032
032
Hardware stores usually stock factory-produced goods.
You can buy most items sold at hardware stores online. If you look hard enough, you can even find them much cheaper.
Hardware stores don't just run on product sales.
The owner is often a technician.
They do repairs, installations, unclog sewer pipes, unclog drain pipes—they do it all.
But there's one thing those hardware stores generally don't do.
Manufacturing products directly.
Manufacturing is a slightly different realm.
You see plenty of hardware stores in the country, but blacksmith shops are rare.
Im Do-young, who used to be our villa's Repairman, leveled up.
His job title changed from Repairman to Blacksmith.
You're asking how that's possible when I just said it's a different realm?
I don't know either. You can't understand the System even if you try.
The very fact that it pops up strange windows in front of my eyes regardless of my will—without me even wearing lenses—means it's an existence I can't understand no matter how hard I try.
Rather than wasting time trying to understand an incomprehensible entity, it's much more helpful to my life to deal with the tasks right in front of me.
At least that's true in a disaster situation like now, where there's no room for error.
When a world comes where we don't have to worry about survival, it won't be too late to ponder human existence then.
Of course, even when the world was safe, I never once pondered what it means to be human.
Anyway, not now.
Right now, I need to worry about how to help the Blacksmith perform at his best, rather than how the Repairman became a Blacksmith.
So, I pooled Coins together with the tenants and brought new equipment into the hardware store.
A furnace, bellows, an anvil, and so on. I restocked the items needed for a blacksmith shop.
Im Do-young was thrilled.
He spent every waking moment in the blacksmith shop, except for meal times.
Wouldn't you be curious about what Im Do-young was making?
Im Do-young never declared what he was making.
I just assumed he was crafting a new Slingshot.
A few days later.
Im Do-young, who had been holed up in the blacksmith shop every day, finally showed his face during work hours, not meal times.
Knock, knock.
"Who is it?"
"It's Im Do-young!"
He had finally knocked on my door.
I wondered what he could have made that took so long.
Actually, I know it's not easy to create a new product while wrestling with a furnace every day.
Just thinking about it—having to keep your face in front of that hot furnace—makes my own face feel hot.
It's a physical heat, the kind that might actually cook your skin.
I decided that even if Im Do-young brought me an unrecognizable lump of metal, I'd applaud him.
The Crafting skill is a high-merit skill in itself.
Even if the beginning is humble, the Crafting skill is one that can become magnificent at any time.
Im Do-young took out a Steel ball.
Honestly, when Im Do-young pulled out the pouch of Steel balls, I couldn't even react properly.
Can you even make Steel balls in a blacksmith shop?
Did he carve them into a spherical shape with incredible concentration?
Or is this the state before something else is made?
As a modern person, the job of Blacksmith is unfamiliar to me.
There's no way I'd know what's generally made in a blacksmith shop.
Besides, Steel balls weren't exactly something I needed right now.
Steel balls can be received as supplies.
That means I'm not going to run out of ammo.
And the performance is pretty decent, too.
Im Do-young must have known that I have Steel balls overflowing, right?
Did he make them for practice?
If so, that makes sense.
I thought I'd just keep using the ones I had and keep the Steel balls Im Do-young gifted me as a souvenir.
That was until I heard the product description.
"It's an Explosive Shell. It explodes upon impact. Don't shoot it at close range."
"Ex-Explosive Shell? You mean an explosion that goes boom?"
"Yes. Like a grenade, metal fragments spread in all directions. You shouldn't drop it, even by accident. Of course, it probably won't explode just from dropping it, but you never know what might happen."
"Ha... haha. Right. Thank you so much. I wonder how I should store this..."
"Don't keep it in a place that's too cold or too hot. It probably won't happen, but just in case."
Is Im Do-young trying to stage my death as an accident?
"Oh, right. While I'm giving you a gift, I wanted to ask. Can I call you hyung? "Boss" feels too distant. Please speak comfortably to me, too."
"Shall I?"
"Yes, hyung."
"Then, since we're speaking comfortably, let me ask you one thing."
"Go ahead."
"You're not angry because I kept asking you to make Slingshots, are you?"
"Me? No way. I'm just curious about the power of the Explosive Shell."
I really hope you don't end up proving its power on my body...
"They're swarming again!"
"What the fuck! What the hell did you touch?"
Moon Byeong-dae, the leader of the A2 Food Mart group, had come out to the first-floor barricade, a place he wouldn't have even shown his face in normal times.
Moon Byeong-dae's group was facing an unprecedented crisis.
"Say it again. Explain it properly!"
"Th-that is..."
The man trembling beside Moon Byeong-dae.
He wasn't an original member who had come with Moon Byeong-dae, but a former civilian turned Looter who had joined late.
He was originally in charge of scavenging the studio apartment complex.
