Early Bird Drills
"Concubine, you talk too much. Shut the hell up."
Rise and shine, early bird!
Ah, fuck. It's only eight in the morning.
With no Nookpia, no RadioTube, and no Dust Wiki, every active hobby I once enjoyed had vanished into thin air. Unless I was busy fucking, I had absolutely no reason to sleep in, so I naturally woke up the moment the sun reared its head. Including today, there were only two days left in March. No matter how much of an Awakener I was, I had zero desire to risk my neck wandering around outside. I figured I'd gather the girls today and run some group combat drills using the tactical gear we'd looted from the police substation. Actually, scratch that. I should drag my father-in-law, Jeong-a, and Ju-ho into it too. If I strapped some protective gear on them and threw them at the front, they'd at least make decent meat shields.
"Hey, Jihye-emon! We're doing group combat practice today with the police gear. Draw up a curriculum for us!"
"Husband, you've finally recognized my true worth!" Jihye beamed, her eyes sparkling with excitement.
Honestly, though, females didn't need that kind of utility. It was different for dickheads like Ju-ho, but for a female? As long as they had massive tits like Ye-jeong or a gorgeous face like Jihye, what else mattered? A female's only real job was keeping her cunt nice and tight.
"So, who exactly are we training today?" she asked.
"Everyone except Hyeong-uk—er, Mr. Hyeong-uk."
"Got it. I'll go grab my parents and Ju-ho, then."
"Let's eat first."
I told Jihye to rest a bit longer and that I'd go wake the others up myself. She gave me a puzzled look.
"What? A husband taking care of his wife makes him a good husband, doesn't it?"
"Really?" Jihye's face lit up. She definitely liked that. ...She did, right?
I headed over to my place and looked at the bed, only to find Jeonga and Ji-hun sleeping in a tight embrace. Fuck. I guess if you're handsome, your wife will still dote on you even if you have a twenty-one-year-old daughter. Seeing Jeonga's pale thighs made me feel inexplicably petty. I lightly tugged up the hem of her short shorts to perform a quick panty check. Pink. This ajumma really seemed to love baby-chick yellow and princess pink. Was she trying to be cute? Was it actually cute? Since her face was rapidly de-aging, my brain kept suffering from severe calculation errors.
Slap!
I smacked Jeonga's slender thigh—which looked remarkably like Jihye's—to wake her up. Ye-jeong's plump thighs were great, but there was a distinct charm to slender ones too. Minji, on the other hand, was so scrawny she wasn't even worth looking at.
"Mmm... What is it?" Jeonga mumbled, blinking sleepily.
"Get up and start prepping breakfast."
I only woke Jeonga and left the rest alone. She would wake them up herself. Letting slaves like Hyeong-uk and Ju-ho sleep in late... man, I really was a benevolent master. But fuck, Hyeong-uk was seriously useless, wasn't he? I couldn't even put him to work. If we had a farm, I'd chain him up and force him to till the fields. If a sadistic psycho like Jihye had gained power in this apocalypse and run wild, a useless slave like Hyeong-uk would have been slaughtered in a heartbeat. And a chaste, innocent married woman like Jeonga would have been brutally raped long ago. It was only because of me that any semblance of morality and goodness was being maintained here. After all, I had only acted in self-defense when Hyeong-uk tried to shoot me with that crossbow, and fucking Ye-jeong was just a perfectly reasonable collection of damages.
I went over to wait in Minji's room, and soon enough, Jeonga walked in after a quick wash. Ye-jeong and Jeonga got to work cooking rice and frying ham in a pan, while I set out some seaweed, ketchup, and kimchi. We really needed to go detach those solar panels from the police substation and get the electricity hooked up soon. At this rate, all our kimchi was going to spoil. Once the table was set, I called out to Minji.
"Minji, go bring Father-in-law Ji-hun and Ju-ho over. And take some food to Mr. Hyeong-uk. No ham for him, though."
Smack!
Holy shit. Did she just slap me on the back?
"Stop discriminating against my dad!" she whined. "I can understand keeping him in handcuffs, but why do you only call my dad 'ajussi' and refuse to give him ham?"
Ah, give them an inch and they take a mile. Did I need to break out the baseball bat and re-educate her like the old days? But Minji must have picked up a thing or two from her mother. The moment she sensed the shift in my expression, she immediately threw her arms around me.
"Honey, it's not like I'm doing this because I hate you, right?" she cooed, looking up at me. "I'm just asking you to treat my dad like a human being. Is that really so hard?"
I felt a bizarre sensation, like watching a wild lion leap through a flaming hoop at a circus. What the hell? How was the blunt, socially awkward Minji suddenly acting exactly like Ye-jeong? Did she really master that trick in such a short amount of time? Women are terrifying.
