Chapter 46: Meyu Inkyo
H City was a third-tier municipality in Japan — its population was reasonably large, but third-tier cities occupied an awkward position. Young people generally had no desire to stay; they preferred to try their luck in bigger cities.
The result was a city with one of the worst aging demographics in the country.
Residents aged fifty and above made up the largest share of the population.
This was the information Ryū had dug up online.
But H City wasn't obscure any longer. After a full day of fermentation, news of the "zombie virus" had already spread across the entire world. That was the terrifying power of the information age.
Numerous countries had already turned their attention to Japan's H City.
Some had even dispatched research teams on overnight flights.
The Self-Defense Forces had locked the city down. Without the Shinomiya Zaibatsu's connections and a healthy amount of behind-the-scenes maneuvering, walking in through the front door would have been… a touch difficult.
Only a touch, though. Inconvenient at most.
Once they'd used those connections to get inside H City…
They surveyed the unfamiliar cityscape.
Kaguya-sama: [Image] [Image] — We've entered H City. As expected, the whole place is under total lockdown.
Kaguya-sama: The streets are almost deserted. The few people still out are moving in groups, masked, walking fast.
Kaguya-sama: According to this morning's news… the infection count has passed twenty thousand.
Kaguya snapped several photos and posted them to the chat.
Crazy Diamond: But I don't see any zombies in the pictures…
Kaguya-sama: H City is fairly large. The area we're in doesn't seem to have any infected. Other districts might be a different story.
Kaguya-sama: There's a kind of oppressive atmosphere hanging over the whole city.
Kaguya's description was spot-on. The district they'd entered was free of infected. But elsewhere, things were very different.
Roughly twenty kilometers from the group's position, a massive area had been sealed off completely by the Self-Defense Forces and police working in concert.
Roads were blocked with heavy trucks parked bumper to bumper across the lanes.
The gaps beneath the trucks had been packed with sandbags.
Faintly, you could make out low, guttural snarling — as though countless beasts were baring their teeth at you from just out of sight. Tension saturated the air.
"How did this bizarre disease just erupt out of nowhere? It's like something out of a movie! These infected people… can they even be cured?!"
A Japanese police officer wiped the sweat from his brow.
His line of sight was blocked by the wall of trucks.
But the memories of last night's encounters still made his skin crawl.
He'd come within a hair's breadth of being bitten by one of the infected.
He had absolutely no desire to catch this nightmarish "disease."
A senior officer beside him glanced toward the Self-Defense Forces encampment nearby and said gravely: "Never mind whether they can be cured. Our job is to hold this perimeter."
"Right now, every resident trying to leave H City has to pass through four or five rounds of full-body screening. The process is so involved that fewer than ten thousand people can be evacuated per day."
"Rather than worrying about the 'zombies' on their side… you'd be better off worrying about what we'll do if the same thing breaks out in the district behind us."
* * *
Inside the zone under full lockdown by the police and Self-Defense Forces…
Countless figures drifted slowly through the empty streets.
The sight was utterly horrifying. The "people" shambling along had pupils bleached a ghastly, cataract-white. Their skin displayed grotesque patterns of decay and sloughing, and the stench rolling off them was enough to make a person retch.
From their throats came bestial, rumbling growls.
The slightest disturbance — any sound, any movement — and they would surge toward it in a mob.
Exactly like the zombies in the movies.
Or rather, they already were zombies.
They could no longer be called "living people."
What living person looked like that?!
* * *
Atop a rooftop high above the streets, a small figure held a pair of binoculars, surveying the movements below. A quiet murmur: "Didn't expect them to react this fast. Locking down all of H City in a single day… that's a little ahead of schedule."
Flanking her on either side stood two towering silhouettes.
Each was at least five meters tall.
Tall enough to play in the NBA, probably.
Their bodies were slabs of dense, bulging muscle — the exposed tissue a nauseating pink, because there wasn't a single scrap of skin anywhere on them. The sight sent a visceral chill down the spine.
They looked like the Lickers from the movies.
Though compared to actual Lickers…
These two were far more humanoid.
"Infection count is at 35,167 and climbing. Once it hits 50,000… we move to the next phase. Smash through the Self-Defense Forces' perimeter and march on the surrounding cities!"
Breathing in the putrid air, Meyu Inkyo let a cold smirk cross her lips.
In her previous life, she'd been nothing more than a bitter, resentful keyboard warrior and shut-in from Japan.
She'd never imagined that a freak electrocution would send her into another world.
In this life, she was Japanese again.
And she'd been given the Apocalypse Fabrication System.
There was, however, one deeply aggravating detail: why had she transmigrated into a girl's body?
She'd been a full-grown man in her previous life!
She looked down at this unfamiliar body.
The corner of Meyu Inkyo's mouth twitched.
How tragic was this?!
Utterly inhumane!!
That said, a five-year-old girl's body wasn't entirely without its uses.
At the very least, it deflected the vast majority of suspicion.
Nobody would believe that a catastrophe of this scale…
Had been caused by a five-year-old girl.
No one would even think it.
"But as long as I complete the System's missions, I'll earn its rewards. Surely there'll be a way to become male again… right?!"
"These zombies have no minds of their own, but with the System's support I can control them to do anything I want! And those Self-Defense Forces think a few junky trucks and some sandbags are enough to keep H City contained?"
"Tch… baka. Keep dreaming! I just need to push the infection count past 50,000 within five days and the first System mission is complete. If I fail to finish on time… it's elimination."
The thought of the System's elimination clause made Meyu Inkyo's expression darken.
Nobody wanted their life in the hands of a System of unknown origin.
Once she'd grown powerful enough…
She would absolutely look for a way to break free of its control.
But until then, she'd use the System for everything it was worth.
And turn the entire planet into an apocalypse.
* * *
What Meyu Inkyo had failed to notice, however, was that the sky not far away had, at some point, filled with a dense swarm of tiny black specks.
Like locusts, they spread in a fan-shaped formation across the better part of H City.
Countless locust-like dots darted erratically through the air.
What they were doing was anyone's guess.
If someone had managed to catch one, they would have discovered it was no locust and no insect at all — but a fingertip-sized micro-machine, each one fitted with a miniature camera.
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