Chapter 66
The night wind in the wastelands was always bitterly cold.
The difference was only a matter of degree; even summer nights were not warm.
The sand and rocks baked beneath the blazing sun often turned cold at night, as though exposed to ice.
That was why the scavengers who lived in the wastelands always bundled up warmly once night fell.
The Army of the Dead had it better than the other scavengers, but they were still no exception when it came to shivering from the cold.
Baron, a member of the Army of the Dead standing guard at a watch post atop the steel wall, hunched against the cold wind.
“Ugh, fuck, it’s cold as hell. It’s always like this at night. Damn, I wish I could stand watch at an indoor post. I heard there are heaters in that watchtower over there……. But what can I do when I don’t have enough seniority?”
He let out a heavy sigh when clanking footsteps came from the stairs below the wall.
Click!
Baron reflexively aimed his gun and shouted.
“Halt! Golden Statue!”
“Mane.”
When the password matched, Baron lowered his gun.
It was Rick, a fellow soldier who had come up for the shift change.
“Ugh, it’s fucking cold. Anything unusual?”
“Nope. Nothing except sand getting in my mouth with the wind.”
Rick was holding a thermos.
“Have a drink.”
“Is it coffee? Hahaha! Thanks. I was just about to freeze solid.”
To Baron, who had spent so long exposed to the wasteland’s night wind, a cup of hot coffee was practically sex.
“Haaah……. I feel alive again.”
As Baron savored the warmth of the coffee in his paper cup, Rick spoke.
“Just hang in there a little longer. According to the commander, we’ll be able to build a new city here soon.”
Baron clicked his tongue at Rick, who leaned against the railing and chuckled.
“Hey, do you really believe that? The commander’s just bullshitting to stop people from deserting.”
“Why couldn’t we build one? You saw what we looted this time. That enormous mass of mana inside the case. Isn’t that what let us move our base? This massive iron wall and fortress! They built the fortress in just one week!”
Rick pointed toward the enormous fortress where they stood.
“I saw it. When the commander cast a spell on the box containing that mass of mana, the rocks from the wastelands and the heaps of scrap metal we’d gathered fused together and became this enormous fortress.”
“Rick, you were part of the advance party, right?”
“Yeah. The whole advance party saw it. The moment the commander worked a miracle! You’re just saying that because you didn’t see it, Baron. It might really be possible this time. No, it is possible!”
Rick’s voice was brimming with conviction.
Just as Rick said, Baron had not seen the fortress being built.
He had been part of the follow-up party, whose mission was to clean up their former base.
Like Baron and Rick, the Army of the Dead was divided into two groups.
The advance party, who had witnessed the commander’s miracle firsthand and blindly believed in his plan to build a new city.
And the follow-up party, who remained skeptical, calling it nothing more than pie-in-the-sky nonsense.
“We’re going to become members of our very own utopia! Hahaha!”
What on earth had the advance party seen?
Of course, Baron knew that too.
He knew that building a fortress of this size in a place like the wastelands was no easy task.
Even so, he remained skeptical about building an entire city.
“You know that building one fortress and building one city are two completely different things.”
Baron grumbled as he tipped the remaining coffee from his paper cup into his mouth.
He did not know how Taepyeong City had been built, either.
That had happened quite a long time ago.
It was a city built before he had even been born.
It was a story he had heard too, like some urban legend.
They said the Army of the Dead he now belonged to had been founded by former knights of the empire that existed before Taepyeong City was established.
The empire that collapsed when Taepyeong City was founded.
Among the former knights who left in opposition to Taepyeong City’s policy of joining hands with the demon king’s army, only a few people, including the commander and several officers, were still alive.
Everyone else was either from the wastelands or human beings who had fled from somewhere else as though in exile.
Perhaps because of the commander and officers’ hatred of undead, the people who followed them were unusually hostile toward undead.
“I know. I know it takes an enormous amount of mana to build a city. But we don’t want some huge city anyway, do we? A truly living city where only the living reside! That’s all we need!”
Rick shouted, his eyes wide and gleaming.
“The commander said so himself. Once our city is built, we won’t have to live mixed in with those stinking undead bastards. Honestly, does it make any sense to live in the same city as people who used to be part of the demon king’s army? I’m telling you, there are plenty of people in Taepyeong City who think just like us. We’ll become their saviors!”
“…Good grief.”
Baron no longer answered.
The commander and the officers’ intense hatred of undead and their pure-blood ideology were nothing new.
Honestly, as far as Baron was concerned, he did not care whether someone was undead or anything else, as long as they paid well and fed him properly.
Wasn’t everyone doing this just to make a living?
Rick, however, seemed to think a little differently.
That was why he clung so closely to the commander as part of the advance party.
“I don’t know. That sounds like a pain.”
“Baron, you need to face the truth too. How long are we going to keep living mixed in with those monsters? Isn’t that right? There are plenty of extremists among the undead too! They’re beings who can never live alongside us!”
