Chapter 83: Asking about father

The rest of the journey toward Baidu passed without any major catastrophic incidents. Over the next several days, Summer managed to hunt down and kill nearly a hundred Elite zombies scattered along the fringes of the desert road.

As she carved through these roaming monsters, her sharp instincts picked up on a clear, unusual pattern. The concentration of Elite zombies surged dramatically whenever the convoy passed through completely barren, isolated landscapes where living prey was practically nonexistent.

It felt entirely backward to normal logic. Logically, mutated beasts should gather near dense human populations to feed, yet these high-tier monstrosities seemed to be congregating in desolate, empty wastes.

Curious about this anomaly, Summer questioned the system inside her mind, seeking a direct explanation for why these powerful zombies were gathering in such desolate terrain.

However, the system simply responded in its usual cold, neutral voice, telling her that she would have to investigate the root cause and uncover the truth behind the phenomenon on her own.

Rather than feeling annoyed by the lack of a straight answer, Summer took the system’s response as a direct personal challenge. As an intensely competitive zombie girl who hated being outsmarted or left in the dark, her pride was instantly ignited.

She actually found a strange thrill in investigating mysterious anomalies and piecing together secrets through her own efforts.

Seeing her become so deeply invested in this new investigation brought a profound sense of relief to both Shadow and the system.

They were thoroughly glad that the little girl had finally stumbled upon a stimulating hobby to occupy her sharp mind, giving her something to focus on besides her endless, ravenous hunger for cores.

While the convoy continued its steady march across the dusty highway, Derrick silently slipped away from the main column under the cover of night.

On the surface, his official assignment was to head directly into Baidu City ahead of the migration, using the syndicate’s local contacts to secure proper housing, supply depots, and accommodations for their massive group of refugees.

Summer, however, was not naive enough to believe that was his only objective. She knew with absolute certainty that Derrick was moving under Salma’s direct orders to execute another hidden agenda entirely.

Driven by her growing curiosity, Summer made multiple subtle attempts to pry information out of her mother over the following days.

She asked innocent-sounding questions during their shared meals, kept a close eye on Salma’s shadow transmissions, and tried every trick in her childish arsenal to figure out what Derrick was truly up to behind the scenes.

Unfortunately for her, every single attempt ended in total failure. Salma was a master of political maneuvers and covert operations, smoothly brushing off her daughter’s prodding with fond smiles, gentle cheek pinches, and casual deflections that left Summer completely empty-handed.

That constant secrecy only fueled Summer’s burgeoning curiosity regarding her mother’s true background. There was simply no logical way that a woman like Salma Al Mansari was a mere, ordinary human who had simply gotten lucky during the apocalypse.

Her cold tactical brilliance, her effortless command over high-tier shadow manipulation, and the terrifying domain-level aura she displayed were far too refined.

Having learned about the existence of the higher worlds through Shadow and the system, Summer began to wonder if her mother had originally hailed from one of those powerful realms before ending up in this mortal world.

Yet, beneath her sharp curiosity, a dark, heavy realization quietly lingered in the back of Summer’s mind. Even though Shadow and the system deliberately avoided bringing it up in their daily conversations, Summer was not blind to her own physical condition.

She could clearly feel that she was losing control over her mind and instincts, slowly but surely.

The rapid merging of her dual foundations was subtly eroding her self-restraint with every passing day.

She knew the cold, brutal truth: if she pushed her core evolution forward into a true Lord tier without securing a continuous, daily supply of unpurified Lord cores to satisfy her altered biology, her lingering humanity would shatter entirely, reducing her to a mindless, bloodthirsty zombie driven by pure destruction.

"Don’t frown. You will become ugly."

Salma reached out with a light, warm touch, her thumb gently brushing across the crease between Summer’s small eyebrows.

Summer tilted her head slightly, her crimson eyes staring up at her mother without blinking. In her mind, Salma was practically an archive of hidden secrets, wrapped in layers of mystery and quiet authority.

