Chương 10: Where is Everyone?

With full stomachs, Joe, Kai, and Hakeem were ready to set out in the two directions they had decided on. Thanks to Kai's party skill, a compass hovered at the top of Joe's party interface, ensuring he always knew which direction they were heading towards. Joe also had a compass on his mini-map, so there was no risk of them getting lost. He assumed Hakeem had a compass also, which would help him navigate the deserted streets of London.

"We have the party interface, so keep in contact," Joe said.

"Good luck, man; let us know when you find your brother and sister." Hakeem nodded. No one wanted to voice the grim reality weighing on their minds. Joe, in particular, was trying hard to keep things positive. Finding anyone alive felt like an impossible dream with the city as devastated as it seemed.

"See you later," Kai said, shaking Hakeem's hand.

"Later, guys", Hakeem replied as he turned and headed east. Joe and Kai wistfully watched their friend leave before they too started heading north. Heading toward the unknown. They didn't know it at that moment. But all three had just embarked on a journey that would change them forever. After about ten minutes of walking, they encountered their first signs of life, two wolves. The beasts came charging around a corner ahead, startling both of them.

Joe reacted instantly, stepping forward to intercept as Kai yelled and crouched in fear, head in his hands. With swift strikes of his quarterstaff, Joe felled both wolves effortlessly. Once the brief fight was over, Joe looted the bodies and walked back to Kai, who was still crouched, his eyes darting around nervously.

"What the hell was that?" Joe asked, his tone sharper than he intended.

"What? They c-came out of nowhere," Kai stammered, his voice shaky. Joe stood silently for a moment, watching his friend. It was clear Kai wasn't adapting as quickly as he was. Joe wasn't sure why he felt so calm. He glanced around at their surroundings. He felt ready to act at any moment, as if his body was expecting more encounters. Was it the two months of torture? His gaming experience before all of this? Or perhaps some kind of system-induced state of awareness? One thing was sure: things needed to change.

If they were going to make it to Kai's family and survive, Kai had to adapt quickly. Joe took a deep breath, steeling himself for what he needed to say.

"You can't do that, man. What just happened now. Freezing up and screaming, you can't do that." Joe locked eyes with Kai.

"What would have happened if I weren't here right now?" Kai hesitated, unable to answer. Joe could see that he knew his reaction to the wolves had been bad.

"I'll tell you what would have happened," Joe pressed.

"You'd be dead." He stared at Kai until he looked away, unable to hold his gaze.

"I know, but I can't deal with this like you can. How are you okay with this?" Kai asked, his voice laced with frustration.

"I'm not. I'm not okay with any of this. But I am adapting. I have to. We have to." Joe stepped back, running a hand through his short, curly hair as he tried to organize his thoughts. He wasn't the best motivational speaker, but when things got serious, he usually managed to say what was on his mind at least.

"For now, I will handle the fighting. If it's two, three, or even four wolves, I can probably handle them without much trouble. But if we meet more than that, you have to defend yourself. So, no cowering, stand tall, and never take your eyes off them. Got it?"

"Yes," Kai replied, though his voice lacked the confidence he was trying to project.

"Good, just be confident. You are stronger than these wolves. You could see all of their movements, right?" Joe asked. Kai nodded.

"Exactly. They're weak. We both have unique classes, so we're strong. They are just dumb beasts running at us to die; think of them as nothing more than that," Joe said, his voice firm. He hoped his words were sinking in, though deep down, he knew that the only real teacher was experience. With that in mind, he silently resolved to lead them toward every beast they could locate. Into the fire we go, my friend, He thought. The egg strapped to his back pulsed gently, a rhythmic reminder of its presence.

__ Kai was starting to sweat. They had been walking for almost two hours, the mid-morning sun peeking at them between clouds. Things became particularly problematic when they reached the River Thames. All the nearby bridges had collapsed, but they managed to find a path across the rubble of what once was Tower Bridge. At one point, they even had to jump over a gap nearly twenty metres wide, which both of them cleared with ease, which still felt hard to understand to Kai.

Joe kept talking about stats and their strength, but Kai struggled to grasp how numbers on a screen could translate into physical reality. Strength of fifty? What did that even mean? And why did having an Agility stat over fifty let him see the beasts' movements more clearly? Assigning a numerical value to everything gave him a headache, but even so, he couldn't deny the truth in Joe's words. He was stronger now, a lot stronger. He was faster, too.

They had made it from South London to North London in just a couple of hours, even with the constant stops to fight. Another wolf attack came every four or five minutes, relentless and unending. It was exhausting, just not as much as it should have been. That constant stream of attacks was the main reason Kai was lightly sweating. The first encounter with the two wolves had left him terrified. But after Joe's stern words, he knew he couldn't afford to freeze again.

