Chapter 18
I had seen in the game’s setting that Je Hyuno’s vocal cords had mutated until his voice no longer sounded human.
Even so, hearing it directly sent goosebumps racing across my body.
I forced my frozen brain to move and think.
How did he know?
This was unexpected.
As he waited for my answer, Je Hyuno moved his fingers. Metal clicked against metal.
Listening to the wordless threat, I slowly opened my mouth.
“I….”
Tap.
A pointed fingertip touched my chest.
I felt the metal’s sharpness through the thin fabric. With the slightest pressure, it could pierce my heart immediately.
Je Hyuno had chosen a position that conveyed his intentions perfectly.
Namely, if I told a pointless lie, he would kill me on the spot.
I immediately swallowed the lie and told the truth.
“I sent it to you, Lieutenant Colonel. The message telling you to stay still.”
Another System Window then appeared before Je Hyuno.
I would like us to clear with the True Ending together.
It was a Message I had sent.
Je Hyuno stared silently at the System Window.
I quietly swallowed against my dry throat.
The tension seemed to make even my hair stand on end. Fortunately, the darkness of night concealed the goosebumps raised across my cheeks.
I slightly altered my original first plan, ‘Pretend It’s a Quest,’ changing it to ‘Persuade Him Through System Windows.’
How would you like an extremely useful and capable Recruit?
After beginning with an intriguing introduction, I rapidly composed the Messages that followed.
- A Recruit capable of communicating freely inside Trials through System Windows!
- A Recruit who knows Trial walkthroughs and item uses unknown even to Samra!
- A Recruit capable of stopping Lieutenant Colonel Je when he attacks Captain Kwak and Captain Mo!
If you trust me, I promise you a comfortable and swift Trial closure.
At the end, I added a slight threat.
At this rate, the Clear will fail, and everyone will become a zombie.
I could picture the puzzled expressions of Mo Haein and Kwak Hanmuk, who must have been watching me.
I had said I would persuade Je Hyuno, yet I wasn’t speaking at all.
To them, Je Hyuno and I must have looked like we were merely standing in silence, staring at each other.
‘But I am working hard to persuade him, Captains.’
I observed Je Hyuno with the small hope that this would be enough to win him over.
The contents should have interested him.
Je Hyuno always focused on clearing Trials quickly.
No matter which Trial he entered, he never took more than one week to achieve a Clear.
But Je Hyuno gave no response to my desperate appeal about my usefulness.
His metal hand remained pressed to my chest.
I brought out the last argument I had never wanted to reveal.
I also know about .
The Trial that had transformed Je Hyuno into an infected being: .
I held my breath and waited for his response.
^ ^
Before long, a smiling emoticon appeared across his goggles.
I faltered, unable to tell what it meant. Then came a rumbling whisper.
“You’re quite insolent….”
At the brief words that seemed to rise from an abyss, I knew it instinctively.
‘I’m screwed.’
The first plan had failed spectacularly.
“Captain Kwak!”
I broke into a sprint while calling for Kwak Hanmuk.
The rosary pulled me in, sending my body flying. At the same instant, the jeep waiting some distance away slammed on the accelerator.
My body landed atop the spare tire on the rear of the jeep, which roared away as though its engine might explode.
Still bound by the rosary and sitting on the spare tire, I looked toward Je Hyuno.
He was too far away to see in the darkness.
But I couldn’t relax. He would surely catch us in an instant.
The jeep raced across neglected asphalt riddled with uneven dents and cracks.
Whenever it struck a stone and bounced, my body jolted up and down with it.
“Captain Mo, you need to come out now…!”
“I know, Recruit.”
A pale hand shot through a window and struck the body of the jeep.
Holding on to the vehicle, Mo Haein climbed onto the roof.
As her zombification progressed, her strength had increased considerably, allowing her to reach the roof safely even while the jeep sped forward.
Kwak Hanmuk still secured her feet with his rosary so the wind wouldn’t send her flying.
After staring into the darkness for a moment, Mo Haein drew the Black Moon Blade.
But she pointed it toward the front of the jeep rather than behind us, where Je Hyuno was pursuing.
