CHAPTER 64: CHAPTER 64: CASUALTIES AND DISCOVERY

All the items in the room were scattered everywhere, broken.

It was worse than the bedroom earlier. Because if an ordinary human who wasn’t used to the apocalypse saw the sight before them, they would immediately vomit in disgust, sorrow; all other indescribable conflicting emotions.

Based on Jake’s words, this house had two ability users–not counting the two people from the Brown family.

Now, those two people were staring at them with their mouths dripping with blood, then something red–a chunk of human flesh.

Their victims lay weakly on the floor in gruesome condition. The bloodstains all over the room told them that they had made the last struggle before they succumbed to the zombies’ power.

The zombies’s eyes, glazed white, turned toward them as he let out a beast-like roar. Then, his figure launched itself toward the three.

"Miss... Mr. Vire..." The man gasped weakly. His eyes wide, as if his eyeballs were going to jump out at any moment.

After the zombie was gone did they realized something incredibly unsettling. The man’s stomach was wide open. His intestines pulled out, scattered on the floor.

One of his arms was gone, as well as some chunks of flesh on his chest. Beside him, his companion was dead, in a worse condition than the man with incomplete organs.

The other zombie was still focused on eating the dead man. The sound of his mouth munching on the flesh triggered a morbid feeling. Their skin crawled.

Jake sucked in a deep breath. "Heavens..."

Still, he was quick enough to react when the incoming zombie lifted its hand, aiming at him. Jake’s hands conjured wind blades as he dodged.

Zerra took out her pitchfork as she scanned the surrounding vigilantly. Her body spun alertly as if another of those creatures might jump at her any moment.

Cassias’ had his hand covered in purplish-blue lightning. He aimed his power at the other zombie, who was crazily eating the dead man in front of him.

"Be... careful..." The Brown family’s man, who was on his last breath, spoke, enduring great pain when he saw Cassias nearby. "They... evil..."

Zerra was quite a few meters away, but she could still hear the man’s faint voice amidst the annoying zombies’ guttural voices. Evil? Who?

"Kill." The man let out a gasp, struggling for the last breath, "me."

Then, he was no longer breathing. They didn’t even need to fulfill his last request.

Even if they managed to kill the zombies before attending to him, there was no way they could save him with such a severe condition.

A heavy feeling permeated the room after the man passed away in front of their eyes. It brought a faint gloominess and a sliver of hopelessness.

Zerra took a deep breath and closed her eyes, trying to shake the image of the man dying in front of her eyes.

The zombie, which had its outer skin cut by Jake’s wind blades, turned toward her at this moment.

Jake seemed lost after he witnessed such a harrowing scene. His eyes flashed with recognition when they landed on the zombies...

"How many people live here, Jake?" Zerra’s voice snapped him out of his senses. She stabbed the zombie, pulling her pitchfork from the rotten flesh, then retreated.

Jake went to help her. "With your people, there should be six in total."

"There are four in this room. We have to find the other two." Zerra decided. Her eyes involuntarily fell on the two dead bodies, noticing them to be people from the Brown family.

They were the only ones who died as humans; it was unknown whether it was a mere coincidence or not. The man’s last words left a strange sensation.

The zombie growled and chased after Jake. He conjured another group of wind blades and pulled out a small knife somewhere from his boots.

Along with Zerra, he worked together to stab the zombie. She directed her pitchfork at the zombie’s chest while Jake aimed at the brain.

Rancid blood spurted from the wounds. The zombie twitched before it went still.

"They seem to have upgraded in power." Zerra commented, scrunching her nose as pulled out her pitchfork from the zombie’s chest. "Even an ordinary zombie has the power of level two now?"

"He is not an ability user, right?" Zerra turned to Jake after she glanced at Cassias’ battlefield. The male lead was handling it with ease. His long sword stabbed the zombie repeatedly.

"He is not." Jake took a deep breath, his face somber and tinged with faint exhaustion. He was no longer as cheerful as the first time they met. "The other ability user is Daisy."

"And that zombie that Mr. Virethorn is battling with. Should we help him?" Perhaps Jake noticed that Zerra didn’t look that worried seeing Cassias fighting alone, so he asked.

