Tonight We Finish This
It was the tone of someone handing over an invitation to a party.
Tonight we finish this?
In theory, it was possible. But that was all it was — possible in theory. I had never managed a first-day clear myself. Play the game by legitimate means, and it simply couldn't be done. Not unless you used a cheat.
And standing right in front of me was a being no different from a cheat.
My mouth had gone dry. I gathered what saliva I could and swallowed. Whether it was nerves or anticipation, I couldn't tell.
The sun, showing only its last sliver, spilled a final wash of red. A faint wailing rode the wind from far away. A terrible howling blanketed the ruined city, and a thin line appeared above the horizon.
Bathed in sunset, Je Hyeon-o spread his wings.
The instant those black metal wings unfurled with a sharp metallic cry into the light, the sun sank completely. A remnant of glow still clung to the sky, but it would not be long before darkness swallowed everything.
The line draped across the horizon began to writhe. That unnaturally heaving line closed the distance at a grotesque speed, its surging shape almost like a violent wave. A wave that would not break until the next morning came.
While the zombies poured in, Je Hyeon-o stood still with his metal wings spread and simply looked at me. He took a step backward.
His black form plummeted.
Even knowing he would be fine, I found myself running to the railing, grabbing hold, and looking down. But I found nothing. Je Hyeon-o was already soaring back up as if launched from a bow. Wings thrown wide, he looked down on the zombies from the highest point — then dove straight into the heart of the wave.
It was the motion of a bullet leaving the barrel.
BOOM!
A roar erupted that no landing should have been able to produce. The enormous sound shook everything in every direction, and for an instant the zombie wave stopped.
A brief halt.
Then the zombies all at once began charging toward the source of the sound. The sight of hundreds of them endlessly pouring toward a single being would not have been overstatement to call a panel from a painting of hell.
A normal person would have been terrified. No — even with tremendous power, no one in their right mind would have picked a fight this reckless to begin with. But Je Hyeon-o had offered himself up as bait and drawn every last zombie to him. Far from fear, he was giddy with exhilaration.
"Kyaaaaagh!"
The zombies screamed. They shouldn't have been able to feel pain, and yet the screams seemed soaked with it.
Je Hyeon-o tore through them like a beast that had leapt into a flock of sheep. His metal hands split zombie bone, and the wings that followed carved through flesh. Wherever the black silhouette passed, hunks of meat and bone fragments rained down. It was a one-sided massacre.
Je Hyeon-o was at his best with large-scale area attacks. He could have wiped out dozens at a time, and yet he was deliberately killing them four or five at a stretch. It was a glimpse of exactly how he must have been running wild during the ten days he had entered Dead Zone Delivery ahead of us.
But at that pace, he won't finish tonight.
I wondered if he was just playing around for now and would get serious about clearing them later. Come to think of it, Je Hyeon-o had been living pretty quietly these past few days.
I watched him for a moment with the heart of a beast tamer, then thought of Lee Ga-on. The noise and vibration from Je Hyeon-o's landing would have reached her inside the lab as well. But I had a feeling she would be fine. Not a vague hope — she really did seem like she would be.
Before we prepared the Research Institute's defense, I had explained to Lee Ga-on what would happen over the next three nights. Even after I told her that zombies would come in hordes every night, she hadn't shown a hint of fear.
"I see.... Gunbam, are you finished explaining? I'm in a bit of a hurry right now."
She had half-listened at best, then gone straight back to her research. Every thought in her head was already locked onto her work; nothing else seemed able to get in. Given the situation, I could understand.
She has to produce both the vaccine and the cure in three days.
The researchers who should have been assisting her had all fled, so it was a mission that exceeded human limits to do alone. But Lee Ga-on, in her current state, seemed like she could pull it off. Bosses had berserk modes. Characters had awakening states, too. I had never seen a researcher hit an awakened state in Dead Zone Delivery before, though.
Lee Ga-on might actually be a bit closer to berserk than awakening...
