A Korean Office Worker Who Became a Nuisance Villainess in a Zombie Story - Chapter 75
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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“…!”
“…!”
Ugh!
Ugh!
Ugh!
It really hurts!
I opened my mouth silently, my face contorting in agony.
Praha’s eyes widened as he witnessed my internal screams. His amber eyes grew wide as lanterns—which would have been funny if I weren’t in such excruciating pain, and which was funny precisely because I was in such excruciating pain….
Ugh….
Ugh….
‘Damn it, this really hurts….’
I genuinely want to stop cursing….
Working at the company, I was cursing a thousand times a day, so I’ve been trying to stop…!
‘How am I supposed to get through this without cursing!’
Electric shocks coursed through my foot and up to my waist.
Tears began to spill.
Fortunately, the fragment was blunt, and I was wearing thick socks, so my foot wasn’t cut or pierced.
It was just, just….
Unbearably painful.
‘I’m…losing…my…mind….’
-Yusara’s desperate acrostic poem-
Desperate: I am grateful to my thick socks, saviors of this wretched soul.
Losing: Let us be close friends.
‘Are you alright?!’
Praha rushed back and gestured frantically at me, his hands and feet moving in distress. He crouched down and tried to lift my foot, but I waved my hands wildly, and he hesitated.
‘If you lift it, it’ll hurt more, please don’t!’
With that massive frame of his, the way he fretted wasn’t like a guard dog—it was like a anxious chick.
‘It hurts, but it’s funny.’
Don’t make me laugh. We can’t make a sound, we….
Wow. Just holding back my voice here is enough—I’ve done my part, truly.
I repeated clenching and releasing my fist around the boot dozens of times before I finally found some semblance of composure.
Even as I did this, my heart was being squeezed to death by the zombies contentedly feasting in the corner of the room.
I mouthed words to Praha, who still knelt before me.
‘Let’s go.’
Before those zombies catch our human scent drifting through this room and overwhelm us.
By the time I barely managed to open the target door and slip inside, my entire body was drenched in cold sweat.
Click.
“Phew….”
The moment the door closed behind me, a long exhale burst forth.
“Gasp.”
I hope there aren’t any zombies here too.
Praha shook his head at me, my mouth covered and eyes wide open.
“This place is safe.”
“Thank goodness….”
“However, there is something here.”
Praha pointed toward the shelves. A pool of blood had accumulated there. And lying in it was a single person.
It was the Short Thug who had come in to distribute the meat broth to us.
The man, struggling to open his eyes and trembling violently, reached out toward us.
“P… please… save me….”
It was already too late.
I observed the bleeding man with cold detachment.
‘He must have hidden under the table or somewhere and gotten his ankle bitten. The other wounds on his body aren’t from bites—they’re from attacks by his own kind.’
Since they didn’t know about zombies, they must have lost their reason and swung blades at everyone nearby. He was clearly caught by one of those blind strikes.
No loyalty whatsoever—truly a fitting end for members of the Human Trafficking Ring.
‘In any case, it will take some time for him to transform.’
“Please… save me…. I’m begging you….”
Without responding, I put my shoes back on and looked at Praha.
Praha, who had put his shoes on far more quickly than I had, was looking down at the man.
I thought Praha would kill the man immediately, but unexpectedly, he attempted conversation.
“Where are the magical security devices installed?”
“What? Now of all times… cough…! Hack…!”
“Tell me.”
“Cough…!”
“If you don’t speak, I won’t save you.”
And he crosses his arms.
As if to say he could wait forever.
Praha tapped his own arm with his fingers and spoke.
“A male appearing to be in his early twenties. Doesn’t seem to have any connection to physical training. All other bodily functions are likely pathetic, but at least he’s young. The wound is far from the brain. If he pushes himself, he’ll last about fifteen minutes.”
“….”
“If you’re still alive after fifteen minutes, I’ll give you a round of applause.”
“W-wait, first you need to stop the bleeding… hack! Cough! I’ll talk!”
The man cried out in panic.
Whether he did or not, Praha remained unmoved.
“Fourteen minutes left.”
‘A professional intimidator.’
I let him handle it and looked around the surroundings.
It was a small storage room for keeping necessities. There were cleaning tools, though they seemed never to have been used, and the air reeked of some unidentifiable sweat.
On the opposite side, there was another door.
This isn’t Alice in Wonderland, so why do these doors keep appearing?
‘This time, surely this door leads to the surface.’
I found some beef jerky shoved into a corner of the shelf, forgotten by someone, tore it open, and gave it to Praha before eating some myself.
We both acted as though we couldn’t see the pool of blood spreading across the floor, growing larger by the moment.
In the end, it was the Thug who surrendered first.
“Right behind here…. And the 1st Floor entrance. The mansion’s main gate.”
“That’s all?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I’m telling the truth!”
“Be honest.”
“Cough…. I’m serious…! I heard there’s a device in the Local Lord’s room that can blow up the entire building…. But I’ve never been there, so I don’t know!”
“So you were just a foot soldier.”
Praha let out a derisive snort.
Summarizing the Thug’s statement—blood and coughs and all—it amounted to this:
[Building Layout]
Second Floor: Local Lord’s Office*, Reception Room
1st Floor: Banquet Hall, Auction House, Exit*
Basement Level 1: Torture Chamber, Processing Room, Staff Recreation Room*
Basement Level 2: Prison
*: Magical Security Device
‘So that horrifying place was the 〈Processing Room〉.’
