The next day.
Aiden was heading to Tower Square, a leisure district adjacent to Amarillo that Parker had ntioned.
Aiden was alone in the car.
He judged that it would be better to act alone, as he may need to move stealthily to avoid not only people but also zombies.
Guuuuu-
With a strange engine sound like an old bear sleep-talking, the car carrying Aiden stopped at Tower Square.
He had arrived at the north side of Tower Square.
Behind him was a large movie theater.
The na of the theater was prominently displayed in green letters on a black background, covering one side of the building.
There were also wide parking lots and abandoned vehicles scattered around it.
However, that wasn’t the direction Aiden needed to go, so he just checked for any risk factors and turned his gaze the other way.
Across from the movie theater was a shopping street.
It had the form of identical 5-story buildings stretching long on both sides, with a wide square in the middle.
It was clearly a place intentionally created by so company or organization.
No zombies were seen on top of that.
But the streets were just as destroyed.
Broken windows and collapsed walls could be seen here and there, and the sidewalk blocks that should have been clean were also hideously torn up. Also, most of the benches in the middle square were broken, and it was difficult to find intact street trees as they were snapped.
It was a sight that was hard to create with just one or two battles.
It seed that it wasn’t a lie that the liberation group had sent search parties here three tis.
Just as Aiden was about to take a step with that thought in mind...
“...!”
At the sudden gunshots, Aiden hurriedly hid behind the vehicle in front.
But the shooting continued.
It seed to be heard intermittently, but several types of gunshots also burst out in succession.
Still, no bullets ca and hit this way.
The shooting wasn’t directed at Aiden.
Only after that assurance did Aiden carefully move his feet again.
“...He said the fourth search party was here.”
Aiden muttered like that and threw a glance in the direction of the gunshots.
The distance of the gunshots was sowhat far.
Judging by the location, the battlefield was probably the water park beyond the shopping street where Aiden had to go.
If the search party of the liberation group also ca to find dicine, it was an inevitable encounter unless they were annihilated.
Aiden’s pace quickened a bit.
He soon found a sign at the end of the shopping street.
It was from a famous restaurant brand.
According to the information obtained in advance, the water park, the destination, was right near here.
So Aiden clung to the building and looked beyond it.
Then, as inford, the water park building ca into view.
A huge building, incomparable in both height and width to the stores. It had more than 8 floors, and perhaps because of the high floor height, its total height was more than double that of the 5-story store building.
In front of it were corpses that were either zombies or humans.
Among them, the remains of particularly huge mutated variants could also be seen.
Bigfoot, Hedgehog, and several Stingers.
Three kinds of mutants were scattered here.
As if hinting at the fierce battle with them, the devastated landscape was a bonus.
But no people were seen anywhere.
It seed they were all deployed in the battle inside the building without any room to be wary of outside intruders.
Inside that building, gunshots and explosions kept erupting. Now that the distance was closer, in addition to that, even the shrieks of zombies could be heard.
And in the midst of that...
“Kiaaaaa!”
A rending scream that seed to shake the skull was added.
This noise, which was enough to slightly crumple even Aiden’s expression inside the helt, was definitely from a variant called a Siren.
Its scream gathers zombies and mutants, and makes nearby people faint.
Inside a building, its power becos even more fatal, so it is an extrely tricky mutant if the location is unknown.
Perhaps because of that.
The growls of the zombies, which had been overwheld by the gunshots, pierced the sky.
In contrast, the gunshots from the humans stopped for a mont, and only soone’s screams were heard occasionally.
“Aaargh!”
Then, a person who had been staggering on the broken glass wall of the third floor while covering his ears fell.
Unfortunately landing on a sharply cut roadside tree, he was pierced through the chest and died instantly.
“...”
Aiden, who had been watching such a sight, ran to the entrance without delay.
The battle was in the midst of a catastrophe.
Now was the chance for Aiden.
He entered the entrance.
What greeted him was a wide lobby.
Fortunately, there were only ordinary zombies gathered by the noise.
No mutants were seen.
So Aiden raised the face cover of his helt and made his way through the zombies.
First, Aiden examined the building summary attached to the corner of the lobby.
