Chapter 54: Exitra vs Three Giants

“What the hell is this!?”

“Wait, were there supposed to be three Giant Zombies here?”

“Don’t they normally show up at Stage 21? Lol.”

Exitra wore a dumbfounded expression.

Normally, there was no way multiple Giant Zombies would appear in Stage 20.

Not even before his regression had something like this happened.

‘What in the world is going on?’

An incomprehensible situation had just unfolded.

And right when Exitra was panicking—

[Zombie Master has donated 10,000 won.]

A viewer named Zombie Master sent a donation along with a long message written in English.

Exitra tilted his head.

“It’s in English?”

Exitra, who was terrible at English, frowned in confusion.

Something was written, but he couldn’t read it at all.

His English phobia wasn’t something regression could fix.

“Uh, everyone, what is this person saying right now?”

—[Zombie Master? That’s the developer of Zombie Survival!]

—[Huh? For real?]

—[Look at the logo. It’s legit.]

—[Wow… even the dev is watching this?]

“Huh? The developer?”

[The game dev has arrived!]

The chat instantly exploded with excitement at the developer’s sudden appearance.

Well, it made sense.

This was a co-op stream centered around Dogrye, from a major company.

It wasn’t strange at all that the developer or someone related would show up.

“But what exactly is he saying…?”

—[Exitra can’t read English lol]

—[But you can’t either, right?]

—[…That’s true.]

—[Somebody with skills, translate!]

[HangeulLove has donated 10,000 won.]

<I’ll translate for you. Exitra, he says, sorry. If certain special conditions are met at Stage 20, three Giant Zombies spawn. The conditions are: summoning 200 basic units, summoning 5 special units, and upgrading wooden walls to stone walls… damn, it’s too long. The system cut me off.>

[HangeulLove has donated 10,000 won.]

<Basically, upgrading triggers them. But he thought it would be too hard, so he was planning to remove it in next week’s patch. Too late though, sorry.>

Exitra’s face twisted in disbelief.

In short, he had accidentally fulfilled the hidden conditions, which triggered the Giant Zombie spawns.

And it turned out this feature was going to be removed in next week’s patch.

‘No wonder I didn’t know about it…’

By next week, it would have been gone.

Nobody else had discovered it before.

Even if his Flashback Skill hadn’t revealed this, it wouldn’t have been strange at all.

—[This is legendary!!]

—[A hidden condition? Unreal…]

—[To be fair, no other streamer has ever reached Stage 20 while upgrading wooden walls to stone and summoning units like this.]

—[And it was going to be removed next week, but Exitra triggered it this week lol]

—[Truly the unluckiest streamer.]

In other words, it was pure bad luck.

If this stream had happened next week, none of this would have occurred.

Exitra poured out all his bottled-up emotions and screamed.

“Yaaahhh! Is this even a game?!”

—[God-tier game!]

—[Peak content lol]

—[This is amazing lol]

Once again, Exitra showcased the essence of being the “Unlucky Streamer.”

If it had been a bug or glitch, he could’ve restarted or tried something else.

But no—this was an official feature of Zombie Survival.

And since the developer himself had confirmed it, there was no room for denial.

“Aaaargh!”

Exitra shrieked.

— [Hahaha!!]

— [This is hilarious!!]

— [How can one person be so unlucky lol]

— [With overwhelming strength! Crush the Giant Zombies~ Smash them~ Throw them~~!]

[Ding~]

[Clap clap clap. Your misfortune exceeds even my expectations. How… pfft… hahaha.]

The viewers and Chronos were thoroughly entertained.

The streamer’s suffering was the viewers’ joy.

Their happiness level soared higher than ever before.

***

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

“Damn it…!”

While he was screaming, Stage 20 officially began.

Along with the three Giant Zombies, hordes of other zombies charged toward the base.

Exitra took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down.

The water had already spilled; there was no way to put it back.

“Exitra~ you know that saying, right? If you can’t avoid it, enjoy it! Classic wisdom!”

“If you enjoy something you can’t avoid, that just makes you a masochist. Think about it. If it’s something you wanted to avoid in the first place, it’s because it’s painful and miserable. How do you enjoy that?”

— [Huh…?]

— [Now that you put it that way, you’re right…]

“Sigh… but still…”

Exitra looked at the map filled with red dots and braced himself.

Despair wouldn’t help.

“I won’t lose.”

To shave off Dogrye’s eyebrows,

Exitra was determined to win.

***

“What did you just say? Exitra’s fighting three Giant Zombies right now?!”

— [Just saw it lol]

— [Yeah, it’s real.]

“Hell yeah!!”

The arrival of three Giant Zombies!

For Exitra, it was disaster and misery.

But for Dogrye, it was opportunity and salvation.

“I can save my eyebrows!!”

He had almost given up.

Honestly, he had already resigned himself to defeat.

But it seemed the gods were on his side.

“I can win! I can really win!!”

— [Wow. Dogrye looks ecstatic.]

— [Nooo!!]

— [Dogrye is hottest when he’s brooding, not when he’s happy…]

“You weirdos! Say whatever you want, I don’t care right now!”

Dogrye was in an incredibly good mood.

The first chance to defeat Exitra had appeared so unexpectedly!

Despair turned into hope in that very moment.

