Danny shook his head to disperse his distracting thoughts over humanity’s predicament. He had to focus and choose a direction to go now that he had made his mind on what to do.

Danny’s rented house was located on the outskirts of Lakeview, to the south. Therefore, if Danny headed northwards, he would go through the more densely populated urban center of the city, so that was a no-go.

Even though Danny had to gather more crystals, he didn’t have to do it in a haphazard way. Traversing the city center was a dangerous endeavor.

So far, Danny had managed to deal with the shambling corpses with a decent amount of success, sporting no injuries to say otherwise. However, now that he was all alone, he would have to be doubly careful going forward.

Even if he had been the most efficient fighter on taking down zombies in his former group, one could not underestimate the immense value that the others brought to the table. True, Danny was responsible for most of their kills single-handedly. However, during the time they spent fighting together, the others had been supporting him by means of distracting and injuring other foes while he dealt with the ones at hand one by one, or by simply acting as meat shields, really, in order to buy him enough time to reinforce them.

That might be a crude way to put it, but it was accurate enough. Now that Danny was alone, the risks of being ganged upon by a bunch of mindless creatures and whittled down to death were way higher.

Danny had improved massively over the course of the last week when it came down to dealing with zombies and dispatching them quickly and efficiently. Even so, two monsters at once were probably his limit within a melee range. Three would be cutting it way to close for comfort, and four was simply asking for trouble. Danny would then have to disengage from the scuffle and find a way to funnel them down, or simply turn tail and run, abandoning the fight and crystals entirely.

If Danny found himself surrounded by tens of zombies, getting himself pinned down and trapped would be the least of his concerns. Without any sort of external support, there was very little he would be able to do in order to avoid the worst outcome possible.

Therefore, Danny completely discarded the possibility of going the north route without any hesitation. The higher number of zombies, and limited field of vision caused by the urbanization of the land and presence of taller buildings at every block, basically made it a death trap for Danny at the moment. To pretty much everyone that found themselves in that spot really.

Besides, Danny could always come back in the future when he felt he was better prepared to deal with the local dangers, and more adept at surviving this new reality.

If Tutu’s words were to be believed, so long as he kept gathering soul gems and using them, soon he would be able to handle a larger group of zombies without too much trouble.

That left Danny with three choices: East, West and South.

According to his maps, to the East there was a long-stretching highway that cut through a mountainous region going up and down in between peaks and straight through valleys. There were not many urban centers or fairly populated areas in that direction, mainly a few spots along the road to provide services and refueling to the vehicles that travelled along the distance.

To the south, there was a gentler terrain with fewer ups and downs. Long stretches of land were occupied by farmland and ranches, and one could find quite a few farming communities and tiny towns going that way.

The last direction – West – was occupied by a not too big but also not too small forest segment. After crossing the woods, one would find themselves in a decent sized city, just a tad smaller than Lakeview. The town in question developed much sooner than Lakeview though, built around the industry that sprouted from exploring the woods’ natural forageable resources and its logging potential.

Danny quickly reviewed the pros and cons of every option in his mind and shortly after opted for the second alternative. The southern farmlands.

The East seemed fairly safe from threats when compared with the two other options, considering it had low population density and enough resources to sustain him if he scavenged the mountainous valleys and relevant buildings along the road for supplies. Danny believed he would not have too much of a difficult time if he headed this way.

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Danny had his crossbow for hunting, and rivers to get water from if push came to shove and he didn’t manage to gather enough supplies from the rest spots and gas stations along the highway to fulfill his needs.

The low population density of the area also meant that he probably would not have to deal with as many troublesome survivors and would also face less opposition from any zombies that roamed the region. However, that in itself was a problem.

Danny’s main objective for now was to gather more crystals. Safety was all well and dandy, but it would not help him much in terms of progress. So, Danny had to strike a balance between risk and reward. Once again, balance was the name of the game.

The West was even worse than the previous option. The uninhabited woods would provide Danny almost nothing in terms of resources other than what he managed to scrounge up from nature itself. Food and water would already be a chore, but crystals would be even harder to get his hands on.

The remoteness of the place meant that Danny would not be able to find any zombies roaming there usually. At the very least, not any human zombies.

Danny was not very clear on that, since his conversation with the demon – even if exhaustingly long-winded and complex – had not been enough to completely cover all his bases.

Danny knew now that it was the soul gems that allowed the dead bodies to move. The tiny crystals provided energy to the corpses that would otherwise be delivered through normal bodily functions, making the dead able to walk again without blood circulating in their veins or air filling their lungs.

That meant that the zombies could “survive” even in a heavily wounded condition. They would keep enduring so long that the main information processing organ – the brain – remained intact and the crystals inside their heads still contained enough energy to fuel their continued existence.

Also, the demon had already explained to him that the soul gems would only show up in evolved enough species. In addition, Tutu said that the checkpoint that usually delimited such event was the development of intelligent thought by the lifeform in question.

However, how intelligent were we talking here?

Would Danny find himself face to face with zombie animal variants if he survived long enough in this apocalyptic world? Could animal corpses even give rise to zombies? Maybe some species on the planet other than humans were evolved enough to surpass this abstract cap while others were not. Danny had no way of knowing.

In the first place, there simply wasn’t enough time to go over every single possibility with the demon. Secondly, Danny did not even think to ask Tutu about this at the time. He was beyond tired and extremely overwhelmed by the sheer amount of novel information the dodgy demon had dumped over him that night. Danny would have to find out about it the hard way, or wait until the next time he saw the demon to learn the truth.

Anyway, the woods would be a poor choice in either case. Even if there were an abundance of animal zombie variants, Danny wanted nothing to deal with them. If human zombies were already threatening enough, could you imagine how dangerous, let’s say, a zombie bear could be? That would be a whole new can of worms that was best left unopened. No, thank you.

On the other hand, even if that was not an issue and Danny was simply overthinking the matter, the situation would still be unfavorable. Besides being scarce, any zombies that Danny met in the woods would be a lot more threatening, given that the complicated forested terrain made it a prime location for ambushes.

Danny could easily be caught unawares amidst the trees by any lonely straggler. Without any extra helpers to spot the threats or assist him if he got jumped by something that went unnoticed, the situation would be that much more dangerous.

Given that, the last and most obvious choice would be to go the South direction. The scattered human settlements meant Danny would have an easier time dealing with any threats – given that it would be harder for larger groups of undead to form – while at the same time giving him quite a few options to explore in order to find more enemies, meaning that Danny most likely would not be short of zombies to hunt down.

Being a farming area, he estimated that he would be able to find both soul gems and basic resources like food and water in acceptable amounts, making it a prime location for his first scouting expedition.

Additionally, the relative flat landscape would help him in terms of visibility and help prevent ambushes. The spread out and shorter buildings also helped in this case. If any larger groups of zombies that Danny would not be able to handle was present in the area, he would be able to see it far in the distance, meaning that he would be able to react accordingly to the threat way sooner than he would otherwise in a city environment.

All that was entirely speculative of course, since Danny could not be sure where was where anymore. All his made-up plans were hanging on the fact that his surroundings had not been shifted too wildly, so there was only so much he could plan ahead. Best not hang up too much on this issue and make adjustments on the way.

Still, having decided his course of action, Danny turned off the tablet from which he had been checking all this information, and safely stored it inside the bag he would be taking with him for the trip together with all the other essentials.

It was time to finally start moving away from this place.