Chapter 82: Two Weeks in Hell

The next few days passed without anything particularly interesting happening.

Zarek kept moving through the ruined city, following whatever roads remained visible. In some places, the roots had grown so thick that there was no road left at all. He had to climb over broken walls, cross damaged buildings, or cut through vegetation to reach the other side.

The monsters were becoming more troublesome as well.

One afternoon, Zarek encountered a creature with a thick shell covering most of its body. It resembled an enormous insect, though its legs were long and uneven, and its head had several openings that released a strange hissing sound.

His first punch barely moved it.

The creature swung one of its legs, forcing him to step back. The sharp end scraped against the ground where he had been standing.

Zarek looked at the mark it left. "That’s more like it."

He moved forward again.

This time, he aimed for the same spot on its shell. The first strike cracked it. The next broke through, and his third punch crushed whatever was underneath.

The creature collapsed.

Zarek stepped away from its body, flexing his fingers.

He was beginning to understand that the monsters outside weren’t all built the same way. Some relied on speed, others on their physical strength or unusual abilities. A few were difficult to kill because of their bodies rather than their actual strength.

It made travelling more entertaining.

But the shelters were proving far less interesting.

He continued searching them whenever he came across one.

A school had been turned into a shelter by a group of teachers and parents. They had barricaded the entrances and divided the classrooms into sleeping areas. Their food supplies were almost gone, and the people inside were beginning to turn against one another.

A few tried to hide their desperation, but Zarek could see it in their faces.

He walked through the corridors, looking at the people gathered inside. Some were injured, others were too weak to stand for long. There were children among them, sitting quietly beside adults who no longer seemed to know what to do.

He searched anyway. Nothing.

He left the school without getting involved in their problems.

Another shelter was built inside an underground station. Its residents had managed to keep the place relatively secure, but their situation was even worse. Food was rationed carefully, and every new arrival was treated with suspicion.

Zarek found a few armed men guarding a storage room. They looked exhausted, and their weapons were poorly maintained.

He wasn’t interested in them.

He searched the other sections of the station, but there was no one worth taking.

The same thing happened in a damaged apartment complex.

The people there had gathered on the upper floors and blocked the staircases. They had enough supplies to last a little longer, but their order was maintained through fear. The strongest residents took the best rooms and the largest portions, while everyone else had to accept what remained.

Zarek saw enough to understand how things worked. He didn’t stay.

There were other places to search.

As the days passed, he began to see things that were even worse than what he had witnessed in the first shelters. Hunger had become an excuse for almost anything. People betrayed their own groups, abandoned those who slowed them down, and made deals that treated human lives as disposable.

Some shelters had rules written on their walls, but nobody followed them once the situation became desperate. Others had stopped pretending that rules existed at all.

Zarek came across a few groups that had turned survival into an ugly business. They controlled food and medicine, then used those supplies to force others into doing whatever they wanted.

He saw people who had once been ordinary residents now acting like the monsters outside.

It was almost impressive.

The apocalypse had barely begun, and humanity was already finding new ways to make itself miserable.

Zarek didn’t interfere.

He wasn’t travelling around to save anyone. If someone was useful, he might consider taking them. If they weren’t, their problems had nothing to do with him.

And so he kept searching.

A week passed. Then several more days.

The scenery changed, but the results remained the same. The roads were increasingly difficult to recognize, and some districts had become almost impossible to cross without fighting through the vegetation. The roots were larger here, stretching across entire streets and climbing over buildings.

Some of the plants had strange shapes. Others moved when he approached, though he couldn’t tell whether they were reacting to him or simply responding to the movement around them.

He encountered more powerful monsters, too.

One emerged from a collapsed building and chased him across the street. Another attacked from beneath a mass of roots, forcing him to jump away before it could drag him underground.

Zarek killed them both.

The fights were worth remembering, but they didn’t solve his actual problem. He still hadn’t found anyone suitable.

He had searched shelters in several districts, spoken to people when necessary, and observed more survivors than he cared to count. There were strong people among them, and a few were even capable of organizing others.

But strength alone wasn’t enough.

He wanted someone with potential worth investing in. Someone who could grow into something exceptional.

The System had remained silent throughout the journey. Zarek wasn’t going to fill the slot just to get it over with.

By the time nearly three weeks had passed, the city had become a familiar sight. He could recognize the warning signs of nearby monsters, judge whether a building was safe enough to enter, and tell when a shelter was likely to be nothing more than a waste of time.

He had also learned that most people were far more dangerous to one another than he had expected.

Not because they were strong. Because they were desperate.

One evening, he reached the roof of a damaged building and looked across the district ahead. Several blocks had collapsed, leaving behind piles of concrete and twisted metal. Thick vegetation covered the remains, and enormous roots stretched between the buildings.

There were no functioning streetlights, no moving vehicles, and no signs of the life that had once filled the area. Only ruins.

Zarek rested his hands on the railing.

He had spent nearly three weeks searching, and his third partner was still nowhere to be found.

"Maybe I’m being too picky."

He chuckled.

He turned away from the edge and started toward the stairs.

A familiar notification suddenly appeared before his eyes.

[High-potential individual detected.]

Zarek stopped.

He stared at the message for a moment.

For nearly three weeks, the System had given him nothing. Now, at last, someone had entered its detection range.

His gaze shifted toward the ruined district ahead. A smile slowly spread across his face.

"Finally."