January 14
The artificial hot spring outside the living room gave off thick curls of steam, turning the whole space hazy, almost like some heavenly realm.
The bad news was that all that moisture had left the wallpaper and the ceiling panels damp. Kyoko had covered those places with plastic sheeting, but the steam still found its way in through every little gap. The white walls had been soaked through, taking on a faint bluish tint.
"Ah… mm…"
Inside the master bedroom, Kyoko woke from her nap, stretched lazily, and yawned. The room was warm enough that she was dressed very lightly—just thermal underwear with an outer layer thrown on top. Her figure showed clearly through the thin fabric, graceful and lively like morning dew under the first red light of dawn.
She casually flipped through the infected bestiary she had unlocked so far and found some new entries—probably creatures that had been killed by the MON-50 antipersonnel directional mine the night before.
1. Howler — A mutant form of the standard infected. Produces abnormal cries that attract nearby infected into swarms.
2. Starver — Extremely aggressive. Will devour anything edible. Possesses an abnormally long tongue and a keen sense of smell.
3. Leaper — As the name suggests, it has exceptional climbing and jumping ability.
4. Rotter — Frail and weak, but highly infectious. Gives off a powerful stench of decay. When it dies, the pustules on its body rupture and heavily contaminate the surrounding area.
5. Nightghoul — Fears daylight intensely. Night is its true domain. Its extraordinary night vision and running ability make it an outright demon after dark.
6. Entangler — For some reason, grows tentacles from its back. These are divided into A and B types. Type A is fleshy and used for binding. Type B is hardened and hornlike, used for piercing attacks.
7. Berserker — Pursues prey with reckless ferocity until it is completely destroyed. Extremely dangerous.
8. Vassal — A secondary infected of the retainer class under a Monarch-level infected. Fairly intelligent, capable of acting as a node through which a Monarch controls lesser infected, and can use weapons it was familiar with in life. Rarely appears alone.
"This is starting to sound like some bizarre video game setting. The mutation paths for these infected are way too ridiculous, aren't they?"
Setting aside the ones with powers bordering on the superhuman, that Vassal had to be the one she'd killed last night. So there really was a higher-level controller above it. That explained what she had seen among the strange infected below the day before. But in the daylight, there had been no sign of them. Maybe their Monarch had taken them away and hidden them somewhere.
"No good. I need to re-equip, fast. At the very least, I need a fully automatic pistol."
After browsing the system shop for a while, Kyoko finally settled on a Glock 18C.
Glock 18, 9mm machine pistol: Produced by Glock Ges.m.b.H. of Austria, the Glock 18 is a modified version of the Glock 17 with automatic fire capability. It uses 9×19mm ammunition and supports both semi-automatic and full-auto firing, toggled via the selector at the rear of the slide.
The base weapon cost 1,100 points, complete with its original 17-round magazine.
A high-capacity drum magazine cost 200 points.
A premium modification package cost another 200 points, including a laser, a 50-round drum, a PK reflex sight, and a grip sleeve.
As for 9×19mm Parabellum, one box of thirty rounds cost 20 points. Kyoko bought ten boxes in one go.
That brought her total spending to 1,800 points, leaving her with 6,707.
In full-auto mode, the Glock 18C had a theoretical rate of fire of 1,300 rounds per minute, enough to empty a 17-round magazine in just two seconds.
Just imagining it made her feel excited.
That excitement lasted right up until the training session completely humbled her.
She went up to the rooftop and arranged various pieces of furniture within twenty meters, with beer bottles placed farther out as distant targets. She wanted to test the pistol's power and handling.
Kyoko didn't look like a novice who had barely handled a gun before. She flicked the safety, switched the selector to full-auto, and racked the slide to chamber a round. The sound of the mechanism snapping into place, paired with the live round settling into the chamber, sent a thrill straight through her.
Though she had never handled a true automatic firearm in either her past or present life, she at least knew the theory. At a minimum, she wasn't stupid enough to point the muzzle at someone just because the safety was on. For all her recklessness, she still had a healthy respect for life.
Having previously used that old Colt M1971 revolver, she already had some sense of how a handgun behaved in the hand. One careless move and the recoil could strain her wrists. A full-auto pistol demanded even more caution.
She took a two-handed grip, angled the muzzle slightly downward, leaned her torso forward, and kept both elbows bent in a blunt angle. Her support hand wrapped beneath the firing hand around the frame, almost like a boxer's stance. Before firing, she inhaled deeply and held her breath to reduce sway.
