"Which direction to the food stores, and any weapons your group stocked up." I asked the girl I had taken from the main room.
She was a pretty girl maybe twenty-four or twenty-five years old, average height somewhere around five foot six. The girl had dirty blonde hair that came down to just below her shoulders. I waited a few seconds, but she didn't respond to my question.
"Well?" I prompt her.
I waited another few seconds, but she just stared down at the ground and stayed silent.
"Look, you need to start answering my questions. I won't hurt you but if I have to go back and exchange you for someone more helpful, you're not going to like what our friends back there will do to you." I put a finger under her chin and lifted her face so that she was looking into my eyes as I spoke.
I didn't actually think they were going to treat her too poorly, but she didn't know that. She started trembling, but she also started speaking, though her voice was slow and unsteady at first.
"I-I-I th-think the food s-stores are that w-way." She said, pointing down the hall and to the right.
"Good, see that wasn't so hard now was it." I smiled at her before moving down the hall.
I didn't think she was lying to me or trying to harm me with a trap, but I stood to the side of the door before opening it and I did so slowly. Once the door was open, I took a moment to look around, the door and above it for anything that might look like a trap. I didn't find anything, so I stepped inside. The room was a kitchen, and off to the side I saw a door leading into a pantry nearly as large as the kitchen itself, it was stocked with food.
"Would you look at that. Well done ... hmm, what's your name?" I turned back to look at the girl I brought with us.
"U-Uhm my name is Malorie." Malorie said without looking up.
"Then well done Malorie." I finish my statement.
"T-thanks, I guess." She mumbles.
"Andy, can you go tell Jax we found the food." I ask Andy.
"Yeah, sure thing." He responds before leaving to inform Jax of our findings.
"Do you know where any weapons are stored Malorie." I ask our captive.
"Well, we weren't allowed to know where they were kept, but the soldiers always went into a room over there." She pointed to a room on the opposite side of the hallway.
"Good, let's go see if that's where the weapons were kept." I say before moving to the room indicated.
Again, I take my time and check for traps, there aren't any. When we enter the room, we find it fairly empty, it's some sort of leisure room or something, with some couches and chairs around a table. Maybe before it was a meeting room of some sort, but there certainly aren't any weapons laying around.
"I swear I wasn't lying! I saw the soldiers come in here a lot. Sometimes they would come back out with their weapons or if they went in with them, they would come out without them." Malorie rushed to assure me when she saw the room had a distinct lack of weapons.
"Hmm, I believe you. Let's look around, try moving the furniture or any decorations on the wall." I told my group, Malorie seemed pretty sure about something being here, so I figured we should at least give a thorough look.
Before we could really get into the search Andy and Jax stopped by the door.
"Where's the food?" Jax asked confused.
"Andy take him to the other room." I point him in the direction of the food stores.
After they're gone, we return to the search. It takes us a few minutes, moving chairs, couches, paintings, tables, and finally carpets before finding what we're looking for. Underneath the carpet that was taking up most of the middle of room under the central table, we find a hatch leading down into the ground.
"See, I told you I wasn't lying." Malorie looked relieved.
"I didn't think you were." I told her.
I open this door with the same caution as the others, still no traps. As we climb down into the cellar, or whatever this was before, we find what was promised and what we were searching for. Weapons, there's quite a few weapons, most aren't that impressive, there's the standard tools and some more interesting things like chainsaws and sheers along with some knives and a few bayonets, though not attached to anything. A few weapons do catch my eye though, there are two shotguns with boxes of shells next to them, there's also a damn sword.
I don't know how people have swords, but here is a second one. The shotguns also reminded me I hadn't gotten to teaching Lilly how to use the handgun we got a few days ago. I'm surprised she didn't remind me earlier, but I guess we've all been busy recently.
"So, shall we take the sword for ourselves? And if so, are we just snatching it and not telling anyone it was here, or are we going to tell Jax about it and then ask for it as a reward for what we've done to help?" I say to no one in particular.
I don't particularly care either way, as I have my Energy Blade that will outclass that thing any day of the week, but I know Andy, Rick, or Gideon might want it. I look to two of the three of them and they seem to understand that the decision lays with them.
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"Andy isn't here so you two will have to decide whether or not to take the chance that Jax will give us the sword back, we can decide later who gets the blade." I nod to them.
"Well ... I think we should probably just turn it in with the rest and take the chance we won't get it back rather than trying to hide it." Gideon answers, looking to Rick for his opinion.
"That's fine, worst case scenario we find another way to get a sword." Rick agrees.
"Right then, let's go find Andy and Jax." I lead us out of the cellar.
What we find when we arrive back at the hallway is a line of Breakpoint soldiers hauling food outside. We fight our way through the crowd and into the food storeroom, finding Jax overseeing the operations. I nod to Gideon and let him inform the big man what we found.
"Mr. Jax we've found the armory." Gideon informs the man.
"Really? Where, take me to it immediately." Jax exclaims.
Before we leave Jax pulls someone out of the human conveyor belt and tasks them with keeping the operation moving smoothly, then he follows us to the armory. Most of the group stays upstairs, but I follow Jax and Gideon down the ladder into the cellar. Jax is already looking around with a huge smile on his face when I get down there. His eyes go to the shotguns first, before settling on the sword.
"If you wouldn't mind, we would like to take that sword as our share of the loot, after all we did find both the food, and the weapons." Gideon makes our interests in the blade known.
