Chapter 35
Once I gave the order, the underlings perched on the buildings to the east, west, and south moved immediately, as though they had anticipated my command.
I jumped from the third floor of my building and into the supermarket in one go. As with any supermarket, there were many entrances. That meant, it was impossible to block every entrance. I had to restrict the entryways somehow. I gave a command to the flock of green zombies that were coming into the supermarket.
‘Block the travelator and escalators going up to the second floor. Make sure nothing gets through.’
I split the twenty-three underlings evenly and had them block the way to the second floor. Very quickly, the ground started to rumble. It seemed like the black tsunami had arrived. I took a deep breath and went out through the main entrance of the supermarket. The cold summer breeze made me sniffle.
Thud, thud, thud.
GRR!! KARRR!!
Along with their intimidating footsteps, their hideous voices assaulted my eardrums from a stone’s throw away. I clenched my fists and looked to the horizon. Whenever I found myself in a situation like this, I always asked myself the same question.
‘Why do I put myself through all of this for people that I don’t know?’
Perhaps it was because of my conscience, or just useless hypocrisy. However, in this world, there had to be someone who followed their heart, someone who held onto their integrity, so that they could make the world a better place to live in.
All of this just might be a meaningless gesture. It might be stupid for me to risk my life for someone I didn’t know at all. The people in the supermarket wouldn’t cry or pray for me even if I died trying to protect them.
‘…So what? Is there even such a thing as a meaningful death in this world?’
In the face of death, everyone stood equal. All of us are just mere beings waiting for death. I had already experienced death, and knowing how painful it was, I wanted to cheer on whoever was still alive, to help them and protect them.
I wanted to devote this second life of mine to So-Yeon, along with the survivors I had chosen to help her grow into a proper person. I wanted to give them a sense of hope and stability. This will of mine wasn’t coming from a place of arrogance, where I considered myself superior to everyone else.
This was just what my heart told me to do. I wanted to help people in need, and listen to the innocents who found themselves in a difficult situation.
Since I was already dead and my body had a limit, I wanted to do the best I could do, given my circumstances. Just like the principal at the high school, and Lee Jeong-Uk when he had been trapped by zombies.
If liking and taking care of people was a sin, I would be handed a life sentence just like them. If I couldn’t get out of this damned world, this prison, if this was my destiny and fate, I had no plans to back down. I would fight against this world, together with the prisoners that shared the same vision as me.
“GRRRRR!!!”
I let loose a throat-rending scream toward the black tsunami that was rolling toward me. I saw the zombies in the very front hesitate. However, the crush of bodies behind them pushed them toward me, whether they liked it or not.
I launched myself at the incoming zombie horde. There was no need to be scared. There was no need to be afraid. There was nothing different about them. Despite their numbers, at the end of the day, they were merely street zombies.
It was time to teach them a lesson; to show them what superiority meant.
* * *
The survivors in the supermarket were silently watching what was happening outside.
“Ah, ahjussi, could that man be…?”
“No, he’s not Hyeong-Jun.”
The man in his twenties was cut off by a man who seemed like the leader of the group. The man who looked like he was in his mid forties clenched his fists and swallowed. His fists seemed like they were holding onto something—something called hope.
This hope was slender and weak, and kept trying to wiggle its way out of his grasp. The more it struggled, the tighter the man clenched his fists, making them tremble, but not letting go. His breath was ragged with fear.
In the midst of nervousness, fear, horror, and despair, this weak glimmer of hope was the only thing that kept his heart beating. This little hope of his was but a small flame flickering in the wind, threatening to be blown out, yet doing all it could to resist the wind by curling around itself.
Then, a man had appeared out of nowhere, causing his heart to beat strongly again.
He heard the voice of the man in his twenties. “Ahjussi, Park Gi-Cheol ahjussi!”
“What do you want?”
Park Gi-Cheol was focused on what was happening outside. The lives of their community depended on the man in front of them. The man in his twenties was desperately calling him, though. He frowned as he shifted his gaze toward the younger man. The younger man spoke again, his shoulders shrugged up close to his ears, as though he was intimidated by the older man’s attitude.
“Did you get a chance to see his eyes?”
“What about them?”
“That person has the same eyes as Hyeong-Jun.”
“What?”
The older man opened his eyes wide and stared at the man who was massacring the zombies. Only then did he realize that the man outside the window had glowing red eyes and a murderous glare.
The man outside was like a ship cutting its way through a storm. His power was almighty. It was way beyond human capabilities. He was stomping his way through every zombie, as if dealing with ants.
Park Gi-Cheol smacked his lips nervously and asked the other man, “Ho-Jin, is Hyeong-Jun as strong as that man?”
“I’m not sure.”
“When is Hyeong-Jun coming back?”
“Do you think he’ll take three days this time as well?”
“Three days huh… Isn’t today the third day?”
“It probably is. He should be coming back any minute…”
“Hmm….”
Park Gi-Cheol grunted and looked outside again.
He watched the violent scene unfolding in front of his eyes with a sad frown. It was nothing short of cruelty, but it was, without a doubt, a miracle for the survivors in the supermarket.
* * *
I charged through the overwhelming number of zombies. The black wave crashed into an unexpected breakwater and dispersed, turning into foam.
