Chapter 2
Chapter 2
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 2
Chapter Title: The Beginning
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January 31, 2022. Monday. 8:30 AM.
The first day of the Lunar New Year holiday, excluding the weekend.
Apartment 301, a rundown hallway-style apartment.
A man sat alone in a dark, gloomy room.
A 30-year-old single man, Jang Jo-jun, who had no family, no lover, and no real-life friends. The only contacts saved on his phone were coworkers he had no desire to call.
He didn't set foot outside all day, subsisting on instant noodles for all three meals. His phone, which no one ever called, was shoved in a corner of the room. His eyes were glued to the TV screen.
Jo-jun was the very picture of a homebody. He holed up in his apartment for the entire holiday, sacrificing sleep to play the game he'd been neglecting.
"Haa... This is the life..."
Jo-jun let out a satisfied sigh as he cleanly lopped off a zombie's head with his katana on the TV screen.
Killing zombies mindlessly, without a single thought or worry, made all the world's troubles melt away.
He disliked alcohol and going outside, so his only hobby was quietly enjoying console games at home.
Especially since he could now play the new zombie parkour action survival game he'd left untouched for two months. He felt like he was flying high.
"This is so goddamn fun. Ah, I don't wanna go to work."
Of course, happy times don't last. Jo-jun felt a slight sense of urgency at this obvious fact. He wanted to see the game's ending before this blissful time ended in three days.
Once you start a console game, the longer you put it off, the less you want to play it. You gotta strike while the iron is hot.
"Haa... I wish everything would just go to hell... so I don't have to go to work..."
That was just a grumble, half a complaint born from not wanting to go to work.
But maybe God was listening to his muttering.
Or perhaps the collective desire of people who didn't want to return to their daily lives woke the dormant evil deity.
Right after Jo-jun uttered his complaint-laced lament, all of humanity heard a single voice.
⚙ SYSTEM NOTIFICATION ⚙ Thank you for enjoying 'The Earth'. DLC 'Eternal Night' is now downloading. We hope for your continued love and support. A completely emotionless, monotone system notification.
It was the voice of God, heard simultaneously by people all over the world.
"What the hell... Was that just a game sound?"
The emotionless, flat, monotone voice.
Unfortunately, Jo-jun, who was wearing headphones, dismissed God's voice as mere in-game static. It sounded too much like an AI voice from the game.
Moreover, before he could even focus on the voice, the zombies in the game were screaming incessantly, causing God's voice to fade halfway from his memory.
He simply brushed it off.
He had to swing his katana at the zombie swinging its arm at him right now.
The holiday would be over in a couple of days, so he focused on the game, thinking he needed to progress as quickly as possible. He didn't know when he'd ever get to concentrate on a game like this again after the holiday.
And so, three days passed.
It had been quite noisy outside, but he dismissed it, thinking it was just a neighborhood full of drunkards and crazy old people.
"Haa... That was so fulfilling..."
Jo-jun's heart swelled with pride, knowing he'd soon see the ending credits.
He was lost in the emotion of having finished a game within the Lunar New Year holiday and rubbed his eyes.
His eyes were sore from playing too much.
His ears were a bit stuffy from wearing headphones for so long.
"Ugh... Haaam... Maybe I should wash my face..."
He paused the game just before the ending and took off his headphones.
That's when he heard it—the now familiar sound of someone pounding on the front door with their fist.
THUD! THUD! THUD!
'Ah, damn... Is the guy from the 4th floor crazy again? He was quiet for a while, but he's throwing a fit again. Why does he always come here when he's drunk?'
A surprise visit from the drunkard upstairs.
He'd get so drunk he'd mix up the floors and come here, pounding on the door like he was going to break it down.
It didn't happen often, but it occurred two or three times a month.
The rundown hallway apartment he lived in was home to all sorts of weirdos, and the middle-aged man living directly above was one of them.
THUD! THUD! THUD!!!
But the sound of him pounding on the door was particularly intense today.
