Vanguard and Rearguard (4)

Vanguard and Rearguard (4) — Cheonwangsan, Guro-gu, Seoul

The thunder that had been rattling Guro-gu fell silent, and stillness descended.

I stared at Cheonwangsan, utterly wrecked by the artificial meteor strike. That annoying little pest who'd been buzzing around me like a mosquito must surely be crushed dead under the pile of rock. The confirmation kill had already arrived via system message — the odds of him being alive were exactly zero.

"...So he had every skill under the sun."

Granted, I was the one who'd pulled off an artificial Meteor Strike, but Seo Joowon's skill was every bit as vicious. Nullification. Didn't that make it the counter to all skills — in other words, the counter to every awakened human alive?

If I'd crossed paths with him back when the gap between us was that narrow, I was certain killing him wouldn't have been nearly as easy as it had been just now.

Which was a shame, really. If he'd fallen into my hands, he could have been the sharpest blade of all. But no — he'd been eliminated in the first round for looking like a leech, and disqualified in the finals for trying to backstab me.

"Ha... Is there seriously no skill for stealing skills?"

With awakened humans in such short supply, I supposed it was only natural for all manner of stray thoughts to drift through my head. I killed time chewing over this and that, and slowly the blanket of dust choking the mountain began to settle.

I reached out toward the gem still glittering radiantly atop Cheonwangsan's miserably shattered peak. Responding to my telekinesis, the gem bored up through the ochre dust and settled into my palm. The instant it touched my skin, the brilliantly gleaming stone melted away — or, to put it precisely, it was absorbed into my hand.

My eyes went first to that last line — the Special Mission Creation Ticket. Ah. So that's why the special mission popped up at such a convenient moment. Seo Joowon, you son of a bitch — you used a one-per-awakened-being item on me. Which meant he'd been confident enough to use me as bait, and then some.

Should I be irritated at being underestimated, or thank him for gift-wrapping a special mission for me? Hoping to vent a little, I recited the traditional voodoo chant — "Is he dead? Is he dead? Is he dead?" — but nothing stirred beneath the boulders.

Still, considering the system's promised "rapid control rate increase" amounted to barely two percent, Seo Joowon — who'd handed me a full four percent — had to be counted as ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a grateful soul. He'd even footed the bill for a special mission. Truly, no tree in existence gave more generously than this man.

I was smirking at the thought of him squashed flat under that massive boulder when I noticed the sun going down. The fight with Seo Joowon had eaten up more time than I'd expected — a war of attrition where we'd mostly drained each other's mana, so naturally it had dragged.

"I distinctly remember Seo Joowon saying something about the night of Guro-gu..."

I recalled how he'd tried to spook me, going on about how dangerous it would be. There was no reason to take the word of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a guy who'd tried to pass off a Sound Stalker as a "steroid zombie." But then, there was no reason to grit my teeth and assume he was lying, either.

"I'd better head back to my territory for now."

Sunset light was already slipping into Cheonwangsan's broken summit. Bathed in the warmth of the dusk glowing against my back, I flew back along the winding route Seo Joowon and I had so cheerfully raced through — past the zombie wave I had exterminated, past the hiking trail where we'd probed each other out — until I reached the building he'd strolled out of with that easy grin.

"Oh! Green."

Just as expected, his territory had become mine. I could tell at a glance: the zone that had been red was now green. The high-rise mixed-use apartment complex at the center, its green dominion spreading wide around it — that expanse would be my current 6.5% of Guro-gu.

Thud!

I touched down on the ground, intending to scout the interior. Passing through the glass doors of the first-floor lobby, I checked the obvious things first: both elevators were dead. A trip to the bathroom next door, where even cranking the faucet produced not a single drop of water, told me everything else I needed to know — namely, just how absurdly cheat-tier my own abilities were.

"Ah... experiencing it firsthand like this, anyone who doesn't join the Church of Salvation is an absolute idiot."

