"It's coming along nicely," I hummed, glancing around at the safe camp that had been set up in Tokonuso.
Calling it a simple 'camp' was being dishonest, as the barriered-in area extended throughout the majority of the city. My subordinates had already cleared out all the streets, and even the majority of the buildings within the city were zombie-free.
The only thing preventing me from completing my quest now was the occasional unfound zombie, as when you had no brain and just wandered around aimlessly, you tended to get stuck in some awkward spots. Raya had told me that she even had to send a few dire wolves into the sewers, as a few zombies had fallen through some overturned manholes.
"You did this even quicker than I thought," I glanced over at Raya, who preened lightly at my words.
"Of course. It was pretty simple," She started to explain, a slightly proud tone in her voice, "I just ordered Katerea to come through earlier, and she set up a communication circle. I used one of those 'eye-phones' from the human world to play a loud noise, and most of the zombies came running over."
I chuckled lightly as she exaggerated the 'eye' in 'iPhone,' but nodded approvingly. I had considered using a similar tactic when I cleared out Fujimi Academy - that being making a loud-ass noise to attract the zombies - but with so many students running around and screaming, it wouldn't have been very effective.
By comparison, the large majority of the residents of Tokonuso were already zombified or hiding in a safe camp. Raya had mostly just been taking in the stragglers holed up in their homes, so the city had been pretty quiet. Her plan had evidently worked, as the streets were zombie-free.
"Their blood is a bit weird, and it's caused some of the wolves to get sick, but a fairy's healing fixes that pretty easily. There's also still the occasional one stuck in a building or that fell in a hole. It would be nice if they were smarter…" Raya continued with a sigh, "But, there are also a few human-run safety camps around the city. I ordered the troops to leave them alone since I assumed you wanted them alive, but one of them has been pretty aggressive towards us, and you can't just expect wolves to sit down while they're being shot at."
I nodded at her words, as I expected as much. Humans naturally feared the unknown, and a group of monsters invading the city to clear out the other monsters eating them alive was definitely unknown. They'd be fearful and lash out, and while I could expect a more intelligent creature, like my dwarves, succubi, or devil soldiers, to realize they weren't at any risk of death, the wolves were much more instinctual.
"What's the situation?" I asked bluntly, and Raya continued.
"The safety camp is called the 'Takagi Estate,'" Raya started, and I resisted letting out a groan.
That was Saya's family, and this reaction from them wasn't unexpected. Saya's father was a bit of a hardhead, and overall was kind of dick.
He'd abandoned Saya during the apocalypse, not using his resources as the leader of a political association within the city to ensure she was safe. The man overall had a good heart, as he had wanted what was best for the city, and was intent on keeping Japanese society alive, but he did that in a questionable way.
Abandoning his own daughter to focus on the overall survival of the people in Tokonuso was one of those questionable decisions, and had led to a conflict in the series between Saya and him. Now, that hardheaded attitude was pitting him up against my subordinates, and this was a battle he decidedly couldn't win.
"Their leader is dead," Raya continued bluntly, and I blinked, as I definitely hadn't expected that, "They started shooting at one of the wolves as it was clearing out the zombies in the area, and it didn't end well. A conflict broke out, and before I realized it and sent someone to stop it, the wolf had already bitten off the man's head."
Well, that was unexpected, but also strangely largely solved the problem. I didn't expect a man like Saya's father to die so easily, as he was actually pretty smart and overall a strong human, but this was an E-Rank World for a reason.
Even the E-Rank title came from the zombies, and not the humans. No matter if he was a skilled human who could easily navigate an apocalypse, he couldn't do anything if a dire wolf wanted him dead. Even the strongest human I had seen so far from this world, Saeko, could only barely compete with one of the four-legged ones.
Essentially, they were still just normal humans. They weren't fit to take on a dire wolf, even with guns.
"Since then, there's been no more shots, as they've holed themselves up entirely," Raya continued, glancing over at me. "I assumed you'd want to deal with them, as they're one of the biggest camps in the city, so I kept the wolves away entirely. However…"
Raya smiled a bit sheepishly, "Since we've been steering clear of them, some of the remaining zombies in the area started heading that way. I thought they just walked towards sounds stupidly, but they seem to have realized that being near us only results in their deaths."
The zombies were becoming smarter? Not by much, as they were just realizing that running into a horde of hungry dire wolves was a death sentence, but smarter nonetheless. That was a bit concerning, but not all that much - no matter how much they learned or evolved, they would never pose a real threat to me.
"I'll deal with it," I said simply with a nod, "Just continue how you've been doing. Try to negotiate peace with the other camps, though I doubt they'll listen to you. I'd prefer to avoid using violence, but if that's what it takes, just try not to kill any of them."
