Surviving Every Worldview

Chapter 16: Surviving the Undead (2)

A club room on the fourth floor of the school’s main building.

If you look out the window, you can see the sprawling school campus at a glance.

From there, Kang Hyunseok watched Yoo Seon-woo and Lee Seorin with bated breath, while the junior paced nervously in and out of the clubhouse entrance.

“They’re both crazy.”

“But…they went to save people.”

“I know. I know, but if something goes wrong with them, too…….”

Hyunseok couldn’t take his eyes off the two tiny figures in the window.

He knew everything he needed to know.

Lee Seorin has the ability to save others, however he’s still worried for her.

Given the circumstances, Yoo Seon-woo has abilities too but he also knows that Lee-Seorin had to struggle back to the clubhouse, exhausted from her search for the others.

Kang Hyunseok can’t help but continue to care even though there’s nothing he can do.

“……What is that?”

Kang Hyunseok couldn’t believe his eyes.

In the distance, a strong light poured out as Lee Seorin swung the weapon she had received from Yoo Seon-woo at the undead.

When he opened his eyes again, the undead that had lunged at the two of them had fallen to the ground, charred.

“Eww!! Hey, senior. What just happened? Was there a fire!?”

“Oh, no. I don’t think so.”

Even as Kang Hyunseok turned around to talk to his junior, a red light struck outside the window several times, like a bolt of lightning.

Not being familiar with the story, he couldn’t understand what the two were doing.

He didn’t understand how someone who wasn’t in his right mind could go to help others.

“……I don’t know.”

However, he quickly realized something.

Whether he knew what was going on or not, it didn’t matter.

* * * *

The way the undead are portrayed varies greatly depending on the setting in which they are depicted.

For example, the undead in medieval fantasy, which is what we’re dealing with here, have a lot of racial categorization and detail, but also a lot of means of combating them.

But the undead in a modern setting?

It depends on the setting, but instead of being limited to zombies, they’re often depicted as a global disaster that causes society to collapse.

Apocalypse itself, where no matter how hard you try to survive, you’re just waiting to die, using up resources that will eventually run out.

In other words, it’s a mixed blessing that what’s in front of me is a medieval fantasy zombie.

In fantasy, the undead are just one of the monster races.

It’s no wonder Seorin is able to cut through them as easily as she does now.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine-”

From behind, Lee Seorin gait looked precarious, like she was about to fall.

Instead of going to help someone, she looks like she’s going to stumble and collapse in front of me but I also know I shouldn’t worry.

By following along, I was actually helping.

“Are you sure you’re okay……?”

“I’m okay-”

I don’t think so.

Every few steps, a corpse would come to life and attack us and each time, sister stepped forward, swinging her baton precisely at the heads of the undead.

Her story is ‘Death Wish’, the story of a gory fairy tale game in which the protagonist’s psyche is pushed to the limit and her abilities are enhanced.

In keeping with the story, the current from the baton became increasingly turbid and sharp.

Just like the same gun in a work of art, its image changes depending on the setting, story, and art style.

The same baton can be held in the same hand, but the story is what makes the difference.

I only needed to help out a bit when she was outnumbered.

The undead were dying even though she was wielding an obviously non-lethal baton.

…Why?

Isn’t it the same as if I put on boxing gloves, I can still kill people if I want to.

“It’s close, so we don’t have to rush. Let’s clear the area so people can get by.”

“I’ve seen them regenerate after they got killed…….”

“Yeah, but they don’t show up for an hour or two once we clear it.”

“Oh, really, I didn’t know that.”

This was a fact I learned thanks to the people who doggedly hunted the undead in the city.

The last time I saw them, some of them were even lying down as if they were safe.

That should buy us enough time to get the school back to normal.

“Ouch.”

Sister almost fell so I quickly ran over and grabbed her hand.

“Ahhhhh…….”

She smiles embarrassedly, brandishes her baton, glances at me, and laughs out loud again.

If it weren’t for the undead, it would be familiar.

She used to drag me around until dawn, drinking, laughing and talking.

……Yes.

She had exams in the morning, and the undead showed up in the afternoon, so she didn’t have time to get drunk.

Why is she like this again today?

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m fine, why do you keep asking-”

I thought about asking her directly, but I stopped myself.

Suddenly, I remembered a familiar name from the list of attributes my sister showed me yesterday.

[Handicap] and [Overdose].

As soon as I remembered the names of the traits, their effects were printed on a white sheet of paper.

—

[Handicap C+]

You become stronger in proportion to the number and intensity of status effects you currently have.

In case of permanent status abnormalities such as physical defects, the strengthening effect will also last permanently.

—

—

[Overdose C+]

Strengthens the effects of directly caused status effects.

Some special status effects cannot be strengthened.

—

Sister’s story, Death Wish, was a game about a protagonist who wanted to die in a fight and fought with increasingly increasing restrictions.

So I planned to make a hardcore game where the protagonist gets weaker and weaker, but I ended up making Text Thief instead.

[Handicap] was the most appropriate characteristic for that concept.

The reason she’s in such a bad condition right now is probably because she was inflicted with an abnormal status and was using her special ability.

Luckily, I don’t think she used [Overdose], but…….

If she had to help all the members by herself, she would have had no choice.

“But?”

Sister, who was leading the way, asked.

“Let’s say we go that far. What are we going to do then? It’s not like the monsters won’t appear once we get there.”

“We need to find someone, a member of our club.”

“Club who?”

“Uh……I can’t remember the name.”

To be honest, I was a bit of an outsider in my club.

