I Became a Game Character in the Apocalypse

Chapter 28

Yes, it’s safer to have two people than one.

As I opened the door to the Dance Lovers club room, I saw a zombie with its arms severed, staring at me while grunting.

Clack—clack!

It twisted its head grotesquely, desperately trying to bite at my flesh.

However, since it had no arms, as long as I held onto its leash firmly, it was no problem.

The hallway of the student union building was about 50 meters long.

I had to assess everything from sight to smell, hearing, and touch.

I gripped the leash of the zombie and headed to the 4th floor with Seol Ye-won.

Since Lee Jung-woo and Choi Hyun were on the 3rd floor, I didn’t forget to explain the situation in advance.

Seol Ye-won tied a rope to the stair railing on the 4th floor, checking several times to ensure it was secure before nodding back at me.

We walked to the end of the opposite hallway and hid behind the wall.

We had to wait until the zombie let down its guard.

After about three minutes, the creature that had been grunting started to quiet down.

I peeked out slightly to observe its actions; it repeatedly swayed its upper body from side to side.

It looked like a zoo animal under extreme stress, rocking back and forth repetitively.

Seol Ye-won tilted her head at the sight and asked, “What is it doing?”

“It seems like it’s acting that way because it doesn’t have prey.”

Do zombies on the streets behave like this before sensing movement?

It would be good to know their habits, so I closely observed its behavior.

Five minutes passed, then ten, then fifteen.

Time kept flowing, but it only repeated the same action.

Would it continue such behavior all day without external stimuli?

Without external stimulation, it was like a plant.

Grrr… Urrr…

At that moment, it stopped its repetitive behavior and began to howl at the ceiling.

I jumped back in shock.

I thought we had caught an ordinary zombie, but we had captured a resonance zombie.

It was howling at regular intervals, with its vocal cords wide open.

Resonance spreads far beyond a zombie’s perception range, so I quickly sprang into action, blocking its mouth with a metal pipe I had placed on the floor.

I secured the pipe with the rope I brought, focusing all my senses on hearing as I held my breath and peered out the window.

Two minutes of excruciating waiting passed.

Fortunately, no zombies came rushing in response to the resonance.

Seol Ye-won approached me, gripping her hunting knife tightly.

“Isn’t it better to just kill it?”

Experimenting with a resonance zombie carried significant risks.

But there’s a great deal to gain as well.

I needed to assess the current abilities of the resonance zombie to respond swiftly according to the evolutionary process of the zombies I knew.

The zombie with its mouth blocked started rubbing its face against the stair railing.

Seeing that made me instinctively furrow my brow.

Is it capable of such motor functions?

A typical zombie would continue to struggle even if its skin was torn, or bite the metal pipe until its teeth fell out.

But this… it looked as if it was trying to spit out the pipe.

The experiment continued late into the night.

Its vision wasn’t as good as expected.

The limit was distinguishing enemies 20 meters away, while its hearing reached up to 30 meters.

I couldn’t clearly define the hearing range, but the zombies seemed to react faster to piercing sounds like pops.

Conversely, booming sounds appeared to take longer for them to process.

Additionally, the 30-meter range only seemed to apply to normal walking sounds; if we moved silently, they couldn’t detect our location.

Outside the fog, their sense of smell hardly functioned at all.

To conduct a secondary experiment, we descended to the 2nd floor and continued testing in the fog.

Lee Jung-woo accompanied me to the 2nd floor.

Even though the zombies had been cleared from the 2nd floor, we couldn’t let our guard down upon entering the fog.

There were always variables.

“Do we really have to experiment in the fog?”

Lee Jung-woo asked with an unhappy expression.

He might think I was taking unnecessary risks.

But I wouldn’t back down; these processes were essential for future safety.

What I learned through the experiments was that zombies in the fog had no significant differences apart from an enhanced sense of smell.

Their vision range remained limited to 20 meters, and their hearing was not much different from before.

If there was a difference, it was that they were able to catch much smaller sounds, and due to the enhancement of their sense of smell, they could detect all nearby odors.

Whereas they could hardly smell anything outside the fog, in the fog, they could catch scents from 30 meters away.

This was the limit of what I could confirm visually; I needed more nuanced information.

“Jung-woo, you and Ye-won should go up and rest first.”

“Are you going to keep going?”

“Yes, I want to make sure of everything.”

Lee Jung-woo yawned while checking his wristwatch.

It was already past three in the morning.

“You should go up and sleep. What more are you going to do?”

“I’m fine. I’ll do it safely, so don’t worry and go up first.”

“Ugh… Who can stop that stubbornness of yours?”

Lee Jung-woo left with those words and stretched before heading toward the club room.

Seol Ye-won looked at me with sleepy eyes, yawning as she spoke.

“Aren’t you tired? Can’t we do it tomorrow?”

“What if there’s no tomorrow?”

“…”

Seol Ye-won licked her lips, making an unhappy expression, and then continued, yawning widely.

“It’s dangerous to be alone. I’ll stay too.”

“Just go inside and sleep. Don’t be stubborn.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re going to split your mouth yawning like that.”

Seol Ye-won struggled to shake off her drowsiness.

She kept getting up and sitting down, slapping her cheeks with both hands, and blinking her eyes.

But it seemed she couldn’t hold on any longer; she left me with a warning to come up soon and headed to the 5th floor.

I remained alone in the 3rd-floor dance room, staring intently at the zombie’s face and contemplating.

I vaguely recalled hearing that cockroaches experience a significant increase in IQ when they sense threats.

Wouldn’t zombies change if they felt threatened?

