Mountain of Corpses, Sea of Blood
This was Lee Sia’s current status window.
Her level had climbed, she had picked up a few new traits, and her skills had multiplied in kind.
Park Ji-hoo had grown just as dramatically—beyond any comparison to what he had been before.
A mere seventh floor. No ordinary player could ever have reached such heights. Yet these two had done it. All thanks to Seong Yujin.
One of the powers of the upgraded Akasha System 2.0 was the party system. By sharing experience, they leveled far faster than they ever could hunting alone. And because they were already overleveled for the floor, their hunts had been devastating—yielding more skills and traits in the process. Seong Yujin had even made sure to hand them some decent gear along the way. That was the only reason Lee Sia had been able to cut through that throng of zombies and reach the survivors by herself.
“Aaaagh! Mutant zombies!”
“We’re dead!”
“S-save us!”
Not that the people she had just saved seemed capable of grasping that they had already been rescued.
“Hey. I said I came to save you.”
Lee Sia spent more time talking the half-panicked survivors down than she had fighting. If the zombies blasted away by the shockwave of Black Flash [D] hadn’t come shambling back, it might have taken even longer. Fortunately, watching her butcher the undead convinced them her words were true.
“We need to head down now. My partner and the other survivors are waiting over that way. Once we reach them, we’ll be safe.”
“Y-you really came to rescue us?”
An older man was the first to regain his wits. He asked carefully.
“Yes. So stick right behind me. There are still a lot of zombies left outside.”
Even through their fear, the survivors nodded. Staying here meant dying together. They had nearly done exactly that moments ago. Better to follow her—terrified or not—than die cowering in place.
“That’s all five of you?”
“Y-yes.”
Men, women, old and young—a mixed group. Lee Sia swept her eyes over them, then checked her own condition.
I’m fine.
The backlash from Black Flash [D] had mostly faded. Her skin still stung as if lightly burned, but she could endure it. Stamina and mana were both still solid.
Still, I can’t use it again.
Not with survivors in tow. If she fired it off, they would never keep up—even a single meter would leave them behind.
So…
Slow and steady. Kill them one by one as they moved. That was the only way.
How many left?
She had cut down about a hundred on the way up; the shockwave had scattered a few hundred more. Not all of those were dead, but few would be moving right away.
Call it three hundred, roughly.
A little nerve-wracking. Alone she could have managed somehow, but—
She glanced back. The survivors were exhausted, half-starved, barely able to walk for the fear. Escorting them would not be easy.
Still, no choice.
She had come knowing the risk. Without that resolve she never would have moved in the first place.
“Let’s head down.”
Steeling herself, Lee Sia led the survivors downstairs. A few zombies lunged with guttural roars only to be split open by her blades, staining the floor.
And then the first floor.
As expected.
Outside, zombies were gathering in ones and twos. The shockwave had wrecked their rotting bodies in places—one missing a limb, another dragging itself forward without a lower half. Like a gruesome Hansel and Gretel trail, entrails lay scattered along the path the crawler had taken, like breadcrumbs.
“Urgh!”
The youngest girl among the survivors gagged. Luck or misfortune—there was nothing in her stomach to bring up.
About fifty.
Just the ones clustered in front of the building. The streets would hold more.
Lee Sia stepped forward, face tight with tension.
That was when it happened.
Aaaaaaaaaaargh—!
A predatory roar split the air, and every zombie blocking their path simply exploded.
KWA-AAAAAAANG—!
The delayed blast that followed carried enough force to make eardrums ring.
“…That is?”
The tension melted from Lee Sia’s face.
“Ji-hoo!”
Park Ji-hoo landed atop the crushed remains of the undead—smashed flat like tofu under a palm.
“Nuna! Are you okay?”
“I told you to wait, didn’t I?”
She scolded him in a voice thick with relief.
“How could I?”
It was Lee Sia—not some stranger. A comrade who had shared life and death with him this far. He could never have left her alone in a place this dangerous. Escorting the other three survivors to safety had delayed him a little, but luckily the timing hadn’t been completely off.
“I’ve mostly cleaned up the area. The last big group was right here.”
Amazingly, while Lee Sia had climbed to the seventh floor and come back down, Park Ji-hoo had nearly finished off the zombies. The aftershock of Black Flash [D] had helped, true—but even accounting for that, it was no small feat.
Kid’s gotten seriously strong.
Just as she had gained a great deal on the sixth floor, it seemed Ji-hoo had done the same.
“Good. Let’s head back.”
