I Became a Game Character in the Apocalypse

Chapter 24

As Jeon Wan-soo entered the engineering building parking lot, he quickly used the parked cars as cover.

Although they had come to a sparsely populated area, the zombies scattered like landmines made combat unavoidable.

The engineering building was lit up 24 hours a day.

Students struggling with assignments would likely be lingering in classrooms and labs late into the night.

Seol Ye-won squinted her eyes, staring intently at the engineering building in the distance.

“Where’s the lab?”

“We need to cross to the opposite side of the building. The lab is on the side facing the rice fields,” Jeon Wan-soo explained.

Hearing this, Jeong Jin-young furrowed his brows and muttered to himself, “It’s annoyingly deep inside.”

No zombies were visible in the parking lot.

Taking a few deep breaths, Jeon Wan-soo addressed Jeong Jin-young and Seol Ye-won, “Follow me. Keep an eye out for any movement near the windows.”

They took a wide path around the parking lot and headed toward the unpaved road on the right.

The engineering college was built at the end of the campus, with a mountain behind it and farmland sloping down on the side.

As they walked along the unpaved road, a large excavator came into view ahead.

Jeong Jin-young grabbed Jeon Wan-soo’s arm, looking at the excavator. “Hey, isn’t this under construction? It looks like there’s no road.”

Jeon Wan-soo smiled slightly and replied, “It’s an excavator used for practice.”

“What kind of practice are you doing with that?”

“We’re taking it apart.”

“That?”

Seeing the puzzled expression on Jeong Jin-young’s face, Jeon Wan-soo chuckled lightly. “Anything with wheels gets taken apart here.”

Soon, they arrived at a lab that looked like a maintenance shop, facing the rice fields.

As they approached the lab quietly, the sounds of zombies started echoing from within.

Jeon Wan-soo glanced around and noticed a partially lowered shutter. He said to Jeong Jin-young, “We just need to lower that.”

“If we lower it, how do we get in?”

“Naturally, we handle the zombies first. The noise from the shutter will attract the zombies inside the lab to us.”

“So we just crack it open a bit and let the zombies crawl out, right?”

“Yes, like a game of whack-a-mole.”

“What about other zombies? Aren’t there any outside?”

“I don’t see any.”

With two people able to see clearly in the fog, Jeong Jin-young nodded, gripping his hatchet tightly.

Jeon Wan-soo sheathed his katana and said, “I’ll lower it. When the zombies come charging, you and Ye-won handle them.”

The two swallowed nervously and nodded.

Jeon Wan-soo counted silently with his fingers: one, two, three, and dashed toward the shutter.

He grabbed the shutter, which was two meters high, and pulled down with all his might.

Grrrrrrr!!

Feeling the presence of zombies, they charged toward him.

Jeon Wan-soo’s eyes widened, and he gritted his teeth as he pulled down on the shutter.

But the shutter, stuck for a month, refused to budge past his chest height.

The damp metal had rusted and became stiff.

Jeong Jin-young swung his hatchet at a zombie that got too close and shouted, “Lower it!”

“It’s not going down!”

As Jeon Wan-soo struggled, Seol Ye-won struck the right corner of the shutter with the handle of her knife.

Thud!

With a deafening crash, the shutter finally descended.

Seol Ye-won adjusted her stance and swung her hunting knife at the zombie in front of her, saying, “It’s tilted, so it’s not going down.”

Trying to force the asymmetrical shutter down only made it misalign further.

As the shutter descended to knee height, zombies from inside the lab began to crawl out toward the light below.

The three of them instinctively plunged their weapons into the skulls of the zombies crawling out.

Grrrrr!!

Kahhh-kah!!

***

Blocking the entrance to the second-floor reading room in the library, I slashed at the frenzied zombies endlessly.

The relentless horde of zombies was exhausting.

After confirming that there were zombies in the second-floor reading room, I tried to head up to the third floor but encountered an unexpected obstacle.

