Dopamine surged through the gamer’s soul, and a lively sensation spread from the top of his head to the tip of his tail.
[System]: The Baby Arctic Fox is in a good mood. He starts to dance.
Suddenly, music that sounded like something straight out of a cartoon began playing from somewhere.
Nyang-nyang-nyang-nyang? Ddoi ddoi nyang nyang♪
His body moved on its own. His front paws gathered neatly together and swayed side to side.
Bbam bbam bbam♬
He wondered with a bright, eager smile, What effect will come after this dance? His face was brimming with anticipation, and seeing him, Snake Rim’s face flushed a soft pink.
‘What are you staring at, you punk.’
Nyang-nyang!
With a fiery final bark, the music came to an end.
[System]: Snake Rim is impressed by your movements. Snake Rim’s molting speed increases by 30%.
[System]: Snake Rim wishes to have a beautiful child like you.
[System]: !!! Snake Rim is a male and cannot produce offspring.
‘What the heck? No personal bonus for me?’
Just as he was glancing around restlessly—
[Snake Rim wishes to adopt you as his son. Will you accept?
Yes / No]
He blinked as he stared at the prompt.
‘This is uncharted territory…’
It felt a bit reckless to accept right away. There would surely be advantages to becoming the adopted son of the second most powerful figure in Shadow Castle, but, as always, every sword had two edges. There would definitely be downsides too—like being forced into some useless “filial piety time” or something like that. Honestly, he wasn’t sure exactly how this would be implemented in the game.
As he pondered, he spotted a ‘Defer’ button at the bottom of the system window. He tapped it with his front paw and nodded vigorously.
[The Baby Arctic Fox needs time to think.]
[You have deferred your choice.]
“Do you not wish to become my adopted son… Why…?”
Snake Rim flicked out his long tongue with a look of disappointment. As an apology, he scooped up another full basin of water and offered it to Snake Rim’s empty shed skin.
“Thank you… Baby Arctic Fox.”
Tending to Snake Rim’s needs was only a brief interlude.
“I’ve adjusted the barrier so that only you can enter.”
After confirming that Snake Rim’s barrier had been reestablished, he bolted outside.
[Third Survival Quest complete. Reward: Health Potion]
As the quest ended, the people who had regained their composure began grumbling about how measly the survival reward was. And with good reason—people had killed each other just to seize the bells. Moments ago, they had been roasting wolves together, laughing and joking.
Measured against the value of a human life, the reward was utterly meaningless.
‘Is it, though?’
A single Health Potion slipped into his inventory as well.
At the exact moment he confirmed the supplies—
Just when you thought you had grown accustomed to the Night Spirits… true terror always comes from up close.
“W-What the hell?!”
A chilling voice stabbed sharply into his ears.
‘It’s started.’
The chained Survival Quest. The most difficult and grotesque challenge, triggered the moment the number of survivors drops to exactly half of the starting count—500 people.
[The Fourth Survival Quest, <500:500> has arrived!
Your former comrades, called back by the shadows, are returning. Fight against those who seek to take you away! The shadow friends will return to where they belong when morning comes.
Time remaining until morning: 4:44:44]
Before he could even finish reading the quest details, the players who had just been lying there as corpses began rising, limbs twisted grotesquely, dragging themselves upright with sickening movements. Then, snap!! they lunged and grabbed onto the ankles of the living players.
“Uwaaah!”
“Ugh, that’s freaking disgusting!”
A game where the dead devour the living. Of course, getting eaten didn’t turn you into a zombie—you simply got booted from the game.
A warrior recoiled in horror and swung his sword at a moving corpse, slicing off an arm—but the severed limb crawled across the ground and latched tightly around his neck.
“Uwaaah! Somebody help me!”
In an instant, chaos erupted. If he were human, he would’ve bolted straight to the main gate and locked it without hesitation.
The name of this quest was <500:500>. Since the previous quest had started when there were around 800 people, it meant roughly 300 players were inside the castle and the remaining 200 were lying outside, buried under the mountain of corpses.
“Uwaaah! The corpse mountain’s writhing like crazy! We gotta lock the gate! Now!”
“We’re all gonna die!”
Several players who had already found the bells during <Find the Baby Fox’s Protective Scent!> and escaped to the safety of the walls shouted down at the people below after seeing the gruesome scene beyond the battlements.
“Don’t just stand there, do it yourselves, you dumbfucks!”
But the people below were far too busy fending off the immediate threat of the writhing corpses.
Amid the battlefield’s desperate struggle, he hopped nimbly along the wall path.
“God, I’m gonna puke… Uwek.”
“Move! Get the hell outta the way, fuck!”
“I mean it—stop fighting the damn zombies and lock the gate, you idiots!”
Curses and profanities flew in every direction. Amid the madness, one warrior, soaked head to toe in blood, finally listened and locked the main gate. Then, grabbing one of the clinging corpses stuck to him, he began hurling it up toward the wall.
“Why the hell are you throwing them at us, asshole?!”
“Thought you might wanna have a taste too, fuckers!”
They hurled pieces of corpses at each other while flipping each other off with their middle fingers.
Just then—
“Little Fox, you shouldn’t be seeing things like this.”
A woman, who had been cursing the guy throwing corpses the loudest, turned, noticed him, and immediately softened her expression, smiling kindly as she covered his eyes with her hand.
