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Chapter 13: Performance Pressure (3)
[Team Formation Complete.]
â Flash!
As the announcement ended, a pure white light spread across the ground, connecting people.
Exactly four people in five teams.
The light extending from beneath my feet split into three paths, linking me to Jieun, Jaehyuk, and a man wearing a hat.
"Yes!!!"
"Could you... move aside, please?"
I instinctively backed away to avoid the man in the hat, who had rushed forward, eager to be on my team.
Judging by how the light followed my movements, it seemed unlikely anyone would get confused about team arrangements during the mission.
"This system is really intuitive."
"Yeah, I was wondering how weâd identify our teammates."
At the center of the beam connecting the four of us, the number â1â was engraved.
So, we were Team 1.
Looking around, I noticed five light beams in total, each linking four people.
"There are five teams in total."
"The problem is, whatâs our objective? And what exactly counts as performanceâ¦?"
I scanned the area but saw nothing out of the ordinaryâjust twenty humans flailing about with white lines at their feet, like prey caught in a spider's web.
"Ack! Weâre doomed!"
"Miss, whatâs all this âdoomâ talk? We havenât even started yet!"
"Young lady, youâve got a sharp sword in hand, so donât worry! Just let us know if thereâs anything you need!"
Beneath the feet of Lee Yeji from the accounting team, who was clutching her head and moaning about being doomed, the number â2â glimmered.
Beside her stood a security guard, a cleaning lady, and a man nervously scratching his head.
"Isnât there any way to switch teams?"
A bespectacled man with the number â4â at his feet pointed urgently at a child nestled in her fatherâs arms, crying.
"This is unfair! Kids shouldnât count as part of the headcount!"
"Waaahhh!"
"Stop shouting! Canât you see youâre scaring the kid?!"
"But weâre all going to die! Weâre only three people, so shouldnât our scores be adjusted? Hello?!"
He shouted at the system, but it remained indifferent.
To this system, it seemed, a young child not yet in elementary school and a fully grown adult held equal value.
If we couldnât meet our performance targets, we were all equally subject to deletion.
[Progress towards team objectives will be updated in real time.]
[A total of 500 points are available. You will earn 5 points for each enemy defeated.]
[Please refer to âPerformance Status.â]
Whether people were shouting or not, the system calmly projected a translucent screen into the air.
ⶠRound 1 Performance Status
Team 1: 0 / 100 points
Team 2: 0 / 100 points
Team 3: 0 / 100 points
Team 4: 0 / 100 points
Team 5: 0 / 100 points
"So weâre Team 5?"
"Is this... a report card?"
"It feels like school rankings, and I donât like it."
A group of female students in plaid school skirts and gray vests murmured among themselves.
Now that I thought about it, the rankings screen did resemble those schoolwide leaderboards we used to see, or maybe the performance dashboards often used in sales departments.
"Yujin, Iâm so scaredâ¦"
"Itâs fine. Just do what we practiced yesterday."
"But stillâ¦"
The schoolgirls kept whispering to each other while glancing nervously at the bloodstained man in their team.
In their hands were a mop and a few small blades.
"We should get ready too."
"Yes, sir!"
Jieun and Jaehyuk nodded, spreading their hands as if rehearsing the summoning technique theyâd practiced the day before.
"Summon."
[Summoning âBlade Tipped Sword.â]
On their palms, sleek, sharp swords gradually materialized.
Rounded hilts, blades gleaming with an icy brilliance.
The translucent handles slowly gained weight as they gripped them.
Just as our preparations wrapped upâ
â Creak!
An instant of silence, an eerie sensation of something amiss, and an unpleasant feeling of being pierced through.
The sky opened its eyes once more.
[By the administratorâs authority, âThe Eyeâ has been opened.]
[Eliminate as many enemies as possible within the time limit!]
"Itâs the Eye!"
"Get ready. Stay focused, alright?"
ã54:59ã
High above Seoul Station, the Eye appeared like a signal flare, marking the start of the countdown.
"Mr. Eunho! Where are the enemies supposed to be?"