I didn’t want to know what they processed there.
Lord Promé, thoroughly satisfied with capturing me, stationed all his subordinates on Basement Level 1 as guards to prevent my escape (me: but why were you all drinking together instead of working?), activated the magical device, and left.
Only the Local Lord could deactivate it.
“If that’s the case, wouldn’t you all be trapped in the basement too? Why didn’t you resist?”
“We didn’t know it would come to this!”
I exchanged a glance with Praha, watching the Thug’s hands begin to tremble.
‘If everyone in this mansion is trapped on Basement Level 1…’
‘Then the upper floors must be completely empty.’
If I could breach the device behind the door in front of me, the 1st Floor entrance, and the mansion’s main gate security, I could get outside.
‘The problem is how to break through magic.’
Praha questioned the Thug.
“How do you shut down the device?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re useless.”
“If I knew, I would’ve escaped long ago!”
Cough, cough!
Blood sprayed from the man’s mouth onto the floor.
This time, I asked.
“Why didn’t you just break through the device? Isn’t taking a few magical hits and getting out better than staying trapped here?”
At that, the man sneered at me.
When Praha asked questions, he was docile enough, but even while dying, he discriminates between men and women.
“If you don’t know, stay quiet.”
“How can I stay quiet if I don’t know? I have to understand something before I can be silent about it.”
How could I stay quiet when I need to ask about things I don’t understand?
“The device the Local Lord installed, woman—it’s not just a matter of taking a few magical hits and being done with it, like you said. It’s something truly terrifying… a lethal weapon….”
“Is there an alternate route?”
“No.”
He didn’t seem to be lying.
‘Well, he’s on death’s door—he wouldn’t waste time lying just to buy a few more moments.’
I had assumed a mansion like this would surely have at least one secret passage.
It seemed the Local Lord simply preferred to burn the entire Mansion down whenever problems arose, using that as a substitute for hidden passages.
“Please… save me now…!”
“Stay quiet.”
I casually tossed some hemostatic agent or whatever was sitting on the nearby shelf to the thrashing man, then discussed matters with Cyprus.
“What should we do? He says it’s a lethal weapon. Should we wait here for rescue to arrive?”
Escaping as quickly as possible was certainly the right move.
But going that way means death.
“Which do you think will be faster—Marquis Prome returning and discovering us, or our companions arriving here?”
“I’m betting on Cyprus.”
“Honestly, so am I. Then shall we rest here and eat some jerky while we wait?”
Besides, all the zombies are on Basement Level 1 anyway. There’s no reason an unsuspecting outsider would be caught off-guard and attacked by a horde of them.
Just as we were about to settle down and relax, the man panicked.
The man’s eyes widened as he cried out.
“I told you everything! Now please save me…!”
He begged—not just for the hemostatic agent, but for bandages or something, anything to help him.
Praha glanced at the man with obvious annoyance and spoke flatly.
“You’re going to die anyway.”
“…What?”
“Didn’t you see how strangely people changed? You were bitten on the ankle by them, so you’ll soon be in the same condition.”
“….”
“The only reason I’m not killing you right now is out of courtesy to an informant. Once you transform, I’ll kill you immediately, so quietly reflect on your past life.”
“Ugh… ugh…”
“You seem bitter about it.”
“Of course I am!”
“You must have deceived countless people and dragged them to the slave market all this time. You’re bitter about being deceived?”
Praha asked.
His face was cold, his lips pressed firmly together.
I stood beside him, regarding the man with contempt. Not a shred of pity stirred within me.
But what we hadn’t anticipated was.
“Ugh… ugh…”
Even a worm knows how to roll.
The Short Thug, who had been trembling violently, suddenly thrust his hand forward. Thinking he meant to grab my ankle, I quickly lifted my foot and dodged.
But that wasn’t what the thug was aiming for.
With a strength that seemed impossible from someone on the verge of death, the thug hurled himself against the shelf.
Crash!
The supplies stacked on the shelf tumbled down with a deafening clatter.
I instinctively glanced back at the Recreation Room we had just passed through.
Even with a door in place, noise of this magnitude would surely….
“Gack!”
“Hack!”
Before I could fully process what was happening, Praha pulled me toward the opposite door.
The door with the ‘trap’—the one leading to the surface.
What lay beyond was a narrow Corridor roughly three meters long.
The moment we entered, the door behind us locked with a metallic click.
The width was so cramped that if Praha and I stood shoulder to shoulder with our arms outstretched, our hands would touch the walls. Ahead, I could finally see the Staircase leading up to the surface.
Seeing it look far more intact than expected, I exchanged a glance with Praha.
“Where is the mechanism…?”
“It will likely trigger once we take a few more steps.”
“Hmm.”
Not knowing what lurked ahead yet having to move forward anyway—I really didn’t like this feeling.
But having come this far, there was no turning back.
Because.
The door we were leaning against was growing increasingly hot.
“Ah, it’s burning….”
Flinching at a temperature that threatened to sear my skin, I took a step forward.
Then.
Two blades shaped like the character 二 materialized across the Corridor from ahead.
One at the height of my forehead, the other at the height of my ankles.
Zing.
With a horrifying mechanical whine, they began advancing slowly toward us.
“….”
“….”
Resident Evil 1…?
[Mount Prome: Basement Level 1 Connecting Passage]
– Yusara, Praha (Alive)
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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