Slash.
The blade carved through the air with cold precision.
A young man—no older than Bittu—stood amidst the twitching corpses of three zombies, his sword dripping with blackened blood. One scratch from these monsters was all it took to turn a living man into one of the ravenous dead. Yet, not a flicker of fear crossed his face. No panic. No hesitation.
His eyes, sharp and distant, barely registered the fight. As if his mind were already elsewhere.
Five moves. That was all it took.
The last zombie collapsed with a wet thud. Without sparing them a glance, he turned and stepped into the broken house behind him—his sanctuary, such as it was.
The building stood like a corpse left to rot in the sun—skeletal, hollow, and barely holding itself together. Windows gaped like empty eye sockets. The walls leaned inward, splintered wood clinging to crumbling plaster. Once a home, now nothing more than a fortress of ruin in a world that had forgotten peace.
Outside, the bodies of failed invaders lay scattered—zombies frozen in grotesque poses, limbs twisted in final spasms. Their glassy eyes stared at a sky that offered no salvation. The silence was eerie, almost mocking. So much death, and yet not a sound—only the wind whispering through the cracks, like ghosts refusing to leave.
This was his base.
He didn't care about the decay. He climbed the stairs, each step creaking under his weight, ascending to a floor slightly less ruined than the one below. Here, broken furniture still held shape—chairs with missing legs, a table scorched by fire, a sofa cracked but usable.
He entered a room, dropped onto the sofa, and pulled an apple from the side table. Took a bite.
Juice burst on his tongue. He chewed slowly, staring at nothing.
"... How am I supposed to do this?" His voice was low—tired, edged with irritation. Helplessness flickered in his eyes.
In another time, someone talking to thin air would be called mad. Even now, in this broken world, it was strange. People didn't talk when no one was listening. Not unless they were losing their minds.
But he wasn't insane.
He was staring at a translucent screen only he could see—a quest log, floating in his vision like a ghost.
This was the fourth quest the system had given him. The first one with choices.
And it had promised everything.
[Quest: A Choice?!]
[Choice 1: Help the forsaken individual]
[Reward: A dead, but loyal bodyguard. (Unknown)]
[Choice 2: Kill the forsaken individual]
[Reward:]
[3 × SSS+ Rank Skills]
[2 × Epic-Grade Treasure Orbs]
[5 Undistributed Stat Points]
[1 Beast Egg]
[Difficulty: Hard]
[Penalty: None ]
When he first saw it, his heart had raced.
No penalty. Choices. Rewards like something out of a cultivation novel.
"... This is it," he'd whispered, grinning. "This is how I become invincible."
He didn't hesitate.
Choice One? A dead bodyguard? Vague, useless. Why would anyone pick that?
Choice Two? Power. Wealth. Potential. A future where no one could touch him.
"Which idiot would pick the first option," he muttered, shaking his head, "when the second gives me enough power to buy a thousand bodyguards?"
He stood, energized, and set out.
This time a kilometer radius. Half an hour of searching.
Nothing.
No signs. No footprints. No screams. No breath. Just silence and ruin.
He returned, frustrated, and bit into the apple again.
"... Maybe I wasn't careful enough. Maybe I missed something."
So he searched again. Slower. Methodical. Eyes scanning every shadow, every doorway, every pile of rubble.
Still nothing.
No one.
His shoulders sagged. His fingers tightened around the apple core.
All that hope—shattered. The fantasy of becoming unstoppable, of rising above the apocalypse like a protagonist in one of the novels he used to read—crumbled under the weight of reality.
He hadn't even found the target.
He'd come down here himself to vent his anger. Normally, he wouldn't bother. He had people for that.
He'd saved them—doctors, pharmacists, farmers, carpenters, cooks—plucked them from the jaws of death and given them purpose. Not out of kindness, not entirely. He wasn't a saint. But he wasn't a monster either. He gave them shelter, protection, food… in exchange for labor. A fair trade in a world with no rules.
They called him a savior. He didn't care what they called him. He just wanted to survive. To thrive.
And now, this.
He tossed the apple core aside. Stood.
This time, he'd expand the search radius. Maybe the target wasn't close. Maybe the system was different now.
But before he could take a step—
A flash.
His vision filled with glowing red text.
[Quest Failed!!!]
[Proceeding with penalty...]
[Penalty not found. Generating new quest...]
A pause. Then—
[Quest: Carnage]
[Kill 1000 zombies. (0/1000)]
[Reward:]
[2 × Normal-Grade Treasure Orb]
[1 × Red-Grade Treasure Orb]
[1 × Skill Book ]
[Penalty: -1 to all stats (Permanent) ]
He exhaled.
A long, slow breath.
Then, a dry, humorless laugh escaped him.
"... From god-tier rewards to this?"
He looked down at his hands—hands that had killed without flinching, that had dreamed of power beyond imagining.
Now, all he had was a mountain of corpses to climb.
And a system that had just reminded him:
Even chosen ones bleed.
...
SPLASH
An orb of raw, pulsing energy erupted from the corpse of the mutated zombie dog—its body twitching one final time before sinking into the river's dark embrace. The orb shot forward like a comet forged from decay, striking Bittu square in the chest just as the river yanked him under.
A warmth bloomed inside him—strange, invasive, yet oddly comforting. It spread through his limbs like liquid fire, tingling beneath his skin, rewriting something deep in his marrow. It wasn't human. It wasn't natural. But it was power.
Before he could process it, the world flipped.
Sky. Water. Sky. Gone.
SPLASH
He was falling upward into darkness.
The river swallowed him whole. Cold water rushed into his lungs, his ears, his soul. His body tumbled, battered by the current, wounds screaming, muscles locked in agony. But the pain wasn't just from the two deep gashes across his chest—no, this was different.
This pain came from within.
His bones ached with a deep, unnatural throb. His skin crawled, as if something beneath it was shifting. His left shoulder burned, then went numb—rotting. Flesh peeling. Tissue dying. He could feel it. The change.
He was turning into something else.
Something wrong.
Not just injured. Not just dying.
Transforming.
And he knew—instinctively—what he was becoming.
A zombie.
The word alone sent a storm of hatred crashing through his mind.
Zombies.
The creatures that had torn apart the city he'd walked toward with hope in his heart.
The city where he thought he might finally find answers.
Who am I?
Where did I come from?
Do I have a family? A name that isn't just "Bittu"—a name given by some unknown screen in a forest where he woke up, naked and empty, with nothing but silence in his head?
That city—his only chance—was gone. Reduced to ash and blood. Streets littered with corpses. Buildings collapsed. Records burned. History erased.
And the things that did it?
Zombies.