Chapter 136 - 87: Brother and Sister

The journey from The Dead City to Central City took them from west to east, a trek across half of Astoria.

Paige Summers and her group traveled at a steady pace, training as they went, and a month flew by.

Along the way, they gained a profound understanding of the country’s current state. They witnessed things that some people might never see in their entire lives.

For example, there was one human settlement.

It had fewer than fifty people, originally villagers from an ethnic minority living in a mountain hollow. After the Zombie Virus infected their village, they had no choice but to flee, eventually finding shelter at the bottom of a hidden cliff.

Fortunately, they were a hardy people; both men and women were skilled hunters. A few had even awakened superpowers, carving homes out of caves and surviving by eating non-venomous Mutant Beasts. They had managed to stay alive.

However, they were merely surviving.

Worried their children might wander off, they told them that the area at the bottom of the cliff was the entire world. So when a curious child happened to wander through the trees and saw the group’s car, they mistook it for a Mutant Beast...

Paige Summers couldn’t tell if this was a blessing or a curse.

But she absolutely refused to live like that!

They took a long detour to avoid a dangerous desert, but the lands they crossed weren’t in much better shape.

Vast stretches of wasteland were overrun by mutated plants. Some had even formed terrifying swamps where black bubbles gurgled up from the rotting mud—GLUG GLUG GLUG. You didn’t need to test it to know it was poisonous. The toxins were so potent that the very air had become toxic, and the Mutant Beasts living around the swamp had developed incredible resistance to poison. While fighting there, Paige Summers suffered a bitter defeat. However, it also forced her to overcome her reliance on Poisonous Liquid and further enhance her own strength.

Claire Chapman, Erin Quinn, and even Sean Raines were all poisoned to varying degrees. By the time they left the area, Levi Young’s detoxification and Poison-making Skill had risen to a new level.

The swamps were manageable, at least. They didn’t move. As long as you didn’t deliberately venture into them, your life was relatively safe.

Mutant Beasts were also manageable. Even if someone was injured, a full recovery was only a matter of time thanks to Levi Young’s potent remedies.

However, as they traveled further east and entered what were once densely populated areas, they began to encounter Zombie Beasts with increasing frequency.

For some reason, Zombies were nowhere to be seen. Instead, there were these Zombie Beasts, which were incredibly tenacious. Just like Zombies, they had to be beheaded to be stopped. They were also highly infectious—even a Superpower User could get infected from a bite.

But Zombie Beasts were different from Zombies in other ways.

They were usually small, social animals, like rats and rabbits.

They swarmed in massive numbers, easily in the hundreds or thousands. For humans, encountering them was like crops facing a plague of locusts—they would be devoured completely. Even Superpower Users felt a chill of fear when facing them.

Even the smallest species can cause a catastrophe when it becomes a plague.

Paige Summers and her group were relatively lucky.

Thanks to the teamwork between Sweetie and the Pathfinder Rat, they managed to avoid two encounters with massive hordes of Zombie Beasts. Any stragglers were quickly dispatched before they could pose a threat.

Not everyone was so perceptive, however.

After all, this was a once-populated region. As they continued east from the central plains, they started to see signs of survivor bases.

They ran into Hunting Squads more than once. One squad, despite their warning, insisted on pressing forward and was completely annihilated by the Zombie Beasts.

From a distance, they heard blood-curdling screams, some cut off mid-cry, followed by silence.

The expressions on everyone’s faces turned grim.

’It’s not because of those fools who insisted on marching to their deaths,’ ’but because this environment is just so relentlessly hostile!’

’The land and rivers are polluted, plants and animals have mutated, and there are Zombies and Zombie Beasts... Humanity’s most basic needs—food, clothing, shelter, transportation—have become a problem! The conditions for survival are even more severe than I imagined. Are we and our descendants really doomed to spend our entire lives cooped up within the confines of a wall?’

Paige Summers, who had once been so certain they could overcome these conditions, now fell silent.

Occasionally, she felt lost.

’If this world is just the setting of a post-apocalyptic novel,’ she wondered, ’then if I don’t disrupt its flow, will everything unfold according to the plot? Will the heroine and hero find a solution to this disaster someday, allowing humanity to embrace the world once more?’

She couldn’t be sure.

But the feeling of loss was only momentary.

’Never mind that I can’t just "sacrifice myself for the greater good" for an unknown outcome. Even if I could, so what?’

’Even if it’s a dead end ordained by fate, I will still fight it!’

A problem soon arose. They had been living in the wild, and while food wasn’t an issue, they needed to restock on gasoline and water. Besides, they desperately needed to clean up. It was a major inconvenience not having a Water Ability User in the group.

And so, after more than a month, they finally entered a human base once more.

"Aegis" was a small base.

