Half the World (1)
Half the World (1) — Hyopyeong Apartment, Yeonsu-gu, Incheon
“Kiiieeeeeeek—!”
A zombie lunged at me, clawing desperately at the air, frothing with frenzy. Its legs dangled uselessly in midair, tethered by nothing at all, its white t-shirt stiff with crusted, rotted blood. I fixed the creature's thrashing head in place—long hair whipping wildly with every convulsion—and studied its face with careful eyes.
……The sex was certain, at least.
Beyond the zombie in front of me, more of them hung suspended in the air, all tethered by my telekinesis, and I glanced over them one by one. The condition of the infected was, naturally, too pitiful to look at with open eyes. Missing limbs were a courtesy; the gaping holes punched through their bodies were practically accessories. The one before me now had its cheek gnawed away like something had been feeding on it, and one ear dangled by a strip of flesh—someone had evidently taken a bite and thought better of it. Distinguishing them at a glance was impossible. And guessing from a rough resemblance was a gamble I couldn't afford.
What I carried wasn't an elixir. It was the Zombie Cure—and it only worked on the freshly turned. A zombie this far gone, the moment it died, was beyond even my power to save.
“Is this one Seo Hyeyoung?”
I asked the believers waiting behind me. Kim Haeil, who had been alternating his gaze between the ID photo and the zombie, nodded.
“Yes. That is Seo Hyeyoung, Cult Leader-nim.”
The instant Kim Haeil's confirmation was done, I drew her in. “Kiiieeeeeeek—!” The closer the food came, the harder she raged. I tilted her head back by the throat until her dead eyes faced the ceiling.
“Instructor Seo Hyewon will be pleased.”
The Zombie Cure left my hand and trickled down over her upturned face, forced past her lips and down her throat. The zombie's body began to shudder.
The familiar herald of transformation.
Paaah—!
Light burst from the woman sprawled across the floor. As the radiance slowly dimmed, her intermittent convulsions eased with it, her body gradually settling into stillness. When she finally rose, her pupils held not hunger but a jumbled mess of confusion and shock.
“…Th-this is…”
With trembling hands, Seo Hyeyoung ran her fingers over her torn shirt, soaked through with blackened blood.
“Welcome, believer Seo Hyeyoung.”
“You've truly been through so much.”
The two female believers on standby sprang forward. One after another, they began peeling the clothes from Seo Hyeyoung, who hadn't yet grasped what was happening to her and could only stammer blankly under their hands.
“For hygiene reasons, and to prevent secondary infection, you'll need to take off everything you were wearing and put on fresh clothes.”
Even the bra and panties—discolored beyond recognition of their original color—came away, leaving her bare. And as the hands of salvation continued their work, the women's gestures of assistance grew softer, smoother, ever more practiced. One of them angled her body aside, generously opening the view for me where I stood watching head-on.
Oh. That's… a fair amount of hair.
I studied Seo Hyeyoung's wide-open groin with careful attention. Had she just not maintained it? Too much hair was a personal dealbreaker, honestly. Once I brought her to paradise, waxing would have to come first. I nodded, thinking of the female hairdressers who kept popping up in the believers' occupational surveys.
…Wait, do hairdressers even do Brazilian waxes?
Well, cutting is cutting. It'd work out somehow. As long as the jungle that had just presented itself to me didn't make me sulk, we'd be fine.
Which reminds me—it's about time I set up some proper, systematic management.
I'd have to train dedicated hairdressers assigned exclusively to the believers I intended to devour. Naturally, those hairdressers would also get a generous dose of my Liquid of Subordination.
Ahh… my cock's already growing majestic just thinking about it.
Even Seong Gaeul, once the city took proper shape, would have no grounds to stop me. When the time came, I planned to recreate in that city every idea I'd been turning over in my head. The hair salon run by female believers under my grace, as I'd mentioned earlier. A public bathhouse accessible only to the Cult Leader and the women. And how about a separate residential quarter where only the women I favored would live together?
The name… Baekhwawon—the Garden of White Flowers? Something like a garden of white blossoms. A utopia within a utopia.
