WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Haruto
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ A Gacha Addict's Life in Fusionpunk ◈
Chapter 26: Project Z (2)
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1.
In Necropolis, your ancestors don’t look after your life.
You have to protect it yourself.
Less than a minute after the sirens and street broadcasts began, the crowds that normally packed the streets like a rush-hour subway scattered like cockroaches.
Stores pulled down heavy iron grilles, and curtains fell behind their cloudy, faded windows.
Other than that, all I could see were Fixers in coats hurrying somewhere, or ordinary citizens occasionally trying to pry open shop doors with crowbars.
It worked out well for me.
The road to District E-9, which should have been a madhouse, was completely clear.
Vrooooom!
The limousine tore through greenish smog and steam leaking from the sewers.
The drive was smooth, but my head was a mess.
“Can’t anything ever be simple?”
My head hurt.
Arbel was like a Ferrari bought on a full payment plan, guzzling 200,000 Bios in treatment costs every week.
I was Arbel-poor.
She needed a Universal Coin to fully recover, but the moment I touched one, Samurai Bitch appeared and killed everyone.
And now, in the E Sector where my apartment was?
Project Z.
An estimated 250,000 dead, with a biochemical weapon released in Necropolis.
Are you fucking kidding me?
“They’re really doing this? Those fucking Nazi bastards....”
There were too many things I didn’t understand.
Ceres had already leaked the information, yet they still decided to go ahead?
If Ceres, one of the eleven board members, had handed information to Overnus Pharmaceuticals, it couldn’t have been anything trivial.
And Overnus Pharmaceuticals had just stood by and watched?
Were they in it together from the beginning?
That alone was complicated enough, but there was another development giving me a headache.
The notification that appeared when I got into the limousine.
::: Challenges (New!) :::
- Ingest Formless Poison. +1 pt
What was this now?
At first, I thought the Formless Poison was part of Project Z.
But it wasn’t.
Sturdy Stomach could only digest poison I had actually eaten.
Besides, the districts where the announced “riots” had broken out were E-1, E-9, E-11, and E-13.
Ceres’s Haeng House was in the D Sector.
And I had been with Ceres until just a moment ago.
“Then....”
Had Ceres poisoned me?
Had Sturdy Stomach purified it late because of the delayed effect?
I didn’t get it.
I’m bad at this kind of thing.
“Focus!!!”
Forget the stray thoughts.
I was alive even after ingesting the Formless Poison, wasn’t I?
Saving Arbel came first.
As I drew closer to the E Sector, people began appearing one by one.
They weren’t ordinary citizens, but Fixers carrying weapons of their own.
Some looked like high-ranking personnel dispatched from fairly large Fixer offices.
Another sharp siren rang out, and the street broadcast changed.
‘This is the City Hall Public Security Bureau. Riot forces in the E Sector have spread beyond controllable levels.’
‘Accordingly, as of this moment, the entire E Sector has been designated a free-fire zone.’
‘All personnel outside buildings in the E Sector will be considered riot participants and shot on sight without warning.’
‘I repeat. All persons identified outdoors will be shot regardless of reason. All law-abiding citizens in the E Sector must remain inside their homes.’
‘Furthermore, movement throughout the E Sector is strictly controlled as of this moment. Any person crossing the perimeter without authorization will be shot on sight, just like riot participants.’
“Fuck!!!”
I couldn’t even get in?
Sure enough, when I reached the border between the E and D Sectors, Fixers had set up a temporary barricade and formed a line.
“Screw it. I’m breaking through.”
In Necropolis, cars came before people.
Just as I was preparing to floor the accelerator and force my way through, the Fixers spotted the limousine and moved the barricade aside in perfect unison.
‘...I’ll lend you the car. Go comfortably.’
Mama Ceres! That was what you meant?
Well, no Fixer would fail to recognize Ceres’s black limousine with its abnormally high ceiling.
“Then why did you poison me?”
Was it because you wanted to say, Now we’ll be together forever...?
But when I said I had family at home, she had let me go without protest.
Could the Formless Poison have come from someone other than Ceres?
Thump!
“Fuck, you scared me!”
Something slammed against the passenger window and stuck there.
A slum resident pressed their cheek against the glass, staring at me with bloodshot eyes.
Apparently, they were trying to hitch a ride.
You want me to pick you up?
How did you even manage that while the car was moving?
Was this what it took to live in an E Sector slum?
Screech! Screeech! Screeech!
I flinched.
There was something strange about the citizen clinging to the vehicle like a remora.
