Chapter 2. First Outing and Survivors.
Chapter 2. First Outing and Survivors.
No matter how thoroughly the world had collapsed, the people who survived still had to eat.
'Still, we're only two months in. The surrounding area won't have been completely stripped bare yet.'
Under normal conditions, survivors would stretch whatever food they had at home and only venture out to scavenge once it ran out.
No one with a stockpile was going to risk going outside voluntarily.
Of course, most of them were probably hitting that wall about now.
Either they'd already gone out and died, or they'd actually pulled it off.
From what I'd seen while I was prowling around, other survivors seemed to be scraping together food while taking out zombies along the way.
Naturally, not every story had a happy ending.
I'd come across bodies wearing makeshift armor cobbled together from newspaper and cardboard boxes.
— Krrk... Kraaah!!!
The sound of zombies scrambling toward me—a frantic rush closing the distance.
I swung my blade in a clean horizontal arc from left to right.
Five charging men—no, five zombies—split apart at the waist, their upper bodies toppling away from their legs.
— Krrkgh... Krurghh...
'Still moving even after they've lost everything below the torso...? Practically undead.'
I crushed the heads of creatures that couldn't even put up a fight, then kept walking.
The supermarket I arrived at had already been picked over. A good portion of the goods were gone.
Corpses littered every corner—some zombies, some what looked like former survivors.
The signs were unmistakable: scavengers had been here before me.
"But unless you actually turn a place into a base, there's no way to haul all of it off... And it's too exposed to make this a proper base anyway."
You couldn't secure a location this big without a sizable group.
And this wasn't exactly the sort of country where civilians could just pick up a gun.
First things first: I stashed most of the food in my subspace, leaving behind only a token amount for the next survivors who might come through.
It wasn't as if stockpiling extra meant I'd actually eat it. Honestly, even back on Titan, food never really interested me.
Every waking moment there had been about scrambling just to stay alive.
After sweeping most of the supermarket and pocketing a modest supply of clothing, I decided to check the rooftop.
— Guuoooh...
'Why do corpses and zombies always cluster on the rooftops? Did they try to escape and fail? It doesn't look like they died on their way outside.'
— Skraaakkkk!!!
When I looked closer, I noticed a mix of people in store uniforms and customers.
'Hm... So they set up a defensive position on the rooftop, but some people who'd already been bitten slipped in with the group and turned?'
In the early days of the outbreak, no one would have known exactly how the virus spread, and in an emergency that frantic, nobody had the luxury of checking every single person.
I let my gaze linger on them for a moment—something close to pity, but nothing stronger than that.
'I can't save everybody. And I don't have a reason to.'
I settled at the edge of the rooftop and took in the surroundings. What met my eyes was jarring.
Cars arranged like barricades. Survivors glimpsed through windows here and there.
'If something like this really broke out across Korea, it makes sense that Seoul—by far the most populous city—would have taken the worst of it.'
I sat on the rooftop eating some canned food I'd grabbed along the way, turning the thought over.
Truth was, I'd started noticing things that didn't add up well before I reached the rooftop.
How exactly had all these people gotten up here in the first place? And why, of all places, had so many of them died on the rooftop?
That was when I finally took a hard look around.
'Gunpowder marks...'
Did a firefight break out between survivors up here? No, that couldn't be it.
This country was a gun-free nation. Private citizens couldn't own firearms.
'Which means... a rescue team came. That's why people gathered on the rooftop. But then someone among the survivors started to turn, and it all fell apart.'
There had to be some sort of shelter where they were consolidating rescued civilians. But to find out exactly where that was, I'd need to locate other survivors and ask.
'If memory serves, there's a Lotte Mart near Seocho Station. I'll make that my first objective. A building that size... there's bound to be someone either nearby or inside.'
Strictly speaking, I could have approached the survivors I'd already spotted from the rooftop.
But in the end, I wasn't going to take responsibility for them.
If they could point me toward a shelter or another survivor group, sure—I was willing to give them a little food for the information.
'Though there's no way they'd stay satisfied with just that. That's how humans work: once you start taking, it becomes normal, and then you start demanding more.'
I'd dealt with that mindset plenty of times back in the other world—save people and they'd immediately turn around and demand your supplies.
With that, I leaped from the rooftop and started walking toward the Lotte Mart at Seocho Station.
'Alright, but think about it: a weird virus spawning zombies is one thing. But a so-called "System" just conveniently showing up at the same time?'
The more I turned it over, the more holes I saw.
When I'd checked the news, the existence of Awakened had been confirmed not long after the virus broke out.