Staircase repairs.

Ultimately, I had to deal with the zombies in the reading room first and hurriedly barricaded the entrance with desks and shelves.

However, the zombies coming up from the first floor were beyond what one person could handle.

Should I move?

Where to?

I couldn’t go up to the third floor, and there was only one entrance to the reading room.

Thoughts chased one another in circles inside my heads.

Somehow, I needed to go back the way I came, but there were too many of them.

No matter how many I killed, it felt like there was no end in sight.

If I delayed any longer, I wouldn’t even have the strength left to escape.

Krrrrrr… crack!

To make matters worse, the sounds of zombies echoed from behind.

I had thought I’d killed all the zombies inside the reading room, but zombies were approaching from the adjacent materials room.

There was no time to deal with them one by one.

It would be faster for the zombies to break through the reading room door and flood in.

Just as I was desperately looking for an escape, a wide-open window on the right caught my eye.

Like it or not, there was no choice.

“Damn it….”

In this filthy world, let’s see how much time I have left.

Wasn’t I once called the ace of the physical education academy?

In fact, I had been eating three meals a day and working out at every opportunity for the past week.

My stats for strength and endurance had increased, so my physical abilities would be greater than when I was preparing for physical education.

Gazing at the wide-open window, I pictured the campus layout in my mind.

If I go out through the right window in the reading room, it will connect directly to the tennis court.

Since the zombies that had been at the tennis court would have flocked here, the tennis court should be completely empty now.

Taking a deep breath, I propelled myself toward the window.

Grrrrr!!

I narrowly avoided the reaching hands of the zombies charging at me, kicked off the window frame, and leaped into the thick fog.

With my entire body floating in the air, the dense fog filled my eyes.

I couldn’t gauge the distance to the ground due to the fog.

Time stretched like a piece of taffy, and the distance to the fog narrowed, appearing in my eyes like a slow-motion film.

I had to leave everything to fate.

“Now!”

I bit my lip tightly and rolled my body as soon as my feet touched the ground.

“Ugh!”

I was slightly late in rolling.

Fortunately, my knees were okay, but I felt a sharp pain in my ankle.

It wasn’t broken, but it seemed my ligaments were strained.

Grrrrrrrrrr!!

The zombies gathering around the window frames started to look this way, growling.

Since I couldn’t hear the unique wails of resonance zombies, it seemed there were none in the reading room.

A few of them squeezed their bodies into the window frames, chasing after me, but I saw them falling in unstable postures, twisting their ankles, arms, and necks.

I didn’t look back and moved toward a side path.

Right now, only the first floor was filled with fog, so the ones in the reading room on the second floor would be in a dulled state of all senses.

It was my turn to use the fog.

I limped on my throbbing right foot and quickened my pace.

***

“Phew… Is it over?”

Jung Jin-young exhaled a heavy breath filled with stale air and asked Jeon Wan-soo.

Jeon Wan-soo, sitting on the floor and panting heavily, waved his right hand dismissively without answering.

Seol Ye-won touched the shutter stained with the blood of zombies and asked, “How many did we kill?”

“One, two, three… seventeen.”

The three of them pierced the temples of the cold corpses of the zombies once more, then lifted the dented shutter and entered the room.

Although it was still daylight, the interior was as dark as pitch.

Seol Ye-won and Jeon Wan-soo pulled out their phones and turned on the flashlights.

As Seol Ye-won looked around the interior, she couldn’t help but admire it.

“It’s no wonder they say this major is favored by the school.”

The practical training room, occupying the entire first floor, was massive.

With such a high ceiling even a bus was parked inside.

Additionally, there was a resting area and a meeting room for exhausted students in one corner of the training room.

Jung Jin-young also marveled at the training room as he looked around.

“Did our school have a building like this?”

Jeon Wan-soo replied with a triumphant expression, “Our major is quite successful, you know?”

“Awesome.”