"You all go. Find if there might be any survivors." Cassias grabbed the longsword from the ground and told them.

Jake and Zerra exchanged glances. She told Cassias, "Alright. Be careful. We will go to find others."

They left Cassias to explore other rooms. She followed Jake as he opened the doors one by one. Some were full of blood, and some were clean.

"Daisy, where are you?" Jake shouted.

They arrived at the bathroom, and he forcefully opened it. The door to the bathroom broke.

A breeze went past Zerra’s face. She realized that someone had run past her; she had noticed a presence, but she wasn’t sure whether it was a zombie or a human.

A woman with disheveled hair and blood all over her body clutched Jake’s arm. Her small face was full of fear. She sobbed, "Jake, they turned into zombies, suddenly attacking us..."

"I don’t want to stay here anymore. I want to join that group to the Moon Cloud city human base!" Her voice shook.

Jake seemed awkward with someone clutching tightly onto him like that. He muttered softly in an attempt to calm her down, "That’s alright now. I will tell Mr. Valez later."

"Really?" She finally let go of Jake’s arm, wiping her face. Only then did she realize there was someone else in the room. The woman’s face became bashful suddenly.

Zerra gave her a polite smile. "Are you Miss Daisy?"

"Yes, that’s my name." She answered weakly. Zerra immediately understood the reason this woman hid so resolutely instead of facing the zombies.

Daisy might be only at the first level of her ability. She was no match for an ordinary zombie, which now, had leveled up to level two, not to mention the other zombie that was transformed from a fellow ability user.

"Do you have another companion?" Zerra glanced at Jake.

Daisy bit her lip and shook her head. Tears pooled in her eyes as her lips trembled. "Miss, my other companion is also gone..."

Jake’s face became taut. "Only you and her, right?"

She nodded. "There were only six of us..."

"It’s alright. You are safe now," Zerra told her.

Jake’s face was a bit distraught. He exhaled before leading them to go back to the living room. Zerra remembered that he mentioned about the person who taught him how to use crystal cores. They didn’t seem to be there during the fog.

Cassias already solved the zombie he was facing, and he was digging into its crystal core.

Daisy took a few steps back when she saw the state of the room; the gruesome corpses and its scattered organs. She sobbed quietly before wiping her eyes, still shaken.

Jake grabbed her arm and nodded in acknowledgement to Cassias. The atmosphere was still tense even after they exited the house.

The devastating effect of the fog was unexpected. On the way, they also met some mutated animals, like birds or snakes.

They checked other houses one by one until they met another Brown family’s team in the same place. Henry had a grim look on his face.

He approached Cassias the moment he saw their group. "How many casualties?"

"There are four people who died from our people." Cassias was expressionless.

Henry took a deep breath, turned around to his people, and ignored them. Frustration was etched on his face. He must have realized now that the four people were his missing members.

"You didn’t–" he stopped himself when he saw there were two outsiders there, Daisy and Jake. Exhaling, he gestured to his people as he opened the door and went inside. "Let’s go."

Zerra snorted when she saw this. Henry was a suspicious person by nature. Judging from his unfinished words, it was clear he suspected them. He stopped because he wanted to rope people in and didn’t want to give them a bad first impression.

He was putting on a brave front by stepping inside the house first, too.

They followed him, helping to clean the mutated animals inside. The owner of this house loved animals; in the aquarium and a small pond, there were fishes.

After they killed the fishes, Henry told them to pack. They will go back tomorrow as soon as the fog completely dissipated.

Zerra and Cassias returned to Scott’s house.

"Do you want to check Scott’s barn? Other animals had mutated so quickly, his farm animals might be..." she trailed off.

Cassias didn’t refuse, and they went to his barn. "Stand behind me."

She was confused, but she still obeyed his words. Scott was nowhere to be found even after they called him and searched the house, so they just went directly to the barn.

It looked untouched.

Cassias opened the place. Curious, she craned her neck. Her eyes widened in an instant; her eyelashes trembled in disbelief when she saw people inside.

They can be considered her acquaintances. How can they be there?!