Genius Archer’s Streaming - Chapter 338

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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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The Genius Archer’s Streaming Season 2 Episode 58
21. An Insurmountable Barrier (2)
A school is an egg, and students are birds.
For birds, the egg is one complete world.
One day, all of them will break free from this egg.
Whether they wish to or not. The egg crumbles when its time comes, and the entire world they knew collapses.
Yet sometimes, birds born in harsh times must break free themselves.
Birds born in times like this very moment.
Most living creatures are dead, and those who rejected even that death wander like phantoms.
The young birds must shatter the world they once knew with their own hands.
The mountain of corpses upon which they stand.
It contains far more than just Zombies, so perhaps these children have already become more mature than adults.
Now they break their own egg and step into a different world.
This is a trembling thing.
At the same time, it is an exhilarating thing.
“There must be people. Surely.”
A voice carrying both emotions rings out.
It is Jido-hyeon, leading from the front.
“There’s no way we’re the only ones in this vast neighborhood.”
His voice trembled.
With tension and excitement.
With hope and worry.
“Yeah.”
The children following nod their heads.
“There probably will be. Definitely.”
Almond adds his thoughts.
At the same time, he thinks.
‘There must be.’
This many survived within the school alone.
If it weren’t for the conflicts inside, far more would have survived.
This outside world is far vaster than the school.
So there must be far more people out there.
‘But can we trust them?’
Meeting people in a zombie apocalypse is a welcome thing, yet simultaneously the most dangerous.
These children who came with him even cheered and applauded when they slaughtered the gang of delinquents.
Almond suspects the other children share his thoughts.
“Remember the first rule?”
“Yeah. Never, ever bring people back.”
They reaffirmed the most important rule and slowly moved forward.

* * *
Now I’m outside the school.
Whoooosh.
The wind was refreshing, but the scenery was desolate.
The school entrance road that was always bustling with students was empty. The traditional market behind the school had its tents completely collapsed. The stationery shop’s windows were shattered, its interior pitch black. Had someone set a fire?
Gulp.
I could hear Dohyeon in front of me swallowing hard.
-There’s literally no one here…
-Creepy creepy creepy
-A wasteland;
The viewers also hadn’t anticipated such a desolate scene, and the chat filled with comments about the landscape.
“Hey, guys. Something’s weird….”
Thud.
Soyoung, the only girl in the exploration team, stopped walking.
Her position wasn’t at the front or back, but in the center where she could maintain the widest field of view.
“…There are no zombies either.”
She was faithfully performing her duty. She’d identified the source of the unease that everyone else had missed.
“!”
The children flinched after confirming her words were correct.
Yujeongi was the most frightened.
“I-I guess there being no people could happen. But why are there no zombies…?”
Her pale legs trembled slightly.
[Anxiety]
“They probably all came to the school and we killed them all.”
Gilsu, who was covering the rear, answered. With his lean frame, he had the look of a nimble scout.
“We killed all the zombies that came whenever we made noise at the construction site.”
“M-maybe that’s it…?”
Well. Gilsu’s guess was probably right.
About 70 percent, anyway.
No one here could answer this question with 100 percent certainty.
I reassured Yujeongi.
“The only way to know for sure is to keep going.”
“…J-Juhyeok. Aren’t you scared?”
Cling.
Her eyes trembled as she clung to me and looked up.
mom mom
-Does facial recognition even work here? The atmosphere feels off.
-The guy who plays golf with boss monsters
-Here we go again… Face ID…
-Face ID activated again?
Almond coldly pushed away the girl who was subtly trying to lean on him.
A leader cannot show favoritism to just one person.
“I’m scared. What if we get trapped in the school and starve to death?”
“!”
Hahahahaha
-The wall-hitting is a pro move
-facial expression lol
“We need to keep moving forward.”
Almond spoke again, each word deliberate and clear.
The children nodded and turned their heads forward once more.
As we walked further, not all the shops were collapsed or burned to ash.
