Found an Enhancement Capsule
Seventeen of the enhancement refusers reported by Byeongsu, along with a few survivors captured from the commercial building the previous day, took Enhancement Capsules on the rooftop.
Terrified by threats of being driven to a place of death, they had agreed to the capsule test.
"My body, my bodyyy...!!"
"Aaaagh—!! You fucking bastards, just kill me instead—!!"
After feeding the capsules to 23 people, 5 of them had their bodies explode on the spot. 18 new enhancement bodies were born.
When fed two or more, half of them showed results. Han Gijin could distinguish enhancement bodies with good compatibility by the color of the aura rising behind their backs.
'This fucking status window only ever talks about side effects.'
The only side effect Han Gijin identified was when enhancement failed and the body exploded. Once enhanced, consuming multiple capsules had no effect, so aside from wasting points, there were no side effects whatsoever.
Their boiling sexual desires, destructive instincts, and his own lust for conquest instead served as the driving force to survive the apocalypse.
Once they became enhancement bodies, they charged blindly without fearing zombies, and dealt with mutants in groups. Since well-compatible enhancement bodies exerted monstrous strength proportional to the number of capsules they consumed, hunting became even easier.
When they successfully finished farming and hunting, he let them fuck women as much as they wanted. By turning surplus personnel into outlets for sexual relief like this, the morale of the enhancement bodies rose even higher.
"Form a farming team with 18 people and head past the intersection. There's a small mart on the other side, so raid that first, then secure the town bus depot behind it."
Han Gijin said to Byeongsu while marking a few spots on the map.
"A town bus?"
"Yeah. They're smaller than regular buses, so they have better mobility, and since it's a depot, it'll be easy to get fuel. If we take the back road from here, it leads to the national highway, so we can find places to farm."
As the enhancement bodies and survivors increased, more daily necessities and food were needed. Han Gijin intended to take complete control of the back gate area, acquire mobility, and build his own kingdom.
No matter how large their numbers grew, once he addicted them to the capsules, there was no need to worry about managing the enhancement bodies. As long as he satisfied their appetite, sexual desire, and capsules, they would remain loyal on their own.
In just a few hours, the newly formed farming team swept away all the zombies around the intersection and succeeded in seizing the small mart and the town bus depot.
Level: 13
EXP: 67/130
Points: 41pt
Skills:
— Physical Enhancement Lv.13
— EXP Plunder Lv.13
— Enhancement Addiction Lv.13
Han Gijin's sense of exhilaration was beyond words. He had grown incomparably stronger than when his level was in the single digits, and the failure rate of the Enhancement Capsules had dropped significantly.
The incoming EXP and the loyalty brought by Enhancement Addiction went without saying.
'Fuck yeah, this is it! This is how my kingdom should be, kuhahaha!!'
He grew greedy for more enhancement bodies. Immediately, teams of three or four were formed and scattered in all directions aboard town buses. Capturing survivors who would become Han Gijin's faithful slaves was their goal.
*****
"Haat, haeuk... I'm coming, I'm comiiing... Kyaaaak—!!"
Pinned beneath me, Jiyoung trembled before going completely limp. The semen filling her womb leaked out, soaking the bedsheet.
"Haa, haa... Master-nim, I can't move at allll...."
"I'll shower first, so catch your breath. Or do you want me to wash you?"
"You wash first. If we go in together, you're going to do it again. Today really isn't okay."
Come to think of it, whenever we showered together in the bathroom, things never ended quietly.
When I finished washing and came out, she was sprawled out on the bed, asleep. Seeing how soundly she slept, I covered her with a blanket and stepped out into the living room.
I took out a cigarette I had been saving, but then I heard a noise.
"Kgeuuuk...."
It was the sound of someone gasping for their last breath. A desperate voice faintly echoing from somewhere outside.
It was a warning sent by my Sense stat. Sense doesn't warn about every situation around me. It primarily warns of threats targeting me or situations I need to be aware of.
Right now, it was a situation I needed to be aware of.
I quietly stepped outside and listened closely in the direction of the sound.
Amidst the agonized voice, sounds of impacts and shouting cut in. It wasn't just one person.
It was about time for gangsters and thugs to start roaming around in packs. That was the only way they could farm more and increase their survival rate against zombies and mutants.
I grabbed the crowbar propped next to the front door and set out. Once I made my way down to the junction where the villa driveway met the main road, the sound grew clearer.
Following the sound, I kept walking toward the direction overlooking the national highway.
The streetlights had been smashed long ago, leaving everything pitch-black. Broken asphalt and glass shards crunched underfoot.
Black smoke billowed from the hood of a crushed, overturned sedan. Pinned beneath it was a corpse so mangled that it was impossible to tell whether it was human or zombie.
Just like this, the world was turning into a living hell with each passing day.
Passing an intersection with an elevated roadway visible in the distance, a town bus parked by the roadside was rocking back and forth.
In front of the vehicle, three menacing-looking bastards were puffing on cigarettes. Their arms and legs were covered entirely in tattoos.
Beneath them, a man lay collapsed, bleeding out. Even from a distance, the sea of blood surrounding him made it easy to tell he was already dead or dying.
Hiding behind an overturned vehicle, I listened closely to what the bastards were saying.
