I Reincarnated Into a Healing Game… and It’s a Zombie Apocalypse?! - Chapter 95

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 95

13. The Last Festival

Today, the Royal Palace’s banquet hall was dazzlingly splendid as always.

Noblewomen waved their fans while discussing perfumes and jewelry, and gentlemen clinked glasses as they laughed and chatted.

Prince Sam, who should rightfully be standing at the center of the banquet as its main character, was leaning against the wall with his head hung low.

On the long dining table, luxurious food was abundantly placed among silver candlesticks, crystal glasses, and pure white porcelain, but everything looked disgusting to Sam’s eyes.

Knowing where that food came from and how it was made, he simply couldn’t bring himself to touch any of it.

After the garden party ended, the season transitioned into winter.

The Royal Palace’s scenery appeared no different from before on the surface, but the atmosphere had completely changed.

Since the day Nana destroyed the farm, the deformed prosperity that had sustained the Royal Palace was rapidly heading toward its end.

At first, no one wanted to acknowledge the cracks. But as the comfort they had taken for granted evaporated one by one, instinctive fear slowly spread beneath their elegant masks.

The banquets became more shabby with each passing day.

Even the splendor spread before his eyes now was crude compared to the days when the farm was intact.

The variety of food had been cut in half, and the decorations adorning the banquet hall were merely items pulled out from storage warehouses.

Even the arrogance of the upper class, who never looked twice at anything they had used once, crumbled helplessly in the face of poverty.

But instead of coming to their senses, they kept their eyes closed to the people’s suffering until the end, struggling to grasp even the remaining dregs of prosperity.

Sam fled the hall and roughly threw open the balcony doors.

“Disgusting. I can’t even breathe because it’s so revolting.”

He gripped the railing and swallowed back his dry heaves. He almost envied Nana, who had escaped from the Royal Palace that day.

‘Nana must have gotten away safely, right?’

With that man by her side, she would surely be safe.

Sam wanted to run away from the Royal Palace right now too. But he was still essentially imprisoned under the pretext of house arrest.

Without the King’s permission, he couldn’t freely leave even a single room, and even when he barely managed to come outside, there was nothing he could call freedom due to the surveillance soldiers who followed him like shadows.

‘How on earth did this place end up like this?’

The father and mother he knew would never have acted this way in such a situation.

The nobles were also too different from his past memories.

But more than anything else, what he couldn’t understand was his mother’s absence.

The King made it taboo to even mention the Queen, and the nobles acted as if the Queen had never existed from the beginning.

Endless surveillance, stolen freedom, thoroughly blocked information.

Sam squeezed his eyes shut, acutely feeling how powerless a human being he was. It felt like burying his head in a pitch-black sewer.

That’s when it happened.

“…The Queen is also pitiful. If not for that accident, she would be enjoying a prosperous life like us.”

Sam’s eyes snapped open at the voices of two women coming from the balcony right next to him.

“You believe that story at face value. Slipping and falling. What a convenient explanation.”

“Shh, watch your words!”

The conversation was cut off as if suffocated. Sam worried they might leave, but fortunately the two women’s whispers continued.

“His Majesty himself declared that incident an accident. There’s nothing good that comes from wagging your tongue about it.”

“But from what I’ve found out, there was red dust on Her Majesty the Queen’s dress hem. You know, right? That’s dust that only exists in the Northern Tower. But how could such traces be found on the clothes of someone who died in an accident on the Separate Palace stairs?”

“Stop! Don’t say any more!”

A sharp restraint followed, and silence flowed for a moment. Soon a voice followed, spat out lowly with a short sigh.

“…So you knew after all. How frightening. That everyone in this Royal Palace is a bystander turning away from the truth. Truly despicable.”

Soon footsteps faded away one after another, and quiet descended again with the sound of a door closing.

Sam stood there frozen in place, alone.

What… what story did I just hear?

The Queen Mother passed away? No, her death might not have been an accident? And everyone is turning away from that fact while even father covered it up as an accident?

As the shocking information rushed in all at once, Sam’s mind went blank.

With the sensation of the marble beneath his feet crumbling, he staggered and leaned against the nearest wall.

His mind gradually settled with the cold touch of the wall.

I need to directly confirm whether what those two women said is true.

He gritted his teeth and resolved.

To escape from this palace by any means necessary and find Brody to hear the truth.

* * *

At the very moment Sam was resolving to escape the Royal Palace.

Nana, who had just returned to the manor from the winter festival, collapsed onto the sofa in front of the fireplace as soon as she closed the room door.

“Ugh, I thought I was going to freeze to death.”

When she pulled over the thick blanket that had been neatly placed beside her and covered herself completely, the warmth spreading from the fireplace and the coziness of the blanket seeped in all at once, and her frozen fingertips and toes relaxed drowsily.

‘On days like this, the rule is to sit on a warm floor and eat tangerines.’

No matter how much she thought about it, the hot water boiler was humanity’s greatest invention. Respect to the ancestors who created ondol.