The entrance to the water park and related facilities were on the 1st floor, a shopping mall was on the 2nd and 3rd floors, and guest rooms serving as a resort were from the 4th floor. The swimming pool befitting the na of the water park was spread wide behind the building.
“...”
In this building structure, the place where dicine would be... was indeed the shopping mall located on the 2nd and 3rd floors.
The rooms are too small to store supplies.
The pool is wide but outdoors, so it is also not suitable for storing goods.
So he judged that the shopping mall located in the middle was suitable to serve as a warehouse.
But a battle was in full swing there now. No matter how much he takes advantage of the chaos, it’s impossible to search while avoiding bullets flying from all sides, mutants, and human eyes.
So Aiden decided to first search the rooms on the 4th floor and above, putting off the shopping mall search.
In a gang of a certain scale, it is extrely dangerous to gather and store all supplies in one place.
So it was common to have an auxiliary warehouse, and such an auxiliary warehouse was likely to be in the rooms as well.
Aiden didn’t need a lot of dicine anyway, so it made sense to aim for that side.
Of course, there was a possibility that mutants were hiding in the rooms as well.
But most of them would have been drawn downstairs by the noise. So the risk was incomparably lower than the shopping mall.
“Hmm...”
Aiden found his way up. There was a central staircase in the middle of the building leading to the shopping mall, but it was too open to use.
Then the next best choice was the ergency stairs located at both ends of the building.
Gunshots, screams, and explosions were still noisy upstairs.
Aiden ran through the inside of the building, taking advantage of the noise.
The ordinary zombies that would have reacted to Aiden’s noisy movent if the surroundings were quiet, were unable to co to their senses due to the sounds bursting from all sides.
He soon reached the ergency stairs.
Inside, so zombies were trapped, banging on the walls and doors as if they were going to break them, not caring that their hands and heads were injured.
Aiden pushed past them and went upstairs.
And just as he reached the 3rd floor...
“-!”
An unexpected being appeared in front of Aiden’s eyes.
A monster about the size of an ordinary zombie, but with a mouth torn to its ears.
It was a Siren.
The two who suddenly faced each other in the narrow stairwell glared at each other for a very short mont.
“Kee-.”
Soon the Siren’s large mouth moved.
It opened wide as if it was about to scream right away, and...
Twack!
Aiden thrust his sword into that open mouth.
There was no need to think deeply.
The Siren’s cry could harm Aiden, even if not as much as humans.
The creature, pierced from the back of its neck to its brain, collapsed on the spot as if it were crumbling.
The zombies who witnessed this imdiately rushed at Aiden.
But the ones coming up the stairs one after another in the narrow staircase were no match for him.
“Kiih...!”
Zombies stabbed by the sword and with their heads smashed by the ax handle toppled over the stairs.
The total number was eight.
It was an unexpected battle, but it wasn’t all bad for Aiden since he was able to take care of one troubleso mutant.
Having cleared the stairwell, Aiden finally entered the room on the 4th floor.
As he expected, the 4th floor was quite deserted.
In addition to the ergency stairs, there was a central staircase connecting the 3rd and 4th floors, so most of the zombies seed to have gone downstairs through it.
Aiden imdiately began searching the rooms.
There were about thirty rooms on one floor.
Also, most of the room doors were open.
Aiden opened and checked those rooms one by one.
Among them, there were rooms with zombies inside, and rooms full of useless wooden boxes.
Finally, at the end of the 4th floor, he found a room.
There were so dicines inside.
“This is...”
Aiden roughly examined the dicines in the room.
It wasn’t the antibiotics he was looking for.
However, upon confirming this, Aiden quickly realized sothing.
“They only collected narcotic painkillers.”
Perhaps there was soone with expertise among the gang that was here.
The dicines were quite systematically separated.
It was very fortunate for Aiden. If the drugs had been mixed up haphazardly, it would have taken quite a lot of ti whenever he found a room where dicines were stored.
Having confird this, Aiden sped up his search of the rooms.
He checked the inside of the rooms with open doors, and if there were dicines, he just scanned the types.
There were also occasionally locked rooms, but he didn’t bother trying to open them.
Aiden moved quickly.