At least on the surface, there were no signs that someone had already ransacked them.
Had we come about one bus stop’s distance?
It was Yujeongi who spoke up again.
“…Yeah. A tteokbokki shop? It’s still intact.”
Looking at where she pointed, I could indeed see a perfectly intact tteokbokki shop.
“Shouldn’t we gather food supply information too?”
Securing food supplies was certainly one of the expedition’s objectives. Creating a waypoint to the bunker was good, but food was the most critical priority.
However, Gilsu raised a counterargument.
“Would that even be food? We’d need to cook it. A sandwich shop where we can eat things raw would be better.”
“Sandwich ingredients would’ve spoiled by now anyway. Foods like tteokbokki where you just mix frozen rice cakes in sauce and simmer them would be fine. Sundae and odeng are all frozen anyway.”
“Where would we even cook that? We’d have to set up a tteokbokki shop right here….”
“Hey. Hey. The expedition leader has to decide anyway. Why are you two arguing?”
The largest child, Kyungho, stopped them. With his build and equipment—thick vest and shield—he had the feel of a tank.
“Right. The expedition leader decides.”
“Yeah. The expedition leader.”
In the end, all the children’s eyes fell on Almond. I had to make the decision. Because I was the leader.
I thought carefully about it.
‘The incident happened right after lunch time.’
When the zombies first entered the school, it was during PE class, which took place right after lunch.
‘So the ingredients would have been all prepared….’
Then the tteokbokki shop was probably preparing for business that day.
Since it was in a school commercial district, they prepared more for evening sales on the way home from school than for lunch, which wasn’t allowed to leave campus.
Then the zombies appeared.
What would have happened?
Did the owner become a zombie too? Would the refrigerator still be running?
Gilsu had asked how we’d cook it, but Yujeongi’s point made sense too.
Tteokbokki ingredients were mostly long-lasting frozen items, and if electricity or gas was still working, it was simple enough to prepare. Especially sundae and odeng were essentially finished products.
However….
“We’ll definitely have to stop by here on the way back anyway. We can check it out then.”
Almond decided to put it on hold.
“…All right.”
This place was close to the school. If we wanted, the children remaining at school could come out separately and retrieve it.
“Instead, leave a record in the chat. Tteokbokki Plus. Possible food reserves.”
“Okay.”
Gilsu nodded in satisfaction, and Yujeongi puffed out her cheeks.
There was no helping it. On the first day, exploring farther out took priority. They continued moving forward.
They passed the bus stop they took every day, and also passed the nearest subway station.
By now, they’d come about three bus stops from where they started.
On the way, there were still no zombies.
Now they’d left the commercial district and entered a residential area. Apartment complexes were beginning to appear.
“….”
Seeing the apartments, my mind felt overwhelmed.
‘Among all those homes, is there really not a single survivor?’
An enormous number of households.
Yet not a single light was on in any of them.
Or perhaps, since this was a game after all, the interiors of those apartments weren’t fully implemented?
“Phew.”
Dohyeon’s hands were trembling slightly.
Being at the front seemed to make him nervous. They were now facing a single crosswalk ahead.
Once they crossed it, they’d be leaving what could be called the ‘school route.’
In other words, they’d be entering unfamiliar territory.
“….”
“There’s no one here.”
“Let’s cross.”
Dohyeon at the front said something foolish like ‘just in case, let’s cross when the light turns green.’
But no one listened to him.
In the end, they began crossing illegally.
“Not a single car on the road.”
“Except for parked ones… there’s just nothing.”
Usually in an apocalypse scenario, you’d expect to find a car or two abandoned on the road.
But there were no cars to be seen.
It was when they’d crossed about two-thirds of the way across the crosswalk.
Vrrrroooom.
A heavy engine sound echoed from the distance.
“!?”
In that instant, the children stopped in their tracks with blank expressions.
“What… what is it.”
“A car?”
Instinctively, they wanted to ask for help from whoever was in the vehicle.