‘The best move right now would be to use ‘Declaration of Peace Zone.’
This was probably the perfect moment to use that skill. Right now, when everything was in complete disarray, he could buy precious time for everyone to either regroup or flee to a safer area.
But the skill’s cooldown was a whole week. If he wasted it now for others, he wouldn’t be able to use it when he truly needed to protect himself.
Besides, the undead weren’t even paying much attention to him, the Baby Arctic Fox, let alone attacking him. In a sense, it wasn’t really his problem.
While he was thinking, someone approached him.
It was Kessler. Even in the midst of this blood-soaked zombie hellscape, the guy strolled around like he was out for a casual walk. As expected, this bastard was a true Thief.
“Hey, Baby Fox. Time to eat.”
This bastard seriously had the nerve to say that while surrounded by blood-soaked zombies?
Doubling down, Kessler even pulled a few pieces of dark red bat jerky out of his pocket and casually began chewing on them.
It was his snack.
As the corpses from the mountain of bodies surged toward the castle gate, the air grew thick with the nauseating stench of blood.
Because of the ongoing battle, rotten fingers and heads flew through the air like thrown spears, and players nearby were vomiting from the sheer disgust—meanwhile, he just sat there, munching on his snack without the slightest change in expression.
‘The more I watch him, the more dangerous he seems.’
He shook his head. Sitting on Kessler’s knee, he peered down at the bloody chaos below—and the sight he caught made his brow furrow deeply.
Nyang!
Bori Noona was cornered. Waving around a chunk of iron she had found from who-knows-where, she frantically shouted, “Go away! Get back!” but the more she flailed, the more the undead gathered.
A zombie, hopping toward her with its neck missing, stretched its jaw unnaturally wide and clamped down on Bori Noona’s leg.
Crunch.
“Ack!”
Shit. After the bearded old man had died, Bori Noona was his last remaining companion.
Sending her off to join the rest of the fallen might have been a more peaceful choice, but…
His body was already leaping down from the wall before he could think otherwise.
Looking up from the ground, the spot where Kessler still sat seemed impossibly high.
“Baby Fox!”
He planted himself firmly in front of Bori Noona.
One of the zombies twisted its bloodshot eyes toward him, as if asking, ‘What the hell are you?’
‘You’re not touching the last of my party.’
He pounded the air with his front paws, summoning a skill.
[‘Declaration of Peace Zone of the Baby Arctic Fox.’
Would you like to declare peace? Yes/No]
He tapped Yes, and immediately, it felt as though the very air around him had been reset. Wind burst outward from his center.
Bori Noona’s pants fluttered for a moment.
While everyone instinctively sensed that something had changed, an adorably small system alert popped up.
[This area has been declared a Peace Zone. Please cease all combat.]
“What the hell?”
Even the zombies that had been relentlessly attacking stood frozen, seemingly just as confused by the sudden shift.
The players who caught on quickly shoved the staggering undead aside and began creating a safe assembly area.
“Alright, alright, everyone gather up! Emergency strategy meeting!”
With their formation tightened up, there was no room left for the zombies to squeeze through.
“All we have to do is hold out, right? Looks like these guys aren’t great at climbing onto rooftops and stuff, so if you’re low on stamina, get yourselves up high! Also, we need to gather a bunch of undead cores to unlock the Special Occupation Necromancer, but… honestly, this is gonna be pretty brutal…”
Now that he thought about it, a Special Occupation quest had popped up.
If you killed 100 undead and gathered their cores, you could earn the Necromancer class.
“Huh, what’s this?”
The job quest, which had nearly been buried in the chaos, suddenly rose to the center of everyone’s attention. Players’ eyes began to sparkle.
‘But it won’t be that easy!’
A few people pressed their lips tightly together, letting out tense sighs.
“Should we gather the mobs and funnel the kills to one person?”
If someone managed to become a Necromancer, the game’s management would become much easier.
“No. There are too many zombies to safely funnel kills to one person. It’s not worth risking everything for just one job class.”
“Yeah. Let’s just fend for ourselves.”
Still, a Necromancer gaining control would mean a massive advantage in the game.
“Let’s at least give it a shot.”
This was a survival RPG where the ultimate goal was to be the last one standing.
Because of that, it seemed more logical to deny everyone the Special Occupation rather than fight to snatch it in the open. Making sure no one could claim it was the smarter play.
The majority alliance decided to abandon the Necromancer quest.
However, a small coalition of like-minded players prioritized getting the Special Occupation no matter what.
“For those who support funneling the Necromancer cores… Among the players without jobs, I think ‘PeeledGarlicUnpeeledGarlic’ has the highest magic stat, so it’d be best for them to grab the class. There are tons of corpses right outside the gate. Just drag a bunch of potions and make sure you land the last hits somehow.”
“When does the Peace Zone declaration end?”
“Ten minutes left.”
The small coalition prepped in advance and moved out beyond the walls. But whether it was fortune or misfortune, they ultimately failed to secure the Special Occupation.
The majority, reading the minority’s intentions, intervened and blocked them from claiming the class.
[Fourth Survival Quest complete.]
Under the faint, pale sunrise, he looked down at the scattered corpses of the small coalition, mingled among the zombies.
Now, the real game was about to begin.