"Sob... *hic*... ugh..."
She even managed to summon some fake tears on cue.
*Tap, tap. Stroke, stroke.*
Well, since my Primary Wife was crying, I gave her a gentle pat on the back. Fine, if she was going to go all out with the waterworks, the least I could do was grant her this tiny favor.
"Here's the key," I said, tossing it to her. "Unlock his chains and bring my father-in-law over too."
"Honey, I love you~!"
Slam!
Minji squealed with joy, kicked the front door open, and bolted out.
Hmm. Seeing her that happy, maybe it was worth treating her well once in a while? No, wait. It wasn't "once in a while." I treated her too well all the time, which was exactly why she kept trying to blur the lines and test my boundaries.
Soon, Ju-ho, Hyeong-uk, and Ji-hun filed into Minji's apartment.
"Ju-ho, long time no see."
"Long time no see, Hyung-nim," Ju-ho replied warmly, looking genuinely pleased.
"Good morning to both of my fathers-in-law."
"Yes, did you sleep well, Doyoung?" Ji-hun politely returned the greeting, but Hyeong-uk rudely ignored me, keeping his mouth shut.
Well, I suppose if someone stole my wife, I wouldn't feel much like exchanging pleasantries with them either. Regardless, Minji was in high spirits, beaming as she clung tightly to my side.
"Honey, thank you so much for listening to me~"
Smooch!
Minji planted a sweet kiss right on my cheek. Hmm. This wasn't half bad.
Jihye, who had been watching this display with a sour expression, slinked over and whispered quietly into my ear.
"Don't get too ahead of yourself. You know this is just because of the Emotional Attachment, right?"
Fuck.
...No, at least Ye-jeong didn't have a real Brand yet, so her feelings had to be genuine. When I drew a mock brand on her belly with a neon green highlighter and told her she was one of my branded girls now so I'd take off her handcuffs, she had been genuinely thrilled, hadn't she?
Hmm. Still, maintaining Minji cost 10 mana every twenty-four hours, and Jihye cost another 10. To increase my mana pool and recovery speed, I needed to raise my Intelligence and Empathy. The problem was that the point cost doubled every time a stat crossed a threshold of ten. Jihye's base Intelligence and Empathy were already at 10, so branding her was easy. But to brand Minji, I'd had to raise them both to 20, which cost me a whopping 40 points.
That meant the next Branded Awakener would require me to raise both stats to 30, costing 80 points. The one after that would require 160 points.
A single Fast Zombie had only given me 45 points. The normal zombie girl next to it hadn't dropped a single thing. On top of that, since it was a lottery scratcher system, there was always a chance of getting absolutely nothing even after killing a Fast Zombie.
And to make matters worse, this wasn't just a zombie apocalypse—it was a nuclear apocalypse. Even if I wanted to hunt zombies for points, I actually had to find them first. Plus, freaks like that Fast Zombie could easily blend in with normal survivors, making them impossible to identify unless I went around slashing everyone with a knife to see if they felt pain.
I needed to hoard my points, even when I did get them. Ye-jeong was completely useless outside of being gorgeous, having massive tits, and squeezing my dick tight. Even if she did awaken a skill, it would probably be some trash-tier utility. Like a cooking skill or something.
"Hey, Ju-ho. How long do we have to keep eating this seaweed?"
"At least two weeks," Ju-ho answered. "Radioactive iodine from the nuclear blast accumulates in the thyroid, which can lead to thyroid cancer. To prevent that, we have to ingest normal iodine so our thyroids absorb that instead of the radioactive stuff. After two weeks, the ambient radiation levels should drop enough that we'll be fine."
Hmm. As expected, even if this guy wasn't Minji's brother, he was useful enough that I probably would have kept him alive. Actually, scratch that. Since I didn't know his utility when we first met, I probably would have just brainlessly slaughtered him. Come to think of it, the people I killed on the second floor might have possessed some useful knowledge too. If I had bothered to talk to them instead of rushing, they might still be alive. But I'd been too impatient and just wiped them all out.
"Now that we're done eating, shall we get started? Jihye, go change into your skirt uniform first."
Jihye grabbed her uniform and headed into the bathroom. A moment later, she stepped out.
"Wow. Jihye, dressed like that, you could easily pass as a police promotional model."
"That's actually why the higher-ups kept nagging me to do promotional videos for the police RadioTube channel," she said with a shrug. "I hated the idea, so I kept refusing."
"Good. You did the right thing. There's no way in hell I'm letting other bastards gawk at my woman's face like some internet whore."