Baron could not concentrate on what Rick was saying.
He had caught sight of an unfamiliar movement.
“What the fuck is that?”
Baron jerked his chin toward the middle of the wastelands, where darkness had settled beyond the railing.
“What?”
“Look over there. Turn the searchlight.”
Rick touched the control panel and directed the massive beam of light downward.
On the sandy plain illuminated by the light,
a man in an immaculate suit was walking toward them at an unhurried pace.
“A suit? In the wastelands?”
“What is that thing?”
Looking more closely, they saw that it was not a living person.
“……A zombie?”
A corpse with tattered flesh approached, adjusting its tie.
Rick let out a hollow laugh as though he could not believe it.
“Haaah, fuck. Undead bastards. The fact that it’s out at this hour makes its intentions obvious. It must be trying to catch and eat any living people it finds. This is why you shouldn’t associate with bastards who’ve turned their backs on death.”
Rick clicked his tongue and aimed his gun.
Baron’s eyes were fixed on the zombie’s clothing.
It was walking through the wastelands in a suit without a speck of dust on it.
There was no sign of a fight, either.
Had it simply been lucky enough not to encounter anyone in the wastelands?
That was impossible.
Even if you did nothing but stand around, scavengers would come and rob you blind.
And yet it was dressed like that.
It was an entity with enough overwhelming force that even scavengers dared not attack it.
An entity capable of overpowering its opponents so completely that not even a drop of blood would fly no matter how fiercely it fought.
“Rick, sound the alarm, now!”
“Why? I’ll finish it off. That brainless zombie bastard will die from one bullet—”
What a thoughtless bastard!
Baron hurriedly sounded the alarm.
Woooooo-!!!
The emergency siren rang throughout the fortress.
At the same time.
Bang!
Rick’s gun barrel spat fire.
“Hey, you idiot. What are you doing, sounding the alarm all of a sudden? We’re raising the alarm over a zombie that’ll die from one bullet…….”
But despite the gunshot, the zombie was unharmed.
“Aw, damn it, Baron. You made me miss.”
“You useless bastard. You still don’t get it?”
“What did you just say?”
At that moment, Baron’s survival instinct began screaming warnings like mad.
Black mana was gathering at the fingertips of the suited zombie walking toward them in the distance.
It was a powerful presence that even a scavenger rolling around in the wasteland dust could instinctively sense.
‘We’re fucked.’
Though it had been shot, the zombie’s posture had not shifted even slightly as it casually tossed the ball of mana gathered in its hand toward the fortress wall.
“Get down!!”
Baron screamed as he grabbed Rick by the back of the neck and slammed him to the ground.
At that moment.
KABOOM!!!
A deafening roar that seemed to rip apart their eardrums.
One of the fortress’s outer walls, which Rick had boasted breathlessly was built through the miracle of that mass of mana, was literally torn apart like a sheet of paper.
“Gaaagh!”
“Cough! What the hell! What is that bastard?!”
Massive fragments flew in every direction, and acrid clouds of dust billowed into the air.
The top of the wall shook as though hit by an earthquake, and the watch post where they had been chatting only moments before was half-destroyed and dangling precariously.
“Cough! Cough! Enemy attack, enemy attack!”
Baron shouted after barely managing to cough through a mouthful of dust.
He had already pressed the alarm, so everyone would be coming out.
In situations like this, the initial response was everything.
“Get the commander here right fucking now!!!”
Baron screamed until his throat felt torn apart.
The sleeping fortress awoke.
***
Woooooo!!!!
KABOOM!
An enormous roar shook the entire fortress.
At the same time, the screams and shouts of hundreds of scavengers rang out, seeming to tear through the night sky.
“Looks like Manager Millelo has started. Let’s move too.”
Far away, part of the fortress wall was blown apart, and black flames shot into the sky.
Manager Kim calmly took the lead after hearing the explosion.
“Strong enough to smash through an iron wall……?”
I knew he was strong, more or less, but I had not imagined he was this strong.
One of the walls made of scrap metal and rock from the wastelands had been shattered completely.
“You have to be this strong to become a manager at a major corporation. Hahaha!”
Manager Kim laughed beside me as though he were proud of himself.
Now I understood.
Why these people had been so relaxed the entire time we were traveling through the wastelands.
‘They were just fucking strong, weren’t they?’
If I had been that strong, I wouldn’t have felt nervous either.
“From this point on, I’ll be quiet. I’ll turn off all the sounds from my joints too.”
When Manager Kim pretended to tighten the screws in his joints, the clattering noises he made whenever he moved really did disappear.
While Manager Millelo drew their attention, we approached the opposite wall.
Rumble!
We heard the scavengers inside the fortress rushing out.
-Rumble!
-Fuck!! Shoot that bastard dead!!
-Bring the explosives!!
It sounded like they were shouting for someone to kill that bastard.
Well, of course.
If someone had blown away the entire wall of my house in the middle of the night, I would have reacted the same way.
