Player of a Ruined World - Chapter 70

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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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Player of the Ruined World – Episode 070
Park Sanghun opened his notebook and picked up a pen, then spoke while looking at Do Sohee.
“So Hee, I’ll draw just one more page.”
“Sure thing.”
Park Sanghun’s hand moved swiftly across the paper.
His drawing skills were quite good, making it easy to recognize the subject.
“It looked like this.”
Looking at the picture Park Sanghun had drawn, I nearly burst out laughing.
“That’s right, that’s her. The Zombie King’s Daughter from No Way Home.”
“This is?”
“Yeah.”
Those Prophets.
They’re trying to use the Zombie King’s child as a hostage to control him.
The attempt itself isn’t bad, but that method is bound to fail.
They know one thing but are ignorant of two others.
“Doyun, so those Prophets over there are the ones who cleared the fourth episode?”
I lifted the corners of my mouth in response to Park Sangha’s question.
“No. They haven’t cleared it.”
“Isn’t creating a religion a strategy that requires knowledge of the fourth episode?”
“It’s incomplete information.”
I explained the fourth episode in a way everyone could understand.
“In No Way Home, specifically in the fourth episode, there’s this setting.”
The name of the Zombie King in the game.
Evan.
He followed his wife to church every weekend.
His wife was a devout believer who thought everything was decided by God’s will.
Evan didn’t like his wife’s fanatical faith, but because he loved her, he attended church every weekend.
He thought that as long as she was happy, that was enough.
Then a daughter was born—a child worth more than anything in the world—and Evan’s thoughts began to change.
A desire for his daughter’s safety and happiness.
A wish for her to grow up safe and healthy, to avoid hardship and develop righteously.
Such feelings led Evan, who had never believed in God, toward the church.
For his daughter’s sake alone, he decided to try believing in God.
The members of The Great Dominion have only confirmed the fourth episode’s setting up to this point.
The truly important content comes later.
Park Sangil asked while crossing his arms.
“They created a religion because of that setting?”
“Yes, they were hoping the Zombie King would participate in The Great Dominion.”
“So the public information you mentioned is that, and the undisclosed information is what?”
“What I’m about to tell you is a story that only those who cleared the fourth episode can know.”
“….”
“If you happen to meet someone who knows about this, please be cautious.”
One day, while offering prayers at the church as usual.
An unidentified virus spread, and Evan’s Wife lost her reason and became a rampaging Zombie.
Evan struggled to escape the church with his daughter in tow.
He ended up hiding with a group of Survivors in an abandoned building near the church.
The problem was that a horde of Zombies had followed them from the church, and Evan’s Wife was among them.
-Huh? Mom!
When his daughter mistook the Zombie for her mother and rushed out saying mom had returned, Evan kicked open the entrance to protect his daughter.
He hurriedly tried to carry his daughter back into the abandoned building, but the Survivors who had escaped the church with him refused to open the door.
-Open it, open it right now!! Open the door!!
The believers who had prayed with him used Evan and his daughter as bait.
-Grraaahhh!!
In the end… Evan, still cradling his daughter, was bitten on the shoulder by his wife, now transformed into a Zombie.
Bleeding, transforming into a Zombie, enduring agony that made his blood boil and his head feel like it would burst, he ran on with his daughter clutched in his arms.
Betrayal, humiliation, injustice.
Leaving behind all the emotions swirling in his mind, driven by the obsession to save his daughter, he ran home without rest.
The moment he arrived home, he hid his daughter in the master bedroom, then gripped a kitchen knife and entered the Bathroom.
It was to end his own life before losing consciousness.
But just before severing his carotid artery, one worry flashed through his mind.
-If I die… who will protect my daughter.
Evan, trapped in a fate where he could not become a Zombie, remain as he was, or die.
He gritted his teeth, swallowing tears of blood.
And he thought.
That there was no God in this world.
That God was dead.
That if God existed, he could not die until he killed Him first.
The time it takes to transform into a Zombie ranges from a few seconds to one minute.