But do you know who that is?
If we stop that, aren’t we dead?
Should we run then?
Do we even have time for that?
My mind goes blank trying to figure out what to do.
“Run! Hide!”
Gilsu shouted from behind. He’d decided that following protocol was more important.
Agreement was reached in an instant. Without another word, the children bolted together and threw themselves into the thicket beneath the street trees across the way, concealing themselves.
My elbows scraped raw, my pants tore at the knees, but I didn’t care.
Vrrrroooom…!
The terror of the engine sound growing steadily closer crushed all the pain beneath it.
“Haa… haa…”
The faces visible through the thicket all gasped for breath in ragged bursts.
‘It’s coming.’
Drrrrring.
The engine’s RPM dropped sharply, and a massive SUV appeared around the corner.
No, the cargo bed was open in the back, so it had to be a pickup truck. The kind commonly used in American suburban areas. For surviving in an era like this, there was no better vehicle.
Three or four people were riding in the truck bed.
All muscular men. With unpleasant expressions.
Screeeech.
The pickup truck stopped in front of the crosswalk.
Did it stop because the light was red?
Whoooosh.
Voices carried on the wind.
“Why’d you stop?”
“I thought I heard something.”
“?”
The men in the truck bed talking to each other.
“What sound did you hear?”
“The wind?”
“No. Not really…”
The man in the cargo bed talking with the driver nods, gesturing to their reaction.
“Probably just heard things because of the engine noise.”
“It sounded like a person though…”
“Must’ve been a bird. And even if it was a person, so what? We’ve got a long way to go.”
Here, I considered something.
‘Would taking the vehicle make things easier?’
From this position, I could eliminate both the driver’s seat and the cargo bed in an instant.
The bow makes barely any sound. Especially with this compound bow—I could handle it in seconds.
They have no idea where we are, and I don’t see any long-range weapons on them.
‘No.’
In a typical open-world game, I could ambush those guys and steal their vehicle.
But given this game’s nature, if I attacked people who had no moral failings and stole their car, the NPCs wouldn’t follow me.
The truck happened to start moving again when the light changed.
“Haa… haa…! I, I thought I was going to die.”
“We barely made it.”
The children exhaled their sighs of relief and relaxed, lying flat on the ground for a moment.
Whoooosh.
The wind blew again.
Green leaves danced and harmonized with the breeze.
Rustle rustle rustle…
‘?’
With his keen senses, I could detect it.
A faint cracking sound hidden within those rustling noises.
I spun around sharply and froze.
“…Where did Yujeongi go.”
The female student had disappeared.
-???
-What
-Huh
The children looked bewildered and glanced around.
Gilsu muttered suspiciously.
“Did she go to a snack shop?”
“No way. She must be hiding somewhere else.”
That’s when it happened.
A hole tore straight through Gilsu’s body.
Gilsu stared blankly down at his punctured form.
“Huh…?”
Something dark slipped out through the gaping hole.
Squelch.
It writhed once.
Kiiiieeek…!
It made a grotesque sound.
Gilsu’s body began to shrink. Like air escaping from an enormous balloon.
“Ugh… ugghhh…!”
His complexion turned ashen.
In fact, everyone’s faces had gone pale.
“Guh, guaaaaaahhh!! What is this?!”
“Gilsu! Gilsu?! What the hell is this!”
The children’s pupils dilated as they traced upward along the elongated thing that had pierced through Gilsu.
A long hose-like appendage stretched upward, connecting all the way to the massive street tree above.
At that location was the owner of that hose—its tongue.
“!”
Everyone panicked.
‘Without a sound…?!’
Almond was no exception.
[Panic]
[All stats decrease by 90%. Unconsciousness occurs if sustained for 30 seconds or more.]
‘Damn.’
However….
[Sense of Responsibility → Fighting Spirit]
[All status abnormalities are cleared for 30 seconds, and all stats increase by 20%]
My position was different from theirs.

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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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