Chapter 130
Kim Jin-Ju showed no signs of backing down.
Mr. Kim, who was next to Kim Jin-Ju, sniffed.
"They’re on the third… the third floor,” he said.
“Hey!”
“He’ll see them for himself, then make his decision.”
Mr. Kim looked at the people around him with a bitter expression.
“Let’s hurry upstairs!”
“All right!”
The men replied as one and headed toward the rooftop. Kim Jin-Ju’s reluctance showed on her face, but in the end, she clicked her tongue vigorously and headed up toward the rooftop as well.
After I saw them go up, I gave orders to my underlings.
‘All of you from the first to fourth company, come up the stairs.’
GRRR!!!
Close to two thousand of my underlings roared in unison and began squeezing through the emergency exit on the first floor.
The zombies on the first floor were no match for my underlings. As I got stronger, the physical abilities of my underlings increased exponentially. When I controlled fifteen hundred underlings, one hundred of my underlings were enough to take out the baits sent by the Family.
In my current state, even fifty of my underlings could take care of one bait.
The zombies on the streets were nothing but toy soldiers to my underlings. As my underlings poured into the emergency exit, I stepped out into the hallway and gave them an order.
‘Stop any zombies from getting through here. If a mutant or black creature appears, tell me right away.’
After giving them their instructions, I looked around outside and saw the arm-wrestling mutant regenerating. Its broken bones were setting themselves, and its twisted flesh was returning to its original state.
I had no intention of giving it the time it needed to recover.
I grabbed the window frame as hard as I could with my arms. My target was an arm-wrestling mutant. I was going to deal with it before it had the chance to fully recover.
Whoosh!
I flew at its back like a bullet. The arm-wrestling mutant took up a defensive stance with its thick right arm in front of it, as if it had sensed my killing intent. As it did so, I realized that the only thing strong about it was its right arm. It didn’t have the perfectly balanced physique like Mood-Swinger did.
I channeled strength into my arms.
“Try and block this,” I muttered.
Crack!
The sound of bricks shattering filled the air as its right arm snapped in a bizarre fashion. At the same time, it lost its balance, and its upper body tilted like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
The rebound sent me off-balance as well, but I was used to such a situation.
My physical abilities were beyond human, and I was also an apex predator amongst the zombies.
I planted my hands on the ground and lashed a roundhouse kick toward the mutant, the way a capoeira practitioner would.
With the sound of an apple being crushed, my foot connected with its jaw. It fell to its knees as though it had lost its ability to balance.
Despite this, I knew better than to stop.
I pressed on, slamming my knee into its face. Its nose broke, and red blood trickled down its face, washed away by the rain. It went down in a heap without even a wail.
I bore it down to the ground and rained punches down on it. It brought its arms up to its face to protect itself, but as I landed more hits, its arms slowly started to droop.
The more I hit it, the more its fists began to twitch.
Finally, its arms fell to the side. With a flash of my blue eyes, I punched it straight in the face.
Crack!
My fist went through its skull and slammed into the cold asphalt ground. An unpleasant sensation made its way up from my fingertips and into my right arm.
The mutant didn’t even have the chance to resist. It was now nothing but a limp corpse. I then took a deep breath and got up.
Pitter, patter.
Now that I was at peace, having taken care of the mutant, I could hear the sound of the rain again. When I’d been focused on the fight, I’d tuned out everything else, and all my concentration had been on catching the mutant.
The cold rain caressed my body and cooled the madness within me.
As I wiped away the mutant blood on my fist, my heightened emotions gradually began to subside. I took a breath and let it out, then looked at the medical center.
I could still hear the faint sound of zombies howling.
It wasn’t over just yet.
It was now time to check on the survivors on the third floor.
* * *
When I finally made my way to the third floor, easily taking out the zombies on the way, I noticed that it was surprisingly quiet. In fact, it was almost too quiet. I had an ominous feeling, and the sound of rain outside seemed strangely distant.
I wondered why the third floor was the only quiet floor.
There had been zombies on the fifth floor as well, but the third floor seemed like it was in a totally different world.
‘Did the zombies avoid the third floor on purpose?’
