Trash in the Apocalypse

Chapter 169: Whimsical Dog

Jun locked the gate and trailed after the woman towards the other end of the alley. He could hear the rattling of the gate as it got pounded by several carriers at once.

With his speed Jun caught up and was about to start some idle chat since they were about to exit the alley. However, a horde of regular carriers appeared running wildly on the street.

The two immediately halted their movements and slowly retreated when suddenly, a roaming H1 appeared. It was sniffing the ground, looking for traces of scent, but all of a sudden, decided to raise its head.

The H1 stared in confusion at the frozen duo before realizing that the two were releasing an extremely pleasant smell.

Jun opened the Faction Storage, and took a dozen of Minute Stone, Evo's consumable growing stones that lasts for one minute. He pulled back his hand that was navigating the inventory from the vortex and dropped one 2cm gravel to his other hand. His left hand caught the stone and charged it with energy.

"Get back!" he ordered.

Jun flicked the glowing stone towards the lunging H1. The piece of gravel expanded, clogging the alleyway. The H1's attack was blocked before it could even reach them. He could fight any of those carriers with ease but he couldn't risk being surrounded and pinned on the spot causing the big guys show up. That would only cause more noise and trouble.

When Jun turned around, he saw the woman already entering the backdoor of one of the shops. Though unimpressed, he followed after her since he still had some questions he would like to be answered. This is the first person that Jun could compare experiences with, someone who also received Yetu's blessing. He doesn't know many of them are out there but since he already had a chance to communicate with one, he wouldn't let it go.

Before Jun could reach the same door, carriers came flocking from the corner where they came from. The gate was already destroyed due to H-series having sharp claws that could easily deal with metal.

Jun pocketed most of the Minute Stones and only charged one to use for blockage. Instead of throwing on the ground, Jun flicked the gravel forward into the air like he was just flicking a coin.

He entered the backdoor and ran after the woman. The 10m radius of IDSearch proves its usefulness in closed spaces like these as he chased after the black question marks. Everywhere he passed by, he could see piles of dirty clothes. On top of the piles were soap bars and laundry detergents. It seems like the shop they entered was a laundry shop. 

He heard a loud crash coming from the outside together with the earth quaking. A notification sounded and appeared in front of him.

[Congratulations for accumulating enough essence. You have reached the bottleneck and could attempt to breakthrough to the next level anytime you want.]

The notification minimized itself to his left peripheral vision and became an exclamation mark.

He caught up with the woman who was busy unlocking another door and tapped her shoulder. He wanted to greet her but she acted cold to him. Jun helped her by destroying the knob then gentlemanly opened the door. Most likely a coincidence, but their hands touched at this time. Jun was about to frown when he suddenly felt a tender sensation together with drowsiness. When he regained focus, the woman was already gone.

He was running on the aisle of the shop when he was re-reading the notification, he didn't notice the laundry machines and bumped on one of them, toppling them over.

Though he was excited about the notification, he was also confused on what it could have possibly meant. He jumped over the toppled machines and hastily ran outside.

When he got out of the front entrance, he saw the blue capped-woman confronting two teenagers on the sidewalk. The woman used the 'symbol' skill on the ground then ignored the two as she chose to ran away.

All of a sudden, an exact replica of the woman flashed out from the symbol. The two teenagers stared at the replica of the woman and ignored the real one that passed by their side.

The replica wielded a kitchen knife and pointed the item on her throat. Both teenager felt surprised but still didn't give up. They were trying to convince her to put the weapon down as they split off in different directions. They slowly inched closer to the 'symbol' and when the woman finally had a blindspot, the other person dashed forward with extreme speed and disarmed her.

At the same time, the dream-like play shattered and they regained their senses. The next thing they knew, there was something sharp lodged on their sides.

Jun pulled the short swords back and held their shoulders. When it started the looting process instead of the legacy absorption process, he quickly released them and ran away.

From behind the shops, the loud shrieks of carriers echoed on the empty streets. He looked around but couldn't see the woman. He became pissed and stared at the building on the other side of the street.

On one of the rooms of the building, four people were hurriedly packing their stuffs to their dimensional storage. One of them was receiving harsh insults from the other three due to his reckless shooting that caused the horde to come to them.

Right after collecting all the necessary stuffs, they immediately headed towards the door to escape. Depending on where the carriers were coming from, they could use the fire stairs or jump down from the windows to evade them.

The man in the lead barely touched the doorknob, when a pale-colored sword stabbed through the door and entered his chest. His mouth spat out blood as he tried to say something.

The people behind became terrified as they stepped back and wielded their weapons. Only one of them had a gun while two of the three had melee weapons. They remained quiet and didn't even communicate as they focused themselves on the door.

The three waited in trepidation whether the monster would dare to come in but it seemed like it chose not to.they didn't dare to fire a shot. The sword was made from a bone, so these people never thought that the sharp object was man-made. Their minds were already thinking of all the fantasises that they could come up with; like a spiked tentancle, a long horn, or a unique claw. Though they have seen many things over the past month, they would never claim to have seen everything.

The thing never came in but they couldn't leave. Their window leads to the streets which meant that zombies could see them. Left with no choice, they sticked on the walls and carefully opened the door.

There was nothing out on the hallway. Terrifying sounds came from the streets as the horde finally arrived.

As the three decided to come out of the hallway, the door of the opposite room in front of them opened.

The man holding the gun was impaled to the wall by a bonespear. The two melee users holding a baseball bat and a golf club wasn't able to react and could only stare at their friend.

Jun ran out of the room and cleaved the two by swinging his bonehammer. At the same time, the impaled mister's dimensional storage showed up.

Jun didn't became surprised when he realized that the man was never bitten. Based from his dress and level of importance alone proved that he was someone in power. He must be quite influential to be the only one armed with a gun.

He searched for anything useful on the storage and found sachets of drugs. He took everything and stored it in his dimensional storage.

Just as he was about to absorb the free stats, a carrier came out of the room where these people stayed on. The fat man that had was stabbed in the chest has reanimated.

Jun pulled the bonespear and grabbed the neck of the impaled man. The carrier noticed him and with an angry shriek that echoed on the hallways, lunged towards him. He pointed the bonespear onto it and waited as it killed itself.

This time, the man was pierced by the bonespear through the head.

When Jun got a closer look on the man's face, he noticed that it was the same guy that fired on him. With past hostilities between them, Jun released his hand and dropped both the bonespear and the fat man. Unless someone loots him or removes the bonespear, he would never be able to reanimate.

After absorbing the essence from the body, Jun heard the sound of glass breaking. He quickly activated his cloak and ran towards the emergency stairs from where he came from.

Instead of going down, he climbed up to the rooftop and waited for the horde to calm down.

He already experimented with the cloak that Evo modified. He tested it on several occassions and found out that there was a few seconds of delay before his smell actually disappear.

His rushed footsteps rattled the metal stairs and caused for carriers to be attracted by its sound. By the time the carriers reached the emergency stairs, Jun's smell would be gone.

At the rooftop, Jun was staring at the holographic map on his smart watch. Movements were all over the place and he could see triangles filling the map.