Luo Feng stood at the window, tense.
The sky was dark, and the moon was high, providing natural light.
Below, riled-up zombies glared at him with bloodshot eyes.
Their hands clawed at the wall, desperately trying to reach him.
Luo Feng couldn't help but reminisce about his experience in the first world.
At that time, the zombies there had cores, and a person could absorb those cores to level up their supernatural ability.
He was fresh away from his home—confused and disordered.
Heh, he almost went crazy that day.
He was trapped in an apartment with zombies surrounding him and no one in sight.
He had to endure the nausea from taking a shot with his gun.
And because he was panicked, the gun didn't hit their weakness.
Instead, it only made the zombies more aggressive.
Luo Feng doesn't know how he survived that day.
All he knew was that he was desperate to go home.
So desperate that he tore through his normal self and became someone with courage—someone whose hands didn't shake while shooting.
Albeit, someone with poor aim.
Luckily, he had enough bullets to waste.
After that battle, he was covered in blood, and his heart was covered with a thin layer of ice.
Eventually, he met another human.
It was a noble.
That experience alone made the ice in his heart spread.
Somehow, the nobles he had met were both hypocritical and cruel at the same time.
They blatantly treated him as bait and called him ungrateful for complaining.
Luo Feng was a modern man who had lived a normal life.
He went to work at a convenience store, then came home to watch zombie movies.
His life before his transmigration was one of solitude and indifference.
He had no friends and was an orphan.
He didn't attend school, so he could only afford to work at a convenience store after leaving the orphanage.
In all, his life was safe... normal.
Only for him to be thrown into different worlds to destroy the cause of the zombie apocalypse.
After facing the nobles and having developed a cold heart,
He fought his way through countless zombies and humans while traveling around the country to find the source.
Unfortunately, he was killed by some nobles who were pissed a commoner was so unruly.
Now Luo Feng didn't feel any pity when looking at nobles.
So that's why his gaze toward the Jeep that just approached the zombie horde was calm.
No anger at the culprit of the original owner's death.
No remorse for his actions.
No solemnity to honor the soon-departed souls.
Just calm.
He held the gun steady, then looked through the lens.
There were three Jeeps following each other, containing five people each.
They hopped down from the Jeep just as the zombies rushed toward them.
Luo Feng felt there was one thing he should be grateful to the zombies for.
They were an excellent bait and distraction.
Just look at how occupied these bastards are.
Second, they were relentless in killing their enemies.
The zombies immediately turned to the fresh meat that was closer to them.
They stretched out their hands and bared their teeth.
The people outside the Jeep quickly took their weapons.
They swung at the zombies.
This group was the more courageous group of people in the base.
So they weren't too panicked and managed to deal with the zombies a bit—
And also accumulated a lot of injuries along the way.
Luo Feng aimed and fired.
The next thing that happened was one of the men suddenly collapsed.
But the people around him were too busy to care.
Neither did they have the luxury to check.
Luo Feng was sure they wouldn't.
After all, they were all destined to die today.
All of them.
But to be sure, he only fired bullets at those about to be attacked by zombies.
Slowly, with the help of the zombies,
He managed to grind all of them down.
Yes... every single one.
Luo Feng thought it was a bother to let the gangster and the green tea live just to satisfy a resentment that wasn't his own.
What's the point of gloating to someone you were going to kill?
After all, a dead man cannot speak.
Is it some vain sense of accomplishment for them?
They have suffered all their life, so revenge on their wrongdoers should be meaningful and fulfilling.
But why should I tie myself down to one person?
That just gives the person a certain control over the other person.
Now, it's easy to refute that statement—
But to Luo Feng, it most certainly does feel true.
Think about it clearly.
You and your "good brother" form a guild.
Eventually, you become too powerful, and that same "good brother" is threatened.
Same old story told a million times.
The "good brother" betrays his friend—which is you in this case—and stabs you in the back.
Then you wake up after some years and seek revenge.
But the thing is—
When you wake up, you'll be thinking about that person who betrayed you.
When you do anything else, you're still thinking about that person.
When you want to get a skill, you're still thinking about that person.
When you decide whether or not to go on an adventure, you still think about that betrayer.
Heck, you could be shitting your pants, but your first thought would be how better your life would have been if you weren't betrayed.