He had to stand tall and face this new reality, as terrifying as it was. All he wanted was to return to a world where his biggest problem was his boss giving him an impossible deadline to finish animating a scene. But looking around, at the shattered building fronts and the endless attacks from wolves, more and more it started to sink in that this might be his new reality. And it sucked.

"Incoming!" Joe shouted. Kai looked up and saw a wolf charging straight for him. Joe was busy fighting three wolves, leaving him to face this one alone. He gripped the shovel in his hands. Well, it wasn't really a shovel; it was the Chisel he'd received when he got his Class. He'd discovered that the tool could transform into any object to aid in building, and right now, it was a shovel for self-defence. As the wolf closed in, He swung the tool with all his might.

His movements were faster than the wolf's, and the shovel struck its shoulder, slamming it into the ground. The crunch of breaking bones was unmistakable, and blood splattered from the impact. But he didn't stop. Joe had drilled it into him that the fight wasn't over until the system announced the Beast's death. So, he swung again and again until, finally, the notification appeared. This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

System Message You have slain Wolf Level 22 Ding! Class City Builder has reached level 8 - stat points distributed. Kai glanced over and saw that Joe had already finished off all the wolves he'd been fighting in the time it took Kai to kill one. He was suddenly struck by how glad he was to have come with Joe. He knew now that this journey wasn't something he could have handled alone.

"You're getting better at this," Joe said, walking over.

"Soon, you'll be a wolf-killing machine."

"Please, no, I do not want to become like you," Kai replied with mock disdain.

"Uuuhhh," Joe gasped in exaggerated horror.

"I am a farmer; I'll have you know."

"Sure you are," Kai chuckled, brushing himself off. He returned his tool to his ring and headed toward the Beast's corpses to loot them. It had been their agreement that Joe would handle most of the fighting while Kai took care of looting. That arrangement suited Kai just fine; looting only required the briefest touch, which was far less harrowing than combat. When Kai finished looting, he walked over to Joe, who was checking his bag and the egg inside it.

They took a moment to rest after the battle, and Kai glanced around, noticing the grass around them steadily creeping outward. They were leaving a trail as they went. Or, more accurately, Joe was.

"You really can't stop the grass growing?" Kai asked, frowning.

"It's leaving a trail behind; what if something follows us?"

"I can sense anything that touches it, remember?" Joe replied.

"We'll be fine. It's probably a good thing. Maybe someone will see the grass and touch it. Then we'll know if there is anyone else walking around." Kai tried to wrap his head around the idea. How was that even possible? He felt he understood less and less of what Joe said each passing hour. Maybe he should have played that Warcraft game Joe was always talking about. Would that help him make sense of this? He wasn't sure. Maybe it was just Joe being weird. He was very weird. That made more sense.

__ Joe felt the warmth of the egg against the palm of his hand before closing the bag and slinging it back onto his shoulders. He glanced over at Kai, who seemed lost in thought. He was starting to worry for his friend, not because of the beasts or the fighting, but because of the unspoken topic they had been avoiding. The complete absence of any sign of humanity. Not a single person, no bodies, no traces of life. It was as though everyone had simply vanished.

He pulled up his quest screen, eyes landing on the Humans Alive number displayed there. Quest - Kill all 100 Gate bosses to restart Integration into the multiverse. Quest progress - 1/100 Time limit of Quest - 2 Years Current Humans Alive in World 43. 999, 532, 002 The number had dipped below one billion. His mood soured immediately. He shouldn't have checked. It was depressing. But at the same time, it gave him a sliver of hope. People were still alive.

He just had to find them and pray his family and friends were among the survivors.

"Ready to move on?" Kai asked, breaking the silence.

"Let's go," Joe replied. They pressed forward, knowing they were close to Kai's home now. Maybe there would be something there, a clue to a safe zone or a military stronghold, anything to guide them to where everyone had gone. The survivors have to be gathered somewhere, Joe thought. It was the only explanation that made sense. They jogged forward for another five minutes before finally arriving at Kai's house. Joe breathed a sigh of relief.

The house was still standing, mostly intact, except for a few cracked windows. Even better, there were no signs of Beasts nearby. Kai didn't hesitate. He ran straight to the door and opened it; it wasn't locked, and he headed inside. Joe decided to wait outside. He didn't want to go inside in case there was… something inside he wasn't ready to see. They had avoided entering any houses along the way for the same reason. Joe had never seen a dead body, but he suspected the Beasts didn't leave any behind.