In her mind she repeated the same instruction over and over:
Steady the sights.
It helped settle her nerves and suppress the instinctive flinch.
Once the rear sight, front sight, and target lined up in a straight horizontal line, she centered the front post on the middle of the target, leaving just a little of the upper target visible above it.
Her plan was simple. She would use the 50-round drum for a rapid sweep against targets within twenty meters, then the standard 17-round magazine for controlled shots at the beer bottles beyond that distance.
She squeezed the trigger.
The muzzle belched fire in a continuous line, and the furniture ahead of her was riddled into splinters. Wood chips exploded everywhere. Kyoko had to exert all her strength just to keep the weapon from climbing violently upward. The recoil on this thing was no joke. In a blink, the fifty rounds were gone.
The damage done by bullets, of course, wasn't at all like what people imagined from television. Most projectiles didn't just leave neat little holes—they tore through flesh, shredded tissue, and produced cavitation after penetrating the body.
The 9×19mm Parabellum rounds Kyoko was using were standard FMJ ammunition—full metal jacket. These prioritized controllable penetration and lower collateral damage. Compared to other ammunition types, the wounds they produced were relatively smaller.
At close range, they could over-penetrate a human body, punching through and out the other side, but the actual wound channel was smaller and less likely to leave flesh grotesquely torn apart. At longer range, once the bullet lost enough energy, it would lodge in the target instead, causing localized tissue death, though with limited spread.
Even so, there were nastier rounds in the 9×19 family. There were expanding rounds designed to blossom into a cross shape on impact, dumping all their energy within twenty centimeters and producing wounds "the size of a bowl." If those hit a person, the resulting damage would be horrifying.
Still, what she had now was good enough.
The G18C was a sidearm. What Kyoko really wanted was the M4A1 as her main weapon. And if she ran into armored infected again, she still had grenades as an option. Failing that, the old methods still worked—pick terrain that was easy to defend and hard to assault, then burn the enemy out. And if that still wasn't enough, then anti-tank weapons would have to come into play.
"Later on, if I ever meet survivors with the right technical knowledge," she muttered, "I could even support home-built rockets."
For now, though, it was time to test her long-range accuracy.
The seventeen-round magazine was loaded in. Now she would see how well she could hit stationary targets beyond twenty meters.
Bang. Bang-bang-bang—
She dumped all seventeen rounds in about five seconds.
The results were absolutely miserable.
She had failed to coordinate sight picture and trigger control properly. Most of the shots passed cleanly around the targets, nowhere near where she intended. Only a few lucky hits spared her total humiliation.
Her hit rate within twenty meters had been a little over fifty percent, which honestly wasn't too bad for a beginner. But beyond twenty meters? It was a disaster. With only iron sights and poor control, she might as well have been blind-firing.
"Guess for anything past twenty meters, I'll stick to semi-auto and take my time. Sigh…"
She bent down to collect the spent brass, quietly stunned by her own lack of skill, and then headed back inside. Maybe Huaxiu had woken up and was waiting for her.
But when she returned—
"Still asleep… Huaxiu, Huaxiu… when are you finally going to wake up?"
Seeing that Huaxiu remained unconscious, Kyoko sat down heavily at the bedside, stroking her hair. In the end, she couldn't resist calling the system out again.
"Hey… Huaxiu really is going to be okay, right?"
"Kyoko, you are unbelievably annoying right now. You're turning into some nagging old grandmother. Are you trying to kill me? I already answered that. If I say she's fine, then she's fine."
"…Yeah. Got it."
Even after hearing the reassurance again, Kyoko still sighed.
In less than a single day, she had already grown sick of being alone.
Miss System was basically a ghost—no physical body, no real presence. The only time she could interact with the real world was by possessing Kyoko, and whenever that happened, Kyoko's own consciousness went offline. Communication between one girl and one system was surprisingly difficult.
Unable to bear staying indoors any longer, Kyoko grew restless and turned her thoughts back to the unfinished task.
That Security Perimeter mission had been hanging over her for ages, and it still wasn't complete.
Security Perimeter: Eliminate nearby sources of danger and establish a 100m x 100m safe zone. Eradicate all infected within the designated zone.
(Only permanent or resident infected count. Wanderers do not.)
Reward: 1,000 points, M4A1 rifle, 3 magazines with 30 rounds each, 260 standard rounds
She wanted that reward badly.
The entire building had already been cleared the night before. So where could danger still be hiding?
The answer was obvious.
The underground garage.
And the basement.
