First Visitor

“No, that can’t be right. Zombies shouldn’t be able to use weapons, right? They must just be holding them.”

Seeing one of the zombies raise its arm, Yuseong reflexively lifted his plasma axe to cover his face.

A red beam shot from the muzzle collided with the purple mass, creating sparks.

Following that, when he heard the buzzing sound of bees coming from the swords the zombies were holding, Yuseong muttered in a dejected voice.

“Zombies using optical weapons and Ultra Vibration Blades. Just like last time, are special quests only for crazy worlds?”

Keeeek!

It wasn’t just zombies inside.

Spotting a variant called Raider bending its knees while staring this way with its extremely thin body capable of explosive speed, Yuseong reflexively activated Asura Perception Way.

This Asura Perception Way wasn’t to respond to attacks but to gain time to think.

‘What should I do.’

Thinking of safety, the right choice would be to retreat from here.

The number of zombies, types of variants, intelligence to use weapons, weapon performance, structure of the top floor – everything was unknown.

Fighting in this situation was unlikely to have good results.

However, if they fled here, the zombies gathered on the top floor would spread throughout the building.

‘What if Choi Hyunseong is among the zombies? What if Choi Hyunseong became a variant and gained considerable intelligence? What if he sees us taking down zombies and tries to escape outside the building?’

Though it would require three coincidences overlapping to happen, it wasn’t entirely impossible.

The basic reward for this quest was 100,000 karma points.

Not even half the karma points spent on taking out recovery potions.

‘If I can’t get the additional rewards, there’s no point in clearing the quest.’

While lost in thought, the Raider had already approached nearby.

As he gently rotated his wrist, the axe blade covering his face traced an arc and cut off the Raider’s head.

“Please block the zombies from getting outside! Not a single one can be allowed to leave!”

“What?”

Leaving behind the bewildered soldiers, Yuseong charged toward the horde of zombies.

The first to react were the zombies holding Ultra Vibration Blades.

When he reflexively brought the axe up against the blade swinging toward his head, an unexpected reaction occurred.

Whoosh!

The plasma mass that always maintained the axe blade’s form rippled and distorted.

In exchange, the blade instantly melted and ceased functioning, but the axe blade was still unstably trembling as if shocked by the previous exchange.

Though anxiety crept in, not using the plasma axe wasn’t an option.

After cutting off the head of a zombie holding a blade, Yuseong gripped a rifle in his other hand and pulled the trigger.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

He aimed for thighs and feet.

Yuseong slipped between the zombies losing balance and falling, and opened a door labeled conference room.

Inside the vast room were zombies that appeared quite elderly.

“Not here.”

After confirming the zombies’ faces, he turned without looking back and opened the door beside him.

What mattered wasn’t taking down zombies but finding Choi Hyunseong.

As he opened more doors, the number of zombies increased and not just Raiders but variants like Climbers, Pitchers, and even Heavies appeared, making the danger grow, but Yuseong’s steps didn’t stop.

And when he opened the innermost door, they finally found Choi Hyunseong.

-Found him!

To be honest, Yuseong didn’t recognize Choi Hyunseong at first.

Though he had seen photos saved on the smartphone, the difference between his human appearance and zombie appearance was too great.

Fortunately, the worst was avoided thanks to Choi Gangsik recognizing his face.

Now all that remained was wiping out all the remaining zombies except Choi Hyunseong.

And he had already thought of a way to wipe out all the zombies from the moment he decided to fight on the top floor.

Swoosh!

After binding Choi Hyunseong with Thorny Vine, Yuseong turned and leaped into the horde of zombies.

Woong!

‘Hold on. Please hold on!’

The biggest reason he could enter the top floor alone with an unknown number of zombies was having the plasma axe that could cut through anything.

If the plasma axe stopped functioning here, all that would remain would be getting torn apart by enraged zombies.

Though the axe blade trembled endlessly like a candle about to go out, its cutting power remained the same.

Cut down whatever enters his space, cut down, and cut down again.

As he advanced in that trance-like state, a Heavy appeared before Yuseong.

The Heavy didn’t roar like other zombies, nor did it run.

It just silently walked forward with a simple behavior pattern of trying to catch prey using its massive frame, but sometimes simple things were the scariest.

Crack! Crack!

When the Heavy swung its arms, the walls caught in its trajectory shattered like styrofoam.

Unimaginable strength.

And just before the arm’s speed reached its peak, Yuseong used Flash Step to dive inside and placed his hand on the Heavy’s head.

Swoosh.

Thorny Vine extending from his fingertips wrapped around the Heavy’s head.

Though Thorny Vine couldn’t wound the Heavy’s tough skin, external wounds weren’t what Yuseong was aiming for in the first place.

The Thorny Vine that entered through the nostrils penetrated the nasal cavity and burrowed into the brain.

Thud! Thud! Thud!

Then the Heavy that had been moving slowly throughout suddenly started banging its head against the wall.

It had instinctively, intuitively realized that Yuseong was trying to do something outrageous to it.

Unable to overcome the Heavy’s neck strength, Yuseong was thrown backward and most of the Thorny Vine was pulled out as well.

