The two of them stayed together for hours, holed up in that ruined room.
Samuel clung to Lex like a lifeline, his small arms wrapped tightly around him, as though letting go would make everything collapse again.
At first, his body had shaken violently with each sob, grief pouring out of him in broken gasps. But slowly, painfully slowly, the crying faded. What remained was worse. A quiet, hollow stillness that felt far too heavy for a child so young.
Lex let him hold on.
He did not move, did not speak, and did not try to rush the boy through his pain. Some wounds could not be hurried. Some grief needed time to bleed out.
For a child like Samuel, losing his only parent was not just tragic. It was catastrophic. His entire world had been reduced to that man, to the promise that his father would come back. And that promise had been broken in the cruellest way possible.
The room itself looked like a monument to irony right now.
One person had lost his parents long ago and carried that absence like an old scar, dull but permanent. The other had lost his father just hours ago and was still drowning in the raw, suffocating pain of it. Samuel had someone worth saving, someone who had fought to the very end for him.
Lex's parents, on the other hand, might still be alive somewhere in this ruined world. But the thought of saving them stirred nothing inside him. There was no urgency, no guilt and no longing.
At least not until he found his sister first.
She was different for him. She always had been.
Lex's sister studied at the world's best college, located in Massachusetts, nearly three hundred and fifty kilometres away. Brilliant, stubborn, and kind in a way that never felt fake. If anyone could survive this madness, it was her.
Lex slowly picked up the phone again and dialled Sarah's number once more.
RING!
RING!
The full ring cycle played out before ending the same way it always did.
[The number you are trying to reach is currently switched off or unavailable.]
"Hah…" Lex sighed softly, exhaustion and frustration mixing into something bitter.
He had been trying to call her since the world changed. Hundreds of attempts, at least. Each one ending with that same stupid, lifeless voice. Each one was carving away another piece of hope from him.
Just then, Victoria's gentle voice echoed in his mind.
"You should not worry too much. Mana has interfered with almost everything in the world. The previous laws that governed your technology do not work anymore. There is still a high chance she might be alive, considering she is one of the most brilliant minds on this planet, according to you."
Lex nodded faintly but did not reply.
Samuel could not see Victoria, and Lex had no intention of frightening the boy with invisible voices. He slipped the phone back into his pocket and carefully shifted, making sure Samuel stayed comfortable.
After a while, Lex stood up and looked out into the corridor, his eyes scanning for movement, for danger, for anything that might threaten them.
As he did, his gaze drifted back to the corpse of the mutated zombie.
Samuel's father.
That man had fought.
Lex could see it clearly now. The torn knuckles. The bruises on the zombie's arms that were not from Lex's attacks. The way the creature's body was positioned near the door, as if it had tried to block the hallway.
He had not turned into a zombie immediately.
He had resisted! He had endured pain, fear, and the slow loss of himself, all for one reason. To buy his son time.
In the end, he had failed.
But that failure did not erase the effort. It did not erase the courage it took to stand between a monster-filled world and a terrified child.
Samuel had lost everything in a single day.
Lex had lost his parents long ago, piece by piece, until nothing remained but indifference.
That was the tragic difference between them.
One had been loved and then torn apart by fate.
The other had been abandoned while the world was still normal.
Soon, Lex and Sam finally left the room and began making their way down through the building.
Staying there would not change anything. They needed food and somewhere safer to be.
The stairwell welcomed them with a familiar stench of rust, dried blood, and rot. Every few steps, distant groans echoed through the concrete, bouncing off the walls like an irritating soundtrack that refused to fade, reminding them that the hospital was anything but empty.
Each floor they passed was infested with zombies, dragging their decaying bodies through the halls as they searched aimlessly for humans to feast on. Unfortunately for them, they were weak.
Pathetically weak. Most of them were level ones.
Lex almost felt offended by how fragile they were.
With his mana fully restored, cutting them down felt less like a battle and more like taking out trash that stubbornly refused to dispose of itself. Blood surged from his fists at his command, shaping itself into long, curved claws that looked like they belonged to Satan himself!
SLASH!
The first zombie did not even have time to react before its head slid cleanly from its shoulders.
SLASH!
Another was cleaved from shoulder to waist, its body collapsing to the floor like a sack of soaked rags.