Jax freezes upon hearing that we want the blade, but slowly he relaxes.
"Hmm, I suppose after what you've done for us, I could allow you to take this sword as your prize. ... Very well, you may have it." Jax nods to himself as he comes to the decision to let us have the sword.
"Thank you, Mr. Jax, we are grateful for the sword." Gideon says with a beaming smile growing on his face.
Gideon picks up the sword and moves to leave the underground armory. I wait until he is up and then follow him out. I'm honestly a little surprised Jax gave up the sword so easily, I must have underestimated either how much he valued the sword, or how much he valued us. Perhaps he didn't care that much, considering he has a sword of his own already. Regardless we now have the sword, and Gideon, Rick, or Andy are going to get a nice upgrade to their weapon.
We decide to exit the building before we're run over by the stampede of people that Jax will surely order in to move the weapons. On our way out I stop at the group of prisoners and leave Malorie with them. Once outside I see that the Breakpoint squads have been laying out the confiscated supplies in the road to be gathered and hauled back to their HQ. We wait outside for at least 30 minutes, and during that time we see weapons begin to be hauled out next to the captured rations. Once everything has been extracted from the church the prisoners are brought out and kept well away from the food and the weapons.
While we were waiting, I decided that I wanted to go and look at the next intersection of four zones on the northeast tip of this zone, I'd never been closer, and I might as well check them out now than have to come back later. I told my companions that once they started heading back to the Breakpoint HQ, I was going to go check out the intersection, they didn't seem to mind, especially Andy and Lilly who knew better what I was really capable of.
"If anyone happens to ask where I'm at, just tell them I wanted to hunt down some monsters, alright." I wanted to give my companions an explanation in case it was necessary, though I didn't think anyone would notice my absence.
With that I slip away from the crowd and head as directly northwest as the town streets will allow me. Without anyone around, slaughtering my way through the monsters in the way is easy, I don't even have to slow down. Without traveling with anyone else, I'm able to really test my new agility stats, and damn is it fucking awesome to run twenty-five or thirty miles an hour without breaking a sweat. I'm sure my endurance has a lot to do with my ability to keep going without stopping as well. It's incredibly freeing, being on my own, not having to hide my capabilities. I need to spend more time like this, just moving about, slaughtering monsters, exploring.
It doesn't take me long to reach the razor cut boarder of this zone, but when I do I stop in complete surprise. Beyond the corner of this zone, it's not other zones I find, but the same landscape in every direction. There are grassy flatlands with dotted trees, running into forests, and rolling hills. It's not like the zones to the south of the town, where the plains run into the forest, this is one whole landscape without the abrupt edges. It hits me then, there are no monsters roaming about, I don't spot a single monster anywhere past the town boarder. It's like they aren't allowed passed the zone.
The only motion visible is the swaying of the grass or the leaves in the wind. Thats why when I do spot something move, I lock onto it immediately, I prepare myself to find a new type of monster, but instead, I find a damn pigeon. A pigeon, yup an honest to God earth bird just flew into one of the trees close to me. The earth animals must have realized that the monsters wouldn't hunt them out here and all the ones that survived fled. No wonder I haven't found any damn animals in the city anywhere, I had figured at least something would have survived the monsters, which they did, they just fled somewhere safe.
This changes quite a bit, about what I assumed the world was like now. Maybe just parts of the world were reorganized into zones. Though as I look over the trees around me, they don't seem like any I've seen or heard of before. The leaves of the trees looked like maple leaves, but instead of green they're a kind of Tiel color that I didn't recognize at first, and the trunks looked normal enough, except they had a red-ish tint to them. If you just glanced at the trees, they didn't look different enough for your mind to pick up on but as you really took in the coloration you could tell, these trees were not from Earth.
"Then ... the zone is surrounded by land from another planet." I said out loud without even meaning to.
I needed to check out the rest of the zones around the city, there was at least a 3x2 grid of zones, but more likely a 3x3, or perhaps more if there are zones extending south. For now, I would assume a 3x3 grid of earth zones, surrounded by the land of another planet, considering the zones around the city don't have Night Stalkers, and they're all less populated. I'm not sure if this means there are more than just the two planets, Earth and whatever I'm looking at now, or if there are more.
I would have to scout the rest of the zones to confirm, but either way this could mean that there are groupings of zones dotted around, maybe even groupings from other planets, who knows. There's so much to consider, but for now it's time to return back to my companions. I take a final look across the landscape in front of me, I notice something new in the distance, I huge mountain range to the north stretching as far as I can see in either direction. With that I leave the breathtaking view.
I decide to take a route that will allow me to kill more monsters on my way back, they aren't a serious threat to me and not the best for class energy either, but I use them to practice my skills on, my footwork, my precision, how fast I can manifest my Energy Blade, and my overall skill in wielding my weapons. It's truly not much, but every second of practice is worth it in my opinion.
It's already past lunch when I return and closing in on dinner soon. I find my companions hanging around the group storing the food they brought back and helping to haul it inside. I join them until we're done which only takes another few minutes, then I pull them down the street a ways until we have some privacy. I tell them about what I found, what I think this could mean for us, for humanity, and maybe even for other worlds.
They're blown away by what I reveal to them. No one speaks a word as they digest the information.
"Well, what the fuck. That's bat shit crazy and fucking cool at the same time." Sam says.
I just chuckle.