Looking down from above, she had spent ages staring at the community grounds—once a place for leisure and relaxation, now littered with the corpses she herself had thrown from the tower.
The system's recycling function, of course, did not take whole corpses. It only harvested specific infected components, just as Kyoko had already discovered when dissecting bodies before.
Dressed again in heavy winter clothes, Kyoko stepped outside.
Standing on the fifteenth-floor corridor, she stared at the blown-open elevator shaft, a black abyss yawning up toward her. She decided to send the drone down first and scout. The Monarch-class infected was probably somewhere below. After that, she could make a battle plan based on what she saw.
Life with a drone really was wonderful.
It let her avoid a tremendous amount of risk, and using it to drop explosives was, frankly, incredibly satisfying.
The four rotors spun up with a buzzing whine. Since it wasn't carrying weapons this time, it flew lightly and quickly, slipping through the tower and out toward the entrance of the underground parking garage.
The basement space was dim and claustrophobic. Emergency lights still glowed here and there, weak and flickering, like candles about to gutter out.
Above the garage level was the general basement area. Normally nobody went there. It was mostly used for tools, storage, and household clutter. Some residents even kept potatoes, cabbages, sweet potatoes, and other hardy produce there because of the cooler temperature.
The drainage system below appeared to have clogged. Through the drone camera, Kyoko could see filthy water pooling around the blocked drains.
Then, just as the drone reached the edge of its signal range, she saw something that made her blood run cold.
"Wh… what is that…?"
The drone's light caught something below, and the thing below looked back.
A pair of eyes—each one as large as a basketball—burned red in the darkness, locked onto her drone. Even through the screen, Kyoko felt a surge of pure dread, as though fear itself had taken shape.
She yanked the controls, sending the drone fleeing toward the exit. Whatever that thing was, it was absolutely the leader of the strange infected from the night before. And already, lesser infected had begun pursuing the drone.
"Come on, faster! Move!"
The drone was fast.
But something behind it was faster.
A lean infected shot out in pursuit, moving with explosive leaps that outstripped even professional athletes. It clung right to the drone's tail.
And then the basketball-eyed monster came after it too.
Behind them came a whole tide of ordinary infected.
The monster's size was grotesque, almost prehistoric—like some creature from a world with richer air and bigger beasts. As it ran, the vibrations resembled heavy industrial machinery pounding the earth. Even through the drone's lens, it looked about as large as a van.
"I'm supposed to shoot that with a pistol? You've got to be kidding me."
The exit was right there. Just a little farther and the drone would escape.
Kyoko's heart pounded in her chest.
At the last possible moment, the drone cleared the exit.
The infected could only hiss and roar helplessly after it.
The huge monster burst out from underground and let loose a thunderous howl. This time the noise drew infected out of the neighboring buildings as well.
"Did I just completely screw this up? With a roar like that, the infected are all going to gather around my building again. This is bad. I'm going to get surrounded."
All at once, Kyoko realized that provoking that giant thing had been a terrible idea.
At this rate, she was about to reenact the tower siege scenario from an old zombie movie.
The underground commotion felt ominous. The infected could easily push up through the stairwells she hadn't fully collapsed yet. She had planted M26 antipersonnel mines there, but those wouldn't bring down the stairs.
She still had one MON-50 left.
That would have to do.
She hurriedly prepared it—but before she could even carry it down to the seventh floor and deploy it, three deafening explosions erupted below. The entire building shook. Even up high, Kyoko felt the impact.
Instead of smashing straight through her barriers, the infected had squeezed through tiny gaps in the defenses. But waiting for them there was a brutal reception: a blast of steel balls from the mines. The first wave was annihilated.
The bad news was that the shockwave had also overturned the barricade furniture Kyoko had used to slow the infected advance.
Now the route upward was even clearer.
The force of the blasts nearly knocked her off balance. She had to grab the stair rail to keep from falling.
"Damn it! So they already breached the stairwell. Why is it always a hopeless situation?! Am I really this unlucky?!"
Cursing violently, Kyoko looked down from the twelfth floor and saw infected already running upward, trampling over the shredded remains of their own companions.
She stopped hesitating.
She tossed the prepared MON-50 down the stairwell from the twelfth floor. The instant she let go, she threw herself flat and slammed the detonator.
The mine dropped—
past the ninth floor—
and then detonated perfectly around the seventh.
A thunderous blast tore through the building.
This explosion was on an entirely different level from the M26s. The shockwave alone was incomparable.
