Miss Yeji
"Miss Yeji. Where are you?"
Yujun spoke without looking away from what lay behind them.
"Huh? I'm right here."
"......No. The person we're supposed to rescue."
"Oh, right! We need to find them fast......"
Hong Yeji's face flickered with chagrin, as if her own mission had only just come back to her.
"Honestly, I don't know where they are. All I heard is that they're hiding somewhere in the Kingdom of Sitahel......"
"What do they look like?"
"I was told. A man with long blond hair. They said he wears a beard, too. And that he's young."
"He wasn't down in that underground earlier, was he?"
"No. There were only dwarves."
"So we have to turn this whole kingdom inside out."
"We might."
"Well. Not much of a problem."
He had been planning to put down every last zombie anyway, if only to raise his level. They paid out a fairly handsome share of experience.
That was when it happened.
They had barely paused to rest when a scream rang out from somewhere.
"Did you hear that?"
"I did."
"Let's go."
The screaming went on and on. When he tracked the sound to its source, it proved to be the relief force from another kingdom — the one that had smashed its way in through the castle gate.
"Insane. Have you ever seen idiots like that?"
Klinsmann smacked his own forehead.
The players who had come to help had broken through the gate and were getting thoroughly mauled by the dwarf zombies. The plague took them, of course, and the players turned into monsters and began attacking their own allies. Half the force vanished in an instant. The zombies multiplied. Their numbers climbed into the hundreds, then the thousands.
"Hah...... They've gone and made the mess even bigger."
Klinsmann let out a groan. It had happened because the kingdom had been cut off completely from the outside. Those people had no way of knowing how strong the dwarf zombies were. Yujun's own party hadn't understood the situation inside in any real detail either, so it wasn't as if their blunder was wholly beyond comprehension.
Even so, ignorance was a crime of its own.
They could have gotten all the information they needed through the messenger...... Does this kingdom just not bother exchanging messenger contacts?
Yujun heaved a sigh and called for Paranet.
"Paranet."
"Yes."
"Portion out your mana carefully and use Corpse Explosion."
"Where would you have me cast it?"
"Same as last time. Use it on that cluster over there."
"As you command."
Paranet activated the skill Corpse Explosion.
Boom! Boom!
Monstrous blasts erupted among the corpses, detonating at the very heart of the dwarf zombies. The explosions were so vast they caught the players as well. Paranet's Corpse Explosion did its work without question. The dwarf zombies' charge faltered.
Yujun and Klinsmann plunged into the gap. Hong Yeji and Shin Jiwon held back, with Paranet standing guard over them against whatever might come. He never swung a sword himself. He only shielded the two of them and loosed Corpse Explosion now and again, and that alone was help enough.
By the time he had cut down dozens of dwarf zombies, his level had climbed by one more. A glance to the side told him Klinsmann was wearing down by the moment.
This is getting tight.
Far too many dwarf zombies were swarming in at the noise. Then Hong Yeji threw herself into the fight as well. Contrary to what he had worried, she fought surprisingly well — her body moving even faster than before. Judging by her gear, her attack power wasn't especially high, and yet she landed clean, telling blows on the dwarf zombies.
Has she been hiding her strength?
The problem was Shin Jiwon. Her combat ability lagged well behind the others. But she was not, it seemed, simply meant to die here. An opening appeared for her to distinguish herself against the dwarf zombies: her S-rank skill, Purification. Turned on a dwarf, that skill showed a truly vicious power. A dwarf zombie struck by Purification did not revert to what it had been, but its body caught fire at once and it was left unable to fight.
"Don't go spamming that. Only use it on the ones coming at you. Got it?"
Hong Yeji said it to Shin Jiwon, who nodded, her face drawn tight with nerves.
From then on, Yujun slaughtered the dwarf zombies without a second thought. Klinsmann's exhaustion was plain to see, so Yujun fought the other man's share as well.
I can't see the end of them.
Even as he moved, he kept a grip on how the battle was turning as a whole. For all his efforts, he could hardly call the situation improved. Wherever they had been hiding, the dwarf zombies kept coming. Far from thinning, they seemed more numerous than at the start.
All the better.
Yujun's expression brightened. A hunting ground this fine would be hard to find.
I need to hit level 250, and fast.
A level-400 sword of Mythic grade. He drove himself onward with nothing but that in view.
Shhk! Shk!
Unlike Yujun's party — who had used Injection and carried a comparatively fierce strength — the players who had come as reinforcements were in a wretched state.
"Gyaaah!"
"Gaah!"
"S-stop them!"
"Grrk......"
Already a great many players had lost their lives and turned into monsters.
"I-I never heard a word about this!"
"Why are a bunch of zombies this strong!"
"I never should have come. I don't want to turn into some hideous monster like that...!"
Their joining the fight had only poisoned it. And the worst of it was that zombies were beginning to slip out past the castle gate, one after another, attacking other players and making comrades of them.
This is bad.
He needed to deal with the zombies escaping outside, but that meant turning his back on the ones already rushing him. Do that, and the burden on Klinsmann would only grow heavier. If this plague — the one that made zombies — spread across the whole Continent, Yujun would be in just as much trouble as anyone. Somehow, he had to end it here, in this place.
