Free Web NovelChapter 13: Chapter 13
Kwak Hanmuk’s jaw dropped.
"...Whoa."
He sprinted over and slung an arm around my shoulder with a solid thump.
"I’ve heard people called crazy bastards before, but I’ve never actually done it myself."
Grinning, he showed off his sharp canines and praised me.
"Goyo, you really seem like a crazy bastard."
"Thank you."
When I thanked him, he burst out laughing — HAHAHA!
I also picked up a baseball bat and gave it to Kwak Hanmuk as a gift.
Encouraged by his enthusiastic agreement, I laid out the plan.
"There’s a group that’s taken over a convenience store."
The bastards occupying the big mart had committed every crime you could in a zombie world — murder, arson, looting.
A group of about five or six. If left alone, they’d keep tripping up players all the way through DeZonDeal.
Bad enough to make zombies seem like the better option.
In an apocalypse where public order had collapsed, vigilante justice was necessary.
The fastest strategy was to clean them out early and then start for real.
"Let’s go."
Kwak Hanmuk listened to the gist of it, asked no further questions, and tucked the baseball bat under his arm.
I led the way as he followed at a leisurely pace. We reached the destination. The big mart’s name was painfully straightforward.
Dead Mart
The clean front glass showed the inside clearly.
DeZonDeal’s zombies had degraded sight and smell — they only reacted to sound, so there was no need to cover the windows.
As I registered the store, a System window appeared.
◆Main Quest: Drive out the group occupying Dead Mart.
You have chosen a reckless approach for a quick clear.
The occupants of the mart, always brimming with rage, are formidable opponents who want to turn you into zombie chow.
But you believe that with a strong companion by your side, this adventure might just succeed.
The System window wasn’t wrong. If I’d been playing alone, I never would have attempted this.
But now I had a reliable ace up my sleeve.
"There."
The moment I pointed at the mart, Kwak Hanmuk shot off like an arrow.
CRASH!
The baseball bat swung clean and smashed the front glass window. Kwak Hanmuk leaped inside with the shards.
The bastards who’d been lounging against the shelves, laughing among themselves, scrambled to grab their weapons. One of them even had a gun — god knows where he got it.
But it meant nothing in front of Kwak Hanmuk.
BANG!
The gunshot echoed everywhere.
The bullet hit nothing but a poor bag of chips.
The innocent potato crisps burst into unrecognizable pieces. The baseball bat came down on his head right after.
THWACK! — the sound of impact, and the man with the gun crumpled to the floor.
Kwak Hanmuk caught the gun as it slipped from his hand, effortless.
He tucked the gun into his waistband and swung the bat at the staggering bastards.
The man who took a full hit flew like a baseball and knocked over a shelf. Spicy chicken cup noodles rained down on top of him.
Kwak Hanmuk stepped onto the fallen shelf and launched himself into the air. A clean kick split the air and sent the bastard clutching a knife flying.
There was a huge difference between a professionally trained soldier and guys in their early twenties who hadn’t even done military service yet.
A gap so obvious it was embarrassing to even mention.
I just watched from the back, and whenever the bastards squirming on the floor tried to get up, I swung my baseball bat and put them back down.
The man who’d been hit first by Kwak Hanmuk groaned in pain and wheezed out,
"F—... who the hell are you people..."
Oh!
I hurried over to him.
And rescued the spicy chicken cup noodles that were about to be soaked in his blood.
That was close. Valuable supplies almost got damaged.
I turned the cup noodles over in my hands, confirmed they were safe, and asked back,
"Why would you want to know that?"
The man was staring up at me with wide eyes. I tilted my head.
"It’s not like knowing who I am would extend your life."
"What? ...Ghk!"
The man tried to shout something with a bewildered face, so I hit him once with the baseball bat.
He stopped making useless noise and quietly closed his eyes, unconscious.
Kwak Hanmuk was still rampaging.
I organized the scattered supplies while I waited. Before long, only the groans of unconscious men filled the mart.
You have won the battle against the occupiers of Dead Mart!