Live like this for a few days, then step into the Sanctuary, and anyone would lose their mind. It would be exactly what the first humans to discover fire must have felt roasting their first piece of meat.

Just in case, I activated the Sanctuary management tab, but nothing here showed up as connected. So that meant I'd be relieving myself outdoors, going unwashed, and needing a flashlight the moment I wandered more than a few rooms deep?

"...Goddammit."

Hard not to curse. I frowned as I stared at the sunset reflected in the glass. Outside the safe zone, shadows were in full swing, pouring into the vacancy the sunlight had left behind. And the moment everything around me darkened, a message appeared.

Ding—!

One short line of text. And with it, the peaceful Guro-gu flipped like a switch.

Kieeeeeeek—!

A howl I could never have heard at morning — and knew all too well — echoed through the city. Dudududu— the building trembled faintly under approaching footsteps, a rumble of earth no cluster of a few dozen could ever produce. Zombies in numbers I had never experienced were massing and moving somewhere.

Unable to contain my curiosity, I approached the glass wall and peered out.

"Kieeeeeeek—!"

The zombies were streaming past the safe zone I occupied at speed. And yet... the procession showed no sign of ending. Five full minutes had passed since the lead of the column cleared my zone, and the tail was nowhere in sight. A literal wave of the dead, easily numbering in the thousands.

Kwaaaargh—!

At intervals within the horde, the "steroid" mutants lumbered forward, trampling ordinary zombies underfoot. One sweep of a bored steroid's arm sent a zombie crashing through the storefront glass of the shopping district ahead.

Crash—!

The zombie collapsing inside the building and the white bombardment began at the same instant. "Kieeeek!" — a sunken crater, and from it, a pack of Sound Stalkers roaring the moment they realized their prey wasn't human. Sound Stalkers squatting across the ceilings like a plague of bats. And even Frogs — the ones with grotesquely overdeveloped thighs — kicking off the storefront glass to glide to the next building over. I spotted plenty of other variants I didn't recognize, but I wasn't about to gamble my life by stepping outside to catalogue them.

A massive zombie wave and a den of mutants. The ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Night of Guro-gu was, in the truest sense, the heart of zombie heaven — no, zombie hell. And yet those zombies were deliberately routing around the green zone announcing my territory.

Wanting a more definitive test, I opened the glass door and shouted at them.

"Hey! Zombies—!"

At my mana-laden cry, every zombie in the wave froze mid-stride. They turned this way and that, swiveling toward the source of the sound that had pricked their hearing — but unable to locate me, they simply resumed their march.

"So that's why Seo Joowon was pissing himself and calling it terrifying."

It was a scale of threat that no ordinary awakened human would dare pick a fight with. A guaranteed safe zone set against an environment where you were fish in water on a razor's edge. And crucially, no matter how diligently you butchered them, there wasn't a scrap of profit in it for you. In other words, the Night of Seoul was a hunting ground the system had deliberately engineered as high-risk, zero-return.

"Wow. Annoyingly thorough."

Hidden rewards were always tucked away in places like this, by design. I ached to devour the hidden treasures buried in the Night of Guro-gu right now — but tonight would hardly be the last night. I was a safety-first creature by nature; I preferred to build my house first and move afterwards.

Besides, this place was now my own personal space. There's something to learn from everyone, after all — meaning that leech Seo Joowon had graced me with a lesson too. The informational advantage of being in the vanguard, and how to exploit first-mover advantage. It was precisely how he'd smacked the rearguards over the head when they arrived after him. And with Seo Joowon dead, Guro-gu's vanguard was now me and me alone.

So there was no reason to burn mana for the sake of it. Folding away my lingering regrets, I decided to finish exploring the mixed-use apartment I was standing in.

Lighting every direction with my flashlight, I took the stairs down to the basement first. It appeared to serve no purpose beyond parking. The cars were pristine, as if nothing had ever happened — not a fleck of blood on the floor, the air dead and silent. Such a stark contrast to the surface, where zombies were still shaking the earth even now. It was the extreme of the same irony I'd felt in Guro-gu's morning: a world caught mid-snapshot, frozen and abandoned.

