[You are currently looking at Tier-7 Monsters ‘Desert Serpents’.]
“Zeifar, those things are destroying skyscrapers like it’s nothing! Why the heck would you bring us here?!” Lauraleith asked, terrified and a bit annoyed.
“Those things can’t see.”
“What?”
“They’re blind, most of these creatures are,” Zeifar repeated, sighing.
“Firstly—how are you sure? And so what?!”
But it was Ethan who answered, “The Invisible Tunnel.”
An underwater tunnel, right beneath the Marina –it was a recent development, designed to be invisible through the water.
“But the Gate is all way over there,” Zac pointed out to the far corner of the road.
“Then walk.”
****
“Zeifar…” Adrian muttered, at a loss of words.
[Congratulations. A member of your group has killed a Tier-10 Monster.]
[Congratulations. A member of your group has killed a Tier-10 Monster.]
[Stats will be shared.]
Zeifar only stared back, expressionlessly, “The Gate’s clear. Come on,” and marched forward without looking back.
Adrian didn’t know what to say. He checked to see if everyone else was alright, but all he saw were sets of horrified eyes, because some of the monsters’ corpses did not disappear immediately and they were…not the prettiest sight.
The thing was, nobody could say anything against it. Through the chaos and confusion, as much as Zeifar’s behavior terrified them—they were lucky to even be alive. They doubted if they would’ve been this safe without her.
The entrance-fee machine had been ripped apart, and the tunnel was only lit by its manual lights.
“Shh!”
Zeifar stopped walking. The sound had come from a corner. There were others in the tunnel.
She peeked into the corner.
She was greeted with screams.
“Maybe don’t scream? Please?” she rolled her eyes.
It was a bigger group, some were recognizable, hotel staff who had managed to escape the fallen building. A few families, but Dubai didn’t have many families there to begin with.
“You’re scaring that kid,” Ethan whispered to Zeifar, motioning at a child who was staring at her like she was a ghost.
“…of course,” she sighed, “You guys should stay here, make sure they’re all safe.”
“Where’re you going?”
“Just a little walk.”
****
[Congratulations, you have killed a Tier-9 Monster. Stats have been increased.]
Zeifar checked the time.
9 am. It had only been eight hours.
‘System, what’re the shared Stats of my group?’
[Current Stats: Strength: 20
Speed: 40
Energy: 20]
“Wow this is seriously like a video game,” she mumbled.
From what she’d understood, the higher-tier a monster was, the more Stats increased when you killed them.
“So, does that mean my personal Stats increasing will level-up my Skills?” she asked.
[Correct.]
“…I see.”
Zeifar looked around the tunnel, she’d killed all the monsters she had found, which weren’t many. But she wondered what was going on with others, what was happening worldwide.
It was only a matter of time before the day was over, it had already been 10 hours.
“System, advice something.”
[Proceed.]
“Is it a good idea to go outside and kill more monsters?”
[Killing more Monsters is beneficial as it will increase Stats. The current amount of Monsters outside of the ‘Invisible Tunnel’ are heavy risk.]
“So it’s risky, but not a bad idea,” Zeifar pondered what to do, “I wish there was an easier way to kill these things.”
[The System-shop cannot be accessed before the 1st Round is over.]
“Wow there’s a shop too.”
But without access to anywhere that did not sell weapons, she could not really kill more monsters. The tunnel had many usable things, scarps of metal she’d used to kill the monsters inside. Those wouldn’t work that well on the monsters she wanted to kill.
The Desert Serpents could not be killed with scraps of metal.
****
“Don’t say his name, Xavier,” Luxeour racer, Raymond Zwolinski snapped.
It was all the same, no matter how strong they were—they were employees too. Luxeour’s management and higher-ups had all disappeared off to somewhere in the blink of an eye, leaving half the group all alone amidst the mess.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
So they had gone to the safest option too, the Tunnel.
The Royale team there surprised them, not because they were there, but because they did not seem to care.
“You’re okay with us being here?” they had asked, only to be answered with a bunch of shrugs.
And Xavier suddenly angering Raymond had happened because,
“I just wonder why this is happening, I mean—just what did Dalton do—” he had started saying, but Raymond had shut him up.
Lauraleith gave them a look.
“What?” she asked.
“We aren’t sure either, hopefully we’ll find out when this is over,” Raymond answered.
“Which reminds me, how long left?” he asked.
Lauraleith checked the time, “…10 hours.”
“Only?”
She sighed, “With the two guarding this tunnel, of course you would not notice.”
****
“This is boring,” Adrian commented.
