The Gates of Hell Always Smell Like Rotten Corpses First
After the live-capture operation on that chain-smoking, nicotine-addicted son of a bitch, time flew by like a goddamn rocket.
Before anyone knew it, a whole month had passed.
Among the outer camps scattered across the northern Gray Zone, the ridiculously named Super Lucky Solution Group had begun carving out a name for itself as a rising new power.
The reason was simple.
A zero failure rate.
If you tossed a request at the group that promised to handle literally anything for the right price, the job would be done in half a day at most.
Retrieving lost items, collecting overdue debts, finding missing cats, delivering letters to the next camp over.
And by far the most requested service of all was running errands for the Greenhouse Mart.
The Greenhouse Marts were embedded all across the continent. Naturally, they were directly controlled territories guarded by insane levels of heavy weaponry, so there was no need to worry about Walkers or raiders.
The problem was that the only way to reach them was by moving through the Gray Zone...
The pathetic little camps that lacked the balls to make the trip themselves had no choice but to cough up coins and beg these errands off others, even though they were basically beggars themselves.
But no matter how many requests they ran every day, their shelter warehouses and digital wallets never seemed to overflow with coins.
First of all, food. A single can of standard cultured meat went for 5 coins.
That was the price of one pack of the cheap cigarettes that Ban and Haze chain-smoked.
And here was the real kicker. A box of rifle ammunition—the most important thing—cost 30 coins.
Even that was considered reasonable.
Ban’s custom revolver rounds were a specialty item that had to be traded directly with Gutter Rat, so one box ran a staggering 80 coins.
In short, the cost of living in this fucked-up world was so astronomical that money simply refused to pile up.
[Hey! Three Walkers incoming from the alley! Haze, sis!]
[Confirmed.]
Bang! Bang! Thud!
Every time Haze’s sniper rifle, positioned on the rooftop, spat fire, a Walker’s head exploded in a refreshing burst.
Down in the alley below, Yui clutched an old terminal, feeding constant updates on the Walkers’ movements through the public satellite network straight into their earpieces.
“Master! Behind you, behind you!”
In the middle of that chaotic battlefield, Eve pointed frantically at the space behind Ban while her oversized hoodie flapped around her.
Ban, cigarette dangling from his lips, turned with tired eyes.
A Walker with half its skull missing let out a grotesque groan as it lunged at him.
Thump—!
Without even pulling his hand from his pocket, Ban swung his leg up and kicked the Walker square in the chest, then stomped down hard and crushed its head like a watermelon.
“Haa… I’m so fucking tired. We done yet?”
“Yes! Perfectly done! Master’s kick is the coolest in the whole wide world~!”
Eve scampered over, linked arms with him, and immediately started rubbing her massive chest against his side.
Ban exhaled a bored stream of smoke. Over the earpiece came Yui’s irritated voice.
[That damn cow really sticks to him all day. Hey, we’ve cleaned up the trash, so grab the bags and let’s hit the mart. We’re out of shampoo.]
“You crazy luxury brat. Why the hell would you buy expensive shampoo? Just use soap… Aaaaaaaaah!!!”
This was how the insane party had been rolling through their daily routine for the past month.
When women with trash-tier gear but god-tier stats teamed up with one deranged problem-solver, it would’ve been weirder if quests didn’t get cleared.
Eve and Yui, who had started off ready to tear each other’s throats out, had somehow developed a strangely tight bond.
And so, while they swept up pathetic little requests and poured water into a bottomless bucket just to survive, one particular day arrived.
“Uh… Hey. Hold up.”
Ban had been sprawled on the first-floor sofa of their shelter, about to take a nap as usual, when Yui’s unusually serious voice reached his ears.
He answered with his eyes still closed.
“What? Did you run out of canned beans at the mart again?”
“No. This one’s on a completely different scale. It’s… an official request posted by Unchained.”
At those words, Haze—who had been cleaning her rifle—Eve—who had been massaging Ban’s thighs—and Ban himself all turned toward Yui’s terminal at once.
Ban finally cracked his eyes open and sat up.
“Unchained? Those cosplaying lunatic bastards?”
“Yeah. They say one of their precious holy relics or whatever got stolen. They want us to find it and bring it back…”
Yui swiped across the terminal screen. The full request details filled the display.
Retrieve the Lost Holy Relic
📍 Location: Northeast edge of the Gray Zone, near the Dead Zone
🎁 Reward: 500 Coins + Full ownership of a large gas station on the northern coastline
“Holy relic? What is this, a goddamn fantasy novel? Bunch of cultist freaks.”
