Chapter 16. The Road to Daejeon.
Chapter 16. The Road to Daejeon.
Everyone except the old man, who was driving, and myself had fallen asleep, likely from exhaustion.
"By the way, do you have any idea where exactly we're headed?"
"To be honest, there's no exact destination. We only had the vague idea of heading toward Daejeon."
"Good grief, so you can act without a plan too, huh."
"For now, we don't know what we'll find along the way, and the cars we've had to abandon here and there will keep us from moving fast."
I pulled a chocolate bar out of my pocket, split it with the old man, and continued the conversation.
"Now that I think about it, you seem to have known Chaeyeon since you were kids. Are the two of you lovers?"
"Well..."
It wasn't like we had much else to talk about on the road. I started telling the old man about my past.
"...And that's how it happened. When I finally returned, the world had turned into a damn freak show."
"Hahaha! So you're a hopeless romantic after all."
Thinking it was a lame joke, I turned my head and looked out the car window.
Then the old man's face grew a bit serious, and he started talking.
"You know I run a hardware store and tinker around making all sorts of things, right?"
"Yeah, I've heard."
"Truth is, I've been picking up a lot of strange chatter ever since I built a radio and started scanning the channels."
'I knew you were good with your hands, but you can even build a radio?'
"Well, things like 'this area has a lot of looters,' or 'we're a group surviving at this location.' That kind of thing."
"Is there something specific you're trying to say?"
"The location all that talk on the radio is centered on... it's Daejeon."
I could roughly grasp what the old man was trying to get at. He probably meant the situation there was extremely chaotic. Meaning there was a chance Chaeyeon's parents might have gotten caught up in it...
"I get the gist of what you're saying. I'll tell the rest of the group. Anyway, what did you do before all this, old man?"
Honestly, I'd wanted to ask for a while. A man who owned a building and ran a supermarket-slash-hardware store on the ground floor.
"Just... lived an ordinary life. Met my wife, worked our asses off to earn money, and were preparing for retirement."
The old man had actually served in the military for a long time, and I'd heard he'd been dispatched here and there throughout his service. After that, he retired and planned to spend his remaining years in peace.
"But... how did you buy a whole building on a soldier's salary?"
"Your questions are painfully realistic, aren't they... Truth is, my wife was pretty sharp with numbers. She was good at investing, a woman who was way too good for me."
In a world that turned out like this, what about his wife and kids... The old man must have read my expression, because he gave a bitter smile and kept talking.
"My wife passed away from an illness, and my one and only daughter..."
The old man cut himself off, took a sip of water, and then continued.
"Maybe I should be grateful they died before this godawful world came to be. In times like these, it's a blessing. I only have to look after my own hide now."
He must have suffered losing his child and his wife, but I could feel the complex emotion—that now, in a way, it was a relief. Maybe that was why he looked after Chaeyeon, a complete stranger, so attentively.
"It's about time we woke the kids up. The world may be a freak show, but we still gotta eat, don't we?"
We woke the group up, pulled the car over onto the shoulder of the highway, and started eating.
"Everyone, listen up while you eat. I'll fill you in on what I heard on the radio."
As I explained the details, I glanced over at Chaeyeon and saw her hands trembling slightly.
The abandoned vehicles on the road, along with streets that were pockmarked or broken here and there, slowed us down far more than expected.
"We're planning to spend the night at a rest stop just before we enter Daejeon."
"Sihu, if you're holding back for my sake, I'm okay. I've braced myself for it, to a degree..."
* * * * * * * *
Just like that, we arrived at the last rest stop before the tollgate that marked the entrance to Daejeon.
Everyone saw to their own training, the old man checked over the vehicles and such, and we started clearing the area to make camp for the night.
'I can sense presences inside the rest stop building. They definitely would have heard us, so why aren't they doing anything?'
I didn't sense any killing intent from them, only fear. The simple wish that we would quietly just leave.
"I can feel presences deeper inside the rest stop. Fortunately, it doesn't seem like they're planning to harm us."
Once everyone was done with their tasks, we ate dinner and turned in for the night without posting a watch. I deliberately let our guard down, wanting to see what the people hiding there would do.
As dawn broke and the sky began to lighten, the sound of footsteps came from somewhere.
— Trudge... trudge...
'About five or six of them. What are they after?'
At my signal, the rest of us all burst out of our tents.
"What's your goal, creeping up all stealthy like that?"
The ones who'd been sneaking up on us were holding weapons—steel pipes, kitchen knives, and the like. But oddly, I still felt no killing intent from them.
"If you don't want your asses kicked, hand over all your food and get the hell out!!!"
"We saw everything you were eating, so don't even think about playing dumb!!!"
