I'm sure all of you have already at least heard of the term "zombies" already—well, at least most of you—but I doubt there are many zombies that have intellect and can talk out there.

Of course I wasn't one of those exceptional ones. Yes, I "wasn't" . . . until that day.

I started off as an ordinary undead like all other undead's. I walked around with my back hunched down and my arms hanging freely while grumbling incomprehensive words.

Quite a relaxing period of my life, I must say. All I did was walking around slowly all days and all nights. I never had to bother worrying about life since I had none. To begin with, I didn't even have a brain to think.

So I guess we could call it a stress-free life that all humans yearn for. Awesome isn't it?

Same as all other types of blessings, it didn't last long, however. I can't really tell how long had I been living as a common zombie like that, but I do have some fragments of memories seeing eras changed. I probably have lived a very long time already—

Anyway, let's go back to that day.

I was dragging my zombie legs, idly taking a stroll around the area as usual. Though the guy walking next to me—also a zombie, of course—was being noisy as hell.

I couldn't understand him, but judging from the way he grumbled so rudely, I bet he was complaining about the food he ate this morning. Us zombies eat anything and everything we can find, so once or twice, we would run into crappy trash and have a terrible breakfast . . . even though we basically can't taste anything.

We were spening our zombie time like how zombies should, when a huge explosion broke out nearby, blowing almost all of us away.

My living habitat was a deserted area, which you may make a guess about its origin being the aftermath of some kind of great wars. Aside from some wild plant life, there were only us undead's. That's why the appearance of an explosion was quite out of place.

If it was a natural disaster then sure, you beat me . . . but before being blown miles away, I caught the silhouette of two bastards fighting each other like mad bulls in the corner of my rottening eyes.

Hey! I know we're zombies, we don't feel pain and we're mean to living beings . . . but randomly making an explosion and blowing us away without warning like that is just rude as heck, don't you think?

Oh well, I could complain but it wasn't going to change the fact that they blew me miles away so I shut up and let the wind carry me through the distance.

I wasn't sure what happened to Bob—the guy walking next to me while complaining about his breakfast this morning—and other zombies, but in my case, I landed in front of a cave in the middle of a forest which I had no knowledge about. Well, of course. I was a lowly undead after all.

You know, one thing about us zombies that some humans can't stand on equal grounds with is persistence.

We'll keep moving forward no matter what kind of danger awaits us. It sounds dumb but hey, at least we're braver than a bunch of you humans.

For that reason, I slowly picked myself up from the ground and continued to walk slowly, dragging my rotten zombie legs on the earth surface step by step.

Just like that, I entered the cave before me while grumbling about my broken arm.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

It broke when I landed after being blown away by that god damn explosion.

Inside the cave, it was quite dark, but zombies don't look, we sense. However, I didn't have any awareness or consciousness of my own, so I was just randomly walking deeper and deeper into the cave.

I kept walking for who-knows-how-long and finally something happened.

Quite unfortunate, but at the same lucky, that's how I felt about the event happened to me that time, and I still do feel the same way about it even now.

The event was . . . I fell into a pit-fall trap.

I wasn't conscious—because I was a zombie—so I wasn't sure if it was a pit-fall trap or was it just the floor breaking into pieces, though.

In any case, I fell again, and this time, I broke one of my legs.

Damn it.

Moving on.

Like I said earlier, zombies are kings of persistence. Even with one broken arm and one broken leg, I continued to drag my body forward . . . of course without any sense of pain or any self-awareness at all.

Until I tripped on something and fell down again. Thank god this time I didn't break any more limb.

Then I sensed a dead corpse—my favorite snack—nearby. In fact, I tripped on that corpse and fell like an idiot.

So for my vengence, I turned back and began consuming the corpse slowly.

I don't know how long it took me, but after quite a while I was able to gulp the brain down smoothly. The brain is always the best thing for us zombies to have as meals. Humans have legends about zombies eating so many brains that they came back to life once again.

I must say, that legend isn't wrong . . . but it's not one hundred percent right either.

Zombies can indeed regain self-awareness if they eat a lot of brains, but not any kind of brain will do. Only the brains of especially powerful beings can bring life back to zombies' empty head.

. . . and of course, the corpse I gnawed on was some kind of high-class being of its own when it was still alive and kicking. I only realized after I ate the brain—yes, I realized.

As you could guess, I gained some consciousness after eating the brain of that corpse.

Not only consciousness, but also its knowledge was passed on to me.

Only knowledge was given to me, though. There wasn't any personal memory such as wedding anniversary date. General knowledge about the world only, for example how to use this magic or that magic, what is this beast, what is that herb, etc.

. . . but that wasn't the only factor that changed my life.

As I went deeper into the underground cave with some blurry consciousness, I found a mine—but an almost empty one.

Why did I say almost? Well, because there were only a couple tens of crystals left lying here and there on the ground. Judging from the traces of mining left behind, this place used to be full of these blue-colored crystals, but for some reasons the miners left in such a hurry that they abandoned more than twenty of them left. Each of the crystals was as big as a person's fist.

As a zombie with only about one-fifth of a human's consciousness, I instinctively threw a crystal in my mouth and swallowed it whole.

I don't know how zombies' digestive system works, but after swallowing one I couldn't eat anymore. I actually felt full for the first time in my whole zombie life.

The result of that was, I fell into a semi-hibernation for a few days, then woke up and ate another crystal . . . then repeated the cycle all over again.

After who-knows-how-long, I finished consuming all of the crystals left behind inside that empty mine.

Then . . . when I woke from the last hibernation—also the longest, it took a couple weeks—I realized I could think and act out of my own self-consciousness.

I became fully aware of my surrounding and myself.

However, my behaviors were still awkward because I wasn't fully "released" yet. At least that's what it felt like to me at the time.

I tried moving my body by my own will and figured out that I had no physical limitation like humans do, which means I could perform abnormal movements without feeling any type of pain.

I was conscious . . . but not alive.

At that point, I began to utilize the knowledge I obtained from the dead corpse's brain. I learned how to swing my arm and performed a punch on the wall.

Without any limitation on my physical body, my punch hit really hard it cracked the wall a bit. . . but my fist was also crushed. I felt no pain, though. I had some sort of self-awareness, but I still was just a zombie.

Seeing my fist like that, I learned that breaking out wasn't the way to do it, so I stopped and tried my best to think.

That led to climbing back up where I previously came from.

I'm not going to lie, it took me three days standing there thinking to come to that solution. Your brain sure feels really slow when you're a zombie.

I had superhuman strength, so climbing out wasn't a big problem.

The real problem was what I met at the entrance of the cave.