After less than 30 minutes of searching through the 4th, 5th, and 6th floors, Aiden finally found the dicine he was looking for.
In one of the middle rooms on the 6th floor, quinolone antibiotics were piled up in bundles.
Aiden took an appropriate amount and left the room. He quickly went down the ergency stairs and soon passed through the 3rd floor section where the shopping mall was.
Before long, the types of gunshots had significantly decreased.
Not only that, but the groans of the zombies had also diminished.
Perhaps the battle had reached its final stages.
With that thought, Aiden was about to go down the stairs.
“Aah!”
“Jace!”
Soone’s scream was heard right next to him.
Beyond the tightly closed ergency stairwell door.
It seed that a battle was taking place on the other side.
“...”
Aiden stopped for a mont and focused on the sound.
He didn’t know how many mbers of the search party were originally deployed here, but it seed that there were only three left now.
On the other hand, the zombie they were fighting... was just one.
But it seed to be a mutant.
Bang!
Was the identity of it... a Wielder?
Every ti it struck the building with sothing heavy, the flowing impact was conveyed not only by sound but also by touch.
At this, Aiden’s mind worked busily.
If the Liberation Front search party could defeat the zombie, there was no room for Aiden to intervene. But if it was the opposite, the story would be different.
Wasn’t Aiden in a situation where he needed an internal contact point to deal with the Liberation Front?
To do this, it would be enough to help them defeat the mutant, or at least allow the few soldiers to escape.
Of course, given the nature of the Liberation Front, there was also a chance that it wouldn’t go as Aiden thought, but you never know until you try.
Aiden quietly lowered the face cover of his helt.
“...”
Aiden carefully opened the ergency stairwell door slightly and looked outside.
Then, a large Wielder appeared on the wide open shopping mall corridor.
Also, zombies and people were dead here and there in such corridors and stores.
“Damn it...!”
Two people were visible behind the Wielder.
A man holding a pistol was aiming the muzzle at the Wielder. And the woman holding a rifle was looking at her gun with a defeated expression.
Judging from her appearance, it seems that the rifle bullets had all run out.
“Graaah!”
The Wielder moved towards them.
The creature, grasping the ankle of a nearby fallen mannequin, rushed at the man while holding it high.
The man pulled the trigger of the pistol in his hand.
The pistol spewed fire several tis, but it couldn’t stop the Wielder’s charge.
“Tsk...!”
Seeing this, Aiden clicked his tongue and rushed out of the ergency stairs.
Aiden sensed that the situation wasn’t good.
With just an ordinary pistol, it would be impossible to pierce the Wielder’s skull.
And as expected.
Squelch!
With an unpleasant noise, the mannequin swung by the Wielder exploded, scattering fragnts in all directions.
The man who had been underneath was nowhere to be seen.
Only the red stain on the broken marble floor of the shopping mall deepened.
Seeing her companion turned into a handful of blood, the woman’s expression distorted.
“Grrr...!”
anwhile, the Wielder fumbled around, looking for a weapon to replace the broken mannequin.
Soon, the creature grasped a new weapon.
A weapon with a piece of broken concrete attached to the end of a thick rebar.
As if it quite liked it, the Wielder imdiately looked at the woman.
The woman gritted her teeth and stepped back, but the brief ti the creature took to change weapons was a variable.
Tatatat!
From behind the Wielder, a storm of 5.56mm bullets tore at its back. Even a Wielder couldn’t help but stagger at the threatening attack. It imdiately turned its gaze.
Then, Aiden ca into the creature’s view. He was holding a rifle in one hand and a pistol in the other.
“Graaah!”
Even in front of that, the Wielder charged without hesitation.
The magazine of the rifle was already empty. And the pistol was no threat to the Wielder. The faint reason remaining in the monster judged so.
But Aiden’s pistol was by no ans the sa as the one the man had.
Instead of a small muzzle that wouldn’t even be visible properly, a huge muzzle like a deep trap squarely aid at the Wielder.
And from inside it-
Bang!
With a roar, a bullet from an elephant gun, incomparable to ordinary pistol bullets and said to silence even elephants, shot out and pounced on the Wielder.
Its head, small compared to its body, completely caved in, and the Wielder’s huge body fell backwards.
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