The Slaughter Begins
There had once been a Hollywood movie that depicted a truly enormous zombie horde.
Unable to contain that staggering number, the creatures came pouring in like a genuine tidal wave—a spectacle in every sense of the word.
But that was the impression one got while watching a film.
What would a person think if that same sight were unfolding right before their eyes?
Overwhelming terror.
No human being could hold back a tsunami.
A few swings of a sword, a few punches—none of that would ever be enough to stop it.
That was exactly how things stood now.
If Lee Sia and Park Ji-hoo went all out, they could probably handle a thousand zombies with ease.
But that would be the end of it.
The next wave would swallow them whole, and they would vanish without a trace.
DRRRRRRRRRR-!
As the ground shook under the charge of the horde, the two of them instinctively took a step back.
"Yeah. Horror theme, all right."
Seeing them, Seong Yujin let out a short snort of laughter.
He had no real urge to be disappointed or to mock them.
Anyone would have reacted the same way.
He had, too.
In the first timeline, he had been completely crushed—psychologically and physically.
No different from the two of them right now.
So there was nothing to tease them for.
"Listen carefully."
That said, they couldn't afford to stand there gaping forever.
"You remember the quest, right?"
They nodded.
Thankfully, they hadn't completely lost their heads; they answered with action.
"You two go find survivors. Stick to the nearby buildings and the subway side—you'll pull a hundred of them together in no time."
Yujin offered the advice from his memories of the first timeline.
"…What about you, mister?"
"Me? I do what I'm best at, obviously."
"And what's that?"
At Lee Sia's question, Yujin grinned.
"Slaughter."
The two of them moved out.
Finding survivors probably wouldn't be all that hard.
The difficulty wasn't especially high.
As long as they didn't do anything spectacularly stupid, locating a hundred survivors would be a piece of cake.
The problem was the zombies.
They came in endless waves, hampering movement and draining stamina.
So someone had to deal with them.
Kill them all, lure them somewhere else, or pin their feet in place.
Yujin had taken that job.
"The third option's probably best."
Wiping out that many zombies completely was impossible.
Luring them elsewhere wasn't easy either.
True to their low intelligence, they tended to move at random rather than in any fixed pattern.
That left only one method.
Pin them down in one spot and buy time—until the other two brought every last survivor back.
"At least this one's got a chance."
If this had been an open plain, even that would have been impossible.
But this was the heart of a city.
A ruined city, no less.
In a place like this, Yujin had quite a few options available.
One of them was…
"Chunbae. Open wide."
"Kkyaaaang-!"
With a cry, a crimson blade was spat free.
Yujin gripped the hilt of the Solar Blade [D] and poured mana into it.
WOONG— WOOOONG-!
The blade trembled finely.
The mana was far too refined and powerful to be contained by a mere D-grade item.
As if thrashing in ecstasy, the Solar Blade [D] shuddered in his hand.
"This should be enough."
He didn't go all out.
The fight ahead was going to be long.
He had to conserve as much strength as possible.
That didn't mean he needed to be stingy, either.
Just exactly as much as required.
Yeah.
To draw every last scrap of those damned zombies' attention and free up his slaves' movements—this was enough.
The Solar Blade [D] moved.
It wasn't particularly fast.
Slow, even.
Even an ordinary human who wasn't a player could have tracked it with their eyes.
But the power inside it was another matter entirely.
Without using any skill at all, the mana swept through a full one-hundred-eighty degrees ahead with tyrannical force.
Zombies shattered.
Rotten flesh that couldn't withstand the blade's impact burst, was severed, and tumbled across the cracked asphalt.
In a single stroke, over a hundred zombies fell.
Considering the tsunami still pouring toward him, it was a drop in the ocean.
Yujin didn't care.
What he had truly meant to cut had never been the zombies in the first place.
KRRRRRRRRUMBLE-!
Was that a thunderclap?
The air suddenly convulsed, and the ground began to howl.
"Nice. Worked out just like I calculated."
Yujin smiled in satisfaction and scanned his surroundings.
The ruined buildings were tilting sideways.
The mana carried by the Solar Blade [D] had brushed the support pillars of the abandoned structures lining both sides of the avenue.
He hadn't needed to demolish them completely.
They had already been on the verge of collapse; a light shock was more than enough.
The tremors grew stronger, and the buildings that had been hanging on by a thread began to come down in full.
KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-BOOM-!
In that brief instant—thanks to Yujin's instinct for calculating the optimal path—the rubble of the ruined buildings sealed every nearby street.
Except for one place.
The stretch between Yujin and the horde.
"You focus on me. Don't even think about leaking off somewhere else."
Not that you can think in the first place, he muttered under his breath.
GRAAAAAAAH-!
The zombies charged.
Climbing over the collapsed wreckage or searching for another route was not an option for them.
Only the pure instinct to tear into the living flesh in front of them and drink its blood ran wild.
DRRRRRRRRRR-!
Once again the ground shook under their stampede.
Yujin looked at the zombies and grinned.
