Chapter 59
"Heh..."
Normally, in a situation like this, I would have expected them to keep pestering me even after I refused.
Maybe it was just a stereotype, but that was the image I had of people who proselytize.
Especially those cults that worship real, living people.
But the moment my firm refusal came out, the man's kindly expression turned cold in an instant.
"Then die!"
"Oh, shit!"
He was a fanatic who knew how to answer properly.
The bastards abandoned any further attempts at persuasion and immediately shrieked, flung their robes wide, and came at us with their bone clubs raised high.
They looked exactly like the fanatics in a horror movie.
But they weren't threatening.
'At a glance...'
they weren't people skilled in combat.
Their movements were so clumsy it looked like they'd only ever dealt with the weakest monsters at best.
They were slow, all angry, but they didn't even feel like they were trying to kill us.
It was more like they just wanted to teach us a lesson.
...We'd fought enough now that I could tell that at a glance.
I adjusted my grip on the spear and let out a snort of laughter.
Yeah, this is better. Simpler than a war of words.
"...Let's just subdue them for now without causing any major injuries."
"Yes, it doesn't seem difficult."
We immediately took combat stances.
We didn't intend to seriously injure them, but since they had attacked first, we planned to subdue them without worrying about minor injuries.
KWAANG-!
The Artillery Golem, relying on its absurd mass, body-checked them.
"Aaaagh!"
"M-my arm!"
A dull boom echoed through the second floor of the mart.
The golem's heavy impact sent the fanatics flying as if they'd been hit by a car, crashing into shelves and the floor.
The drones also did their part, hurling nearby heavy objects around to deal damage.
The tattooed woman also sprang into action with agile movements, as if she'd been waiting for this.
Swoosh-! Thunk!
The machete flashing in her hand easily snapped their bone clubs in half and neutralized them.
"Uh, uh..."
"I-it's a knife!"
When I kicked the fanatics, frozen by the machete's terrifying appearance, they rolled across the floor without resistance.
The man also moved quickly once the fight actually broke out, seizing openings to grab them and slam them down onto the floor.
"Ugh..."
"Ow..."
In just a few minutes, the first floor of the large mart was filled with bone-club debris and fanatics rolling on the floor, unable to fight.
A satisfying takedown.
However, it seemed the fanatics weren't all of them.
Footsteps echoed from the upper floors of the mart, and from behind the barricades on the first floor as well.
"Hey, clear the way."
The moment I gave the order, the Artillery Golem lumbered forward with heavy thuds.
As if it didn't even need to fire a shell, it simply smashed its body into the barricade stacked in layers with shelves and desks, shoving it aside.
Crunch, smash-!
The barricade came down cleanly.
At the same time, we heard the footsteps and voices of the fanatics who had come down from upstairs to back them up.
"What was that noise?!"
"Sounds like something breaking..."
"Shit! Run!"
Click-
When the commotion reached it, the golem's barrel turned upward.
It precisely aimed at the ceiling where the sound was coming from and fired a shell.
"Uh, will this be okay—"
KWAANG-!
The blast's shockwave instantly brought the ceiling and the floor above it crashing down.
The fanatics who had been trying to come down from above screamed as they fell with the collapsing debris onto the second floor.
"Aagh! My leg!"
"Guh...!"
Because they had fallen from such a height, they screamed and rolled across the floor.
Fortunately, it didn't look like any fanatics had been directly hit by the shell.
If they had, they wouldn't even have been able to scream like that.
Even so, I could see other bastards who had luckily avoided the collapsed floor and were trying to come in through the stairs.
Rat-tat-tat-!
But suppressive fire from the drones rained down at their feet.
As the shots shattered the marble floor into fragments and sent debris flying, the fanatics who had been about to rush us with their clubs froze in place.
Their expressions showed that if they took one more step, it wouldn't be the marble that got holes drilled in it, but their own bodies.
"..."
"Agh... my leg..."
"What's going on..."
"Strangers... drones... is that a monster?"
No fanatic dared rush us anymore.
A quiet silence slowly settled over the mart.
'...Firepower really is the best.'
I felt like I understood a little now why Korea before the apocalypse had been obsessed with firepower.
Firepower truly brought peace.
While the fanatics stood there with their hands trembling on their weapons, one of the men who had come down the stairs swallowed hard and spoke.
"Please don't attack us! We're only trying to guide lost people! If you want the mart's goods, then let's talk—"
"You were the ones who attacked first..."
"W, was that so?"
When the tattooed woman pointed at the people sprawled around us, he made an awkward face.
"...Sorry. I think it was a mistake caused by following the cult leader's order to guard the entrance too eagerly."
He bowed his head to us, apologizing as if trying to calm us down.
And then he said.
"To us, the cult leader is a benefactor..."
Then, as if boasting, he began talking about the miracles their cult leader had performed.
"The cult leader brought food out of thin air for the hungry and made electricity flow through this department store."
"Mm... impressive."
I answered him absentmindedly.
It wasn't that I didn't believe him; it was more that, the moment I heard him, I could already imagine how those so-called miracles had been pulled off.
'I heard electricity is generated heavily in Yeouido and supplied as far beyond the capital area as possible for survivors... food from thin air... that means—'
Could he have been using the Exchange?
When I used the Exchange to trade items, the items would also sometimes just drop out of thin air.
That made me wonder something else.
Did these people not know about the Exchange or the Gallery?
