The Reborn Otaku’s Code of Practice for the Apocalypse – CH146

Chapter 146 — The End of the Air Raid

At last, dawn broke through the darkest moment before sunrise.

Sunlight reflected across the endless white snowfields. The people stationed atop the walls—fighting off zombie bird attacks while also monitoring the zombie horde outside the city—felt fear rise in their hearts the moment they saw the base below swarming with countless black shadows.

Zombie birds filled the skies everywhere, hunting freely for food.

With creatures like these around…

What was the point of the walls anymore?

Of course, when they turned back toward the outside of the walls, the densely packed black masses and endless moving figures still reminded everyone just how useful those walls remained.

The black snow-covered earth beyond the city teemed with dark figures of all sizes.

Several zombie giants standing three or four meters tall lingered toward the middle and rear of the horde, casually grabbing chunks of snow, stones, and even other zombies before blindly hurling them toward the city walls.

Thankfully, the rows of defensive metal spikes atop the walls blocked many of the incoming projectiles.

Still, some agile zombies managed to grab onto the spikes after being thrown upward and began climbing over the walls.

But the survivors inside the base had no spare attention for the wall defenses.

All they could do was desperately deal with those enormous, vicious, insane zombie birds.

Luo Xun’s group felt incredibly fortunate that the little dog had already awakened an ability.

Although its power didn’t seem especially lethal, it proved unbelievably useful in the current situation.

Their apartment sat on the fifteenth and sixteenth floors.

Every time the little dog activated gravity suppression, the birds clinging to the windows and metal walls outside dropped from the sky like dumplings falling into boiling water.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

From thirty meters up, even zombies wouldn’t survive intact after such a fall.

Unfortunately, they were too far from the ground to conveniently collect crystal cores.

Otherwise, they could simply have the little dog knock every bird down and leisurely collect the loot afterward.

To maximize their crystal core gains, they still tried luring the zombie birds into sticking their heads through the openings before trapping and killing them.

Although slower, the rewards remained substantial.

Even the weakest of these zombie birds were level three, and many attacks were led by level four birds.

Only when the surrounding numbers became overwhelming did they have the little dog unleash another area-clearing gravity attack.

Still, no matter how effective the little dog was, its mental energy remained limited.

After repeated use, it began panting heavily with its tongue hanging out, clearly exhausted.

Luo Xun placed several level-one crystal cores in front of it to replenish its energy.

But the idiot turned its head away in complete disinterest.

Communication barriers and species differences made Luo Xun want to claw at the walls in frustration.

Still, they could fight zombies without the little dog’s help too.

So after noticing the dog growing exhausted, Luo Xun decisively arranged for Zhang Su and Xu Mei to coordinate their abilities whenever the situation became too dangerous.

Burn the birds’ wings apart.

Let’s see them keep flying after that.

Below them, throughout neighboring apartments and nearby residential compounds, screams rose and fell continuously.

Things had improved compared to the initial descent of the zombie birds, but every so often fresh screams, collapsing buildings, and explosions echoed from somewhere nearby.

Suppressing their unease and resisting the urge to look toward those sounds, everyone forced themselves to focus only on the enemies directly before them.

One bird after another.

One monster after another.

Although crossbows lacked the brutal recoil of heavy firearms, repeated firing still exhausted the body over time.

Fortunately, Yan Fei had opened only two firing slits, allowing people to rotate shifts.

Still, whenever metal-type zombie birds damaged the outer defensive walls, even those resting had to immediately return to battle.

Back outside the base previously, they had faced massive zombie hordes too.

But then they’d possessed sturdy metal shelters, carefully prepared traps, trenches, mushroom extract, and gasoline for burning enemies alive once ammunition ran low.

Now, all they could rely upon were the weapons in their own hands and their teammates rotating into battle.

Clenching their teeth, everyone stubbornly held their positions.

The battle stretched from midnight to dawn…

Then from dawn until noon…

“I’ll go make some food.”

Luo Xun accidentally glanced at his phone screen.

The base had just sent another useless message—telling people whose homes had been breached by zombie birds to hide in underground shelters.

Underground shelters?

Please.

The base hadn’t even dug proper basements. Where exactly were people supposed to hide?

It was already past one-thirty in the afternoon.

None of them had eaten since morning.

“Take someone with you,” Yan Fei said.

He needed to continuously maintain and repair the outer metal defenses and couldn’t leave.

Xu Mei was just about to volunteer when the little dog, previously lying quietly in the corner, suddenly stood up wagging its tail and trotted over.

Luo Xun rubbed its head and smiled at everyone.

“I’ll take the little guy. I’m just going back to grab noodles and tomatoes. We’ll cook noodle soup in the kitchen over here.”

