The Harvest of Greed
Yeongsik couldn't get his bearings.
*Twakwakwakwakwa!*
Every time the gatling gun belched fire, zombies burst apart without fail and crumpled to the ground.
*Twakwakwakwakwa!*
"Ah…."
*Twakwakwakwakwa!*
Each time the barrel spun and spat flame, the zombies collapsed in droves, swept away like a wave going out with the tide.
The gatling gun roared on without pause, firing at metronome intervals. The rounds sometimes lacked the punch to finish a target in a single hit, but Yeongsik could suddenly understand why Hyperion had chosen vacuum compression bullets.
Compressing air into projectiles… no need to worry about running out of ammo.
Even in an apocalypse, firearms remained a genuine threat to the Awakened. But weapons had one glaring flaw: they were consumables. Three years had passed since the world fell. No factory was still churning them out, so supplies were bound to dwindle, slowly but surely.
The shelter kept its own stockpile too, but it was hoarded like an emergency reserve, spent only in desperation.
Yeongsik, however, had no reason to worry about ammunition.
*Twakwakwakwakwa!*
No zombie in existence could resist the air rounds hammering into them without mercy. Held on a fixed point of aim, that firepower could bring down an entire building.
"What in the…."
Every zombie in the area had been wiped off the map. Hyperion had even shut off its stealth and suppressor functions, as if deliberately inviting the horde in for a bombardment.
The zombies that came shuffling and drooling toward the noise fared no better than the ones already there. All of them burst apart or took holes through their skulls and lay themselves down on the cold ground.
Slaughter.
That was, quite literally, the only word for it.
*Twakwakwakwakwa!*
When the last swarm of zombies fell, silence descended over the area.
Not a single one left.
"Heh heh."
To be this overwhelmingly powerful….
Just then, the hatch mechanism on Hyperion's underside whirred to life.
*Pssshhhh— click-clunk—*
"Huh?"
The floor split open, and wind came rushing up between Yeongsik's legs.
*Whiiiirr—*
The seat Yeongsik was sitting in began to lower. And then he understood.
"You're telling me to get off?"
Roughly grasping the situation, Yeongsik hopped down from the seat and disembarked safely. At the very least, Hyperion had lowered its altitude this time, unlike before. Yeongsik swiped a finger under his nose.
S-still, maybe they were getting a little closer, weren't they?
Even such a tiny, negligible gesture of consideration left Yeongsik genuinely moved.
*Thunk.*
"Hm?"
A sack and a pair of tongs dropped down at his feet.
"Ah…!"
Yeongsik realized exactly what was being asked of him.
He was being told to harvest Blood Stones — the rare crystallizations found inside zombie bodies.
"…."
Yeongsik surveyed the surroundings, littered sloppily with chunks of zombie flesh, and broke out in a cold sweat.
"F-for the next upgrade, please, a automatic harvester…!"
Surely he'd grant a request that reasonable, right?
Getting no answer from Hyperion, Yeongsik rolled up his sleeves and set off to collect the Blood Stones.
Well… at least there was no chance of getting ambushed by zombies during the harvest, which was one less thing to worry about.
***
"Boss… what the hell is that?"
"…."
"Am I seeing that right?"
"No idea, kid."
On the rooftop of a high-rise far from Yeongsik, four Awakened were watching the impossible scene unfolding in the distance through their scopes.
"That thing… what is it?"
"Haha. All I can do is laugh."
"An Awakening? Or some shelter ability user?"
"Whatever it is, this is no ordinary situation."
"How the hell are we supposed to deal with that?"
"…."
Their leader, the one supposed to be guiding them, was every bit as lost as they were.
"It's a direct order from the Leader. We can't afford to fail."
"This is insane."
"But he's alone, isn't he? How long's he going to stay up in that thing?"
"Let's take him out the moment he lands. Then that… that fighter jet is ours for the taking, right?"
*Gulp.*
The sound of someone swallowing hard made them all fall silent. Nobody said it out loud, but it went without saying that every one of them felt the same hunger.
A flying tank with power like that?
With just one such craft, this godforsaken world would hold no fear for them at all.
"He's landing! He's getting off!"
"Yes!"
"Looks like he came down to pick up Blood Stones. We just jump him now, right?"
"Right. By the time he spots us it'll already be too late. We take him out fast, before he can get back on that thing."
They climbed down from the rooftop and began closing in on Yeongsik with purpose.
The unidentified flying object had destroyed well over a thousand zombies by now, so collecting the Blood Stones alone would take him ages.
The craft hovered in the air, holding its position. Yeongsik hadn't noticed their approach in the slightest.
"Haha. Taking out one ordinary civilian who hasn't even Awakened? Easy money."
"Don't get cocky. If that guy gets back on the aircraft, there's nothing we can do about it."
"Let's go!"
Suppressing their excitement, they lunged at Yeongsik.
"Heh heh heh!"
"Whew—."
"Been a while since I tasted blood."
***
"Augh…."
Four lumps of meat lay at Yeongsik's feet.
"…."
They were the attackers, minced beyond recognition.
Yeongsik knew exactly who they'd been: the Awakened who worked under Yoo Byungtae. The ones who handled the dirty work, no less.
