episode_0072

Advance team and follow-up team (4) – Cheonwangsan Mountain, Guro-gu, Seoul

The loud roar that had been echoing through Guro-gu stopped and silence fell.

I kept an eye on Cheonwangsan Mountain, which was in disarray due to an artificial meteorite fall.

The top, which was annoyingly flying around like a mosquito, must have been crushed to death by a rock.

Since the system message was displayed as a confirmed kill, there was no chance of him being alive.

“… … You have all sorts of skills.”

I am the one who performed the artificial ‘meteor strike’, but Seo Joo-won’s skills were also brutal.

Invalidation.

Doesn’t this mean that it is a counter for all skills, that is, a counter for all awakened people?

With overwhelming faith points, my combat skills were at max level.

If only we had met at a time when the gap between me and him wasn’t so big.

“… … ”

I was sure that killing him wouldn’t have been as easy as it is now.

That’s why it was sad.

If it were in my hands, it would have become a blade sharper than anything else.

However, he was eliminated in the first round because he looked like a gisaeng brother, and was ultimately eliminated because he tried to kill me.

“Ha… … Are there any skills that steal skills?”

Since there were not enough awakened people, it seemed like I had a million different thoughts.

As I was killing time with various random thoughts, the dust that had covered the mountain slowly settled.

I reached out my hand to the jewel that was still shining brightly on the head of Cheonwangsan Mountain, which had been miserably ruined.

The gem that responded to telekinesis broke through the ocher-colored dust and landed in my hand.

As soon as I touched it, the large, sparkling jewel just melted away.

No, to be precise, it would be correct to say that it was absorbed into my hands.

[You have obtained the special mission reward ‘Jewel’.]

[The Awakened’s Guro-gu dominance rate is rapidly increasing!]

[4.5% -> 6.5%]

[As a perk of acquiring ‘Gems’, you will receive a special mission creation ticket (limited to once per awakened person)!]

First, my attention went to the special mission creation rights mentioned in the last message.

Ha, that’s why the special mission was created so exquisitely.

Seo Joo-won, you bastard, you used an item for me that is limited to once per awakened person.

That means he was confident that he could use me as bait.

Should I be annoyed that they underestimated me, or should I be grateful that they let me do a special mission.

“Did you get rid of it? Did you finish it? Did you finish it?”

I repeated traditional voodoo techniques to vent my anger, but there was no response from under the rock.

Still, considering that the ‘rapid increase in the control rate’ promised by the system was about 2%, I decided to think that Seo Joo-won, who donated the 4% control rate to me, was a grateful person.

They even give me special missions and take care of my dominance rate.

Isn’t there a tree that truly gives generously?

While I was shivering, thinking about the guy who would have been crushed by a large rock, I noticed the sun setting.

The battle with Seo Joo-won took more time than expected.

It was a war of attrition where each side focused on draining the other’s mana, so it was even more severe.

“I clearly remember Seo Joo-won saying something about a night in Guro-gu… .”

I remembered him scaring me by saying it was very dangerous.

There was no reason to obediently trust the guy who called steroids a sound stalker.

Still, there was no reason to grit my teeth and think that what he said was a lie.

“I have to move to my area first.”

The glow of the sunset was hiding behind the broken head of Cheonwangsan Mountain.

With the glow of the sunset warming my back, I flew, retracing the route I had excitedly run with Seo Joo-won.

I passed the zombie wave I had annihilated and the hiking trail where we were exploring each other.

And we arrived at the building where he came out with a bright smile on his face.

“Oh! Green.”

As expected, his area turned into my area.

You could tell just by looking at the color of the red area that had changed to green.

A wide green territory, led by high-rise residential and commercial complexes.

That range would be the 6.5% area I currently occupy in Guro-gu.

widely-!

I landed on the ground with the intention of slowly exploring inside.

After passing through the glass door on the first floor and entering the lobby, I first checked to see if the electricity was on.

I confirmed that both elevators were not powered.

I knew this when I went into the bathroom next to it and turned on the faucet, but not a single drop of water came out.

What a deceptive ability I have.

“Ah… Having experienced this myself, I realized that if you didn’t believe in the Salvation Church, you were an idiot.”