Since more than a minute had already passed, Evan hurriedly went to the Living Room and prepared a rope.
He climbed onto a chair, wrapped the rope around the ceiling fan, and looped it around his neck.
If he became a Zombie and thrashed about, the chair would fall and he could end his life; if he retained his reason, he would survive as a human.
He struggled on the boundary between life and death.
But his mind grew increasingly hazy, and the Zombie virus spread even to his brain.
In the end… he lost consciousness in that state.
-…Gasp!
When he regained consciousness again, he felt that he was alive.
A world that appeared clearly and a mind that possessed reason.
-I’m alive, I’m alive!
Just as he was about to cry out in jubilation and step down from the chair.
He came to realize something.
There was nothing beneath my feet—only the full-length mirror in the living room reflecting a single zombie suspended by its neck from the ceiling fan.
I was already dead.
A corpse without life, yet a mind still conscious.
I had become an animated cadaver, thrashing against the rope that held me.
My body moved of its own accord, defiant against my will.
Crack—snap! Thud!
In the struggle, the ceiling fan shattered, and I plummeted to the living room floor.
The rope had left a vivid mark across my neck.
Yet I felt no pain—only a single primal instinct gnawing at my reason.
A hunger that twisted my insides.
The craving for human flesh had been seared into my mind.
The moment I understood I was dead, the fragile thread of sanity I’d been clinging to began to unravel.
—Ah… Dad?
At that sound, my daughter emerged from the bedroom, and upon seeing her, I found myself torn between instinct and reason.
My body yearned to devour her, while a threadbare strand of consciousness desperately resisted.
No.
I can’t.
Never… please…!
In that moment, my daughter, hesitating at the sight of what I had become, tears glistening in her eyes, rushed into my arms and embraced me.
As her warmth spread through my entire body, my fading reason began to return.
Thump!
I held my daughter close, tears streaming down my face like rain.
—Grrr… grrr…
No words came.
My body was already that of a zombie.
I could no longer communicate with my daughter.
Yet even this worthless father was embraced tenderly by her.
It was my daughter’s existence, my will to protect her, that transformed me into a Mutant.
As I finished the story, Park Sangil’s eyes grew moist.
“Big brother, are you crying?”
Park Sanghun noticed Park Sangil’s expression and looked startled, prompting him to quickly turn away and wipe his tears.
Hearing the story I’d told, he must have thought of Kyeongeo.
If something so terrible were to happen to him… could he endure it as Evan did?
That’s what he was thinking.
Park Sangha flicked Park Sanghun on the forehead and spoke.
“Don’t mess around.”
“Huh? I wasn’t messing around. I was just asking.”
Park Sangha smacked his lips and looked at me.
“That’s the story that appears after clearing the fourth episode?”
“Yes. After that, episodes related to the Zombie King continue to appear, and the story progresses further.”
“….”
“Ultimately, we need the Zombie King to end this game. We can create a vaccine using his blood.”
Those so-called Prophets in the Great Dominion never cleared the fourth episode, so they lack this information.
They saw only the religious setting at the beginning and created a pseudo-religious organization—idiots.
They seemed to be trying to establish an atmosphere through the religious setting and show the Zombie King that this place is a foundation where he can raise a child properly, but that’s a miscalculation.
It only fuels the Zombie King’s rage—his hatred of God.
Park Sangha fell silent, organizing his thoughts before asking in a serious tone.
“Baek Doyun, the true ending you mentioned—is the difference between the true ending and the sub-ending perhaps whether the Zombie King survives?”
Park Sangha, as sharp as ever.
“That’s correct. You can only see the true ending if you keep the Zombie King alive.”
“Then the sub-ending… ends with vaccine development failing?”
“Yes. You can only create the vaccine by extracting blood from a living Zombie King. Blood extracted after death causes side effects.”
“Side effects meaning… surely the people who received the vaccine don’t….”
“Yes, that’s exactly what happens. They transform into Zombies.”
“….”
“It’s humanity’s extinction.”