‘If so, why?’
I shook my head violently.
I knew better to get lost in speculation.
What I needed to do was to look for survivors.
“Pre… tty.”
As I crept through the third floor, slowly opening each door along the way, I heard a rather grotesque voice.
I stopped in my tracks and focused on my hearing. The voice belonged to a mysterious woman. She was repeating the same thing to herself in the hallway across from me.
"Pre… tty? Pre… tty. Pre… tty.”
Just as I had expected, there was more than one stage-two mutant.
I hunched down and moved toward the sound.
‘Let’s get rid of that thing first and see what…’
“Hey.”
Just then, I heard a human voice coming from the gap in the door to my right. As I turned my gaze toward the door, I saw a man—who seemed to be in his fifties—covering his mouth in fright.
He was a survivor.
When I tried to open the door to get in, the survivors trapped inside wailed and tried to block the door with all their might. It seemed like he had called out to me, thinking that I was a person. But when he saw my blue eyes, he was startled as though he’d seen a ghost, and was trying desperately to close the door on me.
"Calm down, please."
“No, no, no!”
The survivors inside heard my voice and grabbed onto the doorknob even harder.
I frowned at them.
“I said calm down.”
Just then, one of the survivors said a word that got on my nerves.
“He’s… He’s one of the Family.”
They were whispering amongst each other, but the word ‘Family’ stood out.
I furrowed my brow.
“How do you know about the Family?”
“We… We did everything that you asked us to do. We swear!”
“Huh?”
“We… We sent you food! Don’t do this to us. You promised to save us!”
I let go of the doorknob, and the door closed with a dull thud.
“Pre…”
With that, the mumbling on the other side of the hallway stopped. When I looked across the hallway, I saw a woman with her head sticking out into the hallway. She had long hair falling down her face, and she was staring at me.
A woman?
No, it was just another mutant. But as I looked at the mutant, another thought came into my mind.
‘These bastards… They were dogs?’
Now I understood why the survivors on the rooftop had reacted the way they did. I recalled what Kim Jin-Ju had said.
- If you want to save animals, go look for them. I’ll have nothing to do with them.
No wonder she called them animals.
Those trapped inside were dogs. And it wasn’t just one or two of them. There were dozens of them.
There weren’t that many survivors on the rooftop, in comparison to the number of dogs. And most of them were either elders or teens. Given the numbers and the sheer strength of the dogs, I couldn’t help but imagine the days of oppression they’d had to go through.
Just thinking about the pain they’d had to endure made my blood boil.
I assumed that the threat of the dogs had ended after cleaning up Gwangjang-dong, since Gwangjang-dong was their base of operations.
However, the Family’s influence was still present in Gangbuk. I had no clue how far the dogs had spread throughout Gangbuk.
Even though the Family no longer had a presence in this area, the dogs were still spreading evil with their unlawful acts. They were controlling and oppressing the survivors, just like what the Family had done.
They were fucking bastards, no different from zombies.
"Pre…tty!”
The mutant, whose head was sticking out into the hallway, rushed toward me, her eyes flashing. I clenched my fist and hurled a fist into her face, putting all of my strength behind my punch.
Crack!
The mutant’s face caved in with the sound of a watermelon bursting. I frowned at the stage-two mutant.
“Well, I’m not pretty.”
I raised my left foot and stomped on the mutant's face, crushing its skull. A tingling feeling traveled through my foot and up my leg. The sensation, as well as the fishy smell, intensified my frown.
The sound of the mutant’s skull exploding drew the attention of the dogs, who emerged from the room.
“Boss…?”
When I turned around, the middle-aged man, who was terrified by me earlier, was staring at me. Judging by the way he was bowing at me, he’d managed to tactfully piece together the situation.
I suddenly realized that he had called me ‘boss.’
I wondered if the boss of the Family also had blue eyes. After that, I wondered if he somehow saw me as a savior that had come all the way to this place to save him.
I considered the middle-aged man silently.
He swallowed, then continued to speak.
“We thought you went to Gangnam, boss. About the food… We had some trouble contacting the dong leader, so…”
I gritted my teeth while I looked at the man.