Finding nothing of note, I climbed quickly to the second floor, passed the floor of restaurants and the third floor crowded with care shops, and reached the fourth — the apartment level. The fourth floor was no different from the basement parking garage. Every front door standing wide open, the scenes so utterly ordinary they felt uncanny. The homes were all empty, with nothing left to farm.

I ran a finger along the dust layered on a shelf, then clapped my hands together to shake off the grey clumps that stuck immediately.

"And it's not like Seo Joowon looted them either..."

From everything I'd gathered so far, this building was nothing but a hollow shell. The exterior — the structure itself — was intact, but everything that made up its interior had been scooped out. Food. People. Even the zombies. That was only my working theory, though, so more exploration was in order.

Past the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠fourth floor I arrived at the penthouse — the topmost level of the complex.

"...Huh. This one's closed."

Every door I'd seen until now had been open, so my instincts fired at once. This is where he was living.

Creeeeeeak—!

No need to deliberate — I flung the door open with telekinesis and stepped inside. A space more than double the size of the one I'd lived in at Hanmaum Apartment was littered wall to wall with someone's traces. I frowned at the abandoned takeout bags and the rotting food scraps left strewn about.

"Ah, the clean-cut ones always live the filthiest, seriously. Should've known — if I had, I'd have put those three daggers in his balls instead of his legs."

Clicking my tongue lightly, I crossed the living room and began opening the closed rooms one by one. The moment my hand touched the doorknob of the innermost room, a stench rolled out that stabbed straight up my nose. I'd assumed it was just the food waste rotting in the living room. The actual source was right in front of me. Either a zombie, or a corpse that had long since rotted. Against that familiar smell of putrefaction, I eased the door open very, very slowly.

I readied myself to dump telekinesis into the room at a moment's notice, but nothing came lunging out. Along the edges of the light, I saw objects hanging from the walls. And slowly, I frowned.

"...Those are heads."

Four heads, all cleanly severed at the neck, decorated the wall like trophies. One had a single eye open, another's tongue lolled out — each face different, but they shared one thing in common. All of them wore the same deep expression of injustice and grief.

I read the A4 sheet taped beneath the leftmost head.

"...I don't need to read the rest to know."

"This guy really was a psychopath."

Clicking my tongue, I picked up the notebook sitting on the desk.

"Tch. The world's gone mad, and this is what it breeds... Tch."

The end times, truly. The genuine end of days. This is exactly why you can't trust a pretty face. They all walk around with something pitch-black buried in their chests — every last one of them.

Come to think of it, I'd never actually gone through his inventory. In his little collection room, I calmly combed through the inventory I'd absorbed along with him.

"...Legendary."

I said nothing more. I simply opened the inventory and dumped out his entire collection.

Thud-dud-dud-dud—

Human heads poured out of the inventory without end.

"How many people did he kill even before reaching Seoul?"

A butcher who had craved the collapse of public order and an age of lawlessness — and Seo Joowon, granted his desired power in his desired age, was nothing short of a demon. How many more like him were still out there? Right this moment, they'd be busily murdering and fleecing my prospective believers. If I could plant just one keyword in the minds of such people, the whole board would flip.

Salvation.

What those people truly needed was my salvation.

Every one of the heads filling the room wore the same look of injustice and anguish. Having emptied his entire collection from the inventory, I closed the door and muttered,

"Count yourself lucky, Joowon — there's not even a corpse left to impale on display."

In the penthouse steeped in darkness, a thought surfaced unbidden: the things I'd said to Yoon Ayoung on the first floor of the library. The words I'd spoken in the prayer room while treating Park Himchan came back with them. A reality far too hellish for ordinary people to survive in had arrived. A world where the fake becomes the real.

And now, the hypocrisy I practiced might just be the last goodness left in this world.