When Mo Haein tapped the vehicle with the Black Moon Blade, the rosary around my waist tightened around my arms as well.
I looked like a prisoner abducted by an armed faction.
Bound securely, I looked toward the area behind the jeep—which, from my position, was directly in front of me.
Zombies gathered at the tremendous noise but couldn’t keep pace with the vehicle.
The jeep broke through the Yellow Zone in the blink of an eye, sped across the Red Zone, and finally entered the Dead Zone.
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The moment we entered, Dead Zombies charged us with mad abandon.
Unlike ordinary zombies, Dead Zombies could keep pace even with the speeding jeep.
But instead of the zombies surrounding us, I looked at the sky.
A black dot marked the moon. It was growing at tremendous speed.
“Ten seconds!”
After announcing Je Hyuno’s position, Mo Haein swung her weapon and cleared away the zombies blocking the road ahead.
But far too many were charging from both sides and behind us.
“That lunatic is f*cking fast…!”
No sooner had Kwak Hanmuk recoiled in horror than Je Hyuno entered my vision, along with the black crescent-shaped energy he created.
“Captain Kwak!”
At Mo Haein’s command, Kwak Hanmuk floored the accelerator.
The jeep shot forward. Dozens of black crescents embedded themselves cleanly where the vehicle had been.
“Gruuuugh!”
The zombies attempting to attack the fresh human at the back of the jeep were struck by the crescents and became lumps of dead flesh.
The crescents Je Hyuno had fired to attack me had struck the zombies instead.
A metal hand immediately lunged toward the jeep.
The instant its sharp passage tore through the air, the rosary wrapped around me lifted my body.
The fingertips, barely missing their target, scraped across the rear of the jeep.
Screeeech!
The sound of metal scraping continued for a long time.
Claw marks like those of a beast remained on the metal, but fortunately, the spare tire had been spared.
As before, Je Hyuno’s failed attack shredded the zombies clinging closely to the jeep instead of me.
Dozens of Dead Zombies bared their teeth and roared.
The creatures raced furiously with rotting arms extended as far as possible, but failed to touch so much as a speck of dust kicked up by the tires, much less my flesh.
Je Hyuno’s attacks sent every one of them flying in pieces.
Our second plan, ‘Use Je Hyuno to Clean Up the Zombies,’ was progressing successfully.
This was the plan that had earned Mo Haein’s heartfelt declaration that I was insane the moment I proposed it.
It did carry a small degree of risk.
There were only the minor issues that I needed to serve as bait so Je Hyuno would launch a barrage of attacks, Mo Haein had to stand on the jeep and swing her weapon at the zombies in front, and Kwak Hanmuk had to drive while simultaneously controlling the rosary….
But ultimately, the plan was succeeding.
As long as Mo Haein dealt with the zombies obstructing our path, Je Hyuno cleaned up all the rest.
Watching the Dead Zombies vanish in droves whenever he attacked was deeply satisfying.
To make a comparison, it felt like using cheats in a game.
Perhaps I had become an experienced participant now that this was my second chase, because it felt easier than when Je Hyuno pursued us the first time.
Dangling from the rear of the jeep, I savored my role as delicious bait.
Then my eyes met Mo Haein’s.
“…….”
Mo Haein, a zombie fighting other zombies, paused with the Black Moon Blade in hand and glared at me.
Her expression looked as though she had a great deal to say. Belatedly, I lowered the corners of my lips, which had been curved in a grin.
Mo Haein frowned deeply, then swung the Black Moon Blade at the zombies once again.
Thanks to Kwak Hanmuk’s furious driving, the research facility soon came into view.
As befitted the Dead Zone, the area surrounding it was a ruin.
The Yellow and Red Zones had contained the occasional intact building, but the only structure remaining here was the research facility constructed from reinforced materials.
It stood alone and intact like the final hope of a fallen world.
Having reached the facility in the shortest possible time by using the cheat known as Je Hyuno, I surveyed our surroundings.
“Turn right, Captain Kwak!”