His excuses caused me to feel even more disgust than stomping on the mutant’s head did.
I took a deep breath to calm myself, then posed him a question.
“You… Are you the leader?”
“Yes, yes! I’m the leader here. My name is Gwang Deok-Bae.”
Gwang Deok-Bae bowed deeply from the waist, and a subtle smile graced his face.
Gwang Deok-Bae.
There was no point in remembering his name.
He was going to die by my hand that day.
I glared at him.
“When did you come to this shelter?”
“Oh, hmm, I came a month ago. I got a call from the dong leader to check out the outskirts of Gangbuk as well, so…”
“Which dong leader?”
“The dong leader of Myeonmok-dong… Oh, never mind. It’d be more correct to call him the sixth officer. I came here because the sixth officer ordered me to.”
“Is the dong leader of Myeonmok-dong the sixth officer?”
“Pardon…?”
I wondered if my question was too difficult for him. Gwang Deok-Bae tilted his head and smiled awkwardly.
He swallowed then said again, “Isn’t the sixth officer… The dong leader in charge of…? If this isn’t the case, please let me…”
“How did you know there was a shelter here?”
“Well… It’d be impossible to not know, since the idiots were broadcasting all over town about this place. They sent the broadcast to gather other survivors.”
Clearly, he had come to kill the innocent, kind people on the rooftop after hearing the broadcast.
Killing him and the others wasn’t enough to teach them their lesson. Gwang Deok-Bae was boasting about what he had done, without realizing what was soon going to happen to him.
“So I took over this place and contacted the sixth officer.”
“How many people did you kill?”
“You don't have to worry, boss. There is still plenty of food.”
“How many people did you kill?” I asked again, frowning.
The dog’s eyes darted around, and his voice took on an edge of surprise.
“Kill…?"
“Is my question difficult to answer?”
“Oh, no. My apologies. It’s not that. But… I had a hard time understanding why you kept on saying killing when we eat meat.”
He smiled sheepishly and scratched his head. His answer was really pushing me close to my limit.
I just barely stopped myself from swearing at him, and asked him another question instead.
“Where are the other dogs?”
“Everyone is hiding. That mutant that you just took care of caused us a lot of trouble, boss.”
“Gather everyone.”
"Oh? Of course!”
Gwang Deok-Bae called the other dogs, laughing as if he expected something good to happen.
‘First company only, get down here.’
GRRR!!!
I heard their footsteps as they came down the stairs in the emergency exit.
In moments, there were about eighty dogs lined up in the hallway, and my underlings had blocked their way back up the stairs.
As I examined each dog closely, I saw one of them trying to sneak away.
My eyes flashed. In an instant, I was behind the man. I grabbed the back of his head.
“Ahhh! Help, help me!”
“...!”
When I saw his face, my eyes widened as well.
It was the leader of the church.
The leader had come to Sinnae-dong after escaping Gwangjang-dong.
Gwang Deok-Bae, who had been watching my interaction with the leader, noticed the surprise on my face.
"Boss… Do you happen to know this person?” he asked cautiously.
“When did this bastard get here?”
“I found this guy on the streets yesterday while I was out on patrol. He was on the verge of death. He said he was a dog, then fainted immediately after. I’m not sure which area he belongs to.”
“Is that all?”
“Yes, boss. He just came back to their senses during the day. However, a zombie wave suddenly manifested, so I couldn't get a proper explanation from him.”
Gwang Deok-Bae did his best to explain the situation to me. I couldn’t help but smile as I listened to his story.
I’d been wondering all along where the leader had gone, and voila, here they were.
"Why’d you run away when you knew all along that you were going to get caught anyway?”
“Please, please let me go,” he pleaded. “I don’t like… I don’t like it either. I didn’t become a dog because I wanted to!”
Gwang Deok-Bae, who had been listening quietly, widened his eyes.
“How dare you say those words in front of the boss!” he yelled.
“You fucking idiot! He’s not part of the Family!”
“What…?”
“This, this bastard...”
The leader wasn’t able to finish.
Because I had crushed his head in my hand.
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