Obviously, the government wouldn't have sat on its hands—they must have investigated them immediately, fools or not.
Because these weren't people who'd been special all along. They were ordinary civilians until one morning the System turned them into Awakened.
Then there was the other oddity: assuming the zombies came about either naturally or artificially, every time I cut them down I sensed a faint trace of mana.
Either these creatures had been created by someone who already possessed mana, or the System really had intervened.
When I came back through the dimensional boundary from the other world, could something have gone wrong in the crossing? I mulled it over for a long while.
But in the end, I couldn't come up with a satisfying answer, so I set the whole question aside.
'When something strange shows up, I cut it down and protect my own. The same thing I've always done.'
That was about when, after I'd been walking for some time—
"Kyaaaah!!!"
"Agh— Get the hell away from me!!"
'More survivors, huh... Better go check it out.'
— Srraaakkkk!!!!!
I cut through every last zombie and planted myself in front of them.
"I don't know who you are, but thank you—seriously... Are you an Awakened, sir?"
"Well... Something like that."
It was a group of three—one woman, two men. They looked a little underfed, probably from scraping by and rationing whatever they could find.
"So, how did you three end up out here?"
"Honestly, we'd been hiding in a cafe just down the street, but we ran out of food and came out to find something to eat. We figured, if we're going to starve to death anyway, might as well make a break for it."
"Right! Also, I'm twenty-three, and my name's Choi Min-cheol. Thank you again for saving us!"
The leader was apparently a twenty-three-year-old man named Choi Min-cheol. With him were Kim Seok-hyeon, the same age, and twenty-one-year-old Kim Jia.
"Seok-hyeon and I were classmates, and we first met Jia at the cafe. Somehow we've managed to stick together through all of it. If you don't mind me asking—where are you coming from?"
"I'm Cheon Sihu, twenty-four years old. Came from near Gangnam Station. Right now I'm heading to the Lotte Mart in the Seocho area. But was it just the three of you in that cafe?"
"When the situation started spiraling and things outside got chaotic, Seok-hyeon and I chose to stay put. We figured there was no point going out and getting caught up in it... Looking back, I think that was the right call. Jia ended up staying with us on the spur of the moment, and we've been together ever since."
"All things considered, you got lucky."
"You're older than me—please, there's no need to be so formal. And, um... would it be alright if I just called you 'hyung'?"
"Yeah, whatever's comfortable."
I gave them a brief rundown of my situation: I was out here looking for survivors and gathering information.
That was when Kim Jia, who'd been quiet beside me, spoke up.
"If it wouldn't be too much trouble... could you possibly take us with you? I promise we won't be a burden!"
I didn't particularly want to take responsibility for them. But it was only a couple of stops' distance at most—a little consideration like that wouldn't cost me much.
We walked on, talking easily among ourselves.
"Hyung, were you in some kind of special forces unit or something? Or is every Awakened that incredible...?"
"I just learned to fight because I was fighting for my life."
That wasn't a lie. The blade-work I picked up was all about survival—on Titan.
The kid clearly thought I was joking and snickered.
"Heh heh... well, I guess in times like these you don't really have a choice, right?"
Maybe she couldn't stand the grim atmosphere, because Kim Jia jumped in with another question.
"So, what did you used to do before all this, oppa?"
"Was still in school, actually. Got a job offer through the open recruitment cycle. Was about to start working."
"Oh wow... that's amazing! You landed a job before you even graduated!"
"Does any of that even mean anything now, with the world the way it is...?"
First things first: the sun was going down, so we needed to head into a nearby building, hunker down for the night, and set out again in the morning.
"Dark's coming on. Let's hole up in a motel or some building nearby and move again at first light."
I led them into a nearby building and pulled some food from my subspace to share out.
"Where on earth did you... ah, never mind. Thank you, hyung!"
He must have found my trick of pulling things out of thin air fascinating, because he kept stealing glances behind me.
"Thank you, oppa! I might not be able to help with the fighting, but I'll handle all the grunt work!"
"Thank you... hyung, I'll eat well."
"So, what happened to everyone else? How come it's just you three?"
"...Honestly, we've heard a lot of bad rumors. Hyung, have you ever heard of looters?"
I didn't need to hear the stories to guess.
In a world like this, if you were outmatched and outgunned, there was no answer.
"Yeah... just hearing the word tells me what kind of bastards they are. Alright, let's get some sleep."
It was my second day back on Earth. After finding survivors and talking with them, I let myself drift off.
Morning came, and we stepped out of the building to make our way toward Seocho Station.