Faith's Sword (3) — Incheon Football Stadium Sky Lounge

It began to approach me, slowly, one step at a time.

I simply held my right hand out in front of me, utterly relaxed. One by one, the weapons that touched my palm were absorbed into my inventory, and my eyes sparkled like a kid staring down a pile of Christmas presents as they stacked themselves neatly inside my subspace. They would mostly be used by my believers rather than me, but that didn't matter. To every man alive, "weapons" was a word that carried a strange, irresistible music.

Not that I was foolish enough to sit my ass down and unbox them one by one. There were still mountains of things left to farm.

"If you're a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠man, you go crazy for anything you can ride, too."

Weapons farmed — now it was time to farm the vehicles. I'd already confirmed that cars useless for actually defending the district had been left abandoned as nothing more than barricade material. Leaving the arsenal behind me, empty and echoing with nothing but dust on the wind, I walked outside, sweeping every discarded firearm off the floor with telekinesis as I passed. Abandoned weapons, most likely, from soldiers infected and turned to zombies.

"……"

Or thrown away after helping someone along. I tugged a rifle toward me that lay beside a soldier whose corpse had rotted far past any point of doubt — a body propped against the wall, stiff and rigid, a hole punched through his jaw and the crown of his skull where the bullet had passed clean through.

"…Was that foolish of him, or wise?"

With telekinesis, I gently closed the soldier's eyes, frozen in place and clouded with fear. Looking at the young face of a man who'd taken his own life, I felt pity and sorrow — and at the same time, other thoughts flickered through my mind.

"Come to think of it, if we have the Zombie Cure, there's probably a resurrection or an elixir somewhere too, right?"

I tried imagining that embalmed soldier was a beauty who matched my ideal type — and my hands immediately started shaking and my head went fuzzy.

"…I have to get to Seoul. For real, as fast as possible."

Seoul. The answer was definitely waiting there. Thinking of all the beautiful women this hellish world was wiping out even as we spoke, my stride naturally lengthened.

Thud— thud—

My footsteps picked up speed until I reached the stadium's outer edge.

Whaaaaang—

The buzzing of fly swarms, irritatingly familiar by now, and mountains upon mountains of corpses piled around them.

"Even dead, these zombie bastards still make work for me."

Already-rotten flesh rotting further, oozing dark fluid and stench. Holes punched through the zombie corpses here and there, maggots squirming fat inside them.

"Goddammit. Every single time. Absolutely fucking disgusting."

Fire. I desperately needed to burn these bodies. The things I hadn't known while safely inside the Heavenly Barrier were laid bare here, raw and unfiltered. Then again — those corpses had been trampled and crushed flat by the next wave of zombies rushing to fill their place, so how had they held up this well at all?

No. That's far too optimistic an assumption.

I'll have to not-kill and farm an awakener with a proper corpse-incinerating ability, too.

Breathing through my mouth instead of my nose, I farmed the silent machine guns and rifles whose owners were long gone, then turned my attention to the reason I'd come out to the stadium's edge in the first place — the military vehicles chained together as barricades.

"Hmm… not many in better shape than I expected, though?"

This place had been a lost battlefield, fallen to the zombies long ago. It would have been stranger if barricades used in that rout had come through unscathed. The exterior was dented and caved in from being trampled underfoot. Scorch marks where high-explosive shells and fragmentation rounds had caught them.

Foomp! Foomp!

When I kicked a few tires, it was actually the ones still holding air that were rare. Looking at the black bloodstains soaked into the driver's and passenger's seats of a car with its doors blasted off, I shook my head.

"Ah, this one's not worth taking even if it were free." Wasn't there some saying about inspecting used cars carefully before buying?

Clicking my tongue lightly, I turned to examine the broken tanks next.

"Is bending the cannon barrel some kind of Steroid fashion statement?"

The military vehicles over here were wrecked beyond any comparison — utterly, pitifully destroyed. Probably because the variants had marked them as their top-priority targets. My brow furrowed naturally at the sight of them, torn and folded like so many pieces of origami.

"What, there's not a single thing worth taking?"

Grumbling as I walked toward the next entrance, my eyes suddenly lit up. A camo-colored military vehicle, visibly less damaged even at a glance. A command vehicle — what people called a "Kuntona."

Zombie corpses sprawled around it, riddled with bullet holes. And chunks of concrete embedded in its flank at close range.

"Got caught out by a Steroid, huh."

Looking at the rank insignia scattered across the crushed concrete, I nodded. A festival of roses and stars — the Korean officer's insignia, littered everywhere. The higher-ups had seen the battle going sour and died trying to run.

Tsk tsk. Couldn't even hold the line properly, and couldn't even run away properly either.

Still — my thanks, gentlemen. Thanks to your retreat, I get to salvage one fine vehicle on my way out.

Checking the dashboard fuel gauge — filled absolutely to the brim — and the keys still hanging in the ignition, I laid a hand on the Kuntona. The moment I thought store it in the inventory, a sensation like being caught by something heavy washed over me, and it stayed right where it was.

"…Now what the hell is this?"

The Kuntona stayed exactly where it was, alongside a message I was seeing for the first time in my life. I couldn't hide my bewilderment — I'd never gotten this even when I'd swept entire department stores clean.

I reread the system message carefully. Inventory weight? Absorb more?

As I turned the problem over in my head, another system message surfaced naturally in my memory.

Up until now I'd taken those lines to mean I was simply looting the items the dead awakener had been carrying. But a broader meaning had been hiding inside them all along. In other words — I was absorbing the inventory itself.

