
And out came a young woman. Fairly pretty. Maybe because she was at home, her clothes were quite casual.
Given that she said "honey," one of the men I'd killed earlier must have been her husband.
But when the door opened and she didn't see her husband, unease spread across her face.
I smiled.