It wasn’t so much a personality thing as it was that I didn’t have a lot of overlapping work, so I didn’t really have a chance to get to know anyone.

Sister knew that, but she gave me a disapproving glance.

“Seon-woo, you have to remember everyone’s name! It’s a shame for the kids! You even said you needed it!”

“I’m sure some of them have forgotten my name because we haven’t shared a single word.”

“That’s an excuse! And you’re going to forget my name too, huh?”

She grabbed me between the shoulders and neck with both hands, shaking me wildly.

From her palms, a surprising amount of heat from the alcohol traveled down my neck.

…She’s been this drunk since daylight, hasn’t she?

I pried sister’s hand away from mine with an uncharacteristic amount of force, and handed her the cell phone I picked up earlier.

Even if she lost it, it would have been somewhere near the school, so I kept looking around and found it just now.

“This…where did you find it?”

“Just around the neighborhood, you have all the contacts of the members of the club, right?”

“Uh, yeah.”

She picked up her phone and checked her notifications.

She heard a small voice say to herself, “When did this call come in?”

I said, looking toward the dorms where we had almost arrived.

“Call all the guys in the dorms right now. I want them to come forward.”

* * *

Sister and I finally made it to the dormitory, taking out all the undead in sight.

Small bits of broken bone splattered here and there, and rotting corpses littered the ground behind us.

“Uh……!!”

As I finished off the last of the undead, I heard a human voice from somewhere.

It was the students hiding in the dormitory.

“Help! We can’t get out of here!”

“Hey, what are they? I can’t see them from a distance…….”

“I think I saw that guy earlier in the day?”

Thanks to my senses enhanced by the story, I knew what each word meant.

I could even hear the sound of a photograph being taken with a ‘click’.

[Awareness has increased.]

Meanwhile, the mood changed in an instant, and Seorin covered her ears.

“Is it okay to make noise like that……?”

“It’s okay, you’ve cleaned up the place, now tell them to come down.”

Seorin glared at me.

“You can do that.”

“I hardly ever save phone numbers.”

“This kid really doesn’t care about the people around him… I’ve been telling him not to for years.”

Sister grumbled, but eventually did as she was told and contacted the guys on my behalf.

It wasn’t long before the three guys who had been waiting for us grabbed their bags and came out from under the dorm to join us.

“Thank goodness… I see everyone is okay.”

Sister Seorin looked at everyone in turn and patted her chest.

Everyone on campus is safe now.

[These are the people who contributed to your story.]

[Proportional to the number of people accompanying you, your ‘Text Thief’ proficiency will temporarily increase by a certain amount.]

[Text Thief Lv.2 + 3]

My proficiency with the story has now temporarily increased to level 5.

The same text should have appeared on Sister Seorin’s face…and I’m sure one of the members standing in front of me is seeing the same thing.

Lee Min-seo, the junior I saw right after the slot machine came down, was an illustrator, so we had a lot to talk about when we were making the game.

“I saw you three days ago, right? I didn’t expect to see you again today.”

“Yeah…I was surprised, because you suddenly asked me to come out, and you actually came like this…….”

The guys next to him nodded in agreement but this is not the time to talk about that.

“You have a story, don’t you?”

“Huh? Are you, uh, are you talking to me?”

Seorin stared at me with unfocused eyes.

She must have thought I was here to rescue the members of the club.

“You’re right, Lee Min-seo.”

The condition to awaken a story is to be an irreplaceable person in the creation of the story, someone who had such an impact that if someone else was there, it would be a completely different story.

By that standard, it’s natural to have awakeners other than me or sister.

“It’s okay, I’m not judging, I just need your help right now.”

“……I didn’t mean to keep it from you, if I’d known it was going to happen today.”

“I know. Can I see the story first? Here’s how…….”

Min-seo nervously began to manipulate the status window to make it visible to me.

The blue window opened in full view of everyone in the dorm, with everyone from all over the dorm peeking in on what we were doing.

—

[TBA]

#crime, #noir

User: Lee Min-seo

Characteristics: [Undecided]

This story doesn’t have a name yet.

It may receive general behavioral support that fits one genre other than noir, but it does not specialize in any one behavior.

—

Fortunately, Lee Min-seo’s story was also [undecided].

This trait was obviously useless in the game, but became useful in real life because you can do anything across the board.

I was actually worried about what would happen if his story wasn’t undecided.

“I saw it, but now we have something to do, so follow me. You too, sister.”

“Uh- no… should I go with you too? I didn’t really, really hear what you guys were talking about. Ahaha.”

Maybe because other members came too, sister started to pretend to be fine.

I said, “Come on.”

This isn’t the first time she’s gotten drunk in front of the other members.

“It’s okay, you don’t have to understand, just follow me.”

“Hmm, hmm. Yeah…….”

I dragged sister’s arm and led the way, and Lee Min-seo along with the other two followed after taking notice.

Now, I actually have to decide what I’m going to do with this junior.

[Text Shift Lv. 2 + 3]

[Presenting three ‘important choices’.]

[You receive one very good option, one very bad option, and one not bad option.]

The choice was triggered as soon as I rescued the members from the dormitory.

My story, temporarily enhanced, suddenly presented me with three major choices.

—

PAGE 4

You have helped everyone within your reach and secured the safety of your acquaintances for now.

But as you know all too well, it’s not time to go home yet – the campus could be at risk again at any moment.

You have three choices to make.

If you make the wrong choice, be prepared to suffer the consequences.

Flee the campus with everyone.

Stay on campus with everyone.

Take only your club members off campus and have them find someone to help.

What would you do?

—

I don’t know what’s going to happen if I make the wrong choice now.