Kwak Hanmuk turned the wheel in front of the facility. The tires drew skid marks across the asphalt.
The jeep swayed so violently from the oversteer that it seemed liable to roll, but just as it took the corner in an exquisite drift…
A black metal hand descended upon me.
Je Hyuno must have been waiting all along.
Waiting for the jeep to slow and for Kwak Hanmuk to become too focused on driving to control his rosary properly.
But I still had one final card.
‘Restriction.’
Restricting ‘Je Hyuno’!
It lasted only a few seconds, but its control was absolute.
The metal hand that would unquestionably have torn me to pieces this time froze in midair.
Unable to control his wings, Je Hyuno fell and rolled across the asphalt in a mass of black.
“Urgh….”
I squeezed my eyes shut and suppressed a groan against the pain that seemed to set them aflame.
Perhaps because I had prepared myself, it was still bearable.
‘I wanted to avoid using it if possible.’
But I would have died just now without it, so there had been no choice. A little pain was naturally better than dying.
Still, I had a feeling I couldn’t use it again.
If I activated it even one more time, some part of my body might suffer permanent damage.
The jeep screeched to a halt.
My body rocked. The rosary quietly loosened and set me down on the ground.
At last, my feet touched earth.
“Ah.”
My legs folded beneath me. My vision turned dark red, and the pounding of my heart roared in my ears.
“Recruit!”
Mo Haein leaped down from the jeep and quickly supported me.
Kwak Hanmuk hurried from the driver’s seat behind her and recoiled upon seeing my condition.
Wiping beneath my chin with the back of my hand, I made an awkward excuse.
“I’m fine. I’m just in a near-death state. Because of my hunger and thirst stats…. Give me a moment to eat, and I’ll recover immediately.”
“…What?”
The two looked at me in bewilderment. I began to feel slightly embarrassed.
‘We all went without food, yet I’m the only one in a near-death state.’
Despite both pushing themselves far harder than I had, neither of them had reached such a state.
Our base stamina was clearly different.
A Trial raised deficient abilities to the minimum values needed for its walkthrough, but did not lower abilities that already exceeded those values.
Mo Haein, Kwak Hanmuk, and I had begun from entirely different starting lines.
That was why I should have managed my hunger and thirst stats more carefully….
I had made an elementary mistake while focusing on Je Hyuno.
“You… what were you doing until you reached this condition?”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, I wasn’t asking for an apology.”
Mo Haein roughly swept back her hair and turned sharply toward Kwak Hanmuk.
Before she could say anything, he was already hurriedly retrieving the backpack from the jeep’s rear seat.
Then he turned it upside down and poured food into my arms.
Holding the pile of food against my chest, I looked at Kwak Hanmuk.
“I think I only need that can and a bottle of water.”
“Yeah, eat it. Eat everything.”
He unwrapped a hot-bar snack and pushed it into my mouth.
As I chewed and swallowed it, the pounding heartbeat faded, and my narrowed vision recovered.
While I drank the bottled water Mo Haein handed me after even opening the cap, Kwak Hanmuk exclaimed repeatedly.
“Wow, this is truly insane. Gwangbam Hyungnim is going to drive me out of my mind.”
Gwangbam….
My nickname Gunbam had somehow transformed all the way into Gwangbam.
The moment I roughly stuffed enough food and water into my mouth to restore my stats, I checked on Je Hyuno first.
Je Hyuno, who had remained sprawled where he rolled across the ground, slowly rose.
Kwak Hanmuk and Mo Haein immediately stepped in front of me.
At that, Je Hyuno waved one hand.
“Lieutenant Colonel Je, have you come to your senses now?”
Kwak Hanmuk asked with a suspicious look. An emoticon appeared across the goggles.
O <
Was that a wink…?
It did seem to mean he had regained his senses.
Je Hyuno beckoned with his metal hand.
When Kwak Hanmuk stepped forward, he shook his head. When Mo Haein did the same, he shook it again.
He continued shaking his head from side to side and stopped only when I came forward.
I was still deliberating over whether I should approach any closer when I heard a click.
Je Hyuno had removed his goggles.