Chapter 71
Chapter 71
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Translator: Ace
Chapter: 70
Chapter Title: The Dead Awaken
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The flashlight gripped by the mercenary trembled violently, illuminating his comrades before him.
Corpses that had once face-planted into the ground.
They began to rise.
Like marionettes pulled by invisible strings.
Huuuh... huuuuh—
The moment their pitch-black, dead eyes fixed on the group amid ragged breaths that sounded like their lungs were being wrung out...
Maximo leveled his assault rifle.
Natasha aimed her pump-action shotgun straight ahead.
Even in their panic, their bodies moved first.
This was no mere trained reflex.
It was a mechanical response etched deep into their bones through countless real battles.
That was what made them veterans. Level 3 solos.
But despite their sharp reactions, neither pulled the trigger.
A split second earlier, a violet flash of lightning had erupted intensely, driving back the darkness.
Then came the sound of something crunching.
Kwachik!!
The mercenary jumped in terror at the gruesome bursting noise.
His arm holding the flashlight shook like a leaf, the circular beam jittering wildly across the background.
Beyond that unstable light, blood exploded outward.
It sprayed so violently in all directions that it dotted Maximo and Natasha's faces like pointillist paintings.
But this was only the beginning.
Kieeeek!
The reanimated corpses bared their long fangs and charged like beasts.
Only to be flung backward even faster.
Faces caved in, bones tore through flesh, necks twisted around.
Pajijik!!
A fist wrapped in electricity smashed into the face of a corpse lunging for the nape.
With a cheok! sound, the corpse's head snapped back, bits of flesh flying along its arc to splatter against the wall, leaving dark red streaks as they slid down.
The next one, thrusting its sharp teeth forward, took a knee to the jaw that pulverized its lower face entirely, sending it crumpling.
The revived dead, having shaken off death itself, now met it again before a storm of the living.
No exceptions.
Pajijijik!!
Every flash of light brought impartial death in its wake.
At some point amid the chaos, the only one standing tall was a blood-soaked back.
“......”
A cross-stitched aviator jacket.
His side profile faced obliquely toward them.
As the group swallowed hard amid the crackling lightning coiling around him...
“Huu—”
Jin exhaled deeply, stowing his lightning extremity, and turned back around.
He shook the blood from his hands and said,
“I know this one. Berserker, right?!”
His confident tone brimmed with swagger, his face beaming with a faint smile now that he'd guessed it.
Ah, not scary after all. I've taken down plenty of berserkers. Call me the Berserker Killer, mortals.
As Jin puffed up and opened his mouth to boast further...
The mercenary slowly shook his head.
“...No. Not berserker.”
“Huh?”
“N-not a berserker.”
“......?”
Jin tilted his head at the repeated denial and glanced down at the floor.
Right there, a twice-dead corpse with dull eyes stared right back!
“Eugh.”
Forced into eye contact with the corpse, Jin kicked its insolent head like a soccer ball.
The body sailed off into the darkness.
With a furrowed glare shifted to the mercenary, Jin spoke.
“...Then what the hell are these things?”
*
Berserkers were people infected by the infiltrating malware Berserk.
This virus forcibly corrupted the neural socket before relentlessly injecting destructive impulses into the brain.
The result: emotions vanished, replaced by monsters stuffed full of pure aggression.
In other words, berserkers were rampaging living people, not corpses.
Yet the monsters from moments ago had clearly been corpses.
“So, what? They turned into zombies or something?”
As Jin's face twisted upon hearing Natasha's explanation...
“Shh!”
Maximo pressed a finger to his lips, then extended it toward the darkness.
He whispered just loud enough to hear.
“Something's coming.”
The next instant, at the edge where the flashlight beam met the underground gloom, a pale face peeked out. It wore tattered casual clothes.
It looked like it'd fled from somewhere. If not for those pitch-black dead eyes, they'd have asked what happened.
“...Shit.”
Maximo muttered aloud, and Natasha immediately pulled her trigger.
Tang!
At about 10 meters, the shotgun shredded the corpse's head.
In that time, Natasha racked the slide with a chul-kek, ejecting the spent shell and chambering a fresh one, then shouted while facing forward.
“Too many!”
At the same time, Jin pulled down the goggles perched on his forehead.
His vision filled with a green-tinted world swarming with an overwhelming number of corpses.
Far too many to fight.
Even Jin, who'd planned to end it here, furrowed his brow.
“Let's get out of here first!”
Maximo yelled urgently, firing controlled bursts at the sprinting corpses.
In the meantime, Jin spotted more emerging from another passage. Without hesitation, he drew Gravis from his waist and blew the head off the oncoming one.
Then, with his other arm, he hoisted the coughing mercenary onto his shoulder.
“Follow me!”
Shouting loudly, he bolted down the right path.
It had seemed clear of corpses, at least.
But mere moments into the sprint, more poured out ahead.
Literally poured.
For some reason, corpses rained from the cavern ceiling like Lego blocks, stacking up against the walls. No choice but to change direction.
“Where the hell did these come from?!”
Jin shouted, putting a bullet hole through the head of a corpse charging with arms spread wide.
