Survivors

-Like I said, I don’t know either.

“Let me change the question. How long would it take to get there?”

-Hmm. About two hours by car?

“Cars won’t work.”

The roads were blocked by abandoned vehicles, and the sidewalks were littered with corpses and trash.

Before even considering drawing zombie aggro, operating any vehicle, whether car or motorcycle, was impossible in this environment.

-Walking would take about two days.

“Two days?”

It seemed Choi Gangsik still hadn’t properly grasped the situation.

Yuseong hesitated about explaining in detail but kept his mouth shut.

He would find out soon enough once they went outside anyway.

With no internet and no map available.

Following Choi Gangsik’s directions, Yuseong drew a rough map of the city and route to their destination on paper, then rested his chin on his hand in thought.

“Shopping mall, downtown, school, subway. Just places that seem dangerous clustered together.”

The shortest route to their destination was too dangerous.

But taking detours was also difficult.

Since they had to cut through the heart of the city, it would be dangerous even if they didn’t take the shortest route, and completely avoiding dangerous areas would make the travel distance too long.

It would take at least ten days just walking normally, and with zombies added in, he couldn’t even guess how long it might take.

This wasn’t the only problem.

‘How much to use items from other worlds.’

This quest wasn’t something that could be solved with strategy or wit.

Though there would be survivors, they would mainly encounter zombies who couldn’t be reasoned with, so strength was most important.

Though Choi Gangsik had quite high physical abilities, they weren’t superhuman level, so to break through countless zombies and reach their destination, he would naturally have to actively utilize items from other worlds.

“Can’t use items to the point of getting a low rank outright, but… guess I’ll have to give up on high rank clear for this quest.”

Disappointing but unavoidable.

High rank clear and stable progression.

Trying to catch both rabbits might lead to losing both.

-Quest? Rank?

“There are such things.”

Brushing it off vaguely, Yuseong took out a new piece of paper and wrote down the items he currently possessed, then drew a line above them.

Though he had given up on high rank clear, that didn’t mean he could use any item freely.

There were many factors to consider – whether items were appropriate for the current situation, whether they could be properly utilized, how efficient they were.

‘Just having strong items isn’t necessarily good.’

Just look at Thousand Hands, or more precisely Tyrant’s arms, which had the highest grade among items he currently possessed.

An item that increased strength by 3,000 points with no conditions.

At first glance it might seem efficient, but when examining the details, that wasn’t necessarily the case.

To properly utilize the overwhelming strength of 3,000 points, appropriate constitution was needed.

When hunting monsters in America, even with 349 points of constitution and protecting his body with internal energy and magic power, he couldn’t properly handle the impact from that strength, let alone Choi Gangsik’s body.

‘The arms protected by options would be fine, but ridiculous things might happen like breaking his back lifting heavy objects, or shattering leg bones just putting a bit of force into stepping.’

Though he could use it somehow if he was careful, considering the karma points needed to withdraw it and efficiency, the costs outweighed the benefits.

“Since the Civilization Grade is high, calculating that withdrawing items will cost less karma points, and for usable skills, ones that use less magic power…”

Yuseong’s deliberations continued late into the night.

* * *

Yuseong didn’t make the mistake of going outside right away.

He needed to at least understand the situation around the apartment.

TV and internet were cut off and the view outside was limited, but Yuseong had another way to gather information.

Whiiir!

A specially made low-noise drone with four propellers rose into the air.

After confirming the smartphone was connected to the drone, Yuseong touched the screen to send it flying outside the window.

The first thing he checked was the parking lot.

It would have been a difficult situation from the start if zombies still remained, but fortunately all that appeared on screen were wrecked cars and a few scattered corpses.

‘Almost no zombies remain in this area.’

Though one or two were visible, the large horde seen last time was nowhere to be found.

“Did they go somewhere else? It would take quite an incident to move that many zombies?”

After finishing checks within communication range, Yuseong furrowed his brow.

Though having no zombies was good, it made it even harder to know what had happened during the ten days he was unconscious.

After checking a few more times to see if he missed anything, Yuseong retrieved the drone and went to the entrance.

And before opening the door, he checked his reflection in the mirror to see if he forgot anything.

Black goggles and mask to block saliva.

Long sleeves and pants to minimize exposed skin, and a moderately sized backpack that wouldn’t hinder movement.

A k7 silenced submachine gun on his shoulder, a Glock in the holster at his waist, and instead of a baseball bat, he held a two-handed axe similar to a firefighter’s axe.

‘In terms of lethality and noise, baseball bats aren’t very good weapons.’

The axe could perfectly fulfill both conditions.

It could easily split zombie skulls and was much quieter than an aluminum bat.

It also had the advantage of being able to open closed doors if needed.

Looking at the razor-sharp axe blade, Yuseong soon gathered his thoughts and placed his hand on the doorknob.

The moment the door opened, a terrible stench assaulted his nose.

The cause was decaying corpses.

Though they were clearly dead judging by the half-rotted, collapsed skin, Yuseong used his axe to prod each corpse one by one.

‘Getting fooled once is understandable but getting fooled twice makes you an idiot.’

He wasn’t foolish enough to repeat the same mistake twice.

After descending to the first floor via stairs, Yuseong crossed through the broken glass door and hid behind a nearby car.

Though he had checked with the drone, other zombies might have come in the meantime.

After thoroughly checking inside buildings, between cars, and the ground, Yuseong carefully moved forward and finally managed to leave the apartment complex and reach his first destination after about the time it takes to drink a cup of tea.