On closer inspection, there hadn't been any Awakened using skills during the earlier fight, and they also seemed to know nothing about the Constellations.
"The gear we're wearing is all thanks to him...!"
Anyway, the man talking about their cult leader seemed sincere.
He seemed to genuinely believe what he'd seen was a real miracle, looking at our indifferent reactions with pity in his eyes.
Even so, he seemed desperate to somehow persuade us and drag us before someone named Kim O-son.
"The cult leader has been waiting for a strong person like you! Please, if you would only put down your weapon and come with us...!"
"That's enough."
I cut the man's words off.
The man's Adam's apple bobbed to a stop.
"We'll just take bedding, tape, and hoses. Please don't interfere."
I told them we'd be taking the goods since they attacked us first.
The fanatics glanced around nervously and nodded with their mouths tightly shut.
The tattooed woman clicked her tongue at the fanatics, and the man beside her let out a sigh of relief.
Just in case, I had the drones and the golem keep watch.
Leaving the petrified fanatics behind, we headed toward the area of the mart piled high with bedding and hoses.
As expected, there was quite a lot left.
They weren't exactly the sort of thing you stock up on in an apocalypse.
As we gathered the items, the backpack and cart we'd brought quickly filled to the brim.
The bedding was so bulky that it filled the cart up in no time.
"Good, this should be enough. Let's head back."
As we headed toward the mart exit, even more of them had already gathered near the entrance.
But unlike before, no one was rushing us with bone clubs anymore.
Instead, when they saw us coming back, they flinched and slowly backed away.
More people didn't make guns and cannons any less powerful.
"Let's just ignore them and go."
"Right."
But then the hesitant fanatics' gazes all turned in one direction, and smiles began to spread across their faces.
Vroom-!
I heard a sound that felt strangely nostalgic.
"...A car?"
Along the road, where the wrecked cars had been oddly shoved aside, a black SUV appeared with its engine roaring.
"Ooh! He's here!"
"The cult leader has arrived!"
The fanatics fussed and prostrated themselves toward the car.
But for us, who had just come by train, honestly it wasn't all that impressive.
'...Honestly, I'm more curious how they cleared this blocked road.'
The car door opened, and the cult leader they praised so much stepped out with a dignified gait.
But contrary to expectations, he just looked like an ordinary middle-aged Korean man with a slight belly.
His clothes weren't much different from the others, and he didn't even look like an Awakened who was any good at fighting.
He walked through the crowd and swept his gaze over the cart we were pulling.
"I heard about it. I'm sorry our followers seem to have threatened you first."
The cult leader continued with a benevolent smile.
"You must be thirsty—"
The cult leader reached his hand out into the air.
Fsh-!
In an instant, with a tiny crack in the air, a bottle of drink dropped neatly into his hand.
"Ooooh-!"
"It's a miracle!"
The fanatics around us were surprised and even clapped at the sight.
But the tattooed woman, the man, and I all couldn't help but laugh in disbelief the moment we saw that familiar crack in the air and the drink drop from it.
"Just now... the Exchange?"
At my words, the leader's pupils trembled wildly.
"E-Exchange? What are you talking about...! You can't just say that so carelessly...!"
The cult leader's stammering, raised voice only made the fanatics lying face-down on the ground even more flustered.
"The cult leader seems pretty shocked...?"
"The Exchange?"
"What's the Exchange...?"
Our group instead questioned the fanatics.
"You don't know the Gallery?"
"What about cell phones? Don't you have any?"
The tattooed woman crossed her arms and asked with a sneer, and the man also chimed in.
Then the fanatics looked genuinely puzzled.
"The world's gone to hell like this, so what would we even use a cell phone for..."
"It'd just waste electricity..."
"The cult leader told us to turn them in, so we submitted them since we didn't need them anyway..."
Only then did my group and I begin to understand this group's situation.
It seemed that those who hadn't charged their smartphones or turned them over to the cult leader didn't know the Survivor Gallery existed.
When the Yeouido Safe Zone began supplying electricity in a limited way, mainly to the Seoul metropolitan area, the cult leader had spun it as if he himself had miraculously created that electricity.
To people who didn't know about the Gallery or the Exchange, he staged miracles by pretending to buy items and pull them out of thin air.
"D-don't listen to them!"
The cult leader wanted to shut our mouths, but the golem stepped in to block his approach.
Taking advantage of the opening, the man in our group deliberately checked the Exchange on his smartphone for everyone to see.
And—
Fsh-!
Just like the cult leader had done earlier, a bottle of drink dropped onto the man's hand in exactly the same way.
"See?"
"...!"
When an ordinary survivor performed the exact same miracle of making a drink appear from thin air right before their eyes, the fanatics' expressions changed.
"H-how did this happen?"
"And he's not even the cult leader...!"
"You can all do the same thing if you just have a cellphone."
"Really...?"
"Of course. Should I summon one more?"
When the man summoned another drink, their eyes sharpened one after another.
"Then... if you just need a cellphone, then that means..."
"The cult leader took our phones too... Then the reason was—"
"...He knew all this and still deceived us?"
The fanatics' gazes turned in one direction.
We quietly pulled the cart and headed toward the train.
notes":"Aligned the chapter title to the existing series pattern as A New Safe Zone (3). Used neutral role-based wording for the tattooed character and kept pronouns/roles unforced where Korean context could read ambiguously. Also smoothed a few awkward phrasings and preserved the Exchange/Gallery terminology consistently."}]}]}}]}],