Season 2: Chapter 247: Group Project (3)
"No, bro. Don't you understand?"
Tako turned to Almond with a frustrated look.
Whoosh.
Almond quickly turned his head away, pretending not to listen.
— The speed of turning his head is insane
— Wow! What physicality!
— lol Does he also not know?
— FYI: It's highly likely that Almond was just not listening
— Not you too, Almond!
“Sigh,” Tako sighed and began to explain. "You can tell by the number of people. It's not completely certain, but the fewer people and the more zombies, the more likely the event happened later. People turn into zombies when they die."
"Oh. That's true."
Bubblegum nodded his head.
"Okay, so your dream was first, right?"
“Me?”
Bubblegum looked back with a questioning gaze.
"Bro. You didn't understand, did you?"
"No~ No~ I got it. I was just joking. It’s a joke. Hahaha," Bubblegum laughed. "Yeah. I was first because there were the fewest zombies."
"Yes, good. Then, knowing when exactly your dream took place is important."
"Um... The time?"
Bubblegum frowned and stroked his chin.
"I think there was a clock tower..."
It was unlikely that he paid attention to the clock in a situation that seemed like a passing prologue.
Almond interjected, "Wasn't it during gym class?"
"Huh?"
"You said you were at the playground."
"Oh!?"
The only time students would be at the playground inside the school was during gym class. Then, they just needed to check the schedule to see when gym class was.
"That's right! It was during gym class!"
"… What gym!? Aren’t you guys supposed to be out!?"
Crash!
A woman who knocked over the snack bar counter shouted, "You guys have less than a minute left of class time! If you get caught at the snack bar during class, I get scolded too!"
— Wow
— Hyun-Ah wow
— Wow! She’s here too, awesome!
— Snack bar sister appears lol
— Where’s pizza bread?
"Hey! The guy eating pizza bread! You go too!"
"..."
A boy with scruffy hair at a table secretly eating pizza bread flinched. He pretended that he didn't hear because he wore earphones, but the flinch gave him away.
"You can hear meeee!" the snack bar clerk shouted at him.
She startled him so much that he jumped up and fell over.
"Really. All of you, get out! Or I'll beat you with this mop!"
Bubblegum dashed out the quickest, followed by Tako and the pizza bread boy.
"…"
Almond just stood there.
"Hey. What about you? Are you relying on your face to stay here?"
— lol
— Safe asset indeed~
— Almond’s face is a blue-chip stock, you know?
"Ah… uh…"
He merely zoned out for a moment after seeing Hyun-Ah. She had been a remarkably impressive character when he played Zombie School.
"Was that what you were trying to do? Huh? Using your handsome guy tactics, huh? My heart almost skipped a beat just now. You dare flirt with your noona?"
— When told to leave, just stand there and make a woman’s heart flutter… Noted…
— Actively being seduced
— lol What do you mean “almost fell for it?”
— Isn’t she the one who got seduced on her own? Lol
Almond felt unjustly accused as he had never intentionally tried to flirt with Hyun-Ah.
He tried to argue his case, "When did I ever…?"
"Get outttttttttt!!!" a high-pitched scream rang out.
Almond felt as if the earth shook and wondered if she had used the Lion's Roar skill on him.
[Fear]
He was afflicted with a status effect.
— Lion's roar with a status effect lol
— Crazy lol, is she a martial arts master or what
— lol
— Her mouth is really big, seriously lol
***
A moment later, Almond felt as if he was under another status effect.
"What’s this?"
He pretended to listen while sitting in class and noticed something odd about the schedule from the corner of his eye.
"Why isn’t there a gym class?"
Gym class was a key clue provided by the dream, but they were still missing crucial information. His class didn’t have gym today.
"… What?"
"Wow."
Similar murmurs could be heard around the classroom from Bubblegum and Takoyaki. They had checked the schedule too.
"Ah, shit… What do we do if there’s no gym?"
"I don’t really know either…"
They whispered to each other as quietly as possible so the teacher wouldn't hear.
"… X is y squared, so y would be the square root of x and… ah."
The math teacher, who was listlessly reading out answers, suddenly stopped speaking.
“Gulp.”
Bubblegum and Takoyaki thought their chatting had been overheard and swallowed dryly.
"You all heard that, right? This class ends ten minutes early. There’s a speech by the principal for you second-years today."
It seemed this was already communicated as murmurs of acknowledgment followed.
"That’s it."
Almond intuited that the reason they gathered at the playground was because of this speech.
Bubblegum said there were a lot more people. It wasn’t just the students who came out during gym class that made up such a huge number. The entire grade was supposed to go out to the playground today.
