I Think My Mom's Going to Haunt My Dreams
We prepared our weapons according to Jihye's plan.
Minji slipped on her leather gloves.
I cut a length of nylon cord to an appropriate size and tied wooden pegs to both ends to fashion makeshift handles.
Jihye prepared her revolver—unloaded, but useful for intimidation—and a Taser for actual use. Normally, carrying both would be too heavy and cumbersome, but this was an emergency. She also packed her collapsible baton and handcuffs.
I grabbed my hwando saber as well, and we slipped out of the apartment.
"Minji, you're small, so hide behind me," Jihye instructed, reviewing the plan one last time. "Once the lady opens the door and my husband and I distract her, slip past her legs and get behind her."
Jihye gave Minji her final instructions.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
"Police," Jihye called out, knocking much softer than usual. She was likely trying to keep the neighbors from overhearing and raising their guard.
Creeeak—
"What is it?" the middle-aged woman in Room 201 asked, her voice dripping with irritation as she pulled the door open.
"We're conducting a routine inspection of fallout shelters due to the radiation," Jihye rattled off a plausible lie.
She spouted whatever nonsense came to mind. In that split second, Minji, who had been standing right behind Jihye, vanished like a ghost. Even knowing she was going to do it, I couldn't track her movement. So this is the power of an active skill, I thought.
My eyes darted behind Jihye, and the woman's gaze naturally followed mine. Ah, this is why eye contact and distraction are so crucial.
In that instant, a small, leather-gloved hand shot over the woman's left shoulder.
"Mmph—"
Startled, the woman tried to scream, but her mouth was already clamped shut. She thrashed wildly, but Minji had already slipped her right arm under the woman's right armpit, locking her in a tight hold from behind. She wouldn't be able to hold her for long, but a few seconds was all I needed.
I drew my dagger from its sheath, turned the blade flat, and shoved it between her ribs, puncturing her left lung. Just as Jihye had instructed, I twisted the blade side to side to widen the wound, letting the air escape rapidly. Then, I did the exact same to her right lung.
Kah-huff...
As the woman thrashed in agony, Minji's hand slipped slightly from her mouth. The woman tried to scream, but with her lungs collapsed, nothing came out but a pathetic, wheezing hiss of escaping air.
So this is why Jihye told me to go for the lungs instead of the heart. It was incredibly clean, with barely any blood splatter.
After about ten seconds, the strength drained from her limbs, and she stopped resisting.
A minute passed, and her body began to shudder with violent spasms.
By the four-minute mark, she stopped moving entirely.
A bitter taste lingered in my mouth. No matter how annoying that woman had been, taking a life like this felt wrong. I felt a sudden pang of guilt, as if I couldn't bear to face my mother up in heaven.
But there was no other way. We were completely out of water. The four bottles we had looted from the empty apartment yesterday morning had been drained by the eight of us by last night. Starting today, we had nothing left to drink. Humans die without water. This was a grim necessity for survival. No one blames a lion for killing a rabbit to eat, do they?
Without a word, avoiding each other's eyes, we entered the apartment and searched for water. We managed to find a few bottles. Leaving them in Room 201 for the time being, we moved on to Room 205—the home of the chubby woman.
The execution was identical. Jihye knocked and announced herself as the police, and the woman carelessly opened the door. While Jihye held her attention, Minji slipped behind her. However, because of the height difference, Minji struggled to reach over her left shoulder to cover her mouth. Instead, she tried to reach under the woman's left armpit to gag her. But between the massive disparity in their physical builds and muscle mass, Minji not only failed to cover her mouth, but her short arms couldn't even wrap securely around the woman's bulky torso, despite slipping her right arm under the woman's right armpit.
In short, we were fucked!
"You fucking piece of shit Korean-male-worshipping bitch! What the fuck do you think you're doing?!" the feminist screeched, her true colors slipping out the moment she panicked.
The feminist bitch was so worked up that her usual internet-poisoned slang slipped right out.
The space was too cramped for me to draw my hwando, and Jihye was standing right next to me. Realizing it was too tight even for her Taser, Jihye whipped out her nylon cord and channeled her mana, sending a massive electric shock surging through the woman.
"Guh— Gaaah—"
The moment Jihye pulled the whip back, I lunged forward. I looped my wooden-handled garrote cord around the back of her neck, crossed the ends in an 'X' in front of her throat, grabbed a handle in each hand, and pulled with every ounce of strength I possessed. Within ten seconds, her thrashing ceased. I kept the pressure tight for another five minutes just to be absolutely sure she was dead.
"We need to deal with the college student in Room 204 quickly," Jihye said, her voice low. "The noise might have tipped him off. He could be preparing for us."
"Let's adjust our strategy and stop by our place to swap weapons first."
Jihye fell silent as we walked, clearly deep in thought.
After rummaging through Minji's apartment, Jihye handed Minji the monkey wrench we had brought from my place.
"The setup is the same—you still slip behind the target—but we're changing the execution," Jihye explained. "Kick him hard in the back of the knee to force him down, then smash his temple with the monkey wrench."
"Husband, take the crowbar instead of your longsword. There's a high chance he won't open the door. But even if he does, a longsword is obviously a weapon. A crowbar, on the other hand, gives us an excuse—we can claim we brought it just in case we needed to pry open a stuck door."
I grabbed my dagger and the crowbar, while Minji held her monkey wrench with her leather-gloved hands. Aside from carrying both her revolver and Taser, Jihye looked like a perfectly ordinary police officer in her standard-issue gear.
We arrived at the door of Room 204.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
Jihye didn't bother hiding the noise anymore. She seemed to realize that we would have to face the guy in Room 207 in a direct confrontation anyway.
