Finally arriving at the destination, East Colorado University.
Joel and Ellie continue searching for clues about Fireflies.
But when they arrive at the university lab, they discover that Fireflies have long since left, leaving only infected corpses.
However, Joel and his group do get some key clues here: Fireflies have moved to St. Mary's Hospital in West Salt Lake City.
But as Joel prepares to leave, they run into hunters who have come here to search for supplies.
During the fight, Joel falls from the roof and is impaled through the abdomen by a steel bar.
The severe injury leaves Joel extremely weak and covered in blood. Luckily, Ellie is reliable enough to take care of the remaining enemies by herself.
This stretch of the journey is incredibly difficult.
Especially because the game simulates Joel's injured vision, making players feel Joel's weakness.
Finally, as the two prepare to leave on horseback, Joel finally collapses from blood loss and loses consciousness.
A black screen follows, and when the image appears again, it is already winter.
The first thing that appears on the screen is a cute bunny.
But before the bunny can take a few steps, an arrow pierces it.
It turns out to be Ellie, who is hunting.
From her casual remarks, it seems Joel is still alive.
This relieves Gery.
Then Ellie spots a deer, but while chasing it, Ellie also encounters two passersby.
In their subsequent conversation, Ellie learns their names and their purpose. The middle-aged man is named David, and he claims he wants to trade for the deer Ellie has.
Ellie, without thinking, asks if they have any antibiotics.
David agrees to the trade and sends the young man next to him back for the medicine. Along the way, a group of infected suddenly appears.
After a fierce battle, David and Ellie take shelter inside to warm up. At this point, Ellie seems to let her guard down a little towards David.
But in the following conversation, David looks at Ellie and brings up something.
He mentions that earlier he sent a group out to search for food, but they were all killed by a madman who had a little girl with him.
At this moment, Ellie realizes the person before her is not friendly, but unexpectedly, he lets Ellie leave.
Ellie returns to their hiding spot. Joel is still lying on the ground, unconscious. Ellie got the antibiotics precisely to save him.
But soon, the enemies arrive.
Because of what Ellie did, David and his men understand something.
That is, Joel must be injured, otherwise Ellie wouldn't be looking for medicine.
And they let Ellie go so they could follow her tracks and find Joel's location.
Realizing this, Ellie immediately decides to lure the hunters away.
Although she defeats many enemies, Ellie is still outnumbered and is captured.
She wakes up in a cell and finds the hunters outside are butchering a living person.
Clearly, the hunters' food is human.
At this point, their leader, David, appears. He reveals his true nature.
This guy is a complete pervert and a pedophile!
Faced with David's disgusting intentions, Ellie naturally remains unfazed and even breaks one of David's fingers.
This enrages David, and he decides to turn Ellie into their food.
...
At the moment Ellie is in danger, Joel finally wakes up.
Seeing the awakened Joel, Gery is overjoyed.
The awakened Joel endures the pain of his wound and struggles to stand up. The first thing he does is call out Ellie's name, his concern evident.
After such a long time together, and after experiencing countless life-or-death situations, Joel deeply understands what Ellie means to him.
Still carrying his wounds, Joel painfully defeats David's men and successfully captures two of them.
The subsequent brutal interrogation methods do not make the player uncomfortable, but rather provide a sense of catharsis.
But this is followed by even more worry, worry about what Ellie is going through at this very moment.
However, Ellie, on the other hand, does not wait for Joel to save her, as in most game or movie plots.
Instead, Ellie uses her intelligence to escape and uses the blizzard to find a way out in the town.
This part of the story is told through two parallel narratives, with the player's perspective switching between Joel and Ellie.
In the restaurant, the game's only boss battle will take place.
The opponent is not a terrifying zombie, but another human.
Here, Ellie needs to hide her tracks and lead David in a chase, assassinating him from behind three times.
It is quite difficult, especially since Ellie cannot make any noise throughout the entire sequence, but there are broken glass shards on the ground in some places.
Gery, failing to get it right the first time, dies once here.
After successfully assassinating him three times, David is defeated, triggering a cutscene.
Faced with David's surprise attack from behind, which knocks her to the ground, Ellie grabs a nearby kitchen knife and furiously hacks at David's head.
A total of eleven times, fully demonstrating what the consequences of pedophilia are.
At this moment, Joel finally arrives. He hugs Ellie and gently comforts her. Ellie cries uncontrollably in Joel's arms.
From the Boston quarantine zone to the soon-to-be-reached St. Mary's Hospital in Salt Lake City, from summer to autumn to winter.
They have experienced countless hardships and life-or-death crises along the way.
At this moment, both Joel and Ellie understand how important the other is to them.
