CHAPTER 542: GO HOME

The streets had grown darker.

Shadows crawled along the cracked pavement, stretching longer as the last remnants of sunlight dipped below the ruined skyline.

Buildings loomed like broken teeth against the dimming sky. Their hollow windows watching in silence as Clyde and Mina moved with urgency between alleys and debris. For now because Mina was still in her best condition he tried to avoid monsters as best as he could.

Clyde led the way. His spear was lowered but ready. Every sound, every distant growl or shift of rubble made him pause with a tense attitude. He didn’t trust this silence. Not after everything they’d faced.

Behind him, Mina followed closely. Her steps ware slower than before. Her breath came in short bursts but her grip on the dagger never wavered.

The exhaustion still weighed on her body like chains, but the fire in her chest—the need to see her family again—kept her going.

They crossed a junction littered with overturned cars and broken streetlamps. Glass crunched beneath their boots. A collapsed bus rested on its side up ahead, its metal shell torn open like a can.

The scene was silent and looks safe, but Clyde raised a hand.

Mina froze and gulped.

He crouched low, eyes narrowing at the gap between two shattered walls beyond the wreckage. Something was there.

The stench hit them next. It was the stench of blood, and rot. But there was something else that smelled like chemicals.

Clyde crept forward, motioning for Mina to stay low. He approached the edge of the wreckage and peered around.

Two creatures crouched over a mangled body. They were once human but not anymore.

Their skin was stretched too tightly over their bones, jaws unhinged wider than they should go. One of them tore into the corpse’s throat with a wet snarl. The other raised its head and sniffed the air.

Clyde didn’t wait.

He launched his spear forward in a blur of motion. It tore through the air and impaled the nearest monster through the skull, slamming it against the ground with a sickening crack.

The second one shrieked and lunged.

But Clyde was already moving. He surged forward, caught the spear with a spin, and drove the blade up under the lunging beast’s chin. It convulsed violently before going still.

Mina hurried over with her dagger in hand, but the fight was already done.

"I killed them already," Clyde muttered, yanking his weapon free.

He turned to check on Mina. She was still steady. But her eyes lingered on the half-eaten corpse.

It was a child.

Mina’s lips parted, then closed again.

There was no time to mourn.

Clyde stepped in front of her line of sight. "Don’t look at it. Just move."

She nodded wordlessly, and they kept going.

They passed more streets, more silence, and more death. The scenario timer ticked down in the corner of Clyde’s vision, now under an hour.

Then finally, they reached the edge of Mina’s neighborhood after that long journey.

Or what remained of that house.

Half the houses were reduced to rubble. One was burning slowly, casting flickering orange light over the street. The trees that once lined the sidewalk were stripped bare, some splintered in half.

Mina stopped walking.

Clyde turned back and saw her frozen in place, staring ahead at one particular house across the street.

Her home.

It was still mostly standing. One side was caved in. The door hung open. The lights inside were off. No movement can be seen.

"I’ll go first," Clyde said quietly.

Mina didn’t reply, but she didn’t stop him either.

He crossed the street with his weapon ready, stepped up to the door, and peered inside. Dust. Broken furniture. Blood smeared on the floor.

No corpses. At least in this front part.

He stepped inside slowly, sweeping the first floor room by room. Everything was torn apart.

Something had clearly broken in. But there were signs that someone had left in a hurry.

The back door was open. A photo frame lay shattered on the floor near it, a family picture, untouched by blood.

Then he heard footsteps.

Mina stood behind him, her eyes wide, taking it all in.

"They’re not here," she whispered.

Clyde nodded once. "But they might’ve escaped."

She stepped forward and knelt by the photo. Her hand shook as she picked it up, wiping dust from the glass.

"My mom would’ve run," she murmured. "She would’ve grabbed my dad and run. If they had the chance..."

Clyde didn’t interrupt.

Then Mina stood. "We must follow the trail. If they made it out, I need to find out where they went."

"You won’t rest until you do, do you?" Clyde said. It wasn’t a question.

She nodded.

He turned his gaze toward the open back door and the faint path beyond it. They saw muddy footprints, drag marks, a torn scrap of cloth on a bush. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

"We still have forty-two minutes before the first scenario ends," Clyde muttered.

And so they moved again out of the ruins of the past and into the path ahead, following faint signs.

Clyde slowed his steps and spoke without looking back, "You should start preparing yourself for the worst."

Mina’s eyes met his, and for a long second, she said nothing. Then, she nodded slowly, reluctantly. Deep down, she didn’t know if she was ready for the worst.

But they kept moving.

The trail led them into the woods behind her house. It was darker here, damp, and quiet in the wrong way.

The trees loomed, and the faint footprints grew more chaotic.

Claw marks scarred the trunks. Blood smeared the roots. This didn’t feel like a path to safety. It felt like a descent into something awful.

Then they saw it.

A shape hunched beneath the trees. A grotesque mass of flesh, sinew, and bone twisted into a single crawling beast.

Three heads rose from its malformed shoulders. One head snarling with monstrous jaws, and two others unmistakably human.

Mina stopped breathing.

Her mother’s face was still there, twisted in pain. Her father’s too, eyes half-closed, lips moving faintly as if mumbling something that couldn’t be heard.

They had been fused with the creature, bound together by mutation and corruption.

Mina clutched her dagger. Her body locked.

Clyde said nothing.

There were no words for this.

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