There was no response from inside.
"I know you're in there," Jihye called out. "If you don't open this door, we're prying it open with a crowbar."
Calling it a crowbar to me, but using the slang '빠루' for the citizen so he understands perfectly. What a fine example of our democratic police force, Choi Jihye. Honestly, 'Minji Police' sounded more fitting.
The college student inside must have realized that a flimsy apartment door stood no chance against a crowbar. Trembling, he opened the door, clutching a kitchen knife. Just like before, Jihye used her police uniform and stunning looks to lock his attention, while Minji dissolved into the shadows like smoke.
Thwack!
"Argh!"
Minji delivered a sharp kick to the back of his knee, sending him stumbling forward.
Whoosh—
Crack!
Minji connected with a full swing of her monkey wrench, striking him squarely in the temple. He collapsed, dead before he even hit the floor. It was over before he could even register what was happening. A heavy, suffocating gloom settled over me. At this rate, I wouldn't even be able to look my mother in the eye when I joined her in heaven.
But I couldn't stop now. We had to clear the second floor at the very least. If we didn't, we risked being ambushed and slaughtered in our sleep by the thirty-five other survivors tonight. Besides, the last bastard remaining was the very same piece of shit who had dared to try and rape my wife, Minji. He deserved to die.
"Jihye, should we stick with this gear?" I asked.
"No. This time, we go in fully armed."
We headed back to our apartment. I geared up with the crowbar, my hwando saber, and my traditional horn bow along with three arrows.
Minji took only her dagger. Carrying a heavy fire axe or a sledgehammer would only tank her agility.
Jihye didn't bother with any useless clutter either, relying entirely on her Whip Mastery skill.
"Husband, this whip is only one and a half meters—it's too short," Jihye said. "Could you make me a three-meter whip? Since I can control it with my mana, I can easily use a three-meter whip even in tight, indoor spaces."
Holy shit. She can use a three-meter whip in a cramped indoor space full of obstacles? If we ever fought, I'd get absolutely annihilated. I realized I needed to stop focusing on expanding my harem with my Brand and start dumping points into my stats as soon as possible.
Regardless, I cut a length of nylon cord and fashioned a three-meter whip for her. Jihye beamed with joy, looking like a woman from the eighties who had just been proposed to with a diamond ring.
"Husband, the bastard in Room 207 has definitely heard the noise we made," Jihye analyzed. "He'll be armed and waiting. On top of that, we already have bad blood with him, so my police uniform won't buy us any time. We should pry the door open from the get-go and kill him as fast as possible with everything we've got. It'll be a headache if the people upstairs hear the commotion and come down."
I agreed.
The moment I jammed the crowbar in and pried open the door of Room 207, the door was violently flung open from the inside. A wooden baseball bat came hurtling down toward my head. Caught off guard, I threw myself backward, but I couldn't dodge completely. I was forced to block the blow with my left arm.
"Argh!"
As I stumbled back in pain, Jihye fired her Taser straight into the man's thigh.
Bzzt—
"Tsk."
The man winced and limped slightly, but with his bulky, muscular build, he absorbed the shock like a wild boar. A single Taser shot wasn't enough to bring him down. Wait, Jihye is an Awakener, but she hasn't even allocated any stat points yet. How the hell did she manage to overpower this guy and beat him half to death with a baseball bat before? Oh right, she got him in a guillotine choke and then punched him in the balls.
Jihye tossed the spent Taser aside and immediately drew her whip.
At three meters long, an ordinary whip would be useless in such a confined space. But this insane weapon was different. Once Jihye channeled her mana into it, it crackled with electricity and became sharp enough to slice right through a stainless steel sink!
As Jihye lashed out, her whip sliced through his flesh and left deep gashes all over the metal doorframe. Terrified, the man retreated deeper into the apartment. But that was his fatal mistake. Minji yanked the front door wide open, clearing our line of sight. Ignoring the throbbing pain in my left arm, I raised my horn bow, drew back the string, and let an arrow fly.
Thwip—
Thunk!
At such close range, the twang of the bowstring and the wet thud of the arrow burying itself in his abdomen occurred almost simultaneously.
"Aaaargh!"
With the entryway cleared, Jihye unleashed the full fury of her whip. In a flash of silver, the man's hands were severed clean off, still clutching the baseball bat.
Thud—
The shattered wooden bat and his severed hands clattered to the floor.
Blood sprayed from his stumps as the man collapsed, looking up at us with pathetic, pleading eyes, begging for mercy. As I hesitated, wondering what to do with him, Jihye raised her whip to decapitate him without a single shred of hesitation.
"Stop!" I barked.
Jihye paused, looking back at me with a puzzled expression.
"I'm going to step outside for a second. Can you... do it while I'm not looking?"
"Why?" Jihye asked, genuinely confused.
She questioned me, unable to comprehend my hesitation.
"If I watch you do this, every time I look at you, I'm just going to picture rolling heads. I'll never be able to get it up for you again. Please, just do it while I'm out of the room."
With that, I stepped out into the hallway. To be honest, our first encounter had left me traumatized too! Just looking at Jihye's face brought back vivid flashbacks of her sitting astride me like a lunatic, raining down a barrage of punches, which instantly killed my erection. If I had to watch her slice a man's head off and see it roll across the floor in a pool of blood, I would never be able to get hard for her again.
Thud—
Thump—
The wet thud of his head hitting the floor was followed by the heavy collapse of his lifeless torso. Given his bulky frame, the impact was incredibly loud.
"First, let's gather all the water bottles from each apartment."
Feeling like shit was one thing, but survival was another. We needed that water.