For the three months I'd be away conquering other districts, I was going to do every last thing this place had to offer. Chuckling to myself over these and other delightful schemes, I waited for Seo Hyeyoung to finish changing. The female believers stepped back, and only then did she seem to come to her senses, running her hands over the white believer's robe she now wore.
“You are Seo Hyewon's older sister. Seo Hyeyoung.”
“……!”
At my voice, thick with mana, her head snapped up.
“Hy-Hyewon—do you know Hyewon?”
“I know her well.”
“Wh-where is she? Where is Hyewon right now?”
“She is in paradise.”
“…Excuse me?”
Naturally, Seo Hyeyoung didn't understand, and tilted her head.
“There is something more important before that.”
Holding her gaze, I pointed behind her. Following my finger with her eyes, she stumbled backward with a scream.
“Kyaa, kyaaaaaak—!”
“Please calm yourself, sister.”
“It's all right. They cannot take a single step toward the Cult Leader-nim.”
The female believers steadied her at once, but she wouldn't settle in the slightest.
“W-we have to run! Th-those…”
Those horrifying moments—flesh chewed, torn, tasted.
“Kiiieeeeeeek—!”
The very ones who had killed her reached out toward her, raging, exactly as they had been. Held fast by the female believers, Seo Hyeyoung could retreat no further, and so she shook her head all the harder and screamed.
“Kyaaaaaaaak—!”
“Kiiieeeeeeeeek—!”
Like some dueling soprano contest, their cries rolled and reverberated through the apartment building—but it hardly mattered. This was, after all, a mandatory passage every time we saved a believer; the spectacle held no novelty for me. The believers restraining Seo Hyeyoung, and Kim Haeil behind them, waited with utterly unchanged expressions for her to exhaust herself.
It took exactly three minutes or so for Seo Hyeyoung to go quiet.
“Koff— koff—”
She hacked out a few dry coughs with her raw throat, then stared at the zombies with bewildered eyes. They hadn't lunged at her. And looked at closely—they were actually floating!
“Is there family of yours among them? Your sister's family?”
She looked at me again. I smiled gently at her trembling pupils and murmured, “Look closely at their faces. Surely you don't think I asked with bad intent—the man who saved you, who clothed you in new garments?”
Seo Hyeyoung turned her stiff neck and examined the zombies one by one. The five zombies that had killed her hung frozen like ice sculptures. The family that man had spoken of was not among them.
“N-no. They're not.”
“I see. Vice Captain.”
“Yes, sir!”
Whooooosh—!
A sudden wind sent her hair streaming. In the blink of an eye, a man had closed the distance to the creatures and, coiling his waist, swung his arm.
Pakeok—!
Five bursts of sound, one after another. The zombies, each with a huge hole punched through its skull, crumpled to the floor in sequence.
Chwaak—!
Blood shed from his spear as he shook it clean spread across the floor, mingling with the rot. The spear's tip, so cold to look upon that it chilled something deep in the chest, caught the sunlight and gleamed.
While the man returned to his place behind us, Seo Hyeyoung stared blankly at the corpses. The first corpses she had ever seen. The first grotesque bodies with holes bored through their skulls. She thought, with relief, that she had screamed until her limit earlier. If she hadn't, her throat would be torn open with screaming right now.
She had died, unmistakably, torn apart by their teeth. She remembered clearly the moment she'd shouted at her little sister—still sobbing as she looked at her—to run. No matter how she'd thrashed, it hadn't mattered. The sensation of their teeth gnawing into her shook her mind still, unfiltered, in raw pain. She had only wanted this moment to end. And so she had closed her eyes, weeping—and after that, nothing. No memory at all.
Then she had opened her eyes as if waking from sleep, and she was alive. Astonishingly, without a single wound—wearing only the blackened, blood-soaked clothes that proved that day had been no dream.
She had come back from death.
A miracle.
She turned her head from the corpses and faced front again. The grateful women who had given her new clothes. The grateful man who had killed the things that killed her. And the one standing at their head, watching her. This man, who knew Hyewon.
She was no fool.
“Aaaaaah—!”
