War Beyond the Obelisk

Chapter 2: The Nameless World — 02

The captain’s roar rolled across the battlefield and lingered long after the last syllable should have faded.

He spun around in fury.

Beneath the brooding sky, half-veiled by columns of black smoke, someone was indeed standing behind him.

Or rather, something shaped like a man.

A black overcoat. Tall boots. Short hair. A face cold enough to freeze a man where he stood.

The captain would have recognized those features even if they had been burned to ash.

Yu Feichen.

The hired expert their team had paid an obscene amount of money to recruit—the contractor who sold a guaranteed-clear service for mission scenarios.

Their team was not exactly wealthy.

They had only forced themselves to hire the most expensive contractor available because they were bringing a newcomer along. They wanted the rookie to witness firsthand just how powerful, dependable, and impressive his new teammates were.

Merely looking at Yu Feichen had made the captain’s wallet ache.

Unfortunately, on the very first day after they entered this zombie-infested world—three months ago, by the world’s internal clock—their ruinously expensive hired expert had been swallowed by the undead horde.

Nothing had remained of him.

The financial loss alone had been horrifying.

Without their strongest outside support, the mission had quickly begun to fall apart. Only yesterday, their rookie, Xia Sen, had been abducted by a flying zombie while carrying an irreplaceable viral sample.

He had vanished without a trace.

In other words, they had lost both the money and the people.

A flawless catastrophe.

By now, the mere sight of Yu Feichen’s face was enough to make the captain want to curse every god in existence.

He drew a long breath and had barely managed to calm himself when he noticed Yu Feichen’s pallid skin.

Then the altered color of his irises.

The expressionless face.

The intact, unrotted body.

Every one of those traits belonged to a high-ranking undead.

When you met a former teammate on a battlefield and discovered he had become a zombie, what exactly were you supposed to say?

How have you been?

Had anything good to eat lately?

So, are you dead?

Do you still support humanity?

Before the captain could settle on an emotionally appropriate greeting, Yu Feichen lifted someone else by the back of the collar and dropped him into the tank.

A slender teenage boy tumbled inside, covered in dirt and wearing a bloodstained white lab coat.

“Captain.”

The bald captain caught him squarely in his arms. The boy looked up and said with perfect sincerity:

“Brother Yu is a good person. He rescued me from the zombies.”

This was their team’s newcomer, Xia Sen.

He was exceptionally intelligent, and for someone entering a mission scenario for the first time, he had performed remarkably well.

“Xia Sen.” The captain immediately asked the only question that truly mattered. “Where’s the viral sample?”

Xia Sen pulled a miniature cryogenic case from inside his coat.

“Praise the High God. I didn’t lose it.”

The captain released a long breath of relief.

That breath had barely escaped before it caught in his throat again.

Yu Feichen was speaking.

After issuing several incomprehensible instructions to Central Command, he turned toward the crew inside the tank.

“Keep moving forward.”

The teammates looked at one another.

After a silent consultation, they reached the only conclusion available to them.

They would obey.

Their extravagantly priced guaranteed-clear contractor dying to a zombie swarm on the opening day had already been strange enough.

That same contractor, whose body was supposed to have been completely destroyed, suddenly returning to the battlefield as a high-ranking zombie was even more absurd.

But the most incomprehensible part was this:

Their newly undead hired expert had returned to the human side and was now directing humanity’s war against the zombie horde.

Muted whispers drifted through the tank.

“We had a traitor in our ranks.”

“But the zombies also had a traitor.”

“And both traitors are the same person.”

“So which side is he technically betraying?”

“That’s incredible.”

“That’s incredible. My brain is about to—”

The artillery thundered again.

This time, the tank fired canister rounds. Each shell burst into nearly ten thousand miniature steel flechettes.

Even when the darts failed to strike a vital point, any zombie they hit would stiffen for a fraction of a second.

The armored tank seized those brief openings and rolled forward, slowly but relentlessly crushing its way through the horde.

“Continue,” Yu Feichen said. “Optimal firing position: north one-seven-seven point five-four-two, west five-nine point five-eight-five.”

The closer they came to Black Satan, however, the larger the surrounding zombies became.

Hideous giants formed an almost impenetrable wall around their overlord.

