Prologue: Gray Skies and Dead Fish Eyes
Has it been close to forty years since the world went completely to shit?
Honestly, I don't remember the exact number.
It's been so damn long.
People usually assume that in an apocalypse the sky would be that dull ashen gray every single day of the year, but it's not always like that.
Especially not in this brain-dead zombie apocalypse where Walkers are shambling around everywhere.
The human population has dropped like a rock. If anything, the weather's actually improved.
Of course, the streets are still packed with those paradoxical corpses that keep walking forever, stinking like absolute hell unless their heads get popped.
Law, morality, human rights? That crap got tossed into the Walkers' gaping maws ages ago.
This place is pure wilderness—survival, strength, and money are the only things that matter.
But there was one crazy bastard who casually chewed up and spat out that kind of common sense.
Just look at that guy.
The one precariously perched on the crumbling edge of a collapsed high-rise, right at the top of the debris.
He's got a rare Greenhouse cigarette clamped between his lips—god knows where he found it—and he's puffing away like he owns the place.
In one hand he's not even holding a paper cup; no, in the most ridiculous way possible, he's cradling a steaming black mug.
Right in the middle of this blood-soaked apocalypse, he's sipping on some old-school drip coffee with zero acidity, staring down at the hellscape below with those hazy, dull red eyes like he's admiring a goddamn painting.
Yeah. Fuck it. That loose-screw slacker is our protagonist, Claude Ban.
"Huuuam... Man. This is so fucking annoying. I'm dying of tiredness."
Muttering in a languid voice about whatever was bothering him, he blew a long trail of smoke into the empty air.
From the beat-up earphones jammed in his ears flowed a chill lo-fi beat that felt completely out of place in this gloomy world.
Creeeeak—
A spine-chilling scraping sound echoed from the collapsed concrete staircase.
Three massive mutated Walkers had crawled up after catching the scent of blood.
Any normal survivor would have pissed themselves and run, or started screaming for mercy.
But this guy didn't even glance back. He simply tilted the mug and poured the rest of the coffee down his throat.
"Ah, shit. This is the worst! The beat was perfect and now it's ruined."
Kwaaaaaah—!
The lead Walker ripped its jaws open wide and leaped straight for the back of Ban's neck.
Dark smoke leaked from between Ban's lips, and at the same moment his body blurred and scattered like heat haze.
It was a speed the Walkers' murky dead-fish vision could never hope to follow.
Slice—!
A silver arc flashed through the air.
The combat knife gripped in reverse cut through space, and the leaping Walker's head separated cleanly from its body, dropping to the floor with a wet thud.
Black blood erupted like a fountain.
When the remaining two charged in with their hideous claws swinging, Ban—looking thoroughly annoyed—drew an absurdly large custom revolver from his waist.
Precise aiming? Who has time for that.
He just lazily thrust his arm out and pulled the trigger.
Bang—! Bang—!
Two bullets that somehow slammed into the rusted rebar dangling from the ceiling.
Clang—! Clang—!
Ricochets that completely mocked the laws of physics, following an insane trajectory.
The two deflected rounds drilled perfect holes straight through the foreheads of the onrushing Walkers.
I don't know if he sucked God's dick before he was born or what, but it was an impossibly lucky shot.
"Ugh. Now everything's dusty."
In just three seconds.
The almost laughably short slaughter ended, and Ban flicked the blood off his knife into the air.
"Sigh... I'm out of cigarettes. This is a real emergency, fuck... And there's nothing left worth scavenging in this area."
He tossed the empty cigarette pack onto one of the Walker corpses rolling on the ground.
His previously hazy eyes sharpened just a fraction.
"It's such a pain in the ass, but... work is work. Our lovely client is waiting."
He picked up the old mug he'd left on the floor, then started making his way down the skeletal remains of the building at a leisurely pace.
When he emerged from the first-floor debris, an armored Hummer equipped with heavy plating sat parked in the middle of the abandoned road where gray dust swirled.
And leaning against its hood was a woman.
A neat light-green bob cut, sharp as if sliced with a blade.
A tight black tactical tank top that clung to her body, pants that revealed the line of her thighs.
The light-green jacket slung over her shoulders had slipped down, shamelessly exposing her dizzying collarbones.
And on that slim frame, an enormous pair of breasts.
Yeah. In a word, she was one hell of a woman.
This sexy, ice-cold beauty's name was Haze.
A legendary sniper from Aegis—one of the 8 Major Factions—and a woman who carried the terrifying nicknames Grim Reaper and Ice Witch.
When her eyes met Ban's as he walked out of the building, the cross-shaped pupils inside her clear light-green irises contracted coldly.
Ban headed toward his bike and spoke in a nonchalant tone.
"Alright, client. Let me double-check the request details. The target's name is Yui. That little... I mean, your precious little sister, the chief hacker of Intelli, got kidnapped to the Lilac Ward, right?"
Haze pushed off the cold hood and bit her lip hard.
Her voice trembled faintly with the despair of possibly losing her only blood relative.
"That is correct. The Intelli bastards used this chance to abandon Yui, whom they could never control... The upper echelons of Aegis refused to provide any troop support to avoid unnecessary friction with the Red Cross. With only my own power, I cannot break through the closed ward of those insane doctors..."
Watching the sexy older woman's mentality shatter in real time, Ban shoved his hands in his pockets, yawned hugely, and answered like it was none of his business.
"So? Your sister's in there about to get turned into a lab rat and fucked over, and you're just leaning against the car, sucking your thumb and whining about organizational rules?"
"W-what are you... That's...! But charging the ward's triple defensive line alone would be nothing short of suicide! And the upper management said that if I act independently, they will immediately expel me..."
"Sigh. You really do live in the most frustrating way possible."
Ban irritably scratched at his messy black hair.
Then he stared straight into Haze's cross-shaped pupils with coldly leveled eyes and drove the facts home.
"Aegis, rules, whatever— if it were me, I'd go cut those bastards' throats right now. You think it's impossible alone?"
Ban walked right past the stunned Haze and swung himself onto his heavy custom bike.
"That's why it's possible, and that's why I ride alone without licking the assholes of any shitty faction. Move. You're in the way."
Vroooooom—!!
The heavy exhaust roar tore through the air.
Before Haze could even open her mouth to speak, Ban's bike kicked up a violent cloud of dust and tore off like a madman toward the Lilac Ward, one of the Red Cross's medical facilities.
All Haze could do was stand there, lips moving soundlessly as she watched the bike disappear into the distance.