085 – And Then There Were None #1
Humanity is a species that uses tools.
I was proficient in handling various tools, but I particularly favored small throwing knives due to their ease of concealment and versatility in different situations.
Like now.
In one sudden motion, I threw a dagger that pierced through a special zombie’s neck, effortlessly neutralizing it.
It was the moment when all the practice and efforts of throwing daggers during my idle times in the trash-filled world paid off.
Then, someone might ask, “Isn’t shooting a g*n better?”
I agree with that too!
However, guns were expensive and hard to obtain.
Fortunately, the throwing kn*fe technique enhanced by the 3rd-grade “Awakening” power showed destructive force comparable to a powerful sniper rifle.
With excellent accuracy, it could be called a finishing move.
All those hundreds of hours spent honing my kn*fe-throwing skills were worth it!
…But?
“Yoo Yeo-reum!”
Ziiing-. Kwaahaa-!
Nothing could compare to the power of Yoo Yeo-reum’s beams emitted from her eyes, fully charged after drinking strawberry milk.
In an instant, the special zombies were sliced like tofu.
There was no need to separate their heads from their bodies as the torsos were cleanly halved.
“Waht…!?”
It was as if she turned my painstaking efforts into mere scraps of paper with just a blink of her eye.
Is this talent?
Is this what people call the realm of genius that cannot be surpassed through hard work?
Ziiing-.
Yoo Yeo-reum’s beams wiped out 14 special zombies in a flash.
Even I, who witnessed this scene, felt despair. What about Nam San-ho?
“This, this is crazy! This monster of a girl!”
I agree.
I’m still amazed that I was able to kidnap someone like Yoo Yeo-reum.
Chiik-.
Yoo Yeo-reum frowned as smoke rose from her eyes, which had emitted excessive light.
“Nam San-ho, I don’t want to hear the word ‘monster’ from you.”
Tuk-.
Yoo Yeo-reum nudged my rib and whispered.
“For a while, I won’t be able to sh**t heat beams. But since we’ve pretty much taken care of all the special zombies or whatever, you and Seugal need to catch that guy. Are you confident?”
Are you confident?
Of course, I wasn’t limited to just throwing daggers.
How about this?
“Haa!”
Tadad-!
I quickly ran and retrieved the kn*fe embedded in the pillar.
Then, I aimed it at Nam San-ho’s head, who seemed disoriented, and hurled it with all my might.
With utmost determination.
Pssh-. The sight of the kn*fe slicing through the air.
Nam San-ho trembled.
“Doing the same trick twice-.”
He seemed to have recognized the trajectory and judged that he could easily block the incoming projectile.
But, his calculations were wrong.
Simultaneously with throwing the kn*fe, I had leaped high.
“Wha… What is this?”
To his eyes, my body must have appeared to be performing some acrobatics, dancing as if turning the Colosseum’s moonlit sky into a stage.
Head down. Literally, a leap that inverted heaven and earth.
Nightmare-like speed, the same as the thrown kn*fe, cutting through the distance as if it didn’t exist, my body soared towards him.
“Ahhaaa-!”
By the time he realized my intention, it was already too late.
A superhigh-speed dagger carrying enough energy to sever the neck and head.
Instinctively extending an arm to block, Nam San-ho’s body shook violently from the recoil of the defense.
“Ghk?”
Taking advantage of that moment, my hand grabbed his head.
“…”
«Name: Nam San-ho
Skills: Expand information to view in detail ☜
《Domination Lv.4》 – Possesses the potential to cover half the world.
《Zombie Lv.3》 – Having mocked d*ath and been resurrected, does not d*e easily.
《Infection Lv.2》 – Possesses a plague-level contagion.
Status: 《Fear》 – Petrified with fear facing two deaths!»
Creak. The sound of the cervical vertebra turning.
“Final Punishment – Extreme.”
Ah, it was perfect for using as South Hanamjin’s finishing move with intact legs.
However, since the opponent didn’t d*e, was it really a “finishing” move?
“k*ll! k*ll!”
Even with his head detached, Nam San-ho continued to scream like a madman.
Probably because he was the host of the special zombies, he was quite formidable.
Actually, there was no intent to k*ll him.