A cleaner victory was impossible.
Kwak Hanmuk checked the victory notification on the System window and clicked his tongue.
"Done?"
He swung the baseball bat at the air, like he was disappointed.
"Captain Kwak is the best."
I shot him two thumbs up.
I’d like to use you often in the future, Captain.
Kwak Hanmuk grinned at my heartfelt flattery — all for the sake of the future. He rested the bat on his shoulder.
"This is F — ing fun. Goyo, let’s do this again, yeah?"
As it happened, I had plenty of things planned for him in DeZonDeal.
Hitting zombies hard. Smashing zombies into pieces. Sending zombies flying far away.
I was feeling pleased that I’d given him work suited to his nature when a System window appeared.
You keep hesitating to register ’Mo Haein.’
But registration is an essential process for growing as a System.
You think it might not be a bad idea to take a small risk and register ’Kwak Hanmuk’ first.
Would you like to register ’Kwak Hanmuk’?
Since I wouldn’t register Mo Haein, the System was now compromising on its own.
Used to ignoring System windows by now, I picked up a backpack that had fallen on the floor.
You have acquired a backpack. Your portable item capacity has expanded.
DeZonDeal had no basic inventory, so you had to farm backpacks.
It was a setting meant to add realism, but having to pack everything manually was a huge pain.
I stuffed the supplies into the backpack one by one. I paused while picking up the spicy chicken cup noodles and glanced at the packaging.
Spicy chicken flavor, born from the blazing tomb that burns ■■■!
It looked similar to Korean cup noodles, but the text on the packaging was bizarre.
When I’d checked it as an item description in-game, it only told me roughly what flavor it was.
This was my first time seeing the actual packaging, so I looked at the other food around me more closely.
Tuna mayo, hauled from the boiling river of ■
Salmon mayo, hauled from the bubbling river of ■
The triangle kimbap was just as grim. If this weren’t a zombie world, I wouldn’t want to touch any of this with a ten-foot pole.
"Goyo, what’s up?"
Kwak Hanmuk had grabbed a bag of chocolate candies. He tore it open and poured the whole thing into his mouth.
"The descriptions are all weird."
"That’s just how the Trial is."
Fair enough. Item descriptions were often bizarre.
While I packed supplies, Kwak Hanmuk tossed a few snacks into my backpack and neatly tied up the mart’s occupiers, stacking them in a corner.
He cracked his knuckles.
"So are we killing these bastards?"
"No need for you to go to the trouble, Captain. They’re useful."
The supplies seemed enough for the three of us to share. I slung the backpack over my shoulder and looked out the window.
"Ughhh..."
Zombies who’d heard the gunshots were dragging their feet toward the mart. At a glance, there were at least a few dozen surrounding us.
"Let’s feed the zombies before we go."
I gave the mart’s occupiers exactly what they’d done to survivors they’d kidnapped in the Green Zone.
I used them as bait.
Kwak Hanmuk and I slipped safely past the swarm of zombies that gathered. He let out a low whistle at the sight of the zombies feasting.
"Now we should head to the Green Zone and join up with Captain Mo."
"Yeah."
He followed me obediently, then suddenly asked,
"You’re twenty-four?"
"Yes."
"Seven years younger than me."
Click.
The sound of a gun being loaded.
I’d been walking ahead. I stopped. Hoping I was wrong, I slowly turned around.
"I know this Trial is basically an infinite repeating illusion. But when it’s right in front of you..."
His gun was aimed at me.
"Even an Adaptee who trained like hell at TRA would have a hard time acting without hesitation."
Kwak Hanmuk made a shooting sound with his mouth. Pew pew.
"But Goyo just feeds people to zombies like it’s nothing?"
Now that I thought about it, it was a reasonable suspicion. But it was because this was a Trial. If it weren’t...
Well.
I recalled Park Seonggyeon, who’d turned into a golden firework, and corrected my thought.
"I suppose I am a bit cold-hearted."
"A bit?"
"Well, I have to survive too."
Kwak Hanmuk let out a genuine chuckle.