Like others, it was surrounded by a wall. Though it didn’t look particularly sturdy, sharpshooters were stationed around it, ready for battle, which offered some measure of security. After paying a small fee of Crystal Cores and undergoing an inspection, Paige Summers and her party entered the base.

They were covered in dust, and their car was so caked in filth that its original appearance was unrecognizable. Yet as they drove down the street, they still drew everyone’s attention. The reason was simple: vehicles were extremely rare in this base. Other than the Superpower Users in what the locals called the major Hunting Parties, no one else had the resources to acquire one.

Paige Summers stared at the bare dirt road, which wasn’t even paved with stone slabs, the adobe-like houses lining it, and the raggedly dressed people whose eyes screamed, ’Rich people...’ She was left utterly speechless.

’This base is just pathetic!’

Claire Chapman had the same thought. "A place like this sells gasoline?"

Sean Raines shrugged. "We’ll see."

"What’s that supposed to mean?"

Sean Raines, who was driving, didn’t answer. Paige Summers glanced at him, then decided to explain to the resident curious cat herself. "I think he means if we can’t get it through official channels, we’ll have to resort to unofficial ones."

Claire Chapman grunted and fell silent.

Paige Summers had no objection. She just smiled and reached back to pet Sweetie in the backseat.

It was too conspicuous, especially inside a base—a walking advertisement. So, it was forced to stay cooped up in the car. It could relax once they were outside again.

But before Sweetie got its chance, someone else decided to "help them relax."

The base might have looked bleak, but it had the essentials, like a hotel. Though it was only slightly better than a private residence, at least they could take a shower. Paige Summers rented two rooms, one for the women and one for the men. Someone needed to guard the car outside, and Claire Chapman volunteered for the task.

And that was when the trouble started.

The street where the hotel was located was supposedly the most bustling area in the base, but there were few people about. That, however, didn’t stop an arrogant pair of siblings.

"Brother, that car is really nice!"

"You like it? Then I’ll go bring it over."

Claire Chapman overheard the conversation, but he never imagined they were actually coming for him!

In the group across the street, a man and a woman in the center were the most neatly and cleanly dressed. They were also rather good-looking and made a decent first impression.

But their actions, paired with their words, struck him as completely absurd.

Without so much as a greeting, the man charged forward, egged on by the fawning of the crowd behind him.

His attack arrived before he did. Seven or eight tendrils of shimmering water shot toward the car’s half-open window—not to flood it, but to bind it like ropes!

Claire Chapman was instantly enraged!

’If you’re going to rob someone in broad daylight, at least have the decency to pick a fight first! So unprofessional!’

He immediately activated his superpower. The car instantly shot forward more than ten meters, neatly dodging the watery ropes.

He wasn’t exactly a patient person. Since the other guy had attacked first, how could he not retaliate? Still, being inside a base, he exercised some restraint. Instead of using his curved blade, he mobilized all the nearby stones, sending them hurtling toward the man and the group behind him!

He gave the woman some special attention.

He was quite confident in his aim and figured that even if the man turned to shield her, the woman would still get hit a few times. He expected her to be crying for her mommy and daddy. But unexpectedly, the woman was incredibly sharp and had a clever defensive trick of her own. She didn’t need protection; in fact, she actively rushed to the man’s side.

The stones rained down. The followers who were too slow to react were hit hard and cried out in pain.

But as for the pair, just as the stones were about to hit them, they seemed to crash into a solid wall and ricochet away. In the end, the two of them were completely unharmed!

Claire Chapman was stunned.

At that moment, Paige Summers and the others heard the commotion and came running down from upstairs.

It wasn’t just them; the owner of the quiet hotel also poked his head out. He gritted his teeth and grabbed Sean Raines’s arm. "Those people are bad news! They’re definitely after the car. Just give it to them! It’s better to lose some money than to invite disaster!" ’The last thing I need is for them to get killed and I don’t even get my room fee!’

Sean Raines pulled his sleeve free and flicked it. "You must be joking."

The hotel owner’s face darkened. He left them with a parting shot before slamming the door. BANG!

"You don’t know what’s good for you! When you get killed in a minute, don’t blame me for not warning you! And another thing, your clothes are far dirtier than my hand. I’m the one who should be disgusted!"

Sean Raines snorted and retorted, "Dead men don’t complain. But we’ll see who ends up dead..."

With that, he casually headed downstairs.

It wasn’t that he wasn’t concerned for Paige Summers and the others. He’d already glanced out the window and determined that those people were no match for his group.

And he was right.

By the time he got downstairs, only the man and woman remained in the street. Their entourage had already scattered.

Even those two were now surrounded by Claire Chapman’s Flying Knives.

Although the knives couldn’t break through the invisible barrier to attack them, they had the pair trapped securely.

Claire Chapman was still yelling, "Paige, hurry! Get Levi to mix up some highly corrosive potion! I refuse to believe this damn turtle shell is unbreakable!"