As Nana crouched in front of the crackling fireplace warming herself by the fire, she suddenly remembered the charm she had received at the night market earlier and pulled out a small scroll rolled up from her outer coat pocket.

“I think it was called a love charm.”

What does the inside look like?

She untied the leather string and unfolded the paper.

“Th-this is…!”

What was revealed before her eyes wasn’t some mystical pattern passed down from ancient times. There were only childishly gaudy drawings like hearts going pop-pop and stars twinkling.

“…”

It was something she would never have bought if she had been asked to pay for it.

Moreover, at the very bottom of the charm, written in a pretentiously stylish handwriting, it said:

[Love Spell: Pingluhu-tangrama-deuk-jjong-i-ba-du]

‘Haha, what is this. It was just clearing out inventory?’

Nana chuckled and crumpled up the charm with both hands.

But right at that moment, a dazzling light leaked from Nana’s hands and a System Message covered her vision.

【Adrienne Rogueton has used a Hidden Dungeon Pass. Moving to dungeon.】

What? Me? When?

Before Nana could protest, the room twisted and her vision spun as if the floor was collapsing. And when she came to her senses, it wasn’t the scenery of the room she had been in.

“…”

What spread before her eyes wasn’t the appearance of a commonly known dungeon.

Stone walls and wooden fences, well-maintained fields.

The peaceful and quiet appearance of a rural village where the sounds of dogs and chickens could be heard mixing peacefully in the distance.

But Nana’s expression as she looked at this scenery seemed troubled.

“This is Sweet Little Village, isn’t it?”

Sweet Little Village was the space Nana had longed for more than anything else.

It was the place that first quenched the thirst of Song Nana, a modern person who dreamed of returning to farming, and even after her possession, it was a place more like home than home itself that made her feel the emotion of happiness most vividly.

Despite the disgustingly alien situation, the longing that poured out was more terrible.

As if enchanted, Nana reached out and gently brushed the foxtail grass blooming by the roadside.

It was chilling.

Because the soft and rough texture unique to foxtail grass was maddeningly vivid.

After thinking with a complicated expression for a moment, Nana raised her hand toward her cheek without hesitation. If it was a dream, she could just give herself a good slap and wake up.

At the moment when a smack should have echoed.

A large hand that suddenly shot through the air caught Nana’s wrist.

“What are you doing!”

When Nana looked up, Ishanka stood there with an urgent expression.

“Isha? Did you come here too?”

She thought she had fallen alone, but did Isha come along too?

Nana’s tightly stretched nerves relaxed a little.

“Why were you suddenly trying to harm yourself?”

“Self-harm? Ah, did it look like that? I was just trying to confirm whether this place is a dream or not. You can’t feel pain in dreams.”

“Even so, don’t do such things. Hit me instead.”

“Where would I hit you?”

“That’s the same for you too.”

Nana, who had been making eye contact for a moment, shook her head and changed the subject.

“Anyway, that’s not what’s important—how does this place look to your eyes?”

“It looks like a peaceful rural village.”

“If you and I are seeing the same scenery, then at least this isn’t my delusion or hallucination.”

But if it wasn’t a dream, it was even stranger.

Could such a peaceful scene really be a dungeon?

Then, as if responding to her question, a translucent system window appeared before her eyes.

【Welcome to the Hidden Dungeon.</p】

Player: Adrienne Rogueton

Party Members: Ishanka Aibanu Nanuk

The return option is currently disabled.

Please move into the village.

If you do not enter for an extended period, the system will proceed automatically regardless of the player’s will.>

It was a moment that revealed the system’s determination to get them inside no matter what.

‘I’m not even surprised anymore.’

Nana swallowed a sigh and firmly grasped Ishanka’s hand.

“Let’s go in.”

Once she had made up her mind, there was no reason to hesitate. Nana strode boldly into the village.

After walking only a short distance, familiar sights began to catch her eye one by one. Low stone walls, neat vegetable gardens, the sound of roosters crowing in the distance.

It was an eerily peaceful rural landscape.

Her rational mind kept warning her to be cautious in this strange situation. But in the face of nostalgia, her guard kept loosening.

Then she saw an old wooden building.

“Oh? That’s the village hall, isn’t it?”

Making her constant vigilance seem pointless, her feet moved toward the old building as if drawn by some force.

“That’s where I mainly received que… I mean, work. You see that bulletin board in front? Job postings like farm plowing part-time work or finding lost cats used to be posted there.”

Without realizing it, she became excited and chattered away non-stop.

“That red roof over there is Uncle Fred’s bakery, and that well over there was where all the village news gathered.”

Memories popped up at every turn of the alley. Ishanka let himself be led by Nana, who was taking the lead, silently gazing at her.

As they continued further along the path, a familiar house came into view.

“This is your farm.”

The rough stone walls, crooked fence, and well-worn farming tools. It was exactly as it had been when she first fell into this place.

Just as Nana was helplessly drowning in the nostalgia that came flooding over her, her previously clear vision suddenly became blurred, as if swallowed by thick fog.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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