I froze for a moment, still holding the cloth, then awkwardly thanked her.

"Thank you."

Thinking back over my actions, I had to admit I’d charged in without any restraint.

But I didn’t feel like I was overdoing it.

If anything, I felt a little... happy.

Of course, a peaceful daily life without any incidents or accidents is the best.

But this wasn’t so bad for me either.

Probably because I got to explore the world of my favorite game in real life.

I’m even learning things I never knew from the game...

If it weren’t for that quest where my limbs got cut off, I’d be even happier.

I didn’t voice these thoughts out loud — Mo Haein would probably look at me like I was even more insane.

Instead of speaking my honest feelings, I busied myself wiping my face with the cloth she’d handed me.

Seeing the red staining the fabric, I could kind of understand why Mo Haein had been looking at me like I was out of my mind this whole time.

While I — who’d looked worse than the zombies — cleaned myself up, Mo Haein and Kwak Hanmuk consumed some rations.

Well, Mo Haein only had a little. Kwak Hanmuk had quite a lot.

After shoving an endless amount of snacks into his stomach, Kwak Hanmuk smacked his lips.

Despite eating that much, he didn’t exactly look full.

"You can have more. There’s plenty of places to find food."

"Nah... gotta watch my figure..."

Muttering something vague, Kwak Hanmuk crunched down on a lollipop as his last snack.

I looked away for a second, and when I glanced back, only the bare stick remained.

Squatting there, holding the lollipop stick between his fingers and staring blankly into space, Kwak Hanmuk caught my eye and grinned before standing up.

Then he tossed the stick on the ground and ground it under his foot.

It wasn’t a cigarette — what was he doing with a lollipop stick? I had no idea.

While the three of us filled our hunger and thirst meters, Je Hyun-oh sat on top of the jeep.

Since he was already infected with the BT-Z virus, he often broke the Trial’s rules.

In DeZonDeal, he didn’t need to fill his hunger or thirst meters, and getting bitten by zombies didn’t infect him.

He probably wouldn’t have been able to equip the toy limbs if we’d entered HapFactory.

That was why Je Hyun-oh was waiting for us to finish eating.

Watching him silently look down at us from above, I felt a bit like an animal in a zoo.

Hope you’re enjoying the show.

Having fully appreciated Je Hyun-oh’s convenience, I wanted to stay on his good side.

But the moment our eyes met, Je Hyun-oh clacked his metal fingers like he was playing piano, so I immediately looked down.

Better to stay out of his sight as much as possible.

After the short meal and recovery, I packed only the essentials into my backpack.

Once the backpack was on my back, I checked the rooftop’s HVAC system.

Fortunately, it wasn’t damaged and was running smoothly on emergency power.

I began the briefing for entering the lab.

"First objective: find the surviving researchers."

The DeZonDeal laboratory was a long, horizontal building with two basement floors and five above-ground floors.

Unlike the National Institute of Infectious Diseases where the Trial had hatched, it wasn’t divided into multiple research wings — everything was in one building.

The fifth floor was the most important. That’s where the high-risk pathogen lab was located.

The Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4) lab was the critical facility for researching the DeZonDeal zombie virus vaccine.

"Originally, the surviving researcher would be hiding on the third floor, but since the situation has changed, they’re likely in a different location now."

In the game, the researcher — the lab’s last survivor — is found hiding in a cleaning supply closet on the third floor.

The player gives the dying researcher food, clears out the zombies, and helps them reach the fifth-floor lab.

The researcher opens the locked lab and begins vaccine research.

That’s when the delivery quests officially start.

But now, there were four surviving researchers.

It would be hard for all of them to hide together in a cramped closet.

"My guess is... they’re probably already in the lab. The fifth floor."

Since Je Hyun-oh had swept through the zombies at the start, they’d likely grabbed food and barricaded themselves in to protect the most important lab.

They might have run into a hidden zombie in the process and suffered casualties.

But that was just speculation.

"So if we don’t find them on the fifth floor, we check the third too?"

Mo Haein immediately added her opinion.

"Yes. Just in case. And finding the researchers is important, but we also need to check if the True Ending conditions are being met as soon as possible..."

Since that was something I had to verify myself, I offered the most efficient suggestion.

"How about we split into two teams and run operations simultaneously?"

"Good idea. We should listen to Goyo hyung-nim."

Following Kwak Hanmuk, Mo Haein also nodded in agreement.

Riding this momentum, I tried to subtly assign the teams.

Me and Captain Mo in one team!

I already had a plausible reason — we’d worked together in HapFactory.

Also, Kwak Hanmuk had means to subdue Je Hyun-oh if he did anything, so putting them in the same team made sense.

"Then the teams are..."

But I couldn’t finish my sentence.

SCREECH!

A horrible sound of metal scraping rang out. Je Hyun-oh was scratching the jeep with his metal hand.

His black wings moved slowly.

The feathers rustled as they folded, and the wings disappeared behind his back.

He hopped down from the jeep, walked over to me, and stood by my side.

It seemed like he meant to come with me...

I looked at Kwak Hanmuk and Mo Haein. They were already discussing how to search on their own.

Apparently, they were confident that since Je Hyun-oh had come to his senses and accepted me as a teammate, he wouldn’t attack anymore.

They must have judged that he was better suited to protect me than they were, with their depleted stamina.

But there was something the Captains didn’t know.

I’d brought up <Zero> with Je Hyun-oh.

I’d poked at what was basically his sore spot, but I couldn’t exactly confess that to Mo Haein and Kwak Hanmuk.

I was already standing out by mentioning Trial strategies and items.

If I acted any more conspicuous, the tacit tolerance I had right now might shatter.