-Isn’t this theft?

“After committing murder, isn’t it a bit late to worry about theft?”

-I was finally managing to forget about that…

“Sorry.”

Apologizing in a not-at-all sorry tone, Yuseong put down his axe and backpack and started sweeping food from inside the convenience store.

Though he had food in his subspace, it would be wasteful to withdraw items that could be obtained in this world.

It seemed quite a few customers had come through as there was almost nothing left, but after searching between collapsed shelves and in corners, he managed to get enough food and water to fill half his backpack.

The backpack was quite heavy but thanks to this world’s people having excellent physical abilities to begin with, plus the power of the Enhancement Procedure skill, it wasn’t too burdensome.

‘Now shall we really get started.’

Coming out of the convenience store, Yuseong moved at an excruciatingly slow pace.

It was so slow that even Choi Gangsik suggested moving a bit faster.

But Yuseong absolutely would not increase his speed.

Rather, his pace grew even slower as he would send out the drone to scout again as soon as he reached the previously checked range before moving forward.

An adult’s average walking speed was 4km/h but the distance Yuseong covered in an hour wasn’t even half that.

-Too slow.

‘Not slow, cautious.’

-That’s what being slow means. Can’t we increase the speed just a little?

Choi Gangsik was urgent.

Unlike Yuseong who spent most of the time unconscious, Choi Gangsik who was fully conscious spent most of that time worrying about his father.

Though he thought his father must be alive since he was a world-famous scientist working at Hansung Group, when his father hadn’t returned home in ten days, he couldn’t help having other thoughts.

With his father’s survival uncertain, watching Yuseong walk at a pace that would make turtles jealous was enough to make his blood boil.

‘Absolutely not.’

-Why not?

‘I still don’t know enough about this world’s zombies.’

Though he agreed with the opinion of finding Choi Gangsik’s father as quickly as possible, Yuseong who had nearly become a zombie due to carelessness had to take a cautious approach.

Last night Yuseong checked not only the items to use for this quest but also dug up all the zombie-related information in his head.

Among them, what he worried about most seriously was the types of zombies.

As the 21st century arrived, people created countless zombies.

Running zombies were just the basics.

Super strong zombies, fast moving zombies, intelligent zombies, combining zombies, kaiju-form zombies, even zombies that used supernatural powers were born.

Of course all of those were just people’s imagination, but having come to a world with real zombies, it wouldn’t be strange if there were zombies with special abilities.

‘Just looking at the rank suggests it won’t end with normal zombies.’

Besides zombie types, there were many other things to be concerned about.

‘Antibody development, zombie virus infection routes, zombie habits, encounters with survivors…’

-Ah, okay. I get it, so stop.

After easily suppressing Choi Gangsik, Yuseong started moving again.

Thanks to using the drone, Yuseong was able to move while barely encountering zombies.

Occasionally zombies would spring out from blind spots the drone couldn’t check, but he could handle that level easily.

Slash!

As the axe flashed, the bespectacled zombie’s head separated from its body.

The zombie’s movements gradually slowed as it chattered its teeth energetically, seemingly unaware it was dead.

Though progress was smooth, Yuseong’s expression hardened as time passed.

‘The numbers are too few.’

Ten days ago, just the number of people seen going from school to the apartment easily exceeded a thousand.

Considering people’s response at the time, it wouldn’t be strange if at minimum over half had become zombies.

What if you expanded that to the whole city?

“Hmm.”

Yuseong unconsciously let out a small groan.

When leaving the apartment he just thought he was lucky, but as zombies continued not appearing, another hypothesis occurred to him.

The first hypothesis that came to mind was that the military had come and repelled the zombies while he was unconscious.

And it was also the first hypothesis to be rejected.

If the military had really come and exterminated the zombies, the city wouldn’t be this intact.

There should have been traces of explosions and bullets on buildings and roads, zombie corpses and remains everywhere, but such scenes were nowhere to be found.

‘Then only one hypothesis remains.’

Yuseong desperately hoped his hypothesis was wrong.

If his thoughts were correct, this quest would truly be extreme difficulty.

However, bad premonitions tend to be accurate.

After checking the video feed from the drone, Yuseong muttered in a dejected voice.

“I knew it.”

-Wh-what is this?

“What else? All the zombies in the area have gathered.”

The screen showed thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of zombies.

While operating the drone to observe the zombie horde, Yuseong discovered they were all looking in one direction.

Following the zombies’ gaze and adjusting the camera angle, an interesting sight came into view.

“Survivors.”

Survivors gathered at a school were holding back the zombies.

The number of survivors was roughly a hundred.

Though woefully inadequate compared to the zombies, they were somehow managing to block attacks while relying on the school’s outer wall.

However, the survivors’ condition didn’t look good.

Unable to get proper rest, they had dark circles under their eyes and their faces were generally haggard.

No matter the terrain advantage, there was no way they could hold back zombies with infinite stamina with just those numbers.

After watching the survivors’ struggle for a moment, Yuseong tried to retrieve the drone.

However, just before the screen changed, he discovered something and stopped his hand.

‘Well look at that?’

There were several people repelling zombies with clearly superior strength and speed compared to others.

“Are there differences in nanomachine performance?”

-Th-there are, but not this dramatically different. What is this?

“…That’s what I’m saying.”

Yuseong looked at the screen with a complicated gaze.