Chapter 106
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 106
Chapter Title: Ah... It's Trying to Wake Up.
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A zombie severed like pudding.
The blade of the sword still gleamed with a beautiful blue light.
'Huh...'
"I didn't expect it to be this good."
It was truly impressive performance—nothing less than awe-inspiring.
It had always felt like slicing through flesh like cutting tofu, but this time, he hadn't even swung it properly. He'd just pressed it against the target.
And the moment the blade touched, it split and severed the spot like a laser cutter. Insane performance.
And that wasn't all.
'Shall I give it a try?'
He gripped the longsword infused with sword energy in both hands and assumed a stance.
Still under the effect of Nameless, no zombies paid him any attention.
With a calm mind, he fully embodied the stance etched into his brain with his body.
'Move the sword, yet keep it still. Turn lines into planes, planes into solids.'
He had no idea what that meant, but his body moved as if it understood the phrase perfectly.
His lower body fixed higher than before, torso twisting.
Not horizontal, but diagonal.
And the blade pointed not forward, but downward.
As his naturally raised elbow reached exactly ear level, his movement stopped perfectly, like a puzzle piece clicking into place.
At that instant, he felt every muscle fiber in his body activate.
He'd thought he was using them to their maximum until now, but it went further, squeezing out every last bit of power, everything.
The peak of human muscle movement.
The force drawing out all the elasticity of the muscle fibers concentrated into a single motion.
'Now!'
Ka**ryu Ultimate 3rd Stance
《***ra*》
Noise exploded in his head.
But he was already too immersed to care.
In that fleeting moment, his body shot forward.
■■■■■■■■――!!!!!
A horrifying sound beyond words accompanied the moving blade.
A merciless slash, not limited to a single target, compressed and burst outward in all directions.
The zombie right in front, those beyond it, and even further.
Every zombie dozens, hundreds of meters ahead was its target.
Boom—! Boom— Rumble—!!
The severed shelves along the slash's path soon collapsed to the floor with thunderous roars.
Thud— Thud thud—!
Only then did the zombies realize their bodies were cut, collapsing like dominoes.
It was a sight too magnificent to dismiss as mere severing.
In an instant, everything before his eyes reeked of intense death.
Realizing he'd created it, cold sweat poured from his entire body like rain.
"Huff... Huff...!"
No, not cold sweat—just sweat.
His limbs trembled.
His breathing grew ragged, as if his lungs were desperately pulling in air.
Clang—!
"Ah."
He braced his forward-lurching body with the longsword.
The clean ring of metal striking rock let him realize the sword energy had vanished.
If it hadn't, the blade would have sliced through the concrete floor without resistance, sending him tumbling forward.
With shaky legs, he barely made it back to the shelf he'd leaned on earlier and sat down.
'It was definitely Ka**ryu.'
Despite the pouring sweat and ragged breaths, he calmed his body and pondered the technique he'd just used.
He couldn't care less about having slain hundreds of zombies in one go.
What mattered more was the name of the technique that had echoed in his head amid the noise.
"Kishimoto Hina."
He murmured the name of a girl softly.
As her name suggested, she was Japanese, one of the heroines in Ajeol.
In the traditional apocalypse of Ajeol, with no special abilities, she was the first and last heroine with a setup straight out of a webtoon character.
Her concept: a young Japanese swordswoman who mastered Western swordsmanship.
Chronologically 16 years old.
17 in Korean age, she was a Japanese girl obsessed with swordsmanship who immigrated to Korea.
And in the story, she was counted among the top combatants.
'She was just ridiculously strong.'
A character full of "sword supremacy" vibes, unrealistically slashing through iron and bullets alike with a single blade, mowing down enemies.
But not with a katana—with a Western sword.
A longsword, just like the one he held now, which she'd used to go on rampages.
No one knew what the author was thinking putting such a character in a gritty, despair-filled apocalypse like Ajeol, but what was certain was that amid massive reader backlash, she appeared around episode 15 and was brutally torn apart by zombies soon after.
To protesting readers, the depiction of her being devoured by zombies was described in exhaustive detail, skirting censorship limits. After that, whatever the author did, readers hushed up about it among themselves.
And just now, he'd used the swordsmanship she recited casually in the story.
Katonpen-ryu—
He'd used a technique from the Katonpen Style.
'Just a coincidence?'
No way.