I didn't know the exact details, but word had spread that several group members who went to the studio complex hadn't returned.
Soon, those in charge of scavenging the studio complex were ordered to go to the apartment complex.
He, too, had set out for the apartment complex for the first time in his life.
"The wall at the entrance of the apartment's underground parking lot was covered in blood vessels..."
Blood vessels, skin, and muscle covering the concrete wall.
It had turned into a wall made of flesh.
Even worse, the mysterious, contaminated wall was pulsating rhythmically.
The situation inside the underground parking lot was even more serious.
It wasn't just the contaminated wall.
Bio-cocoons were set up like pillars throughout the underground parking lot.
The Bio-cocoons were also pulsating in time with the contaminated wall.
"I realized something was wrong. I tried to retreat with my team members, but..."
They say it's darkest under the lamp.
The contaminated wall and the Bio-cocoons were clearly visible from the front, but they hadn't looked at the floor.
The floor was already contaminated, too.
"One of my team members stepped on the floor made of blood vessels while retreating."
That was when it happened.
The Flesh Wall began to pulsate faster.
Thump... thump... thump, thump, thump-thump-thump-thump—
The cocoons could be seen visibly heaving.
Pop!
Suddenly, a cocoon burst.
Other cocoons nearby burst as well.
Something crawled out from inside the cocoons.
An unidentified creature. Slimy fluid dripped from its long arms and thin torso.
The man shouted at his team members to run.
Everyone was already running.
However, the team member who had first stepped on the contaminated floor couldn't run.
He was sitting down.
The man put his hands under the team member's armpits and lifted with all his might.
The person looked to be no older than his late teens.
The man couldn't leave this young kid behind.
He barely managed to stand up, but soon after, he slipped and fell flat on the slippery floor.
"Kieeeeeeeek!"
The monster that had just popped out of the cocoon let out a screech.
Then, the contaminated floor cracked open.
Hands and feet burst out from between the cracks in the floor.
"From the floor...!"
They were zombies.
Moreover, despite having just woken up, their motor skills were intact. As soon as the zombies popped out, they started running around.
They were all running zombies.
Kieeeeeeeek!
Kieeeeeeeeeeek!
Every time the zombies born from the cocoons screamed, new zombies began to swarm from all directions.
Zombies were swarming from outside the parking lot, too.
The team members had already run far enough that they were no longer visible.
The only people left in the parking lot were him and the young student.
"I was determined to save him. Even if it meant I would be the one to get caught...!"
The man and the student climbed onto the roof of a car.
Zombies swarmed from all sides.
The two were trapped.
The man came up with an idea.
A drainage pipe was running along the ceiling of the underground parking lot.
He suggested they hang upside down from the drainage pipe and cross the river of zombies.
"It was high. We decided to lift one person up to the drainage pipe first, and then the person who went up would pull the other one up."
The man went up first.
"I reached out my hand to the student, and the student grabbed my hand. While I was pulling, the student loosened his grip. He said he didn't have enough strength to climb up. I tried to hold on, but it wasn't easy since I was already hanging."
The man who had climbed up first reached out his hand to the student. The student grabbed the man's hand.
At the very moment he was coming up, the man deliberately shook him off.
The student lost his balance and fell.
I almost got dragged into it myself.
He had thrown the useless student as bait.
It was excellent bait.
The zombies were busy eating the student.
In the meantime, the man escaped the underground parking lot.
There were colleagues who had fled first at the entrance of the underground parking lot.
He approached them to greet them, but they had already turned into zombies.
He stepped back and touched the contaminated wall again.
The zombies' screams were heard again.
The man ran like crazy and returned to the hideout.
"Are those the zombies you're talking about?"
"Yes, that's right. When those long-limbed zombies scream, other zombies swarm."
They were the ones the Kwon Min-jun villa group called Sirens.
Before he knew it, the Sirens had multiplied to five.
The zombies rippled.
"But if we work together, we can somehow... isn't this place good for defense?"
That was when it happened.
Something crawled up the wall from behind the building.
It jumped before anyone could react.
It pounced on the man. Moon Byeong-dae, who was standing right next to him, couldn't even react.
Crunch! Crunch! Crack!
The man who had given the false report was torn apart by a Spider in an instant.
Moon Byeong-dae shouted to his group members.
"Hold the line until the end! We can win if we don't retreat!"
Moon Byeong-dae hurriedly fled into the mart.
On his way in, he tipped off a few organization members who trusted and followed him, and they went in together.
Those who weren't chosen by Moon Byeong-dae were swept away while facing the wave of zombies without even knowing why.
The wave of zombies that engulfed the mart was like a tsunami.
"Will I even have a chance to use the Explosive Shells?"
I carefully placed the pouch containing the Explosive Shells on the floor.