Chapter 165: Hwi’s Loyalty

That realization left Joo Joowon feeling somewhat ashamed.

Because in that brief instant, he truly had not thought about Hwi at all.

The only thing on his mind had been Byeol who had thrown itself over his face.

Even though throughout the entire battle against the Big Belly Zombie, Hwi had been the one doing almost all of the fighting.

Byeol lacked the ability to participate in direct combat, so it was understandable that it had spent most of the battle on the sidelines.

Hwi, however, had fought on the front line from beginning to end, engaging in real life and death combat. Yet Joo Joowon had barely worried about Hwi’s safety at all.

He knew very clearly that if it had been Byeol instead, there was absolutely no way he would have reacted so calmly.

With the lingering intimidation left behind by the Big Belly Zombie, there were almost no low level zombies daring to approach this area.

As a result, Joo Joowon simply walked openly down the street without the slightest attempt to hide himself.

Byeol and Hwi were both placed into his backpack with only their heads sticking out.

After all, carrying them in his arms would only interfere with his movements if an emergency suddenly occurred, whereas carrying them on his back would not. Still, a load of more than twenty pounds was hardly heavy for him anymore.

At Byeol’s heaviest, he had only weighed around eight pounds, yet Joo Joowon had never felt that satisfying sense of heaviness whenever he held him.

Hwi alone weighed as much as two Byeol combined.

For the old him, that weight might have felt somewhat heavy, but for the current Joo Joowon, it truly amounted to nothing.

Only after leaving the street where the Big Belly Zombie had been did Joo Joowon finally see ordinary zombies wandering along the roadside.

He did not even bother using crossbow bolts.

Instead, he simply raised his hand and used spider silk to tear the zombie apart.

As his Mental Power continued increasing, Joo Joowon realized that the spider silk had become much easier to use or rather, only now had he truly mastered the spider silk.

Previously, it had felt as though the spider silk had been the true master while he himself merely followed its will.

It was a feeling that could be understood but not easily explained.

If he had to use the language of cultivation novels as an example, then previously he had merely been the sword attendant of the Spider Web Launcher.

Now, however, he had become the sword master of the Spider Web Launcher.

The reason for this feeling was because Joo Joowon discovered that he could now use Mental Power to make the spider silk hard or soft.

He could make it thick or thin.

This was completely different from the simplistic and crude way he had manipulated spider silk before.

Now he could influence the silk while it still existed in liquid form before it even solidified into threads.

Furthermore, the Spider Web Launcher was no longer limited to firing only a single type of spider silk at a time.

It was no longer restricted to being launched solely from his wrists either.

It had truly become an extension of his own body.

An entirely new organ connected to him.

All five of his fingers could now manipulate spider silk.

If Joo Joowon himself did not mind, there would be no problem with spider silk emerging from his eyes, mouth, ears, or even from strands of his hair.

Thinking about it now, that made perfect sense.

Elite grade equipment was already considered top tier at the current stage of the apocalypse.

Although its previous abilities had been powerful, compared to its elite grade status, they had almost felt somewhat undeserving of that rarity.

The battle against the Big Belly Zombie had truly improved him tremendously.

Perhaps it was not even the Big Belly Zombie itself.

Perhaps it was that "illusion."

Although being trapped within it and forced to listen to the sermons of those unknown creatures for such a long time had been unpleasant, it had also subjected his Mental Power to an incredibly rare form of tempering.

It had transformed the difference in his Mental Power from one of quantity into one of quality.

Joo Joowon even had the feeling that if he developed his understanding of Mental Power even further and infused it directly into the silk fluid itself, then once the spider silk fully formed, it might even be capable of capturing the brains of living creatures.

If that happened, perhaps it would no longer be appropriate to call it spider silk at all.

Perhaps it should instead be called puppet threads.

However, that thought only flashed briefly through Joo Joowon’s mind before disappearing again.

Unless there were some extraordinary circumstances, the training of Mental Power was something that could only be explored slowly through years of accumulation and experimentation.

By the time he truly succeeded in researching such a method, perhaps the Spider Web Launcher would already have been replaced by better equipment and long since abandoned.

The spider silk shimmering faintly beneath the sunlight resembled the scythe of death itself as it harvested every zombie that crossed his path.

Although Joo Joowon had already been capable of killing zombies one after another with crossbow bolts before, even that efficiency could not compare to the ease and elegance with which he fought now.

This was not something brought about merely by leveling up.

Rather, it was the result of his increasingly profound understanding of his own attributes.

Joo Joowon even found himself wondering whether he might discover similar hidden uses if he explored his other attributes in greater depth as well.

The moment that thought appeared, however, he immediately crushed it.

The greatest taboo for human beings was greed.

Aside from the rare geniuses capable of excelling in every field they touched, the vast majority of people possessed only limited time and energy.