The stairwell remained pitch dark.

Luo Xun casually switched on the supplemental grow lights—there were still crops planted throughout the hallway.

Compared to the chaos in Li Tie’s apartment, the hallway looked strangely normal.

Nothing appeared disturbed.

But somewhere on one of the lower floors, sounds of fighting and screams echoed faintly.

Once zombie birds smashed through windows and entered apartments, fleeing residents opening their doors naturally allowed the birds into the hallways as well.

Luo Xun carefully lightened his footsteps as he and the little dog quietly returned home.

He hurried upstairs to the storage room, grabbed several bundles of dried noodles, then rushed downstairs into the kitchen to collect a basket of quail eggs before quickly returning next door.

Before entering, he vaguely heard pounding noises against the heavy metal doors on the fourteenth or fifteenth floor, along with people shouting.

His footsteps paused briefly.

Then Luo Xun slipped back inside.

It wasn’t that he wanted to abandon others to die.

But they’d already concentrated the zombie birds’ attention on the openings near Apartment 1601.

They absolutely couldn’t afford to open fire elsewhere and attract more enemies.

If they ended up surrounded from every direction, they’d eventually be overwhelmed and killed.

Fortunately, Li Tie’s apartment still had stored tomato paste—made previously by Luo Xun together with the entire team.

He casually picked some green onions from the plant racks and stir-fried them for flavor before adding tomato paste. Song Lingling filled the pot with water using her ability.

Once the water boiled, Luo Xun added noodles and poured in a huge bowl of beaten quail eggs.

The meal was simple.

But a giant pot of hot soup noodles still lifted everyone’s spirits.

People rotated between eating and guarding the windows.

During one brief lull—after the recovered little dog had forcibly “air-dropped” another wave of zombie birds to the ground—Luo Xun spoke quietly.

“There are zombie birds inside the stairwell now. Not sure which floor they entered from, but there may be some on the fourteenth floor too. I heard movement near the metal doors earlier, though things seem okay for now.”

Everyone exchanged uneasy glances.

Zhang Su asked, “Should we go check?”

Luo Xun shook his head.

“I’m worried the birds will smell people in the stairwell and start attacking the doors together.”

Yan Fei thought for a moment before suggesting, “Then let’s do this: whenever people rotate for rest, keep listening carefully to the stairwell. If something happens, we’ll have time to prepare.”

At the moment, that was their only option.

After nearly an entire day, the endless black masses of zombie birds filling the skies above the base finally descended completely into the city.

And the battle entered its final stage.

Anyone still alive this far into the apocalypse might not possess overwhelming combat power, but most had become very skilled at avoiding danger.

Although zombie birds were terrifyingly dangerous, not all of them were as powerful as those Luo Xun’s group had encountered.

Especially since Luo Xun’s group unfortunately lived on the top floors.

No matter which wave descended, the birds always spotted their apartment first.

As a result, stronger and higher-level zombie birds naturally gathered there first as well.

Lower floors throughout the base were comparatively safer.

If people hid quickly enough in difficult-to-access places—storage rooms without windows, bathrooms with tiny windows, and similar areas—many survivors still managed to survive.

The counteroffensive officially began the morning of the second day of the zombie siege.

After nearly all the zombie birds had landed…

After stronger survivors cleared the birds around their own homes…

After everyone finally got some rest…

The military launched the first organized assault at dawn.

Soldiers armed with heavy weapons first cleared the military fortress and the residential district nearby housing military families.

Then they gradually expanded outward from the military camp, clearing one street and one residential block at a time.

Meanwhile, the ability users from New City also joined the operation.

As for squads like the Otaku Squad that didn’t live in New City, although they too received orders to help clear remaining zombie birds throughout the base, they couldn’t organize an effective large-scale counterattack immediately.

All they could do was first eliminate the birds around their own positions before cautiously leaving their homes to clear their residential complex.

Luo Xun’s group managed to get a relatively peaceful rest during the latter half of the night.

Early the next morning, after receiving the latest orders, they discussed the situation and decided to leave behind the little dog, Xiao Xinran, and Li Tie’s five-man group.

The remaining five would head out first to clear the zombie birds inside their building’s stairwell before doing anything else.

Although Li Tie’s group lacked abilities, the apartment still contained plenty of weapons.

And Xiao Xinran plus the little dog definitely weren’t weak either.

At minimum, they could defend effectively.

Luo Xun’s group each carried walkie-talkies.

Their phones still needed to receive important information from the base, and after an entire night of fighting, everyone’s batteries were already running low.

They needed backup communication prepared in advance.

Thank you for reading 🙂 I hope you all liked my translations. If you enjoyed my work, please consider buying me a Ko-Fi 😉