The Uproar Spreads Rapidly
The disturbance spread rapidly. What began as a riot on the ninth floor soon spilled downward. A legion of zombies, corrupting the living and reshaping everyone into copies of themselves, surged from the ninth floor and began invading every level beneath it. People who had no idea what the commotion was about only moments earlier now fled to the lower floors as the horde came crashing down from above. It was pure pandemonium. Men shoved elderly people aside to save themselves. Women kicked children out of the way to survive. Mothers wrapped their arms around fallen sons to shield them from being trampled, only to be crushed under the feet of the fleeing crowd and lose their own lives. Some died at the zombies’ hands and rose again as zombies. Others died and simply remained corpses. A few miraculously escaped. Still others, puffed up by their own abilities, fought the zombies head-on only to be overwhelmed by sheer numbers and meet the same fate. Chaos and confusion reigned, and in the blink of an eye the Grant Department Store had transformed into an apocalypse.
Even in the midst of all this, Kain continued to sit in the same spot, calmly sipping his coffee. He observed the surrounding madness with complete detachment and quietly organized his thoughts.
Necromancy was a branch of dark magic that revived the dead. Yet the dead could not truly be brought back to life. The truth of necromancy was merely an art that injected an ego into the lingering memories left in a corpse and manipulated it with the dark mage’s mana. The greater the history a corpse had accumulated, the clearer those residual memories became. And the stronger the caster’s ability to raise the undead, the higher the quality of both the ego and the undead produced.
Zombies were among the most basic forms of undead in necromancy and, alongside skeletons, one of the easiest summons to create. Yes, making them was not particularly difficult. Which meant, by the natural law of this world that great endeavors carried equally great difficulty, it should have been nearly impossible for a single zombie to create a catastrophe on this scale.
One could almost declare it impossible. The reason was simple: undead were raised directly by dark mages. It was not normal for a zombie bite to spread an infection like this. At best, one might suffer a bacterial infection from the unsanitary bite of a zombie, and even that only occurred with long-dead corpses. It was even less plausible with freshly killed bodies like these.
Still, the phenomenon was not entirely incomprehensible. Ordinary zombies followed the explanation above, but infectious zombies were not unheard of. Or, to be precise, he had created them.
“What if, through contact with a zombie, I could split an ego and implant it into a corpse without having to touch the body directly?”
Half out of curiosity, half wondering if it might prove useful on the battlefield, he had created this dark magic on a whim. Its drawback was that, due to its nature, it could not be applied to high-ranking undead and worked only on zombies. Still, it had performed brilliantly against the Empress’s army. If the Empress herself had witnessed the horror unfolding in this department store, she would have flown into an uncontrollable rage.
“Haa.”
In other words, this was an original dark magic he had personally developed and perfected. Yet now it was being wielded by someone else, turning the peaceful place where he had been resting into a slaughterhouse. The fact left a distinctly unpleasant taste in his mouth.
"Yes, what is it?"
He pulled out his smartphone and dialed. Before it could even ring, a voice answered from the other side. A profoundly low bass tone that evoked the depths of a cave. Despite the heavy weight carried in that voice, Kain spoke with perfect calm.
“Beat the crap out of Greed.”
Though the command sounded grand, this dark magic was little more than a trivial trick that could hardly be called one of his secret arts. It was easy enough that anyone could use it freely once they mastered it. On top of that, anyone above roughly four-star level would be immune to the infection, making it typical trash magic meant for indiscriminate slaughter. He had never managed it with particular strictness, but it was still his technique. Others wouldn’t dare touch anything of his out of sheer fear.
Greed, however, was different. His loyalty was as fierce as any of the other Seven Deadly Sins, yet he possessed the audacity to sell Kain’s magic for enormous sums so long as it didn’t harm Kain himself. If this dark magic had leaked into the market, the culprit could only be that man.
"Yes, understood."
The man on the other end answered without the slightest hesitation. The reason would surface quickly enough with a little investigation, and reasons were irrelevant when carrying out his orders. He simply thought quietly that the guy must have caused trouble again.
“Tsk.”
Kain hung up immediately and gulped down the rest of his Americano as if to settle his stomach.
“Graaaah!!!”
A zombie shattered the isolated atmosphere around him, charging with a monstrous roar.
“Shut up. It’s noisy.”
The creature fell silent at once. A cold gaze pierced through the thick glasses. The zombie tilted its head stupidly, as if unable to comprehend why it had stopped. Then another zombie struck it from behind; the creature came to its senses and ran off in a different direction.
“The caster’s level is pathetic. That’s why they can’t even recognize the gap and charge mindlessly.”
Kain clicked his tongue again, thoroughly displeased. He had left the cleanup of the annoying bastard to someone else. Now it was time to punish the fool who had used what belonged to him without permission.
The culprit’s location was obvious. The spell for summoning these infectious zombies was simple enough for even beginners to learn. Yet the dark mage occupying this place couldn’t even use it properly. A novice who couldn’t properly emit mana from the negative dimension—likely somewhere between three-star and four-star.
There was no way such a low-grade mage could cover an entire department store with his own power. He would obviously be receiving mana assistance from somewhere.
The artifact store. There was no other possibility. He had probably created a few zombies there, multiplied their numbers, and was drawing supplemental mana from the artifacts to compensate for his deficiency. The artifacts sold in a place like this would have been made with premium mana stones.
Even without such complicated deduction, the fact that zombies were descending from the upper floors made the artifact store the obvious first suspect.
The realization made Kain’s mood even worse. Because Arina was currently in the artifact store.
“How dare you handle the dead in front of me.”
Arina was probably still safe. No matter that they were summons created by an enemy, the dead could never defy his will. And the opponent would come to regret it. He might forget favors, but he repaid grudges without fail. Everyone who had ever soured his mood, even slightly, had vanished from the world without exception.