At least, thankfully, I didn’t have to worry about Je Hyun-oh telling them about <Zero> or the System window.

If anything, Je Hyun-oh’s problem was that he didn’t say things even when he needed to.

He wouldn’t go out of his way to bother revealing that ’Han Goyo’ was something out of the ordinary.

He’ll just deal with it himself the moment he decides I’m a threat.

Since he recognized me as a teammate, he’d probably cut me some slack, but if I crossed the line, he’d take care of me immediately.

I could feel it clearly from the way he didn’t bother hiding his desire to kill me.

Maybe even now, he was coming along to find an opportunity to do it.

I hope I never have to use Execution on Lieutenant Colonel Je...

Burying my worries, I became Je Hyun-oh’s teammate.

We set the fifth-floor lab as our rendezvous point.

Oblivious to my inner turmoil, Mo Haein and Kwak Hanmuk opened the rooftop door and disappeared down the emergency stairs to carry out the operation.

Now only Je Hyun-oh and I remained on the rooftop.

I turned to look at him. His goggles still displayed the wide-eyed emoticon.

He gave me the feeling he’d follow along with whatever I said.

"...So, we need to go to the second floor."

Getting from the rooftop to the second floor while fighting through Dead Zombies would take quite a while.

But with Je Hyun-oh here, there was no reason to go on foot.

Before I could even bring it up, Je Hyun-oh seemed to have the same idea.

He pulled a leather glove from his inventory.

As he placed the black glove over his left metal hand, a bright light shone and it transformed into the shape of a human hand.

So that’s the Crow Gloves.

With the Crow Gloves on one hand, Je Hyun-oh looked a little less threatening.

He grabbed the back of my neck.

Then he sprinted across the rooftop... and jumped down without any warning at all.

The sensation of falling was dizzying.

Je Hyun-oh plummeted fast, then precisely slammed his metal hand into the wall at the second floor.

At the same time, he kicked through the window and hurled me inside.

"Ugh...!"

I nearly tumbled through broken glass and across the floor, but barely managed to catch my balance and stand up.

Je Hyun-oh, with one human hand and one metal hand dangling at his sides, calmly climbed through the window into the hallway.

Emergency lights were spaced sparsely along the corridor.

A long shadow stretched from Je Hyun-oh’s feet.

"KREEEEH!"

Hearing the window shatter, Dead Zombies’ eyes flashed as they came charging.

He gestured at me with his human hand — the one wearing the leather glove. It meant: stay back, they’re annoying.

The moment I pressed myself flat against the wall, Je Hyun-oh swung his metal hand horizontally.

A whoosh — the sound of air splitting — and five lines appeared across the zombies’ bodies.

Then came wet thuds. The horde of zombies collapsed into pieces.

I immediately forgot any disrespectful thoughts I’d harbored while being thrown to the floor.

"Thank you, Lieutenant Colonel Je."

His pros and cons were very clear. His personality was a bit much, but his skills were good — like a boss who let me clock out early.

With a grateful heart, I dutifully attended to my superior, who’d cleared out the zombies in seconds.

"This way, sir."

Our target was the Laboratory Director’s Office.

On the way there, I briefly stopped in an office.

"Excuse me... could I ask for one very tiny, very small errand?"

Je Hyun-oh stared at me as if to say ’go ahead.’ I beamed at my superior officer.

"Food farming."

Since the third floor and above were mostly research facilities like analysis rooms and labs, food was usually most abundant on the first and second floors.

With the number of researchers’ mouths to feed going from one to four, it was a good idea to stock up on delivery food while we were on the second floor anyway.

Je Hyun-oh’s goggles lit up.

O K

Wait, those things could display text too...?

That was something I’d never known since Je Hyun-oh barely spoke in the game.

I wondered inwardly if it could display longer messages, then followed Je Hyun-oh into the office.

Unlike the hallway, the office was dark since the emergency lights weren’t on, but that wasn’t a big problem.

I knew exactly where the food was, and Je Hyun-oh could see in the dark.

"Third desk on the left, bottom drawer — chocolate bars. And the desk next to it, if you move the flower pot, there’s a bag of jelly."

I just called out coordinates, and Je Hyun-oh swiftly gathered everything and tossed it into my backpack.

All I had to do was hold my backpack open in the dark and follow him around.

This is easy. So easy.

I’d been nervous when we were left alone, but he was much more cooperative than I expected, so things went smoothly.

I made full use of Je Hyun-oh’s convenience.

We finished looting the office and were nearing the Laboratory Director’s Office.

Grrrk... Grrrrk...

Faint zombie sounds. They must have woken up from the window shattering, but strangely, the noise sounded muffled — like they were trapped somewhere.

But there shouldn’t be any trapped zombies on the second floor.

Something must have gone wrong somewhere.

The sound was coming from the direction of the Laboratory Director’s Office, so I quickened my pace.

The closer I got, the more the zombie noises mixed with dull thuds of something hitting a surface, and the sound of someone crying.

And when I reached the Laboratory Director’s Office...

"..."

"Goyo."

Je Hyun-oh called my name.

His voice was rough and beastly, laced with amusement.

"Can you clear this?"

To prove my usefulness, I should have answered yes immediately.

But this time, I couldn’t answer.

THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.

A zombie kept slamming its head against the reinforced glass door.

Its arms and legs were tied. Its mouth was gagged.

The only free part of its body — its head — kept ramming the glass door, and around its neck, a researcher’s ID card dangled and swayed.

I stared blankly at the zombie, then slowly lowered my gaze.

The ID card with its name and photo came sharply into view.

Yi Se-on

There was no doubt.

They were the researcher who was supposed to develop the vaccine