An Ominous Sign
“…Haa.”
I’d treated the wounds and tossed him into a sleeping bag, but something about it kept nagging at me.
Of all people, the guy we’d saved had black hair and blue eyes.
And then—
“This isn’t the first time I’ve seen someone actually carrying one of these.”
“What was that called again? A Mauser?”
“No. That one loads rounds into a clip up front. This one’s got a magazine. Has to be a Luger.”
A German pistol sat right in front of me.
Curtis handled it with practiced ease, turning it this way and that while polishing it to a shine with a handkerchief.
“…You don’t look so good. Something wrong?”
Sarah brought me a cup of warm water and settled in beside me.
I scooted my hips over to make space, and she gave an awkward little nod.
“Maybe it’s because we saw so much blood today.”
“Mm… yeah, that could be it.”
Giant Spiders and Land Bats on top of everything else.
And then that man whose identity we still didn’t know.
“Still, thanks to all that, things have been moving along pretty smoothly. If you’re feeling off, why not take a shower?”
“We need to conserve water. That supply… at most, it’ll last us two weeks.”
Now that we had an injured person using a lot of water, finding a proper source had just become a top priority.
Groundwater and rainwater were the main options, and both got safer the more secure territory we held.
Protecting either of them meant bringing in more people, or recovering enough military technical documents to “learn” from them and build automated turrets.
Even that required an engineer and a computer specialist… so for now the only real choice was option one.
Or I became the engineer and computer specialist myself.
“So there are people who hauled relics like this into the bunkers, huh…?”
“Who knows. Maybe my old M1 from back in the day is still floating around somewhere.”
“The thirty-cal, right?”
“Yeah. Hell, if there’s an M2 Browning around, why not that?”
Curtis drifted into old war stories, lost in memory.
Weapons from the Second World War weren’t all that common in this game, but when they did show up, most of them were German-made.
The reason was simple: the Zeroth Reich had been built on the conspiracy theory that Adolf Hitler never actually died.
“Dad, this guy isn’t going to wake up for a while, right?”
“Probably not. He was pretty torn up.”
And now, right in front of us, a refugee carrying a hard-to-find German pistol had appeared—while a faction like that was out there.
…I couldn’t help but be suspicious.
Sarah, Curtis, and James all had black hair, blue eyes, and white skin on top of it.
Assuming the refugee belonged to the Zeroth Reich… wasn’t I the one in the most danger here?
“What are you thinking so hard about?”
A finger poked my cheek. I turned.
Ever since I’d built the shower, Sarah’s interest in me seemed to have climbed a few notches.
“…I was wondering where we should start searching, since we’ll need water for the garden plots too.”
“Tell me more.”
She’d probably latched onto me because I could keep filling in pieces of her little fantasy.
“Come on.”
“If you’re going to chatter, take it to another room. You’re interrupting his recovery.”
Curtis still hadn’t set the German pistol down. He was smiling, calm and quiet.
The problem was how well that look suited him.
He could’ve passed for a Zeroth Reich officer without anyone batting an eye.
James too—change the clothes, stick a hat on him, and… haa.
It made me uneasy.
Every last one of them had the exact appearance the Zeroth Reich loved.
“Hurry up.”
I only got a moment to brood before Sarah grabbed me and hauled me off to another room.
Sometime while I wasn’t looking, they’d scavenged iron bed frames and gotten the place organized.
Find a mattress and it would make a decent bedroom.
“Alright then. So—what’s the plan for the garden plots, Technician?”
I hesitated.
What if the Omen family got recruited by the Zeroth Reich before I did?
Sure, we’d been through a lot together since we first met, and the goodwill was there… but people classified as “superior stock” like the Omens would get the absolute best treatment.
All three of them had combat experience, so they’d get good rooms, good beds, even plenty of food.
Maybe better living conditions than anything I could offer them right now—or ever.
A life of bossing around Asians like me and other whites as slaves while surrounding themselves with the latest tech…
“Sarah.”
“Yeah?”
“The part about worrying over the garden plots… that was a lie.”
I had to get ahead of this.
At the very least I needed these three on my side—or failing that, Sarah, the Achilles’ heel of the other two.
If Sarah stayed wary of the Zeroth Reich, the other two would naturally side with her.