I recalled the gleam in her eyes. No matter what happened outside, Lee Ga-on would focus solely on her research. All I had to do was hold the rear and defend the Research Institute.
I slid the sniper rifle's barrel between the rusted railings and locked the bipod in place. Holding an actual M24 SWS felt unfamiliar and yet strangely familiar at the same time — probably because I had fired the thing to death in the game. Thanks to a crash course from Gwak Han-muk, I could even manage a reasonably convincing grip.
I put my eye to the scope and looked for Mo Hae-in first. Because of the zombification, she could no longer use the Black Moon Blade, so she had taken a submachine gun instead.
Framed in the center of the crosshairs, Mo Hae-in was the picture of a perfect soldier. She held an MP5 in her hands, had duffel bags packed with 9mm magazines crossed over both shoulders, and wore an ammo belt around her waist. Using a massive chunk of masonry as cover, she watched the incoming zombies, then slapped the charging handle down with her hand.
A metallic click — and the muzzle bloomed with fire.
BRRRRRRT!
Casings cascaded like a waterfall, and zombie heads burst like watermelons. Even with the fierce recoil unique to a submachine gun, Mo Hae-in blew them apart with an unshaken, expressionless face. Only her short hair, tossing violently, betrayed the kick.
That's Captain Mo for you.
Even without the Black Moon Blade, her ability hadn't dimmed in the slightest.
I settled the scope on the zombies approaching through Mo Hae-in's blind spot. I drew a breath, let half of it out, and held. Then I squeezed the trigger with my index finger.
BANG!
The barrel kicked in a short jolt. The zombie's head in the scope exploded.
Not bad.
Whether it was thanks to the Trial's physical compensation or not, I seemed capable of sniping at a usable level, even if it wasn't quite up to the game. I immediately worked the bolt back. A hot casing rolled across the floor, and a new round was sucked into the chamber.
That was when a booming megaphone voice rang out.
"Ah, ah, attention all you zombies. This is an announcement."
Gwak Han-muk was leaning his upper body out the driver's-side window of a jeep, shouting into a megaphone.
"Would all you zombies kindly proceed immediately toward Lieutenant Colonel Je Hyeon-o in the central sector. Repeating: zombies, if you'd head to the center, I'd be fucking grateful."
Naturally, zombies swarmed the jeep with its blaring megaphone. Gwak Han-muk didn't flinch. He kept the broadcast going without missing a beat, turning the wheel with one hand — and then he started driving toward where Je Hyeon-o was. He nearly got overtaken a few times, but each time he knocked them away with his prayer beads at the last second and slipped clear. I hurriedly picked off a few with the sniper rifle to peel them off him.
Driving like a stuntman, Gwak Han-muk finally herded the zombies onto Je Hyeon-o in a mob.
"Lieutenant Colonel Je!"
Gwak Han-muk bellowed through the megaphone.
"Stop playing around and do your damn job!"
Je Hyeon-o, who had been enjoying himself indiscriminately slaughtering zombies, swept his metal wings. Metal feathers shot from them and punched in with a rapid series of thuds. Dozens of surrounding zombies crumpled to the ground, their foreheads pierced through. The feathers that had punched through skulls slid smoothly back out through bone and returned to the wings.
Je Hyeon-o put what I guessed was a sulky face on his goggles.
Even so, he moved his wings and lifted himself into the air. Once he had risen to a reasonably high altitude, Je Hyeon-o raised his metal hand.
I quickly sent him a Transmission.
Captain Mo is over by the church.
I had sent it because he looked like he was about to unleash an attack without considering Mo Hae-in's position. Je Hyeon-o checked the system window that appeared in front of him and looked back at me.
Then, as if to make a point, he slashed his hand down toward the church.
A line a dozen meters across split the ruined city. The black line stretched all the way above the church where Mo Hae-in was positioned.
Knowing the catastrophe that would follow, Gwak Han-muk stomped the jeep's accelerator and shouted through the megaphone.
