Auntie Min-jung Who Cries for Me... [Kim Min-jung's Heart Toward Geum Tae-yang] [2]
"...."
Late that night, Kim Min-jung eased open the door to Geum Tae-yang's room and peered through the crack at him.
She was watching the way he slept — dead to the world, utterly spent.
A faint shimmer welled at the corners of her eyes.
That was how deeply she had fretted over him after his supermarket raid earlier that day. On top of everything, the man who had worked himself raw from dawn to dusk was now curled up in a cramped shrimp-sleep on that narrow bed. It tore at her heart.
"Haa..."
She let out a quiet sigh and wiped the tears away. Then, with the softest click, she carefully shut the door.
◈ Growth Motivation [350/500] Unapplied Points [000]【Apply】
『Zombie Energy』[Point conversion is probability-based.]
[Zombie Energy without a clear sense of purpose will not convert into points.]
『Redeemer』[Special situations filled with genuine feeling toward a precious bond convert into points.]
『Special Quest』[Special Quests are granted depending on the situation; points are awarded upon clear.]
No more, no less — just fifteen points today.
The next morning, Geum Tae-yang stepped out of the bunker to farm zombie points and pulled up his Status Window for a check.
He had added the Special Quest clear reward of 150 points on top of his existing Growth Motivation of 190. Then there were the zombies he had cleaned up around the house, the ones he had taken on the way to Ondol Mart, and the ones he had finished off on the return trip after the mission — roughly forty kills across the whole day. Of those, only about twenty-five percent had converted into zombie points: ten points total. That put him at a combined Growth Motivation of 350.
If forty kills only netted me ten points, I should have enough data to work with. From here on out, I can treat twenty-five percent as the baseline.
With an unexpected enemy now in the picture, Tae-yang had decided to put growth front and center for the time being. Today's target was fifteen Growth points. Forty kills for ten points meant roughly sixty kills should get him to fifteen.
Running the numbers... I actually took down a lot more than I thought. Forty of them. Damn...
Mid-check, he stuck his tongue out at the memory of yesterday's body count. A second supermarket raid would have been ideal for stacking kills — but after clearing out around forty, the road to Ondol Mart was practically empty. It would take a few days for any real numbers to build back up. So today he had deliberately chosen a mission zone purely for zombie-point farming.
Mind Control... looks like a nasty ability on paper, but from where I'm standing, Do Min-chul's situation probably isn't exactly comfortable either. Which means I need to put the spurs to it right now.
Status check finished, Tae-yang set out at a steady pace to start today's mission.
Mind Control was an ability with far too many variables. Even for an Awakened like him, wandering around like this carried real risk. Still, he was placing a calculated bet on this particular window of time.
Honestly? If that Mind Control had almost no restrictions, a guy with Do Min-chul's personality would already be running a lot wilder than he is now.
Hearing he was absorbing gang connections sounded impressive at first glance, but... really?
When Kim Man-bok had told him Do Min-chul was swallowing up organized crime groups, Tae-yang himself had been pretty shocked. But once he plugged in everything he personally knew about the man, the picture shifted. It started looking almost passive. Because Do Min-chul, the king of thugs, was a man with an enormous need to show off.
Even the secret fight with Tae-yang had been unnecessary if you weighed the risk. But Do Min-chul's craving for self-display had been so strong that he couldn't rest until he put down the one person being held up as his equal. Factor that personality in, and the current situation — for someone holding a unique ability like Mind Control — hardly looked like a rampage.
If the range were wide and the effect direct, he would have finished the business with me first — the one he spent four years stalking — before any other variables could crop up.
Tae-yang nodded slowly to himself, the pieces locking into place with the clarity of a finished sketch. He still didn't know the exact form of Do Min-chul's Mind Control. But the man's obsession with him was undeniable — an obsession that had stretched from their private brawl in first-year high school all the way through the outbreak of the zombie crisis.
If Do Min-chul possessed a truly direct form of Mind Control, he would already have come knocking. Or, at the very least, he would have made far more aggressive moves after the outbreak to probe Tae-yang's situation — because Do Min-chul's side would also have to assume the possibility that Tae-yang had Awakened. Yet there was no sign of either. Kim Man-bok's stalking was still a solo act. Do Min-chul's moves related to Tae-yang looked essentially unchanged from before the outbreak to after.
Putting it all together, Do Min-chul seemed busy enough just covering his own ass with his Awakened ability. At least in this early stage, the odds of him posing an immediate threat to Tae-yang — or to Park A-young and Kim Min-jung at his side — looked low.
From here on, I push hard on the zombie kills even if it means overdoing it a little. One-shot, one-kill. As long as I keep my focus sharp, it's more than doable.
With that calculation settled, his drive to farm zombie points surged even higher. Probability-based conversion was a pain, sure — but with his one-shot-one-kill stats, it was only a matter of time.
"Grrrrrrr...!"
"Krrrrrrr...!"
