The Regressor Only Protects Me [EN]: Chapter 23

＃23. Unqualified Human (2)

“From now on, we will capture the Black Team’s King. Everyone, prepare yourselves.”

I stood up completely from my seat and commanded the Red Team members.

The moment I stood, my thigh throbbed with pain.

I wasn’t in a state where I could move perfectly yet, but it wasn’t to the point where I couldn’t move at all.

Lee Joo-yeon was startled and approached me.

“Ah, if you move…!”

“From now on, acting alone is prohibited.”

When I spoke sternly to the people, Lee Joo-yeon immediately backed down.

People were about to get up from their seats, abandoning their food.

A middle-aged man approached and spoke.

I remembered his face.

He was the one who had been at the forefront, ruthlessly stabbing the Blue Team with a spear.

His build was quite large.

He was a very large figure to me, who was below average height.

He approached me as if threatening me and asked.

“Acting alone is prohibited, what does that mean?”

“It means exactly what it says.”

After saying that, I looked around at them.

Everyone here was looking only at me.

“From now on, do not stray from my sight. I’m telling you to try not to stray from my sight.”

“Wh-what if! We stray away?!”

A fairly young man behind the middle-aged man shouted.

One of his eyeglass lenses was broken.

I looked at the eyeglass man and said.

“I will kill you.”

At that moment, the air grew heavy.

Everyone stiffened and trembled, their faces pale.

The middle-aged man at the very front shouted.

“K-kill us?! H-how can you say that?!”

“From this moment on, if you stray from my sight, I will consider you the Black Team’s King. So please, I beg you, do not do anything that would make me suspicious.”

No matter what complaints they had, I would capture the Black Team’s King.

Roughly, several people were on the list of candidates, but nothing was certain yet.

There were still things I hadn’t confirmed, so until I confirmed them, I had no choice but to prohibit individual activities.

The moment individual activities were allowed, there would be many variables to consider.

But it wasn’t that I hadn’t anticipated their backlash.

The eyeglass man shouted at me in an annoyed voice.

“What are you saying! Please, be reasonable!”

It was definitely a different attitude than before.

As Lee Se-beom said, it seemed like they had exchanged some words among themselves.

Everyone paid attention to the eyeglass man’s nervous voice.

The eyeglass man almost sobbed as he continued to shout.

“It’s true that you’re the King, but you’re not in a position to do whatever you want with us, are you? Are you the president? Are you my parents?! This is too much! How can you say such things so carelessly?”

Some of the Red Team members nodded as if they agreed.

Normally, I would have felt something, but right now, I didn’t feel anything at all.

Because I had no intention of backing down even one step.

“Do whatever you want if you want to die.”

“Ah.”

I was getting tired of this.

I couldn’t postpone my work because of their absurd demands.

Until now, we had united to deal with external enemies, but from now on, we had to root out internal enemies.

In the meantime, if they didn’t listen and engaged in individual activities, I wouldn’t hesitate.

I still had a powerful weapon, a pistol, left.

They couldn’t know how many bullets were left in my pistol’s chamber.

There were only two bullets left, but that alone would be a great threat to the Red Team.

Thump-!

At that moment, Kwon Kyung-soo burst in from the theater entrance.

“Haa… Haa…!”

Kwon Kyung-soo was breathing heavily.

And Kwon Kyung-soo frowned at the unusual atmosphere.

Jin Jae-hee followed behind him.

* * *

The Red Team members began searching again from the first basement floor.

The biggest goal was to find the Black Team’s King.

If I couldn’t find the Black Team’s King in this expedition, I had to admit it.

That the Black Team’s King was among the 11 people walking in front of me.

“There’s a high probability that Kwon Kyung-soo is the Black Team’s King. We need to prepare. Or eliminate him now.”

Jin Jae-hee, who was walking beside me, said cautiously.

Without turning to look at her, I asked.

“What’s the basis?”

“He kept asking you for a gun, and when you were asleep, he kept wandering around inside the shopping mall. At first, he brought a little food, but after that, he didn’t bring anything. Something’s suspicious.”

Jin Jae-hee glanced around and spoke quietly.

I stopped walking and called her to a halt.

And said.

“That’s just speculation.”

Of course, I had thought several times that Kwon Kyung-soo might be the Black Team’s King.

The fact that he kept asking me for a gun, or that he was talking to people about something.

Above all, what Lee Se-beom had told me came to mind.

But there was no evidence.

If the ‘Black Team’s King’ was inducing me to suspect Kwon Kyung-soo, I would be dragged around by him.

I wanted to avoid that at all costs.

“First, finding the Blue Team’s King inside this shopping mall is the priority. If we find the Blue Team’s King, we’ll find some clues about why the Blue Team’s King is dead now.”

I turned my head and walked away.

And then I turned back to look at Jin Jae-hee.

“And when the Blue Team’s King died, you weren’t there either, were you? So that means you could be the King. What if revealing that you’re a regression [someone who has returned from the future] was intentional?”

Startled by my words, Jin Jae-hee tried to defend herself.

“Ah, ha, but I.”

“But you. What?”

“Ah….”

Jin Jae-hee’s eyelids trembled as if she was flustered, and then she lowered her head.

“Ah, no. You’re right.”

Jin Jae-hee seemed to be holding back something she wanted to say.

But I didn’t have the luxury to listen to her next words right now.

We had spent quite a lot of time here.

I didn’t want to waste any more time.

The Red Team searched the first basement floor and came up to the first floor.

It was the scene of a fierce battle just a few hours ago.