“Ha ha ha! Let’s go! I just need to survive this turn!”

He looked at the swarm of zombies.

Fortunately, the Giant Zombie didn’t appear.

There were no special units, and he only had the basic rifle given at the start, but it was still bearable.

‘Since I couldn’t summon much, I put a lot into upgrades… It lacks compared to having special units, but I guess you could say the fundamentals are solid. Should I be happy about that or not? Well, it’s not bad.’

“Alright! Let’s do this! I just have to hold on! If I survive even one second longer than Exitra, that means I win, doesn’t it?!”

— [Wow~ loser-rai!! (Dogry + loser, mocking nickname)]

— [Pathetic~]

— [Booooo~]

“Pathetic or not, I don’t care. As long as I can protect my eyebrows, I’ll gladly become as pathetic as needed.”

Dogry’s determination was fierce.

After all, his hair had already been shaved, his body hair stripped away—now even his eyebrows were at stake.

He was practically bald already.

It was his last desperate struggle to protect the very last hair remaining.

“Surely God is on my side, right? Let’s gooooo!!”

Dogry clung to hope.

But whether that rope of hope was sturdy or rotten… no one knew.

Except God.

***

Exitra was fighting desperately.

Just dealing with three Giant Zombies was overwhelming, but then came the Assassin Zombie, the Tongue Zombie, and the Aggro Zombie too…

It was enough to drive anyone mad.

“Damn it… caught again!!”

The Tongue Zombie lashed out its long tongue, seizing one of the special units Exitra was controlling.

— [Gomu gomu~]

— [That tongue is insanely long~]

— [lololol]

— [That tongue length is crazy lol]

“Cut the tongue!”

Slash!

At Exitra’s command, a nearby unit swung its sword, severing the tongue.

The moment freedom was regained—

An ambush from behind! The Assassin Zombie lunged at him.

“You little—got you!”

Exitra spun around.

He had predicted that an ambush would come from behind and was ready.

With a full spin, he grabbed the creature’s arm, shoved his gun to its head, and pulled the trigger.

“That’s one down…”

Thud! Thud! Thud!

[ROOOAAARR!!]

A Giant Zombie charged forward.

It didn’t care who or what was in front of it, plowing through like a bulldozer.

Seeing this, Exitra clenched his teeth.

“Everyone, retreat!!”

He gave the order to withdraw, then blew off the Assassin Zombie’s head.

The unit he had been mind-sharing with was destroyed instantly.

If he had let go, the unit could have escaped easily.

But letting the Assassin Zombie live would have caused far greater damage.

He chose to sacrifice the unit and kill the threat.

“Haa…”

Exitra snapped back into his real body and immediately scanned the map.

Red and blue clashed everywhere.

Mixed in were other colors—every one of them a special zombie.

“What is this? Am I the only one playing on hard mode here?”

[This is absolute hell…]

[I just came from watching Dogry’s stream. His run looked pretty peaceful, actually…]

[But here… this is chaos incarnate…]

[Chaotic, truly chaotic~ Surely the Demon King of Confusion must love this place!]

“Tch.”

Exitra clicked his tongue.

His eyes darted rapidly, gathering information from the map.

Using multitasking, he processed it all in parallel.

“Team 10, fall back and lure the Giant Zombie! Team 7, snipe the Tongue Zombie from afar. Team 5, move forward and slowly thin out the remaining zombies.”

Exitra was methodically reducing their numbers.

The Giant Zombie was a nuisance, but the real problem was the normal zombies.

There were so many that even spotting the special zombies was difficult.

He had to thin the herd first before targeting the elites.

— [Wow.]

— [That’s amazing…]

— [How can he issue commands like that? Do you see how fast he’s flipping through the map??]

— [Look at his eyes moving—what even is he looking at??]

— [Haaap! It’s the Sharingan!! lol]

Exitra’s eyes flicked frantically as he absorbed every detail—zombie positions, ally positions, even the exact spots of the special zombies.

And with perfect timing, he issued the right orders.

For anyone else, processing this much information at once would have been impossible.

But for Exitra, it was possible.

‘Work harder, multitasking!’

His multitasking ability was working harder than ever.

It wouldn’t be wrong to call it the MVP of today’s Zombie Survival run.

— [He is… a god!]

— [The god of tactics…]

— [Brainpower overload!!]

“Team 1, pull back immediately! Assassin Zombie ambush incoming! Grab it and kill it. And then…”

‘The Giant Zombies—we’ll kite them.’

He deliberately pulled out a few units, making them taunt and shake their butts in front of the Giant Zombies to lure them away.

Meanwhile, he always stationed backup units near the special ones, countering the Tongue and Assassin Zombies whenever they struck.

***

Time passed.

Most of the normal zombies were cleared.

But the cost had been heavy.

Half of his units were dead, and only three special units remained.

Stage 20 should have been easy.

But the appearance of three Giant Zombies had thrown everything into chaos.

‘I can’t drag this out any longer.’

If he delayed, he would lose even more units—and the cost would be too great.

He had to end it now.

“We’ll finish the rest of them…”

Exitra had already formed a plan.

It was risky, and it would cost him.

But he had no other choice.

“Losing is worse than sacrifice…”

Exitra made his decision.