Unveiling every single one of those hidden secrets sounded like such a fun, entertaining game to play.

Especially one particular topic that had recently crossed her thoughts.

"Mom, who is my father?" Summer asked, her tone entirely curious and straightforward.

The soft, fond smile resting on Salma’s face froze instantly. Her eyes, which were always sharp, calculating, and vibrant like radiant emeralds, seemed to dim significantly at that single, unexpected question.

Summer was taken completely aback by the sudden shift. This was only the second time in her entire memory that she had ever seen such a vulnerable, heavy expression on her mother’s face.

The very first time had been back when Salma had hesitated to hug her, terrified that her own dark energy might accidentally hurt her daughter. And now, she was seeing it again.

In both instances, the underlying emotion driving that reaction was unmistakable: fear.

Why was her mother afraid of her father? Was he truly that much of a monster?

"Is he a bad guy?" Summer asked, blinking her eyes in genuine, innocent confusion.

"Bad?" Salma let out a bitter, self-deprecating smile, her voice carrying a hollow, distant echo as she looked out the heavy armored glass of the command vehicle. "That is far too small of a word to explain what he is. Terrible would be much more accurate."

"Oh..." Summer muttered softly.

The moment Summer realized her father was such a terrible, painful memory for her mother, the lingering spark of curiosity inside her chest dimmed almost immediately. In her pragmatic worldview, a man like that was not worth wasting her precious energy on.

For all she knew, he might have already died somewhere out in the desolate wastes during the initial collapse of civilization.

Salma watched her daughter’s attention quickly drift back to the dark golden gauntlets resting on her lap, and a quiet wave of relief washed through her chest.

She took a slow, steady breath to steady her rapidly beating heart. When Summer had initially blurted out that question about her father, Salma had come terrifyingly close to suffering a full-blown panic attack right there on the leather bench.

Her deepest, most overwhelming terror was the thought that that man might have somehow established contact with her innocent little girl behind her back. After all, covertly infiltrating people’s lives and manipulating events from the dark had always been his absolute specialty.

Before Salma’s thoughts could spiral any further into the dark shadows of her past, a clear, steady transmission echoed directly into her mind across her encrypted shadow link.

’Young miss,’ Derrick’s disciplined voice echoed calmly through the shadow link.

’The Supreme Commander has already arrived at the city. They have officially united every surrounding human settlement and military detachment into the Alathoor Mountain range. The ancient Alathoor caves have been chosen as their primary subterranean fortress.’

’Oh?’ Salma raised a single eyebrow, a cold, sharp light instantly replacing the lingering vulnerability in her eyes. ’It seems they intend to fortify their position and stay in the Baidu region for quite some time. How intriguing.’

’Yes,’ Derrick answered smoothly.

’According to the Shadows, the true long-term aim of the Supreme Commander is to board the fortified evacuation ship heading toward the offshore Islands. However, that vessel is not scheduled for launch for another three full months. The most amusing detail of all is that only he and his son have reserved seats allocated on that ship.’

Salma’s lip curled upward into a sneer.

The picture was crystal clear now. That arrogant bastard was literally using the entire remaining military force, along with tens of thousands of innocent civilian refugees, as meat shields and cannon fodder just to buy himself enough time to escape the continent unscathed.

It was a meticulous, utterly ruthless survival plan.

Unfortunately for him, Salma Al Mansari was here now.

How could Salma ever forget the monster who had made her precious daughter’s life a living hell? How could she ever bring herself to forgive the vile, pathetic excuse of a human who harbored lecherous, repulsive thoughts against her sweet child?

There was a very specific reason she had deliberately refrained from ordering her Shadows to assassinate that father and son duo long ago.

A quick, painless death in the dark was a mercy they did not deserve, and Salma Al Mansari was certainly not a benevolent woman.

Rather, she preferred her retribution to be slow, agonizing, and thoroughly punitive.