I thought of the zombie with the glowing red eyes from the high school. I’d torn it to pieces and eaten its brain, but it had been a lot stronger compared to other zombies. It just happened to be facing me. It had just been at the wrong place at the wrong time.
The three hundred or so underlings it had were a lot stronger than the zombies in front me right now. The ones that were charging toward me weren’t coming at me of their own free will, but because they were being shoved forward by the others behind them. They weren’t a big threat to me.
As they got closer to me and saw my glowing red eyes, all of them grew scared and shuddered.
I knew what they must have been feeling. They’d probably expected that they would descend upon a weak and lonely lighthouse. But the sweet lighthouse they’d imagined had suddenly turned into a creature with glowing red eyes, a breakwater that wiped out everything that came into contact with it. They probably only realized that they had been going in the wrong direction after it was too late.
‘Realize?’
In reality, they didn’t know how to think. They just followed their instincts. That was the difference between me and them.
The ones that were charging at me, sensing that they had a numerical advantage, quickly grew hesitant as they saw the others being wiped out. The pile of dead bodies around my feet was a clear signal of danger.
GRRR!!!
But the ones who couldn’t see did not know any better. They kept on charging toward me. It seemed like the ones without the ability to see had weak senses overall. They didn't recognize what was standing in front of them, and their attention was solely trained on the instinct to kill.
I cracked their heads and added more bodies to my pile. Their heads were crushed like soft tofu and their spines snapped like weak twigs. Eventually, I was standing on a massive pile of dead bodies. Only then did they stop what they were doing.
The remaining zombies all had vision. I screamed at the top of my lungs, loud enough that it felt like my throat was about to be torn out. My scream stopped them in their tracks, rooting them to the spot. They stood where they were, bobbing their heads side to side.
‘Don’t they know what to do? Or are they trembling in fear?’
I unclenched my fists and walked toward them. They started to back away slowly, utter horror written all over their faces. I went ahead and pushed them before they got away.
“GRR!”
I felt a headache as soon as I pushed them. There was a reason why I said recruiting when I got new underlings. Just punching them was nothing more than violence. In order to make them into my underlings, I had to lay my palms on them.
The moment I touched them like that, I was beset by the worst headache in the world, and the zombie that I touched turned green. That’s how I made them into one of mine.
Many people asked me later on why I hadn’t just shoved all the zombies with my palms from the start. At least that's what most people thought. However, the reason why I only recruited zombies after killing some of them off was quite simple.
If I’d started shoving them from the start, I probably wouldn’t be able to fight the ones charging toward me because of the jolting headache that I had to deal with. And it would’ve been difficult to differentiate the ones that had vision from those that didn’t.
The ones who only relied on smell or hearing had charged at me thinking they possessed a numerical advantage. It made sense, since they had probably been driven to the supermarket by the instinct to kill and to feast.
However, the ones with vision did not charge in mindlessly. Instead, they grew hesitant after watching the situation unfold. They had probably realized that something wasn’t right once they noticed my glowing red eyes.
I was planning on only recruiting those with vision. I couldn’t just recruit any zombie I came across, since I now knew that there was a limit to how many underlings I could have. I needed to be efficient, and only recruit the most useful ones.
I pressed my temples and blinked hard as my head continued to ring. I felt like my skull was getting hammered. The agony spread through my entire body.
But I couldn’t stop.
I was planning to recruit all the ones in front of me as my underlings. Even if I had to endure the pain of my brain melting, or my skull cracking in half, I was going to turn all of them. The number of underlings I had corresponded to my people’s safety, ensuring better odds of survival for them
“Grr!!!”
I kept screaming to endure the pain. After thirty minutes, my eyes were greeted by the sight of an endless flock of green creatures.
* * *
I ordered my newly-recruited underlings to stay put and went into the supermarket. The zombies that went straight into the supermarket might’ve made it to the third floor.
Instead, I was greeted by a barricade of dead zombie bodies in front of the travelator leading up from the first floor. My worry had been for naught.
I ordered my underlings to come out, and they emerged from within the piles of dead bodies. Some of them had minor injuries, but compared to the ones I had taken out, they were nothing.
My underlings looked at me proudly. As I grew stronger, it felt as though I could make out more of what my underlings were feeling. I wondered if my underlings were growing and evolving, the same way that the zombies in the streets were.
I couldn’t seem to draw a clear conclusion. Everything was uncertain. However, having feelings toward my underlings was something I couldn’t dare imagine.
I ordered my underlings that were guarding the travelator and the escalators out of the supermarket. I lined them up, ten to a row, and did a head count to see how many I had in total.
I had a total of one hundred and seventy-eight underlings in front of me. As my physical abilities improved, I was getting better at handling the headaches.
I remembered the first time I’d fainted after my body couldn’t handle recruiting thirty-two underlings. Now, I managed to recruit more than one hundred underlings in a single day.
‘Is my brain gaining muscle mass as well?’
I chuckled at my nonsense.
‘So, a hundred and seventy-eight plus a hundred and thirty-two is three hundred and ten, right?’
Considering all the underlings I had, both here and back at the apartment, I had a total of three hundred and ten underlings. I was also a zombie leader that had over three hundred underlings.
“Hey!”
At that moment, I heard an unfamiliar voice calling me from behind. I turned around to find the source of the sound. My gaze focused on a middle-aged man, who was sticking his head out from the third-floor window of the supermarket.
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