The canister rounds were rapidly losing effectiveness. Armor-piercing shells had nowhere useful to strike.

Most importantly, their ammunition was nearly gone.

Smoke blanketed the battlefield.

Visibility ahead had fallen to almost nothing.

Within the gray haze, enormous pale shapes surged toward the tank.

Several teammates screamed instinctively, as though they had already been struck.

Then—

A heavy impact shook the battlefield.

Another colossal figure came hurtling in from behind and slammed directly into the oncoming beast’s skull.

Both monsters crashed to the ground and began tearing violently at one another.

A zombie had just saved them.

Then another threw itself into the fight.

Then another.

More and more kept coming.

The captain raised his binoculars and struggled to see behind them.

Their tank had already penetrated deep into the undead tide. Every direction should have been filled with enemies.

Yet the zombies flooding in from the rear were not attacking the tank.

They were fighting the other undead giants.

Smoke churned across the battlefield as monstrous bodies collided. Waves of smaller zombies rushed forward one after another.

It was as though an ocean had split down the middle and its opposing tides were now crashing into each other.

The zombies were fighting among themselves.

The faction that had abruptly rebelled was almost certainly made up of the strange, motionless creatures they had observed earlier.

The captain immediately remembered Entity A1407—the suspected second zombie overlord.

“It’s a trap!” he cursed. “Damn it, they really are fighting each other! The two overlords are going to war! Where the hell is A1407? I told you people to find it!”

No one had found A1407.

No one dared answer.

The team huddled together in collective terror.

Then a cold voice broke the silence inside the tank.

“Were you looking for me?”

The captain said nothing.

The teammates said nothing.

The captain stared at Yu Feichen, his mouth hanging open.

No single word could adequately describe his state of mind. Even the way he addressed the man began changing of its own accord.

“You… sir… you’re…”

Yu Feichen did not answer.

He merely stared ahead without blinking.

Perhaps it was the intensity of his concentration, but something faintly unhinged seemed to flicker within his violet, mutated eyes.

His silence hardly mattered.

The instant everyone accepted the truth, the way they looked at him changed completely.

The scientists’ earliest recorded sightings of A1407 had begun shortly after Yu Feichen’s supposed death.

Suddenly, everything made sense.

Entity A1407 was Yu Feichen.

The zombie overlord was their hired contractor.

And he was on humanity’s side.

None of them had ever seen anything remotely like this.

The battle transformed in an instant.

A1407’s control over the undead was clearly far stronger than Black Satan’s. The defecting zombies dramatically reduced the pressure on the tank, allowing it to push deeper into enemy territory.

They advanced straight toward Black Satan itself.

The overlord’s mountainlike body appeared to have no weaknesses whatsoever.

Yet the immense creature was clearly growing agitated by the steadily approaching steel tank.

Millions of zombified birds shrieked overhead and plunged toward the ground battle.

The moment they abandoned the skies, the human aerial formations were given room to breathe.

Bombers reclaimed air superiority.

Black Satan was far too large to miss. Heavy bunker-busting bombs and pressure-enhanced explosives began striking it in a measured, orderly sequence.

The weapons could not kill it outright.

They could, however, hurt it badly.

A deep roar seemed to rise from beneath the earth.

The ground trembled.

Black Satan’s jagged, grotesque spine slowly began to arch.

“We’ve reached the coordinates.”

The tank stopped.

Black Satan’s shadow expanded above them, as though an entire mountain were forcing its way out of the earth.

The wounded overlord stood upright.

The tank was directly beneath it, no more than three hundred feet from its legs.

When the crew looked up, they could see the area that might generously be described as its abdomen—assuming a creature like that possessed anything resembling one.

A piercing cry cut through the air.

A black bird with a wingspan of several yards swept over the tank. Its talons caught Yu Feichen by the shoulders and carried him into the sky.

Suspended in midair, he looked as though a pair of black wings had suddenly grown from his back.

The weapon cradle beside the captain was empty.

He jerked his head upward.

Yu Feichen had casually lifted the heavy cannon the captain himself had failed to carry.

He leveled it at Black Satan.

He did not appear to need the sights.

What kind of monster was this man?

At some point, he had transformed himself into a zombie.

