Chapter 28

Chapter 28. Toward the Company (3)

Before asking the boy what he meant, I first checked the new bead through Lucy.

The ability of the bead used on Lucy was:

‘Blocks wicked things.’

I had no idea exactly what counted as ‘wicked things,’ but it would probably be useful to me somehow.

After all, the phrase itself certainly didn’t sound like it referred to anything good.

If this had been free, I would have accepted it gratefully.

But the boy had held out the bead and asked me to look after him.

That meant it wasn’t free.

“What do you mean by this?”

I asked without taking the bead.

The boy answered honestly.

“Could I come with you, Mister?”

So that was what he meant.

I didn’t need much time to think about it.

Unlike Lee Yeonhee, who possessed the special power of divine energy, the boy didn’t seem to have anything particularly extraordinary.

If he joined us, it was obvious that we would end up protecting him one-sidedly.

In other words, he would become baggage.

I firmly shook my head.

The boy nodded as though he had expected that answer, then spoke again as if this were what he really wanted to ask.

“Then… would it be okay if I just followed you on my own?”

At those words, I had no choice but to ask,

“Why are you going this far?”

“I want to land at least one direct blow on the Company.”

“There’s a very high chance you’ll die. Didn’t you also say you haven’t slept properly for two days?”

“I’m fine. I can still endure it.”

The boy spoke with a firm expression.

“You don’t have to worry about me. I’ll just follow you on my own. Don’t protect me. Don’t save me. Just allow me to follow you. My life doesn’t matter to me anymore.”

I could see an unshakable determination in his attitude.

I looked at the others.

Lee Yeonhee smiled.

Hualian told me to make the decision myself.

Arlin simply didn’t care.

She only stood there quietly, watching what I would do.

In the end, I accepted the bead from the boy.

The boy expressed his joy and gratitude with his entire body, then asked us to wait for just a moment.

He went to each of the children who had come with him and said a few words of farewell.

A gloomy atmosphere settled over them, but the boy shook his head and told them not to worry.

After that, the children left.

The boy returned.

He stayed so far away that he was barely within my field of vision before shouting loudly,

“I’m ready! I’ll follow you properly on my own, so you don’t have to worry about me!”

He said that, but I still worried a little.

There were a lot of zombies.

Would he really be okay?

Well.

He would manage somehow.

And just like that, our group of four gained one stalker.

With our stamina fully restored, we set off.

Our destination was—

the Company.

About a day passed.

Quite a few things happened during that time.

Learning that the boy’s name was Lee Jinseong was probably the least significant among them.

Lee Jinseong nearly dying after being bitten by a zombie was the next biggest incident.

There was also the time I lent him the cloak and told him to follow us without getting hurt.

Even after nearly dying, Lee Jinseong continued following us to the very end.

His hatred toward the Company was truly enormous.

And because of that hatred, he was surprisingly useful when it came to dealing with the Company.

At the very least, he earned the temporary use of the invisibility cloak I had lent him.

Providing us with information was one of the ways he helped.

Thanks to him, we learned the Company’s exact location and finally had a definite destination to aim for.

“The Company is here?”

“Yes. I saw it myself, so there’s no mistake!”

“It’s a little far. The distance is… about seven kilometers. We can’t use a car because of the zombies, so we’ll have no choice but to walk.”

“It’s going to be a difficult journey.”

“Yes. Everyone, make sure you’re fully prepared.”

We began walking toward the Company.

As if proving that Lee Jinseong’s directions were correct, the closer we got, the more zombies appeared.

There were several dangerous moments.

Sometimes, zombies surrounded us and began closing in.

Other times, there were so many zombies inside narrow paths that our retreat was completely blocked.

Whenever that happened, Lee Jinseong used the invisibility cloak to scatter the zombies’ attention.

We never missed those opportunities and broke through their encirclement.

We escaped danger that way more than once.

And that wasn’t the end of his usefulness.

Whenever one of us started nodding off during the night, Lee Jinseong would rush over and wake them immediately.

The urge to sleep was far more powerful than I had imagined.

Even Arlin and Hualian, who had already reached the level of superhumans, dozed off at least once.

According to Lee Jinseong, it seemed like the Company was somehow stimulating people’s desire to sleep.

That sounded exactly right.

Whenever something strange happened in Korea, blaming the Company was usually correct.

The zombie virus was one example.

The destruction of Busan was another.

Getting rid of the Company even one day sooner was definitely the right decision.

Tormented by drowsiness, we continued forward with an even stronger determination.

And now, this journey finally seemed to be reaching its end.

No.

Maybe it would be more accurate to say that the real beginning was finally approaching.

“One! Kilometer! Left!”

Lee Jinseong’s voice came from behind us.

The zombies surrounding us heard his shout and turned toward him.

We took advantage of the opening and broke through the encirclement.

For a brief moment, we had some breathing room.

I looked ahead.

Straight in front of us, around one kilometer away, I could faintly make out the outline of a massive building.

That was probably the Company building.

I had never heard of any building that large existing around here.

“Everyone! Just a little more!”

With Lee Yeonhee cheering us on, I read the book and saved my regression point.

There really wasn’t much farther to go now.

Soon, we would finally face the Company.

And at last, I would probably meet that Company employee who had constantly tormented me and my companions.