Eyes so red that every vessel in the whites had burst.
Bloody tears streaming down the window.
Teeth chattering together like a nutcracker doll, drool running down their chin.
And... a gaze that saw me, a human, as prey.
Crunch.
“Call an Uber, you fucker!”
I was so startled that I used an incredible sense of clearance to wedge the hitchhiker between the outer wall of a building and the car.
The sound of crushing bones rang through the frame.
When I checked the rearview mirror, I saw the half-crushed citizen jerk upright, then collapse again.
The sense of déjà vu hit me hard.
“Ha. Don’t tell me... it’s that?”
The answer came less than a minute later.
“Graaah!!!”
“Kyahhh!!!”
Grrr... grrrr....
The slum had turned into a hellscape of chaos.
The slums were places where the weak preyed on those weaker than themselves.
Show even the slightest opening, and someone would put a knife in your side or a steel pipe through the back of your head.
That food chain of survival of the fittest was now playing out in its most primitive form.
“Graaah! My arm! Don’t eat my arm!”
“Get away! Get away! Get away!!!”
“Please save me! Someone! Someone save me!”
Humans were tearing into humans.
Grrrrr!!!
“Eek! Stay away!”
Someone with eyes just like the hitchhiker’s pounced on a screaming citizen.
They moved less like a human and more like a wild animal.
Then, only a few seconds later.
Grr... grrrrr!
The bitten citizen’s eyes rolled back, turning equally red as they rushed at another citizen.
“Is Project Z’s Z from World War Z? Stop mixing genres, fuck!!!!”
This was completely insane.
A zombie apocalypse now?
The slums were already cramped, packed tight, and heavily populated.
Even if people hid in their homes, the doors were flimsy as hell.
They released a zombie virus there and blocked everyone from escaping, so around 250,000 people would probably die overnight.
“Door! Block the door! Hurry! Don’t let those things get in!”
“I-I got bitten too!”
Grrrr! Grrrr!
The roads in the slums were completely fucked.
Not only were they narrow, but there were countless alleys, all thick with frozen mud.
With zombies running wild everywhere, breaking through by normal means would be difficult.
Vrooooom!!!
I shifted gears with flashy handwork and floored the accelerator.
Brakes? Never heard of them.
The impact force of a car was mass times speed times horsepower.
Don’t underestimate a 2.5-ton limousine.
If I hit them head-on, I’d lose momentum and get stuck, so I had to clip them slightly as I passed!
“Don’t stand before the king!”
Thump! Thump! Thud! Thump!
The roadkilled zombies rolled across the bumper, splattering blood and guts over the windshield.
The vehicle shook as it crushed things that may or may not have been corpses.
======
::: Challenges (NEW!) :::
- Kill an Infected Citizen. +2 pt
======
Screeeech!
I rode that momentum straight to District E-9 at top speed.
There were no roads wide enough for a limousine from here on, so I abandoned the car and ran into the alleys.
Grrr?
“Kyah! Kyaaah!!”
“Kyahhh!!!”
The moment I got out, my dear neighbors greeted me warmly.
“This place is already fucked too.”
I threw myself without hesitation into the crowd charging at me like seagulls spotting shrimp crackers.
“Kyahhh!”
I slipped past the hand swinging for me, raised the muzzle, and aimed at its chin.
“Too slow.”
Bang!
At point-blank range, a Magnum round hit with over 3,000 joules of force.
That was like firing a bowling ball at 100 kilometers per hour.
A human skull was little more than a firework that scattered brain matter.
I spun away the collapsing body and extended my arm to the side.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Three shots from that position.
The gunshots overlapped into one.
The hammer struck the primer, and a spray of blood bloomed beyond the muzzle flash.
With dull thuds like leather sacks hitting the ground, three headless bodies collapsed almost at once.
“Whew.”
This was the power of augmentation?
From spotting a target to aiming, firing, and hitting it took less than 0.1 seconds.
Even firing from positions close to trick shooting, I could maintain precise control.
This was the combination of the artifact Laplace’s Eye and a Level 1 augmentation, a mass-market Sandevistan.
To my focused eyes, their beastlike movements looked slow.
I had the reaction speed to match them, and the strength to take the recoil of the S&W Model 500 with one hand.
“That cash investment was worth it!”
Big Sis Isis, you really know your stuff!
Click.
“Reloading!!!”
It felt like my brain and body had been overclocked at the same time.
The entire sequence of emptying the cylinder and loading five rounds one by one took only 1.5 seconds.
