“Phew……”
Uju let out a sigh and sat back down in the driver’s seat.
Throwing out goblin corpses wasn’t that big a deal, but thinking about going back to finish unloading the rest of the luggage when he was already dead tired made a sigh escape him.
He had decided to do it tomorrow, but while clearing away the goblin corpses, he reconsidered. Goblins were roaming around, and he couldn’t be confident that the car outside would remain intact forever.
He might not have minded if it were only goblins, but hobgoblins and the like were roaming around too. With their size, who knew what problems might arise if they bumped into things.
“Phew. But nothing changes just by sitting here like this.”
Uju let out a short sigh and, out of habit, took out his phone. He figured the internet probably wouldn’t work, but he was about to check the time anyway.
“……?”
But the signal indicators on the screen were strange. Though nothing looked different from usual, it felt as though the internet would work at any moment.
And the feeling didn’t end as just a feeling. The internet had truly connected.
“Sssek.”
He immediately went to a famous portal site and checked the news section, but there was no mention of the current situation whatsoever.
“Which means…”
Was it really just an F~D rank Gate Break occurring here? Was this a situation happening in such a small area that even if a few people made a fuss, they’d only be treated as common attention-seekers? Even if they attached videos or photos as evidence, would they all be dismissed as composites or AI-generated fakes in this day and age?
But there was one point that didn’t quite add up.
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Contract Mission — Have Sex
Have sex in any form within the time limit!
Time Remaining — 5 Days
Reward — A skill bestowed by 【The King of the 72nd Legion】
Failure Penalty — Your death
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It was precisely this so-called mission. And even the Divine Seat, the existence known as 【The King of the 72nd Legion】. These were concepts that did not exist in the “common sense” that Uju knew.
But was it really right to judge by Uju’s common sense? Wouldn’t it be better to think differently? Perhaps it wasn’t being treated as attention-seeking because it was too small an incident, but rather the whole world might be in too urgent a situation to be fussing over the news.
“……No.”
But when he checked the upload time of the latest news, it had only been five minutes. Then the assumption he had just made was also incorrect.
“……No, wait. It’s not? Then that means other places are safe?”
Then all the actions he had taken until now became useless. He could just run away!
But precisely because of that, a broad smile bloomed on Uju’s lips.
“To think it was such a simple matter…!”
Uju’s attempt to stockpile food had been a judgment based on his knowledge.
Since it was a “Gate Break,” he had naturally assumed that starting from here, the surrounding areas would all fall into a prolonged, apocalyptic, anarchic state, and since money and everything else would become useless, he had secured food in advance.
And now, he realized it had been a wrong judgment. In his knowledge, the area where the “First Gate Break” occurred had been plunged into a prolonged lawless state tantamount to the apocalypse. And while not A-rank, other gates had broken around the world as well, leaving them with no capacity to care about that region, so it had become a lawless zone.
And the Gate Break that occurred here now was merely estimated to be around F-rank. To the point where there were so many oddities that one might even question whether a real Gate Break had occurred.
Then, shouldn’t the response be different as well?
“Sex is… yeah, I can just buy a woman!”
What on earth had to happen for things to turn out this way? Even if he had purchased it from a black market dealer, this was a South Korea with such bad public order that an individual could buy firearms. If he looked around a bit, he could easily find a red-light district.
He didn’t even need to go far. The original owner of this body, Happy Tree Geo-i Uju, had written in his diary about shooting a gun while living as a gangster. If a mere gangster could openly shoot and kill members of an opposing organization, that said enough.
“Haha…!”
Then there was no reason to hesitate.
Uju broke into a broad smile, even letting out a loud laugh as he immediately started the car.
“I have plenty of money in my account… good.”
He had had enough money to play and eat for four years, and had only been doing so for about a month. It was an amount where, if he went to the provinces where housing was cheap rather than the metropolitan area, he could buy a decent house. Even in the extreme case that this area was devastated and he lost all his assets, he could fully make a comeback.
In other words, he had absolutely no hesitation about running away now.
‘Where would be the safest to go?’
After a brief moment of worry, he decided to just take the southern highway. Because as he had just thought, if he went north to the capital region, housing prices would be expensive.
‘Gas… too, is plenty!’
He wanted to floor it and drive over a hundred kilometers straight away, but the road was such a mess that it looked difficult.
It wasn’t that the road was destroyed, but rather human corpses were strewn about the narrow two-lane road, serving as speed bumps.
“……”
But there were too many corpses on the road to avoid them. He had no choice but to drive over them, and the sensation of crunching over corpses that hadn’t even finished rigor mortis transmitted through the car, leaving him in very poor spirits.
“Tch.”
Clicking his tongue in annoyance and slowly entering the main road, the situation improved somewhat.
Though there were still corpses on the road, most were not far from the sidewalk. They must have been caught and killed right away while trying to flee from the suddenly appearing goblins.
“There are goblin corpses…?”