He had controlled the direction of his mutation, evolved toward becoming an undead overlord, and used that process to locate Black Satan’s central nervous core.

Then, at the decisive moment, he had returned to the human camp, dictated the rhythm of the entire battle, and taken up a human weapon to deliver the final strike.

The captain suddenly felt that his experience with zombie scenarios was embarrassingly limited.

He could not understand how even one stage of that plan was possible.

Looking up at Yu Feichen and remembering the expression in those violet eyes, the captain was struck by a powerful intuition.

Whatever that thing was, it was not harmless.

Boom.

The cannon’s report was almost unimpressive amid the chaos.

Smoke and flame flashed.

A streak of light tore through the darkened sky and vanished into a point on Black Satan’s exposed lower torso.

The enormous figure went rigid.

For one instant, time itself seemed to stop.

Yu Feichen made a signal from the air.

The captain’s pupils contracted.

“Reverse! Now!”

The crew went pale and hauled on the controls.

Across the broken terrain, the heavy tank lurched backward at the fastest speed it had ever achieved.

A colossal shadow came crashing down over them.

The tank raced along its edge, as though dragging the darkness behind it.

Then the shadow overtook them.

The first thing to strike the tank was not Black Satan’s body, but a massive piece of falling debris.

“Close the hatch!” the captain shouted.

The hatch slammed shut.

Heavy impacts continued to hammer the armored hull, like an avalanche of boulders raining down from above.

The steel groaned under the strain.

After each tortured creak, the only sound inside the compartment was the pounding of human hearts.

When the impacts finally stopped, the captain was the first to climb through the hatch.

The ground was covered in scattered remains from the colossal creature.

Black Satan had not fallen as a single body.

It had come apart.

The captain surveyed the battlefield.

The smoke was beginning to clear.

Fewer and fewer zombies were still resisting.

It was as though someone had placed a rest symbol over the entire war.

Frenzied lunges became slow, mechanical motions. Rapid attacks dwindled into sluggish steps.

At last, every zombie stopped.

Then they began moving toward the center of the plain.

Across the silent battlefield, a wordless migration unfolded.

The undead drew closer and closer until they had assembled into a rough, uneven formation.

Every lifeless face turned toward the human base.

Even the birds and insects descended to the ground.

Yu Feichen dropped back into the tank.

The team immediately resumed its commentary.

“Excellent. A1407 has now allied with humanity and used the human army to defeat Black Satan.”

“Excellent. A new zombie king has been born.”

“Excellent. What happens next?”

“Not excellent. Next, A1407 betrays humanity and turns on us.”

“You people are unbelievable.”

The last line came through the communicator.

Yu Feichen glanced toward them.

He had been accepting guaranteed-clear contracts for a long time. He had encountered every imaginable variety of employer and mission team.

Yet groups this intensely committed to repeating each other’s words and staging impromptu comedy routines were relatively rare.

He had no idea what world they came from.

Of course, the remark from Central Command had not been entirely normal either.

Yu Feichen counted the people inside the tank.

There was one fewer than the number who had entered the scenario.

Apparently, the captain had stationed one teammate inside Central Command.

So although this team’s practical usefulness was limited, they were not completely without merit.

An hour and a half later, the gathering of the undead was nearly complete.

They stood packed across the plain in dense rows, offering no resistance.

They looked like a vast pot of dumplings already prepared for boiling.

Yu Feichen raised the communicator and spoke to Central Command.

“Bomb them.”

His tone was perfectly calm.

He might as well have said:

“Dinner’s ready.”

And just like that, humanity won.

Carpet bombing was a remarkably simple operation.

So simple, in fact, that some people quickly lost interest in watching.

“Yu Feichen. Brother Yu.”

The captain’s heavy voice filled the tank.

Yu Feichen looked at him to indicate that he was listening.

“Would you care to sincerely explain everything that happened today?”

“The contracted work is complete,” Yu Feichen replied.

His tone was, in fact, perfectly sincere.

“Remember to pay the remaining balance.”

“Is it really complete?” the captain asked mournfully.

Yu Feichen reviewed the assignment.

The team’s mission objectives were:

Win the defensive battle.

Eliminate every zombie.

Save the human base.

Contract requirement one: all team members survive.

Contract requirement two: complete the mission.