Right now, I was practically Alucard himself.
The swarm of zombies mindlessly charging at the No Life King were nothing but slow-moving targets.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Every time the gunshots rattled my eardrums, pleasure and exhilaration tickled my heart.
I fired with one hand, shoved them aside with the other, and headed for my apartment.
I killed every one that followed.
“Arbel!”
The moment I kicked open the door, I saw Arbel.
Arbel, curled up on the bed with her knees hugged to her chest.
“You’re awake!”
Nice timing!
At least I wouldn’t have to carry deadweight through a zombie apocalypse!
The moment Arbel slowly raised her head, I saw her red eyes.
“Oh, no....”
Arbel’s small, curled-up body lunged at me like a beast.
This wasn’t the speed of an older sister happily running over to hug her younger brother.
It was a threatening speed beyond comparison to the dead wandering outside.
Time stretched out.
Click.
The moment I recognized the threat, my hand moved mechanically.
I aimed the gun at Arbel and placed my finger on the trigger.
Even as I completed all those movements, I knew instinctively.
I was too slow.
Her lips had already covered my nape.
Bang!
As Arbel tackled me and sent me falling backward, I aimed at her abdomen and pulled the trigger without hesitation.
A shot fired too late.
A flash bursting through the cramped room.
Thick gunpowder smoke spreading through my arms.
The sound of something pouring down.
A strong smell of blood flooded my already numb nose.
Arbel’s body fell over mine.
“...Cedric.”
Arbel pulled her lips away from my neck and whispered through gritted teeth.
“I hate you.... Someone like you....”
Arbel’s body collapsed.
Hot bodily fluid poured over me.
======
::: Challenges (New!) :::
- Kill a Family Member. +15 pt
======
I pushed Arbel’s body off me and stood.
With trembling hands, I touched my nape.
Did she bite me? What happened if I got bitten?
Would I be infected? Would I complete a Challenge if I got infected?
I felt around my neck for a long time before realizing something.
“Fuck....”
In that brief exchange, I had definitely been the slower one.
Yet there was no wound or pain on my nape.
There wasn’t even a faint tooth mark.
Arbel hadn’t bitten my neck.
Even though she had enough time to do so, she had died spilling blood and guts.
“Why’d you do something I never told you to...?”
I stared at Arbel for a while, then aimed the pistol at my own head.
Why did car-poor people pour most of their salary into their cars?
Because to them, that car was their life.
What if Arbel died in front of someone who was Arbel-poor?
This run was a failure.
The hot barrel pressed against my temple.
Huff... Huff....
One pull of the trigger, and my skull would shatter.
It would be painless.
“...No.”
I lowered the gun.
Instead, I put a cigarette in my mouth and lit it.
The tingling purple smoke stung my eyes.
This run wasn’t over yet.
“I still have things to do.”
My life was precious.
If I was going to throw it away anyway, I should go back to Ceres, dig up as much as I could, and die there.
I needed more information.
After all, Ceres would hold the key to this entire situation.
The moment I made up my mind and opened the apartment door.
Grrr...?
Dozens of red eyes turned toward me at once like warning lights.
There were at least five times as many as I had killed on the way here.
“You bastards. Did you make friends on Tinder that fast?”
That wasn’t all.
The hungry cries of the living dead coming from every direction were several times louder than before.
This was a scene that badly needed chainsaws and heavy-metal background music.
“Ha. What a lovely place to live, Necropolis.”
A heap of bullshit bad luck crashing down on a run that had seemed to be going well.
Unexplained misfortune erupting one after another.
At the end, a forced tearjerker where I had to destroy my own dream with my own hands.
All these cursed fates seemed to be telling me one thing.
Give up.
“Give up? Me?”
I flicked away the cigarette butt.
The sparks traced a slow arc as the beasts charged at me, and I raised my gun.
“If I gave up over something like this...”
Facing the zombies rushing at me like a pack of dogs, I think I smiled.
“I couldn’t have made it through twelve liquidations, you one-bite-mooching bastards!!!”
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Thick gunsmoke.
The beasts’ howls.
The ridiculous dance of one human and corpses that had failed to die.
Wait for me, Arbel.
I’ll definitely put you in a bunny girl outfit.
Footnotes:
“Car-poor” adapts Korean slang for someone left broke by excessive car expenses. “Arbel-poor” extends the joke to Arbel’s treatment costs.
“Alucard” and “No Life King” reference Hellsing, comparing his gunplay to its vampire antihero.
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