"Good question! I donât see anyone but us hereâ¦"
"Surely, weâre not supposed to fight each other?"
Jieunâs hands trembled as she gripped her Blade Tipped Sword.
The other teams looked equally bewildered.
"Just in case, letâs stay away from the others⦠Wait."
â Step. Step.
While we were busy keeping an eye on the other teams, footsteps echoed from behind, coming up the stairs of Seoul Station.
And thenâ
"Assistant Manager Yoon?!"
Jieun gasped in recognition as a woman climbed the stairs.
She was an assistant manager Jieun had been friendly with, from the overseas sales team, if memory served.
Always impeccably dressed in tailored pantsuits, sheâd seemed so cool, handling overseas clients in fluent Englishâ¦
"Youâre alive! Thaâahhh!"
The neatly pressed dress pants had turned into shorts.
"Assistant Manager...?"
And below her kneesânothing.
They were gone, as if theyâd been blown away along with her pants.
Yet sheâd somehow made it this far.
With every step, the shredded stumps of her knees left crimson stamps on the ground.
Bloody footprints... no, knee prints.
"Urghhh..."
As if that werenât horrifying enough, she started making monstrous, guttural noises that no human should make.
â Step. Step.
She began striding toward us.
"Jieun!"
"Noona!"
Jieun, seemingly dizzy, staggered back just as the others finally noticed Assistant Manager Yoon and began to scream.
"Kyaaah!"
"What the hell?! What is that?!"
Even Jieun, who had managed to keep her wits about her, struggled to withstand the sight of a close friend advancing in such a gruesome state.
Still, she steadied herself with great effort and said,
"I... I'm fine."
Dozens, no, hundreds of people began to climb the stairs in similarly grotesque forms.
And among them, Yoon wasnât the only familiar face.
"Team Leader Lee...?"
"Wait, Sirâdo you know him?"
Of course I do.
I reported to him as my team leader for two years until he told me I was laid off due to restructuring.
But now...
"What the hell, man! How are you alive?!"
The Lee I knew was an ordinary middle-aged man who took pride in the few strands of hair he had left, always combing them neatly even when his shirt was stained with soup or his tie was askew.
"Sir! Look at his head!"
It was goneâpart of it, at least.
A quarter of his skull, including the area around his left eye, had been smashed or ripped away.
Had he been hit by a car?
Or beaten with an iron rod?
Even as he limped toward us, something wet and viscous kept dripping from the gaping hole, evoking both pity and revulsion.
"He... he was just going to have some soondae soup..."
"..."
And yet, more and more figures kept climbing the stairsâbeings that had long since crossed the boundary between life and death.
People missing limbs.
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Others with their internal organs spilling out.
Some with bones grotesquely twisted out of shape.
But the worst part?
Despite their horrific injuries, they approached us as if possessed, as if something was driving them forward.
How else could I describe this?
"This is..."
The same word lingered on everyone's lips, hanging in the air like a curse.
"Zombies."
As everyone stood there, frozen in shock at the wave of zombies closing in, one man acted.
He didnât hesitate.
"That guy..."
The lone survivor of a packed Seoul Station.
â Thud!
He crushed the remaining leg of a one-legged zombie, then drove a broken soju bottle into the chest of a two-legged one.
His attacks were so fierce and unrelenting that even the mindless corpses seemed taken aback.
â Squelch!
"Urghhh..."
When another zombie charged straight into the bottle embedded in its chest, the man yanked out his now blood-soaked arm and tore its head off with his bare hands.
"What kind of strength is that...?"
Jaehyuk stood next to me, jaw agape.
But this wasnât just about strength.
'He doesnât hesitate.'
Even in this situation, most people would struggle to kill an animal.
And these still had human faces.
What kind of life had this man lived to be able to rip apart human-like bodies without a second thought?
"Stay vigilant. Itâs dangerous."
"Y-yes, sir."
This was no time to be distracted.
Even though dozens of zombies had already been taken down, the horde below the stairs only grew larger.
In fact, their numbers seemed to be increasing.