"Alright. Time to power level."
A crimson blade-light flashed.
"Is he going to be okay?"
Park Ji-hoo asked with a worried face.
The atmosphere behind them was anything but normal.
The howling of the zombies.
A stench thick enough to rot the inside of one's nose.
And on top of that, a sudden explosion and mana so vicious it made the skin crawl.
Just what was Seong Yujin doing back there?
No matter how strong he was, holding back tens of thousands of zombies alone shouldn't have been possible.
"Worry about the ones who need worrying. Not that psychopath."
But Lee Sia's face showed not even the faintest trace of concern.
Honestly, she felt sorrier for the zombies that had to face that monster than she did for Seong Yujin.
"Still…"
"You still don't get that guy?"
In Lee Sia's eyes, Seong Yujin was an extreme egotist.
The type who absolutely never did anything that didn't benefit him.
Dragging her and Park Ji-hoo along to hunt, even helping them—ultimately it was only because it helped Seong Yujin himself.
"And that kind of man said he'd hold them himself. What does that mean? It means he's confident he can do it."
He would never volunteer for something dangerous and self-sacrificing.
He stepped forward because even tens of thousands of zombies were manageable for him.
That much was obvious.
"Got it? The ones who need worrying aren't that bastard—it's us."
Seong Yujin was holding back the main horde, but that didn't mean every zombie on the floor had flocked to him.
Like the one right in front of them, half its teeth already missing, lunging with its jaws open.
A not-insignificant number of zombies still blocked their path.
CRACK-!
The dark edge of Black Wing [C] split the creature's skull.
No blood sprayed.
Only a thick, blackish sludge oozed down.
Lee Sia flicked her blade clean with a quick snap of the wrist.
A famous sword was a famous sword; even that simple motion left the blade spotless.
"See? We're fine for now, but if we keep running into them like this, we're screwed."
One or two were easy.
Weaker than any monster they had fought so far.
But the true terror of zombies lay elsewhere.
The power of numbers.
There was a reason people in the movies got overwhelmed so helplessly.
One became ten, ten became a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand—or more.
Once the numbers swelled that far, Lee Sia and Park Ji-hoo would be swept away by the zombie tide without even getting a chance to fight back.
We have to move fast.
Before the creatures could gather, they needed to put as much distance as possible between them.
"Any presence you can feel?"
Lee Sia asked.
While she handled the zombies and cleared the surroundings, Park Ji-hoo had taken on the role of scout.
"Not yet. Aside from those things, nothing else seems to be moving."
Park Ji-hoo's senses were quite sharp.
Not on Seong Yujin's level, of course, but far better than Lee Sia's.
All thanks to the trait he had gained as a level-up reward: Feral Instinct [E].
The Akasha System had handed him the reward that suited him best, almost as if it had carefully considered his combat style.
"Then we need to head another way. Let's try looking for the direction of the subway…"
"Ah—wait a second!"
Lee Sia was scanning the area when Park Ji-hoo suddenly raised a hand and stopped.
"What? You found something?"
"About two hundred meters to the left. Three people!"
At the very edge of Park Ji-hoo's sensory range, something was moving.
An aura completely different from the zombies.
No other players could have climbed this high already, so they had to be survivors.
"Lead the way!"
Lee Sia poured mana into Black Wing [C] and shouted; Park Ji-hoo kicked off the ground.
PAANG-!
Blinding speed.
Despite the massive gauntlets on his hands, his figure shot across the cracked asphalt like an arrow.
PABABABABAT-!
Lee Sia followed right behind him, swinging her sword to clear the path.
Moonlight Blade [E].
An attack skill that launched crescent-shaped sword energy.
Three silver crescents shot from Black Wing [C] and sliced through the zombies blocking the way as if they were nothing more than rotten straw.
"We're here! This is it!"
For two people past level thirty, a mere two hundred meters was nothing.
It felt like they had taken only a few steps, and they had already arrived.
"Get inside!"
Zombies were gathering.
They could still handle them for now, but if they delayed any longer they might end up trapped inside with no way out.
They had to hurry.
Park Ji-hoo crushed two zombies loitering on the first floor with his fists, then charged straight up the stairs.
TADADADAT-!
A ten-story building.
All three survivors were on the top floor.
"Zombies! The zombies are here!"
A frantic cry erupted from above.
Apparently they had mistaken Park Ji-hoo and Lee Sia for zombies.
"We're not zombies! We're here to rescue you!"
Reaching the ninth floor, Park Ji-hoo slowed and called out.
"…A rescue team? You said a rescue team?"
A voice thick with disbelief.
But they had no choice except to believe it.
Zombies couldn't talk.
"We're here to get you out. So you don't have to be so wary of us."
The staircase leading to the tenth floor was barricaded with every scrap of junk imaginable.
A crude, pathetic defense.
Beyond it, the three people were trembling.
"Come with us. To a safe place."
Park Ji-hoo held out his hand.
Three people.
Ninety-seven left to go.