"Still, wearing my dress uniform after so long feels pretty weird."
"Alright, let's get everyone here involved in the training. Why don't we start by practicing how to fight as a group against a single, powerful opponent—like that Fast Zombie we ran into?"
I had changed my mind and decided to include Hyeong-uk, whom I had originally planned to leave out. As long as I didn't give him any lethal weapons like spears or crossbows and only handed him a non-lethal club, he could still serve as a decent meat shield. Besides, for Minji's sake, excluding only Hyeong-uk from the drills would probably make her throw a tantrum.
"First, everyone put on a stab-proof vest and stab-proof gloves. Jihye and Minji, you two wear the bulletproof vests."
There were eight of us in total, and with sixteen stab-proof vests, three bulletproof vests, and eleven pairs of stab-proof gloves, we had more than enough gear to go around. Since I was the boss, I naturally claimed one of the bulletproof vests. Jihye and Minji got the other two because they were my wives.
Under the watchful eye of a fully armed Jihye, Ju-ho and Hyeong-uk had their handcuffs temporarily unlocked. They slipped into their stab-proof vests before being promptly cuffed once more.
"Jihye, didn't you say before that police bulletproof vests are actually bulletproof and stab-proof?"
"That's right," she replied. "After all, the threats police are most likely to face are knives or homemade firearms. They can stop pistol rounds, but they won't do anything against rifle rounds like military-grade body armor."
Jihye equipped her revolver, expandable baton, and handcuffs as usual. However, instead of her standard duty vest, she wore the bulletproof/stab-proof vest, securing her gear into its various tactical pouches.
"You don't carry a Taser?" I asked.
"The pouches on our duty vests are designed to hold either a pistol or a Taser. Gas guns require a different size. The higher-ups always tell us to carry both when we're patrolling alone, but it's honestly too heavy. Usually, when we go out in pairs, one of us carries the pistol and the other carries the Taser. If I ever had to go out on a solo call, I'd keep the pistol in my pouch and leave the Taser in the patrol car just in case."
"Why carry the pistol instead of the Taser?"
"Well, if someone gets as close as you did when you took my virginity, a Taser is completely useless," she said, giving me a pointed look. "A pistol can easily neutralize someone even at point-blank range. But you can't even use a Taser up close. It shoots two electrode probes, and it only paralyzes the muscles between those two points. You need to be at a decent distance from the target so the probes have room to spread out before they hit."
"The Taser is rechargeable, right?"
"No, it uses batteries. Genuine batteries cost about a hundred thousand won, so the National Police Agency tried replacing them with five-thousand-won commercial batteries. It didn't display the remaining battery life, but it worked perfectly fine. But right now, we've used up all the cartridges, so we can't use it anyway. The cartridge containing a pair of probes is fired using compressed nitrogen gas, and it's strictly single-use. Those cartridges are expensive too, costing tens of thousands of won each. Meanwhile, .38 caliber live rounds only cost a few hundred won. The Taser itself costs well over a million won."
"By pouches, you mean those things hanging all over the police vest?"
"Yes. There are separate pouches for the baton, handcuffs, and radio. The gas gun pouch can hold either a gas gun or a .38 caliber revolver. Usually, we remove the gas gun pouch and attach a universal holster, which can hold either a .38 revolver or a Taser. The universal pouch is larger than the gas gun pouch."
Makes sense. If it were me, carrying both would be way too heavy, so I'd ditch the gas gun pouch and only keep the Taser holster too.
"Since this is just practice, we'll train assuming we're carrying pistols for intimidation when we go outside," Jihye explained. "If the lighting is bright and the angle is right, you can actually see whether a police revolver is loaded or not. So even if they won't fire, we'll keep them fully loaded. Normally, the police leave the chamber under the hammer empty on a six-round revolver to prevent accidental discharge from an impact. The next chamber gets a blank, and the remaining four are loaded with live rounds. But for you guys, just load all six."
True. If someone looked closely enough at a revolver, they might be able to see whether the cylinder was empty or loaded.
"Also, we originally had small, medium, and large shields, but ever since the new medium shield was introduced, everyone only uses that," she continued. "The small one is too tiny, barely covering your forearm, and the large one is too bulky to carry around in a patrol car. The old medium shield was awkwardly small, but the new medium shield is just the perfect size."
"Only you, me, and Minji need to carry handcuffs and keys, right?" I asked.
"That should be fine."
Even though I had drawn that mock brand on Ye-jeong's belly with a neon green highlighter, she wasn't a real Branded Awakener who was physically incapable of betraying me like Jihye or Minji. If she suddenly decided to unlock Hyeong-uk's cuffs, we'd have a massive headache on our hands.