Chapter 2 - Levan
Baldur City.
A mansion in the high-class residential district.
"Back then, that Plum Blossom Sword God drew his sword from his waist and made a sword aura as big as a whole house······"
"······."
Jet-black hair, a small frame.
Ingrid van Rena, the second daughter of the chairman of Van Bio Company, a magic-sector pharmaceutical corporation headquartered in Baldur City.
Her delicate eyebrows furrowed slightly.
"Levan? You told that story last time too."
"Ah, did i?"
When Rena lightly scolded him, Levan—who had been standing beside her and continuing the tale—stopped speaking.
Personal attendant Levan.
A gift she received from her chairman father the year she turned exactly ten.
Not an android or humanoid made to imitate humans, but a real "human" attendant—custom-made from birth solely for her.
Someone who grew up with her from childhood, always becoming Rena's absolute ally and friend.
Of course.
'······damn it.'
The fact that this personal attendant had lived through four reincarnations, and that the story just now wasn't some fantasy novel stitched together from data by an AI, but something he had actually experienced in his 3rd playthrough—were things Rena had no way of knowing.
'Reading fairy tales to a girl with insomnia… if Master saw this, he'd flip out.'
Levan lamented his situation to himself for a moment, then recalled a certain story.
"Then have i told you this one too?"
"What is it?"
"One day i saw a group holed up in a safe shelter, monopolizing the food. About ten of them. Outside the shelter, people were crowding in—humans who'd come after hearing rumors there was food and a hiding place inside."
Levan's voice, dark and low.
As Rena listened quietly, he continued in an even tone.
"They were funny bastards. They said if you answered their riddle, they'd let you in and even give you food. After watching a few times, it was true—they really did let you in if you got it right. But something was strange: anyone who went in never came back out. There was only one entrance."
His 2nd playthrough: the Zombie Apocalypse.
A world where it wouldn't be strange no matter how grotesque things got.
"Think about it. They killed every single one who entered. The more food, the better. After six idiots got taken like that, i set the shelter on fire. The ones on fire went mad and rushed out. I shot them one by one, starting with the ugliest, then tossed them back in."
"······."
Rena, who had been listening with held breath, swallowed hard.
It might be a fictional story instantly assembled by an AI out of text, but it felt like he was recounting something he'd truly lived through.
Levan kept going.
"And then, the idiots outside the shelter grabbed me and asked me something. Wanna know what? They asked if, once the fire went out, they could go in together and eat."
As the story grew more and more grotesque—
"···ugh, what is that?"
Rena finally gagged, sick of it.
Levan, watching her with a satisfied face, abruptly changed his tone and bowed politely.
A chance to escape his troublesome owner's clutches.
"My lady."
"······huh?"
"It's far too late, so i must turn off the lights. I regret your insomnia, but please have a comfortable night."
"!?"
Rena's eyes widened.
After telling something that awful, he was just going to cut it off in the middle and leave? There were limits to how much you could make someone feel unsettled.
Flustered, she hurriedly shouted and stretched out her arm.
"Hey, Levan—!"
But.
Levan had already disappeared.
Inside the pitch-black, silent bedroom.
Feeling something sticky, as if someone were watching her, Rena squeezed her eyes shut and timidly pulled the blanket up.
***
The end of the day.
A corridor leading from Rena's bedroom to the attendants' quarters.
Turning his head to look out the glass window, he could see, far in the distance, the skyline of the central business district of Baldur City, one of the seven megacities that formed the "Federation".
"······."
No matter how many times he saw it, it was a view that made his mouth fall open.
A deeply dark, gloomy sky.
Skylines of supertall buildings soaring up toward the underside of that sky brightly illuminated the dark cityscape, and along neon lines stretching from rooftop to rooftop, work carriers shaped like tiny spacecraft moved back and forth.
On one side of the business district stood towers belonging to magic-sector corporations; on the other, rows of oriental-style high-rises symbolizing Murim-sector corporations stretched on as if competing.