Whenever Tae-yang left the house, he always cleared the surrounding zombies before moving on. He had done the same yesterday before heading to Ondol Mart, taking down four in the process. Now, on the second day of consecutive patrols, zombies were shambling around again. The inflow was climbing day by day.
Three districts of Hanseong Metropolitan City got locked down all at once yesterday. Within a few more days, lockdown responses are going to stop meaning anything. And then the real apocalypse begins.
Spotting the zombies near the house, Tae-yang wrapped his hand around the projected steel pipe and walked toward them.
"—KEEEEEEHHHH!!!!"
The nearest zombie bared its jaws and charged the moment he entered range. Unlike yesterday, though, Tae-yang didn't explode into a preemptive dash. Today's goal wasn't speed-running a mission — it was maximizing the kill count. Stamina mattered more than time.
As the first zombie entered striking distance, mana energy flooded into the projected steel pipe. Tae-yang swung it in a sideways smash and shattered the creature's skull. The head burst like a smashed pumpkin; brain matter and blood sprayed from the side of its skull. The first zombie toppled sideways like a falling dead tree, finished in a single blow.
"—Grrrrrr????"
"—Kieeee!!!???"
The remaining zombies snapped their heads toward the sound — then came barreling at him in a furious rush. No formation, no coordination, just a mindless charge. Tae-yang picked off the third and fourth one by one.
Oh-ho... so this is where you all were hanging out.
After cleaning up the house perimeter, he was heading toward the main road when he spotted a sizable cluster of zombies.
"Krrrrrrr...!"
"Grrrrrrr...!"
"Kieeee...!"
It was an alley sealed off by lockdown barricades. Roughly nineteen zombies were pressing and jostling against a solid-looking steel barrier.
There's been talk circulating in the communities about zombies starting to show herding behavior... maybe that's what this is.
About a week into the zombie virus outbreak, a decent body of zombie-related knowledge had started making the rounds. Beyond the early intel that their vision was poor but their hearing was sharp, people were noting a tendency to gather, and that they retained a certain level of motor function even as muscle and flesh rotted away. Their physical ability sat at roughly half of what it had been in life — but when they bunched up at close range, they started showing a fiercer aggression, almost like a human's latent potential flaring under crisis.
Which means if I get surrounded in this situation, I'm fucked. I need to use speed and the one-shot-one-kill power of the projected steel pipe to force one-on-one engagements.
Working from the assembled intel, Tae-yang locked in the fastest, most efficient combat method within his ability range. Unlike when he had cleared the house zombies, he now deadened his footsteps and closed in on the roughly twenty-strong pack.
At thirty meters, he detonated into explosive speed and charged the cluster. The rearmost zombies, relative to the barricade, had their backs to him.
His elevated Agility hadn't just supercharged his burst power and reflexes — his flexibility had climbed too. That was what made direction changes fluid. Using that flexibility, the instant he entered striking range he killed his speed with perfect control and stopped cold. Then, gripping the projected steel pipe a touch shorter, he snapped out three rapid compact swings in succession and shattered three rear-line skulls at once.
"—KEEEEEEK!!!" "—Kieeee???"
The remaining sixteen zombies all registered his approach at once and spun around.
That's right. Come after me, you bastards!
Tae-yang was already set to run. He bolted like a bullet, and the zombies thundered after him in a mob, hungry to pile on. After covering a set distance he flicked a glance over his shoulder.
That's it! The eager ones get their heads cracked first!
He killed his speed again with that same exquisite control and stopped. Zombies' physical abilities varied individually, and nowhere was that clearer than in a footrace. With a whole pack charging at once — already a mess of a formation — the fastest ones pulled ahead. Tae-yang intended to use that geometry to pick off all sixteen one by one.
Compact swings of the projected steel pipe smashed through the skulls of the three male zombies who reached him first.
Hell yeah! This is cake!!!
As the tactic he had drawn up in his head played out perfectly, he wore a cocky grin and savored the moment.
Holy shit... the effect is great, but the stamina drain is no joke...
A few moments later that grin was gone, replaced by ragged breathing and a string of curses. After roughly four more rounds of hit-and-run, he had finished off the remaining thirteen. The result was excellent. But chaining explosive sprints with hard brakes had drained his stamina in a straight line, and with early-summer heat bearing down, sweat poured off him like broth.
Okay... time for a mid-check after a stamina top-up! Hooo!
He summoned the Status Window to rest and check his point gains, then pulled a water bottle filled with Kim Min-jung's breast milk from his Inventory and started drinking while he looked over the zombie-point situation.
"Huh????"
He was still sweating and steadying his breathing, but his face had been bright with anticipation — imagining the points that should have stacked up. The moment he checked the bottom line of the Status Window, his eyes went wide.
What the hell? Where are the new zombie points? Why hasn't it changed at all?????
Unapplied Points: 0.
He had killed roughly twenty-five zombies — and not a single point had accumulated.