Employment Ice Age of the Dead Chapter 3

 Chapter 3: FIRE → Zombies Appear

「Ngh… where am I?」

How long had I been unconscious?

When I opened my eyes, I found myself lying on the futon in my room, back in my run-down apartment.

「…Yeah, this is definitely safe…」

The moment I got up, my body felt a little heavier than before… or so it seemed. But when I hurried to check the bathroom mirror, my skin was still smooth and I didn't look like I'd aged five years.

「What's going on here?」

Had I gone back to my old body, the usual near-fifty one, now that I was back in my original world? No, wait, the muscle I'd built up hadn't withered at all and my skin was still in good shape.

I quickly checked my status… I wasn't sure it would even work in this world, but when I pulled up my status screen, my level had somehow reset to 1.

「Level 1 again… does that mean I've gotten weaker?」

Maybe it was from five years of training in the other world, but I looked younger than before I'd been summoned and felt in perfect condition, though at level 1 I had to be far weaker than right after defeating the Demon King. It probably wasn't so much that my body had gotten heavier as that my stats had simply dropped from resetting to level 1.

It was strange that I'd kept my youth despite being back at level 1 but I decided to just accept that was how it worked for now. There was no way the muscle I'd built in the other world would just vanish overnight, so compared to the level 1 I'd been right after being summoned, I was now far sturdier, brimming with vitality and in good health.

「Well, it's not like I need to get that strong in this world anyway. Or rather, I'm probably never getting any stronger again.」

That's because leveling up required defeating demons and monsters. Since none of those existed in this world, my level was never going up again.

As for animals, if anyone asked, I'd hunted plenty of them in the other world for food, but killing animals had never raised my level. So I figured hunting in this world wouldn't raise my level either.

「Good, I can still take the king's reward and everything else I picked up in the other world in and out of my 『Item Box』 just fine.」

As long as I had this, it wasn't a problem even if I am at level 1, since unlike the other world I wouldn't need to fight monsters here. If anything, staying under the radar from here on meant it was better if nobody found out I was strong or that I was secretly sitting on a mountain of gold and treasure.

「Huh? Now that I think about it…」

Just then, a question occurred to me. How was it that my apartment, empty for the five years I'd spent fighting in the other world, was still just sitting here, usable as ever?

「If I'd gone five years without paying rent or utilities, I should've been evicted by now.」

What's more, the room was in exactly the same state it had been when I still lived here. It bothered me too that even though five years had supposedly passed, the room looked exactly like it had before I was summoned.

「What is going on here?」

I hurriedly checked the phone lying next to my pillow and an outrageous truth came to light.

「Today's July 10th 2025 and it's eight in the morning! So that means I'm…」

It had taken five whole years to defeat the Demon King in the other world and yet only a single night had passed here! Could it be that the king had actually looked out for me on this one?

「Oh, wait, then!」

I hadn't been fired from the janitor job after all. I still had to go to work!

「I'm going to miss the bus!」

If it turned out five years had actually passed here too and I'd been fired, that would've been out of my hands but if only one night had gone by, I still needed to properly submit a resignation letter before quitting. Rich enough now that none of that should've mattered and yet here I was acting all conscientious about it anyway. Maybe it was just my nature or maybe it was the same careful attitude that I had kept up my whole life, had somehow kept me from sinking all the way to the bottom.

「No time for breakfast! I need to get to work, fast!」

At least being a janitor meant I didn't have to bother changing into a suit. I threw on my usual casual clothes and immediately went to open the door and head out.

But then…

「What!」

The fact that I instantly sensed killing intent, pulled back and slammed the door shut, even at level 1, was probably thanks to all those days I'd spent fighting as the hero of another world. I'd slammed the door with all my strength and whatever had made me close it so fast had shoved an arm through, catching it in the door.

「Eh?!」

That alone would've been fine, but incredibly, the impact of the door closing had torn the arm clean off and it dropped with a plop onto the entryway floor. Startled didn't even begin to cover it.

「Oh no! Even back at level 1 with my strength dropped, I forgot I'm still far stronger than a normal person. I didn't mean for this to happen… Wait, huh?」

I checked the severed arm lying in the entryway and noticed something.

The torn arm was barely bleeding at all and the skin was a dead, blackish color, dry and filthy like something out of a corpse. I recognized that arm.

「Could this be…」

I wasn't sure it would even work at level 1, but I cast the 『Heal』 spell I knew on the fallen arm. The arm was wrapped in a pale blue light and vanished, giving off white smoke as it went. All that was left behind afterward were the white bones of the arm.

「Healing magic burns it away like that because this arm belongs to the undead.」

I ran over to the window this time and threw the curtains open. What spread out below, seen from my second-floor window, was an outrageous sight.