The anticipation of finally getting revenge mixed together with the pressure of confronting such a powerful enemy.

It created a strange feeling inside me.

“Hualian! Arlin! From now on, conserve your internal energy and mana!”

Bullets and grenades flew everywhere, driving back the zombies overflowing around us.

Perhaps because we were near the Company, which had supposedly created the zombies in the first place, they were especially concentrated here.

To conserve her stamina, Hualian used machine guns in both hands instead of her sword.

Her grip was wrong.

Her shooting stance was wrong too.

But zombies were everywhere.

No matter where she fired, she hit one.

In that sense, it actually worked out better.

And perhaps thanks to training her internal energy, her reflexes were good enough that she at least didn’t shoot any of us.

“Five hundred! Meters! Ahead!”

We passed the five-hundred-meter mark.

Now only another five hundred meters remained.

That was when the real trial began.

I clenched my teeth and kept firing around us.

Maybe it was because this was Busan, but the sea was truly enormous.

A sea stretched out before us.

Only—

it wasn’t made of water.

It was a sea made of zombies.

Thousands of arms reached toward us like waves.

Their screams replaced the sound of crashing surf.

A green sea surged toward us in waves.

“GRAAAARGH!”

“KIEEEEEK…!”

Zombies collapsed under gunfire, piling into mountains.

The blood spilling from them formed another sea.

It was literally a mountain of corpses and an ocean of blood.

Every disgusting smell imaginable filled the air.

Horrifying sights that I still couldn’t get used to surrounded us from every direction.

But I was too busy to care.

Morning arrived while we were fighting, yet I barely even noticed.

Whether sunlight or moonlight shone down on us made no difference.

Everything around us was nothing but green and red.

There was no time to enjoy the warmth of the morning sun.

Exhaustion had climbed all the way to the top of my head.

Our bodies, soaked in fatigue, moved more and more slowly.

Our reaction speed kept dropping.

Yet the number of zombies only continued to increase.

Eventually, Arlin couldn’t endure it anymore and tried to use magic.

Just before she swung her hand and activated the spell, Lee Jinseong’s shout interrupted her.

“Front! One hundred meters! The building! Is visible!”

His powerful voice reached us.

His sentences were broken into pieces, but understanding him wasn’t difficult.

I was more worried about the boy himself.

When I glanced back, Lee Jinseong was running like a shepherd while hundreds of zombies chased behind him.

The ‘sheep’ had left the encirclement and were now following their shepherd.

Lee Jinseong was doing a good job escaping.

Watching the boy properly pull his own weight made me feel strangely proud.

I raised my gun again.

Gunshots rang out countless times.

The sound had once been enough to make my ears ring, but now I barely felt anything.

Maybe my hearing had gone slightly numb.

My five senses had been sharpened so much that they had instead become dull, like a blade sharpened past its limit.

My physical condition was terrible.

The others were the same.

And yet, strangely enough, things weren’t becoming harder than before.

For some reason, the number of zombies around us was decreasing.

Then, at some point—

the zombies approaching us completely disappeared.

“…What?”

“Is it over?”

That continued until we stood directly in front of the Company.

“Distance! Ten meters! We’ve entered! The Company’s territory!”

Lee Jinseong’s breathless voice announced that it was over.

Unable to fully believe it, we blankly looked around.

Why had the zombies disappeared?

Why weren’t they chasing us anymore?

Why?

“….”

I looked behind us.

Outside the Company’s territory, the zombies that had been pursuing us were still there.

But they showed absolutely no interest in us.

It was as though they could no longer perceive us.

As if we had all put on invisibility cloaks.

It was a truly strange phenomenon.

Still, it made sense.

If the Company had created the zombies, then it wouldn’t be surprising if they also possessed some method of controlling them.

Breathing heavily, we finally turned our heads forward.

The Company stood directly ahead of us.

We had finally reached it.

The building looked large enough to rival the 63 Building.

It was extremely tall and massive, yet its appearance was strangely neat and orderly.

The entire building was painted white.

There wasn’t a single window.

The only decoration on its surface was one sign.

[Factory]

Before going inside, we first collapsed onto the ground and rested.

I considered making another save.

But I didn’t do it.

In games with save-and-load mechanics, the most terrifying mistake was saving at the wrong moment.

“Be careful with saves.”

We were clearly already inside the Company’s territory.

There was no telling what kind of trick they might have prepared here.

A save point always had to be chosen carefully.

Without reading the book, I tucked it back inside my clothes and enjoyed the short rest.

Lee Jinseong, who had only been following from a distance until now, came closer and rested near us.

Probably because of everything he had gone through, his skin looked dark and sickly.

It almost seemed to have a greenish tint.

But there was no time to comfort him about it.

Our hearts were packed tightly with tension.

I touched the Curtain and Lucy to make sure they were ready.

Then I took the lead and approached the Company’s main entrance.

With a grim expression, I raised my hand to knock.

But before I could—

the door opened by itself.

Apparently, it had a sensor.

For some reason, it reminded me of the Mystery Mart.

Was it simply because they both had automatic doors?

Or was it because, just like back then, I was about to walk inside even though I knew I might die?

I pushed away my fear and terror.

Then I stepped inside the Company.