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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: Xrecker
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…2 levels?! I had killed twenty-seven of them! …One level per ten kills? …Wow… This was ridiculous. Damn it. One level per kill, and now one level per ten kills? This was too much. I felt deflated.
“Status.”
…Damn it.
Only 1 point per level.
…Ugh…
I rubbed my forehead and sighed. I had thought it was strange how the leveling speed increased as I leveled up. When I first got the Time Controller specialization, I had only leveled up twice, or maybe four times, on the first day. I had barely leveled up at all in the beginning. It had gradually increased from the second day onward, and towards the end, I was leveling up over twenty times at once. I had definitely thought it was strange.
A new specialization started at level 1. This one also meant that if I kept increasing my HP to shorten the recovery time, I could kill more per day, which would, in turn, increase my leveling speed.
Right… Well, it was fine to have some kind of leveling restriction, but one level per ten kills was too much. Damn it. I needed to get stronger quickly, but at this rate…
“…Ha…”
This was making me anxious. Could I even go back home? My parents, that bitch of a sister, my friends…
…Damn it.
Rubbing my forehead and sighing just made me feel more tired. I’d recover some Accelerate charges and go back tonight.
I went up to the rooftop room and lay down. I needed to recover 50 Spirit. With only 30 HP… it would take about thirteen hours to fully recharge.
…I couldn’t rest for thirteen hours.
I’d rest until nightfall and then go back out. Fast recovery was important. I allocated the 2 stat points to HP, went into the bathroom to wash off the blood, and lay down again.
I took off the Maintenance Gloves, and the tattoos were starkly visible. Damn these things. I wondered what my friends back home would say if they saw them.
If they were still alive, that is. Back in high school, there was this guy who’d gotten into trouble and been sent to some kind of juvenile detention center.
He had a stupid tattoo on his arm—some nonsense about being the best under heaven, written in hanja. He’d been sniffing glue, extorting money, hanging out with other thugs, and acting all tough until I beat the crap out of him.
Well, the message window had told me what to do, so it wasn’t really a fair fight. After that, he was mercilessly bullied by me and my friends, and then he dropped out of school and disappeared. I couldn’t even remember his name.
He was just “Tattoo Idiot.” If I showed up with these things on my hands, my friends would… damn it.
“Ah, this is fucking annoying.”
…The design wasn’t bad, though. A flower-like thing burning inside, surrounded by multiple overlapping rings. I didn’t know what was burning inside. It was a strange design. But I still didn’t like it. There was also one of those old thugs on the street who had tattoos.
Damn it.
I felt like I was being lumped in with those tattooed idiots and old thug losers. Whatever. I’d watch some YouTube and then go to sleep. I had just woken up; I wasn’t sure if I could fall asleep again.
…YouTube was in chaos. Not just in Korea, but all over the world. Countless channels were filled with people pleading and demanding to know what their governments and militaries were doing.
What could the president possibly do when the entire world was like this…?
From what I had seen, every few houses had at least one growler inside. That meant roughly one out of every thirty or forty people had turned.
Places where people gathered must have been scenes of utter carnage, and the military, with soldiers sharing barracks, couldn’t have escaped unscathed.
No, sharing barracks must have made it even worse. Some units, with quick responses, might have survived, but others could have been decimated within hours. Expecting the president to solve this… that was unrealistic.
…Hmm?
…There was something strange on one of the channels… what was this?
It looked like a crowd at a World Cup final. A massive crowd filled the entire city. Where was this? It looked like a favela, with a steep incline.
…Rio de Janeiro?
Brazil?
Why were there so many people?
Was this an old video?
…The upload date was yesterday.
…Yesterday? That couldn’t be…
The channel owner, speaking in what I assumed was Portuguese, was babbling frantically. I couldn’t understand a word.
…Drone?
I kept hearing the word “drone.” It seemed like it had been filmed with a drone.
…Looking at the massive crowd filling that city, or rather, that massive favela, made me feel a little nauseous.
I’d check out some other channels.
…Oh, this was America.
…New York?
Skyscrapers… I think I’d seen this place in a movie once… Madison Square… something like that.