Every single person out walking, the ones who'd normally be heading to work or school, had skin that had turned a sickly black all over. Looking closer, I could see bite marks all over their necks and limbs in multiple places and I recognized these monsters.

「（Zombies……）」

Magical weapons created in the other world by a commander among the Demon King's forces, built for the sole purpose of wiping out humanity. There were some differences from the zombies back in the other world but these were undoubtedly zombies.

And then…

「Hiiiii! Monsterrrrs!」

「Aaaah」

「Uuurgh」

Just one person, still not turned undead, kept running for his life but the zombies that had been shambling along a moment ago lunged at him with a speed too fast to follow and sank their teeth into him everywhere. Bitten all over and out of strength, the man collapsed on the spot and several zombies piled on top of him.

Unfortunately, the man seemed to have died and laid there face down on the ground without so much as a twitch. Getting bitten by a zombie meant death was the same here as it had been in the other world.

「Grrr… And here I finally made it back to my own world too…」

Never in a million years did I expect zombies to show up in the modern world…

「This is like something out of a B-movie horror flick!」

That said, having spent five years fighting the Demon King and his army, I switched straight into combat mode. I hurried to pull weapons and armor out of my 『Item Box』 and started gearing up.

But then…

「I can't use the 『Hero Series』 gear that I wore when I beat the Demon King… Guess my level's too low for it.」

In that case, there was nothing but to defeat these zombies and level back up.

「Even at the same level 1, I'm way stronger than I was right after I first got summoned to the other world. If I can get back up to the level I beat the Demon King at…」

Besides, I had five years' worth of combat experience and knowledge built up. I was bound to be stronger.

I put the 『Hero Series』 gear I couldn't wear back into my 『Item Box』 and pulled out a different set to put on instead.

「Leather armor, leather boots, leather shield, leather helm, a bronze sword. Guess this is about my limit after all…」

In the other world, you needed good enough stats, meaning level, to equip decent gear. You could technically equip it anyway but it would only end up making you weaker.

That made sense, really. After all, if a level 1 character put on metal plate mail, the sheer weight alone would only slow them down. No matter how much of a hero I was in that world, I couldn't escape that rule and I'd worked hard leveling up so I could equip better gear.

「But for now, level 1 is level 1. Can't be helped.」

Once I had my gear squared away, I went ahead and stuffed everything within reach in my room into my 『Item Box』 too. Years of being poor had left me with a hoarder's instinct for scrimping.

At the same time, the whole town was already overrun with zombies like this. There was no way it was just this town, so I figured I'd better assume it was happening across Japan, if not the whole world.

「If that's the case, humanity probably won't be able to keep up its old standard of living for a while.」

Everything from everyday supplies to food and even water was likely to run short. Since I had my 『Item Box』 handy, I made sure to stash away anything that looked useful. This same scrimping habit, after all, was part of the reason I'd managed to beat the Demon King without dying.

「And here I finally got all that gold and treasure as my reward too…」

In a situation like this, there was no selling any of it for cash and even if I got money now, who knew if it would even be useful…

Right now, everyday supplies, food and water were worth far more. So I needed to collect as much of that as I possibly could.

Thanks to the zombies, I'd already slipped right back into the same combat mode I'd had as a hero in the other world.

「My phone… It's a miracle the internet's even still up. People all over the world turning into zombies one after another, attacking the living to make more of themselves, huh…」

Social media posts, forum threads, popular video sites, all of it. Every single one of them had people from all over the world reporting the same mass zombie outbreak. Some had even been attacked by zombies from behind in the middle of a live stream.

「It's a safe bet the internet's going to cut out soon too and the electricity, gas and water will probably stop working after that.」

So then, what I needed to do was…

「Let's go!」

Once I was fully geared up and had swept everything in the room into my 『Item Box』, I opened the door again. A one-armed zombie immediately lunged at me again. But I'd seen it coming so I managed to take its head off with the smallest possible motion.

「Phew… That takes care of that, for now…」

「Aaaargh!」

Even so, my opponent was undead. Though reduced to just a head rolling around in the hallway, it kept groaning, while its headless body wandered aimlessly up and down the second-floor corridor.

「Undead are such a pain to finish off…」

I cast 『Heal』 on the zombie's head first and the flesh dissolved away in a haze of white smoke, leaving nothing but the skull. I cast 『Heal』 on the body too, and sure enough, the flesh melted away and only bone remained.

「Phew… Good thing I'm stronger than I was at level 1 before I got summoned.」

Among the bones left from the zombie's body was a gray, marble-sized orb. I picked it up to examine it and could tell it was a lump of condensed mana. Monsters dropped magic stones in the other world too when you defeated them but this one looked a little different.

