EN CH3

Chapter 3: A Nameless World 02

The shout echoed across the battlefield, lingering in the air.

The captain spun around furiously. Beneath the gloomy sky and amidst the billowing smoke, someone really was standing behind him—or rather, a humanoid creature.

Black trench coat, tall boots, short hair, and a face so cold it could freeze someone to death. He would recognize those facial features even if they were burned to ashes.

—Yu Feichen, the mercenary they had hired to provide a “guaranteed dungeon clear” service.

Their squad wasn’t particularly wealthy. They had only gritted their teeth and shelled out the money for the most expensive Executor because they were bringing along a rookie this time and wanted him to feel how powerful and reliable his teammates were. Just looking at Yu Feichen made the captain’s wallet ache.

Who could have guessed that on their very first day in this zombie world, three months ago, their sky-high-priced mercenary would get buried alive by a zombie horde, not even leaving an intact corpse behind.

The financial loss was heartbreaking, and without their hired gun, their mission had stumbled along with endless difficulties. Just yesterday, their rookie, Xia Sen, had even been snatched away by a zombie while carrying an extremely vital virus sample, vanishing without a trace.

In short, they had lost both their men and their money—a complete and utter disaster.

As a result, the moment the captain saw Yu Feichen’s face right now, he wanted to curse to high heaven.

He took a deep breath. Just as he managed to calm his emotions a tiny bit, he noticed Yu Feichen’s pale skin, discolored irises, expressionless face, and completely intact, unrotted body. Those were all the hallmark traits of a high-tier zombie.

Meeting on the battlefield when your teammate had turned into a zombie—what was he even supposed to say?

How are you? Have you eaten? Are you dead? Do you still love humanity?

Before the captain could even gather his emotions, he watched the creature grab another person by the collar and toss him inside—it was a dirt-smudged teenage boy, slender, wearing a white lab coat stained with blood.

“Captain,” the boy said, looking up after being caught square in the chest by the bald captain. “God Yu is a good person. He saved me from the zombies.”

—This was their squad’s rookie, Xia Sen. He had high intelligence, and for his first time in a dungeon, his performance hadn’t been bad at all.

“Xia Sen,” the captain asked the most critical question first, “where’s the virus sample?”

Xia Sen pulled a miniature cryobox from his coat. “Praise the Main God, I didn’t lose it.”

The captain let out a long sigh of relief.

Yet no sooner had that breath left his lungs than his chest tightened up again.

He heard Yu Feichen’s voice. After barking a few cryptic commands to the Unified Command Center, the man said to the people inside the cabin, “Drive forward.”

The teammates exchanged glances and came to the conclusion that they really didn’t have much choice but to comply.

The fact that their exorbitantly priced “guaranteed clear” mercenary had died at the hands of zombies right at the start was already bizarre enough. For that same mercenary—whose corpse hadn’t even been left intact—to suddenly reappear on the battlefield in the form of a high-tier zombie was even more unfathomable.

Of course, the most unimaginable part of all was that this mercenary-turned-high-tier-zombie had suddenly shown up in their camp and started commanding the human military against the zombie horde.

The teammates’ muffled muttering drifted through the cabin.

“We’ve got a traitor in our ranks.”

“Yeah, but the zombies have a traitor in theirs, too.”

“Both traitors are the exact same person.”

“So whose side is he actually a traitor to?”

“Good grief.”

“Good grief—I’m blowing up—”

Artillery roared to life once more. This time, they fired canister shots; every shell exploded in mid-air, spraying nearly ten thousand miniature steel flechettes. Even if they didn’t hit a vital spot, the zombies suffered a brief moment of stiffness the instant they were struck.

The armored tank seized these openings, slowly yet steadily rolling over them.

“Keep going,” Yu Feichen said. “Optimal coordinates: North 177.642, West 69.685.”

However, the closer they got to Black Satan, the larger the surrounding zombies became. Hideous behemoths formed an impenetrable fortress. Canister shots were no longer effective, armor-piercing rounds had nowhere to land, and most importantly, their ammunition was nearly depleted.

—Through the thick gunpowder smoke where visibility was practically zero, countless colossal grayish-white shadows surged forward, charging straight toward them!