The moment that thought cracked open, ideas came pouring out one after ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠another. The weight of the weapons crammed into my inventory right now, versus the weight of what I'd swept up at the department store. No contest — what I'd gathered here was far, far heavier. That was why I was seeing this message for the first time here and not back at the store. On ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠top of that, I'd already killed and absorbed two awakeners. My inventory had been quietly expanding without my even realizing it, and now I was trying to load it down with heavy weapons and a vehicle at the same time — that was how I'd found out.

Other awakeners had probably figured this out ages ago and been mindful of weight all along.

"Ha… ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠so this happened because I'm just too far ahead of the curve."

An information gap that existed precisely because I was the very tip of the spear. I gave the Kuntona a couple of light pats, laughing, and headed back inside the stadium. I wasn't the least bit bothered. Worst case, I could just make the trip back and forth a few times, same as I'd done at the department store. Granted, back then the problem had been Seong Gaeul's impossibly picky taste, not weight limits.

Either way, vehicles weren't exactly a resource the Salvation Church desperately needed right now.

"Weapons, vehicles, food."

Three farming objectives I'd set before even coming here. Considering how the zombies had swarmed like ants until I dealt with them, I was almost certainly the first awakener to reach this place since it fell. Which meant the food the shelter's civilians and soldiers had eaten from should still be sitting here untouched.

"I'll check it out first, and if there's too much to carry, I'll grab it when I come back for the Kuntona."

I had a pretty solid guess where it was. If they'd posted personnel on the third floor to guard the weapons, then — obviously, logically — the food would be managed there too. No reason to split up the manpower. My bet was that they'd stockpiled everything in the "Sky Boxes" up on the third floor.

Tracing my earlier route with ease, I walked toward the opposite end of the sky lounge. Finding the glass windows hidden behind blackout curtains, just like the armory, I nodded.

Creeeeeak—

I swung the steel door open with telekinesis and pulled back the blackout curtain facing the stands. Harsh sunlight poured in, brightening the dark sky box.

"Bing—"

The sky box was completely empty, except for rotted zombie corpses.

"…go?"

I pulled a single crumpled bag lying next to the bodies toward me with telekinesis.

"…It was food, all right."

Calmly, I surveyed the next sky box.

Crrreeeeeak—

After checking every single one, there wasn't so much as a bag of hardtack left — let alone real food.

"There's clearly evidence there used to be food here… but it's gone." So somebody took it. I wasn't the first guest after all, huh?

I went back into the first sky box I'd opened and churned through the dead zombies with telekinesis. One feature common to all of them — marks completely different from the gunshot wounds the zombies inside the shelter had carried around like medals of honor.

"…Someone crushed their heads outright with a blunt weapon."

More than half of each face had been caved in, and I was certain. This was something no ordinary man's strength could ever accomplish.

"…An awakener."

Someone had gotten here before me, snatched the food, and fled. The zombies were clearly still roaming the stadium. Whoever it was had come and gone using methods that kept the noise down. So how did they travel? A flight skill like mine? A bicycle? Just on foot?

As I mulled it over at leisure, a dead Zombie Bird in the corridor caught my eye. That bastard's head's caved in too.

Two inside the sky boxes. One in the corridor, visible right now. My eyes gleamed at the corpses and a smile crept across my lips.

"The little rat dropped bread crumbs."

I chased the breadcrumbs — Hansel and Gretel style. Zombie corpses scattered sparsely down the corridor, and the dents punched into their skulls. Those traces let me imagine exactly how the intruder had gotten this far: a single blow smashing into the back of the head with such force the zombies never even had a chance to howl.

Powerful yet nimble. That's a physical-enhancement awakener, no question.

The trail of breadcrumbs the intruder left cut off abruptly at the northwestern road outside the stadium grounds. Even the indoor traces were nothing but stealthy ambushes. I could see a pattern — this one avoided combat at all costs. Someone like that wouldn't go out of their way to draw aggro outside, either.

Stroking my chin slowly, I nodded. This bastard really was a rat. This was no amateur's handiwork. There was a certain cunning to it, too.

"And someone like that took only the food. In other words — food was urgent for them. Which means…"

They were living as part of a group — a group that burned through a lot of food.

With a thin smile spreading across my face, I lifted my body into the air with telekinesis. The rat had been thorough, meticulous. Its trail was a single, tiny crumb — but that last breadcrumb was enough to point the way. As my altitude climbed, a fierce wind whipped past and the buildings shrank to dots below. I rolled my eyes across Incheon's northwest, focusing on where I estimated the rat had come from.

The Mimic Holy Body raised every one of the body's capabilities along with it. Dynamic vision was, naturally, included. My honed, absolute focus took in the buildings of the northwest one by one.

Honestly, I didn't even have to search long. Two buildings sitting directly above the Incheon Football Stadium: Gongseong Middle School and Gongseong High School. And on the rooftop of the high school, I spotted someone.

A grime-stained school uniform, and a pair of binoculars held in the kid's hands. The figure hadn't noticed me floating in the sky — too busy scanning the direction of Incheon Stadium with those binoculars.

Made sense, really. I'd whipped up an artificial tornado and raised all that hell; any group camped right next door would be dying of curiosity.

Either way…

I smiled as I watched the little rat peeking out and scoping the stadium, glancing around nervously. The rats who'd dared to steal the precious food my believers were meant to eat.

"Found you."