The two of them took the newly rescued survivors and moved on, mopping up leftover stragglers as they went. People who had been hiding inside another building saw them and finally crept out, breathing sighs of relief.
“Now we head for the safe zone.”
Eight people for now. Ninety-two survivors still remaining. A long road ahead.
That lunatic’s doing fine, right?
A sudden worry surfaced. They had nearly risked their lives against a mere thousand or so. Seong Yujin was holding back tens of thousands—hundreds of thousands—of zombies. There was no way to be certain he was unharmed.
Hope he didn’t get hurt.
Not because she was fond of the bastard. Simply because climbing the Tower without him would become a serious problem later. That was the only reason she worried. Or so Lee Sia told herself.
If he did get hurt, I’ll tease him for it later. All that swagger and posturing, only to get wrecked looking cool.
She smirked and quickened her pace.
“Haaah— haaah—!”
His breath burned all the way to his throat.
“Fuck, how long has it been since I was this out of breath?”
The last time had been fighting the End, hadn’t it?
“No… even then it didn’t feel this hard.”
Chasing the thing when it tried to run had been worse than actually killing it.
“Can’t even remember when that was.”
In the first timeline, once he hit a certain level, he never had to struggle like this. His power had simply been that overwhelming. Now he was different from that Yujin. Still low-level, missing countless traits and skills, and his gear was nothing special. And the enemy numbers? Endless.
Not getting tired would be weirder.
Yujin split a charging zombie’s skull in half and took another step forward. Front, back, left, right—even from below. The undead poured in as if they had been waiting for the invitation.
Pa-ba-ba-ba-bat—!
Solar Blade [D] danced. Chilling straight lines carved through the air and opened every throat they touched.
“Huuuk—!”
He was truly exhausted.
Getting this was a godsend.
Without God-Infused Physique [S], what would have happened? A fight like this would have been unthinkable. Hit-and-run tactics, whittling their numbers down a few at a time—that would have been the only option. And that would have made the quest far harder. He never could have drawn every zombie’s attention solely onto himself.
Still, in the first timeline we did this with a whole group, so it was a bit easier.
Side effect of climbing too fast. Right now there were only three of them, so the burden on each had multiplied.
“Well. Still.”
In the briefest of pauses he fully recovered his breath and scanned the surroundings.
Corpses corpses corpses corpses corpses corpses corpses corpses corpses corpses corpses corpses corpses corpses corpses corpses corpses corpses corpses corpses corpses corpses corpses corpses corpses corpses corpses corpses corpses corpses.
The only phrase that came to mind was mountain of corpses, sea of blood. Bodies beyond counting lay in shattered heaps that formed actual hills, and the blood they had spilled had become a sea. Living corpses had become ordinary dead ones sprawled everywhere.
“Pretty much cleaned them out.”
Maybe a thousand zombies left at most? Unbelievably, Yujin had massacred them by the tens of thousands. Slaughter—the one thing he had always claimed he did best—embodied.
“If this had been open plains I never would have dared, but…”
Fortunately they were right in the middle of the city. A ruined city full of buildings that looked ready to collapse at any moment. From the very start of the fight, Yujin had kept using the same method: collapsing buildings whenever he got the chance.
A single swing of Solar Blade [D] could only kill so many. Even with a skill active, two hundred at absolute maximum—and he couldn’t chain those skills endlessly. But bringing a building down? Anywhere from five floors to dozens. Ruined or not, the materials that made them up were still there. When a structure that size came down, it delivered more destructive force than any skill he currently possessed.
“One sword stroke, one building.”
The collapsed wreckage became graves the zombies never asked for.
“I even make them a place to rest and offer a prayer for their souls. Eh? Where else are you gonna find a guy this generous? Right, Chunbae?”
“Kkyaaaaaang—!”
Yujin grinned at Chunbae’s cry.
“You get it. So what about you lot?”
He asked the blood-soaked zombies still standing.
Grrraaaaaaagh—!
No coherent answer came back, of course.
“Idiots, the lot of you.”
What else could you expect from rotten brains?
“Time to wrap this up. Looks like the kids are about finished too.”
Yujin’s sensory range dwarfed Park Ji-hoo’s. Mana control alone put him in another league, so even in the middle of a life-or-death brawl he had kept perfect track of their movements. They had gotten into a few tight spots, but—
Still made it in time.
If they hadn’t finished the quest before he completely cleared the zombies, he would have repaid all his suffering tenfold. Half regret, half satisfaction colored his expression as he raised Solar Blade [D].
“Come on. Come at me.”
The remaining zombies charged.