Several teammates instinctively screamed, as if they had already been run over by a truck.

At that exact moment!

A dull, heavy thud of colliding flesh suddenly rang out. Another massive figure shot out from behind them, slamming head-on into the charging behemoth’s skull. The two monsters tumbled to the ground, tearing and biting at each other in a frenzy.

A zombie monster had just saved them.

Immediately after, another pounced forward.

Then more and more.

The captain raised his binoculars and strained to look behind them. They had already pushed deep into the zombie tide, surrounded by enemies on all sides. Yet now, the horde behind them was surging forward like mad, fighting to the death against the other zombie behemoths.

Thick smoke billowed as the giant monsters mauled one another, while countless smaller zombies rushed forward in waves—as if the tides of a single ocean had split in two and were crashing against each other.

A civil war among the zombies?

And the side that had suddenly mutinied was almost certainly made up of those strange, motionless zombies from earlier!

The captain immediately remembered A1407, the suspected second zombie leader.

“It’s a trap!” he cursed. “Damn it, they’re infighting! The two leaders are about to duke it out! Where the hell is A1407? Didn’t I tell you guys to find it?!”

None of his teammates had spotted A1407. Too terrified to answer, they huddled together, shivering.

Inside the quiet tank, an indifferent voice suddenly spoke up.

“You looking for me?”

Captain: “…”

Teammates: “…”

The captain stared at Yu Feichen, slack-jawed. His feelings could only be described as sheer shock, and even the way he addressed the man involuntarily shifted: “Y-You… sir… you…”

Yu Feichen didn’t say a word. He simply stared unblinking at the chaos ahead. Perhaps because he was concentrating too hard, a faint trace of madness surfaced within his mutated, purple-tinted irises.

It didn’t matter that he didn’t speak; once everyone accepted this reality, the way they looked at him changed drastically.

Connecting this to the exact timeframe when the scientists had first detected A1407’s tracks—right after Yu Feichen had been torn apart—everything made complete sense.

It turned out Zombie Leader A1407 was Yu Feichen, their squad’s hired mercenary, and he was on humanity’s side!

—Nobody had ever seen anything like this before.

The tide of the battle instantly took a turn for the better. A1407’s control over the horde far surpassed Black Satan’s. The defecting zombies vastly relieved the pressure on the tank, allowing it to push all the way through and close in directly on Black Satan itself.

Black Satan’s mountain-like physique made it look completely invulnerable, yet the creature was clearly growing anxious about the steadily approaching steel tank—tens of millions of zombie birds let out piercing screeches, diving downward to join the fray. Their sudden shift in focus finally gave the human air squadron room to breathe.

Bombers seized air supremacy. Because the target was massive enough, heavy bunker-busters and thermobaric bombs rained down methodically onto Black Satan. While they couldn’t kill it, they could certainly cripple its bones and sinews.

A low, rumbling roar echoed from the earth. The ground shook as that jagged, hideous spine slowly arched upward.

“We’ve reached the coordinates.”

As the tank came to a halt, the shadow cast by Black Satan grew larger and larger, like a towering mountain breaking through the soil.

—Covered in mangled flesh and blood, Black Satan had stood up.

The tank was right at its feet, no more than a hundred meters away. Looking straight up meant staring directly at its belly—if this thing even had a belly.

A sharp screech tore through the air. A black bird with a wingspan of several meters swooped past, snatching Yu Feichen by the shoulders and lifting him off the top of the tank.

Suspended high in mid-air, Yu Feichen looked as though he had suddenly sprouted a pair of black wings.

The weapon mount on the tank was empty, too. The captain abruptly looked up and saw Yu Feichen effortlessly aiming the heavy mortar—the very one he himself hadn’t been able to lift earlier—at Black Satan. He didn’t even seem to need a sight.

What kind of monster was this guy?

Turning into a zombie at some critical juncture, controlling the direction of his own mutation to evolve into a zombie leader, locating Black Satan’s central nervous system in the process, and then returning to the human camp at the final moment to orchestrate the counterattack and wield human weaponry—

The captain felt his experience in zombie dungeons was far too shallow, because he couldn’t fathom how any single step of this had been pulled off.