"Captain Moooo!!"
He just yelled her name with no explanation whatsoever. But the moment she heard that cry, Mo Hae-in ran without looking back.
She had barely been sprinting at full speed for a moment when the black line began to open. The zombies the line had been drawn through split cleanly to either side, spilling their guts, and died instantly. The ones that had avoided the line didn't fare much better.
"Kaaagh!"
"Kreeeeeh!"
Buildings and earth split apart, and zombies plunged into a deep darkness. However far he had torn up the ground, the fallen ones never crawled back out. With a few hundred deleted in an instant, even the tsunami-like flow of zombies faltered.
A system window appeared.
First defense successful!
Current Defense Successes: 1 / 3
He had already filled the entire zombie kill count required for the first day.
But Je Hyeon-o didn't stop. He clapped his metal hands together as if applauding.
CLANG!
The impact rang out clearly. Then came a succession of scraping sounds, like steel plates being dragged across each other. Screee. Screeeee. It was too strange to be merely the noise of metal hands interlocking.
The source of that alien noise revealed itself as Je Hyeon-o opened his hands. Between his palms, tiny black crescents swarmed like a hive of bees. The crescents, constantly grinding against one another with that screeching sound, moved in irregular patterns.
The frantically moving black crescents turned toward the sky. New ones kept generating and joining the ones climbing in formation. They multiplied in an instant, faster than the eye could follow, and blotted out the sky. The heavens, which had still held a faint remnant of light, darkened as if it were the dead of night.
Screee. Screee. Screeeee....
The hair-raising sound assaulted my eardrums without mercy. On top of that, the zombies howled, whipped into a frenzy by the metallic noise. I watched Je Hyeon-o, fighting the urge to clap my hands over my ears right then and there.
When the entire sky was covered in black crescents, Je Hyeon-o finally stopped making them. He slowly clenched his metal hand. Following the closing of his fist, the black crescents blanketing the sky scraped against one another and produced a hideous sound.
The instant I felt it had reached its limit — he opened his hand. As if letting go of the reins.
Black rain poured down.
It almost felt like a meteor shower. After a very brief downpour—
"......"
I was speechless. Every zombie in sight was dead.
A chime rang out. A system window appeared.
...Holy shit.
I threw down the sniper rifle and shot to my feet.
The Three Days of Death quest looked at a glance like you had no choice but to defend for the full three days, but you could actually accelerate the timeline. If you killed more than a certain number of the infinitely spawning zombies, it counted as a successful defense.
The number that would register the first successful defense was ten thousand.
And the number that would register the second successful defense was....
One million.
I had only known that number from hidden information I'd picked up while running side quests. I had never actually achieved it. It was a number you could never fill unless you used a cheat.
And Je Hyeon-o had filled an impossible number.
While I stared blankly at the defense-success window, a gloomy piece of music settled over everything. It was the music that announced, with the start of the third battle, the appearance of Dead Zone Delivery's final boss: Nothing.
The corpses of the dead zombies writhed, flesh and bone tangling together like clay being kneaded. It absorbed not only humans but every scrap of debris scattered around — steel beams, masonry, plastic — and was born as a new existence. That thing, with the appearance of a repulsive nightmare, rapidly grew enormous, swelling to a height greater than the Research Institute itself.
I looked up at Nothing with stunned eyes.
I think it used to be smaller than this?
Hundreds of eyeballs were embedded in its slick, dripping hide. Zombie eyeballs. The pupils, each spinning and moving differently, stopped all at once.
Every last one of them was looking at me.
I hadn't even had time to feel the chill of it.
"...!"
My body shook violently and I was yanked into the air. I looked up in shock to find Je Hyeon-o flying, his metal hand cleverly hooked through the ammo belt at my waist, snatching me up.
"Goyo."
Je Hyeon-o said it like he was having the time of his life.
And with that, he flew out over the boss monster.
"Aaaagh, Lieutenant Colonel Je!"
And dropped me.