I didn't actually care all that much about the lives of a few thousand humans, as while the stats from the quest would be nice, they weren't so nice that I'd be losing sleep over missing out on them. Instead, I was more concerned about one of the humans dying being a part of the families of one of the women back in my palace, who I did actually care about.
So, it was better to be safe than sorry, even if it would slow down the process a bit. It wasn't like I had much else better to do - time was half-speed in this world while I was gone, and in the DxD world I was largely just sitting around waiting for more intel on the Greek Pantheon anyway.
"They're in a mansion north of here," Raya nodded at my words, and I tensed my legs.
A split second later, I was casually bounding through the long streets of Tokonuso. I lunged upward, blitzing through the sky as the air broke around me, and casually landed on the top of a skyscraper-esque building. I glanced down, enhancing my vision lightly as my eyes narrowed.
I pretty quickly spotted the estate, but that was more so because I recognized it than because it was obvious. The front-yard area of it was massive, stretching out hundreds of feet, as it looked like Saya's father really was loaded with cash. The mansion itself was also huge, casually looking like it was ten different homes squished together with at least four floors.
However, the area in front of the mansion showed that Souichiro Tagaki's, Saya's father, decision to try and kill my subrodinates had definitely bit him in the ass. The area that should've been one of the largest safe zones in Tokonosu, even having working water and power, along with numerous vehicles and a massive protective gate to keep out any zombies, looked like a wasteland.
Cars were flipped over, the fountain in front of the mansion was literally ripped out of the ground, and the various tents that had once been in the front yard were strewn all around messily. The mansion's actual door was blocked up with strips of wood, looking nailed in as zombies casually wandered around in the front yard. The windows were the same, and it seemed that after Souichiro's death, the remaining survivors had holed themselves up in the mansion.
With their leader dead, it was obvious that they wouldn't last long, but they were lucky I was generous. The man who'd given the order to attack my wolves and who had abandoned Saya was dead, so I'd take mercy on the rest and free them from their predicament.
I casually lunged off the roof, shooting down toward the Takagi Estate like a missile. I landed in the middle of the yard with a thud, the ground cratering from the force, and a shock wave of air shot outward from the impact. Most of the various zombies in the front yard fell over from the resounding shockwave, and the few that didn't only remained standing because they were tossed into a wall that kept them upright.
I wasn't going to waste my time with such weak creatures, so I just casually flicked my wrist and [Ice Conjuring] activated.
Massive ice spears shot upward from the ground, turning the front yard into the world's largest ice sculpture in real time. Frost covered the floor as the zombies' feet were stuck to the ground, and then the ice spears curved and shot forward. They slashed through the zombies' necks easily, creating a criss-crossing of ice pillars across the front yard.
But, I left one alive as I had an idea. I casually walked up to the sole one remaining out of the nearly hundred that had once been here, raising my palm. During my time in this world, I had indeed tried eating the flesh of a zombie, though it had been very unpleasant.
Compared to the usual taste of flesh, which was so tasty to me that even the greatest devil chefs couldn't make something comparable, the zombies tasted absolutely awful. Stronger beings usually ended up tasting better, but even weak monsters I ate from the Monster Farms in my original territory didn't taste this bad.
As a result, I had only tried zombie flesh once, intent on waiting to finish my 'kill 10,000 undead' quest to get the rest of the skills. However, that one zombie had given me something besides a stomach ache, as I got the [Decaying Slash] skill - which just applied the [Decay] debuff to anything I attacked hard enough to break through its skin.
Through a bit of testing, I figured out that [Decay] just started whittling away at whoever it was affecting, causing their skin to start turning gray as their body slowly lost functionality.
It wasn't as good as it sounded, as it took over an hour for the direwolf I tested the skill on to lose functionality in its arm, and it didn't even seem to hurt him. Beyond that, any decent healing skill seemed to completely reverse the effect.
But, as I stared down the final remaining zombie - a man in a suit whose feet were stuck in the ice, causing him to look like an idiot as he tried to walk at me anyway - I had a thought. What would [Decay] do to something that was already dead?
I casually walked up, the tip of my finger shifting into a knife, and slashed across the zombie's face with [Decaying Slash]. I stepped back for a second, watching as the zombie just became… more zombie-like?
Its skin turned a darker gray, and the ever-present bags under his eyes dragged down a bit more. But, besides that, it still was just opening and closing its mouth dumbly as it tried to walk towards me. I sighed, casually beheading the creature as I swept through his neck with my finger-knife, and turned to the mansion after the anticlimactic result.
If I waited for longer, he probably would've been affected more, but I wasn't that patient. Instead, I casually walked up to the mansion's door, which was nailed shut with boards of wood. Then, I raised my foot and promptly kicked through it. The wood crumbled away easily at my action, and I stepped through the doorway.