Among those skyscrapers, the most striking was a supertall pavilion, its alloy roof tiles packed densely like dragon scales.
That overwhelming pavilion belonged to the upper-tier mega-corp, Wudang Corporation, and it was ten times more splendid and grand than even the finest brothel he'd seen during his 3rd playthrough in the Central Plains.
"Wudang is Wudang wherever you go."
At first, there was no choice but to be amazed.
A world that slightly deviated from common sense.
It was strange enough that the Murim sector and the magic sector existed divided under a single world, but a world fused with cutting-edge technology at least half a century ahead of 21st-century Earth?
A world where you could buy heavily encrypted martial arts and magic data chips, "download" them, and master them; where advances in cyberware and nanotech meant even if an arm was severed, you could replace it with cyberware parts.
Even up until the moment Genie injected the memories into him, he hadn't believed it.
And then—
Even the cities of heterogeneous races, who had developed steam engines to their limits, were part of the Federation.
They said it was a city of steam and brass where elves, vampires, dwarves, and the like lived in the majority… if he succeeded in escaping, maybe one day he'd see it with his own eyes.
I turned my gaze to the opposite side of the business district.
They said the city was only about the size of Seoul, but it had everything.
At this hour, the central entertainment district, packed with neon lighting and signs, would be swarming with every kind of rabble.
Guys hunting limited-edition drugs, guys kicked out of casinos. Guys looking for sex toys to satisfy their fetishes, guys whose crotches were just bored, guys robbing people, guys looking for a skilled fixer, and so on.
And beyond that noisy entertainment core, past the slum-like outer satellite towns, outside the massive wall…
"Damn, it'd be better if there weren't any zombies."
The finishing touch on this world's masterpiece… here, they called them "undying corpses" or "Undead".
Different words, same thing—just zombies.
So in this world, the damned zombies he'd endured in his 2nd playthrough apocalypse existed in plain sight.
According to the memories injected by Genie—
[ Among the Undead, the most famous named individual recently is "Gareuk", who was hiding in Odin City, murdered the legendary level 9 Federal Executor "Mori Murata", and escaped without a scratch. Isn't that terrifying? ]
Level 9 was, in Murim terms, the Hwagyeong.
By the standards of his 4th playthrough in Raagis, a 7th Circle mage—about as strong as the Kingdom Archmage of the Royal Magic Tower.
Humanity's overall combat level might be the highest among the worlds he'd lived through so far, but…
If that Executor was that powerful, and it still killed him, then it meant this zombie was incomparably stronger than the zombies he'd known in his 2nd playthrough apocalypse world.
Worse, the Gareuk incident happened about fifteen years ago—back when he was still inside the incubator, receiving information injections from the AI Genie.
After all this time, it might be even stronger now.
From his experience in the apocalypse, the longer a zombie survived, the more it mutated and evolved—becoming stronger and smarter.
In the apocalypse, he'd seen a twenty-year-old specimen smash an armored vehicle bare-handed, or throw chunks of concrete from a rooftop to shoot down a helicopter.
But in this world, zombies had first appeared a full "150 years" ago.
[ Did you know? There's a rumor that the reason named Undead confirmed at least level 9—like "Parumuchi". "Akbu", "Guroshin", "Gareuk", and "Nokryangbaekryang"—don't attack the cities is because they're waiting for the Federation's three heroes, the Three Venerables, to grow old and die. Humans grow old and die someday, but the Undead don't age and don't die, so they just keep getting stronger as time passes. ]
There was no answer in sight.
Even excluding the confirmed ones, how many more unimaginable monsters might be roaming that land beyond the wall…?
It was a miracle the Federation still hadn't fallen.
Well, with things like this, wasn't it inevitable that the entire continent had become the zombies' land?
Driven insane by the scent of humans, those things had left only seven megacities—and a handful of regions—tiny specks compared to the continent's total area.