Ban snorted.
But the moment he saw the amount and the reward, his dead-fish eyes snapped wide open.
500 coins.
Even in this motherless economy, that was enough to stockpile ten cartons of cigarettes. A seriously juicy sum.
And the real prize? They were handing over an entire large gas station?
“This smells way too fishy,” Haze said, frowning as she stared at the terminal screen.
“They’ve probably already stripped everything useful from it. It’s almost certainly an empty shell. They’re just dangling it like bait to get mercenaries to clean up their mess.”
“I agree. They’re throwing us a worthless gas station and telling us to shovel their shit for them.”
Yui tapped rapidly on the worn-out terminal.
“Plus, they posted the last known location of the target. Wanna guess where it is?”
She enlarged the map on the terminal and shoved it across the table. A red dot was blinking in an absolutely terrible spot.
“Right here. The far northeast edge of the Gray Zone. A complete shithole right next to the Dead Zone. You get what that means, right? If you fire a gun wrong, you’ll drag an entire horde of Dead Zone Walkers down on us.”
“M-Master. This is too dangerous…”
Even Eve, whose head was usually filled with flowers, looked anxious as she clung tightly to Ban’s arm.
Hmm… They were all making perfectly reasonable points.
It was obviously a dogshit scheme—throwing them a dried-up, fuel-less gas station in exchange for risking their lives to recover some item.
But Ban simply ground his cigarette out in the ashtray, stood up with a bored expression, and said:
“So we’re not taking it?”
“Huh? Did you not hear me? It’s right next to the Dead Zone! There are tons of Walkers, and if we can’t even use guns, what the hell are we supposed to do? And the reward is probably just some empty can—”
“Who said anything about shooting guns and throwing a tantrum? We’re just going to pick up some holy relic or whatever.”
Ban stretched, cracking his neck with a loud pop.
“I was starting to get bored around here anyway. Even if it’s a throwaway, it used to be one of Unchained’s sub-bases, right? A big gas station should have plenty of space, and the coastal view might be nice.”
At Ban’s ridiculously simple and brutish logic, both Yui and Haze stared at him in utter disbelief.
“Are you out of your goddamn mind?! How are you supposed to get it without shooting?!”
At Yui’s outburst, Ban casually dug at his ear and snapped his fingers.
“Why the hell would I need to use my brain? I’ve got you amazing party members, don’t I~? You guys handle everything, and I’ll just sneak in, grab it, and leave. Right, Professor Jung?”
“Yeees! I’ll take care of everything so Master doesn’t have to get his hands dirty with nasty blood~!”
“As expected, only my pretty Professor Jung truly understands me!”
Ban stroked the head of the flower-brained woman who agreed with his every word and planted several kisses on her forehead.
“I really, really hate this.”
“Haa…”
Yui and Haze both facepalmed again, but the crazy bastard’s words somehow carried weight.
That’s right. He was just a chess piece. They were the ones building the board.
The Humvee carrying the Super Lucky Solution Group came to a stop on an elevated highway at the northeast edge of the Gray Zone, where the faint boundary of the Dead Zone could be seen in the moonlight.
Far below the collapsed overpass, dozens—no, hundreds—of Walkers had formed a pitch-black swarm around the abandoned building that was their destination.
“Holy shit. There really are a fuck-ton of them.”
Ban pinched his nose and scowled.
“I told you. I told you. I told you. I told y— Mmph! Blubblub—!”
“Shut it.”
When Yui started throwing another fit, Ban simply shoved a finger into her mouth.
“I’ve got a suppressor on, so I can quietly pick off anything that enters my line of sight. But no matter how quietly Mr. Ban moves, with that density, the smell is going to be the real problem.”
Haze, pressed tight against the guardrail, spoke without taking her eyes off her night-vision scope.
What good was being quiet? He reeked of living flesh. Jumping into a horde of those rotting bastards was basically advertising, “Come eat me, I’m delicious!”
“Fuck… Should I smear myself with guts or something?”
Just then, Eve, who had been sulking in the corner of the Humvee, silently approached and pulled the knife from Ban’s belt.
“Huh? Officer, there’s a thief here!!”
Ignoring Ban completely, Eve rolled up her sleeves and walked over to the Walker corpse whose head she had blown off on the roadside the moment they arrived.
“I am the entire database of Lab 3! There’s no way I’d let Master wear something as crude as smelly Walker guts, is there?”
