Chapter 93 - Wildness-Optimized Villainous Noblewoman
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[Virtual VTuber Gallery]
[Live Commentary] Why is A-grade Virgin in a different genre, LOL.
Other VTubers are playing horror games, but she’s the only one doing hack-and-slash, LOL.
[Comments]
– Just soloing everyone with a dagger, seriously, LOL.
– Could she actually be a guy with a female voice?
– No way, a guy couldn’t pull that off…
– If she were a guy, Rion would’ve been pregnant already.
– Is that why Rion quit VTubing…?
– [No way, nya-kun]
***
[General Post] I’m not great with horror stuff
(link)
The young lady’s [zombie kills] make them drop like flies, so it’s not scary at all.
[Comments]
– It’s because she’s calm and has a strong stomach, LOL.
– But seriously, why is she roasting zombies to eat them?
– Gotta eat to survive.
– (Author) But shouldn’t a villainous noblewoman have refined taste?
– It’s villainous cuisine, so she’s a Villainous Noblewoman.
***
[General Post] Clears throat Oh… my beautiful… my love… Laura… heh… I want to… hold you~~@@
(Laura image)
Feels like it’s been~~ so long~~ since I last saw you~~ LOL!!
In all my life, never met a refined lady like you~~, Aurora~~!!
Though I’m 40 years old, heh… like some lovestruck fool in an epic romance, if only you would accept me… ^^
In my heyday!! Made plenty of ladies cry, but you’re the only one for me, LOL~~
Though I may not seem it! I’m quite the gentleman~~LOL.
Laura, come to me~~!!
[Comments]
– Is this Ainat’s doing?
***
Turns out, properly cooking zombie meat means you don’t get infected.
Now that I think about it, you could eat zombie meat in Minecraft too.
Are all sandbox games just like this?
This game must be difficult, and finding food is probably a pain.
Maybe they allowed players to eat zombies to adjust the difficulty.
Considering it’s still in early access, they might change it when it’s officially released.
Eating zombies might be a privilege we can only enjoy right now.
──But for Rion, it was a game detail she’d rather not know. Who in their right mind would want to eat zombie meat?
‘…Wait, why does that woman seem so familiar with it?’
Even the butane gas had questionable safety. Making fire was challenging, yet she scavenged some twigs and random materials and lit a fire right then and there.
Then she built a huge campfire on the rooftop and grilled a zombie over it.
“Could you select some safe chemicals for us to eat this?”
Laura spoke into her smartwatch.
《Identifying suitable items.》
A voice from a tiny earpiece chimed in as it highlighted the items.
It was an AI managing the hospital facilities, assigned to follow Laura’s team in the game.
A sort of guide character, akin to a helpful AI from Pokémon or a digital assistant from other games.
“Here, eat this with these chemicals.”
“…What is this?”
“If you eat it raw, it might harm your health. But thanks to the medicine we brought from the hospital, we can eat safely.”
To stave off hunger, they had to eat zombie meat with medicine. …Even the homeless would be living more humanely than this.
Laura took the lead, showing no hesitation.
With a calm and elegant expression, she chewed gracefully.
“Unnie, does it taste okay…?”
“Taste is a luxury for better times. Eating zombies is probably preferable to bugs, don’t you think?”
Laura smiled gently.
And after that, Laura kept adapting at an unsettling pace.
Climbing trees and streetlights.
Catching bugs and eating them.
Even crafting a harpoon to hunt squirrels.
-The first ever wildness-optimized noblewoman, LOL.
-Is she even a noblewoman?
-How can she be a young lady?
-Fake noblewoman, LOL.
-Just admit it, she’s a former special forces member, right?
-Laura Grills, LOL.
A wildness-optimized noblewoman.
…‘Wild’ and ‘noblewoman.’ How can two words so incompatible sit side by side?
Thanks to the survival expertise of our own Laura Grills, Rion, Sora, and Ainatsu managed to survive. Though, admittedly, they endured countless culinary horrors.