Anyone who lives like this and enters the sanctuary will go crazy.

It would have been no different from the feeling that humans who first discovered fire felt after grilling meat.

I tried activating the sanctuary management tab just in case, but I couldn’t see any functions related to this place.

So now you have to go to the bathroom outside, you can’t wash, and if you go a little deeper, a flashlight is required, right?

“… … Fuck.”

I can’t help but swear.

I frowned as I stared at the sunset reflected in the window.

Outside the safe area, shadows were filling up the gaps in the sunlight.

As soon as everything around me turned dark, a message came to mind.

Tiring—!

[After 18:00 PM. The night of Seoul is coming.]

If it’s short, it’s a short message.

With the message that it was night in Seoul, the once peaceful Guro-gu took a turn.

Kkkk!

A familiar howling that could not be heard in the morning echoed through the city.

Dududududu- The building shook slightly as the footsteps approached.

A rumbling in the ground that cannot be imagined from a colony of dozens of animals.

An unprecedented number of zombies were grouped together and moving somewhere.

Unable to contain my curiosity, I approached the glass wall and looked outside.

“Kkisss—!”

Zombies were quickly passing through my safe zone.

however…

There was no end to the procession.

Five minutes have already passed since the front line passed the safe zone, but the end is still far away.

A literal wave of zombies easily exceeding thousands.

Krraaa!

In the middle of the colony, the steroids advanced, crushing the surrounding zombies.

A zombie passed through the window of the storefront in front, its arms swinging as if steroids were bothering it.

Clink!

Zombies fall inside the building and white bombing begins simultaneously.

“Kkiss!”

A hollow crater and a pack of Sound Stalkers roaring as they realize their prey is not human.

The upper part of the shopping district was revealed by the hurriedly moving flashlights.

Sound stalkers occupy the ceiling like a flock of bats.

There are even ‘frogs’ with abnormally developed thighs who kick out store windows and glide to other buildings.

In addition, I saw many variants that I didn’t know about, but I didn’t take the gamble of going out.

Massive zombie waves and mutant clusters.

The night in Guro-gu was literally the center of zombie heaven, or rather, zombie hell.

Those zombies were intentionally avoiding the green area that was notified as my area.

To check more clearly, I opened the glass door and shouted at them.

“Hey zombies—!”

At the mana-filled shout, all the zombies that formed the zombie wave stopped.

Zombies looking around, keeping an eye on the direction that stimulated their hearing.

But it resumed its movement as if it couldn’t find me.

“There was a reason Seo Joo-won wet himself and said he was scared.”

It was a size that even a normal awakened person would not dare to fight.

A clear safety zone and a water-based environment.

For the first time, I was thinking about doing the hard work of killing zombies to secure faith points.

What was important was that even if I worked hard to kill those guys, I wouldn’t gain the slightest benefit.

Those guys don’t give out points for zombies they kill in Seoul.

So to speak, the night of Seoul was a hunting ground for high-risk no-returns intentionally designed by the system.

“Wow, you’re so meticulous that it’s a bit annoying.”

I shook my head as if I was tired, but my intuition as a web novel reader was telling me.

Hidden rewards are usually hidden in places like that.

I wanted to monopolize the hidden rewards hidden in Guro-gu’s night right away, but tonight is not the only night.

As a safety freak, I preferred to build the house first and then move.

Besides, this was now my own space.

There is something for everyone to learn.

My gisaeng brother, Seo Joo-won, also gave me teachings.

Utilization of the information advantage and first-mover effect of the advance team.

It was no different from the way he used it to hit the backs of those who came behind him.

Now that I killed Seo Joo-won, Guro-gu’s advance team was only me.

So there was no reason to get so worked up about wasting mana now.

After putting aside my regrets, I decided to explore the residential-commercial apartment complex I was staying in.

I went down from the basement using the stairs, lighting up all around with a flashlight.

The basement seemed to be used as a parking lot without any special facilities.

The flashlight scanned the parked cars.

The clean exterior of the cars as if nothing had happened.

The floor was not splattered with blood and the air was as quiet as death.

It is a scene that stands in stark contrast to the zombies still shaking the ground outside.