James still carried the scar of his divorce.
And to Curtis, Sarah was his one and only granddaughter.
“…You’re looking pretty serious. Is this about that guy?”
“Yeah. Have you… ever heard of the Third Reich?”
“Doesn’t ring a bell. ‘Reich’ sounds pretty German, though.”
“What about Nazis?”
“Obviously. Didn’t Grandpa ever tell you he was a veteran?”
“No, whenever he talks about weapons he always—”
“Those are his war stories. I hear them all the time too.”
I sat down on the opposite side of the iron frame from Sarah.
We faced each other.
“Then… if I told you there are people down in the underground who still worship the Nazis, would you believe me?”
“…We just got bitten by a spider that shrugs off bullets, chased by some weird cultists, and then ran into mutated bats. Come on.”
Sarah shrugged.
She smiled at me.
“Nazi fanboys sound like the most realistic thing we’ve seen.”
“…They call themselves the Zeroth Reich. People like us just call them Nazi bastards and leave it at that.”
“How long have you even been down here to know this much?”
I couldn’t exactly say two thousand hours.
“…Long enough. That’s all I’ll say.”
“Hmm.”
“The Zeroth Reich defines black hair, blue eyes, and white skin as the master race.”
“Wasn’t it blond hair and blue eyes?”
“Adolf Hitler was the one and only Führer of the Third Reich, and Adolf Hitler had…”
“Black hair and blue eyes.”
“Exactly.”
“So does that mean only having one ball is superior too?”
…Huh?
“Grandpa was dead serious when he said the guy was missing one. Or maybe he was a eunuch.”
“That… I don’t know. Never heard that far.”
“Well, anyway. A one-balled dictator is still alive, hiding out in some secret bunker?”
“That’s right. You know about it?”
“Grandpa used to tell stories like that too. Want me to go get him?”
“No, no. Just… hear me out first?”
Sarah gave a little smile.
Then she propped her chin on her hand and looked at me with an odd light in her eyes.
“You’re serious.”
“I know. Keep going. I’m listening.”
It turned into a longer story than I’d planned.
How they’d built their own bunkers and gone underground to meet the Adolf Hitler who might still be alive.
How they kept teams of expert tunnel diggers so they could link bunker to bunker.
How they stockpiled supplies, animals, even cutting-edge technology to prepare for life underground…
“High-tech Nazis.”
“Pretty much.”
“Bunker-obsessed.”
“Yeah.”
“And people like me—black hair, blue eyes, white—get to treat every other race like slaves?”
“…That’s right.”
Sarah’s expression turned complicated.
The corner of her mouth twitched like she was already picturing life in the Zeroth Reich.
“So. Why are you telling me all this?”
“…I need certainty.”
“Certainty about what?”
“That if that refugee really is with the Zeroth Reich, you won’t take his side.”
“Huuung.”
That reaction was lukewarm too.
She made a little nasal sound, crossed her legs, and kept watching me…
Was that her way of saying she wouldn’t side with me?
Maybe I should have made the pitch more hostile from the start.
“Why me?”
“What?”
The sudden question caught me off guard. I tilted my head.
Sarah sighed and patted the space beside her twice.
Come here, it meant.
“Don’t just sit there squirming. Get over here. I’m not going to eat you.”
Back when she was groaning over a wrecked leg, I’d thought I still ranked higher than the Omen family.
Looking at it now, outside of knowledge and crafting I probably couldn’t even beat Sarah.
A woman who’d trained like hell under a military father just to enlist in the U.S. Army.
Me, nerfed down to the absolute floor on base stats, with tactical knowledge that amounted to whatever the game AI handed me.
If she decided to kill me right here…
“The question I asked earlier…”
“Why me.”
“…Why you?”
“You’ve got Dad. You’ve got Grandpa.”
How was I supposed to explain this?
That if the daughter and granddaughter stood with me, the other two would have no choice but to follow?
That sounded way too mechanical.
It reeked of those games where you marry the daughter, the wife, the niece, and the in-laws all at once, castrate the vassals, and knock up the daughters-in-law to secure heirs—one of the tamer comments you saw under those titles.
So instead—
“Because I saved your life.”
“You did, yeah.”
“And, uh… without me, you can’t grow that big garden you want…?”
