Bandit Camp
The zombie that had been repeating “buff” finally collapsed.
“Good.”
I pulled out the [Lowest-Grade Zombie Enhancement Potion] I’d received as the Stage 2-2 reward and used it on her.
The zombie twitched.
All that pain becomes blood and flesh.
“Kekek…”
The zombie looked remarkably healthy now. Her flesh and muscles had filled out considerably, and compared to an ordinary zombie her skin was in excellent condition. If I dressed her properly, she could almost pass for a slightly tall dwarf rather than a zombie.
“That’s enough training for today.”
I wiped the sweat away with a torn bedsheet.
Now it was time to make a shield.
The boss-round bandits used bladed weapons. Their strength was only enough to leave a scratch, but taking hits head-on still wasn’t wise. Especially with fifty of them—if they surrounded us, things could turn dangerous fast.
As I’d seen in Stage 1, the boss round flipped the script. Once I pressed [Combat Start], the enemy would set up a fortified position and we’d have to attack.
That created one major difference: the bandits now had watchtowers that functioned as defensive emplacements.
They weren’t game-style towers that auto-fired arrows. The dwarfs inside would shoot manually, but that didn’t make them harmless. Arrows launched from high ground carried far more force than shots fired on level terrain. Worse, the towers gave the dwarfs near real-time knowledge of our location.
Better safe than sorry.
I lashed together some thick branches and vines into a crude square shield. It was small and flimsy, but still better than nothing.
“Here. Use this.”
“Keke!”
That settled the zombie’s gear. Now it was time to make my own.
Crack—crack—
I stepped into the cabin and snapped off all four legs of the table. Then I lashed the remaining stumps together with vines in an X-shape to create a handle. It wasn’t a proper shield either, but compared to the zombie’s it was practically luxury.
Chair in my right hand, table in my left. Furniture set complete.
Feels solid.
With that, I was fully prepared for the boss fight. Without hesitation, I pressed [Combat Start].
Wood creaked and groaned as a path formed. In the distance, hills began to rise. The bandits’ mountain fortress was taking shape.
The camp itself was hidden behind dense trees, but one tall structure stood out.
Is that the watchtower?
The same watchtower the community had complained about endlessly. Everyone said it was the reason the Stage 2 boss difficulty spiked so sharply.
I agreed. Seeing it in person carried a different kind of pressure than reading about it. The tower alone made the raid far more complicated—practically the real boss.
That was why so many posts had analyzed it in detail. According to the user “Stage-2 Specialist,” the dwarfs on the tower rotated every two hours.
If that’s true, the guy must have watched the tower for at least eight hours straight…
I didn’t know what kind of summoner he was. He’d stopped posting after announcing he was moving on to Stage 3. Still, I was certain he was alive. After all, he was the kind of madman who had lured the fifty bandit dwarfs out one by one and picked them off individually.
Or maybe he’s just insane.
Either way, the reason I respected “Stage-2 Specialist” was simple: his information was excellent. He’d written thirteen posts about Stage 2. In the eleventh entry of his [Stage 2 Observation Log], he mentioned “traces of a wild dog pack.”
I believed the key to Stage 2 lay there. Sometimes those aggressively titled community posts like “How to Cheese Stage 2” actually pointed to something genuinely useful.
Wild dog pack.
They didn’t sound like allies of the bandits. No harm in checking.
I took the zombie and headed toward the location mentioned in the post.
Crunch—crunch—
We walked through the forest. It wasn’t just one extra forest tile; the entire map felt dozens of times larger. Soon we reached the stream the post had referenced. Following it downstream should lead to a small cave—the wild dogs’ territory.
Oh… there’s one right there.
Luck was on my side. A single dog was drinking from the stream nearby. It was smaller than I’d expected.
About the size of a crouching zombie?
When I approached, the dog growled warily, clearly startled by the stranger.
“Hey now. What’s this?”
Thud! Whine—
Luring wild dogs to fight the bandits—that was the mindset of weaklings who couldn’t handle the dwarfs themselves. So why had I come here?
A dog corpse is still a corpse, right?
I’d come to make dog zombies. Human-type zombies were versatile but fragile without weapons. Four-legged beasts were the opposite. They couldn’t use proper weapons, but their raw physical abilities surpassed human zombies. No reason not to recruit them.
I walked over to the dog I’d knocked down with the chair and snapped its neck. Like wringing a chicken’s neck—except this one was for combat, not dinner.
Preparations are done… but what do I say?
[Feed] had worked by simply telling them to eat, but I had no idea what command turned something into a zombie.
I tried every phrase I could think of.
“Um… Summon!”
Nothing happened. Shouting “summon” at a corpse probably wasn’t the right wording.
“Rise?”
No, that’s not it either. Isn’t that usually how it works?
“Become a zombie!”
“Resurrect!”
“Appear!”
It was hopeless. I’d tried every activation phrase I knew and failed.
Damn… Does that mean I can’t summon in real time? Do I have to leave the corpse lying around until the round ends?
Just then the zombie walked over to the dog.
“Whoa? Zombie, don’t eat that. Down, girl. I’m turning that one into a zombie later.”
The zombie glanced at me, then lightly clawed her own arm and dripped blood onto the corpse.
“Ah…?”
Was I an idiot?
The way to make a zombie was to infect the target with zombie bodily fluids.
A moment later, a zombie dog rose and crawled toward me on shaky legs. The zombie pointed at it and shouted excitedly.
“Kikeke! Kike!”
What’s she saying?
The zombie dog trembled and began repeatedly bending and straightening its front legs.
Is that… push-ups?