A world of advanced civilization that had been on the verge of entering space—building even a colossal orbital station—had been forced down to this state since the zombies appeared 150 years ago.
And beyond the wall, it wasn't only zombies that wandered.
Outside the city were biomechanical things, polluted and pickled by radiation and chemical deposits; lethal mines left unrecovered after the great war between the Murim sector and the magic sector; ownerless humanoids and abandoned military androids; escaped criminals, and more—roaming hand in hand across an extremely dangerous land.
Travel and logistics between the seven megacities of the Federation were mostly only possible via airborne carriers, which meant the land beyond that wall was a hell beyond imagining.
In a world that seemed like it had deliberately gathered only dangerous things together, my goal—though i was only an attendant right now—was simple.
Not zombie hunting, not some grand ambition like reclaiming humanity's lost lands.
Tuk, tuk—
'First, i need to rip out the control chip.'
Escape from slavery.
In the reflection of the glass, i saw myself—a boy who'd only just shed his childlike look. Slightly taller than average for my age, an ordinary frame, a face with a bland, blurry impression. And a thin, jagged piece of metal embedded beside my temple.
That metal was the full-brain control chip implanted from birth.
A brand that a normal custom-made human attendant—brainwashed since childhood by the virtual memory management program—would never even think of removing.
I wanted to tear it out right now, but if i tried to rip it out with brute force, i might end up half-crippled.
No matter how advanced the tech was, and even with magical processing layered on, it was connected to sensitive nerves.
I stopped walking for a moment and closed my eyes.
—Twitch.
Something stirred quietly in my Dantian.
My inner power—not even at the level of a third-rate thug.
The bare minimum inner power i'd built over the last ten years with nothing but breathing, avoiding the full-brain control chip's behavioral control and physical anomaly detection.
It was incomparably weaker than my Dantian in the 3rd playthrough, but this tiny scrap of power would act as a safety device to absorb the shock when i forcibly tore out the chip.
'If only it weren't a magic-sector corporation, i'd have done it long ago…'
If i could use magic, removing a mere control chip wouldn't be difficult, but… Van Bio Company was a magic-sector corporation.
If i hastily created a Mana circuit, i'd be exposed in less than a day.
Damn it.
I started walking again.
[ Attendant Levan. Confirmed. ]
When i arrived in front of the thick door to the attendant-only room in a corner of the mansion, it opened automatically.
A small room with only two beds and blankets. Compared to the futurized world, it was far too bare—an attendants' dorm. And there, someone greeted me with a bright smile.
"Levan! You're a bit late today?"
Deep dimples and a tall figure.
Bright blonde hair flowing down to the waist—an attractive appearance anyone would admit.
Merida, the personal attendant to the chairman's eldest daughter—and Rena's sister—"Ingrid van Rubenka", and a top-tier android.
"Anyone would think you were human."
"You're saying something random again."
Humanoid: a general term for machines with human-like appearances. And android, a more advanced stage, are artificial humans possessing not only form and intelligence, but even human emotions.
Especially at the top-tier level—absurdly expensive—things like touch, speech, even breathing were so similar that they were indistinguishable from a human, and Merida was exactly like that.
Sometimes even i mistook Merida for a human.
"Levan, what do you think about all day?"
"Nothing special."
"Hm···."
Merida naturally came over and lay down beside me. Staring at me with wide-open eyes, she formed a bewitching smile and spoke.
"Want me to hug you, just once? If you want, i can comfort you all night."
"Stop talking nonsense and go sleep."
At my firm reply, she burst into laughter.
"It's a joke, but you're so serious. Don't tell me you actually got your hopes up?"
"······."
"Given Rubenka-nim's personality, there's no way she'd allow us to mix bodies with each other. So, Levan—could you go back to your spot now?"
"Merida, that's my bed."
"Don't be shy."
"······."
A life being toyed with by the pranks of a mere machine.
I'll escape no matter what.
#Episode 3. Menial chores of Hwagyeong attendants