Additional request: clear the scenario in the most overwhelming and forceful manner possible, so that the newcomer could fully appreciate the strength and reliability of his teammates, become deeply impressed, and develop profound admiration for them.

Yu Feichen remembered the expression of gratitude on Xia Sen’s face when he rescued the boy from the undead.

His answer became even more certain.

“It’s complete.”

After the battlefield had been cleared and a brief celebration held, most of the base’s remaining resources were redirected toward vaccine research.

The viral sample Xia Sen had brought back proved invaluable.

Everything progressed smoothly.

The captain encountered Xia Sen while searching for Yu Feichen.

“Captain,” Xia Sen said, “have you seen Brother Yu?”

“You’re looking for him too?”

Xia Sen pressed his lips together in a faint smile.

“There’s something wrong with you,” the captain said, eyeing him sideways.

Xia Sen smiled again.

“I’m simply curious about him. In my homeland, the pursuit of knowledge is considered one of the highest virtues.”

“It’s not a bad virtue,” the captain muttered. “It just has a habit of getting people killed.”

They eventually found Yu Feichen at the observation tower in the northeastern corner of the base.

The eighth floor opened onto a projecting concrete platform.

Yu Feichen sat on the broad outer railing, leaning against the wall with one leg loosely bent.

A clear glass bottle hung from his right hand.

It appeared to contain a crude, high-proof liquor diluted and bottled by the base cafeteria.

Its less formal name was counterfeit moonshine.

Yu Feichen took a drink.

It was difficult to tell what drinking meant for someone like him.

Against a sunset that spilled across the sky like dark red paint, he initially resembled a melancholy silhouette.

A closer look revealed that his face remained entirely expressionless.

Even a machine would have struggled to look more rigid.

For a while, the captain did not speak to him.

Instead, he walked to the railing and looked out over the base.

This was nearly the highest point in the entire settlement.

Gray concrete buildings pressed together below like a dense colony of ants, all confined within an invisible boundary.

Beyond that boundary stretched an apparently endless black plain.

A flock of crows circled over the wasteland.

Beneath the enormous setting sun, the entire city seemed smaller than a single bird.

For the surviving residents, rebuilding the life they had once known might prove even harder than winning the battle itself.

“Captain?” Xia Sen asked softly.

“Feeling sentimental,” the bald captain said with a sigh.

“Suffering will eventually pass.”

Xia Sen watched the distant crows and folded his hands over his chest.

“For God loves every soul.”

“You know quite a lot,” the captain said.

“I still understand very little about Paradise,” Xia Sen replied, “but my homeland is called Landonwarren. Our people have worshiped the High God for generations.”

Yu Feichen turned his head toward them.

“Oh, you’re awake,” the captain said.

Over the past several days, the captain had made peace with what had happened.

So what if their method of clearing the scenario had been completely unexpected?

It was still better than losing the entire team.

As for the magnificent image they had hoped to present to their newcomer, that illusion would have shattered eventually anyway.

The captain was now perfectly calm.

“I came to ask you something, Brother Yu,” he said. “The zombies have been eliminated. The vaccine was confirmed effective today. So why haven’t we returned to Paradise?”

He frowned.

“Is there some hidden completion condition?”

Yu Feichen looked at him.

It was not the first time the captain had seen that particular expression in his eyes.

The left one appeared to say:

How have you still not figured this out?

The right one added:

How are you somehow still alive?

The captain said nothing.

Yu Feichen looked away.

Employers often asked him questions so simple that they became difficult to interpret as genuine questions.

When the contract included instruction or coaching, he would occasionally explain such matters.

This assignment, however, had been purchased strictly as a guaranteed-clear service.

Ever since the complaints against him had begun increasing, he had stopped accepting coaching contracts altogether.

The burning sensation of the alcohol gradually faded from his throat.

One hundred fifty-six proof.

Acceptable.

He drew the long dagger he carried with him and poured the remaining liquor down the length of the blade.

The captain and Xia Sen watched as he calmly triggered whatever final condition the mission required.

A soft sound rang through the air.

“Ding.”

Then came a gentle female voice.

“Mission 791154 completed.”

“Return passage opening.”

“Ten, nine, eight, seven, five…”

“Welcome back to Paradise.”