Chapter 11
...Oh, jeez.
The drone immediately picked up an odd scene.
The apartment interior came into view through the torn curtains.
The scene on the monitor was horrific.
Around the floor that looked like a living room, more than a dozen people were kneeling in terror.
And around them, five or six burly men in neon work vests or showing off tattoos were threatening them with steel pipes and kitchen knives.
"It doesn't exactly look good at a glance."
I frowned.
I wasn't sure what was going on, but things seemed to be going badly.
Sound came through the footage the drone was sending.
"Hurry up and hand it over?! I know you've got hidden food!"
"Should I kill you first?"
The bald guy who looked like the leader jabbed a middle-aged man in the shoulder with a steel pipe as he shouted.
The man was trembling, shielding a woman who seemed to be a family member.
The sinister words being exchanged made me uncomfortable.
"Ha... you've gotta be kidding me."
My hand, which had been tearing into some dried squid, stopped.
As expected of the apocalypse, people really had become terrifying.
I didn't feel good about just sitting there and watching.
I wasn't exactly a righteous type, but if I saw some injustice I thought I could easily solve, I wanted to act.
And I had drones that could easily solve this situation.
"First, intercept the weapons of the people who are still standing. Start with the loudest one."
The drone targeted the steel pipe in the bald man's hand.
Thwack-!
The suppressed submachine gun spat out a short burst of fire.
Clang-!!!
"Aaaah?!"
The bullet that pierced the glass window knocked the steel pipe out of the bald man's hand.
The guy clutched his hand from the powerful impact, looking dumbfounded as he alternated between his empty hand and the sky.
Then he met the drone's eyes.
"W-what is that?!"
"A-a gun!"
The thugs around him started murmuring in surprise.
Seeing the gun mounted beneath the combat drone, most of them either slumped to the ground or flailed around in panic.
This was the chance.
"Disarm them."
Bang! Bang! Thaaang!
Like playing a rhythm game, I precisely shot the blades of the kitchen knives and the handles of the baseball bats they were holding.
Crack! Thud! Clang!
Like magic, the weapons were shattered or dropped to the floor from the thugs' hands.
The guys who were left with empty fists in an instant backed away in terror.
"Aaaagh! My hand!"
"H-hide!"
They retreated deeper into the living room to avoid my drones.
None of them seemed to have any means of fighting back against the drones.
"Are there no Awakened?"
I ordered the reconnaissance drone.
"Bring the weapons over. To the people who are kneeling."
Whirr.
The waiting recon drone descended nimbly.
The one that slipped through the shattered glass used its grippers to snatch up a still-usable baseball bat and a steel pipe from the floor.
"H-hey? My weapon!"
One of the punks reached out, but the drone zipped right over his head.
Then it dropped the weapons in front of a young man among the residents trembling in the corner—the one with the liveliest eyes.
Clatter.
"...?"
The young man stared blankly at the drone before him and the weapon at his feet.
The drone buzzed in place, urging him on as if telling him to pick it up.
Then the young man's eyes changed, and he picked up the weapon.
"Those bastards..."
The situation had reversed.
The victims were now the ones with weapons, and the perpetrators were the ones with empty hands.
The eyes of the people who had been trembling in fear began to change.
Slowly, they picked up the weapons the drone had delivered, which had fallen to the floor.
"...Yeah."
The middle-aged man who had been threatened a moment ago also gritted his teeth and stood up, pipe in hand.
The punks' faces went pale.
Already, they were clutching their hands, apparently having suffered minor injuries while the combat drone was dropping the weapons.
"W-wait, hold on! Let's talk this out! Fellow survivors..."
But excuses didn't work on the enraged crowd.
The rest would be sorted out just fine on their own.
"Phew... this should be fine."
I sighed and looked at the monitor.
I could have given the combat drones direct orders to resolve the situation faster, but I didn't.
I felt kind of gross about handling them directly, but on top of that, I thought it would be better if the victims themselves handled it, if possible.
I wondered if there might be an Awakened among those punks who could counterattack, but thankfully there was no sign of one.
The residents vented their frustration on them with a few hits, then subdued them by tying them up with thin clothes.
"Are Awakened rare?"
Right before recalling the drones, I gave one more order.
The punks were subdued, and the residents were now armed.
Most of them still seemed to be ordinary people who hadn't awakened yet.
Come to think of it, I had also shouted "Status window" on a hunch and then summoned the train.
I sent a reconnaissance drone to one of the female students among the residents.
The recon drone, as ordered, etched the words in small letters on the floor with a laser.
"Status window...?"
At first the girl seemed flustered by the approaching drone, but soon she read the writing and looked into the air with wide eyes.
At that moment, the drone camera caught a faint light flickering from a female student's body.