"Fine. I'll give you enough food to eat."
Right in front of their eyes, I opened up the subspace and started pulling out rations. They realized I was an Awakened and flinched, but they didn't back down.
"If you don't wanna get your asses kicked, take out all the food now!!!"
I ignored their words and stomped my foot on the ground, concentrating my aura into it.
— Craaash!!!
The asphalt road where I'd stomped cracked and split, forming a crater.
"I have a rough idea what this is about. It's because of the people hiding over there, isn't it?"
When they realized I knew about the people hiding, they started to panic.
"Wh-What the hell are you talking about!!! We'll let you live, so just give us something to eat and get the hell out!!!"
Back on Titan, there were also people who resorted to this kind of thing, desperate just to survive each day. Yet they were the type who at least never committed murder.
Using my aura, I snatched every weapon they were holding away from them.
"I can take a guess. Why are you doing this? It's because of the ones hiding back there, isn't it?"
"What kind of bullshit have you been spouting this whole—"
"Why do you think I subdued you all instead of just killing you? I could simply kill you and then go wherever those people are hiding."
Only then did it seem to sink in. They collapsed to their knees, trembling like leaves, and started talking.
"W-we're... we're sorry. They haven't done anything wrong. We were just so hungry, it was all my doing... please, just spare them."
"I knew you were there from the start. I was simply curious. I have no intention of killing anyone, so bring them all out here."
After hesitating for a moment, the man started bringing out all the members of his group. Among them were elderly people and young children. Chaeyeon and Jia took care of the kids, while the old man saw to the others.
"We actually came here from Daejeon. By the time we'd made it this far, we'd run out of food, and the rest stop's supplies were gone too."
It turned out they had been scraping by on dwindling rations, and when we showed up, their plan was to take only our food and send us on our way.
'These are people who have never, not once, taken a life.'
If that's possible in a world like this, it boils down to exactly two cases. Either you possess overwhelming strength, or you're so weak you couldn't do anything anyway.
'These people are the latter.'
"Anyway, what made you all come this far from Daejeon? It must have been difficult moving this many people."
I'd noticed it when we arrived at the rest stop, but the cars here had apparently been abandoned for quite a while, given the layers of grimy dust caked on the windshields. If so, that meant these people had walked here...
They must have remembered the situation in Daejeon, because they suddenly started sweating cold, their pupils shaking violently.
"That place... it's a living hell. There are so many zombies, and there are people who... brutally murder their fellow humans."
"We came from Seoul, but we had our share of zombie hordes and looters there too..."
Before I could finish, the man urgently cut me off and continued talking.
"Looters are nothing like them!!! There are insane bastards who spout utter, nonsensical bullshit and torture people to death in the most brutal ways..."
"They torture and kill people, you say?"
"Yes, that's right... They claim they've received some 'revelation' and are nothing short of complete lunatics..."
He went on with his story. He said they thought they were a rescue team at first.
A few people with kind faces approached them, rescued them, took them to what seemed like a shelter, gave them food and counseling, and generally looked after them.
But as they stayed, they gradually began to see their true motives. Other women were subjected to terrible things, and the men were brutally murdered as 'sacrifices,' he said.
"That's basically... a cult..."
"Sounds like cultists..."
Hearing his words, we both spoke at the same time, as if we had guessed it. These kinds of malign religious lunatics are incredibly tiresome to deal with. Rational logic doesn't work on them. It's no coincidence that, even in the real world, it's so hard to pull people back to normal life once they've fallen into a cult.
"But couldn't you just avoid them and live somewhere else?"
"I don't know how they do it, but they kept bringing in survivors from somewhere."
'Do they have a scouting-related skill?'
"Also, though we don't know the details, there are multiple factions in Daejeon. In the end, even if we wanted to dodge those bastards and head to another faction, we had no idea what the situation was, so we just fled..."
'So the factions are locked in a power struggle? These people might be a bigger problem than the zombies...'
"Whatever the case, we intend to go to Daejeon. There are people there we need to find."
As a modest act of consideration, I gave them a decent amount of food, and our group got ready to head out.
"I won't give you any lip service—no empty promises about 'protecting you' or 'wait for us.' If you want to survive, figure it out on your own. This is the bare minimum of consideration."
"We're sorry... and thank you..."
Leaving them behind, we boarded the vehicle and started moving.
A short while later, we came upon a road completely blocked by vehicles.
'It feels oddly like someone blocked it deliberately...'
"Hold on. Slow the vehicle down and approach carefully."
"What's that for? Because of the cars blocking the way ahead? Let's just clear them out and go."
"No... it feels like someone blocked the road with these cars on purpose."