Chapter 106: Survival Comes First
After a while, however, someone finally could not hold back any longer and asked, "Hyung, are we really not going upstairs?"
Since the previous floors had been cleared, some rooms had already been emptied, but there were also rooms that remained completely untouched.
Back then, Joo Joowon had considered that houses where no zombie noises had been heard might still contain survivors, so he had never entered them to search for supplies.
The reason he could take such concerns into consideration was because he currently lacked nothing, while other people were in a completely different situation.
Because of this, the others could still find supplies from those rooms.
It was not as if they would spend all that time working only to leave without gaining anything.
Their group had many people, and some of them even had entire families to support.
They truly could not bear leaving like this empty handed without obtaining anything.
"Do you want supplies or do you want to stay alive?" Hidden beneath his helmet, Jin Hunseok rolled his eyes where nobody could see.
A larger team was indeed much harder to manage.
They really should have considered the other person’s abilities.
Everyone looked at each other in confusion.
Jin Hunseok patiently broke down the situation for them.
"Think about it. How did he know that most of the zombies outside had already been cleared? All of us have so many people and still don’t dare go outside, yet he went out there alone. Whether he is strong or not, do I really need to explain that?"
"Is it even possible that the commotion we saw outside today was caused by him?"
Someone hesitated.
"...Wouldn’t that be a little too much?"
"It is very possible," Jin Hunseok replied. "When judging people like this, it is better to assume they are stronger than they appear rather than weaker. There was no reason for him to lie about something like this. It would be exposed too easily. If that is the case, then what he said about there being a boss monster upstairs is most likely true."
"So there are two possibilities."
"Either the boss monster is still alive. If we go upstairs, we will simply be sending ourselves to our deaths. But the other person was able to escape from the boss monster’s hands, which means his strength definitely cannot be ordinary."
"Or the boss monster is already dead. As for who killed it, I don’t think I need to say it out loud, right? In that situation, the other person is someone we definitely cannot afford to offend."
He continued earnestly.
"To be honest, I don’t have any particularly ambitious goals. I just want to survive safely in this apocalypse and, if possible, live a little more comfortably. After that, everyone can work together and figure out a way to bring our families over so we can all live together."
"After all, my child is studying in another city, while my parents are living somewhere else entirely. Everyone here is more or less in the same situation. Now that the marketplace exists, some people have already managed to locate parts of their families through the information available there. If the opportunity presents itself in the future, we will definitely have to find a way to bring them here so we can be reunited."
"So what is it that we’re really striving for right now? Stability. Survival. We need to make sure we’re still alive by the time that day comes."
To be honest, things would have been easier if the marketplace had never existed.
With information cut off, people would have accepted reality much more quickly.
They would not cling to hopes of family reunions.
Instead, they would assume their loved ones were already gone, or comfort themselves by believing that those people were still alive somewhere and wishing them well from afar.
There would certainly be a few players willing to take action and search for their families, but there would never be many.
But now things were different.
People could communicate with their families every single day.
Naturally, that changed their way of thinking.
Most of their family members happened to be in cities not too far away.
Since the apocalypse had only begun a few days ago, everyone in the group had gathered together because of shared interests and common goals.
It was not that everyone was secretly plotting against one another, but there was also no emotional foundation between them.
Under these circumstances, there was no need to start thinking about building some giant organization or becoming stronger and stronger.
Wouldn’t that just be creating trouble for themselves for no reason?
As Jin Hunseok spoke, he carefully observed the expressions of everyone around him.
Although they had all originally gathered together because they shared the same goals, people’s hearts could change.
There was always the possibility that someone had developed different ideas during this period of time.
After all, relationships built on emotional bonds could be unreliable.
Someone might initially be so overwhelmed by emotion that they desperately wanted to travel across the country to reunite with their family.
But after calming down and thinking rationally, they might decide that the risks were simply too high and start entertaining entirely different plans instead.
Jin Hunseok’s reasoning was logical and convincing.
As a result, no one said anything more.
After all, these teammates had already gone through a selection process before joining the group.
They were still capable of listening to reason.
Even if someone did have different ideas in mind, they certainly would not reveal them at a time like this.
The main reason they had been unwilling to give up was because they believed that floors which had already been cleared out were relatively safe.
All they had to do was move supplies around.
The risks were incredibly low.
It was difficult not to be tempted by that.
On top of that, for modern people, there was still a deeply rooted assumption that cold weapons could never compare to firearms.