The Stroll
In truth, when I first came in, I meant to escape right away.
Hearing Lee Junsung's reasons shifted that a little. Before the tower, I had figured the government would handle it. Hm. Say it plain, though—I don't trust them. Too restless to leave it alone, I decided I would try to be of some use. The goal was to farm as much cash as I could, then get out. This would be my first act of patriotism, and my last.
"Hurry up and search, mister."
"I told you, I'm not a mister."
"Hey, Mr. Lee. A little faster."
"Yes, yes. I'm doing it."
The moment we left the starting point, we put down two more zombies and ducked into the villa two doors over. This Lee Junsung, though, was unbearable. We needed to farm fast and get out, and here he was straightening the place up. Is he some kind of neat freak?
Right now the priority wasn't cash. It was a weapon. The tower's wooden bat was sturdier, sure, but it would snap sooner or later, and I needed a spare while I had the chance.
"Is this worth taking?"
"It's fine. Put it in here."
The junk Lee Junsung had gathered went into my bag. Good thing I've actually got a bag. Without one, I couldn't have hauled half of what he was picking up.
Same as the villa beside it, we worked our way down from the fourth floor. A hammer! On the first floor, at the very end, I found a backup weapon.
"Mister, hurry and come out. We're leaving."
"Did you find a weapon?"
"Yeah."
From here it was a straight run to the exit. I no longer trusted myself to keep dragging this man around.
We were moving carefully when I raised a fist and stopped. A beat later, I heard him halt behind me. Oh, for—look at that reaction time. I forced the rising frustration back down and ran through the plan again.
On foot, the station was four minutes from the starting point in the residential block. We had to dodge zombies, though, so call it fifteen.
"Grrrrk."
"Grrrrrrk."
"Grk."
Five of them, fast asleep. I put a finger to my lips and signaled Lee Junsung. He nodded. He got that, right?
We picked our way carefully between the zombies. When I glanced back, he was following the exact line I had walked. Right. Not managing even this would be ridiculous. He's a person.
A little farther on, I raised my fist again. Damn it. A strolling zombie.
Stage 1 zombies came in two kinds: runners and walkers. And between them sat what you might call the strolling zombie. Zombies spent most of their time asleep, but they didn't sleep around the clock. Like that one out wandering, they woke and roamed for a set stretch of time.
The problem was that there was no telling how long it had been awake. If two minutes had already passed, it wouldn't be long before it turned into a runner. A runner wasn't dangerous merely because it ran. Once the stiffness left its body and it could move freely, that was worse—its combat power jumped.
I signaled Lee Junsung. Fall back. He nodded, as if he agreed.
Quiet Footsteps
A blue hologram rose in front of my eyes. Nice!
In the tower, a skill sometimes formed according to how you acted. The odds of one actually generating were vanishingly small, of course. When I read it, Quiet Footsteps was a passive that muffled the sound of my steps. This is stupid good. In a way, wasn't it one of the most important skills in the whole tower?
Something whistled overhead, tracing a long arc across the sky. Huh? It came down. Glass shattered on the pavement, and the shards skittered and spread. Fuck, that's a beer bottle?! Someone had thrown it on purpose. No question. Who?
"Krk?!"
"Oh, fuck. No...."
A walker had noticed us. No—a thing that had only just become a runner broke into a sprint straight at us. In that instant, the number-one cause of hunter deaths flashed through my head: getting spotted by a strolling zombie the moment it turned into a runner. There was no time to hesitate. Shit!
I charged to meet it and swung the wooden bat with everything I had. Crack—but the blow caught on the arm it threw up, and I never landed a real hit.
"Hiek!"
One disaster on top of another. Startled by a fight that had exploded out of nowhere, Lee Junsung cried out.
"Kwok?!"
"Krrrk!"
"Kweeeek!"
The five zombies along the path we had come woke up too. We're fucked!
"We drop this one fast and we bail! Run!"
"Huh? Wha—?!"
"I said run!"
"Wh-where am I supposed to run?"
God damn it.
I barely slipped the runner lunging for me and drove an elbow in. Thud. Thud.
"Get over here!"
"Ah—yes!"
Only then did Lee Junsung come running, five shambling zombies in tow. Crack—a clean hit at last, right to the head. He was sprinting in behind the hunched zombie.
"Smash the head, just like that!"
"Yes, yes!"
Crack. It must have landed true; the runner pitched forward. I stomped its skull and finished it.