“But how do we get up there? Are you going to throw a rope with a grappling hook on it, like in the movies?”
Maybe it was because I had realized just how strong they were.
I was starting to relax a little too.
“You watch too many movies. That wouldn’t even come close to working.”
Manager Kim shook his head.
So there was another way after all.
They had brought an enormous amount of equipment, so maybe they were going to use one of those items?
I was thinking that when—
“Hup!”
Manager Kim’s body suddenly shot into the air.
As though ignoring gravity, he leaped over the fortress wall, which stood more than a dozen meters tall, in a single bound and landed lightly atop the railing.
“……”
Manager Kim looked down at me from atop the wall and beckoned with one finger.
“Now, just do the same.”
Was he joking?
How was an ordinary person supposed to jump over that?
I was standing there dumbfounded, letting out only a hollow laugh, when
“Mincheol, come here.”
Lumina raised one arm and beckoned to me.
“…You want me to hold on to you?”
“Of course~. Big sis will hold you tight. It’s okay. It won’t hurt.”
There was a playful laugh in Lumina’s voice.
The crop top visible beneath her rider jacket.
Her outfit, too, showed not the slightest hint of tension.
On the other hand, it was also a sight capable of making a grown man nervous.
If I were held against those enormous breasts……
“I-isn’t there any other way?”
“There was originally, but…….”
Ms. Lumina’s helmet turned upward.
It meant that the other bus had already gone up.
“…Please be careful. It’s my, my first time…….”
“Oh my, look at Mincheol’s ears turning red. How cute.”
When I approached her awkwardly, Lumina wrapped her arms tightly around my waist and back.
The feel of cool, smooth leather.
And the soft cushion I felt along with it—or rather, her breasts.
The closeness was incomparable to when I held her waist from behind, and I inadvertently drew in a sharp breath.
“P-please be gentle.”
“Don’t worry. Big sis will take the lead.”
Being held in her arms was incredibly cozy.
When our bodies pressed together, the rich, fresh scent of flowers I had smelled behind the bike washed over me.
As my heart began beating a little faster at the sweet fragrance so out of place in the middle of a battlefield,
“Tuck your chin so you don’t bite your tongue. Here we go!”
Fwoosh-!
The moment Lumina kicked off the ground, my body shot into the air like a feather amid a powerful rush of wind.
“Mmph……!”
I squeezed my eyes shut and clung tightly to her neck.
I was being held completely in her arms.
It was far too embarrassing and undignified a position for a man to be in, but I had no choice.
If I let go, I really might fall.
With my eyes squeezed shut, I rested my head against her chest.
I tensed my entire body so much that I did not even realize her soft skin was pressed against my face.
The dizzying sensation of floating lasted only a moment before the wind against my ears died down and I felt the ground beneath my toes.
Lumina landed without a sound and lightly patted my back.
“There.”
“I-it’s over?”
“Yeah, you can open your eyes now.”
The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes slightly was her cleavage.
“I-I’m sorry.”
“What were you looking at?”
“…N-nothing.”
“Pfft, liar.”
She had caught me immediately.
Why did Lumina keep doing that when she knew exactly what I had seen?
She must have enjoyed teasing me.
“You’re not hurt anywhere, right?”
“No. You jump much more smoothly than I expected.”
“Of course. I’m a top-class courier who never leaves so much as a scratch on anyone I deliver. You’re no exception.”
Lumina cheerfully tilted her helmet and tapped my cheek.
The touch coming through her gloves tickled strangely, so I cleared my throat and looked away.
“Ahem. Manager, do we continue farther inside?”
“Yes, it should be in there, in the commander’s office. According to our information, the commander is treating it like a sacred treasure because he intends to use it to build a new city here.”
Lumina adjusted her gloves as she spoke.
“Then let’s hurry.”
“I’ll lead the way.”
Manager Kim took the lead, with Lumina behind him.
“No matter what happens, I’ll protect Mincheol, so don’t worry.”
“That’s reassuring.”
I had vaguely sensed that our companions were strong, but after seeing Manager Millelo destroy the fortress with one blow, I felt even more reassured.
Perhaps everyone had gone out to take down one zombie manager, because the fortress was quiet.
Of course, there were still people guarding the interior.
Thud.
Manager Kim and Lumina subdued them without a sound.
It happened in the blink of an eye.
They were so stealthy that I couldn’t even hear them breathe.
We reached the largest building inside the fortress.
“The mana is getting stronger. This is the place.”
Following Lumina’s certainty, we entered the building.
And there,
Vmmmm.
an opaque box that concealed its contents was emitting light.
It was obvious at a glance that it was the box containing Lumina’s head.
“That’s it. That’s…….”
The moment Lumina spoke in a voice filled with emotion,
“I was wondering what kind of rat had snuck into my house……. But it seems they’re just some disgusting undead bastards.”
an unfamiliar voice came from the side.
A middle-aged man holding a massive shield stood there.
“What business do you have in my house?”