The crowd…
It was massive. Just like in Rio, a huge crowd filled the city.
Someone was speaking in English, but I couldn’t understand.
The upload date was… eight hours ago?
…What…?
…This wasn’t good.
The people who had disappeared from the streets… the ones that should have been there but weren’t… I had thought about that before.
I’d look for some Korean channels.
…Found one.
“…Holy shit…”
…Where was this?
Incheon?!
This one had also been filmed with a drone.
The streets of Incheon…
…were filled with a massive crowd. Tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, at a glance. They filled the spaces between buildings, the roads, every available space.
The channel owner was whispering.
“L… Look at this, everyone. I… I always check the streets with my drone before going out to look for food. T… Today… the street in front of my house… it’s… completely filled with… z… zombies… I… I can’t… I can’t go out…”
The channel owner was trembling with terror, his teeth chattering audibly.
Growls and snarls, loud enough to drown out the other sounds, filled the air. Loud enough to make the house shake.
This person’s house was completely surrounded.
The channel owner whispered,
“Th… these… z… zombies… they’re… moving… I… I don’t know where they’re going… They’re coming from somewhere… and they’re going somewhere… I… I think they’re heading towards Suwon… but I don’t know… I… I hope the people over there are okay… if… if you’re watching this… please be careful… l… let’s all… survive… and meet again…”
The channel owner waved. The video ended. Uploaded four hours ago.
…The human beasts… they had disappeared from the streets and were gathering.
…This was dangerous.
They weren’t on these streets.
Not yet.
But if that horde appeared here…
This wasn’t good. I might be stuck inside for a week, a month, or even longer. Even if I could kill them quickly, I couldn’t kill an endless horde. I couldn’t take on tens or hundreds of thousands of them alone.
I jumped up, grabbed my sword and gloves, and ran outside.
…I could still hear growls coming from the mixed-use building, but it was much quieter now. They seemed to be getting ready to go back inside.
…Was Soo-hyun okay? She was probably at the hardware store. I’d check on her first.
I crouched down and ran towards the convenience store, then to the hardware store. I could hear the clatter of tools and voices.
“Ah, those are welding rods. You need to bring those too.”
“Yes, Soo-hyun. Just tell me what you need.”
…I felt relieved. After seeing that video, I had been incredibly tense.
“Soo-hyun.”
“Oh, you’re back.”
Soo-hyun smiled as she saw me. Hoon, standing next to her, greeted me as usual, calling me “sir.”
“How’s it going? Did you get everything you need?”
“Yeah, I’m just going back to drop this off and then I’ll come back for more.”
I nodded and asked, “How are the boarding house barricades coming along?”
“They’re coming along nicely. Why?”
I held out my phone. “…Have you seen this?”
Soo-hyun smiled. “Wow, YouTube. I haven’t had time to watch anything—I’ve been too busy hammering. Is there something interesting…?”
Her expression changed.
Hoon’s face also changed instantly.
“S… Sir… th… this…”
I nodded. “Incheon isn’t that far from here. We need to properly fortify the house.”
“…It’s probably not just Incheon,” Soo-hyun said. “There are probably massive hordes like this all over Seoul… all over the country.”
…Soo-hyun was right. The video from Rio hadn’t shown all the human beasts in Brazil, and the one from Madison Square hadn’t shown all of them in America. …Was that horde really only in Incheon? No way.
There were probably hordes of tens or hundreds of thousands all over the country, moving somewhere.
“S… Sir… wh… what should we do?”
What should we do? Level up like crazy, damn it!
But one level per ten kills… damn it!
I closed my eyes briefly, then opened them again.
“First, we need to help Soo-hyun. And we need to stock up on food, just in case.”
“Yes, sir! You’re right.”
I nodded and said to Soo-hyun,
“I’ll help you, so grab everything you need.”
“Okay.”
Soo-hyun nodded, her face grim. At first, she had been hammering and dismantling things half-heartedly, as a hobby. Then it became a full-time job. Now, she was determined to turn this house into a fortress. That was the look on her face.
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Thanks Xrecker!