Ch.170[Chapter 170] The Wasteland and Gacha World

Sir Dominic slowly walked toward the middle of the bridge connecting Gacha World and the Wasteland.

The lights from the carousel spinning inside Gacha World leaked through the entrance, illuminating Sir Dominic’s back.

The light shining from behind him was so bright that his expression couldn’t be clearly seen.

But as you might have guessed…

Sir Dominic was smiling.

As Sir Dominic reached the middle of the bridge, the first zombies began crossing from the other side.

Sir Dominic stared at the writhing movements in the darkness for a moment.

It was impossible to predict how many zombies were approaching.

But Sir Dominic did not despair.

And finally, he swung his shield at a zombie that had entered his attack range.

With a thud, the zombie flew far away.

“…What on earth-“

Sir Dominic felt as if he had hit cotton with his shield.

The sensation was so bewildering that Sir Dominic was more confused than when he’d been bitten by a zombie.

Sir Dominic knocked back a couple more zombies with his shield and slashed them with his sword.

The zombies crumbled like tofu and snapped like dry twigs.

“…This seems manageable.”

Sir Dominic continued staring into the darkness.

Countless eyes were looking menacingly at him from there, but Sir Dominic wasn’t afraid of those gazes at all.

Sir Dominic’s special skill, [Standard Bearer], activated and a flag fell from the sky.

The flag landed in the middle of the bridge, not far from Sir Dominic, impaling a zombie and fixing itself to the ground.

The flag itself had such minimal damage that the system didn’t even bother to display it, but the zombies were weak enough to fall easily even from that small amount of damage.

Behind Sir Dominic, another light turned on in Gacha World.

Near the carousel, a haunted house shaped like a clown with its mouth open toward the entrance.

In the dark night, the clown’s face, with eerie shadows cast by poorly installed lighting, seemed to mock the approaching zombies, as if saying:

Welcome to Gacha World.

…

While Sir Dominic fought against this weak zombie horde, something strange was happening inside his body.

More precisely, the problem was with Sir Dominic’s right arm that had been bitten by a zombie.

He had torn his clothes to make an emergency tourniquet to stop blood flow, but that alone couldn’t completely prevent the virus from spreading.

However, Sir Dominic showed no signs of turning into a zombie.

Normally, there should have been some abnormal symptoms somewhere in his body, but Sir Dominic was strangely fine.

How was this possible?

In fact, it was thanks to the slime.

The very slime that lived in the S.P.Y app on Sir Dominic’s phone.

The slime living in Sir Dominic’s phone was originally an entity that existed between dimensions.

But as Sir Dominica crossed into Sir Dominic’s dimension, the slime that existed between Sir Dominic and Sir Dominica was also fully recognized as an object of this dimension.

Thanks to this, the slime could now help Sir Dominic beyond the application, albeit weakly.

The slime sensed Sir Dominic’s danger and examined his condition.

And it noticed that something strange was spreading through Sir Dominic’s body.

Though the slime had limited intelligence, it instinctively knew that whatever was spreading through Sir Dominic’s body couldn’t be good.

As you know, slimes have the ability to repair cracks or distortions.

Regeneration.

The slime used that regenerative power to gradually restore Sir Dominic’s condition.

Interestingly, the slime’s regenerative power and Sir Dominic’s resistance were almost equal to the zombie virus’s infection ability, creating a delicate balance.

If he were bitten by a zombie one more time, this balance would break, but currently, Sir Dominic was in the unique state of having a zombie right arm while the rest of his body remained human.

Whether he knew this fact or not, Sir Dominic simply continued swinging his sword and pushing and pulling his shield.

“…It seems to be getting a bit tougher.”

Sir Dominic muttered.

Having already dealt with hundreds of zombies, Sir Dominic noticed that at some point, the zombies stopped dying from a single attack.

Standing atop a wall of corpses made from hundreds of zombies, Sir Dominic stabbed a climbing zombie with his sword and pushed it away with his shield.

The zombie fell back into the wave of undead after taking two attacks.

Sir Dominic knocked away another zombie without time to check on the one that had fallen.

After defeating dozens more zombies, it now took 3 hits.

After defeating dozens more, it took 4 hits.

If Sir Dominic had been a dealer, he might still have been able to kill zombies in one hit, but the situation arose because his attack power was too low.

“…I’m not sure if I can hold out until the time limit.”

Sir Dominic glanced at Gacha World.