Yet, gazing up at Yu Feichen in the sky and recalling his earlier expression, the captain had a distinct feeling that this creature was anything but benevolent.

Bang—

An unremarkable sound rang out amid a burst of smoke and fire. A streak of light sliced through the gloomy sky, disappearing in an instant into a specific spot on Black Satan’s exposed abdomen.

That colossal silhouette stiffened violently, as if time itself had frozen.

Yu Feichen made a hand gesture in the air.

The captain’s pupils shrank to pinpricks!

“Reverse! Full reverse!”

Pale-faced, the teammate at the controls yanked the levers backward with all his might!

Over the rugged terrain, the heavy tank lurched and hurtled backward at the fastest speed it had ever achieved in its life!

A massive shadow came crashing down overhead. The tank sped right along the edge of the darkness, as if racing ahead of the falling gloom, until—the shadow overtook it.

What slammed into the tank first, however, wasn’t Black Satan’s main body, but a chunk of flesh the size of a human head.

The captain bellowed, “Close the hatch—!”

The hatch slammed shut, yet violent impacts pounded against the hull incessantly, as if they were being pelted by an avalanche of boulders. The steel plates groaned under the strain, and after every metallic screech, the entire cabin was filled with the sound of frantic heartbeats.

When everything finally came to a stop, the captain was the first to climb out of the hatch. Before his eyes lay a field scattered with hideous, shattered chunks of limbs. Black Satan hadn’t fallen over in one piece; it had completely disintegrated.

Looking around, the gunpowder smoke was no longer billowing, and fewer and fewer zombies were still putting up a fight.

As if someone had pressed a pause button, frenzied tearing slowed to sluggish chewing, and rapid lunges turned into lethargic shambling. Finally, every single zombie came to a halt.

Then, they gradually began converging toward the center.

On the dead-silent battlefield, a quiet migration seemed to be underway. They drew closer and closer together, eventually gathering into a somewhat irregular square formation—every lifeless face turned toward the human base, and even the zombie birds and insects dropped down from the sky to join them.

—Yu Feichen dropped back down into the tank cabin.

The teammates’ muttering filled the cramped space: “Okay, so now A1407 joined forces with humanity, used the human army, and defeated Black Satan.”

“Okay, a new Zombie King has been born.”

“Okay, what happens next?”

“Not okay—now it’s time for A1407 to turn his back on us and bite humanity.”

“You guys really are something else.” —This time, the voice came from the communicator.

Yu Feichen couldn’t help glancing over at them.

He had been taking “guaranteed clear” jobs for a very long time and had met all sorts of clients and teams, yet a squad so dedicated to parroting each other and performing comedy routines was genuinely rare. He had no idea which world they hailed from.

Of course, that remark coming from the Unified Command Center’s channel wasn’t exactly normal either. He counted the people inside the cabin; compared to their numbers before entering the dungeon, they were short one person. It looked like the captain had stationed a teammate inside the Command Center as well.

Well, while this squad’s usefulness was limited, they did have a few redeeming qualities after all.

After a mere hour and a half, the gathering of the zombie horde reached its conclusion. They stood densely packed across the plain without putting up the slightest resistance, looking just like a pot of dumplings ready to be boiled.

Yu Feichen spoke into the communicator to the Unified Command Center—

“Bomb them.”

His tone was so calm and natural, it sounded just like saying, “Time to eat.”

And just like that, humanity won.

Carpet bombing was a simple affair—so simple that some people had already lost the desire to watch.

“Yu Feichen, Brother Yu,” the captain’s heavy voice sounded in the cabin.

Yu Feichen looked at him, signaling that he was listening.

“Are you willing to give a sincere explanation for everything that happened today?” the captain asked.

“The terms of the commission are fulfilled,” Yu Feichen replied, his tone genuinely sincere as well. “Remember to pay the balance.”

“Are they really fulfilled?” the captain asked mournfully.

Yu Feichen thought back.

This squad’s mission was: Win the defense battle, eliminate all zombies, and save the human base.

Their Commission Requirement #1 for him: All members survive.