By this point, the game's story is nearing its end.
The emotions between Joel and Ellie, having gone through spring, summer, autumn, and winter scenes, have changed significantly.
From indifference at the beginning, to trust later, and now to this.
The other is an indispensable part of their lives.
The conversations between the two during their journey are also warmer and richer.
Joel tells Ellie that when everything is over, he will teach her to play the guitar.
Walking through sunlight and corridors filled with dust.
The scene before them stuns everyone who reaches this point.
In front, a giraffe is eating. And not just one, but a herd in the distance.
Ellie stands frozen. Born in the apocalypse, she has never seen such a beautiful animal.
Guided by Joel, Ellie gently walks forward and strokes the giraffe's neck.
Countless giraffes leisurely chew on green leaves, swish their tails, and move forward calmly, fully showcasing the delicacy and beauty of life.
The apocalypse is only relative to humans.
But for animals, the world seems to be even more beautiful.
Here, Joel looks at Ellie and tells her that they don't necessarily have to find Fireflies anymore.
They can go back, back to Tommy's town, where they will be accepted.
However, Ellie refuses, as they have already sacrificed so much.
Finally, the two successfully arrive at the Fireflies' base.
Facing Joel, Marlene, the Fireflies' queen who has returned to the base, seems a little incredulous.
She could never have imagined that Joel and Ellie could travel thousands of miles from the Boston quarantine zone to find the Fireflies' base.
However, the subsequent conversation reveals the cruel truth to the players.
According to Marlene, the Cordyceps fungus has mutated in Ellie's body.
This is why Ellie is immune to the virus, but this mutation has now reached Ellie's brain.
To understand the principle of immunity, researchers must remove the Cordyceps fungus spreading into Ellie's brain so they can work backward to develop a vaccine.
Such a study would obviously cost Ellie her life.
Joel asks Marlene to find someone else to research, but Marlene tells Joel it's impossible because Ellie is the only person found with immunity in twenty years.
Marlene then imprisons Joel.
At this moment, Joel makes a choice.
Joel has never been a noble person.
When the apocalypse broke out, he told Tommy to ignore people begging for help on the street.
Because in the car was his world, his daughter, Sarah.
After the apocalypse, to survive, he was a hunter and a smuggler.
And now, he has finally found a new world.
His world was destroyed twenty years ago; he will absolutely not allow his world to be destroyed again twenty years later.
Finding an opportunity to fight back, he interrogates for Ellie's whereabouts and single-handedly confronts all the armed forces in the Fireflies' base.
At this moment, Joel is like a wild lone wolf.
Throughout most of "The Last of Us," stealth is required to reach objectives.
But at this moment, it's unclear if it's Gery's illusion, but he feels the pace of the entire game has changed.
No route planning, no stealth assassinations.
At this moment, both the player and Joel have only one thought.
That is to find Ellie as quickly as possible.
Because every second delayed, Ellie faces the danger of death.
To hell with saving the world, he only wants to save Ellie, the little girl he has spent so much time with.
Finally, at the last moment, Joel breaks through all the Fireflies' defenses and reaches the operating room to rescue Ellie.
In the parking lot, Joel kills Marlene and leaves the Fireflies with a comatose Ellie.
In the car, facing an awakened Ellie, Joel tells a lie.
He tells her that there were actually many other immune people in the Fireflies besides her.
But they were unable to help, and now the Fireflies have given up.
Next, they plan to return to Tommy's town and start a new life.
Finally, on the road nearing the town, Ellie confides in Joel.
"In Boston, when I was bitten... I wasn't alone. My best friend was there too. She was bitten too."
"We didn't know what to do, so... she said, 'We'll wait and see. Maybe we can both turn into cannibals, it has a poetic ring to it.'"
"I was still waiting for my turn. Her name was Riley. She was the first sacrifice I saw."
"Then there was Tess, and then..."
Her former best friend, Tess whom she met on the road, and Sam, all died from the infection.
If she could, Ellie wishes to change all of this, even if it costs her own life.
She looks at Joel: "Swear to me that everything you said about the Fireflies is true."
Without hesitation, Joel looks directly at Ellie and nods, saying seriously, "I swear."
With this, the game ends.
The game screen fades to black, and the game's credits appear.
But Gery is still immersed in the game's story.
Because the game has too many things to contemplate, too many things worth reflecting on.
Every character in the game, every hidden detail, is full of deep meaning. This is not a story without flaws, but it is so heavy.
This is a completely linear game, and it does not end with everything turning out for the best, as the player might have expected.
Gery feels there is still much content in the game that he has not explored.
But one thing he can now be sure of.
That is, "The Last of Us" is absolutely a masterpiece!
(End of chapter)
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