"Wow, he still isn't dead after this. Next."
"Fucking bastard just won't fucking die. There isn't even anywhere left to stab."
"Stab him by the time I count to five. Otherwise, it's my turn."
"You motherfucker. Stop counting!"
They were betting on how many non-fatal knife stabs it would take for him to die. I wondered why pieces of shit like that had come all the way out here.
Through the rattling bus door, a woman's legs were visible. Without even looking, it was obvious what was going on.
"By the way, why is that bastard doing that to a corpse when there's a perfectly fine woman right there? What a fucking pervert."
"He's pulling that shit out here because he can't kill women back at the school. If the team leader finds out, that bastard is dead."
"I hope he does drop dead. Why the fuck is he killing her when he could've just dragged her back? We're already running short on women as it is."
"My point exactly. Fuck, if I could take multiple capsules like that bastard, I would've beaten the shit out of him."
"Huh? This guy croaked. That means I won, right?"
As if murder bets and rape weren't enough, that perverted bastard was committing necrophilia. Not wanting to poison my eyes any further, I got up to smash them, but hid again after spotting something strange.
'They aren't ordinary bastards.'
I saw an aura rising like a haze behind their backs. I had seen an aura when I first met Jiyoung too, but this was much fainter in color.
An aura is visible in three cases: a Slave Candidate like Jiyoung, an awakener, or an entity influenced by an awakener for some reason.
'Which one is it?'
Since they're guys, they're either awakeners or entities influenced by an awakener. I just had to check for myself.
Flipping the crowbar in my grip, I aimed at the closest bastard. If he was an awakener with a decent level, he wouldn't die easily from a thrown crowbar.
Sswaaaek—
Peok!
"Keo-eok—!!"
His head was pierced with absurd ease. At the very least, he wasn't a high-level awakener.
"Wh-Wh-What the hell—!!"
Flustered, the two bastards next to him took up defensive stances. The bastard thrusting his hips inside the bus had no idea what had happened, completely lost in his own trance.
As one bastard walked toward me holding a knife, I sprang forward in a body-check posture.
Moving faster than he expected, the bastard didn't even get a chance to swing his knife before colliding with my shoulder.
Eudeudeuk—!!
Along with the crisp sound of ribs snapping, he crashed like a bowling pin into the bastard behind him.
"Keo-eok!"
Pulling the crowbar from the head of the bastard collapsed on the ground, I slammed it into the hand holding the knife.
"Kkyaaaak—!!"
His bone must have shattered, yet he checked my movement with his other arm. To possess enough strength to withstand my physical power meant he was no ordinary guy. He had either awakened recently or received some kind of treatment from an awakener.
Even so, he was no match for me at Level 9.
Tilting the crowbar lodged in his arm, I pressed down on his throat. He choked and flailed, but unable to bear the pressing force, his breath stopped.
Meanwhile, the bastard in the back broke free and charged with a large kitchen knife.
"Fuck, die!!"
Yanking the crowbar out of the arm, I struck his leg. As he staggered and leaned forward, I drove the claw part of the crowbar into his head.
Peo-eok—!!
Along with a dull impact sound, white matter splattered in all directions. With half of his head gone, the bastard collapsed on top of the guy beneath him.
As I pulled out the crowbar and stood up, my eyes met with the bastard inside the bus.
"Y-Y-You... what the hell are you!!"
My eyes felt like they were rotting because of the thing dangling outside his pants. I needed to hurry back and cleanse them with Jiyoung's sleek body.
"Answer properly and I'll give you time to zip your pants up."
Of course, I was going to cave his skull in right after that.
"Where did you guys..."
"F-Fuck...! You think I'll just let you take me down?"
Suddenly his eyes rolled back, and pulling something out of his pocket, he shoved it into his mouth.
'That...'
"Keok! Kgeuuu... Kgeu-aaaak—!!"
Foaming at the mouth, he furiously clawed at his neck and chest. Every time his nails tore through flesh, blood spurted and skin ripped wide open.
At the same time, parts of his body swelled up everywhere. In some places, blood vessels bulged out, and in others, flesh burst open and chunks dropped with wet thuds.
"Gaaaak—!!, Fuck... it was fine before, it was fineeeeee... Kgeu-aaaak—!!"
The thrashing bastard's chest and back swelled massively like a pufferfish, and then exploded with a peong.
I hadn't done anything, yet the bastard blew himself up on his own.
'Doesn't look like suicide.'
He said he wouldn't go down easily and ate something. That was probably what caused his body to explode.
'A side effect?'
I recalled the Enhancement Capsules I had heard about from an awakener hyung before my regression.
"There are side effects, but do you think a leader gives a shit about that?"
He said the junior colleague obsessed with the leader's woman was a production-type awakener for Enhancement Capsules. With that, even ordinary people could wield awakener-level power.
The body exploding might be the side effect hyung mentioned. If this was true, someone had already awakened as an Enhancement Capsule production type.
'I killed them all for nothing.'
Thinking I could just ask the bastard in the bus where they came from, I had killed all the rest. If I had known this would happen, I would've kept at least one alive.
Looking at the route map posted on the bus, it was a town bus operating not far from here. It seemed something was going on in that neighborhood.