Chapter 91
For now, he walked.
Perhaps because it was night.
Since encountering that human, he had met no one else.
His impression after walking along the paved road for a while could be summed up in one word: 'Amazing.'
Along the well-maintained road, pillars that gave off light stood at regular intervals, brightly illuminating the surroundings even in the middle of the night.
What sort of mechanism made this possible?
His curiosity was piqued.
After a while, the lights went out, but that was hardly a problem for him, since he could see in the dark.
Still, it was a little disappointing to see those beautiful lights go out.
Perhaps about five minutes passed.
A large structure came into view ahead of him.
What could it be?
He decided to approach it.
It was a large building.
Had humans built it?
But there was no sign of humans.
He wondered what he should do.
He looked around.
In the end, curiosity got the better of him, and he decided to enter the building.
As he tried to enter through what appeared to be the entrance, he collided with something.
Thunk.
What was this?
An invisible wall blocked his way.
He tried to enter again.
Once more, he collided with the invisible wall.
He grew irritated.
Not knowing what it was, he pounded on the 'invisible wall.'
Since he knew nothing, he could not understand that it was a substance called glass.
He pounded on it again and again, striking harder each time.
Then a crack ran across the invisible wall.
His smile deepened.
This invisible wall could be broken.
He struck it even harder.
The invisible wall shattered with a deafening crash.
He held out his hand once more.
His hand passed through the place where the invisible wall had been.
Apparently, he could enter now.
He padded around inside the building.
Glass shards pierced the soles of his feet, but an injury of this degree was neither painful nor troublesome to him.
After some time, a bookshelf came into view.
He calmly picked up a book from the shelf.
It was covered in writing.
He did not know it, but this place was a library.
He studied the book with interest and eventually came to understand.
This was human knowledge—a record of it.
Humans were intelligent creatures.
To keep from forgetting what they had experienced, they left a record of those experiences somewhere other than their own minds.
But he could not read it.
He understood that it followed some sort of pattern, but that did him no good if he could not read it.
"..."
Even so, he frantically turned the pages.
Then he came across pages containing pictures as well as words.
It was what was commonly called an animal encyclopedia.
There was a picture of an animal, with words beneath it.
Those words probably indicated the name of the creature.
That was helpful.
If he compared the pictures with the words, he might be able to figure out some sort of pattern.
Read, read, read.
He found places where the same characters appeared in the names of different animals.
There had to be some sort of rule.
Then what was that rule?
The reason the same characters were used in different names—in other words, they had the same pronunciation.
The same shape meant the same thing.
Nodding to himself, he continued reading one book after another.
There were animal encyclopedias, plant encyclopedias, insect encyclopedias, space encyclopedias, and countless others.
He combed through each word, one by one, searching for rules in the characters.
Then he learned that, besides words for names, there were characters that connected words, characters that indicated a word's state, and even numbers that represented quantities and scale. Characters came in many different types.
He lost himself in reading.
Still, if he could make one selfish request, could something not be done about this unpleasant 'sound'?
A harsh wailing had been echoing for some time.
It had begun when he entered the building.
He thought it might be an alarm announcing that the 'barrier' had been destroyed, but no humans had come running even so.
In the first place, there had been no humans in this building.
Why were there no humans in such a large building?
But he soon lost interest and focused his attention on the book before him once more.
How much time had passed like that? By then, it was fully light outside.
When he looked down, he saw that a great many books were scattered around his feet.
When he became absorbed in something, time passed quickly.
He had more or less figured out the rules governing the characters.
Next came pronunciation.
Even if he understood the shapes of the characters and their grammar, pronouncing them aloud was an entirely different matter.
So what should he do?
It was simple.
If he did not know, he only had to ask someone who did.
It was time to hunt.
When he left the building, the morning sun greeted him.
The brightness made him squint.
Even for something so trivial, he smiled.
Before, he had been unable to experience even something like this.
Zombies generally detect prey through sound or presence, so their eyesight is poor.
But things were different now.
His eyesight was clearly better than before.
He could see the surrounding scenery clearly.
He felt profoundly grateful for the way he was now.
He looked around.
He saw smoke and heard people's screams from all directions.
Even without sensing their presence, he could tell exactly where the humans were.
He moved toward the signs of human presence.
After walking for a while, he came out onto an open street.
Cracks ran through the ground here and there, and parts of it had heaved upward.
It was probably the result of yesterday's earthquake.
Hiding behind cover, he looked around—and found prey.
In his line of sight:
There were two humans.
A wounded girl and a boy carrying her as he moved.
He sensed no other humans nearby.
They were ideal targets.
He quietly erased his presence and slowly crept up behind the humans.
He rushed out of the bushes and first sank his teeth into the boy's throat.
"—!? W-what, there's a zom—gah!"
The boy's throat was torn out, and he died instantly.
≪You acquired Experience Points.≫
≪Your level rose from 1 to 2.≫
A voice echoed in his head.
Without paying attention to it, he approached the wounded girl.
Seeing him and the boy with his throat torn open, the girl's expression gradually filled with despair.
Why was she making such an expression?
He still did not understand 'emotions.'
"Eek... no... ahh..."
He approached the trembling girl.
Then the girl screamed and tried to flee.
But of course, he had no intention of letting her escape.
He seized her by the leg, dragged her closer, and pinned her down.
He had seen it in a book yesterday, so he decided to try it.
The book had explained that this would immobilize a human because of their physical structure.
It had been shown in diagrams rather than explained in writing, so even he had been able to understand it.
"Ow... uah, aaaaah..."
Just as expected, the wounded girl was easily rendered unable to move.
Knowledge really was incredible. He could gain "power" so easily.
He considered knowledge to be "power" as well.
And so he craved it—greedily.
He dragged the girl toward the building from before.
When she resisted, he struck her hard enough to subdue her.
When they reached the library, he pressed a book into the hands of the girl he had dragged there.
"Huh? ...Um?"
"■■"
"Huh, ah, uh...?"
He had told her to read, but the girl seemed unable to understand his words.
He had no choice but to use gestures to tell her, 'Read the book.'
Then, at last, the girl seemed to understand.
Trembling, the girl read the book aloud as instructed.
He committed every word to memory, savoring each one.
The contents—though he could not read them, so it was merely rote memorization—were in his head.
All that remained was the pronunciation.
Once he knew the pronunciation, his understanding of the knowledge would improve dramatically.
As he made her read book after book, he began to understand the characters at a tremendous pace.
The language was Japanese.
It used three types of characters: kanji, katakana, and hiragana.
They were combined to create individual words and sentences.
Wonderful. New knowledge was pouring into him.
He could feel his power steadily increasing.
Moved, he had her read one book after another.
"—Enough. I understand most of it now."
Hearing that, the girl flinched.
Then her face filled with astonishment.
It was probably because the being before her, whom she had thought unable to speak her language, had suddenly begun speaking their language.
"Um... wait, you... understand what I'm saying?"
"Yes. I was able to understand thanks to you."
He smiled.
The girl, seemingly prompted by his smile, also wore a somewhat relieved expression.
The fact that they could communicate had given her a little hope.
"Um, I did as you said, so please, save me—gah!"
"You are no longer useful."
Without hesitation, he snapped the girl's neck.
The girl was dead in an instant.
He no longer needed her, so he disposed of her. That was all.
≪You acquired Experience Points.≫
A voice echoed in his head.
But without paying attention to it, 'he' gazed at the girl's silent corpse.
"...Let's see. At times like this, I think this is what you're supposed to say."
He smiled broadly once more,
"—Thank you. I'm grateful."
He was very satisfied that he had been able to use a newly learned phrase.