Exactly. The zombie had just gained a subordinate she could order to exercise however she pleased. She beamed with pure happiness.
“Kekekeke!”
Exercise wasn’t supposed to be torture. I should probably explain that to her… Actually, as long as the exercise was spreading, did the details really matter?
I decided to leave it alone.
After that, we wiped out every wild dog in the area. By the end I had twenty-five zombie dogs. The zombie led them around the cabin like a shepherd girl, running in circles. Apparently exercise was more efficient when done in a group. The same zombie who used to hate training was now actively putting the dogs through drills.
“Zombie, let’s get going.”
“Keke.”
The dogs would sit out this fight. My plan for the boss round didn’t require them.
According to the Stage-2 Specialist’s final post, there was a “side path”—a route behind the camp that avoided the watchtower’s line of sight. He had used it to lure the fifty dwarfs out one by one. I had no intention of using a lure strategy, though. I planned to take the side path, launch a surprise attack, and smash the dwarfs from behind.
Rustle—rustle—
The zombie and I crawled through thick undergrowth. After about twenty minutes we reached a narrow gap in the camp’s perimeter. A hole between the solidly built wooden barricades—just wide enough for me to squeeze through if I hunched down.
Nice. Stage-2 Specialist, if I ever meet you in the future I’ll buy you a drink. You’ve made this a lot easier.
I’d been half-skeptical. Blindly trusting community info wasn’t smart. But the information had proven true, so I owed the man a favor.
Once inside the barricade, I immediately spotted the backs of three dwarfs. They were laughing and joking while watching the wild dogs trapped inside the camp.
The post said there were fifteen more dogs inside the camp.
At my signal the zombie crept forward and drove her claws into the backs of their necks.
Thud—thud—thud—
The dwarf count dropped to forty-seven. Smiling at the smooth start, I gave the next order.
“Let’s clear the watchtower first.”
The camp’s three critical facilities were the watchtower, the armory, and the main gate. The gate and armory were too exposed for a surprise attack to matter much. The watchtower, however, sat in a corner of the camp. We dragged the three dwarf corpses outside the barricade and moved quietly toward the tower, eliminating four more dwarfs along the way. We left the bodies where they fell. This operation would begin with those corpses.
We reached the tower and climbed the stairs. The old, rickety steps creaked ominously.
Creak—creak—
The sentries must have heard someone coming up, yet they didn’t react. We had deliberately timed our arrival with the shift change.
At the top we rushed them before they could shout and silenced them for good.
Good. That’s ten already.
At this point the fight was practically over. The watchtower had been the biggest threat in the Stage 2 boss. The dwarfs had relied on it heavily. Now, when they discovered the four corpses we’d left behind, what would they do?
They would realize intruders were inside. They would rush up the tower to search for us—without realizing the tower was now our territory.
The wait wasn’t long. Soon I heard the next shift climbing the stairs.
Creak—creak—
Three dwarfs in formation. They became three more corpses the moment they reached the top. Outside, a commotion erupted—they had found the bodies we left behind. Three more dwarfs who came up to report the intruders met the same fate.
Easy. Too easy. People actually complained about this?
Now it was the zombie’s turn. She swapped her hat for a bandit’s cap and poked her head out of the tower. From below she would look like just another dwarf guard. She scanned the entire camp, then relayed the dwarfs’ positions using the hand signals we had agreed on beforehand.
“Kikek kkekek.”
Twenty at the gate, five at the kennel, and five below the tower?
Five were unaccounted for, but they were probably inside the armory. Wherever they were, they weren’t a major threat.
“Let’s head down.”
Creak—creak—
The five dwarfs waiting below were shocked to see the wrong people descending. They drew their hand axes. Five weren’t nearly enough to be dangerous.
Thud—thud. Thud.
I blocked the axes with my shield and smashed their heads with the chair. The short fight ended. I took four, the zombie took one.
By the way…
I had expected the noise to draw the rest of the dwarfs. With their numbers halved, I’d planned to switch to an all-out fight. But an unexpected bonus appeared.
In the distance, dogs were barking. I hadn’t noticed it during the fight, but dozens of furious barks were coming from the direction of the main gate.
Is that why most of the dwarfs were at the gate?
There was only one reason dogs would be barking like that. I looked at the zombie.
“Did you order that?”
“Kikek!”
This zombie… was she actually a genius all along?
Either way, it worked in our favor. Most of the enemy force had rushed to the gate, making cleanup even easier.
“Good work.”
“Kii!”
We headed toward the wild-dog kennel where five dwarfs were supposed to be. They seemed to be off duty—unarmed and simply watching the dogs for fun.
Every place has its slackers.
Maybe it was a law of nature. Even ants supposedly have twenty percent that do nothing. People like Deputy Manager Park existed everywhere.
We slaughtered the idlers. Without weapons it was even easier.
“Since we’re already here, might as well make things even simpler.”
Inside the kennel the dwarfs had been watching were fifteen wild dogs. I used the zombie to turn them into zombie dogs. They were already restrained, so there was no need to kill them first—just a quick jab with her poisoned claws.
“You’d rather be zombie dogs than dog-meat stew, right?”
It was just a rumor, but if players stayed too long in the Stage 2 boss the bandits would butcher the wild dogs for food. Unlike us, the dwarfs needed constant meals. Maybe hiding for a week and waiting for them all to starve was a viable strategy.
Not that I plan to test it.
A short while later I had fifteen more zombie dogs. Now it was time to head to the main gate for the real battle. Twenty-five dwarfs remained. We had forty zombie dogs in total.
And then a message suddenly appeared before my eyes.
[Haha. Look at this funny guy who got caught?]