He could even understand why Byungtae kept men like that around. Running a shelter meant that not every day could be about doing good; sometimes the ugly work simply had to be done. And since the shelter couldn't just cast out every low-quality Awakened who showed up, putting them to use on such jobs wasn't a bad policy, all things considered.
But Yeongsik had never once imagined he'd be on the receiving end.
They'd been his comrades, after all.
Though they'd never realized it themselves, these were men whose lives Yeongsik had saved more times than he could count. Against the ever-stronger evolved variants, he'd drawn up countermeasures and shared tailored raid strategies so they could hunt safely.
"…."
He'd never expected them to stab him in the back like this.
"What a waste. Those Awakened died for nothing."
They may have been second-rate, but an Awakened was a source of strength for ordinary people just by existing.
"Not my problem anymore, though."
A shield user, a tracking specialist, a wind-blade user, and a physical-enhancement Awakened — they'd rushed him for nothing, and paid for it with their lives.
At first they'd merely surrounded him and made threats.
Perhaps they'd assumed he was safe to handle because he wasn't riding Hyperion. They had no idea that he was, in a sense, just another component of the ship.
Tch….
Yeongsik wiped the blood from his face with his sleeve.
That bastard Byungtae….
He'd been genuinely startled when the ambush began. A casual kick from one Awakened had sent a zombie's innards flying into his face, sliding down in a thick, dripping smear.
"Nothing more to say, is there? I've got a few questions. That flying thing up there — what is it? Did you make it with your ability?"
"…."
"What's with the silence? If you actually want to survive this, that attitude isn't going to get you anywhere."
"Hand over the craft along with the controls, and we'll let you walk away."
"Heh heh. Boss! Isn't that a bit too generous?"
"You know how we are — we've got a real talent for interrogation. So do us a favor and cooperate, yeah?"
They barely spared Yeongsik a glance. Their attention was fixed entirely on the unidentified flying craft — on Hyperion. Their eyes were brimming with greed.
"Just look at the finish on that thing. Gorgeous."
"It can just hover in midair like that? What is it? Is that even possible?"
"We've got people with superpowers too, so what's impossible, really?"
"From what I could see, the rate of fire's fast, but each round seems weaker than a normal gun."
"Hmm. Now that I've looked at the corpses up close, plenty of the wounds didn't penetrate."
"But there are no bullet casings anywhere?"
"Thinking about hauling this thing around gets my blood pumping, I'll tell you."
Until that moment, Hyperion had been drifting lazily through the air.
Then the tracking specialist leapt toward its underside. He must have intended to climb through the open hatch and into the pilot's seat.
And Hyperion's gatling gun opened fire.
"GRAAAAAAGH!"
The Awakened possessed physical abilities far beyond ordinary humans by definition, but apparently that meant nothing against Hyperion's iron spear.
The others scrambled to throw up barriers and ready their attacks the moment they saw their comrade reduced to a lump of meat—
*Twakwakwakwakwakwa—*
The shield endured Hyperion's barrage for a few precious seconds, but with more than ten thousand rounds a minute — over two hundred air bullets every second — hammering into it without mercy, it was crushed like tofu.
Ugh….
And the rest of the Awakened fared no better.
Just like that, Hyperion had turned them all into diced meat in the blink of an eye — yet somehow, Yeongsik got the feeling that Hyperion was in a bad mood.
How he could possibly sense the emotions of a hunk of machinery, Yeongsik had no idea.
Some kind of butler's intuition?
While inspecting Hyperion's outer armor up close, he'd spotted it — a scratch barely a centimeter long, left by the wind-blade user's final attack.
"Huh… so that's what that was about?"
After the area was cleared, he'd boarded Hyperion again and noticed the power output had risen, ever so slightly.
"So killing things alone generates power? No need to feed it Blood Stones at all?"
Blood Stones were the only currency in this apocalyptic world worth trusting. If he could save them, then—
*Shush-shk— shk— shush-shk—*
Not a chance.
The instant he climbed into the pilot's seat and had the thought, every last Blood Stone was sucked away.
"…."
Yeongsik gave up on thinking.
He had absolutely no intention of rebelling against a being that had just turned four Awakened into ground beef before he could blink.
> Initiating Auto-Hunt.
> Searching for optimal hunting location…
*Beep—*
Moments later, the screen printed out hundreds of red dots.
Hmm… that area's where evolved zombies show up all the time, though….
It made Yeongsik a little uneasy, but he didn't have the option to choose.
Hyperion streaked off in an instant toward where the zombie population was densest.
> Commencing combat.
*Whiiiirr— click-clunk.*
*Twakwakwakwa—*
Like a max-level player running rampant through a starter hunting ground, Hyperion swept the zombies up by the bucketload.
*Twakwakwakwa—*
The poor zombies began their sacrifice on the altar of Hyperion's growth. At least for a little while, the sight of them being so effortlessly shredded made it feel almost pitiable.
Watching it all, Yeongsik was left speechless.
The calamity that would soon arrive — the Zombie Wave.
Come to think of it… for Hyperion, wouldn't it just be one big experience-point event?