There were many things I wanted to ask this guy.
After checking his status window using “Insight” just now, I had even more questions.
…
…
…
Approximately ten hostages were trapped in the Colosseum.
They were all First-stage Awakened Ones, seemingly kidnapped by Nam San-ho to be remodeled into special zombies.
Perhaps due to being infected too long by the virus, they were unconscious.
Even when they regained consciousness, they only muttered things like “Who am I…? Where am I…?”
“Symptoms of zombie virus include losing recent memories first. It’s been at least two days since everyone got infected, but it’s not too late yet. Seugal, Yoo Yeo-reum, pour some cola into these people’s mouths.”
Gukgukgukguk-.
As Yoo Yeo-reum and Seugal poured cola into the people’s mouths, I questioned Nam San-ho’s severed head.
“Nam San-ho, tell me everything that happened to you that day. From what I know, you were a First-stage Awakened One, right? Did you accidentally obtain the “Zombie” concept and cause trouble while dying that day?”
“…”
Suddenly shutting his mouth, I poured cola into it.
“GHAAA!”
Pouring cola into an already-rotten zombie causes them great pain-.
It was knowledge I obtained from the future, and it seemed to work on the host Nam San-ho as well.
“I’ll talk! Just talk! I was resurrected! That day, that guy saved me! He brought me back to life from a corpse!”
Resurrected Nam San-ho?
Segoel, who had seemed dazed until just now, regained her senses.
“Who? Who is that…!?”
“Khukhukhuk, Gu Se-jun. Him. That guy revived me from a corpse. Actually, he was also skeptical about my resurrection. The problem was that I couldn’t control myself.”
If it’s Gu Se-jun, isn’t he the leader of the illegal Awakened group, Villainous?
‘Seo Do-cheol asked him to handle the Nam San-ho incident and Gu Se-jun attempted to resurrect him… So there seems to be some sort of revival concept that can bring the dead back to life.’
If the resurrection had succeeded, it would have been fine, but the failure turned Nam San-ho into a “Zombie” who started biting people around him, playing out in my mind.
“Out of concern that the zombie virus would spread, the higher-ups ordered Yomhun of Villainous to eventually torch the N-Mart, right? Am I mistaken?”
“Huhuhu. I’m not at fault. I was just too hungry because I became a “Zombie.” You know, right? Awakened ones consume a lot of calories, especially right after manifesting a concept.”
I understand how the fire started. Then, what about after that?
“After N-Mart, what happened to you? Tell me your activities until you became the mind of “Zombie”. Why did you make your base in this Great Labyrinth? Did Nam Tae-geon arrange a hiding place for you?”
I wanted to dig into the connection between Nam San-ho and Nam Tae-geon.
Just as I was carefully documenting everything with video and audio recording, Nam San-ho began his cackling.
“My father? Khukhukhuk, no. You’re wrong. The “Zombie” mind? What is that? You’re mistaken. “Zombie”… That’s just one of the numerous abilities I’ve conquered…aaaah…”
I had an ominous feeling.
Perhaps it was the unpleasant sensation I felt when I saw Nam San-ho’s status window.
“You’ve made a grave mistake. Now, I don’t know what’s going to happen to me either. That girl… That gem she gave… That white… gem. Ever since I swallowed it, I’ve…”
Nam San-ho’s severed head began to twitch and twisted grotesquely. Soon, sticky bl**d started to ooze from the cut on his neck and strangely intertwined with the surrounding dead zombies.
Seugal asked me.
“Hey, did your planned strategy include this?”
“Honestly, it needs a slight adjustment.”
My strategy was to defeat Nam San-ho and use him to our advantage.
Unfortunately, my assumptions about him were slightly off.
“I thought he was just a useless guy and underestimated him. Why does he have a second phase that doesn’t suit him?”
Nam San-ho wasn’t the “Zombie” mind.
He had encountered a concept beyond his handling.
“Aaaah…”
The body intertwined with various corpses grew several meters larger.
The grotesque form made by the tangled human bodies looked somewhat familiar.
On that day when the world was destroyed without any prior sign.
A monstrous calamity that opened its enormous maw and absorbed people.
Especially the “Giant” known among them.
