Immortals vs. Grim Reapers - chapter 6
Chapter 6: An Experienced Rookie (Part 3)
Gangrim surveyed the path down from the cleared emergency stairs. Apart from the periodically blinking emergency lights, there was no illumination.
The elevator seemed to be still functioning, but using it during a zombie outbreak was as dangerous as during a fire.
You never know what might be waiting beyond those doors.
Gangrim held up the Goblin Lantern to illuminate the stairs. As expected, it clearly revealed about 10 meters ahead.
Going down like this, he might encounter a few zombies, but he could escape without much trouble.
However, Gangrim suddenly paused.
‘…I wonder if those people are still there?’
At twenty years old, Gangrim hadn’t survived alone.
There had been a group of survivors, mostly patients, and after struggling together for two days, they were finally rescued.
Though contact was lost as the zombie plague worsened, without their help, he would have had a hard time surviving.
‘I should at least check if it’s safe.’
Gangrim walked towards the hospital room he remembered. He encountered a couple of zombies on the way, but easily split their heads with his hand axe as he passed.
Gangrim briefly stopped in front of the door where the zombies had been standing.
Grasping the doorknob, Gangrim paused for a moment before swiftly pushing it open.
“Eek!”
As he opened the door, Gangrim immediately placed the axe blade against the throat of the nurse behind it.
The nurse, holding a fire axe, let out a shallow groan and stumbled back.
Gangrim put his finger to his lips and made the nurse step back.
Looking around, he saw several elderly patients huddled in the room with terrified expressions.
Gangrim lowered his hand axe.
He could have entered calmly and spoken to them, but they probably wouldn’t have let him in easily due to their heightened vigilance.
“Who are you?”
Ignoring the nurse’s question, Gangrim asked,
“Why haven’t you fled?”
“There were people who couldn’t evacuate.”
The nurse answered with relief, realizing Gangrim was human. Gangrim could roughly understand the situation.
“A gate has opened.”
“Yes, yes. But…”
“This is a long-term patient ward, so the zombie plague probably broke out simultaneously. Most evacuated, but those with mobility issues were left behind. You couldn’t abandon the patients, so you gathered the remaining people in one place and are waiting for rescue, correct?”
The nurse nodded frantically.
She was an admirable person, but Gangrim had seen countless such admirable people die.
Gangrim gestured towards the door with his chin.
Long-term patient rooms don’t have locks, in case of emergencies.
“You should have barricaded and blocked it.”
“Yes, yes. We were doing that, but one patient went out to call for help and hasn’t returned yet…”
That’s the most foolish decision one can make when a zombie plague breaks out. If you miss the timing to escape, staying in an enclosed space gives you a better chance of survival.
‘It’s exactly the same as the past I remember.’
In his memory, this nurse eventually dies trying to stop zombies from invading the room. The questions he just asked were what the past Gangrim had wanted to ask the nurse.
Gangrim let out a long sigh.
No matter how accustomed he was to hunting zombies, taking this many people along was burdensome. But leaving them behind weighed on his conscience, thinking of the victims that would result among these people. Just then, a notification that solved his dilemma rang out.
“Mission: Hospital Escape”
“Objective: Escape the hospital with the patients”
“Reward 1: Futile lives”
“Reward 2: Hardship that even a monk wouldn’t choose”
After reading the reward details for a while, Gangrim said,
“Gangrim: Can you please be honest? Are you inputting these missions directly, Lord Yeomna?”
“Yeomna: Is it that obvious?”
“Gangrim: Did you make this app too?”
“Yeomna: I outsourced it to capture a young sensibility, to help new grim reapers adapt.”
“Yeomna: I did intervene a bit. Like adding more intimidating colors.”
‘So here’s the culprit behind this insane red color.’
“Gangrim: I thought the color scheme was truly excellent.”
“Gangrim: Given your superb aesthetic sense, I’m sure you have a great sense of humor too, but I also believe you’ll promise fair rewards.”