A weird Western sword style like Katonpen-ryu couldn't exist in reality, and there was no way he, who knew it from Ajeol, could obtain it by chance.
In a way, the countdown to the end that had appeared before him before this apocalypse began.
And Sua's existence showed this world was more closely fused with Ajeol than he'd thought.
'But not exactly the same.'
A prime example: the countdown that appeared before everyone worldwide appeared only to him, along with his fantasy-like abilities.
It definitely felt like somewhere between Ajeol and reality, a munchkin element exclusive to him had been added.
'Like someone made a world just for me.'
For a moment, he recalled the comment section of Ajeol's final chapter, where only one comment benefited him, but he dismissed it as unlikely.
Ajeol's author was a regular human guy who'd revealed his face in real life—not some god or transcendent being.
It was easier to think something inexplicable had happened.
"I don't know the technique's name."
In the story, Hina used three techniques total.
None were five characters with "ra" as the fourth, and he'd never seen phrasing like "Ultimate 3rd Stance."
But her sword style was etched in his memory, and even as mere 2D animation, he could tell the technique he'd executed matched hers perfectly.
Well, no point overthinking it.
He decided to think on it later if the chance arose, stood with his now-calmed breathing,
and cast Clean over his body to wipe away the drenched sweat.
'Now just to test magic and reinforcement.'
He'd spent quite a while lost in thought over that one sword technique, but fortunately, magic and reinforcement could be checked quickly.
Oh, and Shooting as well.
He stored the longsword in his inventory and drew the shotgun in exchange.
He loaded one 3.5-inch 12-gauge rifled slug shell, pre-stored in the tubular magazine.
Click—!
Normal shotguns couldn't handle 3.5-inch shells due to specs and power scaling (most use 2.75 or 3 inches; naturally, more inches mean more powder).
But the shotgun he'd bought from the shop window was none other than the Mossberg 500.
Better known as the M500, it accommodated 3.5-inch shells.
And slugs, as widely known, were single projectiles, not buckshot.
Big, simple, but packing a heavy punch—enough to hunt bears. His favorite.
He'd had little chance to use them until now, since zombie hunting favored efficiency, but...
'With reinforcement, that's different.'
He aimed the muzzle forward.
Thanks to Shooting, his usually sloppy aim adjusted perfectly.
And he instinctively knew it would hold even in intense motion.
Such stable aiming.
The urge to keep supporting the shotgun two-handed was a bit inconvenient, though.
The chaotic field of view, littered with gutted corpses and shelf debris, was already filling rapidly with zombies.
Always a gruesome number, every time he saw it.
He activated the Reinforcement skill.
A mysterious energy utterly unlike mana enveloped the entire shotgun and the loaded shell, infusing them with the skill's power.
Reinforcement's effect was, as named, "reinforcement."
On metal, it hardened further; on gunpowder, it boosted firepower.
On projectiles, it increased speed.
On the body, it enhanced all physical abilities (strength, hearing, vision, smell, taste, etc.) by one level.
That was everything he'd learned about the Reinforcement skill.
'Simple is best, huh...'
The description was straightforward, but the effect exceeded expectations.
Reinforcement boosted the shell's internal powder explosion.
The rifled slug gained more spin and speed.
And the shotgun's overall durability rose to withstand the process.
Reinforcement acting on everything, literally.
The recoil would shatter a normal person, but he could handle it, of course.
He pulled the trigger.
Boom—!!!!!!!
"Urk!!"
A deafening roar like tearing eardrums hit, followed by intense recoil surging through his hands.
For a split second, his grip nearly faltered.
It felt like hundreds of kilos slamming into his hands.
And from that ferocious blast and recoil, beyond the muzzle spewing faint smoke, an incredible sight unfolded in his view.
"Haha..."
He couldn't help but laugh in disbelief.
Not wide-ranging like the previous technique.
But the opposite—a perfect "single-point focus" spectacle.
It blew clean through.
That one phrase explained it all.
Dead center in the zombie-packed space.
A hole the size of a person's torso had formed.
The slug had punched straight through them along its path.
Completely, enough to see the opposite Martco concrete wall.
Through the holes in the zombies' guts or torsos as they toppled, the far wall was visible—penetration that demanded admiration.
The catharsis was beyond words.
'Man, I wanna mag-dump.'
The shotgun warrior inside him stirred again.
Of course, he'd restrain himself, lest the Martco building crumble.
All that remained was intermediate magic.
He was plenty excited for that, too.