Chapter 4: HTSCF CH 004 In the name of milk tea, I will slaughter all of you.

A/N: This chapter’s title was inspired by Sailor Moon. :D Posting an extra chapter outside the regular post schedule to celebrate my birthday earlier this week. Another extra chapter will also be posted tomorrow.

Beta: Jeannette

A week passed in relative peace, and Jun was glad to have chosen Silver Base. Though it wasn’t the strongest base, it was still one of the strongest. After all, where the female protagonist and male leads stayed was bound to be safe, if one were to ignore the fact that he was the cannon fodder that the plot was still coming after. Compared to other places, though, he might have died already.

During the week, the management of Silver Base was easily established because a zombie apocalypse was nothing unusual. Many people had either watched movies or shows or read books concerning zombies, so the rules of base operations or how to handle zombies weren’t hard to figure out. A merit system had been put into place, where base residents could earn points to redeem certain benefits, such as food or a private room.

For now, no one would be expelled from base for doing nothing, but they wouldn’t be given anything other than a bed. In the future, though, when more people would take shelter at the bases, it would be a different story. But that wouldn’t happen for another two weeks, and that’s where Jun’s storage units would come into play. He had prepared enough supplies for nearly a year, which would act as his contribution to the base and keep him alive for the remaining 3 months of his mission.

Currently, the base had more than enough supply for half a year, but that wouldn’t last long once more survivors arrived, so there were already missions to earn merit points being handed out. Jun had signed up for one of the missions to find food or daily necessities such as toilet paper, shampoo, etc. He had the choice to go alone or form a team. For the sake of privacy and to not stand out, he decided to form a team and then “get lost.”

There were no ability users yet, but during this week many will begin to awaken as a result of more intense fights between new types of zombies and humans. At the moment, Jun had already slipped away from his team and was on his way to one of his storage units. Surprisingly he had yet to come across any zombies. In fact, since the apocalypse and seeing some of the first zombies when he ran to hide, he had yet to come across another or even had to fight one.

That wasn’t very good—definitely the calm before the storm. With his fate as a cannon fodder, he was very likely to encounter a horde of zombies. As if they were just waiting for him to jinx himself, sounds of people screaming along with the groans of the undead became audible as he got closer to the storage unit lot.

Storage unit lots were usually devoid of people, as it was a place for things, wanted or unwanted. People also wouldn’t go through storage units to find supplies during the apocalypse as it’d be gambling. They’d have to sort through a lot of junk and memorabilia before finding anything useful if anything at all. Time was limited during the apocalypse so who had time to do that? 

Based on those facts alone, if there were to be any zombies at a storage unit lot, it should have been just a few stragglers, not the small horde of 30 or some running at him that very moment.

‘What the actual fuck.’

But who was Jun? Only a cannon fodder doomed to die, so of course there would be such a horde of zombies here. And was that not the female protagonist’s love rival leading—no—being chased by the horde, screaming her head off?

“Ahhhhh! Help me! Help me!!!”

‘Help you!? Help me!’ Thought Jun as he considered his options. Technically he didn’t have to save the love rival as she should be safe until the female protagonist personally wreaked vengeance on her, but he had made a promise to himself earlier, that he wouldn’t just be a passerby after escaping the college campus. 

‘Ah, I hate myself.’

|Don’t be so hard on yourself, dearest Host.|

|Yeah, whatever. Fuck it, death is inevitable, whether I’m a cannon fodder or not.|

“Milk tea forever!”

After shouting his battle cry, Jun took out his crossbow and started shooting. He’d been working hard the past 6 months so his accuracy was pretty good. He would only miss once out of five shots, and when he hit his target, it was always with headshots.

|Nice shooting as always, dearest Host! Don’t forget, you still have a Rewind if you regret your decision later.|

Again with the mention of the useless skill. 

As Jun shot at the zombies, he kept running away, keeping his distance. At the same time, he had to be on the lookout for any other zombies popping up, and the love rival’s screams certainly weren’t helping.

“Help me! Save me! Ahhhhh!!!”

How could the female protagonist’s love rival be so useless? It didn’t make sense.

“Shut up, Oriana! You’re going to draw more zombies to us!” 

As expected of the love rival, Oriana Silvie had managed to outrun the zombies even in her ridiculously high heels and had caught up to Jun.

“Oh my gosh, little Jun, is that you???” The nickname caused Jun to stumble a little bit, but he quickly regained his footing.

“Yeah, it’s me. What are you doing here alone?” He asked.

“I’m not alone,” Oriana countered. “I was with my team, but then I got lost. What about you?”

“… I’m also lost.”

“Oh no, that’s terrible!”

“Yup, terrible.”

‘Now I’m stuck with you and won’t be able to go get my milk tea stash.’

|Is milk tea all you care about, dearest Host?|

|No milk tea, no life.|

System 00 sweatdropped. |At least you have some motivation.|

At that moment, Jun saw that one of the zombies had suddenly sped up, and realized it was a new variant, the speed ones. Wasn’t the arrival of the variant zombies a little too early?