The Thorny Vine fragment remaining in the brain was barely the size of a finger joint, but that was enough to use the skill.

“Move.”

The moment Yuseong extended his hand, the Thorny Vine buried in the Heavy’s brain blocked the signals the brain was sending to the body and instead sent some kind of signal from Yuseong.

The Heavy that had been trembling like it was struck by lightning spread both arms wide and slowly advanced forward.

Kek! Keek!

Kiiiik?

The zombies that noticed something wasn’t right screamed and tried to escape, but they couldn’t overcome the Heavy’s strength.

Each step the Heavy took forced the zombies one step forward.

Outside they could have kept going forward indefinitely.

No, they would have escaped to the sides before that.

But this was a corridor with walls on both sides leaving nowhere to escape, and inside a building with limited size.

Thud!

A continuously pushed zombie hit the window at the corridor’s end.

There was nowhere left to retreat but the Heavy kept advancing forward, and the glass unable to withstand the gradually increasing weight shattered.

What followed was obvious.

Crack! Crack! Crack!

Diving toward the asphalt ground.

Though zombies were tenacious, they weren’t tough enough to survive throwing themselves at the ground with no shock absorption from dozens of meters up.

BOOM!

When the Heavy fell, a thunderous boom incomparable to anything before rang out.

After watching the fallen zombies through the broken window and confirming none moved even after considerable time passed, Yuseong turned around.

With the impact of falling dozens of meters plus the Heavy’s weight added on top.

Though he thought nothing could have survived, remembering the quest’s first day meant he couldn’t neglect confirming kills.

“Mr. Choi! Are you alright?!”

“I’m fine! There are still some I haven’t dealt with, so please keep waiting at the entrance!”

After barely stopping Alex, Yuseong hurriedly ran toward the room where he had tied up Choi Hyunseong.

Though he had dealt with all the zombies, the final process of coordinating with Choi Hyunseong remained.

“Ughh.”

The power of the recovery potion was truly amazing.

Choi Hyunseong, who instantly returned from zombie to human, opened his eyes with a faint groan.

“…Son?”

“Father, are you alright? Do you recognize me?”

To anyone watching, Yuseong was the very image of a good son worried about his father’s wellbeing.

But there was one fatal mistake here.

“Father?”

As Yuseong became flustered by Choi Hyunseong looking at him with puzzled eyes while repeating the word ‘father’, Choi Gangsik’s voice was heard.

-…Call him dad. Dad and I are close like friends.

‘What? What are you suddenly saying? You’ve been using father this whole time with me, though?’

-Th-that was just to sound more formal.

‘How can you tell me this now!’

Swallowing dryly, Yuseong looked at Choi Hyunseong with the most natural smile he could manage.

“…Why are you here?”

“Of course I came to save you, dad.”

“Where did those clothes and gun come from?”

“I picked them up after soldiers dropped them. But there’s something more important right now. There are American soldiers outside? I had to tell a small lie to get their help…”

Though the doubt in Choi Hyunseong’s eyes grew deeper as the conversation continued, Yuseong didn’t particularly mind.

Who could imagine that a person from another dimension was inside their son’s body?

Unless they were directly involved, even if told all the facts they would think he was playing a prank or had gone mad.

No matter how much dissonance was felt or how persistently questioned, it would end by explaining he had changed after going through a lot.

“That’s roughly what happened. Can you match the story?”

“…So you’re saying you found my address in my room and came all the way here through tens or hundreds of thousands of infected people?”

“That’s right.”

“And in the process you coincidentally obtained a vaccine that can cure the virus?”

“Got it from a doctor I met by chance.”

“Is that so.”

Seeing Choi Hyunseong nodding his head, Yuseong secretly let out a sigh of relief.

But hearing Choi Hyunseong’s next words, Yuseong felt his whole body break out in goosebumps.

“Are you a user?”

A voice filled with certainty.

After briefly pondering what to say, Yuseong faintly nodded.

There were no regulations against revealing a user’s identity to someone other than the client, nor any disadvantages from revealing it.

Since Yuseong was more curious about how Choi Hyunseong, a mere human unlike monsters like Hae Cheongyeong, knew he was a user, and more importantly how he knew about users at all, he readily revealed his identity.

“How did you know I was a user?”

“It’s simple. I received help from a user before. The sense of dissonance like suddenly becoming a different person, strange items with unknown origins. Those are characteristics of users.”

“…What was that user’s name?”

“Oh, it was probably Sophia Blanchett.”

A helpless smile spread across Yuseong’s lips.

It was the moment when his questions about the scientific capabilities that were similar to but far more advanced than Earth’s were perfectly resolved.

“By the way, seeing how you came to help, that’s really fortunate.”

“What? Don’t tell me Sophia didn’t help and just left?”

“That’s not it. Thanks to Ms. Sophia I was able to develop nanomachines. I’m talking about the user who came before, not Ms. Sophia. Because of the first user, our world almost ended.”

“Ended? Did the first user do something?”

Toward Yuseong tilting his head, Choi Hyunseong spoke in a calm voice.

“The first user scattered the Omega virus in our world and left.”