Lawful Good
April 6, 202X.
Sometime after the world had more or less gone to hell...
XX City, Gyeonggi Province.
In a corner of a city slowly crumbling into ruin, a small group of people was making its way forward.
No — crawling would have been just as fair a word for it.
Six men and women dragged their half-starved, gaunt bodies through the wreckage, clothes hanging off them in tatters, carefully ducking and weaving from cover to cover as they pressed toward somewhere — anywhere.
"Babe... a-are you sure there really aren't any zombies on this route?"
"I already told you. You know my class is Sniper. Spotting things at range is literally my specialty, so ease up on the worrying and just... keep your head down. Head down."
A man soothed his anxious girlfriend as he picked his way carefully ahead. Truth be told, he was every bit as terrified as she was — but he couldn't afford to freeze up and dither the way she was. They couldn't stay holed up in their hideout any longer, praying the world would somehow snap back to normal. The food and water had run out.
The apocalypse.
More precisely, the zombie apocalypse had slammed into humanity before anyone could so much as prepare, wiping out ninety percent of the species. Or perhaps "wiped out" wasn't quite right — "transformed" might have been the better word.
Why? Because within mere hours of the outbreak, ninety percent of the entire human race had turned into zombies and fallen upon the survivors. Of those who remained uninfected, vast numbers still suffered and died. An unprepared end of the world shoved people into the abyss before they could even gather their wits. Countless souls screamed and wailed as they died helplessly.
...Not every human, however, had been powerless.
"H-huh...?"
Among the group, a woman in glasses reacted with sudden sharpness. Her class granted her a keen sensitivity to presence — a kind of killing intent — radiating from her surroundings. That sense alone was what had kept a frail woman who'd barely ever been in a fight alive for days after the apocalypse began.
"W-what is it, Min-jeong?"
"Over there... in that pile of trash..."
The bespectacled woman called Min-jeong raised a trembling arm and pointed. The others followed her gaze. It was a heap of refuse that looked little different from the rest of the ruins — and yet something about it felt wrong. It didn't look like debris that had simply gathered in the chaos of people fleeing or fighting back.
"What about it? Doesn't look particularly suspicious t—"
The man who'd seemed the most composed of the group — the one who called himself a Sniper — never finished the sentence. A choked cry of agony tore from his throat as he crumpled.
Horror flooded the eyes of the two women and the rest of the party. A needle of considerable size was buried in the Sniper's neck — large enough to have punched clean through.
An ambush. The moment she understood, Min-jeong screamed.
"Kyaaaaaaaaaah!"
"J-Jin-woo!"
"Ghk... ghhhrrrk...!"
The man called Jin-woo couldn't answer. He simply collapsed onto his knees, blood pouring freely as he writhed in pain. Death was closing in on him — that much was plain.
"Damn it, hang on, Jin-woo! I'm a Cleric, I'll heal—!"
The man confident he could restore Jin-woo stepped forward to pull him to safety. Of course, something vicious came whistling out of the trash heap as if it had been waiting for exactly that.
Whish! Thunk!
"U-uaaagh!"
The man who'd moved to save Jin-woo recoiled in terror at the object that had slammed into the ground right in front of his feet. It was a short spear — the kind you almost never saw in the modern world. Crude beyond anything a person should have made, and smaller than a normal short spear besides. It was practically a oversized arrow.
But the mere appearance of that spear drained the last of the color from the faces of the five remaining survivors — everyone but the dying Jin-woo.
"Keheheheheh...!"
"Kikikiki!"
Hideous laughter spilled into the air. And from the trash heap Min-jeong had pointed to, shapes began to emerge.
Not one or two. Having sized up the band of survivors, they revealed themselves without a single one held back — six unidentified creatures in all, approaching with thin, cruel smiles.
Min-jeong knew at once. The things stepping into view were... monsters.
They stood no taller than young children. But the deep green of their skin and the reddish cast of their eyes made it impossible for even a fool to mistake them for children. More than anything, the rags they wore and the blades clutched in their hands were proof enough of the hostility with which they were closing in on the survivors.
After all, they were the ones who had put a needle through the man named Jin-woo and left him at death's door.