There were several vehicles, including buses, trucks, vans, small cars, and even cars imported from Germany.

Jeon Wan-soo, wielding his katana, checked every corner of the  room for any zombies.

After confirming it was safe, he returned to Jung Jin-young and Seol Ye-won’s side.

“I’ll check the generator first.”

“Is there electricity here?”

“This is one of the buildings equipped with solar panels.”

A total of eight buildings in the school had solar panels installed, and this was one of them.

Since it was a place for breaking, fixing, and researching all day long, the power usage was enormous.

Seol Ye-won sat down on the front bumper of a vehicle and looked at Jung Jin-young, asking, “Jin-young oppa.”

“Yeah, what?”

“What about Jae-hyung?”

As soon as Park Jae-hyung was mentioned, Jung Jin-young scratched his head with a bitter expression.

Then Jeon Wan-soo turned back and said, “If it were anyone else, I’d worry, but Jae-hyung should be fine.”

“How do you know that?”

“He’s like an older brother to me, even though we’re friends. I always feel reassured when I’m with him. He’s smart, adaptable, and physically capable.”

“…I’m worried.”

Seeing Seol Ye-won’s worried expression, Jeon Wan-soo raised his eyebrows and spoke.

“He may seem sentimental, but in critical moments, he’s more rational than anyone. Even if he seems to act recklessly, he always has a solution in mind.”

“That rational personality can sometimes be a poison.”

Seol Ye-won couldn’t forget the image of Park Jae-hyung she saw in the main building.

When he was bitten on the calf by a zombie, most people would have panicked and lost their minds.

But Park Jae-hyung checked the lower-level zombies first and was someone who had attempted to take his own life.

A person who thought of the next plan according to the situation and had excellent adaptability.

A person whose strengths could also be a weakness.

Seol Ye-won sighed deeply and closed her eyes tightly.

I hope Park Jae-hyung is safe.

I fervently prayed to meet him alive.

While Jeon Wan-soo was checking the vehicle, Seol Ye-won and Jung Jin-young started looking for the zombies inside the building.

Hunting knives and hand axes.

They were efficient weapons in tight spaces.

The two of them barricaded the stairs leading to the lecture room with desks and chairs and knocked on the stair railings to attract the zombies.

The zombies in the second-floor hallway gathered upon hearing the noise.

About six of them.

Without a word, Seol Ye-won and Jung Jin-young dispatched the zombies and gradually checked all the classrooms on the second floor.

After securing the second floor, Seol Ye-won wiped the beads of sweat from her forehead and said, “Let’s bring back the desks and chairs.”

“There shouldn’t be many zombies on the third floor. The fog doesn’t spread there.”

“…Are we going to go up and get killed without any precautions?”

“Isn’t that faster? We need to wrap things up and help Wan-soo.”

“No. Jae-hyung said that zombies aren’t very good at hearing. There are probably still zombies left in the third-floor hallway.”

“Jae-hyung said that?”

“After we reclaimed the convenience store, Jae-hyung told me. He thinks the zombies’ hearing is worse than expected. But he also said not to take it too seriously since it’s not certain.”

Seol Ye-won recalled that day with a bitter expression.

Park Jae-hyung had always looked out for her to help her get close to the people in the club.

Whenever there was a topic for discussion, he would call Seol Ye-won, who struggled to socialize, and keep talking to her, even paying attention when dividing groups.

He knew that Seol Ye-won found it difficult to deal with the representative of their group, Lee Jung-woo, so he placed her in Team B.

Park Jae-hyung was always quick to judge and didn’t show his feelings.

He sometimes seemed a bit cold, but once you got close and started talking, he was more humane and warm-hearted than anyone.

Now, she couldn’t help but worry about what might have happened to him.

Seol Ye-won shook her head vigorously, trying to shake off her anxiety.

Yes, Park Jae-hyung was important, but organizing the building came first.

She vowed not to be swayed by her emotions and tightened her grip on the hunting knife.