Her eyes brimmed, welling as though a fistful of tears had been scooped up all at once, and I smiled upon them with benevolence. This was why I preferred those treated with the Zombie Cure to the citizens I rescued in Seoul. Through the miracle they had already lived, they turned toward me with hearts flung wide open.
“Let us go home. To our house, where your sister waits for you with a burning heart.”
Everything that needed doing at Hyopyeong Apartment was finished. I swung the veranda door open with telekinesis and walked through. With a little invested time, I could have forged her right here into a believer as devoted as any in my flock, but there was no need. Her family—who owed me more than anyone and worshipped me—would make her the most fervent believer in the world.
The female believers slowly helped Seo Hyeyoung along, and Kim Haeil followed at my heels. There was no need for stairs; we would descend to the ground by telekinesis. A single vehicle waited for us on the surface—believers seated in the military truck we'd procured from the Incheon shelter.
I raised both arms and wrapped the whole party in telekinesis.
“Heeek—!”
Watching her own body rise, Seo Hyeyoung sucked in a sharp breath. But contrary to her fears, a gentle descent began.
Tap.
The party touched down as softly as settling feathers and immediately began their practiced next steps. While Kim Haeil relayed the next destination to the believer in the driver's seat, the women and Seo Hyeyoung boarded the truck. Once Kim Haeil returned, the believer who had once driven a taxi in Incheon bowed respectfully and hit the accelerator.
Vroom—!
Watching the truck rumble back toward the Sanctuary, I asked Kim Haeil, “Fuel's still sufficient?”
“Yes. The gasoline stockpiled at the Sanctuary is plentiful as well.”
The price we'd paid had been a rip-off by any measure, but it hardly mattered now. The spear in Kim Haeil's hand, the gas drums stacked at the Sanctuary—looked at that way, even an infinite-money cheat like me didn't have it so bad. My true strength, built up piece by piece, might just be my hourly Faith production.
“Good to hear. What's the next destination?”
“The next one awaiting salvation is believer Kim Deoksoon's granddaughter. She is currently not moving—at Marin Hotel.”
“You mean she's stopped entirely?”
“No. Her movement radius is circling round and round inside the hotel.”
Things that pace in circles inside a building like that were, in most cases, zombies. Still—to be able to track a movement radius in that much detail. As Kim Haeil's Pursuit skill leveled up, it was growing astonishingly precise—even to me.
Walking down the road, I held out a hand behind me. I took the photograph that settled gently into my palm and studied it closely. The face of a woman smiling, one hand resting on the shoulder of a seated grandmother.
“…Hmm. We can take it slow.”
“Yes, sir.”
After all, we'd have to clear the surroundings on the way back for the truck anyway.
Chaeng—! Chaeng—! Chaeng—!
The spare spears—handy for when Kim Haeil's shattered—clashed against one another in the air with a ringing clang.
“Kiiieeeeeeeek—!”
A cry spread wide across the quiet city. The howling of things gone mad at the mere hint of prey drowned out even the clamor.
Dududududu—!
Zombies came swarming from every alley like cockroaches, all at once. Their darting heads snapped toward us—and froze in unison.
“Kiiieeeeek—!”
I slowly raised my right hand. Every creature that had been charging toward us, torsos heaving wildly, stopped dead in its tracks as if nailed to the spot. Telekinesis backed by my Divinity blanketed the zone I designated.
“Vice Captain.”
“Yes, sir!”
Kim Haeil was on them instantly. His movements flowed in seamless combinations—nothing like the clumsy flailing from the first day of the Hand of Salvation. I watched him carve through the creatures in every direction and smiled with satisfaction. That's right—when the Cult Leader backs you up properly, you'd better cash in on it.
Thanks to that, with every zombie slain, his Pursuit level climbed and the salvation project rode high on the wave; and with occasional investments into his physical stats, his movements were growing distinctive in their own right. The only drawback was how utterly bored I was.
Krraaaaaaah—!
An asphalt chunk flew at Kim Haeil, who was in the thick of slaughtering the pinned zombies. His eyes flared at the mass suspended midair.
Thoom—! Thoom—!