Gangrim was a practical person.
He had no intention of risking danger by unnecessarily taking patients along. After all, it wasn’t that dangerous, and hunters would come to rescue them in about two days.
Staying put was both in line with protocol and much safer.
‘But if they’re hinting at saving these patients, there should be a suitable reward.’
“Yeomna: If you leave them, they might all die, you know?”
“Gangrim: Without any variables, only about two would die. It’s safer to stay. That’s how it was in my previous life too.”
“Yeomna: But back then, you were there to protect them.”
Gangrim was at a loss for words.
Yeomna was right.
Gangrim had played such an active role in this hospital in the past that it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say he discovered his talent here.
It wasn’t for nothing that he chose the path of a zombie hunter afterwards.
But then Yeomna, seemingly done with jokes, added a new reward.
“Reward 3: 10 nyang soul pay per patient”
’10 nyang per person?’
Gangrim counted the surviving patients.
Including the nurse, there were seven. If all survived, it would amount to a considerable sum of 70 nyang.
“Gangrim: As expected, you’re quite generous.”
“Yeomna: Feeling confident, are we?”
“Yeomna: But I think about five will die on the way”
“Yeomna: If any get infected, I’ll deduct 5 nyang each.”
Yeomna said teasingly.
But Gangrim had no intention of letting even one person get infected. He turned to the nurse and said,
“We’d better escape.”
“What? But the procedure…”
“The hospital is a top-priority protection zone for local zombie hunters. The fact that no hunters have arrived yet means a dangerous abomination has appeared in the city.”
This was actually true.
The abomination that appeared on Bukhansan was causing significant damage to northern Seoul.
With Seoul’s combat-capable forces concentrated there, it was difficult to pay attention to every patient remaining in the hospital.
“They won’t have the capacity to come here for a while. The zombie plague will only get worse, and don’t you have patients in poor condition? We don’t know when rescue will come.”
The nurse’s expression turned pale.
She looked around at the patients. Those too unconscious to move had already become zombies due to the gate.
She nodded resolutely, as if realizing there was no other choice.
Gangrim liked her quick understanding. At the same time, he felt a bit pained remembering that she died too early trying to save the patients.
“I’m Ju Gangrim. And you are?”
“Han Min-ah. I’m Han Min-ah.”
Gangrim nodded.
“Good. Ms. Han Min-ah. Please gather what I tell you to.”
While the patients looked for things that could be used as weapons, Gangrim dealt with all the zombies on the same floor.
There were no zombies hiding; perhaps the patients who would become zombies were already out in the corridor. The patients who finished preparing were startled to see Gangrim return covered in blood.
“Let’s go.”
Used to such reactions, Gangrim moved towards the emergency stairs without changing his expression. The patients hesitantly followed behind him.
They were holding makeshift light armor in their hands. Things like plastic chairs or flat lids.
Gangrim didn’t expect the patients to be combat-effective. But he thought they could at least buy some time by pushing away zombies with chair legs when they charged.
Click.
Gangrim raised the Goblin Lantern. The bluish light brightly illuminated the dark stairway. But the patients behind him looked on in confusion.
It meant they had no spiritual perception.
“W-what is that? A lantern?”
Only Nurse Han Min-ah asked, looking perplexed.
“Can you see it?”
“Yes. A little…”
She seemed to have some weak spiritual perception, though not as much as Gangrim’s vision.
Gangrim began descending the stairs with long strides. In the darkness, the patients clung to the railings and each other’s shoulders, cautiously making their way down.
“Ga… gahak.”
As expected, about eight zombies were clustered on the descending stairs.
Most people would have evacuated via the stairs, so these were probably zombies that came through unclosed doors or those that followed survivors.
‘But zombies, like when they were alive, rely heavily on sight.’
Gangrim calmly brought his axe down on the head of a zombie gaping right in front of him.
A few zombies sensitive to sound showed reactions, but they too could only follow sounds and had to rely on sight for exact locations.