Eventually, they arrived safely at the shelter,
[To enter the shelter, please pay 5 million won per person.]
Hearing that right to their faces.
At the entrance to an underground passage, two robots stood guard.
It was hard to describe them as anything other than robots.
If one had to put it into words, they were like the “Big Data Drip” robots often seen in galleries.
But at least they could communicate, which was an advantage over zombies.
However, the guns they aimed made them equally dangerous.
“…5 million won? Are they seriously asking for money after the world’s ended?”
Sora muttered in disbelief.
[This facility is operated under the rules set by the Facility Manager. All uninfected humans may enter, but an entrance fee of 5 million won is required. Thank you for your understanding.]
“Can’t you let us in for free? Money’s pointless in a world like this….”
[We apologize, but these are the Facility Manager’s rules.]
“Sigh… who even is this ‘Facility Manager’?”
[We apologize, but we cannot disclose that information.]
The robots stood their ground without a hint of flexibility.
Fortunately, it seemed they wouldn’t shoot as long as no one made a hostile move. They answered questions quite honestly.
The information they gathered was as follows:
1. The shelter offers infinite safety time. If you log out here, there’s no risk of turning into a zombie.
2. Shelter entry costs 5 million won per visit. There’s no time limit, and once inside, you can stay indefinitely. However, if you leave and re-enter, you must pay another 5 million won.
3. The shelter only offers sleeping facilities, with no food available except water.
“So, if you want to log out safely, you have to pay.”
That was Laura’s conclusion.
“It seems your progress won’t decrease or increase while in the shelter. So, you could call it just a place to log out.”
-Price hikes are insane, LOL.
-Do games now charge you just to log out?
-Still better than SAO where you can’t log out at all, right?
“Five million won every time you want to log out? How are you supposed to make that money…?”
“Sora, you’re overthinking it.”
Laura shrugged.
The ducal party soon reached an ATM outside a convenience store.
“Ah, so with the world ending, there’s no such thing as theft anymore.”
“Pretty much. ATMs are packed with cash, so if we can just get it out, money won’t be an issue.”
-Smart thinking!
-Loot it!
-She’s thinking like a full-on robber.
-Played too much Phantom Thief; it’s rubbing off.
“The question is how to get it out.”
If they could smash the ATM with something like a forklift, they’d access the cash.
But heavy machinery wasn’t exactly easy to come by.
“On the way here, I think I saw some construction sites…. Should we go back and check, unnie?”
“Can you operate heavy machinery?”
“…Nope.”
“Perhaps we can hack the ATM’s system to open it. Can’t the AI handle that?”
《Accessing the ATM system requires bank authorization.》
《Connect to the bank’s system to gain ‘Deposit and Withdrawal Authorization.’》
With that, the AI marked the bank’s location on her smartwatch.
“Seems we’ll have to rob a bank.”
***
Naturally, we robbed the convenience store first.
The doors were locked tight. Even the lights were off.
But only the lights were off. The refrigerators and other appliances were still working.
It must’ve been one of those rare convenience stores with no night-shift worker.
Thanks to that, it seemed unaffected by the apocalypse.
The store was pristinely organized.
“…Honestly, I’d rather live here.”
“It’s not exactly safe, though.”
Finally, we had actual food supplies for the first time since the game began.
Of course, many items were past their expiration date, and transporting the supplies was no easy task.
Still, we had a car, so we shoved everything in.
After making a mental note of the convenience store’s location, we moved to a nearby apartment.
I instructed Rion and the others to wait in the car while I climbed up the exterior wall of the building.
I checked each window along the way, and fortunately, a window on the 7th floor was unlocked, allowing me to slip inside.
[Safe Time Remaining: 20:32:44]
Once inside, I opened the front door from within and cleared out any zombies lurking in the hallway.
After securing the area, I called my party to the 7th-floor room.
“Let’s split into two groups,” I said.
“We’ll use Room 708 here as our temporary base. We’ll assign some members to reinforce it and others to raid the bank.”