Because the appearance in front of me closely resembled the super-large corpse golem known as the “Giant.”
Even though the size was smaller by several times, it became clear that this entity was the part of the “Three Calamities” that emerged by breaking through the ground.
‘Nam San-ho was not the “Zombie” mind, but the “Domination” mind.’
My misjudgment.
However, it wasn’t something I could perceive as entirely negative.
Rather, it felt like good fortune.
“The “Domination” mind was one of the Three Calamities.”
A clarity akin to carbonation spread throughout my body, as if a longstanding mystery had been solved.
I had always wondered about the identity of the colossal monsters that arose from the sky, ground, and sea. Now, I finally learned.
The entity of those monsters was “Concepts.”
When a “Concept” becomes a mind and further acquires uncontrollable power, it becomes a giant monster!
Made of flesh, absorbing countless people and growing even larger, I decided to name it “The Giant of Domination.”
“Aaaah—”
The entity possessed countless mouths.
As it opened its multiple mouths and screamed,
“Aaaah—”
“Aaaaah—”
The cries, merely hearing them, felt like they drained one’s mental strength.
What should I do in this situation?
Defeat “The Giant of Domination”?
Compared to the situation during the extinction event, the current size of the giant is like that of a baby.
Now is the best chance to stop it.
“That… what kind of monster is that…?”
“Jina! How did this happen? You didn’t mention anything like this…”
But Seugal and Yoo Yeo-reum couldn’t accept the current situation. They looked exhausted, like marathon runners who had just finished the race.
Though now is a golden opportunity to defeat the great monster, unfortunately, our condition isn’t good.
Just then,
‘A threat to the safety of the Great Labyrinth has been detected.’
‘Do you permit the activation of the defense system, under the authority of the King?’
‘YES/NO’
The text appeared before my eyes.
Uuuung-. The ‘Seed’ ring on my finger was violently vibrating for some reason, clearly the reason behind the text.
Permission to activate the defense system?
Yes or No.
Facing this unfamiliar text, there’s only one choice to make.
“A man should run forward.”
The answer is YES!
As I reaffirmed my resolve, Yoo Yeo-reum shouted.
“Jina, look at that! Do you know what it is?”
Turning my head at Yoo Yeo-reum’s cry, there was a round something floating in the air in the Colosseum.
It looked like a black hole or wormhole with a white ring around a pitch-black hole.
Since when had that been floating in the air?
Blink- The black hole emitted light.
Then, a long something appeared there, revealing a strange presence.
It was a completely pitch-black humanoid.
So pitch-black it seemed like a shadow floating in the void.
The only peculiar point was that its eyes emitted a luminous starlight of the universe.
The starlight evoked a sense of déjà vu.
Such a beautiful light, once seen, was hard to forget.
“Is that Nam Woo-joo?”
While I was pondering, Yining, which had been clinging like a mask on my face until now, began to growl neurotically.
-Krrrrrung…!
Why Yining was acting this hostile.
Even Seugal, who had been deflated during the fight with Nam San-ho, groaned as if she were fed up.
“What is that again! Another mind appeared!”
Demon.
Seugal’s impression that ‘that thing’ was a mind, right?
Indeed, to me as well, that thing was a ‘Demon.’
More specifically, it was probably the corrupted Nam Woo-joo—
Zzzzzz.
Soon, the fiery starlight in the Demon’s eyes turned toward the giant made of corpses.
“I will…eliminate the threat to the Great Labyrinth…”
Snap.
As he clapped his hands, the enormous “Giant of Domination” began to distort as if crushed by a compression machine, collapsing into a single point, shrinking.
“Aaaaaah…”
“Aaaaah…”
Although the countless mouths cried out, it was impossible to stop the occurring situation.
Compressed by an extremely strong gravitational force, the giant, having been crushed, eventually shrank to the size of a fingernail.
The sight resembled a pure white pebble.
“…”
Nam Woo-joo, looking down at it, seemed to have lost interest, disappearing with a flash as he had come, leaving behind only the black hole.
In this situation, I uttered a magical word that brought tranquility to my heart regardless of what happened.
“Operation successful!”
At my side, Yoo Yeo-reum nudged my rib.
“Is it really going according to the plan?”