I'll have to use that.
When no answer presented itself, the best move was the inventory. No-Pay Casual Gamer's inventory could manufacture a solution even where none existed.
Yujun kept fighting while he searched his inventory for an item. Doing both at once was no small feat, but he could manage it. And at last he found what he wanted.
◈ A large-scale barrier can be established.
◈ Vanishes after a single use.
A one-use item of Legendary grade. Its effect, at least, was certain.
Yujun shattered the orb right where he stood.
Crack! Shhhhh......
A wave of mana poured from the orb and spread wide. The thin membrane it formed had, before he knew it, swept out past the castle gate itself.
The range is enough.
The barrier covered a broad stretch. There was no gap left for the zombies to slip through. The players fighting for their lives were too frantic even to notice it forming. The barrier imprisoned friend and foe without distinction. In short, the players who had come to help could not leave it either. Yujun had sealed them in by force.
Nothing for me to be sorry about. Whatever else, they're the ones who smashed the gate and blew this whole thing open.
He wasn't sorry in the slightest. The urgent part was finished. All that remained was to clear the zombies at his own pace.
The speed at which he killed them grew steadily quicker. He had their patterns completely read. He cast Frozen Field (A) and dragged their movements slower still, then tossed a health potion to Klinsmann.
"What's this?"
"Drink it. It'll help."
A high-grade potion. A considerably expensive item. Klinsmann, putting his thanks into his whole body, popped the cork and gulped it down.
"Hah! Now that's the stuff. A fine potion."
From high grade and up, a potion restored even bodily exhaustion.
"You don't have any potions of your own?"
"Potions are precious things, you know."
"Fair enough......"
He hadn't gotten his hands on a single potion since the game became reality, either. All he still carried were the ones he had collected back when he was only playing.
Klinsmann was back on his feet in no time, facing the zombies again.
No need to give one to Paranet......
Yujun handed a potion each to Hong Yeji and Shin Jiwon as well. This was no time to be stingy. His inventory held more potions of this kind than he could ever use up.
The reward for never once stopping came quickly. He was already level 240.
Just ten more.
Whenever unallocated points appeared, he assigned them on the spot. For Yujun, the tedious battle dragged on for a good while longer. The zombies he had killed had, somewhere along the way, passed three thousand. He didn't spare the potions on himself either. Once he had drained a high-grade potion clean, he gathered his strength and threw himself back into the hunt.
Thirty minutes passed that way.
Among the players who had come to the aid of the Kingdom of Sitahel, hardly a one was left alive and whole.
Honestly, all they did was swell the enemy's numbers.
They had been nothing but a nuisance. Thanks to them, though, Yujun had been able to reach level 250.
In a way, maybe it was fortunate.
In the end, the finish came. The dwarf zombies had all been cleared. For the moment, at least, no zombie was still moving nearby. When the long fight was over, every one of the party let out a breath of relief.
"Haa, I really thought I was dead."
"M-my heart's still racing."
Hong Yeji and Shin Jiwon, of course — and Klinsmann too, as if the tension had only just left him, managed a smile. Yujun, by contrast, did not slack in watching their surroundings.
I'm sure there are more.
The kingdom was vast, and the dwarves who had lived here had been staggering in number. The dwarf zombies they had dealt with were only a fraction.
Still, I should rest for now.
A faint throb pulsed at his temples. He might have forced his stamina back up with potions, but no one could fight without pause and come through it unwearied in the mind. The players who had come as support were annihilated, save for a few, and even those few survivors stood dumbstruck by the situation they were in.
Yujun turned his head.
"Miss Yeji."
"Yes?"
"Where do you think our target is? Any hint at all?"
"I don't know either."
"They might already be dead."
"No. The person who commissioned me said that person is alive. Even now."
"How would they know?"
"Because I was just talking with them by message."
"That's what I mean. It's not as if you were exchanging messages with the target."
"Right. But it seems the one who gave me the commission is connected by messenger with the target."
"......"
That only made it stranger. Couldn't they simply ask where he was? Why couldn't they pin the location down?
"The son and the father fought. The son ran away from home, and he won't so much as speak to his father."
"......Even in a crisis like this?"
"Yes. No matter how many messages they send, he never replies. But if they can still send messages at all, that means the son is alive, doesn't it?"
"Wait. Hold on. Then he isn't human, is he? It's been five years. Five years since humans were dragged into the Tower of Infinity."
"No. Father and son crossed over together."
"Ah. Right."
A son who had cut ties with his father. What on earth had happened, that he would hide inside a kingdom rotting with plague and never once ask for help?
"So, bottom line, we have no way of knowing where the target is right now?"
"Right."
Hong Yeji nodded. Then there was nothing for it but to roam the kingdom and search for him one person at a time.
"What's the target's name?"
"Ju Donghyeon, they said."
"......Ju Donghyeon?"
Hong Yeji turned the question back on him.
"Yes. Why?"
"Because it's a name I know."
A smile touched the corner of Yujun's mouth.