He'd usually stop and leave, but today he wasn't leaving and was pounding as if he was going to break the door.
THUD! THUD! THUD!
'Is he really crazy...'
There wasn't much left until the ending.
He just had to kill three more zombies.
He had poured all his precious holiday into this game, so he wanted to savor the ending alone. But the sudden visit from the crazy neighbor upstairs completely ruined his concentration.
"Haa, damn it. This is so annoying."
Eventually, he walked to the entrance and flung the door open.
He didn't want to get into a fight with a neighbor if he could help it, but the guy upstairs was such an asshole that he felt he could curse him out without a second thought.
"Hey, mister. I told you this isn't your..."
Jo-jun, who was about to tell him to get lost, froze when he saw the man standing dumbly at the front door. Something was wrong.
"Grrrgh..."
The man from upstairs was dripping with blood.
His eyes were filled with a white substance, as if he had cataracts, and his entire body was coated in blood—it was unclear whose.
Especially the yellowed teeth visible through his torn cheeks and the long gash on his forehead...
He looked just like the things Jo-jun had been watching on his screen until moments ago.
"A zombie...?"
"Grrrgh!!!"
The man from upstairs, now a zombie, gnashed his teeth and pushed his way into the apartment.
"Ugh! You son of a bitch!"
Naturally, the zombie tried to bite Jo-jun.
He was full of the intention to bite, enjoy the taste, and then turn him into one of his own kind!
"Graaaah!!!"
Jo-jun was knocked over by the invading zombie. The middle-aged zombie climbed on top of him as he lay on the floor.
Jo-jun wasn't the type to panic and scream at every shitty situation like this.
Having worked for years at a crazy small company, he was a man with the fortitude to accept situations as they appeared.
"Kraaaah!!!"
So, even with his neck on the verge of being bitten, he calmly did exactly what the character in his game had done.
Nothing special. He just twisted his body with all his might and slammed his elbow into the zombie's jaw as hard as he could.
CRACK! CRUNCH!
A sickening crunch echoed as the elbow strike connected, and the zombie's jaw bent at a strange angle as it was flung to the side.
"You fucking bastard! Even after you're dead, you're causing a racket in front of someone else's house!"
He sprang to his feet and delivered a powerful kick to the neck of the middle-aged man who had become a zombie.
After kicking him three or four times and mercilessly stomping on his neck, the zombie writhed and trembled violently.
"You damn bastard! I wanted to beat the crap out of you anyway, perfect timing! Die!"
Jo-jun quickly locked the front door before more zombies could gather.
If a swarm of zombies came at him when he was unarmed and defenseless, it would be game over.
After closing the door, Jo-jun scrambled to the kitchen and grabbed a perfectly clean frying pan, not a speck of grease on it. Then, he swung it at the head of the zombie, which was still preoccupied with the floorboards.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! THWACK!
"Grrrghk..."
The zombie, its cervical spine shattered by Jo-jun's kicks and unable to even stand up, could only squirm helplessly. It couldn't put up any resistance as Jo-jun's attacks rained down on it.
In the meantime, the zombies that had gathered in front of the entrance howled grotesquely, pounding and scratching at the door.
"Get lost, all of you! You fucking bastards!"
"Grrrgh!!!"
Those weak and stupid zombies had no way to break down the front door right away. So, he decided to ignore their cries.
He just kept smashing the head of the trembling zombie with his frying pan. Until its movements completely stopped.
Soon, the zombie's head was half-crushed and mangled.
SPLAT!
A stream of putrid blood spurted from its shattered skull.
"Ugh... Ptooey, damn it. So disgusting..."
The blood splattered onto Jo-jun's face. Only then could he stop swinging his arm. The zombie's head was completely crushed. The frying pan was so bent it was beyond recognition.
"Huff... Damn it... What the hell is going on..."
He wiped the blood from his face with the back of his hand and looked down at the motionless zombie with a disgusted expression.
A foul, acrid smell of blood filled the apartment.