“Reinforce?”
“For example, our safe time. Can we extend it?”
I wanted to test the theory, so I dragged a wardrobe over to cover the balcony window.
[Safe Time Extended: 22:14:32]
“…Huh? It actually increased? How?”
“What other access points could zombies have aside from the windows?”
It’s not like they’d crawl through a narrow drain.
“Doesn’t that make no sense? It’s not like zombies are assassins sneaking in through the balcony window.”
“Well, there could be higher-tier zombies capable of such things.”
“What? Higher-tier…?”
“Sora, you’ll have to try Biotic Hazard soon.”
I was certain. Stronger zombies than those roaming the streets were out there.
I had figured out the cause of the apocalypse, known as ‘Sz-001.’
A gate must have opened.
Most likely, one appeared in Africa.
It was like my ‘second homeland’.
The gate must’ve unleashed a virus, and humanity failed to contain it—that seemed to be the premise of this game.
Labyrinthos had a medieval fantasy setting, but it was made by the same developer.
There was a faint magical aura around the zombies.
My sensory skills as Laura Iris couldn’t be deceived.
Labyrinthos and this game shared the same lore.
“Those left behind should secure this place as much as possible and make as much portable and preserved food as possible before we return.”
So, I left Sora and Rion for cooking.
Ainatsu and I set out to rob the bank.
“Uh… do I have to drive?”
“The viewers tipped me off that you have a driver’s license.”
A tail can’t hide forever. Ainatsu had a license but could no longer fool me.
Rion had driven us to the car earlier, so this time, Ainatsu took the wheel.
Incidentally, there are key rules when driving in a zombie apocalypse.
Humans stop at red lights, but zombies don’t.
You could run over a zombie or two, but cars wear down with every impact.
And there was no guarantee that just one or two zombies would block the road. If five or six zombies appeared at once, clearing a path would be tough.
So, I didn’t ride in the car.
I rode on top of it.
“Stop the car.”
Knock knock.
I tapped lightly on the car roof.
Once Ainatsu stopped, I went to greet the zombies blocking our way.
“Graaagh!”
Jumping down from the car, I stomped on a zombie’s head and landed behind it.
Zombies lack any intelligence, so they can’t see behind them.
They’re more like wild animals than monsters.
And so, before they even turned around, I’d taken three heads.
Two more remained; I quickly drove a knife under one’s chin and grabbed the other by the neck.
“Groargh…”
With a firm grip, I lifted it by the throat.
-Inhuman strength…
-The glory of humanity, glorious indeed
-Humanity’s glory vs. zombies in sizzling agony
-Tonight’s main course is you
-The world’s first physical-type Villainous Noblewoman!
-Are you grilling that one too?
“Hm.”
Seems I still lack strength.
This game avatar was pitifully weak compared to my real self. Understandable, though.
If real-life specs transferred into the game, the balance would break. Athletes would dominate, and shut-ins would be at a huge disadvantage.
Though I felt weaker, it wasn’t bad. Like an in-game challenge where you beat it using only a broken sword.
I tossed the zombie aside.
-WHUMP!
“Ainatsu, start driving.”
I climbed back onto the car roof.
***
In retrospect, I’d never been to the main branch of a bank before. Not even at a restaurant or telecom company.
Didn’t think much would be different, but the building was massive.
An entire skyscraper, all theirs.
《Survivors detected nearby.》
The AI announced as we arrived at the bank.
“Survivors? Besides us?”
“Uh, this is the promo server, remember?”
Ainatsu looked at me with an incredulous expression.
“Isn’t it obvious that other sponsored streamers are here?”
She clarified, like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Moments later,
“Ugh… I seriously can’t stand this. Why are you even here?”
Four survivors approached us.
【Jungseok_SerenadeKR】
【Elenoa_SerenadeKR】
【Choi Changyoung_SerenadeKR】
【Mashina_SerenadeKR】
“Oh my, Shina. Long time no see.”
It was a pleasant surprise.