"Dayum, he was packing some serious heat, yeah?" Gertrude joked as she ripped open the lid of the boxes and saw the shotguns as well as the ammunition.

Even Cherry and Elizabeth came over to look, their faces filled with curiosity. They were also shocked by the sheer amount of weapons within, but they did not have much desire for them.

After all, they were teens who felt that their knowledge and experience was number 1 in the world and adults were just annoying old-timers who kept making noise. Having received such awesome powers too, they were even more certain of their personal uniqueness.

Why use a measly and trashy gun when I can control lightning?

As such, apart from marveling at the sheer number of weaponry, they did not have much interest nor fear towards it. To them, guns represented a thing of the old era. What use did such measly things have in the apocalypse?

Only Alan was still glancing at Dominic's mutilated body with sadness, feeling a hint of despair. He'd hoped this guy could run and inform others of their situation, but who knew he would not understand and even gaudily drive home.

Alan was sad for a short while until he saw Dominic appear suddenly beside his corpse, full and hale. He was so shocked his jaw dropped almost comically and he could not even fathom a single thought at what he was seeing.

Meanwhile, Dominic did not waste time. He immediately charged forth and grabbed the head of the girl who controlled electricity on either side, startling the three young women who had been peering into the box.

Without any hesitation, Dominic twisted her head off of her body and dodged the spurting blood from what used to be her neck. What was interesting was that - whether due to a biological phenomenon or her own relatively high Vitality stat - she did not die immediately.

Even as her body slumped to the ground lifelessly, her eyes darted around in her head crazily. She opened her mouth in an attempt to scream, but how could she produce sound without lungs?

The other two girls were shocked by the sudden change as well as the death of their friend, not to mention the gruesome sight before them. Inflicting pain on others was something they had gotten used to these past few days, but having the same done to them? Unthinkable.

That was why when Dominic tossed the head of the bespectacled girl towards the lanky one, both she and her friend reacted predictably, but dodging it while screaming in horror.

Unfortunately, this was a bad move as a death clone that had been released when Dominic came back to life kicked the lanky girl right in the lower back - where her spine would be - with full force.

This sent her flying forward into Dominic's grip, and his hold on her neck was like iron. He did not give her a chance to kill him by using her telekinesis to crush him like a tin can - assuming she even could - and ripped her neck open.

He tossed her body to the ground as she grabbed her neck to stifle the blood while choking on it. Her pupils rapidly dilated and contracted as her expression showed terror, and Dominic could almost hear her begging for her life, that she didn't want to die.

As for the obese girl, she was currently contending with two other death clones, precisely number 2 and the newly born number 3. Due to the sudden chain of events, her mind was scattered, and she adopted a defensive position from the attacks, which was a mistake since the death clones could not hurt her.

By the time she realized this, fury emerged within her as she roared like a crazed beast and punched the two death clones away, causing them to fly back for a significant distance with dented chests.

The two simply got up nonchalantly as if they were not the ones who were hit, but it was only due to their special nature that they avoided coughing out their organs at this time. Meanwhile, Dominic and the first death clone casually took out four shotguns and loaded them, walking over.

The other two death clones regrouped and received a shotgun each before spreading out to flank the fat girl, who was half roaring and half crying due to the state of her friends.

"Y-YOU MOTHERFUCKER!! I'LL KILL YOU! YOU HEAR?! I'LL KILL YOU!!" she screamed with madness, charging towards Dominic himself like a raging bull.

Dominic and his death clones simply raised their shotguns and fired one by one.

The first shot blew off the girl's arm, much to her surprise.

The second shot blew off her head, leaving a mangled stump that looked like it had been chewed by something with crooked teeth.

The third shot blew open her torso, exposing her innards to the world as chunks of fat poured out.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

The final shot took away her other arm and sent the corpse to the floor, blood shooting out of the various orifices crazily.

Dominic glanced at her corpse as well as that of the other three. He pumped the shotgun to reload the chamber and then blew on the muzzle, which was smoking, with a casual look.

Dominic had killed his first person, and the process was made easy for him because they had been the ones to brutally end his life. He could have attacked at the police station, but the last vestiges of morality and society within him resented such actions.

After all, if Dominic were even to survive into the last hundred, the point was to live on. He did not want to become like an army veteran who was haunted by his actions on the battlefield, unable to extricate himself from the cruelty of his actions.

