Apocalypse Superstar
If I could empty the subspace backpack...
Maybe this would work too.
I called the mannequins in.
"Anything with iron in it goes in the bags. Nails, tools, locks, hinges—I don't care what. Bring all of it."
A nod. Another. Another. Another.
"Time is life. Move."
They took off in a scatter of light, rapid footfalls—tat-tat-tat, then a thinner patter, then one last runner peeling away.
And then it was my turn.
▸ Cash Recovery
▸ Purchase
▸ Sell
▸ Repair
▸ StorageNEW!
Cash Recovery first.
The subspace backpack went light all at once.
Selling can wait until right before we head up. Empty the bag first.
I crammed every piece of luggage I was carrying into Storage.
"Hold on. This thing doesn't have a capacity limit?"
If Storage had a ceiling, it would have displayed one. I stuffed everything in, and not a single warning appeared.
"This is completely insane!"
A rank-one perk, through and through. The only reason I'd been farming in moderation until now was that the backpack never had room to spare. Like this, I could run back and forth and loot to my heart's content.
Then that other plan works too!
Bag emptied, I shot out of Hongje Station.
The farming stopped at the one-hour mark. This was only ever Plan B, and the time I'd been given was nowhere near generous.
"Hand the bags over."
They were only about half full. There simply hadn't been time to fill them. I took the bags off the mannequins, dumped the lot into Storage, and pulled back out nothing but the reinforcement materials I'd set aside.
And a repair while I'm at it.
The mannequins had picked up their share of nicks and dents. I couldn't spend Restoration on them—the cooldown ran twenty-four hours per body.
Lucky Repair can handle it.
Not only the items. The mannequins came out of it spotless.
"Up we go."
Nods answered me, one after another, and among them the little one dipped its head as if it had been waiting, then fired off a thumbs-up.
"Heh. Let's go."
The countdown ran out.
A low hum swelled around us.
Once again, the transfer spat us out inside a subway-station elevator. Lucky. Landing in the same place as last time was nothing but coincidence—we could just as easily have come out somewhere else entirely.
A metal clack.
Clear a path.
A nod.
First target: the shopping street we'd already stripped.
Last time I didn't spare it a second glance. To think it'd come to this. If I can just get that one thing—!
The mannequins closed on a knot of sleeping zombies, footsteps quiet as a pack of assassins.
Crack!
A silent ambush. Puppet 1 finished its mark in a single blow.
Thud—crunch!
Puppet 2 and Puppet 3 didn't manage the same. Even so, nothing aggroed. Silent Strike swallowed most of the impact, and the stagger held long enough that not one of them got a death-wail out.
Wham! Crack!
They folded before they could so much as react.
Into the alley.
We pushed on, clearing the way without a sound.
Sealed, this time.
The base where Sia and I had holed up was boarded over and plated with iron. Fine. We'd make a base somewhere else.
I set the little toy down first and showed it the map.
Move this way. If you spot anything dangerous, come back.
A nod, and the small body pattered off.
Keep advancing.
At the order, the mannequins moved like seasoned hunters. Puppet 1 slipped into the next cosmetics shop the way an assassin enters a room. Puppet 2 was already finished with the café and on its way out. Puppet 3 and Puppet 4 drove down the street that fed the shops. Each one doing its own job, and together they looked like a single team.
This one's sealed too?
The jokbal joint—the braised-trotter place—was shut tight as well. I'd hoped another whetstone might turn up. No such luck.
Then the handmade comb shop on the other side.
I needed to get into a restaurant first. If luck held, I might at least come away with a kitchen knife.
"Grrrrrk."
"Gluk."
The sleeping zombie's skull—
Crack! Split!
I broke it open without much effort.
There!
I picked the knife up in the kitchen. Its durability was too poor for a primary weapon, but as a sidearm it was more than decent.
Anything else worth taking...
I pocketed the cash at the register and started rifling the drawers.
What about this?
Hurl the thing sack and all, and it ought to blot out a zombie's line of sight. The weight was the flaw.
The real objective wasn't where it had been last time. Then, it had been the big sportswear store. This time it was the plaza farther in. Plenty of wide, tall buildings meant plenty more zombies—
Whack! Thud!
—but by now they weren't a threat at all.
Right about here.
Out in the middle of the plaza, a single bench sat waiting.
It's there!
Myeongdong was a stop tourists couldn't skip. Some of them came for Korea itself, but most arrived on the back of K-culture—dramas, films, music, food, all of it. K-pop sat closest to the center. A single concert could drag in a staggering crowd, and so the city and the tourism board had put up photo zones to keep those feet from wandering off.
I heard they built the one here because of an OTT movie about K-pop.
Tiger Boys, was it? I remembered that idol performing on this very spot.
A bronze statue in a male idol's stage outfit sat on the bench. Legs crossed with pure arrogance. An arm cocked in that come-here, shoulder-around-you pose. A finger heart, of all things.
Ugh. What is so great about this that people line up to take pictures with it?