“Sounds like those slaves you mentioned could handle that just fine. Hell, using slaves might be easier.”
The look she gave me was scary.
Half-lidded, ice-cold eyes, like I already looked like yellow monkey number one to her…
“Is there anything more convincing than ‘you owe me your life’?”
“Uh, umm…”
“Come on. What if I turn into a Nazi conspiracy theorist?”
“I’ll—I’ll do anything. Anything within my power!”
“Oh-ho?”
“Garden plots, a private farm, a private shower, a private bathroom—hell, I’ll deck a whole room out like a hotel suite. Once we find a mattress the bed’s easy.”
“True… you’d probably have to get promoted in the Zeroth Reich just to earn that much. Anything else?”
“A buffet where you can eat whatever you want—what about a movie theater? I can build one as long as we find the parts.”
“Now we’re talking.”
“And also… and, um… uuuh…”
I started counting on my fingers and trailing off. Sarah finally burst out laughing.
She kept smacking her thigh.
“You want me on your side that badly?”
“…Honestly? Yes.”
“Be a little more honest. There’s a more important reason than all that, isn’t there?”
“A more important reason?”
“You saved my life, built me a shower so I could stay clean, shared food, started a garden with me… it seems pretty obvious from where I’m sitting.”
She prodded me with her elbow, laughing, closing the distance little by little.
With muscle and bulk that didn’t lose to a man’s, she gradually pinned me into the corner.
“Say it. Why I’m so important. Why someone who can make bullets and toilets and garden plots is clinging to a woman who got wrecked by one spider.”
My lips trembled.
Her weight pressing down made it hard to breathe.
So—
“W-well—”
I was about to tell her the real reason.
About to confess that if I got the daughter on my side, the other two would come free as a package deal—
“Hyunwoo, the refugee’s awake—whoa.”
I couldn’t decide whether the timing was good or terrible.
James cleared his throat and turned his head.
“What exactly were you two, ahem, doing…?”
“Oh my god, Dad…”
“Ah, nothing. Really.”
I stood up, brushing myself off.
Acting like nothing had happened.
“I’ll be right there. Is he okay?”
“N-no, no. Y-you can keep talking with my daughter if you want.”
“I’ve got a few things I need to ask the refugee.”
“Well, if that’s the case…”
James shrugged. Sarah sighed and dusted herself off too.
A little more pressure and I might have ended up signing a slave contract under duress.
But I needed the Omen family that firmly on my side.
I let James go first, then caught Sarah’s hand.
“W-what?”
Short black hair.
Flawless pale skin.
Bright blue eyes that almost glittered.
I squeezed the hand of the perfect Zeroth Reich poster girl.
“I meant it when I said I’d do anything… so please. Be on my side.”
I had to drag a clear answer out of that complicated expression.
I tugged her hand.
“Please.”
“…Alright.”
It was a lukewarm answer, but an answer all the same.
I let out a breath and gently let go of her hand.
“That’s a promise.”
“We’ll talk later about exactly what I’m getting out of this.”
She gave me a light shove between the shoulder blades and pushed me into the room where the refugee was.
But why were both of her hands…
“You’re here.”
Curtis’s easygoing face greeted me, German pistol already aimed.
The refugee sat frozen stiff, blinking frantically like he was begging someone to stop this.
“What are you…?”
“Can’t exactly play nice with someone who doesn’t know a damn thing. Not when we know what he is.”
“Especially after we already got jumped by that church.”
James agreed, hanging an assault rifle around his neck.
He wrapped both hands around the optic and braced the stock against his forearm.
“Go on. You said you had questions.”
“Alright. Then…”
I dragged a chair over and sat down in front of the refugee.
Of course he wasn’t even bad-looking.
Once the wounds healed he might turn out pretty handsome. Goddamn it.
If he really was something like a Zeroth Reich officer…
“Name?”
“H-Hans.”
Hans, huh.
“When someone asks your name, you give the whole thing. Surname.”
Before I could continue, Curtis growled and pushed the pistol a little farther forward.
“H-Hans Anderson. Hans Anderson.”
“Good. Hans Anderson…”
With the three people who might or might not be on my side standing behind me, I opened my mouth.
“Say ‘Adolf Hitler is a son of a bitch.’”