With that thought, Kain finally rose from his seat. His shadow stretched long across the floor, and a heavy silence enveloped the area. Death bowed its head deeply in reverence. The rampaging dead halted and quietly parted to either side. Kain strolled down that path of death as casually as if taking a leisurely walk and slowly advanced toward the elevator leading to the artifact store—where the mastermind of this incident waited.
Luxurious wallpaper and glass display tubes standing like pillars were splattered with red blood. Amid people trembling from the eerie atmosphere, grotesque sights, metallic stench of blood, and sheer terror, a single man moved with excited steps, fiddling with something.
“Done.”
What he had set up was a video camera. He swept it across each hostage, grinning with sunken eyes.
“Come on, what are you doing? Smile. I spared you, didn’t I?”
He had killed every employee who worked here. But the customers who had come as guests from the ninth floor upward had all been taken hostage without being turned into zombies.
“Ah, if you’re expecting to keep living after this, you’d better drop that dream.”
Some wondered if they were being kept alive because they were wealthy. Perhaps the man’s goal was ransom. If so, maybe their lives could be saved. They clung to that faint hope, but the man shattered it instantly by pointing the camera at them.
“Why should I spare people who shop at a place like Grant?”
If you hadn’t used such a worthless store, you could have lived your entire lives without ever experiencing anything like this. Yes, this is all your fault.
“That’s not true! I came here for the first time today! I’ve never bought anything from Grant Department Store even once!”
A young man leaped to his feet among the terrified crowd, shouting as if the man’s words were unjust. Forcing his trembling legs forward, he dropped to his knees in front of the man.
“So please, spare me! I’ll give you as much money as you want!”
“Do you know who I am?! If anything happens to me, do you really think my family will let you walk away?!”
His carefully styled morning hair was now a mess. His handsome face was smeared with tears and snot. Fear had clearly broken his mind. Begging and threats alternated so rapidly that he no longer seemed aware of what he was saying.
The man seemed to find the sight of him babbling in terror rather amusing. He smiled unpleasantly and answered.
“No. Fuck you.”
The dagger pierced the man’s throat. Unable to believe his own death, the man fell to the floor with his eyes still wide open. Then, twisting its joints in grotesque ways, the body slowly rose again.
“It got on my nerves, so I started without any explanation.”
Looking down at the man now reborn as a zombie, the culprit turned toward the even more terrified hostages.
“From now on, I’m going to record every one of you dying, just like this. Then I’ll spread the video all over the internet.”
This was revenge. Damn Grant. Rotten Grant. The Grant that had taken everything from him. A desperate, crushing revenge directed at them. Every customer in the department store would die as a zombie. Every scene would be captured on video and broadcast across the entire kingdom. The damage to the Grant Company’s image would be enormous. This video would mark his debut as a villain—the beginning of a cruel vendetta against the Grant Company.
“You can resist. You can run. You can despair and accept your fate. It doesn’t matter to me.”
He had more than enough fuel. He had swept up every artifact in the department store. He could maintain this zombie outbreak for several more hours. Time was on his side. The outside world had probably noticed the disturbance by now. Perhaps the police had been dispatched. But what could they do? It would take them a long time to break through the zombie hordes downstairs and reach this floor.
The dark magic he had learned was an original creation of the Death King himself, the pinnacle of necromancy. It was the worst dark magic that had turned the great southern wilderness of the continent into ruins several years ago. In that time he could slaughter everyone here in the most brutal ways possible and escape at his leisure.
“So, who wants to die first? I’ll specially film the first one so their pretty face shows up nicely.”
The man scanned the room with mad eyes. As if infected by his madness, the zombies scattered around let out grotesque sounds and slowly advanced toward the hostages. Families held one another tightly. Those desperate to live even a little longer looked around for someone else to die in their place.
Amid the terrible, trembling fear, Nel glanced at her smartphone and frowned.
If I had known this would happen, I would have bought an expensive model from the start.
No signal. The man had likely set up a jammer in advance. Because of it, reporting the situation would be delayed, and it would take even longer for the news to spread outside. She had heard that high-ranking government officials carried high-end smartphones equipped with anti-jamming measures for situations like this. Since she only attended to the Majoan and rarely engaged in external activities, she had never seen the need to buy an expensive one. Now she felt like violently beating her past foolish self.
“It’s okay.”
A whisper came from behind Nel. She turned to see a child.
“You are…”
Something about the child felt familiar. Lustrous golden hair and clear blue eyes. It was definitely someone she had never seen before, yet those striking features seemed to remind her of something. She couldn’t quite place it yet.
“I already made the report.”
Apparently the child’s model wasn’t affected by the jamming. The girl smiled proudly and waved her smartphone.
“It might sound boastful coming from me, but my oppa values me quite highly. He’ll probably come rescue us in less than ten minutes.”
“……”
“The question is how we survive those ten minutes. Any ideas? You’re the Majoan’s secretary, yet you don’t know any magic at all?”
While Nel felt only a vague sense of familiarity, the child clearly knew exactly who she was. The girl’s completely natural casual tone made Nel bow her head in apology.
“I’m sorry. I’ve never learned magic.”
“That’s quite unfortunate news.”
The child bit her lip. All the while, the zombies continued their slow approach. The atmosphere was so sinister it felt like a massacre would break out in less than a minute, let alone ten.
What should we do?
As Nel desperately racked her brain, something rather bewildering caught her eye.
“Huh?”
One of the hostages suddenly stood up and walked straight toward the man. It was another young girl who looked the same age as the child beside her. Arina—the bourgeois niece who had been sweeping through the department store with her uncle.