Chapter 26: Floor Cleanup Again
After all, zombie infection could happen in many ways.
It was not guaranteed that infection only occurred through scratches or bites.
If infected blood splashed into someone’s eyes, they might still become infected through sheer bad luck.
That was why Joo Joowon felt extremely fortunate that he had specifically bought a small electric scooter in order to save commuting time back before the apocalypse.
The country’s laws also required people riding electric scooters and motorcycles to wear helmets.
Without that regulation, Joo Joowon definitely would never have bothered buying one just for convenience.
Yet in the apocalypse, it had become one of the easiest defensive tools ordinary people could obtain, greatly increasing safety while killing zombies.
There was only one zombie inside this apartment.
It gave Joo Joowon one point of experience and one copper coin.
He searched through the apartment briefly afterward.
The kitchen was completely barren, it’s so empty that there were not even pots or bowls left behind.
It was also filthy and messy.
Seeing that, Joo Joowon no longer bothered hoping to find supplies there and directly turned around to move on to the next apartment.
The sounds of zombies smashing against doors had already alerted nearby zombies, so there was no longer any need for Joo Joowon to search carefully.
After peeking through the peephole to check the situation inside, he directly unlocked the doors.
Whether because the apocalypse game had transformed too many zombies at once or because the game officially started at midnight, Joo Joowon felt that only a handful of survivors remained inside this entire building.
Aside from the anti theft doors installed at the entrance by the landlord, all the interior renovations had been uniformly arranged by the same person.
Joo Joowon did not know whether the landlord had hired some relative for cheap renovation work and gotten scammed in the process, but the apartment had been full of problems from the very beginning.
When he first moved in, he had already encountered leaking faucets, leaking water heaters, and even leaks dripping from the bathroom ceiling.
None of those problems were major individually, but all of them were extremely annoying to live with.
However, the most outrageous issue was the bedroom door.
The material used for it was unbelievably terrible, similar to those cheap wooden computer stands and storage shelves sold online that were made from fiberboard.
What exactly was fiberboard?
It was essentially wood ground into powder and then compressed back together into board form.
Not only did it possess poor load bearing capability and terrible moisture resistance, but it also deformed very easily.
Once, when Joo Joowon returned home and closed the bedroom door with slightly too much force, the entire thing had directly collapsed on the spot.
This type of board naturally could not stop zombies.
So if a player living with roommates had one of those roommates transform into a zombie, then with the zombie recklessly smashing against the door without caring whether its bones broke or not, it would quickly break free and devour the remaining roommate.
The problem was that people who lived in this apartment complex mostly chose it because the rent was cheap.
Very few people would waste money renting an entire apartment alone.
Most residents shared apartments with others.
Because of that, one could easily imagine just how high the death rate in this neighborhood became after the apocalypse game descended.
If he could not clear out his own floor and the nearby areas quickly enough, then Joo Joowon would soon consider evacuating.
The population density in this kind of apartment complex was second only to overcrowded urban villages.
There were simply too many people.
At the beginning of the apocalypse, the zombies had no shortage of food here.
No matter how he thought about it, the chances of higher level zombies appearing in this place seemed extremely high.
If he failed to escape early on, then later he probably would not be able to escape at all.
After quickly killing the zombies inside the room, Joo Joowon did not rush to search the apartment.
Instead, he immediately headed toward the next unit.
By the end of the morning, he had completely cleared all the zombies on this floor.
However, Joo Joowon could also feel that he was reaching his limit.
Although using the compound crossbow did not consume much stamina, the force of zombies crashing into the shield was genuinely terrifying.
Even though he started taking advantage of blind spots and trick angles to kill zombies again after testing things once, there were still moments when he had no choice but to use the arm shield directly.
At this point, his arm felt so sore that he could barely lift it anymore.
After all, the muscle pain left behind from yesterday’s zombie hunting had not recovered yet.
Now things had only become worse.
There were a total of seven zombies on this floor.
Three apartments had remained completely silent even after he knocked on the doors.
He did not know whether those apartments were empty or if survivors were simply hiding inside.
Among the seven zombies, one apartment absurdly contained four people.
It was apparently two couples living together.
Joo Joowon spent the most of his time dealing with that apartment.
Even facing two zombies directly required him to use tricks and careful positioning, let alone four.
He killed them one by one through the peephole.
Out of his twenty bolts, ten had been wasted on that single apartment alone.
Yet the rewards they gave him were unbelievably stingy.
The four zombies did not even drop a single copper coin, nor did they drop any equipment.
The entire floor only rewarded Joo Joowon with seven experience points and two copper coins.
Not a single piece of equipment appeared.
Fortunately, he was now only four experience points away from leveling up, so he did not feel that the entire morning had been wasted.
Luck was not something people could force into existence anyway.
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