Awakening (1)

Awakening (1) — 10th-floor corridor, Hanmaum Apartment

Kieeeeeeek—

The phlegm-rattling screech of a good twenty-some zombies. Their grotesque chorus resonated on and on, until it felt like the sound itself was vibrating inside my skull. An alien noise my gut rejected on pure instinct — a racket easily in the running, alongside the water-deer screams I'd endured in the army, for the most fuck-awful sound of my life.

Bang— bang—

The zombies' flailing arms hammered the glass doors of the first-floor entrance without pause. It was thick security glass, but it would shatter in an instant all the same.

"Uh… so how am I supposed to set this up? Touch input?"

"…'Will recognition' — you mean it registers the instant I think it?"

"Then obviously will recognition. What kind of dumbass would go with voice recognition?"

"Hang on. Are there actually dumbasses out there who set theirs to voice recognition?"

Hm. I cast a little line and, as expected, got stonewalled. That tip about the Skill Writing Ticket came back to me — skills that threw the balance too far out of whack got auto-adjusted. So it would look after the balance at least somewhat. It would help me, sure, but it wouldn't answer anything that tipped the scales. I'd been dying to know whether there were other Awakeners racing me for the front of the pack, but the System clearly wasn't going to say a word.

So I'd have to deduce it myself. My first achievement had been 'First Kill of a Zombie as an Awakener.' Whoever got somewhere first would find it easier to take the next first — a classic, and therefore all the more bloody, winner-take-all structure.

Along with the message on the status window, white light seeped into my body. And the moment that light died down, an unfamiliar vitality began to overflow through every inch of me. I felt it intuitively: I had become someone entirely different from the man I'd been until now. The wind kicked up by a casual one-two punch stirred my bangs, and on top of that, a strange energy spread across my whole frame — its vigor lifting me into a giddiness I couldn't quite name.

The alpha and omega of becoming superhuman. The soul's eternal duo, forever at the status window's side.

"…Mana."

I had truly become one of the 'Awakeners' the status window spoke of.

The instantly noticeable stat changes were one thing, but my intelligence, though…

What's 99 times 29?

'………'

Huh? What? Why can't I do this in my head? Something is seriously fucked up here, isn't it?

"Status window! My intelligence went up but I can't feel it?! …Don't tell me even after pumping 9 points into INT, I've still got a melon head that can't manage one bit of mental arithmetic? …Right, System?"

My body flared bright yet again, and the absurdly long status window dazzled my eyes.

"Ah, shit! What the hell is this! From now on, condense anything repetitive into a summary!"

Right — I'd claimed the first rewards, so let's try once more.

What's 99 times 29?

'9 times 9, so that's 81, and then… uh… oh, you goddamn—'

"You son of a—! Who are you mocking? I pumped my intelligence and it doesn't even work? Isn't this a straight-up scam?!"

Fucking System bastard. Dodging the question again. Which meant answering it would mess with the balance, huh? …Or else twenty points of intelligence still wasn't enough to crunch that in my head. No. Nope. Not thinking about that. It would only sour my mood.

Steadying myself, I called up the status window in my mind.

…Hold on, why didn't Mana get a first-achievement bonus?

'What the hell! Which lunatic—!'

No. Hold it. Hold it, Guwon. If I lost my temper over every single thing like this, there'd be no end to it.

"…Well, I've pretty much swept the early-game stat first-rewards for myself, anyway."

One more thing about the status window kept nagging at me: there was no character level, the one RPG element you simply could not leave out. Kill monsters, gain experience, level up. Spend the bonus stats you earn from leveling. That was the whole loop.

"…Shop window."

A scroll that just kept going no matter how far down I dragged it. The instant I resolved to buy the 'Roughly Slapped-Together Energy Bar,' a prompt flew in.

Sure — of course an Inventory has to come bundled with a status window. The moment I nodded, another notification popped up.

The instant I thought I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠want to take the energy bar out, the bar was sitting naturally in my left hand.

'Putting things back should work too, right?'

And with the thought, the 'spear' I'd hastily thrown together to kill a zombie vanished into the inventory in the blink of an eye.

The very moment I drew the spear back out, the message I'd been silently waiting for popped up like ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠an ad banner.

"Yas! Yas! That's it! You're supposed to follow the tropes, damn it!"