One after another, the zombies fell like dominoes. Lex moved through them with smooth, almost casual efficiency, his body flowing naturally from one kill to the next as though this kind of violence was ingrained into his very bones.
Behind him, Sam followed in stunned silence, his eyes wide as he carefully stepped around the carnage, doing his best not to slip on something he would rather not think about.
Floor after floor passed like this.
Then, as they reached the fifth floor, a different sound cut through the air and entered their ears.
BANG! BANG!
The repeated crashing of flesh against metal echoed down the hallway as Lex slowed immediately, raising a hand to signal Sam to stay back. He leaned out from the stairway entrance and cautiously peered down the corridor.
A group of zombies had gathered around a metal door, slamming themselves into it again and again with mindless persistence. But the door looked like it had no plans of breaking.
The moment Lex stepped into view, each one of them froze. All their heads snapped toward him at once as Lex blinked.
'Huh?' he thought. 'I did not even make a sound.'
He checked their levels, and his expression darkened instantly.
These were no longer level one trash mobs. Most of them were level five, and a few had already reached level seven! One of the zombies tilted its head slightly, its nose twitching as it sniffed the air like a hunting dog that had just caught the scent of prey.
"Just like you humans, every other species in this world can increase its level by killing others," Victoria's voice rang out casually, clearing Lex's confusion. "They must have grown stronger too. And yes, they can probably smell you just like the big guy you killed before."
Lex clicked his tongue in annoyance as he heard the explanation.
His gaze flicked toward Victoria for just a moment, and his focus nearly shattered. Her one-piece dress clung perfectly to her figure, and when she giggled lightly, her chest bounced in a way that felt entirely unfair given the state of the world.
Lex swallowed hard and forcefully turned away.
'Focus Lex Focus. Set your priorities straight!' he thought while gulping his own saliva.
The upper floors of the hospital had been reserved for VIP patients, which explained why the zombies above had remained weak. There simply had not been enough people there to feed on.
But from the fifth floor downward, it was the general ward full of crowded rooms and packed hallways. Patients who could not run even if they wanted to.
If Lex had to guess, many of those people had already been devoured, their Existence Codex absorbed, their lives reduced to nothing more than nourishment for these monsters.
With that realisation, Lex pulled out his knife and sliced shallow cuts across his knuckles. Blood welled up instantly, writhing and twisting as it answered his will.
The blood reshaped itself into fresh claws, thicker, denser, and sharper than before.
Fifteen zombies rushed him at once. They were strong, but Lex did not retreat!
With his stats hovering around forty and real combat experience now etched into his muscles, he surged forward instead, crashing into the horde like a blood-soaked madman. His claw pierced the first zombie's skull with a violent crunch, the resistance far greater than before, the impact sending a jolt through his arm.
"Tch. They were hard-headed too," he muttered.
These zombies were built differently. Their skulls felt closer to stone than bone, and after killing just three of them, the claws lost their shape, dissolving back into liquid blood.
Lex cursed under his breath.
Mana surged again as he reforged the claws mid-fight and kept moving. He twisted his body, ducked beneath a swinging arm, snapped a zombie's knee backwards with a sharp kick, and drove his claw straight up through its jaw.
Every slash, every kick, and every narrow dodge sharpened his instincts further. It did not feel like learning something new. It felt like remembering, as though his body was shedding layers of rust to reveal a predator that had always been there.
If someone saw him now, they would think Lex was a born fighter rather than a guy who had spent his whole life in hospital.
Victoria watched him with keen interest, a satisfied smile curving her lips. The man she had chosen was growing exactly as she had hoped.
Behind him, Sam watched in silence, gripping his steel pipe with white knuckles as his heart pounded wildly. He wanted to help. He wanted to move. But all he could do was stay back and feel useless.
The fight stretched on for nearly ten minutes.
When it finally ended, the hallway was painted red. Corpses lay scattered in twisted positions, and the only sound left was Lex's steady breathing as another familiar notification flashed before his eyes.
He had levelled up again.
But this time, something else caught his attention as his gaze dropped to the floor.
Two faintly glowing orbs lay beside the fallen zombies, pulsing softly like dying embers that refused to fade.
"What are these?"