Ding-a-ling ding-a-ling di~ng ding-a-ling ding-a-ling di~ng??
Almond, Tako, and Bubble Gum quickly gathered together again after class.
Tako spoke first, "Doesn’t it seem like something will happen during the speech?"
No one disagreed and they only felt more certain.
"Ah, right. What I found strange was that everyone was lined up in the playground, but they weren’t in gym clothes. They were in uniforms."
Bubblegum's testimony made it clear that the event was bound to happen.
"Oh, so it’s happening within the next hour. We’re not prepared, are we?"
The team mode seemed to be at a much faster pace.
The player had ample time to adapt to the school facilities in the previous version of Zombie School. This time, they had no such allowances.
"If we just head out to the playground like this... the outcome is too predictable," Tako rubbed his head with voluminous hair as he expressed his concern.
"Come on, kids! We need to start heading out now! You all know what happens if we're late for the principal's speech, right?" the class president, wearing large horn-rimmed glasses, shouted at the top of his lungs.
Almond observed the glittering class president and thought, "The class president is the same as always."
He looked just as he had in the early access version of Zombie School. His personality seemed to be the same too.
"As soon as the class president starts harassing us, we won’t have time anymore. Quick. We need to decide. Does no one have any clever plan?"
Unexpectedly, Bubblegum started speaking, "Let's start by breaking into the infirmary!"
He seemed quite confident as if it was the most obvious choice.
"They have donation chocolates and medical supplies there. If I remember correctly, there was even a golf club. We absolutely have to start there."
He recalled the early access quite accurately.
The infirmary was unexpectedly equipped with essentials for survival. The nurse was a golfer by sheer coincidence, so they could secure a golf club as a weapon. Since it was a blood donation day, there were also choco pies. Naturally, the infirmary had medical supplies. It would be a comfortable place to stay with beds there.
"Right. The infirmary was a goldmine," Tako recalled the same and nodded.
"Yeah! Forget the speech and trumpet call! Let's go right now!"
"… What?" Tako gave him a bewildered look.
"No. Why? Why should we listen to the speech? Am I supposed to listen to lectures from the principal on top of nagging from my wife!?"
— lol Is that really the problem right now?
— lol Gum's expression is hilarious
— Does your wife know you’re here? Should we give you the usual weapon?
"No, bro. Should we go right now? Just us?"
"Yeah. We need to survive, don't we?"
Takoyaki was stunned by Bubblegum's surprising game sense.
"No... bro. What's the point if only we survive!? Isn’t this game about saving as many students as possible?"
"?! "
Bubblegum stepped back as if hearing this for the first time.
"Are we supposed to save the kids?"
— lololol
— Did he not know? lol
— He's planning to survive alone lol
"Oh gosh. bro. The challenge is about saving as many students as possible!"
"Ah…"
Tako felt exasperated, but working with Bubblegum wasn’t new. He shook his head vigorously as if to clear it and focused on his thoughts.
"I think we should block the kids from leaving!"
"How are we supposed to keep them from going out? By force?"
"…"
That was the problem. No good ideas came to mind. It wasn’t feasible to hold each kid back and convince them zombies were coming. They couldn’t physically stop them either without destroying the students' trust.
"What do we do? Should we just go out and think about it?"
The class president's rage was already reaching the max.
"Let's go out quickly! If we can't line up properly, we’re all going to diiiiie!"
— lol Is he a contestant?
— He's too enthusiastic, for real lol
— Remember when someone got bitten by a zombie because they didn’t line up right? Lol
— Should we go out then?
They couldn't test the class president's patience any longer.
"Ha. We need to go out, but how do we stop what’s going to happen?"
Blocking the onslaught of zombies in an open field was no easy task. Everyone would probably panic and run back at first.
Almond ventured an idea, "Tako bro. There probably won’t be many zombies at first."
"That's true."
"What if we try to suppress them early on?"
"Are you talking about killing the zombies? Even so… we have no weapons…."
As seen in various media, zombies were almost invincible unless their brains were destroyed. The zombies in Zombie School couldn’t be killed unless their brains were destroyed. Breaking through their skulls to destroy the brain without any weapons was impossible.
"I’ve thought through that much."
Almond pulled something out.
"I found this in my pencil case."
Swoosh.
It was a box cutter with a blade that slid back and forth.
"… That, with that?"
— lol Is he crazy? Lol
— Don’t talk like it’s some great plan lol
— Pretending to be tactical with a box cutter lol
— Takoyaki’s pupils dilating!!
Yenmazing's Thoughts
There's a meme in Korea where group projects (the chapter title) at university end badly because no one knows how to work with each other. I've also been on the suffering end of this so I can relate strongly.