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Chapter: 32
“Please eat.”
Click.
At the sound of a dish being set down, Damian, who had been staring at the screen, shifted his gaze.
“…What kind of tasteless joke is this?”
On the pristine white plate lay pink raw meat, soaked through with vivid red blood. The metallic stench of fresh flesh pierced his nose, and Damian frowned in disgust, covering it.
As expected of a well-bred young master, even that simple gesture looked refined.
Watching the man’s pale, slender hand—like delicate jade—Lennart swallowed a smirk and curved his narrow eyes.
“A joke? I’m serious. You haven’t been eating at all, so I was worried. I am your physician in name, after all.”
Worried? The word wasn’t even worth responding to. If he were capable of such human emotion, he would have left this mansion long ago.
Where on earth had he gotten raw meat like this? As Damian glared uneasily at the plate, Lennart smiled faintly and lifted it.
“Does it whet your appetite?”
“Have you finally gone insane?”
Damian’s face twisted as the plate was thrust close to him. His eyes filled with unmistakable disgust as he glared at Lennart.
“Haha. Perhaps.”
Despite the sharp reaction, Lennart only laughed dryly and turned his gaze to the screen Damian had been watching.
“What were you looking at?”
“Survivors.”
“Hmm. Survivors…”
The estate was enormous; including the surrounding grounds, there were hundreds of surveillance cameras installed.
Leisurely scanning the wall covered in panels, Lennart spotted figures running along a forest path and let out a soft exclamation.
Survivors. It had been quite some time since he’d seen living people. He felt a faint sense of novelty.
Three women, one child, three men. No—four? One of the men, dressed in military uniform, was bleeding heavily from his thigh. Even at a glance, his condition looked serious.
As Lennart switched screens with a click, following their movement, he suddenly clicked his tongue.
“My, my. They’re running headlong toward death. How unfortunate.”
His tone was dry and cynical, completely at odds with his words.
The place the figures were heading toward was this very mansion. It seemed they had followed the surveillance cameras here.
Not exactly a wise choice. Tsk, tsk.
Lennart’s eyes suddenly glinted.
Whenever he made idle remarks, Damian reacted. It was their little game—an extension of their experiment—in this desolate mansion where only the two of them remained alive.
But Damian acted as though he heard nothing, staring intently at the screen.
More precisely, at the woman on the screen who was looking up at the camera.
Observing him closely, Lennart spoke with interest.
“Are you hungry?”
Damian slowly turned only his eyes toward him and replied coldly,
“Stop talking nonsense.”
Is that so? With a face like someone dying of thirst?
“Open it! Please, help us!”
As the woman’s desperate voice echoed, Damian’s blue eyes snapped back to the screen as if pulled by gravity.
He gripped the armrest tightly, as though holding something in, unable to look away from her. Watching him silently, Lennart smiled meaningfully and pressed a button.
Clank!
On the screen, the firmly shut iron gate began to open slowly. Damian’s expression hardened as he glared at Lennart.
“What are you doing?”
“If we don’t open it, they’ll either become zombies or die. It didn’t seem like that’s what you wanted.”
“Don’t make me laugh.”
A scoff escaped him. A hedonist who chased nothing but his own amusement, yet always wore the mask of a benevolent man.
And he never truly bothered hiding his real intentions. A thoroughly vile man.
But the gate had already opened.
Smiling brightly, Lennart gestured grandly toward the screen.
“Now then, you should go greet the guests. Isn’t that the duty of the mansion’s master?”
The mocking tone grated on him, but Damian no longer had the energy to respond.
Sweat dampened his tightly clenched palms. His stomach churned, and his vision swam as though he were drunk.
Perhaps… he was a little hungry.
“Where on earth are we…?”
“Oh my God.”
Beyond the iron gate—thicker than an adult man’s thigh—lay a scene as peaceful as the world before the virus.
Under towering willow trees, a tranquil lake shimmered, reflecting a clear blue sky untouched by sunlight. Hydrangeas bloomed abundantly along a well-tended path, adding freshness to the verdant garden.
At the end of that path stood a magnificent mansion.
With the atmosphere of an old castle preserved in full, it bore the marks of time, yet even that made it feel like a work of art.
Who could have imagined such scenery inside these bleak gray walls charged with high-voltage electricity?
Jigu looked around in a daze.
“…Is this a dream?”
But the zombies’ shrieks from behind reminded them it was not.
“Kalif! To the mansion!”
The thick iron gate was slowly closing, but its heavy weight made it sluggish.
Zombies were squeezing through the opening. Spotting them staggering upright in the manicured grass, Jigu’s face turned pale.
Through a gap barely wide enough for a hand, they forced their faces in, heedless of torn flesh.
“Jigu! Behind you!”
“Graaaah!”
The zombies, now close enough to touch, lunged with blackened, rotting hands. Barely dodging fingers that grazed her hair, Jigu drove a poker into one’s eye.
Its brain pierced, the zombie collapsed instantly. But dozens of grasping hands still clawed toward her.
“Run!”
Thud!
Maya split a zombie’s skull with her axe and grabbed Jigu’s hand, pulling her along. Hydrangeas blurred past as they sprinted down the garden path.
The beautiful garden—like a place untouched by the virus—quickly turned into chaos.
Rumble!
Kalif reached the mansion entrance first and shoved open the heavy mahogany door. He lowered Edwin from his back onto the lobby floor as the others rushed inside.
Boom!
Thud!
“Graaaah!”
Zombies slammed against the closed door, but the thick mahogany held firm, just like the steel gate outside.
Staring at the door through reddened vision, Jigu held her breath.
What is this…?
Her vision was unnaturally red—so dark it seemed almost black. A chill crept down the back of her neck.
Swallowing hard, she slowly turned around.
This wasn’t just a warning about danger outside.
Inside the mansion.
There was something in here. Something so dangerous that her detection skill was screaming at full force.
“Hello.”
A soft, low voice like the melody of a viola echoed through the lobby.
A man.
No—a boy?
Sunlight streaming through the tall windows illuminated a face too youthful to call fully grown.
His golden hair shimmered like spun threads of molten gold, and his blue eyes—like the mansion’s lake itself—glowed brilliantly beneath delicate golden lashes.
He was beautiful, like an angel in a sacred painting.
A stunned silence fell over the group.
But not for Jigu.
In her dark crimson vision, those vivid blue eyes shone with an ominous brilliance.
Yet strangely, she couldn’t look away.
Though her instincts screamed at her to turn and run, she felt spellbound.
To keep herself from losing consciousness, she bit down hard on her stiff tongue. The metallic taste of blood filled her mouth.
At that moment, Edwin—lying on the floor—stiffened and began to convulse.
Peggy checked him in alarm, her face turning white as she shouted:
“He’s in hemorrhagic shock!”