"It's glowing."
I don't think mine did that.
Was that some kind of skill?
In any case, an Awakened had been born.
Now that the girl would share the information she gained with the residents, they would be able to protect themselves.
I watched for a moment through the drone screen as they helped one another up and began to settle down.
That was enough. I gave the drone the order to return.
"Now, time for me to rest a bit too."
With peace having returned, the things that had been bothering me started to stand out.
One of the biggest problems in my comfortable train life right now was the smell.
Car 1 was a studio layout with the cockpit, bathroom, bedroom, and kitchen all in one space.
Thanks to that, if I cooked something like kimchi stew, the smell soaked into the sofa, and I had to fall asleep breathing in that spicy scent.
"Let's separate them. Car 2 has plenty of room, too."
I was going to be cooking more often from now on, for my health and my appetite, so I decided to separate them in advance.
I went to the cockpit and opened the customization menu.
Using my fingers, I dragged the kitchen and minibar area that had been in Car 1 over to a corner of Car 2's cargo hold.
Car 2 had an armory and a drone hangar, but I'd widened the space so much that there was more than enough room for the kitchen.
Besides, the ventilation system was stronger in Car 2.
Because drones also came and went constantly.
Rumble-
The kitchen and minibar vanished on their own and moved to Car 2.
Now Car 1 was a proper rest space.
But that wasn't the end.
[Purchase : Hotel-Style Bed]
"Sofa, you've worked hard all this time."
I cleared away the narrow sofa and installed a huge bed in its place.
A soft bed covered with a white comforter.
I threw myself straight onto the bed.
"It even comes with bedding. Thank goodness..."
It felt like my body was being sucked deep into the mattress.
The fatigue piled up in my lower back melted away in an instant.
The sofa had actually been satisfying, but comparing them like this made it obvious right away.
That the difference between the two was bigger than I'd thought.
"Heh heh..."
I rubbed my face into the pillow and rolled around, then surreptitiously took out my smartphone and opened the survivor gallery.
Using a smartphone while lying on a bed somehow brought back the feeling of before the apocalypse.
"Huh? The rate of posts is way faster now."
Every time I refreshed, dozens of new posts appeared.
At first, most of them were desperate pleas like 'Please save me,' but now information sharing was fairly active.
As the number of people increased, new types of posts also started appearing.
[Title : Help me. I am in Seoul.]
[Title : I'm Japanese, using a translator.]
Foreigners also showed up from time to time.
They seemed to be foreign exchange students or tourists who had been in Korea.
Whether this incident was global or confined to Korea was still unknown, but one thing was certain: the gallery had grown bigger.
I looked through the information posts in the recommended section.
---
[Title : (Must Read) Current Seoul Situation and Temporary Shelter Coordinates Roundup]
I'll share the information I know.
The area around Gyeongbokgung in Seoul is currently inaccessible due to a monster wave.
Don't even go near there.
Government functions are paralyzed, but many Awakened and soldiers are building safe zones around Namsan Tower, the War Memorial, and the Blue House.
With so many Awakened around, they're restoring the monster zones to normal really fast, yeah.
But shelter capacity is already full, so I wouldn't recommend heading there right now.
Food rations are uncertain.
Survivors who can get by for now should not force a move; hold your current position.
Oh, and as someone mentioned earlier, there are surprisingly a lot of treasure-chest-like objects around buildings, and they respawn, so search from higher up. They drop food too.
---
"Oh-ho..."
If this is true, then it's pretty useful information.
The shelter info wasn't really related to me, but there were definitely people who needed it.
The moment I sank into the mattress and put down the smartphone, a change appeared at the top of the screen.
[Notice] Survivor Gallery New Feature Guide
"Huh? A notice? Someone wrote it themselves?"
There had been notices posted before, too.
But those were cases where someone in another gallery posted important information and many people pinned it as a notice so others could see it.
This one was a post uploaded directly by the Awakened who made this gallery.
And hearing that a new feature had been added, I clicked the post right away.
The icon next to the nickname told me this person wasn't an ordinary user.
---
[Title : Hello, I am the owner of this gallery.]
Author : Signal ￭
Thank you all for working so hard to survive.
At first, I thought it was a worthless skill.
Thanks to so many of you logging in and sharing information, I was able to survive and even raise my skill level.
With the level up, a new feature was unlocked in the gallery.
It's called the marketplace.
Apparently, you can buy and sell items without meeting in person.
I think it should be available in two hours.
---
"...Wow."
I figured other people's skills would grow like mine did.
So this is how someone with the Gallery skill grows.
I started opening the boxes the drones had gathered, looking for something to sell as a test while I waited for the marketplace to open in two hours.