Omen of Tragedy
[Conditions have been met, so the Slave House can be dismantled and relocated.]
When designating the villa as the Slave House, the condition for dismantling/relocating it was securing 1 slave. By making Jiyoung my slave, I had fulfilled this condition.
"Are we not coming back here?"
"Yeah. Wherever I set up the Slave House, everything inside will automatically generate. There's no need to stick around here."
The most useful thing in the villa was the luxury camper van CEO-nim used to brag about. Once I rescue slaves, I can roam around in the camper van and set up the Slave House wherever I find a decent spot as much as I want.
"Anywhere Master-nim feels comfortable is fine with me. All I need is a bed."
"I also like doing it on the couch or in the kitchen."
"Ah! Then we'll definitely need a living room and a kitchen too."
Saying that, she grinned bashfully. Ahead of a major battle, I had brought up talk about sex—which she loves—so she wouldn't be nervous, but she went a step further.
If she fights well, as a reward, I should put nothing but an apron on her and have sex with her in the kitchen.
[Remaining Time 28:33:15]
I packed only what could be used as weapons and went up to the parking lot. It said that the facilities and items inside the Slave House would automatically be stored in a sub-space upon dismantling. It's a system more convenient than full-service packing and moving.
"It's an eSprinter."
Jiyoung said upon seeing the camper van parked in the lot.
It was something CEO-nim, a camping and especially car-camping enthusiast, had bragged about, so I knew the vehicle model too.
It was a luxury camper van converted from a Mercedes-Benz eSprinter. Combining the car's price and the customization costs, it was a tremendous beast reaching hundreds of millions of won.
Since the eSprinter line is exclusively electric, there was no need to worry about fuel. That was because the system had stated it would find a Lightning-attribute Enchanter to take as a slave.
Jiyoung recognized the model as soon as she saw it. Is she interested in camper vans?
"My appa loved camping, so I bought one for him. It's the exact same model, so I recognized it right away."
"This thing costs hundreds of millions."
"Master-nim. Back when I was doing well, I made over 3 billion won a year."
Ah.
I had forgotten the fact that she was once the most famous non-celebrity in South Korea. When she appeared on the influencer survival show, her annual income would have easily surpassed that amount.
"But what good is that now? The world is completely ruined like this."
The corners of her eyes drooped slightly before perking back up. She's a girl who bounces back quickly.
"When I was hiding in that convenience store, really, I could only think about dying... I don't know how lucky I am to have met Master-nim. I'm being doted on like this, and living well in the villa."
She said as she climbed into the passenger seat.
"Let's go quickly. Someone like me must be terrified out of her mind... We have to save her."
After ordering the system to dismantle the Slave House, I drove the vehicle toward Cheongun University.
*****
Having heard the news that a horde of zombies was rushing in, Seo Yeji's marionettes set up a crude defensive line at the 1st-floor entrance and resisted with their lives on the line.
"Fuck! That side is breaking through!!"
"Block them—!!"
"Aaaargh!! Over... over there, more are cominggg...!!"
At first, it was manageable. Having received Seo Yeji's royal favor, the marionettes, whose physical strength had improved substantially, guarded the main entrance defensive line while bashing in the skulls of the swarming zombies.
Peo-eok! Kwajik!! Eudeudeuk—!!
"Keuaaaang—!!"
The problem was the numbers. If they took down one, three lunged at them; if they blew off three heads, five or ten rushed in.
The marionettes were vastly superior in attack power, but the issue was stamina. The marionettes killed and killed until they collapsed from exhaustion, but the zombies were not like that at all.
In front of the overwhelming numbers endlessly swarming while trampling the headless corpses of their own kind, one by one they eventually gave up resisting. Their stamina had completely bottomed out.
The forces—reinforcements in name only—that had swarmed out from the Language Building were in the exact same boat.
Starting off high-spirited, there had been no issues until they passed through the Student Union Building.
"Leader-nim. Is it really okay for us to pass through here?"
One of the enhancement bodies walking ahead asked Han Gijin. Just as seen from the rooftop, that thing settled in the middle of the plaza remained motionless and silent, as if dead.
It looked like an egg sac straight out of an alien movie where humans are used as hosts. The top was slightly split open, but because its height towered well above a person's height, what was inside could not be seen.
"It looks fucking repulsive."
"I know, right."
"It might spew mist, so don't touch it for no reason. Let's pass through quickly."
Putting the meat shields in front, the enhancement bodies swiftly traversed the plaza. Their objective was the horde of zombies surrounding the Student Union Building in multiple layers.
Just like the marionettes barricaded inside, the beginning went smoothly. By bashing in the heads of the zombies charging blindly without paying mind to their surroundings from behind, they succeeded in disrupting the zombie horde's formation up to the halfway point.
Up to the halfway point, that was.
"Fuck! Why the hell are they filling right back up?!"
"What are you doing? Block the rear—!!"
"More are coming! Keep breaking through! Quickly!!"