"Follow me!"
"Yes!"
We came out into an alley where the villas were jammed tight against one another.
Besides watching hunter footage and wandering the streets on street view, I had one more hobby: parkour. It was movement that could split life from death, and it wasn't easy—most hunters couldn't do it at all. Among the seasoned ones, though, there wasn't a single person who couldn't. So I had practiced too. You had to do a thing yourself before you could picture it in any real detail. Good thing I put the work in.
And this spot, where two villas nearly touched, was where I had trained in secret. The one on the left had a semi-basement. The one on the right started at the first floor. Thanks to that, the balconies stepped up in halves: first floor, one and a half, second, two and a half. I planted a foot on a balcony and sprang up along them.
"Hup! Hoop!"
Whether it was the shape I was in or the snacks I had eaten, I climbed faster and sharper than usual. Lee Junsung stared up at me, blank.
"Mr. Jaeha, what about me?!"
"Wait there!"
I hurriedly pulled out the worn cloth, knotted the ends, twisted it tight, and wrapped it round and round with blue packing tape to reinforce it. This'll make a fine rope. The shambling zombies had nearly reached us.
"Grab on and climb, quick! Watch your footing."
"I-it won't snap, will it?!"
"If you don't want to die, shut up and climb!"
"Ah, yes!"
That was how we made the top floor, where we held still and waited, barely breathing. A little later, from below, came the sound of walkers smashing through a villa's glass door. A crash—but it was the door of the building next door. Lucky they're stupid. Narrow field of view, too.
They didn't know exactly where we were. They only prowled the last place they had sensed us. Three minutes passed, and the zombies broke into a run.
"Kwoooor."
"Kuweeek."
They only drifted, with nowhere to go. In the end they never found us, and went back to where they had been sleeping.
"Whew."
We could finally catch our breath.
"I-I thought I was going to die."
Yeah, so why'd you make a sound? It wasn't only Lee Junsung's fault, of course. The real problem was the beer bottle that had come flying in from somewhere. God damn it! It had been deliberate. Who the hell threw it?
I had heard the stories—hunters who pulled aggro onto someone else, then strolled off clean. I had half doubted it was real. Just let me get my hands on that bastard. He would already have run, though, using the opening while we were in trouble.
Still, it was a mercy it had ended here. If this had happened out by the road, we would have been dead, one hundred percent. The street by Hongje Station would hold dozens of zombies. If all of that aggro landed on us, there was no way out.
"Since we're here, let's clear this place and go."
"Ah, yes. All right."
We stepped inside through the balcony. Lucky. You couldn't get into every building. Most were sealed with shutters or wooden boards, as if real people had boarded them up to keep the zombies out. The buildings along the way we had come were the same. This one, by luck, was not.
"Mr. Jaeha, would a board like this be any use?"
"Yes. Put it in here."
He must have been getting the hang of farming; he had brought back something worth keeping. I was rifling fast through a drawer when something glinted inside it.
"Oh!"
That was the glimmer you got when you found a special item. I drew out whatever my hand had closed on.
"A key!"
Jackpot. In the tower, a key carried a special meaning. There were all kinds, so you had to check, but as a rule they were used to enter a special place, to take a special exit, or to open a locked door. I fired up the Tower of Calamity app at once and scanned it.
"WOOOOO, fuck!! I got it!!!"
I had shouted before I knew it. I couldn't help it. A mega-jackpot had just gone off. Even an ordinary safe key was huge, and this was C-grade—a grade I had never once seen in any footage. Rumor had it a B-grade had turned up once, but the consensus was that it was bullshit. Which means this safe key is, for all practical purposes, the highest-grade key ever found!
The grudge and rage I had packed down deep melted clean away. My benefactor! Thank you! So there was a reason after all! The beer bottle arcing through the air came back to me. I was bowing toward where the runner lay, and Lee Junsung just stared.
"Mr. Jaeha, are you hurt somewhere?"
"I'm fine. Do what you were doing."
I ignored him and finished the bows, to make it three.
A safe key here means there's a good chance the safe is nearby. Not always, of course. Sometimes only the key dropped, and then you carried it until you found the safe. First thing—find it fast.
I turned every corner of the place over, and there was no safe. Maybe another unit. This was 502. It might be in 501.
"Mr. Junsung, let's go next door."
"Ah, yes."
I undid the lock on the front door and eased it open.