The statue had one strange feature. Like the mannequins, it had no face. Photograph it through the app, though, and the face of whatever idol you wanted was laid over the blank. You could take a picture with a statue of your favorite. An AR photo-zone sculpture. Exactly what I had come for.
Up close, the one on the bench was nothing but a body in the dark—and it still managed to look handsome. Infuriating.
Ah, this pisses me off.
I could already see how Sia would react.
Well. No face, so it can't cash in on the looks.
The inferiority swelling in my chest settled, a little.
Who said you could sit there with your legs crossed, making a heart like you own the place? Get up.
I set a hand against its chest and poured my will in.
Fwoosh!
Blue light surged through the chest. Ripples of it raced the body like veins.
A thin, strange keening rose with it, and light leaked from the joints beneath the clothes.
Oh.
Slowly, it began to move. Then, still holding that same pose, it rose and came to stand in front of me.
"You gonna get that out of my face? Who said you could make a heart?"
It wilted. Shoulders sinking, the statue drooped into a picture of pure dejection. Much easier on the eyes.
One promise, then. I would be the most villainous boss it had ever worked for.
A hundred kilos, give or take? Then what do I do about the noise?
Everything else aside, that weight was going to make keeping quiet a problem.
Sit back down.
A nod. It settled onto the bench again, almost demure. Why was the sight of it so unpleasant? I had no real desire to haze a rookie, and still some instinctive rejection pressed down on me.
Foot up.
I cut rubber matting to the soles of its dress shoes and fixed the pieces on with duct tape and adhesive.
That ought to kill the noise, right?
Nod, nod.
You stay put.
Another wilt.
"Pfft!"
I couldn't help it. The laugh broke out of me, and a thumb crept up in answer, tentative.
"Ah, come on. Heh."
Hard to hate it outright.
Reflections, too. Those have to go.
Dark as it was, we were fine for the moment, but the slightest light would set the thing gleaming. Clothes were the wrong size to cover it.
Then those?
Right beside the photo zone stood a four-cut photo booth. The curtains inside the stalls would do perfectly well as a cloak.
Pull them all down and bring them here.
A nod.
I stitched the curtains it gathered into a single piece, tied on cords, and draped the result over its shoulders like a cape.
A spin. A snap of fabric.
It turned and flared the cloak with a flourish.
What did I say about staying still?
It shrank in on itself, slow and guilty. Was this some kind of instinct? It kept trying to fanservice me. I am not your fan.
Wait. Puppets pick up my movements, don't they? And I don't do things like that. Probably...
If Sia asked, I might.
Don't tell me that was self-loathing?! No. It can't be.
Maybe puppetry shifted according to the concept of whatever it was cast on. Mannequins were simple and had no personality of their own, so they took on a great deal of me.
This one's concept is an idol, so it acts like an idol.
It absolutely did not resemble me.
That aside.
What weapon do I give it?
The kitchen knife was side gear at best. A wooden bat? Or the iron shovel Puppet 1 was carrying?
While I was still turning it over, the statue shook its head. Side to side, firm.
What? Why? What?
I got prickly with this one for no good reason.
What is it?
It drew an X in the air with both arms.
Oh. You don't need a weapon?
Nod, nod, and a thumbs-up.
Would you put the damn thumb down?!
It wilted again.
This brat kept turning me into the bad guy. It was doing it on purpose, wasn't it?!
Well. It claimed to be confident. Might as well see the bare-handed work.
Grab that one.
I pointed at a zombie that had drifted off from the rest.
It slid forward. Whether it was the mats on the soles or the quiet of its steps, it closed the distance without a sound, laced its fingers, and brought both hands down like a hammer.
Crunch!
The head burst outright. And from the look of it, that had been the statue holding back.
A stage-one zombie isn't even a test.
Fair to say it didn't need a weapon. A fist alone was already a heavy bludgeon, and the rating on it had come back EX-grade.
Still, a zombie made noise when it toppled.
Be careful. No noise.
Nod, nod.
Just now it had only wanted to show me what it could do. It understood.
Here. Take this, clear a building, and farm on your way back.
I handed it a large bag of its own.
Next.
I checked the route on the map. The exit we hadn't been able to take last time, because the roster was already full, looked like the right heading.
A little more farming before we went that way. The shopping street finished, we crossed the road.
Quieter than I expected. By a lot.
Set against the statue's weight, the stealth was absurd. Its shifts of balance looked practiced, too. Debris and broken obstacles littered the ground—its stride should have been stumbling all over the place—and it didn't look bothered in the slightest.
Clear this, then we go.
A nod.
It was the building beside last time's exit. If the zombies in here woke, it would be a disaster. We needed somewhere to fall back to.
Halfway through sweeping out a suitable five-story building, the floor began to shudder. A heavy, running thunder.
I looked out the window.
"Kyaaaaaak!"
"Gwoooogh!"
"Krurrrk!!"
"Kweeeek!!"
"Hyaaaak!"
A hunter was sprinting flat out down the middle of the road, and dozens of runner zombies were plastered to their heels.
Oh, hell—!
The hunter was coming straight this way, and with them a tsunami surging in far too fast to dodge.