Among the corpses were goblin corpses numbering few enough to count on one hand. That part was a bit puzzling.
Even if goblins were weaklings, it would clearly be arduous for ordinary people to resist those bearing weapons and pressing in with numbers. Moreover, people traveling the road in broad daylight like this would likely be unarmed… did they subdue them with their bare hands?
Of course, they might be able to somehow subdue and kill one. But the other surrounding goblins weren’t idiots, and the moment they saw one being killed, they would all swarm together……
“Save me! The car over there!! Save me!!”
Uju’s thoughts were cut off by the sudden shout. Despite the windows being closed, the loud voice reached him, and he glanced in that direction.
“……”
He saw a man holding his left arm, sweating profusely and running for his life. He looked to be in his thirties, and in his suit looked like a typical salaryman.
*Vrooooom*
Uju silently hit the gas.
“Sa-save… me! Save me!! You bastard!!! You have plenty of room to give me a ride!!”
“Quit talking out your ass, punk. Why should I?”
Behind him, a hobgoblin and four goblins were chasing him. Somehow he had put distance between them, and though there was a fair amount of space, it was a distance where if Uju stopped to pick him up, Uju would also be sufficiently endangered.
Judging by how he was holding his arm, it seemed broken, and Uju had no reason to risk his life to save such dead weight. Even if he had a reason, the car was currently full of luggage so there was nowhere for that dead weight to sit.
“Huaaaack!”
“Kyiiii!”
Speeding up like that and racing down the empty road, screams could be heard from here and there.
“What are they doing wandering around?”
Seeing them like that, words of pity automatically spilled out.
He didn’t know how many hours had passed since this situation began, but at least three hours had passed since Uju first saw a goblin. And considering the delivery driver had been dead when he headed to the mart… one could judge that at least four hours had passed since the incident began.
But they still hadn’t grasped the situation and were outside defenselessly screaming? Surely they hadn’t been running and screaming for four whole hours, which meant they had just come outside. Seeing such incomparably foolish acts of throwing away their lives made a sigh escape him.
“……Huh?”
Uju ignored such fools and continued driving down the road, when he suddenly encountered a strange sight.
*Screeeech!*
After urgently checking his surroundings, confirming no monsters were visible, and grabbing his handgun, he got out of the car.
‘What happened?’
He didn’t voice his question.
Being flustered by monsters running rampant and speeding, then getting into an accident because of that—he could understand that much. But even so… a situation where over thirty cars had all crashed together on a straight road was far too strange.
No matter how he looked at it, this “pile-up scene” before his eyes looked like anything but a natural occurrence—it could only be artificial. Then the monster that caused this catastrophe might still be nearby.
‘Damn it. What the hell happened?’
Inside the wrecked vehicles, the stench of blood wafted from the crushed corpses. The airbags had deployed normally, but because it was a chain collision, it seemed they had been hit from behind as well as from the front.
‘A mental-type monster? Or a mage type? Did something like a goblin shaman knock out the drivers?’
Uju slowly surveyed his surroundings and continued forward. To figure out how such a thing had occurred.
If it seemed completely hopeless, he was thinking of just turning around and taking a different highway. But at the very front of the accident, where the first collision had occurred, a situation that made curses spontaneously erupt was unfolding.
“……Ah, fuck.”
The car at the very front had crashed into a transparent wall and then been pushed by the car behind, becoming completely flattened. The cars coming behind must not have known the front car would suddenly stop when the road ahead was completely empty.
*Thud, thud*
The transparent wall couldn’t be seen, but it could be touched by hand, and when knocked, it made a sound. It was without a doubt some kind of barrier.
“Sh…it…… Is this mission or whatever saying it won’t let me escape?”
Such barriers did not occur during Gate Breaks. But truly, by an almost too convenient coincidence, it wasn’t difficult to recall why this thing had appeared.
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Main Quest.1 — Survive for 6 Days!
Now, monsters have been scattered across the entire world to measure your usefulness!
Survive for 6 days and prove your worth!
But… can you truly prove your worth merely by surviving?
《Condition Fulfilled》
Excellent! You have chosen to kill monsters to prove that usefulness.
Since you’ve already killed around ten or so, is there any need to hesitate? Kill and kill and kill, and kill again! The more the better! You will obtain something far more valuable!
But, if you are tired now, finding another method might be good as well. Can you truly know what that is?
《Additional Condition Fulfilled》
To think you even killed a superior monster; do you know no fatigue? You truly have the qualifications to be chosen.
Current Enemies Killed 31 / Superior 1
Reward — Bonus Point 1, New Skill
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This strange mission window, completely detached from Uju’s common sense.
“……What the hell.”
He had called up the mission window without thinking and noticed the changed parts.
“This is…… no. Fuck, let’s think about it later.”
Just maybe, this barrier-like thing was set up by a monster Uju didn’t know, and perhaps he could actually reach a safe place by going another way. Since it wasn’t confirmed that he couldn’t get out from here, he had to at least try.