Chapter 29
Shrrrk. The metal wings folded with a sound.
Je Hyun-oh landed on the rooftop, a backpack threaded with multiple carabiners dangling from his hand.
Only a single one of those rings had survived, now hanging from his metal hand.
Having successfully retrieved the backpack, Je Hyun-oh set the load down and tilted his head to the side.
"Lieutenant Colonel."
Kwak Hanmuk, who had been waiting for him on the rooftop eating potato chips, dusted the crumbs from his hands.
Beside him, Mo Haein offered only a brief, silent nod of greeting before taking the backpack and descending the emergency stairs.
She was off to deliver the items to Yi Ga-on as quickly as possible.
Kwak Hanmuk gave Je Hyun-oh a short report.
"During the underground boss battle, Han Goyo’s eyes turned gold. Captain Mo Haein reported it earlier, and the symptoms were identical to what I witnessed in the Yellow Zone."
After a brief silence, a rough, rasping voice emerged.
"Just gold?"
Je Hyun-oh pushed his goggles up onto his forehead, revealing his eyes.
"Or the same color as mine?"
Kwak Hanmuk studied the vivid gold pupils — so unlike the dark violet irises — for a moment, then answered with certainty.
"The same color as your pupils, Lieutenant Colonel."
He’d seen it twice now. There was no room for confusion. But there was one difference.
"However, in Han Goyo’s case, it wasn’t just a temporary color change. They seemed to emit light."
"They sparkled?"
Sparkled.
That wasn’t quite the right word. Kwak Hanmuk replayed the scene he had witnessed in his mind.
Then he chose the word from his vocabulary that felt closest.
"I believe... ’radiance’ would be more accurate."
At Kwak Hanmuk’s words, Je Hyun-oh’s eyes curved into a smile.
He pulled his goggles back down.
"I’d like to see it for myself. Wonder what I’d have to do to make him show me."
"You are not permitted to kill him."
"I know."
It was right after receiving that less-than-reassuring reply from Je Hyun-oh.
Ding. A system window appeared with a chime.
◆MA!!IN? QUES?T!?: Defend the Laboratory.
Defend the laboratory from zombies for 3 days. (0/3)
***
"Do you see this? Roasted Chestnut, you see this, right? I can’t believe it..."
Yi Ga-on, having finished her tests, shouted at me, trembling uncontrollably.
"Roasted Chestnut, YOU were the cure!"
Something about blood serum, something about antibodies — Yi Ga-on poured out a rapid-fire stream of words that were hard to follow.
I didn’t understand even half of it, but I understood the core of it.
My blood was the cure for the zombie virus, Pandora.
"Sniff, Roasted Chestnut..."
Yi Ga-on was on the verge of tears.
As if the bad memories of being tormented by Tak Jucheol and Paeng Sangdo had been wiped clean, her crying face was filled with joy.
Of course, I was happy too, but honestly, it didn’t feel real.
It seemed I hadn’t expected things to unfold this way in the slightest.
"First, I’ll try to produce enough cure for two people, and I’ll work on the vaccine simultaneously."
"How much blood do you need?"
"At least 400ml..."
Yi Ga-on spoke cautiously.
"Under normal conditions it might be fine, but in your current state, the blood draw could be a bit hard on you."
Since I hadn’t been able to rest properly, it did seem like it would have an effect.
But it’s not like I can put it off, either.
Developing the cure as soon as possible, even a day earlier, was the most important thing.
I readily held out my arm.
Yi Ga-on gazed at the blue veins in my forearm with greedy eyes.
She swallowed hard, then murmured as if in a trance.
"I’ll get ready for the blood draw."
...It was a relief I’d built up some affinity with Yi Ga-on beforehand.
If I were Tak Jucheol or Paeng Sangdo, I might have lost an arm.
She returned in an instant with a 16-gauge needle and a blood bag, then sat me down on a cot in the corner of the laboratory.
"It’ll be over in ten minutes."
Then she vanished, busily typing something into her tablet.
I stared for a moment at the blood flowing into the bag.