It was even fine if they were cruel people lording their powers over others. As long as it did not affect Dominic or those, he would not interfere and would not play hero. Even if they attacked him and tried to steal the guns, he would have, at best, beaten them down and sent them packing but alive.

However, they chose the exact set of actions that would leave him in agony before death, meaning that they relished this kind of malice.

Just as well, as the saying went, he who lives by the sword dies by the sword.

This was all Dominic thought about the matter before putting it behind him. He then turned to the still-flabbergasted Alan and walked over to him calmly.

Alan shook his head and woke himself from his stupor with difficulty, glancing at Dominic with a complicated look. "You killed them, but what's the point? More will just come after you when they come looking for them and find the traces."

Dominic was silent.

"They have better trackers than me, people who have talents like you can't believe. It's because of people like them that even if we band together and try to use our talents to escape, they still capture us back to that… hell." Alan continued.

Dominic remained silent.

"So it's best if you pack up and run, leave this city altogether. If you find refuge with government forces, even if they are brave, they still wouldn't risk it just for revenge, I think." Alan suggested with a tone that slowed down towards the end.

Dominic was still silent.

Alan also fell silent.

"Alan… you saw my ability," Dominic said slowly after being quiet for so long.

Alan sucked in a deep breath as his heart skipped a beat. Then panic flooded him as his blood began to pump through his body at crazy speeds.

He looked at the somber Dominic and the three death clones who were cleaning up the area but had somewhat surrounded him in a box.

"I... I won't tell anyone," Alan squeezed out through chattering teeth.

"Alan... you saw my ability," Dominic reiterated once more, his voice a little firmer.

"Please... even though it sucks... I still want to live," Alan begged as tears fell from his eyes.

Dominic could only be silent to this as he seemed to struggle with himself. It was one thing to kill in cold blood the people who murdered him, but another to kill the one person who honestly tried to not only help him but save him.

That was a very, very dangerous line to cross that Dominic wished he would never have to in his life. Unfortunately, he was not given the luxury to avoid it because even if he trusted that Alan would not speak even under the worst torture, there were talents out there that could rip the answer out of him without his will.

And he did not yet have the strength to ignore any threat that knew about his own talent. Others could show their talents because they were straightforward, but his was the type that needed to be kept a secret for it to be effective.

No one liked a foe that could resurrect; they were always the most troublesome and annoying to deal with. If Alan only knew that he could resurrect, that would be fine to some extent and would give much more leeway.

But... Alan saw how he resurrected, which was ten seconds after his death, right beside his corpse. Anyone who got this information would always have the upper hand on Dominic and grasp his future in their hands.

A situation like here and now where his enemies thought him finished and lowered the guard, allowing him to make short work of them and be victorious, would become a pipe dream in the future.

Not to mention that if they felt Dominic's resurrection was too troublesome, they could simply seal him in a place where he could not kill himself and then deal with him at their leisure.

That outcome was hypothetical, but to counter that, Dominic could almost see the future version of himself locked in a cage, with a mutilated body from torture yet forcefully kept alive through various means, glancing back at his current self with hatred and murderous intent, wishing he could kill himself for hesitating at that time.

And so he looked at Alan, who was shaking and sobbing at the thought of dying. He clearly did not want to die even if his situation back there was terrible. He had just heard that the universe was coming to an end, so did that mean there was an afterlife?

Was the afterlife also closing down and coming to an end? What would happen to all the souls who died during this time or who had died since the beginning of time? Would they just be extinguished or devoured by something?

Alan had spent his free time while in captivity thinking about this in particular, and the conclusion he came up with was simple: it didn't matter.

From the very fact that there was such an elaborate event universe-wide to decide those who would get to live in the next iteration of reality, it made it clear that the only valuable thing was to live to the end and get a chance to continue on.

If the afterlife was so good and secure, then what was the point of fighting so hard in this Death Game? One could just die and wait to be reborn anew in the new universe as a new life. Memories would be gone, yes, but it was a form of continued existence.

However, with the threat of death upon him, Alan's brain had never worked as fast as it had in his life. He could almost feel that the moment life left his body, he would enter a void of nothingness and slowly cease to exist forever.

He looked up to Dominic and played his last desperate card.

"I-I can be useful to you! You can take me back as a prisoner and lock me up! That way, no one can get information about you!" Alan stated quickly, his eyes lighting up at his clever idea.

For him, it was nothing big, as he was just changing one prison for another. Though it was more likely that this one would be far more humane towards him, so it was fine anyway.