He sat down on the newly sprouted grass with the egg before him. These quiet moments brought him a strange comfort. He found himself staring at the egg, wondering what lay inside. Unconsciously, he placed his palm against the bag and let his imagination wander. What if it's a dragon egg? The thought popped into his mind first, but he quickly dismissed it. No chance. Dragons aren't real. Maybe it was a bird of some kind. Mammals didn't lay eggs, so it had to be either a bird or a reptile.

Then a wild thought hit him: What if it's an alien egg? Maybe it was something entirely unknown, a species he'd never seen. As he pondered, he felt a faint heartbeat from within the egg. He froze, focusing on the sensation. But before he could process it further, Kai returned. Joe looked up, relieved to see that Kai didn't appear shaken or distressed. If he'd found something horrific inside, he would have looked different. Instead, Kai seemed calm, carrying an envelope in his hand.

"What's that?" Joe asked.

"A letter from my dad," Kai said, holding up the envelope.

"It's faded and hard to read. But it says the police and military set up a camp for people to gather and hide from the Beast hordes. Some place called Hatch Forest, north of Woodford." Joe nodded. He knew where Woodford was, but hadn't heard of Hatch Forest before.

"That's great," he added with a sigh of relief. The idea that the police and military were helping people was a great sign. He glanced at his mini-map and zoomed out to get a sense of their position. Although the map only showed the areas they'd travelled, it looked as if they headed east; they could reach Woodford pretty quickly. With any luck, the camp would still be there.

Before either of them could say anything else, a familiar young blonde woman emerged from one of the nearby houses, her eyes locking directly on them.

"Sarah?" Kai said, his voice rising in surprise. Joe stared at the thin, gaunt-looking woman who stood in the doorway to her house. She had shoulder-length, scraggly blonde locks that needed brushing. Her face was marked and covered in dirt. She wore an expression of someone who had seen far too much suffering. Joe's heart skipped a beat at her expression. She was draped in what looked like a kind of leather hunting outfit. It was torn and ragged from use, something he envisioned seeing in a game.

"Kai? Oh my God! Kai!" Sarah burst into tears, falling to her knees. Joe watched Kai run to her, wrapping his arms around her shoulders, trying to console her. Joe's mind moved, trying to place her. He vaguely remembered meeting her once before, a neighbour and a friend of Kai's family. She lived in that house with her daughter.

"Where is Kayley?" he heard Kai ask softly. Sarah's sobs grew louder as she choked out the words, "She died." Joe swore under his breath. He wanted to approach, but hesitated. He didn't know Sarah well and felt it might be awkward to intrude on this moment. So he stayed where he was, sitting outside Kai's house, watching from a distance. After a while, when Sarah had perked up and wiped away her tears, Kai motioned for him to join them. As he approached, he got a good look at her; she was so thin.

He wondered when she had last eaten. Together, the three of them made their way into Sarah's house. There wasn't much to see inside the house. It looked like no one had been there for a while. There was no electricity, and a thick layer of dust covered everything, except for the single backpack sitting in the hallway by the door.

"Please sit," Sarah said, motioning toward the couch. Joe sat down awkwardly while Kai remained standing, his expression tense.

"Sarah, what happened?" Kai asked, exchanging a look with Joe. Instantly, Joe could tell they were thinking the same thing. They were both worried by the state she was in; there were still patches of drying blood on her sleeves and hands. It looked like she had not long been in a battle. Kai, in comparison, was free of blood stains or tears on his clothing. Joe looked like he had been through a lot, though, with gaping holes and a lot of dried blood marking his clothes.

"Sorry about that," Sarah said after taking a deep breath to compose herself.

"I only just got here; I just came to look for something, but then… oh gosh. Where did you come from? You've been missing for so long, Kai."

"We were stuck inside..."

"A Gate!" Joe interrupted quickly, cutting Kai off before mentioning the Bloodline part.

"Yeah, a Gate," Kai continued.

"Didn't you go to the military camp? I just saw the letter my parents left. Did you see them there?" Kai's voice was full of hope. Sarah stared at them in bewilderment.

"The camp? You mean the one that was in Woodford?" Joe groaned inwardly at her use of the word was.

"That camp was destroyed months ago," Sarah said.

"The last time I saw your parents, they were headed north with everyone else."

"Months ago?" Kai asked, his confusion evident.

"But didn't they just make the camp?" Joe exchanged a bewildered look with Kai.

"Kai," Sarah said gently, "that camp was built after the first gates broke." Joe felt a sickening sensation twist in his stomach. Sarah's eyes flicked between them, her expression confused but also cautious.

"Kai, you've been missing ever since the gates appeared. That was almost two years ago."