Boss Fight
“Hey! Looks like there are other survivors here besides us!”
“Survivors? You mean we can run into people playing the game like us?”
“No, no—I mean NPCs! Ah, an NPC is—”
“Yeah, Dad knows what an NPC is.”
“Right, it’s a word that’s been around forever. Even grandpas would know it.”
“......”
There was no need to call him a grandpa.
He wasn’t that old.
He was still in his thirties, for crying out loud.
Just as Yeongho was gloomily turning his head away, the intermittent crack of gunfire and the pounding footsteps of people running drew closer and closer.
And then the scene came into view.
“Damn it! Why’s there a monster like that here?”
“We’ve shot it so many times, and it still won’t die!”
“We’re almost out of bullets!”
Six men and women were frantically running from something, weaving and dodging as they fled.
Every so often, one of them would glance back and fire a shot while on the run.
And chasing after them was—
“Huh?! That’s the boss!?”
“Whoa...”
Bang—!
With a thunderous crash, a sedan was sent skidding across the ground.
It had the shape of a human, but its bulk was almost on par with an elephant’s.
The giant zombie pounded after the survivors, each step shaking the ground beneath it.
“Eek!”
“It’s gonna catch us!”
The survivors shouted in terror, and no wonder.
“Grrrrrrr—!”
A massive roar, impossible to mimic with a human throat.
It stood nearly eight meters tall.
Its body was an ugly mass of lumpy muscle, and just looking at it made it obvious that if it caught a human, it would crush them like a rotten tomato.
Its common name was Big Mouth.
It was the boss that headlined the first chapter of Escape City.
‘It’s already weakened?’
Yeongho flicked a glance at the chat messages floating up the screen, then turned his gaze back to the giant zombie and the survivors.
Sure enough, now that he looked closely, there were bullet wounds all over its body, with blood streaming from them. One of its legs was a wreck, the flesh hanging ragged as if it had taken a blast from an explosive, and across the center of its stomach there was a long, ugly gash that looked like it had been cut open by something sharp, with intestines dangling out.
“D-Dad? What do we do? Can we even fight something like that?”
Even in 15-year-old mode, which should have dulled the creature’s terrifying appearance quite a bit, it still looked so shocking that Sunhee was speaking to him with a pale face and a shaky voice.
In real life, he would have turned and run without a second thought.
“...We fight it and take it down.”
It was only a game.
And once he remembered that there was mission money on the line, Yeongho steadied himself and gripped the shovel handle tightly.
Maybe because the boss fight was right on top of them, more and more people started adding missions in a hurry.
“Thanks for the missions! Wow—our live viewer count just passed 80! That’s a new record!”
At Sunhee’s cry, he checked the chat again and saw that the number of viewers had really doubled compared with when they first started.
And the total mission amount, too.
Total Mission Amount: 2,140 Coins
📍 Location: Stream
🎁 Reward: Mission payout after the boss is defeated
‘214,000 won? We’ve only been playing for a little over an hour...’
Of course, he would only get paid after the boss was down, and around 70 percent of that total was from one-try-clear missions that couldn’t fail even once.
Still, the fact that there was this much earning potential in such a short time was astonishing to Yeongho.
It was more than what his company salary came out to when broken down into a daily rate.
“Hehe! I guess more people are coming to watch because Dad’s playing with me!”
While the chat grew noisy, the survivors who had been closing in noticed the two of them and froze in place.
In a ruined world like this, other survivors were just as dangerous as zombies, so it made perfect sense for them to be wary.
“W-What? People?”
“Hey! If you’re not here to help, then get the hell out of here!”
“You’re not planning anything shady, are you?”
Even so, perhaps they judged the Big Mouth that was chasing them to be the more urgent threat.
Some of the survivors shouted warnings for them to get out of the way, while others looked at the pair with a hopeful, pleading gaze, wondering if they might actually be helped.
The survivor group "Shelter B Group" has been encountered.
The player’s actions will determine the relationship with the survivor group.
Current relationship: Neutral
“Huh?”
The game system’s notification.
Yeongho, who had been about to run forward, had to stop for a moment to read the message that appeared.
“Shelter B Group? Relationship? So they’re not just simple extras, then.”
At his muttered words, one of the viewers reacted by sending a donation.
After reading the chat, Yeongho gave a light nod and once again settled into a running stance.
It was a game, and yet the space around him felt so real it was hard to distinguish from reality.
He had no desire to stand by and let people die in front of him just so he could squeeze out a little extra reward.
The choice was natural: team up with them and bring down the boss.
‘Normally, there’s no way a monster like that can be taken down with nothing but a single bladed tool...’
He had no real basis for it, but for some reason he had the feeling that, just like when they’d faced the zombie horde, they could pull it off.
And then, behind Yeongho as he ran forward—
“Go, Dadmon! I’ll cover you!”
With the clack of the bolt being pulled back, Sunhee’s shout rang out.
‘Right. Sunhee’s shooting probably isn’t something I can expect much from, but it should distract the boss’s attention, and if the other survivors cooperate, even a monster like that can be brought down somehow.’
No sooner had that thought crossed his mind than—
BANG!
The gunshot rang out, and the bullet Sunhee fired pierced the approaching target.
“Aaagh!”
“Poole! Those damned bastards!!”
More precisely, it hit one of the survivors.
“...Eh-kung?”
Yeongho, who had rushed up to the survivors with the intention of joining forces against the boss, gaped in stunned disbelief at the unexpected disaster.
“Those damn looters!”
“Kill them!”
Five gun barrels were suddenly pointed straight at him.
Somehow, the donation notification that popped up felt like it was speaking directly for him.
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