Another face loomed close behind the falling body.
“Kyak!!”
Jin smashed Gravis straight into the gaping maw aiming for his nape.
No time to catch his breath—he squeezed the trigger into the skull of one clinging to his pant leg, then scanned left and right for an opening.
Left? Right? Diagonal?
Screw it! Left!
No time for deliberation.
Just trust instinct.
In the midst of it, the mercenary on his shoulder began thrashing.
“We're all gonna die! All of us!!”
“Argh! You bastard! Stop shaking!”
Jin roared.
Should've knocked him out earlier, he regretted.
He wanted to ditch the guy, but there were still questions to ask. The sole survivor and witness.
So, for now, run like hell.
“Out of the way, you zombie bastards!”
Gravis spat fire repeatedly.
The magazine emptied fast, but no problem.
He'd come prepared with plenty.
Distracted by the wildly flailing mercenary on his shoulder, Jin somehow reloaded and charged ahead recklessly.
Even then, he didn't forget to check behind.
Tang! Tang! Tang! Tang!
Natasha methodically pumped and fired, pulverizing heads in rhythmic beats, calmly reloading amid the chaos.
Corpses closed in on her openings, but she dodged fluidly without panic and resumed firing.
While Natasha stayed ice-cold,
Maximo's every move was frantic.
“Don't touch my bag!”
Sprinting on short legs for dear life, he hurled grenades back at the closely pursuing corpses.
Not just one, either.
Like discarding boiled eggs, he kept rolling cluster grenades behind him.
Kwang! Kwang!
Explosions boomed at regular intervals.
Come to think of it, both were solos on Fenrir's level.
No need to worry.
Feeling reassured, Jin faced forward again.
His position now: vanguard. The frontline guardian of the team's lives.
Right. No time to get distracted.
Steeling himself, he burst through the blocking zombies with full power.
Honestly, zombie or not—who knew.
Didn't know why they always targeted the nape, either.
But they weren't human. That made it easier.
Jin never treated enemies as mere EXP for mental health reasons, but this was different.
Come on, you bastards!
Eyes bulging, he kicked off the ground.
The battle that followed was pure hell.
Corpses swarming from all sides.
Unclear sightlines.
The cavern's disorienting layout.
A perfect storm of crap.
How long did the grueling fight last?
Finally, in a lull, they found a corpse-free space and collapsed in exhaustion.
Breaths heaving to their throats, unable to speak, they focused on recovering for a long while before sluggishly rising.
“...Jin, you okay?”
“Yeah. You?”
“I'm good.”
As Jin and Natasha whispered...
Maximo peeked out from behind the wall and said quietly.
“No corpses in sight. We lost them.”
Only then did their eyes turn to the unconscious mercenary sprawled on the floor.
“Hey. Wake up.”
“...Huh? Uuugh.”
Jin shook his shoulder, eliciting a groan as eyelids fluttered open.
Mountains of questions, but unfortunately, the guy's state was rough.
Repeating nonsense, whipping his head around paranoically—hard to hold a normal talk.
Still, the group stayed patient.
Comms dead, entrance gone.
Turning revealed only abyssal darkness that felt like it could swallow souls.
And chased by dog-pack zombies, no less.
Anxiety that they could end up like him kept them from giving up the conversation.
Comforting cries, no snapping at whines. Shared rations when hungry.
And it paid off.
Focus returned to the mercenary's delirious eyes.
“......W-what do you want to know?”
His pronunciation clearer, lips moving.
But no telling how long it'd last.
So Jin wasted no time, handing him a chocolate bar as he trembled.
“Tell us exactly what happened here.”
“What happened...”
The mercenary muttered, biting into the bar.
Chewing, he asked,
“What day is it today?”
Jin silently held out his terminal, screen lit. The mercenary twisted his lips at the date.
“...Al-already two weeks passed?”
Muttering, he clutched his face with a palm.
Brief silence.
Then a trembling voice leaked through his fingers.
“The ruins the moles found? It was actually someone's tomb. Something inside we shouldn't have woken. Sun-deprived idiots lost their minds collectively... Called it a god. Offered themselves as sacrifices. Ahh...”
His hands climbed his face, gripping hair tightly.
“That's not all. That monster roams here. Quiet usually, but when time comes, it hunts.”
Pupils darted anxiously.
His voice turned hoarse and grating.
“Die to it, become a monster. The moles here all turned that way. Still not enough, it says. Keeps... keeps needing more to eat.”
Sensing an oncoming fit, as Jin placed a hand on his shoulder...
Suddenly, chills raced up his nape.
Pajik!
Electricity surged unbidden, coiling his body.
Lightning extremity sensing danger.
Jin slowly turned his head.
Chapak, chapak—
Wet footsteps echoed from beyond the cavern entrance.
Even Natasha and Maximo, who'd fire without hesitation normally, froze.
An overwhelming blood stench assaulted their noses.
A death smell incomparable to the first underground floor lingered there.
The next moment.
Toward Jin, now standing facing the entrance...
A horrific voice echoed from the darkness.
“Ja-had.”