Two Steroids came bounding in, shaking the ground. Meeting their bloodshot eyes, I stretched out my hand toward them.
“Deal with those first!”
“Yes, sir!”
Without a flicker of doubt, Kim Haeil wheeled around. He leapt toward the thing that looked three times his size. The Steroid, already under the dominion of my telekinesis, could only watch him blankly. Its trembling hands clawed uselessly to shield its head, but it didn't budge an inch. I smiled as the Vice Captain's spear point skewered the creature's skull.
Two thousand Faith, times two. Four thousand Faith deposited in a single stroke—easy money.
“…Lucky.”
More of them, please.
Clicking my tongue in appetite, I kept staring down the alley that had gone still, no more zombies bursting forth.
“It's huge.”
“Yes. The records say it's famous as a five-star luxury hotel.”
Kim Haeil answered my question as he read the document he'd pulled from his inventory. Fair enough—you were a student; knowing hotels would be stranger.
I turned my head back to the Marin Hotel standing before us. Even a glance at the gorgeous façade brought the question bubbling up unbidden—whoa, what would one night here even cost? True to the name Marin, the moment we stepped toward the entrance, a long outdoor pool stretched out before our eyes. And floating on that pool, dozens of corpses. The water had turned a sinister blackish red, dyed by the blood they'd shed.
“The one awaiting salvation, Jeong Seonga, is wandering a little deeper inside.”
“Right. Let's go in.”
Even with corpses sprawled carelessly across the grounds, the luxury still couldn't quite be erased. I strolled the exterior like a sightseer, making my slow way toward the main building's entrance. I'd always wondered when I'd ever set foot in a place like this—and it turns out it took a zombie apocalypse. I was chuckling at the absurdity when a sound rang out from inside the hotel.
“Kiiieeeeeeeeek—!”
Their roars kept rolling through the building.
“Cult Leader-nim.”
“Something's happening in there.”
Zombies didn't scream all day. They only raised their voices after catching a sound or spotting prey, calling their fellows together. This wasn't one roar or two—it was a chorus of them, droning through the building. Proof that something was stirring within.
Tap— tap—
I passed the reception desk and crossed the lobby at a brisk pace, ears tuned to the roars drawing nearer.
Thung—! Thung—!
The sound of footsteps on crude steel plating.
“Kiiieeeeeeek—!”
The zombies' roars were rising from directly beneath the plating we stood on.
Clank—!
A rough mechanism ground into motion, and the steel plate under our feet suddenly sank downward. At the same moment, the floor yawned open—and I saw them: dozens of zombies reaching up toward us, hands outstretched. They clawed desperately at the prize that was about to fall to them, but their fingers would never reach. Without so much as a hiccup, we drifted slowly over the trap on telekinesis and passed into the hotel's depths.
Tap.
My feet found solid ground again, and I glanced back at the pit where the zombies lay hidden. A crude design, but one that bore the mark of human hands.
“This time, we might not need the Zombie Cure at all.”
For the first time since the Hand of Salvation began, the odds favored finding a living survivor rather than a zombie.
“It's been a while since I've seen survivors who lasted this long in Incheon.”
Curiosity and excitement outweighed my wariness. My unhurried footsteps carried us past a pumpkin-shaped display piece in the center of the lobby, toward the stairs leading to the next floor. Hands clasped behind my back, climbing the stairs—I caught the sound of voices echoing down from above. The survivors who spotted us from partway up the long staircase flung their eyes open so wide they looked fit to tear.
“A—a man! No, no, no! It's a Tessssss!”
“Unnie! Unniieee! The Tesses are coming! They're invadinggg!”
I narrowed my eyes as I climbed after the survivors, who turned and fled up the stairs. Tess? What Tess were they talking about?
……Socrates?
“Shall I go catch them?”
I shook my head, restraining Kim Haeil as he drew a spear from his inventory.
“Where is it? Where are they!”
“D-down there, unnie! Two—two people, no, two heads!”
Listening to the storm of footsteps ringing through the stairwell, I smiled faintly. Whatever this turned out to be—
It felt like something interesting was finally about to happen, for the first time in a while.