Chapter 44 Apocalypse Quest — Treasure Room!

Magnus Vane waited outside Room 101 for several seconds after killing the walker, listening carefully for movement inside.

When nothing else came through the doorway, he lowered the Stone Sledgehammer and stepped into the motel room.

The first thing he noticed was a dead man lying across the bed, shirtless and reduced almost to a skeleton below the waist.

A bullet hole marked one temple, while the skeletal fingers of his right hand were still wrapped around a handgun.

Magnus looked from the corpse to the female walker he had just killed outside and immediately understood enough of the story to wish he hadn’t.

Apparently, the man had been trapped in the room, attacked, and somehow managed to shoot himself before whatever happened next finished playing out.

Magnus shivered slightly and shook his head.

“Man, you had one hell of a bad ending.” Sympathy didn’t stop him from taking useful equipment.

Magnus carefully worked the handgun free from the man’s fingers, then opened the nightstand and found half a box of loose pistol ammunition spilled across the drawer.

Judging from the scattered rounds, the man had probably been loading the weapon in a panic shortly before shooting himself.

Magnus gathered everything and stored it away before searching the rest of the room.

The motel room was small, probably under five hundred square feet even with the bathroom included, and most of what remained had already gone bad.

Cheap packaged food had rotted or been ruined, an old television sat beneath a thick layer of dust, and magazines were scattered across the floor.

Then Magnus noticed a sturdy pair of dark leather boots near the bed.

He picked them up, checked the soles, and smiled.

“At least you had decent taste.

I’ll put these to better use.” He also collected a tube of toothpaste and two unopened bars of soap from the bathroom before stepping back into the corridor.

The search had taken less time than expected, which meant the two of them could cover a decent portion of the motel before the convoy’s thirty-minute break ended.

Magnus walked over to Room 102, where Daryl had already finished checking his side.

“You stay on the first floor.

I’ll take upstairs, and we meet back outside in twenty minutes no matter what we find.” Daryl gave a short nod.

“Got it.” Magnus headed toward the staircase, but halfway up he stopped when a faded blue vending machine caught his eye.

He wiped a layer of dust from the glass and expected to find it mostly empty, only to discover rows of snacks and energy bars still packed inside.

His eyebrows rose.

“Either the owner stocked this thing right before everything went to hell, or I finally found a place nobody robbed.” Rather than waste time searching for keys, Magnus flipped the Stone Sledgehammer around and struck the glass with the handle.

It shattered with a sharp crash, exposing the untouched contents inside.

He cleared away the loose shards, grabbed an energy bar, tore it open, and took a bite while continuing upstairs.

“I’ll empty the rest on the way down.” The instant his boot touched the second-floor walkway, a familiar chime sounded inside his head.

Magnus froze.

A translucent screen appeared in front of him.

[Apocalypse Quest Triggered] [Resource Search] [An abandoned motel contains a hidden treasure room.] [System-reset resources have appeared inside.] Magnus stared at the message for a second.

Then a grin spread across his face.

“Well, that’s practically a gift.” The phrase system-reset resources was the important part.

Whatever waited inside that room didn’t necessarily have to match what the motel originally contained; the system might have generated fresh food, medicine, ammunition, tools, or other supplies that should have been impossible to find untouched after the outbreak.

As the mission screen faded, a warm yellow exclamation mark appeared farther along the second-floor corridor.

“Quest accepted.” Magnus finished the last bite of the energy bar and tightened his grip on the Stone Sledgehammer.

The same hallway he had been looking at moments earlier suddenly felt much more interesting.

Instead of carefully searching every drawer and cabinet, he now had an objective.

He walked to Room 201 and kicked the door open.

An elderly male walker inside barely had time to turn toward the noise.

Magnus stepped in and swung.

WHAM!

The Stone Sledgehammer hit it hard enough to send the corpse flying backward.

Before Magnus could follow through, another walker began pulling itself upright from behind the bed.

This one was an elderly woman with sunken cheeks and almost no teeth left, her mouth opening and closing as she staggered toward him.

Magnus stared at her.

Then at the bare gums.

He sighed.

“You really don’t have much going for you, do you?” Instead of swinging, Magnus planted the end of the sledgehammer handle against her forehead and held her in place.

The walker clawed toward him and snapped her toothless mouth uselessly, unable to move even an inch against his Strength Lv7.

Magnus couldn’t help laughing.

When something had almost no ability to hurt you, even its rage stopped being intimidating.

“All right, grandma.

Settle down.” Magnus pushed her head sideways with the hammer handle, turned her around, and grabbed the back of her clothing.

With his upgraded strength, lifting her onto the bed took almost no effort.

He wrapped the walker tightly in the motel blanket, then used the television cable to bind the bundle until she could do little more than squirm.

Magnus stepped back and studied the result.

The walker continued wriggling.

Something still looked wrong.

His eyes landed on an old Christmas-themed knit cap hanging from the coat rack.

Magnus picked it up and pulled it over the walker’s head.

For some reason, she stopped moving for a second.

Magnus nodded with exaggerated approval.

“There.

Much better.” He shouldered the Stone Sledgehammer and turned toward the exit, but after taking several steps, he paused.

A faint growling sound came through the wall separating Room 201 from Room 202.

The motel’s cheap construction and thin walls carried the noise clearly enough that Magnus could pinpoint the source without even going back into the hallway.

He slowly smiled.

Why waste time on doors?

Magnus raised the Stone Sledgehammer.

“Let’s see what Level Seven can do.” He swung into the wall.

BOOM!

Drywall, wooden framing, and cheap interior material burst inward.

Part of the wall collapsed directly onto the walker standing in Room 202, pinning it beneath debris before it could react.

Magnus stepped through the opening and crushed its skull with one finishing blow.

[Experience +300] He scanned the room.

Dusty television.

Old furniture.

Nothing that looked remotely like newly generated system loot.

“This isn’t it.” Magnus turned toward the next wall.

Instead of walking back into the hallway and opening every door one at a time, he simply raised the Stone Sledgehammer again.

Downstairs, Daryl had just finished checking another room when a deep impact rolled through the ceiling.

BOOM!

He stopped.

Looked up.

Then another impact followed.

BOOM!

Daryl stared at the ceiling for several seconds.

“What the hell is he doing up there?” Another wall broke.

At that point, it no longer sounded like Magnus was searching motel rooms.

It sounded like somebody had started demolishing the entire second floor with a wrecking ball.

Magnus didn’t care.

One room became another, and then another.

He smashed through wall after wall, moving directly across the motel instead of wasting time on hallways and locks.

Over the next thirteen rooms, nearly half contained walkers, and every one of them was eliminated except the bundled old woman still wriggling harmlessly back in Room 201.

Magnus opened the system panel briefly.

[Level: Lv13 — 79%] He smiled.

The quest was paying off even before he found the treasure room.

After killing the final walker in the thirteenth room, Magnus rested the Stone Sledgehammer against the floor and caught his breath.

His upgraded Strength made each swing far more destructive than before, but destroying walls and fighting repeatedly still drained stamina.

He waited until the bar recovered past halfway before stepping toward the fourteenth wall.

The yellow mission marker was still ahead.

Magnus tightened both hands around the handle.

Then he raised the Stone Sledgehammer again.