Surrounded by zombies, the enhancement bodies shrieked and struggled desperately, but in the end, like the marionettes, they slumped to the ground one by one. The number of zombies was just that overwhelming.
However, neither group noticed until they had lost the strength to resist the zombies. The fact that the zombies were only surging in to surround them, without biting a single person.
*****
Unable to drive all the way into the school, I parked the car on the roadside a short distance from the main gate. That was because cars were tangled in a chaotic mess across the road, making it impossible to advance any further.
"Let's walk from here."
I dragged over a few cars that had turned into scrap metal to conceal the camper van as much as possible. After blowing off the heads of a few roaming zombies, I scattered their remains around it.
[Remaining Time 26:05:39]
I was going to enter through the rear gate and raid the Language Building first, but seeing the villain icon move toward the plaza, I changed the destination to the main gate. The plaza was closer to the main gate.
As we got closer to the main gate, the number of zombies dwindled, and once we passed through the main gate, not a single zombie was in sight. It was as if someone had swept them all clean.
"There are no zombies."
"They're probably gathered in the plaza. The squad leader said that place is crawling with zombies."
Though I hadn't seen it in person, I had heard that there were mutants that lured zombie hordes to create a zombie wave.
It was something I heard shortly before dying in the shelter, so it should still be too early for that, but since many things had changed with my regression, it was too early to let my guard down.
As we walked toward the plaza, the status window brought up the map again. It notifies me like this whenever the positions of major icons change.
'What is this?'
While the slave candidate and villain icons in the Student Union Building remained unchanged, the other villain icon that had left the plaza was moving back toward the center of the plaza. As if someone were dragging it along.
Feeling that something was off no matter how I looked at it, instead of entering the plaza directly, I went up to the rooftop of a nearby college building.
Although it was somewhat separated from the central plaza, since I had raised my Sense stat to 19, if I focused my mind, I should at least be able to figure out what was going on.
*
"Why aren't these bastards biting?"
"Fuck if I know. Why do they keep herding us this way!"
Only after being surrounded by the zombies did the marionettes who were resisting in the Student Union Building and the enhancement bodies pushing in from outside notice the anomaly.
Zombies evolved enough to climb stairs surrounded the marionettes and survivors on each floor, then maintained a set distance while driving them down to the lower floors.
The people had no choice but to move according to the monsters' flow to avoid being bitten by the zombies. It was as if they had opened up a path and were telling them to go this way.
It was the same for the enhancement bodies who had been outside.
Baring their teeth, the zombies completely surrounding the perimeter herded the people toward the center of the plaza like sheepdogs. Right toward where the unidentified egg sac was.
In this manner, the marionettes, enhancement bodies, survivors, and lastly Han Gijin were gathered at the center of the plaza.
One might expect them to talk to one another, but everyone kept their mouths firmly shut. That was because the atmosphere was far too bizarre.
'Fuck... does it make any sense for zombies to herd people around?'
Han Gijin clutched his heart, which felt like it was about to burst, and groaned lowly. He couldn't even remember how many Enhancement Capsules he had taken.
He had overexerted himself to wipe out the zombie horde, but now he was at his limit. His instincts were sending danger signals. If he took even one more pill here, his body would explode.
He had fought well until the very end, but strain had developed on his heart and he eventually slumped down. Now, even walking was difficult. He had barely managed to move his feet to get this far just to avoid being bitten by the zombies.
"What on earth are they doing this for?"
"Why aren't they biting? Are those bastards capable of thought too?"
"When they're dead?"
"Fuck, that's why I'm asking!"
The people gathered in the plaza stared anxiously at the surrounding zombies.
*
"Master-nim. What do you see?"
"People are gathered in the plaza... and zombies have formed multiple rings, surrounding them."
"What should we do? It looks like they're all about to be bitten to death."
"That's the thing... they're not biting. They're just encircling them so they can't run away."
"Pardon?"
Jiyoung asked back with a dumbfounded look. It was a scene I couldn't believe either, so such a reaction was only natural.
'There's no mutant... does that even make sense?'
Zombies not biting people made no sense, yet they had rounded them up in the middle of the plaza like sheep. Seeing how they encircled the perimeter, it seemed as if they were telling them to stay beside that thing rising in the middle.
'What is... that?'
It looked like a fire ant mound covered with banana peels. The tip was split open toward the sky, but because the height didn't line up, the inside couldn't be seen.
An aura could be seen behind the backs of about half the gathered people. Seeing it rise faintly, they weren't awakeners.
One person in particular was enveloped in a dense aura. A black icon; he had to be an awakener.
More than half of them were people influenced by an awakener, yet their condition was a total mess, making it obvious why they were being chased by zombies.
They had all held out and held out until their stamina bottomed out, only to be dragged into the plaza.
'Why did they gather them there?'
A moment later, that thing in the middle of the plaza let out a monstrous shriek and began to peel off its husk.