She plunged the knife deep between the Walker’s jaw and collarbone. Before the rotten blood could even spray, she used the tip of the blade like a pair of tweezers and neatly extracted two thumb-sized black lumps.
They were the scent glands containing the neural-disrupting substance that let Walkers recognize each other.
Eve scooped up a handful of muddy sludge from the ground and mashed the black lumps into it.
Then she walked back to Ban and began meticulously smearing the disgusting mud mixture onto his outer clothes and shoes.
“Ugh, Doctor. This smells like absolute ass. Can I puke? I’ll aim it right at your face, okay?”
Ban gagged and turned his head away, but Eve simply smiled brightly and adjusted his collar.
“Please endure it. It smells bad, but it’s a downgraded version of the camouflage cream I used to research. At the very least, you won’t smell like a living human when you walk past them.”
Her confident smile quickly turned serious.
“But since I made it on the spot, it’ll only last thirty minutes at most. You have to find the item and get out within that time… Will you be okay, Master?”
“Thirty minutes? Thirty minutes?! Isn’t the time limit way too short? Can’t you just slap ten times more on me?”
“Even if I use ten times more, it’s the same…”
With nothing but her knowledge, Eve had somehow managed to create a path forward even in this bare-handed situation.
“Good. The smell issue has been handled by Cow-tits Noona.”
Yui snatched Ban’s terminal, then shoved it into the chest pouch of his tactical vest so that only the lens poked out.
After tightly securing the terminal with the pouch strap so it wouldn’t shake, Yui warned him sharply.
“Temporary body cam. If you break it, you’re paying for the repairs with your own coins, got it?”
Yui adjusted the terminal and tapped his earpiece.
“I’ve cranked the Humvee’s comm tower to maximum output and I’m blasting signals at that building like crazy. The Walkers inside will bounce the waves—ah, never mind, explaining is pointless. Just go exactly where I tell you. Understand?”
Ban tapped the terminal embedded in his chest with a fascinated expression.
“Whoa… This is actually really high-tech. Awesome.”
“Confirmed. I’ll clear a path from six hundred meters out, starting at the building entrance.”
Pssht—!
The moment Haze’s suppressed sniper rifle made a dull sound, the head of a Walker blocking the distant path exploded silently.
Three women with specs far beyond those of any pathetic survivor group had built a perfect stage.
All so they could push one single man toward his destination.
“Wow. You guys are seriously reliable. At this rate, this family man has to hurry off to work.”
Ban slid a combat knife into his belt, casually slung a ridiculously large machete over his shoulder, and rolled his neck with a loud crack.
“Let’s go, Dream Team! By the way, what the hell is this holy relic thing anyway? What does it look like?”
At that absurd question, Yui—who had been staring at the terminal screen—nearly choked in disbelief.
“Ha. You really are something else. I told you to read the briefing file before we left.”
She shoved the screen right in front of Ban’s face.
“It’s a pure white metal box about the size of a handspan. It has the Unchained emblem engraved on it. It’s pretty, so it should stand out immediately.”
“A handspan-sized box? That’s tiny as shit? Smaller than my dick. Mine’s bigger. So what’s inside? Gold bars or something?”
“I don’t care about your dick!!! I don’t know. The request strictly says not to check the contents. It says if you open the box, a sensor activates and the reward is forfeit. Smells like a total cult, right?”
“Fuck, they’re so damn picky. Are they insane? If that’s the case they should’ve just used rocket delivery.”
Ban grumbled as he adjusted his grip on the machete.
“White box. Got it. Roger that.”
“Mr. Ban. Keep this in mind.”
Haze’s voice, coming from where she lay prone atop the rubble, rang through the earpiece.
“The time limit is thirty minutes. And if something goes wrong… that’s it. No matter what, you must get out of there.”
“Master… You really, really have to be careful… And take this. Reapply it once you reach the front of the building.”
Eve handed him a tiny container filled with the disgusting mud paste.
“Yeees~ You’re all worrying about me so much, I’m genuinely touched! When I’m done, want to come to my room, Haze-chan, Eve-chan?”
“Yeeees!!”
“Get lost.”
Even in this situation, the fact that the bastard was still spouting nonsense left Haze utterly dumbfounded, yet at the same time, it strangely reassured her.
That’s right. It was precisely that relaxed attitude that made everyone place their hopes in him.
Ban slid down the rope from the overpass and trudged into the thick shadows of the ruins where Walkers swarmed like maggots.
Swish—
Ban’s figure was completely swallowed by the horde of Walkers. In the corner of Yui’s terminal screen, a red timer blinked to life.