Chapter 51 : Zombie(2)

The zombies were uniformly weak.

So weak that even I, who had invested almost no points in strength, could slaughter them

barehanded.

However, compared to ordinary people, they were much faster and stronger, like zombies from a

certain game.

They could even run.

Considering the Necromancer’s primary targets for spreading the infection were ordinary people,

not fellow users, failure to control this could lead to a very serious situation.

Though, now that we were involved, the chances of the situation escalating to such an extreme were

almost nonexistent.

Thud.

With a dull sound, a security guard zombie whose leg had been blown off collapsed to the floor.

Bleeding blackened, foul-smelling blood, the thing started dragging itself towards me with its arms,

wanting to bite my leg.

“Disgusting.”

I broke its arms with the pipe I had picked up near the entrance of the research facility.

Once my own arms started to ache and I stopped the barrage, the zombie, its limbs broken and

grotesquely twisted, seemed unable to move anymore.

At most, a nod of its head was the extent of movement allowed to it.

The nauseating stench and unpleasantness remained, but swinging the pipe a few times like hitting

a punching bag seemed to relieve some stress.

Zombies don’t die unless their heads are struck off or their torsos are completely destroyed.

Of course, if I put my mind to it, I could do either.

Whether piercing its head with an icicle or burning its entire body with fire.

But I had no intention of doing so right now.

There was a way to save these humans.

‘Certainly, that man used an Inventory.’

Methods to save people turned into zombies like this were extremely limited.

It was a way to return corpses, which had lost their will and had their bodies taken over to act on

instinct, back into ordinary humans, so it was only natural.

First, a high-level priest is needed.

Just as priests are needed to save or purify the undead, a priest’s blessing was essential to heal those

turned into zombies.

And second, preparations are necessary.

If you ask what those preparations are, it’s Holy Water 

Water with purifying and healing effects that drives out all dark energy, found only from the NPC

Saintess of the Holy Kingdom and the spring within the highest temple.

Combined with the blessing of a high-ranking priest, it was a consumable item second only to an

Elixir, capable of performing miracles like reviving someone who had just died.

Its value was far greater than its weight in gold, so its status among ordinary users was undeniable.

Naturally, obtaining this required tremendous effort for ordinary users, but as you know, our

rankers’ Inventories were overflowing with it, enough to create a lake of Holy Water.

As for the primarily needed high-ranking priest, utilizing past connections would make it hard not to

find one.

Countless users owed me significant debts from the game, and just picking out the skilled priests

among them would fill a truck.

‘So, if I can just figure out how to open the Inventory…’

If only I could open the Inventory containing the Holy Water, returning these people to normal

would be only a matter of time.

I suspect each of these researchers is a valuable elite asset to the country, so succeeding in treating

them would surely be payment enough for the amethyst mine.

Thinking this, Winter tossed the pipe onto the floor.

Having relieved a decent amount of stress, she now planned to quickly wrap everything up and head

home.

The heart mixed with dragon blood surged, releasing mana, which she freely manipulated to form

magic circles.

Magic spells, fired at speeds too fast for the eye to follow, targeted the legs of zombies emerging

from the surroundings.

After clearing all the zombies at the entrance and the upper floors, Winter proceeded towards the

passage leading underground.

For some reason, the door to the basement was disguised as an ordinary door, blocked by a thick

reinforced wall made of a hard alloy.

As if wanting to hide the space behind it.

If it were an ordinary person, even realizing there was empty space behind this wall, there would be

nothing they could do.

However, for her, an obstacle of this level wasn’t a major problem.

<Dragon Tongue Magic: Ymir’s Breath>

As the breath of the mythical frost giant covered the reinforced wall, Winter cast another spell.

When the intense heat of hellfire struck the frozen alloy plate, the reinforced wall soon twisted with

a bizarre sound, then collapsed with a roar.

Just as she was about to pleasantly enter the secret passage, numerous figures appeared behind the

dust cloud.

They were not people with will, of course, but zombies.

“…Were they stimulated by the noise?”

Hearing the sound of the wall collapsing, dozens of zombies behind it simultaneously screamed and

started rushing towards her.

It was an eerie scene reminiscent of a horror movie, but Winter, having seen far worse countless

times, showed little reaction.

She merely wrinkled her nose slightly at the stench trapped behind the wall.

Using  Flight to ascend out of their reach, Winter surveyed the interior of the wall.

She didn’t know what kind of research was conducted in this lab, but it gave off a distinctly

unpleasant smell.

The location was a deserted, secluded area.

Furthermore, there were guards armed with firearms on the first floor.

Of course, most were already zombies who, far from firing their guns, tripped over magazines on the

floor.

Of course, seeing only that much, one might think it was just a hidden research lab belonging to an

ordinary country— Winter glanced around while cutting the legs of the zombie horde following her.

The entrance was disguised as a normal wall, and the number of zombified researchers currently

visible was also unusual.

Added to that was the number ‘27’ written on the pillar before her eyes.

The scale of just this room was enormous, large enough to fit a decent-sized building entirely inside.

If her guess was correct, it meant there were at least twenty-six more sections of this size.

‘I don’t know exactly what they researched here, but shall I take a look at what kind of mess they’ve

made.’

Dragons were lazy, but at the same time, they were creatures whose curiosity had to be satisfied

once a question arose.

---

Nothing could be seen.

The darkness where literally nothing was visible was now an environment all too familiar to her.

In fact, the memory of seeing the bright sunlight outside was more distant.

However, she wasn’t accustomed to this kind of starvation.

‘Why, why isn’t anyone coming?’

I’m hungry.

I’m thirsty.

Except for extremely rare cases, no matter what drugs were injected or what experiments were

performed, they at least provided ample food and water as desired.

She barely held onto her sanity using the energy gained from those meals.

But now, even those meals weren’t provided.

No, to be precise, no experiments or even attention were given at all.

She didn’t know how many days had passed since anyone last visited this laboratory.

In this room where the flow of time couldn’t be perceived, the only measure of time’s passage was

the frequency of meals.

Now that the meals had stopped, she couldn’t even tell how much time had passed.

But setting aside the meals, she wished anyone, absolutely anyone, would talk to her right now.

Being alone in this room filled only with unchanging blackness wherever she looked felt like it would

drive her mad.

Perhaps, this current situation pushing her life to the extreme was also part of the experiment.

The experimenters didn’t seem to care much whether she lived or died.

She wasn’t a valuable experimental subject like a user, but merely an ordinary person.

More accurately, an ordinary person judged by the scientists here to have high aptitude.

‘Am I being punished for doing something bad… I shouldn’t have believed them when they said my

debts would be cleared if I came here. No matter how hard it was, I miss life outside…’

She could now feel her insides drying up in real-time.

She remembered hearing somewhere that a person dies if they don’t consume water for three days.

‘So my cause of death is dehydration, huh.’

It was a pathetic cause of death, fitting for a human who had lived such a trivial life.

Suddenly, a childhood memory surfaced from her hazy recollections, of playing with an insect that

had dried up in the sun.

Laughter escaped her at the realization that her own state was no different from that insignificant

insect in her memory.

Seeing childhood memories she couldn’t usually recall must mean this was the ‘life flashing before

your eyes’ she’d only seen in novels.

It truly felt like her remaining days were numbered.

Clutching her starving stomach, having given up on everything, she closed her eyes and lay down in

front of the solitary cell’s door.

If she could just fall asleep like this and die without pain, she felt she would have no further wishes.

Until she heard the faint sound of footsteps near her ear.