Jo-jun rummaged through his coat pocket, pulled out a cigarette, and lit it in front of the corpse of the dead man from upstairs.
For some reason, the cigarette he rarely smoked was incredibly tempting today.
As he exhaled the smoke, something floated up before his eyes.
⚙ SYSTEM NOTIFICATION ⚙ Level has increased by 1. A class is being generated. Class: Cultist Please select a class skill. Achievement Unlocked! 'First Kill!' Achievement reward has been granted. You have earned 5 Coins for eliminating a zombie. He exhaled a puff of cigarette smoke and casually tossed the frying pan he was still holding aside, then rubbed his forehead.
⚔ STATUS ⚔ ⚡ Strength: 13 💨 Agility: 12 ✨ Magic Power: 10 💪 Stamina: 11 🍀 Luck: 666 🛡️ Willpower: 18 "Haa... Am I the one who's crazy..."
The status window soon disappeared.
"What the hell is going on..."
His hands, his clothes, and the entrance were all smeared with the zombie's blood.
It was a disgusting and unsanitary sight.
What was even worse was the stench emanating from the dead corpse and the thick, cloying smell of blood.
"Haa, this son of a bitch... Why does he have to crawl to my house even after he's dead?"
He smoked the rest of the cigarette down to the butt and then stubbed it out on the dead zombie's body.
Smushing the cigarette made him feel like he was at least masking the smell of the rotting corpse a little.
"Ugh... When am I going to clean this up?"
Just thinking about cleaning up the zombie's corpse made his stomach churn.
He scratched his head and eventually decided to ignore the immediate problem.
"Huff."
He casually walked to the bathroom.
He washed his hands and wiped the blood off his face.
After washing his face, he went back and sat down in front of the TV.
He unpaused the game and killed the few remaining zombies to reach the ending.
He hunted down the zombies with his katana, killing them methodically, like a machine.
THE END.
The TV screen turned black and the ending credits began to roll.
Jo-jun stared at the screen for a moment, then lifted his head toward the ceiling and closed his eyes.
A profound sense of reality washed over him. The deep afterglow of the game's conclusion, which he had been able to see after sacrificing his entire holiday.
Jo-jun sat perfectly still for a long time, savoring it.
After enjoying the afterglow for about ten minutes, he got up again and approached the dead man from upstairs.
Actually, until a moment ago, he couldn't tell if all this was a dream or reality. But seeing the corpse again, it was clear this was not a dream.
It wasn't some nightmarish dream. This was the reality right in front of him.
There was still a corpse soaking the entrance floor in putrid blood.
Jo-jun began to wonder why this was happening to him.
He checked the cell phone he had shoved in a corner and hadn't looked at for days.
[Emergency Disaster Message (132)]
There were disaster warning messages and several scattered messages asking for confirmation of his safety.
The messages all contained abnormal content. They were warnings about abnormal situations like zombies appearing. If he hadn't seen a zombie himself, he would have dismissed the content as nonsensical.
It seemed that even those messages had stopped coming after yesterday.
'A zombie virus, of all things, during the New Year.'
He checked the messages in more detail.
Among the hundred or so disaster messages, there were a few with content even more bizarre than the zombies.
'This world was actually a game... and a new content started three days ago...? What kind of bullshit is this...'
Reading the content of the messages, he was at his wit's end.
The world had ended, zombies were roaming around, and for some reason, there were a few humans like him who could see a status window.
Reading the messages that said the world had turned into a game, he could only sigh.
Jo-jun couldn't tell if he had gone crazy or if the world had.
He wondered if he had finally lost his mind after being cooped up in his room for days, killing zombies on his monitor.
However, no matter how much he thought about it, this horrific scene was too real to be a hallucination caused by insanity.
The zombie with its head blown open, the stench that felt like it was drilling into his nose, and on top of that, the cries of the other zombies still pounding on the entrance.
There was no way all of this was a hallucination or fake.
"Damn it to hell. Son of a bitch..."
Jo-jun realized that not only his own life but the lives of all humanity had plummeted into the abyss.