'Focus.'
In this hellish world, you have to become a predator like him.
If you donât want to be devoured, you have to devour first.
"Ms. Yoon! Please, donât come any closer!"
"Urghhh..."
â Slash!
In one swift motion, I sliced through Assistant Manager Yoonâs back.
Jieun, too hesitant to draw her blade, had left herself open.
I stepped in.
"Draw your weapon! If you donât want to end up like them!"
"Urghhh..."
A zombie flailed its arms wildly like it was splashing water, charging at me.
I ducked.
Aim for the thigh.
If you disable their legs, you stand a chance.
â Slash!
I cut through the thigh of the zombie coming from the left, then kicked the one on the right, sending it tumbling into the crowd behind it.
Yet they got back up, as if nothing had happened, and charged again.
"Are you kidding me?! How do you kill these things?!"
"There are too many of them!"
ã19:10ã
It had already been 30 minutes since we began fighting.
But...
ⶠRound 1 Performance Status
Team 1: 0 / 100p
Team 2: 0 / 100p
Team 3: 0 / 100p
Team 4: 0 / 100p
Team 5: 0 / 100p
"The score hasnât changed at all."
"No matter how much we hit them, the score doesnât go up!"
"Damn it! Isnât it because these zombie bastards wonât die?!"
What are we missing?
How do we kill them?
Could it be that killing zombies isnât the mission?
"Hah⦠could it be that the enemies the system mentioned⦠arenât the zombies?"
Jieun, panting heavily, asked, but I was just as clueless.
"There must be a rule."
Every mission so far has had hidden rules.
They just werenât obvious.
"But this time, I really donât know."
No matter how much I looked around, all I could see were zombies, every single one of them damaged beyond repair.
"Damagedâ¦"
"What?"
Spark.
"â¦!"
Among the moving zombies, something sparkled briefly.
No, to be precise, it was glimmering among the strands of hair.
"Jieun!"
"Yes?!"
"The body fragments of the corpses we passed on the way! Why donât they move?"
"Um, well⦠because their bodies arenât intactâ¦?"
When I asked urgently, Jieun answered in a flustered voice.
But the zombies werenât intact either.
"They can still move as long as they have legs, right? There were plenty of corpses with intact lower bodies!"
"What? Th-then⦠because they donât have headsâ¦?"
"Thatâs it!"
Only the zombies with heads attached were attacking us.
And the suspicious silver thread glimmering among the strands of hair...
It wasnât easy to spot because of how it constantly moved, butâ¦
"Petrification!"
If it was deliberately hiding among the strands of hairâ¦
â Swoosh!
I grabbed the shimmering silver thread near the neck of a male zombie.
And thenâ
"Eek! What is that?!"
Wriggle.
"I-isnât that a bug?!"
"This is the core!"
â Scrape!
After slamming it to the ground, I slashed it with my sword, producing the sound of metal grinding.
The bug, split in two, twitched momentarily beforeâ
"Itâs dead⦠wait!"
â Swoosh!
The two halves turned into two bugs and darted toward me at lightning speed.
âTheyâre fast, butâ¦â
"Acceleration!"
â Whoosh!
âIâm pretty fast too.â
Grabbing the two bugs flying straight toward my neck like arrows, I slammed them to the ground again.
I pinned one with my sword and crushed the other under my foot.
Their bodies were surprisingly tough, but after stomping several times with my full weight, I finally heard the sound of its insides bursting.
â Squish!
[You have defeated a 'Split Needle Beetle'!]
This was it.
The true form of the "zombies," controlling their hosts from within.
ⶠRound 1 Performance Status
Team 1: 3 / 100p
"Wha-whaaat?!"
"The score went up!"
For the first time, the score increased.
A corpse, now lifeless, lay sprawled, and a crushed bug twitched under my foot.
The look in everyoneâs eyes changed.
"Thatâs it!"
"The bugs! Catch the bugs!"
"Hurry!"
Ten minutes before the first performance tallyâthe first "restructuring" team was about to be determined.
Only now did Round 1 truly begin.
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