“It’s the damn apocalypse, what’d ya’ expect?” Zeifar replied, rolling her eyes.
Adrian shook his head. He wasn’t usually the biggest fan of violence, but he had helped Zeifar to kill monsters nevertheless.
“I’m worried, honestly,” he sighed.
“About your mom and sister?” Zeifar asked.
He nodded and, to his surprise, she began laughing.
“Dear, your family consists of two of the only SSS-Rankers in this world,” she said, “I understand that won’t make you stop worrying but you should be more worried for yourself.”
“Do you think the others’ families are alright?”
“I’m sure the Kotrovs are fine, the Alexanders too. And the others…I pray that they are too.”
Adrian could not really say anything, “And…”
“They’re alive, probably,” Zeifar said, shutting the topic off before it could be started.
The Nadir family was, as Zeifar said, too powerful for its own good. Adrian had always been a little confused by the entire family. It was odd, its rules almost like a royal family’s. Zeifar had been raised in Dubai, never actually lived with her family. They only met on occasion, like when the entire ‘filthy rich’ family gathered on New Year’s eve at the most lavish mansion with halls of riches.
For Adrian himself, he had never known his dad—and somehow he didn’t care at all. With a mother and sister like his, why would he care about some non-existent man? Though he wondered, how weird it would be to be raised in a place where no one was his family like Zeifar. Yes, people had great adoptive parents, but being raised by servants who kept changing and each had their own families—basically strangers. Even the idea felt crazy to him. Wouldn’t it be weird?
But he could not ask that to a grown person—no matter what he asked, he would get a simple, casual answer. Because to Zeifar, the Nadirs were just people with the same surname. She didn’t hate them, but she didn’t seem to care much either.
“Adrian, time’s almost up,” she said, jumping to her feet and changing the topic completely, “Wanna’ kill those?” she pointed at the giant things swimming I the lake, at least three.
“With what?” he laughed.
“I have a few guns in car—don’t worry they’re authorized!” she explained, panicked by the horrified look on his face.
“A…authorized guns?”
****
[*Vital Point: Throat]
Her Skill showed Zeifar.
“The throat, aim for the throat!”
Adrian only nodded.
They were doing risky business, standing on the top of a skyscraper, but it was the best shooting angle.
[Initiating Lvl.1 Skill: ‘Archangel’s Arrow’]
[Precision of attacks increased by 2x (Level very low)]
Adrian shot at the throat, just as he had been told. He had never used a real gun, though that didn’t matter. His Skill worked no matter the weapon.
Zeifar nodded, impressed by the precision. She herself was fairly good at shooting, she’d learnt it in her childhood.
The monster collapsed, alerting the two others. They were blind, but not senseless. The fact that there were two people attacking them was obvious.
Trembles ran through the concrete as one slammed its head against the broken building right the next to them.
‘Less boring now, Delevane?’ Zeifar’s smug face seemed to say.
‘Oh get lost,’ Adrian’s eye roll replied as jumped onto the back of the monster’s head. Zeifar’s eyes widened, a clear ‘WHAT THE HELL’ as she watched him get violently shaken around as the monster tried to get him off of its head.
Aggressively flopping around in the air while he hung on to the monster’s neck for dear life, Adrian shot another bullet into its throat.
Hissing loudly, the giant serpent dipped underwater and up to the surface, then back down and up again—until it got shot directly down its open mouth from somewhere up the skyscraper—making it burst into bright green light.
“AAAGHH—HOW DID YOU CATCH ME--???” Adrian screamed all at once as Zeifar stared at him, clearly annoyed that he had almost drowned. And maybe also annoyed for having to hold him like he was her bride.
“I have never seen someone this badly impulsive,” she said, “What the actual fuck was that??”
Adrian sheepishly grinned at her.
“I’m not killing that last one, we’re going back,” she said, still carrying him.
“What—”
“I’ll drop you off the building.”
“…sorry.”
****
“Why does he look like someone tried to drown him?” Xavier asked.
Adrian only gave him a side-ways look as he went to a corner to change.
“Because he almost did get drowned,” Zeifar sighed, lighting a scraps on fire to reduce the cold.
“Aight, I’ve changed,” Adrian returned, wearing an oddly familiar jacket.
Kazerin raised her eyebrows at Zeifar, who only sighed, “It was to protect your sanity and his dignity.”
Before Kazerin could make a comment, she was interrupted by a parent scolding their child.
“The time’s almost over, we’ll get food later!”
Right. Most of these people had not eaten anything for almost an entire day.