My answer didn’t seem bad, but with Captain Kwak as my opponent, I couldn’t be sure if it would pass.
He was the kind of man who could laugh like that and still pull the trigger.
"I just... have clear priorities."
I spoke slowly as I walked toward Kwak Hanmuk.
I stopped right in front of his gun.
"And Captain Kwak is included in my priorities."
Kwak Hanmuk stared at me. His eyes asked why. I answered.
"We’re a team."
We’re on the same side now, so stop doubting me. I don’t stab my teammates in the back.
...I couldn’t say it outright, but there was no way Kwak Hanmuk missed my meaning.
He laughed out loud and tucked the gun back into his baseball jacket.
"Can’t mess with Hyung-nim Goyo."
I didn’t know why he called me Hyung-nim, but I answered quickly.
"Thank you for trusting me."
If he’d kept the gun aimed at me, things would have gotten complicated in a lot of ways. Lucky. I didn’t want to blow Kwak Hanmuk’s head off.
I took Kwak Hanmuk to the gun shop.
The gun shop was a place you could only find the hidden location and entry method after completing all sorts of miscellaneous quests in-game.
But I led us there like it was my own home, and Kwak Hanmuk looted the items like it was his.
Seeing him follow without a word gave me a strange feeling.
I hadn’t given TRA a proper explanation.
Samra knew that I’d experienced the Trial and the people tied to it through the game.
But TRA hadn’t pressed me for anything since forming the special task force.
Kwak Hanmuk was the same. He had nothing to say about me pulling out strategies and rare item locations.
’As long as I can close the Trial, they don’t care what I am.’
The attitude was clear — they intended to use me as a tool.
I knew TRA prioritized practicality, but it really didn’t feel like a government agency.
By the time we finished looting the gun shop, the sun was already setting.
I’d added a duffel bag to my load. With the blazing red sunset at my back, I headed toward the Green Zone.
Zombies moved slowly during the day, but at night, their speed increased.
If you didn’t want a chase with sprinting zombies, it was best to reach the Green Zone before dark.
DeZonDeal was divided into four zones.
The Green Zone — a safe area where survivors stayed. Only a very small number of zombies appeared here, manageable for survivors. freewebnσvel.cøm
The Yellow Zone was where players started the game, and where zombies began appearing in earnest. Few zombies during the day, but double at night.
The Red Zone was crawling with zombies day and night.
And finally, the Dead Zone.
The entire Dead Zone was always treated as night, even when the sun was up. And it spawned special zombies called "Dead Zombies."
These zombies were far superior to regular ones in strength and speed.
The delivery destination — the lab — was located in the Dead Zone.
If you played by the book, you couldn’t start the delivery until the player had built up enough strength.
Of course, that method had nothing to do with me.
Before entering the Green Zone.
I asked Kwak Hanmuk to do one thing — something he’d really be good at.
Kwak Hanmuk found it highly entertaining and readily agreed.
Once inside the Green Zone, the number of zombies shuffling around dropped noticeably.
The survivors had gathered at an elementary school.
The people standing guard at the barbed-wire gate shot us wary looks.
A couple of people pointing guns at me didn’t faze me anymore. I opened my backpack to show them.
Their eyes went wide at the sight of the supplies packed inside.
"I’ll give you information on supplies. Please call a woman named Morae. She should have arrived here today."
When food was involved, suspicion and everything else took a backseat. One of them ran inside, out of breath.
Not long after, a man who looked about fifty appeared with several subordinates.
"Where’d you get the supplies?"
Mo Haein wasn’t with him.
Kwak Hanmuk and I looked at each other.
There was no way a few scrawny men could stop Mo Haein from coming out.
She must have heard the commotion outside. The fact that she was staying quiet meant only one thing.
She hadn’t made it to the Green Zone.
Why? freēwēbηovel.c૦m
There was no reason for that at all, which made it even more suspicious.
Kwak Hanmuk narrowed his brow. "Hm." Then he lowered his voice and whispered to me.
"Captain Mo... I think she might have been bitten by a zombie."