Of course the shop window had to have its own first reward too!

Crrrrack—

The dull thudding of fists against the first-floor security glass stretched out into a long, tearing shriek. Looking down, I could see the zombies at the entrance going even more berserk — probably because of the victory whoop I'd just let loose. The glass that had held firm while I fiddled with the System let out its dying wail.

No more time to lounge around. I hurriedly re-armed myself — though "re-arming" meant exactly one 'Makeshift Kitchen-Knife Spear.' My evenly distributed body kept flooding itself with vitality, and with the terrain this cramped, that horde was well within my odds. If the numbers kept growing, of course, I was in trouble. Every reaction so far showed the zombies were hypersensitive to sound — and tangling with that many of them meant noise whether I liked it or not. This might turn into a longer, uglier fight than I'd figured.

Heading down the stairs, I made up my mind to spend the first of my 'first-achievement rewards.'

After reading the message, the very first thing that surfaced in my mind was my own safety.

'How do I block the zombies' single greatest strength — infection?'

The classic tropes were bites, or infection through blood and saliva. 'A skill for efficiently exterminating zombies at close range.'

"There's nothing like a 'Full Recovery' thing where I just heal right back up after getting bitten, is there?"

"You piece of shit! Just you wait!"

My reinforced body was as fast as it was strong — I hurtled from the tenth floor down to the first in the space of a breath. The sound of my body slicing through the air, the rush of it, felt so good that despite how deadly serious this was, an absurd grin broke out on my face.

'So this is what they call a runner's high?'

Kieeeeeeek!

The zombies that spotted me arriving on the first floor let out joyous cries of welcome.

"………Wow."

A swarm of corpses, laid out in vivid detail beyond the glass. It would have been harder to find a single zombie not missing some piece of its body. They pressed themselves against the glass in ceaseless waves, like tide coming in and going out, and I could even see the ones at the front being crushed by the crush of bodies behind them. Bent at grotesque, impossible angles, their eyes were horrifyingly, brilliantly fixed on me and me alone.

Crrrrrrack—

Dark, rotten blood spread wide along the spiderweb of cracks the limit-stressed glass was tracing. The gore smeared across the panes swallowed my view almost completely.

"…Hoo."

With one short, deep breath, I climbed back up a floor — the stairs I'd just come down. A narrow staircase and a superior position would make the fight that much more efficient.

Kieeeeeeek!

The moment I vanished from their sight, the zombies' howling grew even fiercer — the fury of a lunchbox snatched away the instant it appeared before their eyes.

Powack—

"Kieeeeeeek!"

Behind a crash far too muffled to be the sound of breaking glass, the zombies' howls — suddenly, vividly close — flooded the entrance hall. The security door, which had held out far longer than I'd expected, burst apart, and with it came the roar of bodies pouring through like a dam giving way.

Zombies spilled through like water from a bursting levee, and thanks to the throat-shredding howling they'd kept up this whole time, even a rough eyeball count told me there were twice as many as I'd registered.

Tudung-tung—

The zombies at the head of the pack couldn't brake their momentum and slammed head-on into the elevator. So they had the physical capacity to sprint at full power, but they'd lost the intelligence to control that speed?

"Morons."

Every head in that zombie-packed first floor turned toward me at once.

"Kieeeeeeek!"

"Alright, then."

So this is what stairs look like when order and courtesy die? The narrow staircase, stripped of any right-side-walking etiquette, was the reincarnation of a Korean-style hellgate. The first zombies up the steps were trampled by the ones behind them, and those ones by the ones behind them. Yet the wall of flesh steadily closed the distance regardless, unfurling toward me like a red carpet rolled out for a VIP.

Now that the adrenaline of my 'first zombie kill' had settled, watching the zombie wave — the zombie wave — in the flesh made one thing unmistakably clear: the world was well and truly fucked. Lethally wounded bodies that should've been flat on their way to a hospital, moving with perfect vigor. The hatred — or the appetite — aimed at my grotesquely enhanced frame behind those chilling, inhuman eyes.

"Keeeek!"

Thrusting the spear in and out of the gaping maw of a zombie that had closed all the way to me, I visualized the skill I needed most, right now, more than anything.

"Come on, people, Korea walks on the right side! You shit-for-brains!