Zeifar stood up and turned to the others, finally having succeeded in lighting the fire, “Do any of you have energy left?” she asked.
They all shuffled around, looking at each other. None of them wanted to admit it, but the constant stress, lack of food and sleep, and wary-ness of monsters had exhausted them much more than a normal day could possibly.
“Come on, just get the stuff, I’ll do the rest,” she insisted. Still silence. Most of them barely had the energy to get up.
“Fine, I’ll go,” Raymond announced, standing up.
There was an odd atmosphere, but nobody said anything.
“Okay, let’s go.”
****
“I’m getting stranger danger aura from you,” Raymond muttered.
Zeifar didn’t respond as she drove.
The city was in ruins. Empty and dusty, there were barely any signs of life left. Shattered glass and concrete scattered the roads, smoke clouding the sky.
“It’s almost impossible to tell what time it is,” Zeifar finally said.
Raymond glanced at her. He didn’t know her at all, he’d only ever seen her on the race-track, an admirable person surely, but never had he thought this situation would ever happen.
“…hey, this System thing, did you all actually know about it or were my teammates joking?” he asked.
“We did, though we weren’t sure why it existed. You didn’t?” she asked back.
“No.”
“You know, in my opinion I feel like the System appearing might’ve been on purpose,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you guys are saying our world got ‘sold’ for someone to gain more power—this person wouldn’t have done that if he didn’t even know about the System…uh…?”
Zeifar stopped talking and looked at Raymond. He was frozen, the car was frozen.
“Huh?”
A Window glitched in front of her, disappearing as fast as it had appeared:
[Sorry!]
The car went back to motion, Raymond didn’t seem to even remember her saying anything.
Zeifar blinked a few times, confused.
‘Sorry’?
Why would the System suddenly…what even was that? How was it even possible?
She shook her head. Maybe it wasn’t the right time to be worrying about that.
They parked the car in front a destroyed shop, fortunately, the shop itself was intact.
“I dunno’ if we need to pay in the middle of the apocalypse, but let’s see.”
****
Raymond stared at the food he was packing into plastic bags.
“Is…is this really alright?”
“The world is ending; you think a clean morale is useful?” Zeifar laughed, “And what am I supposed to do? Hunt down the cashier and pay?” she sighed, hauling the bags into the car, “If anything, if we end up surviving, you can come here and pay the shop back if you feel that bad.”
He didn’t say anything back.
“Anyways pretty boy, there’s a monster over there,” she pointed ahead, exactly in the middle of the road, “I know I’m your guard but wanna’ help kill it?”
“Actually uhm,” Raymond fidgeted, “I have healing Skills…”
She looked surprised, “Woah, those exist too…damn. ‘Kay, cool,” she said.
Raymond blinked a few times in confusion as Zeifar searched the insides of her car for a gun. Most people were mainly disappointed by his Skills, they were healing Skills after all, but she didn’t even care—was she really so sure of her own strength that not having backup didn’t bother her at all?
“Wait—uh...” he stammered.
“Hmm?” Zeifar asked, loading her gun.
“I could help somehow, right?”
Zeifar seemed to consider it for a second, “If this is just as similar to fiction as it seems, then you’re probably going to be important further on…but for a Tier-10 monster? I won’t get hurt so, no.”
He blinked.
She was relating all of this to fiction?
It was smart but—how could someone even think of that in the middle of an apocalypse??
****
“What is it Ray? Did she attack you? Why do you look like you saw phantoms?” Xavier asked, shaking a frozen Raymond, who was staring at Zeifar with large, round eyes.
“She…killed a monster…with a tiny little gun…” he mumbled, still in shock.
Xavier nodded, impressed, and got up to get some food from her.
“Cook these over the fire,” she said, handing him a bag without looking.
Slightly surprised, Xavier asked, “You’re giving us food too?”
“Eh?” she looked at him, visibly annoyed, “Do you not want it?”
“What—no I didn’t mean—”
“Then shoo, get lost,” she waved her hand in the manner of shooing away a child. Dumbfounded, Xavier walked away.
1,2,3… “We’re short on food…” she muttered, realizing. Just two packets short—not even an extra bag of chips left. All there was were drinks.
She glanced at the instant noodles and frozen sushi kept aside.
“I suppose it’s too much anyways.”
At least she’d given it to two kids.
“Ah, it’s almost 1am again,” she said, drinking an energy drink.
“Hey, I’m tired I think I’ll take a nap,” Danielle said, yawning.
“Hmm? Sure, wait, I’ll get you a blanket from the car.”
“…okay.”
****