"Kkhehek!"
"E-eeeeek!"
"G-goblins!"
"D-defensive formation! Just like we practiced — form up, hurry!"
Even as they scrambled in panic, the five remaining survivors fought to pull together. There was a reason they still stood on this earth as survivors when ninety percent of humanity had been annihilated. Even while hiding in their shelter, they had drilled hard for exactly this kind of emergency — and they knew this was the moment that preparation had to pay off.
As the survivors bunched up to weather the assault, one goblin boldly closed the distance. A goblin gripping a curved blade swung for the waist of the large man in front of it.
The speed was tremendous. The blade was a hair's breadth from cutting him open.
"Khk!"
There seemed no way to dodge — and yet the targeted man slipped aside. An evasion that would have been utterly impossible for the person he'd been a week ago. Barely clear, he brought the club in his hand crashing down at the goblin.
Whoosh!
"You little monster bastard!"
"Kkit!"
But dodging a sluggish club swing like that was child's play for a goblin. At the same time, the goblins moved with care. The fact that their opening strike had been avoided was proof enough — the survivors before them were no ordinary humans.
These ones were nothing like the other humans the goblins had met days ago, the ones slaughtered helplessly or still suffering as playthings back at the goblin den. Pale and filthy, yes — but the strange aura clinging to their bodies prickled uneasily at the goblins' instincts. The man who had dodged a killing blow and struck back was living evidence of it.
"Th-these monsters... they're not normal goblins! G-Goblin Warriors! Th-their HP is a hundred, and th-their level is... ten! Th-they're insanely strong! We can't take them!"
The bespectacled survivor, Min-jeong, shrank into herself and cried out, trembling violently.
She and the other survivors possessed another special ability — the power to briefly read the stats of these anachronistic monsters. And that ability was telling them their odds of survival had already converged on zero.
At first the survivors had held on, if only barely...
"Khh... you disgusting monster bastards...!"
"Kikehek...!"
Amazingly, every survivor was still alive — except for Jin-woo, who had bled out after the needle punched through his throat. But the two remaining men were so badly wounded they looked ready to drop at any moment, and while the three women were in relatively better shape, continuous fighting had pushed them to the brink of collapse.
By now the survivors understood. The goblins were vicious. They would toy with their prey for a long, long time before finally taking their lives.
No — they would only kill the men. The women had realized it as they weathered the goblins' blows: their attackers were deliberately holding back, striking just hard enough not to kill.
In other words, the goblins fully intended to take the female survivors alive.
What that meant needed no explanation. Everyone already knew.
"S-save me... somebody save meeeeee!"
"E-eeeeek!"
"I don't want to die, I don't want to die!"
The survivors screamed for their lives with the raw desperation of people leaving their final words. But the goblins only tightened the circle, drawing closer and closer. Back to back, the survivors could do nothing but despair.
They had barely, barely survived that catastrophic first of April...
They had clawed and scraped and done every desperate thing they could think of just to stay alive...
They had been so careful, so endlessly careful, when they finally stepped outside...
And the moment they did, misfortune had found them like this!
Someone — anyone — please, help us... help us!
...
......
........And then,
just as in every novel, every film, every comic...
the protagonist always arrives at the very end.
Shunk!
"Kerheuk!?"
One of the goblins — still grinning as it leveled its blade at a human — suddenly lost its head. The Goblin Warrior died without ever knowing who had taken it.
"Kiik!!?"
"Kraek!?"
The other goblins reeled in confusion at their kin's abrupt death. And the more shocking fact was this: whoever had killed their comrade was nowhere to be seen.
Impossible. They were Goblin Warriors. Capable enough to sneer at ordinary goblins as trash. Masters of combat, infiltration, and stealth, skilled enough to execute any number of simple tactics as a coordinated pack.
And yet one of them had been snuffed out in an instant — without even registering whose hand had done it.
Who? And how...!?
"Keruk...!"
The goblins brandished their swords and glaives, warily scanning every direction. And the survivors who had been staring death in the face felt, in the same breath, both bewilderment and hope at the goblins' sudden hesitation.
From the far side of the ruins, hope stepped suddenly into view.