Chapter 1: The Apocalypse Begins
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S City.
Star Hill Residential Complex.
12:00 AM.
"Who is it? Who is making noise in the middle of the night and not letting people sleep?!"
Inside a rented apartment, Joo Joowon was awakened by a deafening sound.
He abruptly sat up in bed, startling the pet cat that had been sleeping on his chest.
The cat immediately darted under the bed to hide.
This was a stray cat Joo Joowon had picked up.
It was affectionate toward people, not picky with food, overly dramatic, and also had slightly poor hearing.
Joo Joowon scratched his messy long hair.
His mind was still foggy from sleep.
Star Hill Residential Complex was an old residential complex.
Because several nearby buildings were almost all owned by the same landlord who had arranged the rent at relatively affordable prices just to keep himself busy most of the residents in the area were office workers.
The tenants were already exhausted from work every day, so at night there was usually almost no sound in the complex except for animals.
It was even less likely for noise to be loud enough to wake someone up.
Joo Joowon turned on the bedside switch.
The moment he opened his eyes, a game like interface appeared in front of him.
On the left side was a full body one to one replica of his character model.
On the right side was a row of numerical data.
[ Joo Joowon ]
[ Level ]: 0
[ Strength ]: 4
[ Physique ]: 4
[ Agility ]: 6
[ Mental Power ]: 8
Note: average value for a normal adult per attribute is 5
Game interface?
Joo Joowon froze for a moment.
In an instant, he wondered if he was still not fully awake and he could not help rubbing his eyes.
He immediately recalled the sound that had woken him up.
His body jolted in alarm.
Without even putting on his slippers, he quickly climbed out of bed and pulled open the blackout curtains.
The nearby tenants seemed to have been awakened by that enormous sound.
Those who were at home had turned on their lights.
Noise and chaos filled the air without end.
If one listened carefully, they could even hear panicked screams and desperate cries from the tenants.
"Aah!"
"Help!"
"Don’t bite me!"
"Growl!"
Joo Joowon’s expression turned serious.
As a young adult, he naturally understood what this meant.
He forced himself to calm down.
"First, the apocalypse has arrived."
"But I am not sharing my apartment with anyone. As long as I do not go outside, those zombies cannot bite me."
Thinking of this, Joo Joowon immediately felt much more relaxed.
Star Hill Residential Complex had many apartment units.
Because it was relatively close to the city center, even cheap rent was not that cheap.
Most tenants chose to share apartments with others, so depending on whether it was a master bedroom or a smaller room, rent could be around eight hundred to one thousand per month.
This allowed tenants to have more financial breathing room.
However, the zombie outbreak happened at night, and no one knew how many people were caught off guard in such an unprepared situation.
But on second thought, Joo Joowon felt that the situation might be more optimistic than he initially imagined.
After all, if the roommates were not couples, most shared apartments consisted of strangers.
People usually locked their doors at night.
In that case, as long as they were slightly cautious, it should not result in someone opening the door and immediately dying.
And he was renting the place alone.
He did not have to face those problems at the start.
But this was not purely an advantage without drawbacks.
Just looking at the game like interface in front of him made that clear.
This apocalypse was a gamified apocalypse and games were always about leveling up and fighting monsters.
Joo Joowon was not the type of person who would passively wait for others to save him.
Opportunities and risks always coexisted.
Those in shared apartments might be able to level up immediately, while he did not even have a beginner starter package.
However, not long ago, Joo Joowon had only been an ordinary office worker with slightly suboptimal health.
Asking him to go out and kill monsters right now was something he honestly did not dare to do.
After a long internal struggle, Joo Joowon still could not make up his mind.
As everyone knew, zombies could infect people.
Even though reality had turned into a game, he could not truly treat it like a game.
Who knew how strong zombies actually were?
What if he failed to kill them and instead got infected and turned into one himself?
"Meow~"
A cat’s meow interrupted Joo Joowon’s thoughts.
He came back to his senses and saw the little one poking its head out from under the bed and cautiously observing its surroundings.
This was the heterochromatic white cat that Joo Joowon raised.
It had once been a dominant figure among cats, but ever since Joo Joowon had it neutered, its personality had completely changed.
It no longer went outside and at the slightest sign of disturbance it would hide away.
Joo Joowon grabbed it from under the bed and lifted it in front of him.
"Little guy, change already! It is your turn to support me now!"
"Meow~"
The little cat flattened its ears while staring at Joo Joowon in fear and unease.
Joo Joowon widened his eyes and stared at it for a long while.
No information window appeared in front of him.
He did not know whether it was because he lacked a appraisal skill or because the cat was just an ordinary domestic cat with no informational value worth displaying in the system.
The cat became somewhat restless and curled tightly in Joo Joowon’s arms.
As a cat that had once lived in the wild, it was very sensitive to changes in its environment.
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