Just as I was failing to feel any sense of reality, a ding sounded and a system window appeared.
◆MA!!IN? QUES?T!?: Defend the laboratory from hordes of zombies for 3 days.
Unbelievable! You have discovered a cure that does not exist.
This astonishing achievement will delight Akasha.
But one final gate remains before you can reach your own True Ending.
For the 3 days it takes to produce the vaccine and cure, you must protect the laboratory from the endless waves of zombies that will swarm every night.
Will you?Succeed!this time?Will you??Succeed!Succeed! This time, you resolve that you will absolutely succeed.
(Current successful defenses: 0/3)
There was some weird text mixed in there, but it was the Main Quest I knew.
It was the defense quest known in DeZonDeal as the ’Three Days of Death,’ nicknamed the ’Ending Cutter’ because it prevented players from reaching the ending.
Starting tonight, then?
It ran from sunset until sunrise the next morning, so there wasn’t much time to prepare.
I felt a pang of regret that I hadn’t secured more submachine guns.
But I wasn’t too worried.
The most perfect being for this kind of large-scale battle was on our team.
I was studying the system window, thinking hard about how to formulate the most efficient operation, when a shadow suddenly fell over me.
What’s making it so dark? I thought idly, lifting my gaze — and flinched in surprise.
Pitch-black goggles were staring down at me.
"Lieutenant Colonel..."
I called out to him, pressing a hand to my racing heart.
I don’t usually startle at jump scares, but Je Hyun-oh shoving his goggles in my face genuinely shocked me.
The spot where the needle was inserted throbbed. I looked at my own face reflected in the goggles and asked,
"When did you get here?"
Of course, I didn’t expect an answer even as I asked.
A chill radiated from him, so he probably hadn’t arrived long ago.
Seeing as the next quest popped up, it looks like he made the delivery to Yi Ga-on just fine, too.
Having taken that as answer enough, I checked to make sure the blood was being drawn properly.
Then I looked past Je Hyun-oh.
Mo Haein and Kwak Hanmuk were walking over, deep in conversation.
"Trainee."
Mo Haein asked, her face tense.
"Did you check the quest window?"
"Yes. Zombies will start swarming in tonight."
I gave my superiors a brief explanation of the quest.
When I said it was from sunset to sunrise the next day, Mo Haein visibly relaxed.
She must have thought we’d be hounded by zombies nonstop for three full days and nights.
Mo Haein gave advance notice of her condition.
"I won’t be able to fight on the last day."
The day after tomorrow, Mo Haein would fully turn into a zombie.
To be precise, she would become one around sunrise, after the second battle ended.
But since we didn’t know what variables might arise, it seemed best for her to pull out during the second battle, for safety’s sake.
I explained my opinion and added one more thing.
"I don’t think we’ll be short on combat power. We have you, Lieutenant Colonel."
Kwak Hanmuk’s zombification, however, was a slight problem.
Today was only the first day of his infection, so he was still manageable, but by the second day, suppressing his aggression would not be easy.
Even if he could exercise patience in peacetime, once he entered battle his instincts would be far more stimulated, and it was nearly impossible to guarantee he wouldn’t attack me.
"So I think it would be best if we split up into separate zones for the battle."
I, the weakest human, would take the rearmost position on the rooftop and focus on firearm-based attacks. Je Hyun-oh would take the central front line. Kwak Hanmuk and Mo Haein would cover the flanks.
My reasoning was that since their zombification had increased their stamina and strength, this kind of divided deployment would be viable.
"But, Goyo."
Kwak Hanmuk, who had been listening intently, abruptly cut in.
"Why are they taking your blood?"
Only then did I realize I hadn’t explained the most important fact.
I was wondering how to put it when, right on cue, Yi Ga-on appeared.
"I’ll take the needle out now."
Undeterred by the presence of two zombies and one goggle-wearer, she walked right up, checked the blood bag, and removed the needle from my arm.
In Yi Ga-on’s eyes, there wasn’t a trace of fear — only a glint bordering on madness.