After I finished explaining everything, Park Sanghun, who had been listening quietly, asked in disbelief.
“An extinction ending?”
“Yeah. Everyone across the entire world cleanly transforms into Zombies.”
“Huh, I don’t understand.”
“What don’t you understand?”
“That no one but you ever thought of making the Zombie King an ally while playing No Way Home.”
“Who would think to team up with a Zombie in a Zombie game?”
“….”
“The game settings are designed that way too. Following the story makes it impossible to think of it.”
“….”
“When you encounter the Zombie King, you’re meant to flee, and he’s designed like a boss you can’t defeat.”
As I explained calmly, Elder Chulmin scratched the bridge of his nose and asked.
“So Baek Doyun, you’ve seen both the ending where you kill the Zombie King and the ending where you keep him alive?”
“That’s correct.”
“Didn’t you say before that making the Zombie King an ally was unimaginable?”
“I said that only applied to the fourth episode.”
Elder Chulmin crossed his arms, his expression troubled, then asked with a slight cough.
“Then… which episode do you need to reach to see the true ending?”
“I saw the true ending in the fifteenth episode. I succeeded in persuading the Zombie King in the fourteenth episode, and then succeeded in vaccine development in the very next cycle.”
“And the sub-ending?”
“I saw it in the twentieth episode.”
“What? The failed ending is longer than the true ending?”
“Yes. That’s how I realized… ultimately, you can’t see an ending unless you join hands with the Zombie King.”
“Then if we can join hands with the Zombie King in our current situation, does that mean we could potentially end the game in the third episode?”
“That’s correct.”
“…!”
I could see everyone’s eyes gleaming with sudden intensity.
At an unexpectedly rapid pace, the possibility of reaching the end abruptly had awakened them all.
However, one person—Park Sangil—asked with a voice full of doubt.
“Would Gaia really allow that? She must have prepared many episodes.”
The Giant Zombie hunt that had proceeded as an emergency episode.
Gaia had intervened then as well.
There was no guarantee she wouldn’t intervene this time.
“I’m worried about that too. Whether Gaia will delete all the remaining episodes and acknowledge our ending—I can’t say for certain.”
“….”
“If Gaia intervenes and tries to push us to continue playing, then we’ll have to reconsider at that point.”
Then Do Sohee, who had remained silent until now, picked up the diary resting on the table and spoke.
“Um… wouldn’t it be better to focus on the present for now? We can think about those things after we’ve brought the Zombie King to our side….”
“So Hee’s right. Let’s first figure out what to do about The Great Dominion and the Zombie King.”
As Park Sangha agreed with Do Sohee’s words, everyone’s gaze concentrated on me.
Eyes seeking an answer.
I quietly stroked my chin and fell into thought.
“When I played No Way Home… I said I failed to bring the Zombie King to my side in the fourth episode, didn’t I?”
“You did.”
“And I also said that bringing the Zombie King to my side in the fourth episode was virtually impossible.”
“Yeah.”
“The reason for that is about to become clear.”
Seeing my companions’ confused expressions, I let out a sigh and continued.
“Regardless of when the Zombie King at the school became that way, the fact that he remained bound so obediently means he hadn’t been a Zombie King for more than two weeks.”
“Two weeks? Is there some kind of standard for that?”
“Yes. If the Zombie King can’t find his child even after two weeks pass… he enters a berserk state.”
“…What?”
“In No Way Home, I once kidnapped the Zombie King’s Daughter to negotiate with him. In the fourth episode.”
“Kidnapped?”
“Yes.”
“…So.”
“At that time, I found the Zombie King’s Daughter too late, so his legion had already formed by then. I had his daughter with me, but I was in no position to approach the Zombie King.”
“….”
“Since I couldn’t just abandon his daughter, I kept her with me, but after two weeks passed, the Zombie King went berserk.”
Everyone stared at me with dumbfounded expressions.
They didn’t say anything outright, but their faces all screamed the same thing—Baek Doyun was no ordinary person.

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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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