‘Fuck me.’

|… Host?|

You are reading story Falling: How to Survive as a Cannon Fodder at novel35.com

|…|

As the zombie got closer and closer by the second, Jun was given a vivid view of how disfigured the zombie was. One of the arms was almost falling off, most of the skin was rotten or bitten off and was of a discolored pasty yellowish-green color, the mouth was filthy, yellowing, and constantly grinding and gnawing at nothing. He could even smell the foul odor of the dead from where he was and almost threw up. The speed zombie was moving too fast and too smartly for him to land an arrow in its head.

All he could do now was run.

But lucky for him, being next to the love rival seemed to be a good thing, as she still had to survive until her downfall due to the female protagonist. Her team had somehow found them.

“Oriana, you’re safe!” One of the men shouted and pulled her into a hug. Another of the men waved his arms and took care of the speed zombie with a fire blast. The third man had a sniper rifle and quickly scoped the remaining zombies. Just like that, their ordeal was over, but to be safe, one of the men checked the perimeter for any stray zombies.

Worthy of a love rival, Oriana seemed to have formed her own harem. Jun looked at her team of strong and handsome men with admiration. Noticing his eyes, Oriana asked, “Do you want to come with us?”

“No, my team should also be nearby.” Jun was quick to reject and the men’s hostile glances lessened. He almost wanted to tell them he was gay and had no desire to join a woman’s harem but controlled himself.

“Thank you for rescuing me, little Jun.” Oriana smiled, resulting in the men’s hostile glances returning a thousandfold.

“No problem, no problem, you're my sister’s best friend.” Jun laughed it off.

‘Now hurry up and leave before your men kill me with their laser beam eyes.’

“Oh, I don’t know about that anymore. Dahlye has been avoiding me since we saw each other at base…”

Because Oriana was the love rival, she had also ended up at Silver Base. That she already had a run-in with Dahlye, Jun did not know. After all, he had been avoiding her and all her harem members much like he avoided unsweetened milk tea.

Oriana looked rather forlorn and Jun couldn’t help but try to comfort her as he was soft-hearted. “… Oh. I’m sure it’s just some misunderstanding.”

“You think?” Oriana brightened. “Maybe you could talk to her for me? Help us clear up the misunderstanding?”

‘How am I supposed to do that when I don’t even know what the misunderstanding is?’

In the original plot, told from the perspective of the female protagonist, it was only stated that she had been betrayed by Oriana, leading to her death and rebirth. As to how or why, there was never any mention of it, so it could be just a misunderstanding. But if that was the case, then the rest of what happened after the female protagonist’s rebirth would be utter nonsense. Now with the transmigrator aspect, Jun had no idea how the plot would develop.

|Well, you’re supposed to be dead, so much of the plot has already changed.|

|No shit, Sherlock.|

|Uwu, why do you have to be so mean, dearest Host?|

Jun couldn’t help it. Something about System 00 made him want to bully it!

“Little Jun?”

“Huh?” Snapping out of his daze, Jun refocused on Oriana. “What?”

Oriana only gave him a helpless smile. “Regarding Dahlye, can you help me?”

“… I’ll try.” He agreed. “But I can’t guarantee you anything. She’s been strange towards me too…”

“I wonder why…” Oriana pondered, but couldn’t come up with anything reasonable. After that, they parted, and Jun was finally able to make his way to his storage units. They were all in this lot but spread out, so he went for the nearest one. It didn’t matter which one, since they all had the same items.

On his way there, he didn’t run into any other zombies. After all, this was an area that usually lacked people. That zombie horde earlier was probably a freak of nature caused by the love rival and absolutely not his cannon fodder umbrella.

|You keep telling yourself that, dearest Host.|

Jun was standing in front of one of his storage units, ready to unlock it. For convenience’s sake, he had installed a password lock that used his fingerprint. It was much faster and easier than using a pin pad or a key and lock. Once his fingerprint was accepted, the storage unit’s door began to rise.

|If we’re talking about my cannon fodder umbrella, wouldn’t I have run into a lightning ability variant zombie? Or worse, the zombie emperor himself?|

|H-h-host! B-behind you!|

|Don’t tell me it’s really the zombie emperor?|

A breath of hot air hit Jun’s left ear, causing goosebumps to run down his arms. His shoulders were then enveloped by a pair of strong, muscular arms that were a little heavy on his slender body. With someone else’s weight—presumably the zombie emperor’s—pushing down on him, Jun couldn’t help but despair over his shit luck. That was until the zombie emperor spoke.

“Baby, it is you. I’m so glad you’re alive.” Then he was sniffed by the other. “And you smell so good, so delicious. It’s making me so hard. Can you feel it?”

There was something hard rubbing against his lower back.

‘—The fuck?’

— 

A/N: … Teehee?

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