The staircase shattered from the fifth floor down through the seventh. Two full flights collapsed, crashing onto the stairs below and sealing the route completely. The infected that had been charging upward so triumphantly were crushed flat into slabs of ruined flesh.
"We're safe," Kyoko muttered as she climbed back to her feet.
"Temporarily."
She stood by the twelfth-floor window and looked down.
The grounds below had become a sea of infected. Her entire building was now ringed by a zombie horde, and more were still arriving from farther away, adding themselves to the spectacle.
Even so, it still wasn't quite as bad as she'd feared.
Maybe too many residents had already fled. Maybe many of them hadn't been home when the outbreak struck. Maybe they had been lured away earlier by other disturbances. Whatever the reason, the mass below still hadn't reached the truly nightmarish scale she had imagined.
At a rough estimate, it was about the size of a concert crowd—something in the low thousands.
And from what she could see, they still didn't know how to form human ladders.
That let Kyoko breathe a little easier.
At least she wouldn't have to face that entire mass climbing up to her level.
Still…
Was she really supposed to just sit here and wait them out?
Wait for that Monarch bastard to lose interest and leave?
Or—
A sudden spear-like object slammed into the window right beside her.
If Kyoko hadn't reacted in time, it might have skewered her on the spot.
"These infected really are a pain. At this point, all I can do is hole up."
Against a horde on this scale, Kyoko had no real answer. Shooting them with a pistol would do next to nothing. And if enough of them got soaked in blood and whipped into a frenzy, they might eventually start climbing over one another.
Then she would be finished.
Since there seemed to be no immediate move from the infected, and that huge Monarch-level creature had actually stretched out in the landscaping below and gone to sleep like a dud, Kyoko finally gave up on action for the moment.
This was the first time she had ever seen an infected like that.
"Fine. Then I'll eat."
Below the tower, the grounds had become a blood sea. The corpses Kyoko had thrown down before were now being eaten by the living infected. The stench of rot hit her face even through the height.
Huaxiu was still asleep, and Kyoko didn't want to disturb her. Besides, she herself was filthy. If she went in like this, she'd only bring dirt and contamination near Huaxiu.
So she cleaned herself up first, then finally returned to Huaxiu's room.
She hung the last bag of saline for her, intending to follow it with a glucose infusion afterward.
Only after pulling the needle did Kyoko herself sit down to eat.
And "eat" was generous. It was just another pile of vacuum-packed snacks. Most of their food stores at the moment consisted of packaged snack foods. There was flour and rice too, but with Huaxiu still unconscious, Kyoko had no heart to cook.
Standing by the bedroom window with a half-finished preserved plum in hand, she looked down at the horde below. In the darkness, the infected were almost impossible to distinguish clearly. All she could really make out were the sounds—the endless snarling and howling rising up out of the black.
"Using a flashlight to look around would be way too risky. If I stir them up, I'm done for."
She rejected the idea immediately. If she triggered the horde into a frenzy, that would only make things worse. Even if they couldn't reach her, if they kept screaming below all night, neither she nor Huaxiu would get any rest—and Huaxiu was still recovering.
"Kyoko," the system suggested, "maybe you could try something else. Like in the movies. What if there really are other survivors out there? Maybe someone sees you and comes to help."
Kyoko snorted.
"System, do you honestly think there are still living people nearby? I've been awake for over a week now, and the only survivor I've found is Huaxiu. Not just people—I haven't even seen animals. There used to be occasional gunfire from farther north, closer to Fukushima City, but that's way too far away."
Relying on someone else to save her? She'd rather wait for the infected to wander off on their own.
But in the end, she still couldn't out-argue the system.
So she spent 10 points to buy reflective emergency cloth and arranged it on the rooftop into a giant SOS signal.
After checking the horde one more time, she decided nothing else was likely to happen tonight.
Some of the infected were already drifting away to other areas.
The tide was beginning to recede on its own…
Wasn't it?
Below, red eyes still glimmered in the darkness.
And the Monarch was still there, conserving its strength.
It was just the calm before the storm.
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 178)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 115)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League ( 126 )
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter110)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter116)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter82)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter144)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 65
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 77
From Junkman to Wasteland 66
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 46
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 118
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 65
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 111
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass 80
The Way the Umamusume Look at 68
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 112
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 65
Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 76
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 66
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 65
Uma Musume: The Dark Trainer 80
Uma Musume: A Calamity Born fr 74
I, a Reincarnation-Loop Player 48
The Violent Girl Group Is Beat 50
Uma Musume: The Horse Girl Who 47
Uma Musume: From Beginner 42
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