When facing a threat to life, two types of reactions typically emerge.

Some animals bury their heads in the ground, thinking the threat has vanished, while others exhibit exceptional wits to survive.

Humans are no different.

Some give up on life and fall into panic, while others’ mental acuity increases to survive.

I looked at the zombie and murmured, “If you want to live from now on, try to think as much as you can.”

As I took out the hunting knife I had stored in my leg holster, I boldly walked toward the zombie.

***

The next morning, Seol Ye-won, who had woken up in the club room, rubbed her eyes and looked around.

While everyone else was deep in sleep, she couldn’t find Park Jae-hyung.

‘Still at it?’

She brushed her messy hair aside and headed for the stairs.

Carefully ascending to the third floor, she spotted Park Jae-hyung lying in the dance hall.

Seeing him, she felt her sleepiness vanish instantly.

The area was drenched in blood.

Park Jae-hyung’s clothes were stained with blood, and the zombie that had been tied up was now a cold corpse.

The problem was that the rope binding the zombie was now undone.

For some reason, there were several corpses in the dance hall that she had never seen before.

Four zombie corpses were sprawled across the floor.

‘Were we ambushed?’

With an uneasy heart, she rushed to Park Jae-hyung’s side and checked on him.

“Jae-hyung, Jae-hyung!”

When she slapped his cheek, he grimaced and opened his eyes.

“…What time is it?”

With a weary expression, he glanced around.

Seol Ye-won, still in shock, scanned Park Jae-hyung’s entire body and asked,

“What… what happened here?”

“…”

“What are all these corpses?”

“They’re all dead. Don’t worry.”

“What do you mean ‘don’t worry’? You didn’t go outside and catch zombies, did you?”

“How could I go out alone in the early morning? I’m not that careless.”

Yawn stretched wide across his face as he squinted at the corpses behind him.

Then he spoke nonchalantly,

“I just brought the ones from the stairs on the first floor.”

Seol Ye-won gave him a baffled look, and Park Jae-hyung complained,

“I’m so tired. Let’s talk after I sleep a bit more.”

“…You’re going to sleep here?”

Regardless of her, Park Jae-hyung turned his back and lay down again.

Seol Ye-won stood there, mouth agape, with no choice but to wait for him to wake up.

***

How many hours passed after that?

The sharp, fishy smell prickled his nose, waking him up.

Scratching his messy hair, he looked around and found the zombie corpses had been thoroughly cleaned up.

“Are you awake?”

A voice came from beside him; it was Lee Jung-woo.

Turning his head, he saw that everyone was cleaning the floor.

Jeon Wan-soo clicked his tongue at his face, shaking his head.

“How can you sleep in a place like this?”

“It seems his sense of smell is dulled,” Choi Hyun chimed in.

Everyone had covered their noses and mouths with cloths because the stench was unbearable.

He sniffled and rubbed his upper lip with his finger.

Seol Ye-won handed a mop she was holding to Jae-hyung and said,

“Get up and help out.”

Cleaning up right after waking up?

But since the others were tidying up the mess he made, he took the mop without protest.

Half-awake, he started cleaning, and after about 30 minutes of a thorough cleanup, the third floor returned to its original state.

However, the fishy smell still lingered.

Jeong Jin-young sprayed air freshener he had brought from the convenience store on the second floor everywhere, but the persistent stench made him wrinkle his nose and pour the air freshener on the floor instead.

“Jae-hyung.”

Seol Ye-won’s voice came from behind him.

Turning his head, he saw Seol Ye-won pointing at the group.

“We’d like to know what happened here yesterday now.”

Without hesitation, he called everyone over.

They gathered around him as if they had been waiting for this.

The first to speak was, of course, Lee Jung-woo.

“I heard from Ye-won that you learned something. What happened?”

Where should he start explaining?

After organizing his thoughts in his head, he slowly began to speak.

He started with his observations on sight, hearing, and smell, and also mentioned the zombies’ time of death based on where they were hit.

Attacking the temples or eyes would result in instant death, while slitting the throat or stabbing the heart allowed them to survive for about 20 seconds.

If in a desperate situation, it was best to aim for the eyes or temples for a one-hit kill.

He also shared insights about the zombies’ cognitive functions.

It appeared that when zombies felt threatened, their cognitive functions were activated.

Lee Jung-woo frowned at that and asked,

“Are regular zombies also capable of transforming like resonance zombies?”

“Yes, but it doesn’t activate immediately; it takes some time after they feel threatened.”

Just then, Jeon Wan-soo snapped his fingers and chimed in,

“Just like the ones we saw at the reservoir?”

“Exactly, the ones that charged at us suddenly didn’t block the path for no reason; they recognized the terrain.”

Zombies that sensed a threat exhibited recognition of objects and strategies for overcoming challenges.

Though they wouldn’t develop to the point of using tools, they showed an understanding of what was harmful or harmless to them.

At this, Jeong Jin-young, with a skeptical expression, asked,

“Was it the same in Last Ark?”

“No. In the game, there was a clear distinction between regular zombies, resonance zombies, and leader zombies. But now it’s different. This isn’t a programmed game; it’s reality.”

“In the game, what were the conditions for zombie evolution?”

“It had to be raining or snowing for them to evolve. But now they grow without any conditions. Of course, it’s possible that they evolve faster if it rains.”

As he spoke calmly, everyone’s expressions turned grim, and no one replied.

When they played Last Ark, they hadn’t felt this kind of disparity.

In the game, the differences between resonance or auditory stimuli weren’t apparent.

But in reality, those subtle differences were starkly evident.