The sight was gruesome.

People were about to go up to the second floor, shining their flashlights haphazardly.

But I called them to a halt.

“Stab the corpses with the spears one by one.”

More than confirmation kills, I was thinking about the variable that the Black Team’s King might be disguised as a ‘corpse’.

People glanced at each other and hesitated.

No matter how they were, they didn’t want to stab the corpses of the already dead.

But they had to stab.

The hope that the Black Team’s King was not among us, but among the corpses.

The probability was low, but I didn’t want to miss that case.

People walked between the corpses, holding their mops one by one.

Stab! Stab!

The human body was pierced so easily.

It was so different from living flesh.

Thick blood flowed out from between the pierced skin.

The long-dead corpses had decayed contents gushing out just by stabbing them.

Several hours of work continued.

From the first floor to the seventh floor.

More than physical pain, the mental pain would have been greater.

I don’t know how much time had passed, but people were already exhausted.

Every time, Kwon Kyung-soo said.

“Um… Sion. How about giving people a little rest?”

“No.”

Every time, I refused firmly.

Because my death meant the death of everyone on the Red Team.

Everyone on the Red Team knew that fact.

That’s why they had no choice but to follow.

Stab the corpses, stab and stab again.

Even while committing inhumane acts, people were holding on to their minds with the will to live.

The Black Team’s King was a meticulous person.

The fact that he hadn’t shown himself even once so far clearly meant that he was plotting something for sure.

I didn’t want to get caught up in such a Black Team’s plan.

Several hours passed.

We had checked all the way up to the 11th floor.

Nevertheless, there were no survivors.

Also, we couldn’t find anyone who could be called the Blue Team’s King.

Of course, we couldn’t find the Black Team’s King either.

Everyone was sitting on the 11th floor, exhausted and collapsed.

Some grumbled and complained.

Their voices were heard one after another.

“Against an old man… ha… geez… haiguya… [a Korean expression of exhaustion and frustration].”

“My back and calves… there’s not a single part of my body that’s okay. You couldn’t have let us rest a little while doing it.”

Most of the older people complained.

I was aware of those complaints, but I had no intention of resolving them.

Because the goal doesn’t change anyway.

“Is this all over?”

Jin Jae-hee cautiously approached and said.

I nodded slightly and looked at my thigh, which was stained with blood.

The bandage was stained red again with blood.

I was sweating a little.

In fact, just walking was a lot to handle.

“Is it really over?”

I asked Jin Jae-hee again for confirmation.

If this was really the end, it was time to make a decision.

Jin Jae-hee hesitated for a moment, then spoke again as if she had remembered something.

“I threw the corpses in the elevator shaft. There must be about 30 of them.”

“Elevator shaft?”

After hearing her words, I headed to the nearest elevator.

When I opened the door and shone a flashlight down, there were corpses tangled and piled up there.

Rats gnawing at the cheeks were also seen here and there.

As I was looking down, Jin Jae-hee, who had come to my side, looked down with me and said.

“It’s impossible to take out those corpses and check them all again.”

I nodded slightly.

No matter how much of a goal there was, it didn’t make sense to drag out those corpses one by one and check them again.

But there was a solution.

“Incinerate them all.”

Burn them.

Jin Jae-hee answered without hesitation to my words.

“Okay.”

She went somewhere and soon came back with a container full of oil.

It was a large-capacity cooking oil container used in restaurants.

Without hesitation, she poured the cooking oil into the elevator shaft.

Pour, pour-.

The cooking oil poured like a waterfall onto the pile of corpses.

The rats, startled by the sudden pouring of oil, scattered here and there.

Jin Jae-hee took out a cigarette, lit it, and inhaled.

She lit the cigarette and dropped the ash there.

The ash fell through the pure white smoke.

Whirling, whirling.

The ash fell, emitting a faint light, and collided with the pile of corpses.

Soon, a fire soared.

Whoosh-!

Black smoke began to fill the elevator shaft.

I stared blankly at it.

The ones in that place are by no means alive.

I will not have any sympathy or pity.

I just pray for their souls.

That was all.

After watching it closely and confirming that the notification window was not responding, I got up.

When I got up and turned around, Kwon Kyung-soo was there.

Kwon Kyung-soo was staring at me blankly.

With a flushed expression, his lips were blue.

Kwon Kyung-soo was looking at me as if he was looking at a monster.

But when I made eye contact with him, he naturally avoided my gaze.

Just now.

I felt like something was breaking between him and me.

At that time, Lee Se-beom ran from the opposite side.

He took a breath and said to me.

“I think I found the Blue Team’s King…”

I frowned.

The Blue Team’s King?

Not the Black Team?

Everyone turned to look at Lee Se-beom at his words.

We naturally followed him.

* * *

That place was a hidden floor that could be accessed from the 11th floor.

If you opened the tightly closed door, there was another staircase there.

The survivors climbed the stairs.

Step, step.

An unknown silence flowed as they climbed each step.

At the end of the stairs was the 12th floor.

The 12th floor that ordinary customers could not enter.

That place was an office space used by employees.

Click.

Sion, who was in the front row, turned on his flashlight and gradually walked into the dark space.

There were no corpses here.

No, rather, it was as clean as ever.

I couldn’t even imagine that it was the aftermath of the world’s end.

On both sides were the office spaces of ordinary employees, and at the end of the hallway was a door with a nameplate that said Branch Manager’s Office.

Sion carefully opened the door.

Creak-.

They couldn’t help but be surprised to see the person in that room.

Sion frowned.

(To be continued in the next episode)