"Fire!"
I looked down blandly as the ring of gunfire resonated through the building, and a rain of bullets rocketed towards me. They slammed into my chest, bouncing off casually, as, despite not even wearing my armor, my END was far too high for my body to even be scratched by the bullets. I was also wearing my [Weighted Clothing] at the moment, so it didn't even tear my shirt.
I casually glanced at the sight in front of me, which was a line of Japanese-looking men holding various weapons, ranging from machine guns to pistols.
"Don't stop! Use every bullet you have!"
Judging from the orders coming from the woman standing behind the firing squad, they either knew I wasn't a simple zombie, or they were the worst marksmen of all time as they used all of their ammo on one man. The woman herself looked very familiar, as she bore a strong resemblance to Saya.
She had long purple hair, a beautiful yet sharp face that was coated in drops of dry blood, and a body that looked like a more mature Saya. Her curves were a bit more pronounced, her overall frame a bit taller, and her breasts a bit larger.
"I'll give you one chance to stop," I hummed casually, glancing forward as I locked eyes with Yuriko Takagi. Luckily, she shared the same 'genius' moniker as her daughter, and she raised her hand as I was clearly unaffected by the bullets.
"Hold your fire!" She shouted, but another voice quickly shouted over her.
"Keep shooting! Don't stop until the bastard is dead!" Another man, who was standing a few feet to the side of Yuriko, shouted.
The man was much taller than her, looking to be around six feet tall compared to Yuriko's slightly above five feet, and fit the image of a hard-boiled political leader. His face was set in stone, his eyes hard and determined as he stared me down, and his voice loud and authoritative.
"It's not doing anything to him, Yoshioka! Just stop firing!" Yuriko tried to order again, but Yoshioka shouted again as he spurred the men to continue.
"I'm in charge now that Souichiro is gone, not you! Continue firing until the bastard is dead!" Yoshioka shouted, an angry tone in his voice, "We have no words for the monsters that killed him! I'd rather die than-"
"Trust me, you will," I hummed casually, cutting off Yoshioka as my fist met the front of his face.
He didn't have a chance to react, as there wasn't even an opportunity for his head to snap back. Before my fist even made contact, the pure force of my punch caused the very air in front of him to slam backwards, and his head exploded like a watermelon being smacked with a hammer.
"Y-Yoshioka!" Yuriko took a panicked step back as I casually appeared in front of her, and her eyes went wide, "W-Wait! Stop firing! We'll cooperate!"
"Stop firing?" I hummed, raising an eyebrow at her, "Who are you talking to?"
Yuriko's eyes went wide as her brain finally processed that the sound of gunshots had stopped, and she slowly looked past my tall frame, her eyes widening in horror. The men who had been previously firing their weapons at me lay on the floor - or, their bodies did, as they were all beheaded.
With humans, going slow enough to let them see what was happening was me being generous. If I wanted to, I could've slaughtered the whole room before they could even process that I had moved. [King's Aura] activated, and I stared down the woman like a giant as my shadow cast over her.
"W-Wha…" Yuriko didn't even finished her words, her mouth open and closing as she took a step back, and then fell onto her shapely ass.
For as intelligent, composed, and overall ruthless the woman was, as you had to be to be married to a man like Souichiro, even she couldn't keep her composure here. I was sure she had ruthlessly gunned down countless zombies herself, and even killed non-turned humans that had been bitten, but something like this was outside of her stratosphere.
"As far as world-conquering dictators go, I'm pretty generous," I hummed, which really didn't mean much, as I was the only world-conqueror I knew, "But I'm not generous enough to overlook this. You guys have been firing at my troops, tried to kill me when I walked through the door, and blew the one chance I gave you."
"I-I tried to stop them…" Yuriko muttered out, staring up at me with wide, fear-filled eyes as my presence flooded the room, making me seem like the monster I truly was.
"You did. Which is why you don't need to be afraid," I hummed, grinning down at her, though it did nothing to alleviate her fear.
Even if she hadn't tried to stop them, I would've spared her anyway. She was both Saya's mother and drop-dead gorgeous, which put her between the 'let her live no matter what' parameters. It was truly nice being the King.
"Instead of fearful, you should be grateful," I continued casually, grinning even wider as I stared down at her, "Instead of waiting here until your inevitable end, slowly running out of food and starving to death, or dying to the undead as your overwhelmed, you've been saved. You'll have a greater purpose now in serving my kingdom, so you don't need to be afraid."
Those words also did nothing to comfort Yuriko, but I didn't really care as I grinned down at her.
"From now on, you're mine."
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AN: Thank you for reading! The next chapter will be out tomorrow!
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