Employment Ice Age of the Dead Chapter 4

 Chapter 4: Scavenging

「Aaaargh!」

「Uuurgh!」

「Kayuumaaa…」

「It's not even open yet, so maybe that one's an employee?」

In order to secure daily necessities, I ran toward the shopping mall near my apartment.

Along the way, I collected goods from the shops and convenience stores I passed… Technically that's theft but it's an emergency, so consider this my apology in advance… Then I smashed open the still-closed shopping mall's front entrance with my bronze sword and stepped inside, only to be attacked by dozens of zombies.

I swung my sword, took the zombies' heads off and burned their bodies away with 『Heal』. Just taking their heads off alone wasn't enough to actually defeat a zombie. It earned me no experience either so my level wouldn't go up. I wouldn't get any magic stones that way either. As much of a hassle as it was to finish them off properly, I had no choice.

「And don't forget to refill my mana too…」

I made sure to collect the magic stones from every zombie I took down, using them to refill my mana as I continue. With zombies, burning them away was enough to finish them off but that was going to be rough for everyone else out there.

「Level 4 now.」

Things were going smoothly but it was only going to get harder and harder to level up from here. In the other world there'd been plenty of strong enemies that weren't undead but in this world so far, there was nothing but zombies.

It wasn't hard to imagine that from here on, no matter how many I defeated, leveling up would only get harder. Either some special individual on the level of a strong boss would show up or I'd have to speed things up by taking down the Skeletons that revived from defeated zombies' bones.

「It takes a while for a Skeleton to revive from a zombie's bones so I'll just have to leave these as they are for now.」

In the other world, I'd tried grinding the bones to powder, soaking them in holy water, scattering them in pieces, all sorts of things to keep a Skeleton from reviving but in the end, it always came back anyway. I'd just had to accept that was simply how it worked and give up trying to stop it.

More importantly right now was getting strong enough to reliably take down a Skeleton when the time came. I couldn't afford to let my guard down. I needed to use my head and make sure I never ended up surrounded by a horde of undead while hopelessly outnumbered. After all, the real strength of weaker undead, like zombies, lay in numbers and in group tactics built around sheer overwhelming force.

「Every single thing in this mall is getting collected!」

The mall had a general supermarket, a home center, restaurants and all sorts of other specialty shops inside. I combed through every corner, collecting anything that looked useful. I didnt forget to collect the goods in the back stockrooms too.

Once I'd finished that, I moved on to the gas station next to the mall.

「I'll fill the gas cans I picked up with gasoline and diesel before I put them away. And I'll put kerosene in the poly tanks…」

If I stored gasoline and the like as loose liquid straight into my 『Item Box』, it would come splashing out onto the ground the moment I pulled it back out. So the gas cans and poly tanks I'd gathered from the home center came in handy.

These fuels were almost certainly going to become impossible to get from here on. Both crude oil imports from overseas and the refining of gasoline, diesel and kerosene were bound to stop.

「Fuel's going to become precious. I collected some generators too so I can use those to run appliances. Actually, solar panels and a storage battery might be better. If it's just enough electricity for one person to live on, solar panels alone should cover it.」

At the same time, I'd made sure to collect some stoves too. It was in the middle of summer now but winter would be here before long. A stove that didn't need electricity would be more useful than a heater.

Naturally, I didn't forget to collect firewood, charcoal, gas canisters, portable gas stoves and the like.

「The camping goods store had a lot of handy stuff. I grabbed all of it, though.」

I still hadn't quite figured out the storage limit on my 『Item Box』. So I just kept stuffing in as much as I could, figuring I could always toss out anything unnecessary if it ever filled up. With zombies breaking out worldwide and everyone they attacked turning into zombies in turn, the situation called for gathering up as many supplies and as much food as I possibly could right now.

「From here on, a lot of what modern society takes for granted just isn't going to be possible anymore. That's exactly why I should secure supplies while I still can.」

If I worked hard enough, I could probably get my hands on enough supplies and food to keep living a modern-ish life until the day I died. Fortunately, I was single and didn't have a wife or kids to be responsible for.

On my own, I could probably manage just fine. I'd already done something as hard as defeating a Demon King. So all I wanted now was to live out the rest of my life in peace.

「Guess I'll make the rounds elsewhere too…」

A little while back, a certain comedy duo's catchphrase had gone viral. 『There's no such thing as having too much of this stuff, no matter how much you've got.』 The same went for supplies and food. No matter how much you had, none of it would go to waste.

I borrowed a car from one of the mall employees. I didn't own a car myself but I did technically have a license… even if I'd basically been a paper driver lately… and besides, in a situation like this, there was no need to worry about getting pulled over by a police officer for driving without one anyway.

It had been a while since I'd driven but I got the car moving and started collecting anything useful from shops, warehouses and houses all over town, one after another.

「Still, why haven't I run into any survivors?」

Ever since I'd come back to this world, everyone I ran into had already turned into a zombie. There was no way every single resident of this town had turned into a zombie but even if there were survivors, they'd probably already fled.

And mixed in among the many zombies were plenty that were bloated from drowning, missing parts of their bodies where fish had eaten them away or too rotten to even look at.

「Seems pretty likely the zombies came ashore from the sea.」

My apartment, the shopping mall, the warehouses, every shop I'd been to so far, all of it was right along the coast. The zombies that had come ashore from the sea had probably attacked the people living along the coast first, turning them into zombies too.

There might still be survivors further inland or up in the mountains but gathering supplies and leveling up had to come first for now.

「Been a while since I drove but no real problems so far.」

That was probably thanks to all the training and leveling up in the other world, which had sharpened my reflexes and dynamic vision. And just as I'd guessed, there were plenty of zombies along the coast so I fought my way through them while collecting supplies from the shops and warehouses there too.

「…I'd better hurry.」

There was no such thing as too much food. More than anything, the power had finally gone out. So I wanted to collect as many perishables as I could before they went bad.