It was the height of irony that I felt the same way in the morning in Guro-gu.

Not finding anything special, I quickly went up to the second floor.

We passed through the second floor, where restaurants were located, and the third floor, where various care shops were concentrated, and reached the fourth floor, which was made up of apartments.

The 4th floor was no different from the underground parking lot.

Except for the front door being wide open, the sights were so ordinary that they seemed foreign.

All the houses were empty, so there was nothing to farm.

I swept the dust accumulated on the shelf with my finger.

I immediately clapped and shook off the gray dust that had gathered on my fingers.

“It’s not like Seo Joo-won farmed it… .”

From what I could tell so far, this building was just an empty shell.

Only the exterior of the building was intact, but everything inside was missing.

Food, humans and even zombies.

For now, it’s just a guess, so I had to do some more exploring.

After passing through the 4th floor, I arrived at the penthouse, the top floor of a residential-commercial apartment complex.

“… It’s closed.”

All the doors I had seen so far were open, so I felt the urge right away.

Seo Ju-won stayed here.

Knock knock!

Without hesitation, I opened the door with telekinesis and went inside.

Of course, the first place I searched with the flash light was the living room.

The vast space, which was twice as large as the space we lived in at Hanmaeum Apartment, was filled with traces of someone.

I frowned at the discarded food bags and food waste left behind.

“Ah, this neat-looking guy lives a really dirty life, really.”

If I had known this would happen, I would have stuck three daggers in the testicles instead of both legs.

Clicking my tongue lightly, I passed through the living room and began to open the closed rooms one by one.

The moment I grabbed the doorknob of the room in the innermost part of the room, a stink that stung my nose.

I thought it was the smell of food waste left in the living room.

The source was right in front of me.

Either a zombie or a long-decomposed corpse.

The door opened very slowly, inside a familiar rotting corpse.

I immediately prepared to pour out my telekinetic powers, but nothing came out.

Flashlight first carefully inspected the floor and then climbed up the wall.

Objects hanging on the wall were visible along the outline of the light.

And then he slowly frowned.

“It’s the head, right?”

A total of four neatly decapitated heads decorated the wall like trophies.

Although each appearance was different, such as with one eye open or a tongue sticking out, they had one thing in common.

Everyone had deep resentment and sadness on their faces.

I read the A4 paper attached under the head on the far left.

[First healing. Killed before even understanding his abilities.]

“… You don’t have to look at the following things to understand them.”

[Second healing. Super strength? I don’t know. The moment I was stabbed by the dagger, the skill was blocked and I could not understand it.]

“This was a real psychopath.”

I clicked my tongue and picked up the notebook on my desk.

[Healing Note]

“Ugh, the world is going crazy so these bastards… Ugh.”

Don’t say it, don’t say it.

That’s literally nonsense.

This is why people with dirty faces are not allowed.

We all live with something black in our hearts.

Now that I think about it, I remembered that I couldn’t even check its inventory.

In the guy’s collection room, I carefully looked through the inventory I had absorbed this time.

“… It’s a legend.”

Didn’t say anything else.

I just opened my inventory and poured out all of his collection.

Doo doo doo doo-

Human heads were constantly pouring out of the inventory.

“How much were you killed before you came to Seoul?”

A murderer who longed for a vacuum of security and an era of lawlessness.

Seo Joo-won, who gained the power he had hoped for in the desired era, was literally no different from the devil.

How many of these guys are there still?

Even now, they are probably killing and exploiting my prospective believers.

If these people could be made aware of just one keyword, the situation would change drastically.

Salvation.

They truly needed my salvation.

The minds that filled the room were all filled with resentment and sorrow.

After pouring out all of his collection in my inventory, I closed the door and thought about it.

“Adjutant Joo Won-a, consider yourself lucky that there are no bodies left to attend.”

In a dark penthouse.

Suddenly, I remembered what I said to Yoon Ayoung on the first floor of the library.

I also remembered the words I said while treating Park Himchan in the prayer room.

A reality that is too hellish for ordinary people to live in has arrived.

A world where fakes become real.

Now the hypocrisy I am displaying.

It could have been the last good left in this world.