Gangrim dispatched the zombies with a sense of playing whack-a-mole.
‘The small income from killing zombies is quite nice.’
He had gained 8 nyang for killing 4 more in the upstairs corridor, and now 16 more here.
He spent 1 nyang to recharge the Goblin Lantern’s fuel, so now he had a total of 38 nyang.
Gangrim thought about buying something more but decided to save for now. Yeomna had told him not to spend recklessly, after all.
‘It’s not particularly difficult yet anyway.’
“Heuk, ugh, uugh…”
Just then, the patients following Gangrim stepped on the bodies strewn across the floor.
Some patients retched at the sight of the corpses’ conditions, briefly visible in the emergency light.
Han Min-ah’s face was pale too, but she closed her eyes slightly and murmured, “I’m sorry.”
‘Ah… right. People reacted like this back then.’
Gangrim awkwardly looked at them from amidst the zombie corpses.
He suddenly became acutely aware of the fact that he had regressed from the future.
In the future, people viewed zombies similar to pests, and no one felt guilt about killing them.
But not now. This is still a world where zombie hunters are easily despised.
There might be such people among the patients too, but no one dared speak carelessly to the blood-covered Gangrim.
“Follow carefully.”
Gangrim left a caution, feeling somewhat embarrassed, but the patients interpreted it differently.
More like, ‘Be careful not to become a zombie if you don’t want to end up like this.’
Gangrim continued descending towards the lower floors without stopping.
‘Almost at the first floor now.’
On the way down, Gangrim encountered a few more zombies. Just like before, he was able to kill them without difficulty, earning a total of 56 nyang soul pay.
Gangrim thought these small side incomes were more substantial than expected.
‘Hmm, should I make another round after sending off the patients?’
Such greed suddenly arose, but his stamina was nearing its limit. Even the hand axe that had felt like an extension of his hand now felt quite heavy.
Experience aside, stamina is stamina.
He couldn’t risk danger with a body that wasn’t yet conditioned.
“Wait.”
Gangrim stopped the patients before descending to the first floor stairs.
Listening closely, he could hear zombie groans coming from below. Shining the Goblin Lantern, he saw countless zombies standing in front of the first floor door.
They were pounding and scratching at the door, desperately trying to get out.
‘At least twenty… this is a bit tricky.’
Using the Goblin Lantern to deal with zombies only works when their density is low.
But if zombies crowd in densely due to a small disturbance, even darkness couldn’t protect Gangrim.
“Looks like they followed people trying to escape.”
“Probably. Zombies are the most likely thing you’ll encounter on an escape route.”
Gangrim glanced at Han Min-ah.
He wasn’t surprised as it was a situation he had roughly anticipated. No, rather, it was fortunate.
If this number of zombies weren’t trapped but in the lobby, it would have been more difficult to deal with them.
‘Should I use the height difference to lure them up and then block and attack? Or look for a route to jump down from the second floor?’
Gangrim pondered various options but couldn’t choose any of them.
Because of the patients.
Most were elderly, so they were busy just taking care of themselves. It was fortunate enough that they followed trustingly without complaint.
‘It’s been easy so far, but the real difficulty starts here.’
Gangrim spotted stairs leading down next to the first floor emergency stairs.
They led to the basement.
“Where do these stairs lead?”
“Um… probably to the morgue and funeral hall area.”
Han Min-ah shuddered, perhaps imagining the scene there.
Most likely, the inside of the morgue would be chaotic. All the frozen corpses would have become zombies.
Even if all the zombies were trapped in freezers, it was a scene he didn’t want to imagine.
But Gangrim recalled one thing.
“That corridor leads to the underground parking lot, right?”
Funeral halls are usually connected to underground parking lots because many outsiders visit. Han Min-ah nodded vigorously, seemingly having reached the same thought.
Gangrim decided to choose the path to the underground parking lot instead of breaking through the first floor lobby.
“But… we’ll have to get past those zombies.”
“No problem.”