The excitement of having found the cure seemed to have suppressed everything else.
Kwak Hanmuk, who had been watching Yi Ga-on act like a mad scientist, asked again.
"Researcher. Why are you taking his blood?"
As if she had been waiting for it, Yi Ga-on shouted in a voice full of ecstasy.
"Roasted Chestnut’s blood was the cure for the Pandora virus!"
The moment they heard those words, Kwak Hanmuk and Mo Haein’s expressions hardened in unison, terrifyingly so.
Even with the zombies right in front of her putting on menacing faces, Yi Ga-on didn’t seem to register them at all.
She walked away, cradling my blood bag with a face drunk on rapture.
The moment Yi Ga-on was out of sight, Mo Haein glared at me.
"Trainee."
Her voice was icy, cutting like a frost-laden gale.
"Come with me. We need to talk."
***
I got chewed out.
Thoroughly, massively chewed out.
I swallowed a sigh and recalled the barrage of scolding that Mo Haein and Kwak Hanmuk had unleashed on me from both sides.
"Minimize contact with NPCs and items. That’s a basic principle of Trial entry — do you not know that? Get your head on straight, Trainee. What exactly do you think the Trials are?"
"Crazy Chestnut is driving me insane, I swear. You just hand over your blood like that? Do you have any idea what an NPC might do with it? And what if they’d injected you with something while pretending to draw blood? Huh? What made you trust them enough to sit there quietly with a needle in your arm? Ugh, I’m losing my mind."
From the start, their perspective and mine were different.
I had played the games of the Archive and had developed no small amount of affection for the NPCs within the Trials.
So, fundamentally, I couldn’t help but have a favorable attitude toward them.
But to Mo Haein and Kwak Hanmuk, the Trials were calamities that had flown in from outer space.
From their point of view, my actions must have looked like someone waving their hands around in a raging fire, saying, Oh, this is warm — it’s not that hot.
No matter how much I insisted it wasn’t dangerous, it was useless.
Of course, I did need to take the captains’ words to heart.
Nothing they had said was wrong.
It’s true. I am doing reckless things.
If I had acted normally and rationally, I never would have spared the Chef Zombie in the underground zone.
Nor would I have attempted to create a cure, nor given my blood to an NPC for that purpose.
Coldly speaking, they were all insane acts.
But... even if I could turn back time, I think I would make the same choices.
Because I know Yi Ga-on and Yi Se-on, the Chef Zombie, Princess Tarantella and Smiley — people that Kwak Hanmuk and Mo Haein don’t know.
Anyway, once the vaccine and cure were safely completed, it seemed like the captains’ anger would ease up at least a little.
Thinking that I just had to get through the next three days of battle, I finished assembling my firearms.
The sun was already setting.
As I was placing the guns according to Kwak Hanmuk’s instructions, my eyes were naturally drawn to the figure standing on the rooftop railing.
Je Hyun-oh was gazing at the sun as it cast its sunset glow, his metal hand hanging loose at his side.
Come to think of it, the Lieutenant Colonel hasn’t said a word.
Well, it would have been stranger if he had.
I approached him carefully, the way you’d approach a wild animal.
"Lieutenant Colonel."
At that, Je Hyun-oh turned his head toward me.
^ ^
He displayed a smiling emoticon on his goggles, looking immensely pleased.
He was even clicking his metal hand, wiggling the fingers slightly.
"Since I’ll have a view of the battlefield from the rooftop, if Captain Mo or Captain Kwak needs support, I’ll let you know via system window. And I suspect the zombies will mostly swarm toward you, Lieutenant Colonel, so since the battle will be continuous for three days, if there’s anything that’s too much for you..."
"Goyo."
At the sudden call of my name, I stopped speaking.
No — it was more like my breath stopped, and my voice died along with it.
"You know about <Zero>."
"..."
"And yet, three days?"
A laugh echoed out, as if reverberating from deep within the darkness.
Je Hyun-oh whispered, his voice brimming with a delight he couldn’t contain.
"Let’s end this tonight."