In the area he was responsible for, only about 25% of the space was lit up, suggesting they hadn’t even connected power to the Ferris wheel yet.

He needed to hold out much longer for the remaining 75%.

Sir Dominic looked back toward the Wasteland.

Though barely an hour had passed, he could still see plenty of movement in the darkness.

Feeling the urge to know just how many there were, Sir Dominic raised his shield.

He was determined to do as much as he could.

That’s when it happened.

With a vrooom sound, a bright light from the distance struck Sir Dominic’s one remaining eye.

Sir Dominic’s vision was momentarily blocked.

A life-or-death situation where he was vulnerable to attacks because he couldn’t see.

Vrooom—

The sound came closer.

Then gunshots rang out from all around, and soon everything around him went quiet.

“…I saw lights in the Wasteland so I came to check—”

An unknown voice.

As Sir Dominic’s vision gradually returned, he could faintly make out the owner of the voice.

A man wearing a leather jacket and jeans, with spiked gloves and a necklace made of intertwined chains, a blue bandana, and dark sunglasses.

“Are you Sir Dominic by any chance?”

The man with bushy hair and muscles that gave off a macho vibe, sitting on a Harley Davidson with a double-barreled shotgun slung over his shoulder, asked Sir Dominic.

“…That I am.”

Sir Dominic looked around.

The zombies that had filled the bridge moments ago were now scattered on the ground as finely minced fragments, and in the distance, red flares were decorating the sky, falling like angel wings.

Under those flares, zombies that had been hiding in the darkness were revealed, and people with a mechanical feel were hunting them with guns.

Yes. It wasn’t combat but a one-sided massacre, or more accurately, a hunt.

Sir Dominic stared blankly at this overwhelming and one-sided hunt.

That’s when Sir Dominic suddenly saw a familiar face.

Someone with three-colored feathers in their hair, wearing an eye patch, holding a shield and charging toward the front.

Sir Dominic couldn’t mistake that face.

“I am Sir Dominic of Feralant!”

It was Sir Dominic himself.

…

“As I thought. It is Sir Dominic.”

The macho man showed his teeth, so healthy they gleamed, and smiled brightly.

He introduced himself as the Governor, explaining that this was just a concept and he had a different true appearance.

“I came out on patrol because I saw lights in the Wasteland, but to think I’d find Sir Dominic here…”

“Two Sir Dominics?”

The Governor’s adjutant with dull eyes looked at Sir Dominic in surprise.

More precisely, he alternated between looking at the real Sir Dominic and the Sir Dominic lined up behind the Governor.

“I am Sir Dominic of Feralant! Happy!”

Sir Dominic carefully observed the Sir Dominic behind the Governor.

At first glance, the Sir Dominic behind the Governor looked no different from the real one, but upon closer inspection, there were several signs that he was fake.

First, the fake Sir Dominic used very clumsy vocabulary.

He could only form sentences using phrases like ‘Sir Dominic of Feralant’ or ‘happiness’.

And unlike the real Sir Dominic, there was something unnatural about him.

“Is this… what you call an android?”

“Well, that’s about right.”

The Governor answered with a showmanship posture reminiscent of a professional wrestler.

“Then… you must be a Pioneer.”

“That’s right too.”

The Governor nodded.

He tried to cross his arms but flinched when pricked by the spikes on his gloves, though he endured it like a manly man.

“By the way, what are you doing here?”

The Governor glanced at Gacha World.

“It looks like… an amusement park.”

“We need to get the Ferris wheel moving. That’s what we were asked to do.”

“The Ferris wheel?”

The Governor looked up at the Ferris wheel in the center of Gacha World, which seemed to reach the edge of the sky.

Indeed. So the structure required activating all attractions in one area to supply power to the Ferris wheel.

The Governor, having good observation skills, realized this fact immediately.

“But for some reason, zombies attacked this place. I was careless and even got bitten once.”

Sir Dominic showed his arm, which had turned black from the tightly bound cloth.

The virus-infected arm was still grotesquely twisted and pulsating.

The Governor was horrified looking at Sir Dominic’s arm.

He thought: Even for a tank, how could anyone resist a virus that turns people into zombies within minutes of being bitten?

“Are… are you alright?”

The Governor frowned as if just looking at it was painful and asked Sir Dominic.

“Ah!”

At the Governor’s words, Sir Dominic exclaimed as if realizing something.

“I forgot that I’m currently using the [Rider] trait, not the [Tank] trait.”

The Governor wore a blank expression at those words.

It was something he couldn’t have imagined.