「Low quality, though. Better get away from here as soon as I can.」

That's because the remaining bones would revive into a 『Skeleton』 before long. Unfortunately, just smashing the bones wasn't enough to stop the revival. A Skeleton counted as a mid-tier undead, which meant I had a good chance of getting caught off guard at level 1.

For now, I just needed to focus on defeating zombies and leveling up.

「First, I need to take down as many zombies as I can and get my level up…」

The zombie I'd just defeated had to be the resident from the room next door on the second floor. We hadn't really talked much so I hadn't recognized them at first.

「Aaaah」

「Uuurgh!」

Once I'd taken down my neighbor's zombie, the rest of the second-floor residents turned out to be zombies too, throwing open their doors and lunging at me one after another. I took the heads off three of them with my bronze sword and burned the rest away with 『Heal』.

「Sorry about this.」

After clearing the zombies on the second floor, I made sure to check their rooms too. While stashing anything useful in my 『Item Box』, I found breakfast already laid out in the room of an old woman who'd lived alone.

「This grilled salted salmon set is delicious. Sorry, ma'am.」

This was for survival too. I collected more food and water on top of that.

When I went down to the first floor, its residents had unfortunately all turned into zombies too so I worked through them with my bronze sword and 『Heal』. I cut them down with the sword and dissolved the bodies with 『Heal』. Lastly, I made sure to collect the magic stones they dropped too.

I really was stronger than I'd been right after being summoned to the other world and the five years of fighting had drilled itself completely into my body. So a handful of zombies was nothing to worry about.

「Level 1 or not, I'm glad I haven't forgotten the swordsmanship I worked so hard to learn in the other world. Oh! My level just went up!」

Taking down six zombified residents of my own apartment building had been enough to level me up. My body already felt a little lighter so I'd keep grinding out levels steadily from here.

「I'm overwhelmingly stronger right now than level 2 me was right after getting summoned but I still can't afford to let my guard down.」

If I ran into a Skeleton, or something even higher-tier among the undead, there was a good chance I'd get killed without even putting up a fight.

「…I'm giving up on going to work. I'll focus on leveling up fast while securing what I need to survive. Hmm…」

Showing up to work like some honest fool in a situation like this wasn't going to get me paid anymore anyway. Besides, there was no way the bus to school was coming to the bus stop on schedule in the first place.

「I wonder if Shirai-san is safe.」

I was worried about her, the girl I talked to in the janitor's room every day but I couldn't imagine she'd be heading to school in a situation like this. And as the janitor, I had no idea where she even lived. A non-regular, middle-aged janitor asking a student for their contact information was bound to cause a huge problem.

Calling the school now to ask after her wouldn't get anyone to pick up anyway so all I could do for now was pray she was safe. I felt bad for Shirai-san but securing my own safety had to come first right now.

Determined as I was though, being back at level 1 meant that casting 『Heal』 on six zombies had already burned through all my mana.

「Normally I'd need a full night's rest to recover my mana but I bet this'll work instead.」

I pulled a bracelet out of my 『Item Box』 and fastened it onto my dominant arm. Lucky for me, this bracelet seemed to be equippable even at a low level. In the other world, I hadn't gotten my hands on it until I was already at a pretty high level.

「The 『Mana Replenishment Bracelet』. If I fit the magic stone I got off that zombie into the socket here…」

In an instant, the magic stone dissolved away as if it were melting. And the headache and drowsiness that came with running out of mana vanished.

「And now, 『Heal』.」

I used the healing spell to top off the max HP I'd gained from leveling up and my body felt lighter again. With this Mana Replenishment Bracelet, I could refill my mana using the magic stones I picked up from defeating zombies. Using this, I should be able to hunt down plenty of zombies in a short amount of time.

With my mana successfully topped off, my first priority was survival so I set off to secure everyday supplies and food. As for leveling up, that would take care of itself as long as I defeated every zombie that got in my way.

「The chairman's idiot son probably isn't showing up to work either. Honestly, it's looking doubtful the school will even survive this.」

I never imagined that after five whole years summoned to another world, I'd end up back here the very next day. But zombies showing up was a curveball I hadn't seen coming at all. But first things first, I needed to survive and I'd figure out the rest after.

「Once I've leveled up enough to have some breathing room, maybe I can go look for Shirai-san.」

Still, to think my own world would end up overrun with zombies like this…

Huh?

You're asking if I'm not going to use my power to save the world?

Sure, I was suddenly summoned to another world and had my life put on the line but the king treated me with real courtesy and I got a reward to match. But here in this world, I'm nothing more than society's deadweight, an 『Employment Ice Age Uncle』.

Like I was told before, I'll just find some way to get by on my own. Saving the world, I'll leave that to the capable elites and the young people.