Commission Requirement #2: Mission complete.

Additional Requirement #1: Preferably a brute-force clear (to let the rookie experience how powerful and trustworthy his teammates are, leaving him awestruck and deeply admiring them).

Recalling the touched expression on Xia Sen’s face when he rescued him from the zombies, Yu Feichen’s tone grew even more certain.

“Fulfilled.”

After cleaning up the battlefield and holding a brief celebration, the vast majority of the base’s resources were poured into researching the zombie virus vaccine. The virus sample Xia Sen brought back played a crucial role, and everything went smoothly.

On his way to look for Yu Feichen, the captain ran into Xia Sen. Xia Sen asked, “Captain, have you seen Brother Yu?”

“You’re looking for him too?”

Xia Sen pursed his lips and smiled.

“You’re acting weird,” the captain said, eyeing Xia Sen sideways.

Xia Sen smiled lightly. “I’m just very curious about him. A thirst for knowledge is one of the virtues my homeland believes in.”

“That’s a decent virtue, alright, pity it easily gets people killed,” the captain muttered.

They found him at the watchtower in the northeast corner of the base. There was a protruding platform on the eighth floor of the tower, and Yu Feichen was sitting on the wide concrete railing along the side, his back against the wall and one leg casually bent. In his right hand, he held a transparent glass bottle that looked like half-finished high-proof liquor blended by the base’s cafeteria—commonly known as bootleg booze.

He took a sip. It was hard to tell what the act of drinking meant to him; beneath the blood-splattered sunset sky, he looked like a melancholic silhouette at first glance, yet up close, his face was completely devoid of expression. Even if you put a robot in his place, it couldn’t possibly look more rigid.

For a moment, the captain didn’t strike up a conversation, instead walking up to the railing and gazing out into the distance. This was practically the highest point of the base. Gray concrete buildings crowded together like an ant colony, hemmed in by an invisible boundary; beyond that stretched an endless black plain.

A flock of crows circled over the wilderness. Beneath the enormous setting sun, this city looked even smaller than a single crow. And for the surviving residents, trying to restore their former lives after such a catastrophe seemed even harder than winning the defense battle itself.

“Captain?” Xia Sen asked softly.

“Just feeling sentimental,” the bald captain sighed.

“Suffering will pass eventually,” Xia Sen said, looking at the crows with his hands clasped over his chest. “Because God loves everyone.”

“You sure know a lot,” the captain remarked.

“Even though I still know very little about the ‘Paradise,’ my homeland is Landonwarren. We have worshiped the Main God for generations.”

Yu Feichen turned his head to look at them.

“Oh, you’re awake,” the captain said.

Over the past few days, the captain had come to terms with everything: so what if the method of clearing the dungeon was unexpected? It was still better than a total party wipe. As for the squad’s image in the rookie’s heart—well, it was bound to get shattered sooner or later anyway.

He was completely at peace now.

“I came to ask you something, Brother Yu,” the captain said. “The zombies are wiped out, and today the vaccine was officially declared effective. Why haven’t we been sent back yet? Is there some hidden mechanic we missed?”

Yu Feichen stared at him.

It wasn’t the first time the captain had seen that look in his eyes. His left eye read, “How have you still not figured it out?” while his right eye read, “How are you even still alive?”

Captain: “…”

Yu Feichen shifted his gaze away from the captain. Clients frequently asked him questions so simple they bordered on bizarre. For those kinds of questions, if the commission required “tutoring,” he would occasionally offer a brief explanation—but this job was strictly a “guaranteed clear” service.

Ever since the complaints started piling up more and more frequently, he had stopped taking tutoring orders altogether.

The burning sensation of the alcohol in his throat gradually faded. 78 percent proof—not bad.

He drew the long dagger he carried on him and poured half the bottle of liquor over it, drenching the blade from hilt to tip.

Then, right before the wide-eyed stares of the captain and Xia Sen—

Without a flicker of expression on his face, he stabbed himself.

In mid-air, a soft chime suddenly rang out.

Ding.

A gentle female voice followed.

“791154 has been completed.”

“Return passage opening: 10, 9, 8, 7, 6…”

“Welcome back to the Paradise.”