Santos was organizing his backpack. He was looking for a special weapon among his belongings.
"I got it!" In his hands, a knife with a golden hilt shimmered faintly.
These things had no magical circuitry, no mana crystal, nor a medium to function.
He had arranged the bodies of the super walkers. When he went to collect them, the first one he had sliced in half was still moving, and the second, despite having its head crushed, had grabbed him by the ankle, nearly breaking it.
That scared me. Their strength is no joke.
He had come to a conclusion.
They're not undead, ghouls, vampires, or any life-gifted variant. No, they're not even dead.
He studied them for a couple of minutes and realized they didn't exude the stench of death, but they lacked the glow of life.
They even showed signs of intelligence—something impossible in such low-tier creatures.
Holding the knife, Santos began stabbing each one...
"Will Ezequiel be okay?"
Hidden among some bushes, they pulled out camouflage to avoid the gaze of other walkers.
Everyone wore serious expressions. Except the squire.
"He'll be fine. I think we're the burden here."
This time, the one-armed man and the warrior agreed.
Looking up at the sky, the sun was nearing the horizon.
We have only a few hours left.
Once night falls, the walkers will be the least of our problems.
"We need to go now. If it gets dark, the insects will start showing up," said the squire.
The situation was now critical—an emergency, really. If no one made it out of the forest before nightfall, the odds of survival approached certain death.
Looking at each one, the squire began to remove his armor and gear.
"Hey, I haven't even paid the brothel—what are you doing?" asked the warrior.
"Listen up. I'm going to run with everything I've got. The church isn't far."
"You're crazy—you saw how fast those things move," replied the girl.
"It doesn't matter if we fight or run. If we do nothing, the whole group will be dead by nightfall."
His face was twisted. He had seen his leader die, and no more flares had been fired for a while. To him, that could only mean one thing: death.
"I don't plan to die here. I'd only be a burden. So I'll try to reach the church to alert the town."
With newfound resolve, he prepared to stand.
"Well said. An adventurer who knows he's a burden is more helpful than someone trying to be a hero."
AAAAAAH
AAAAAAH
AAAAAAH
KYAAAAAH
A symphony of screams echoed.
"Oh my god, my ears are going to fall off!" said Santos as he picked his ear with his pinky.
"Ezequiel!"
"Ezequiel!"
They shouted in unison.
"Shh, don't yell." His ears were sensitive—maybe too sensitive.
"You managed to defeat the walkers! I was just about to start running like crazy toward the church, hahaha."
"You can't leave."
The laughter froze in the air.
"W-what did you say?" their expressions darkened.
"If I take you to the town, you might not survive."
Everyone tensed up.
"You mean the town—"
"Don't get it wrong, the town is fine," said Santos. "The problem is the road—it's swarming with super walkers. You won't make it."
Like a judge's sentence, Santos dropped the hammer.
"So... do any of you know how to camp?" he asked with a renewed smile.
Ukryo had reached the site of the last flare fired. He found a hidden cave among rocks and trees, where the missing groups were hiding.
Cuar and the archer.
Fredar and his team.
And the most famous team: the Green Cats.
"Welcome, Ukryo. Welcome to another day of being alive," said a red-haired girl with a fiery temper written all over her face. Her hair reached her waist and she wore light explorer clothing.
Ukryo was greeted by the striking green eyes of Vashina, leader of the Green Cats.
She seemed slightly cheerful, but Ukryo wasn't fooled—the leader was about to explode.
"The reality is we're going to die soon if we don't find a way out of here," said Cuar, a tall, robust man with short green hair. His waist and abdomen were bandaged. Beside him, a girl lay unconscious with a bandaged face.
Apart from them, the others seemed relatively fine.
Relatively, because the rest were only stained with blood or covered in dirt.
"You guys clearly didn't fight ordinary walkers," said the old man.
Vashina, who was closest, looked at him and shook her head.
"I wish they were ordinary, but those damn things seem to have evolved."
"Wait, you fought walkers?" The old man tilted his head in confusion.
"They're walkers, but they seem stronger and smarter," answered the tall boy from Fredar's team.
"That's no reason to flee. You just have to dodge—"
"They're faster—way faster. This should be categorized as an Emerald-rank mission," said Fredar.
At those words, the atmosphere turned cold.
"Fredar, are you forgetting I'm a Saint?" Vashina didn't deny or confirm anything. And for good reason.
In the entire room, only she, Fredar, and Cuar were Ruby Rank, just two ranks below the third-highest, Emerald.
They, along with the deceased battle mage, were the only Ruby-ranked adventurers. The rest hovered around Gold Rank.
Stone, Iron, Copper, Silver, Gold, Ruby, Diamond, Emerald, Platinum, and Obsidian—the ranking system for adventurers.
The Adventurer's Guild assigned missions based on those ranks and years of experience.
But the true way to measure someone's strength was through their state.
Vashina, the strongest in the room, had only just reached the Saint state about a month ago.
For her, Fredar, and Cuar—who were Sages—fighting those irregular walkers one-on-one wouldn't be a problem.
"All this strategic retreat is because they don't fight with bites and scratches like before," Vashina looked at them one by one.
"Those things fight like humans—in groups—and their strength far surpasses ours."
Vashina held in her hands the possible solution to this situation.
And perhaps the best chance they had... before it was too late.