...In essence, what else do you call this?
Obsession.
Someone on the path of revenge can easily fall into a sort of obsession.
Now, obsession isn't bad.
We aren't talking about good and evil right now.
We're talking about the idea and thought that goes into revenge.
Revenge shouldn't just be some primitive act of causing chaos.
That's too low-level and childish.
It's better to move on with your life than to aimlessly cause chaos.
So what if you destroy all his wealth?
He can just build it back up again.
So what if you become the strongest in the world?
...People will still read about him in history books.
So what if you finally kill him?
Till his death, he was never truly repentant.
So what's the point?
He didn't think he did anything wrong, now did he?
Apologies from a man about to die are useless.
He didn't suddenly realize he was wrong.
It was just that his brain looked for the best way out of the situation.
And "apology" or "realizing one's mistake" would give him a lesser death.
So no, revenge is a delicate thing.
It isn't about paying back what someone did to you.
It's about a lot of things depending on the individual.
It can be about making sure the person never forgets who you are and what he did.
It can be about killing them.
It can be about plunging them into despair.
It can be about taking everything back.
It can be a lot of things.
But it can never be a righteous act for the sake of goodness.
Anyone who believes that isn't actually carrying out revenge but merely throwing a tantrum.
...It's just that the tantrum is louder than normal.
Real people committed to their revenge recognize only one thing—
Self-fulfillment and self-satisfaction.
It isn't about what the person did or how bad it was.
It's about quelling that feeling in the person.
That feeling can be a lot of things—
Resentment.
Misery.
Despair.
Fury.
Revenge is about these emotions, which fuel the person to carry out different acts.
Whether right or wrong.
Justice or unlawful.
Whether it endangers other innocent people or not.
In fact, anyone who cares about harming innocent people while on the path to revenge isn't a good person.
That's someone seeking justice.
Justice and revenge might sound different but are essentially the same thing.
Neither can be born without a great evil.
The difference is that those who uphold justice care for their external surroundings.
Those who want revenge care only about the path that leads to their success.
If that path involves innocent people, then so be it.
Those innocent people would bear resentment toward the person seeking revenge.
But that person would not care.
He would welcome their curses and retribution with open arms—
Because he knows what kind of person he is.
A body without a soul, just thinking about revenge.
Unlike a person upholding justice.
For example, Luo Feng.
He wasn't the original owner and hadn't met these people before.
So he didn't have resentment toward them.
Therefore, it was never an act of revenge.
It was simply upholding justice.
What happened to their bodies and how much pain they suffered in death was no concern of his.
Luo Feng gazed at the finally quiet streets and put the gun away.
[ Task "Eliminate the villain" successful ]
[ Reward obtained – ×1.5 attributes ]
[ Spirit +5 ]
"Why did you cut it by 0.5?" Luo Feng asked.
[ Please refrain from using trash in anything I give you ] the system's cold mechanical voice sounded disgusted.
Luo Feng was no stranger to this.
He had found out along the way that the system hated zombies.
It wasn't the usual hatred directed toward something.
It was mostly coming from an inherent disgust.
Luo Feng couldn't grasp why the system hated the undead so much.
According to some novels, a system could take a transmigrator to any world.
So it should be quite strong.
Then what's with the deep-seated hatred?
As if the two parties had known each other for years—
And had always been at odds.
[ Task – Join the base at the designated area ]
The system was back to its original voice.
Luo Feng didn't pay any more mind to it because he knew the system would probably not answer.
So he checked the location of the base on the mini-map he just received.
It showed him the direction and how to get there.
Luo Feng went around the building to pack some food and water.
He tossed it into his storage space and left the building.
There was a heavy scent of blood, and the ground was sticky with it.
Luo Feng didn't glance at the corpses with their eyes open in fright, laying motionless.
He only stopped at two corpses.
He gazed deeply at the dead gangster for a minute.
Just sixty seconds to adjust his mental state and reassure the resentment the original owner left behind.
Now the resentment had dissipated.
Luo Feng bent down and took the key from the corpse.
Then he swung it around on a finger while whistling a jolly tune.
His back was straight, and his steps were measured.
He decisively got into the Jeep and drove to the destination pointed out by the system.