Chapter 3

The man walked slowly toward me with unsteady steps. His head and neck, barely connected, swayed as if being pulled by his staggering gait.

"Hey, hey, is this some kind of costume or prank?"

I spoke to him while backing away to the opposite side. There was no response; the man just kept walking.

Even as I said those words, I clearly felt that this entity was not a fake. I had faced real undead creatures multiple times in another world, after all.

"Damn it."

A zombie is nothing to me. If I really wanted to, I could take one down with just a finger.

Still... I wished it was some kind of mistake. I clicked my tongue and fled from the scene.

I ran down the hallway, opened the door to the emergency stairs, and started descending. At first, I skipped one step at a time, then two, then three. By the time I reached the landing on the second floor, I was effortlessly jumping down all the steps at once.

It seems my abilities other than strength are still intact from the other world.

As I felt this in my body, I reached the ground floor and approached the door leading outside. There, a man in a suit, his head crushed, lay face up. A metal bat lay beside him.

"He's dead, right?"

I picked up the bat and poked the corpse. There was no reaction, only a dry sensation transmitted through the metal bat.

I swallowed hard and reached for the doorknob. I slowly opened the door, trying not to make any noise, and was speechless at the scene I saw through the gap.

The road a short distance from the door should have had a decent amount of pedestrian and vehicle traffic at this time. But now, instead, there were only the sounds of dragging feet and groans, and the numerous figures of the undead.

I quietly closed the door and climbed back up the stairs I had just descended.

+++++

The sound of someone pounding on the door of the room echoed. Occasionally, I could hear scratching sounds, probably from the zombie from earlier scratching at the door.

"What the hell is going on..."

After that, I returned to the fourth floor, used the metal bat I had picked up to push aside the zombie blocking the emergency door, and went back to my room.

I sat on the floor by the entrance, still in my shoes, and muttered to myself.

Did I really come back to the world I was in before, Japan? But this room is definitely the one I lived in before I was transported. If that's the case, what happened in this month?

I took off my shoes to moisten my dry throat and turned on the faucet in the room.

"Of course, there's no water, right?"

If this power outage is widespread, it's understandable that there's no water from the tap in this apartment building. In a single-family home, water might still come out, but even if it did, I'd have to question whether it's safe to drink.

By the standards of the other world, even if a zombie fell into a well, drinking the water wouldn't turn you into a zombie. That's because when someone is bitten by a zombie, they turn into one because the zombie's curse, fueled by envy and desire for life, spreads throughout their body. The water in a well wouldn't be cursed just because a zombie fell into it. The curse would dissipate quickly because it's not a targeted object. Of course, it would still be dirty, so priests and clerics would cast purification spells.

But the zombies I saw outside might not be the same. If they are caused by bacteria or something else, it's uncertain whether the water treatment facilities are functioning, and at the very least, I should boil the water as a precaution. If the power is out nationwide, the water treatment facilities probably aren't working at all.

"From what I saw, they looked just like the zombies over there..."

If the "Status Effect Immunity" skill works the same way as in the other world, there would be no need to worry about it.

With that thought, I turned off the faucet.

I opened the refrigerator, which was now the same temperature as the outside air, and sighed again, confirming that there were no unopened drinks left.