Lucas ran at a speed that surprised even him, he was sprinting like a professional Olympic athlete. Not just that, he didn't stop until he was well out of the residential area.
When he finally slowed, his lungs were screaming.
He pressed his back against a concrete wall and bent forward, hands on his knees, gasping. His legs should've given out ten minutes ago. They didn't.
*Level 3 Agility.*
So that's what it felt like.
[TheSmartOne: BRO. You were literally flying. Did you see yourself?]
Lucas straightened up and looked around.
He was standing at the edge of what used to be a commercial district. Storefronts with shattered windows lined both sides of the road. Overturned cars. Scattered clothing. The quiet kind of destruction that looked like it had been sitting undisturbed for days.
No zombies in sight.
He exhaled slowly.
"Okay." He wiped the cold sweat from his jaw. "Okay. I can do this"
[TheSmartOne: Yes you can.]
Lucas ignored him and pulled up his mental map of the city.
The power plant was located on the industrial side of town, beyond the commercial district and past a lonely road that cut through a dense stretch of forest.
That part bothered him.
Inside the city, there were places to hide. Buildings. Cars. Alleyways.
But out there?
Nothing.
Just trees.
And in a zombie outbreak, trees were worse than crowded streets. You never knew what was hiding between them until it was too late.
Worse of all, It wasn't just the zombies he had to worry about, there were far worse monsters.
'One problem at a time,' he told himself.
He pushed off the wall and kept moving.
The commercial district was easier to navigate than he expected. Most of the destruction was old. Whatever chaos had torn through here had long since settled into silence.
He moved in a low crouch, hugging the storefronts, pausing at every corner to scan ahead before crossing.
Halfway through, he spotted something that made him stop.
A pharmacy.
The front window was smashed, but the shelves inside still looked partially stocked.
[TheSmartOne: Don't even think about it. Stay focused.]
For once, Lucas agreed with him. He filed the location away and kept moving.
It was another twenty minutes before the skyline changed.
The buildings thinned out. The road narrowed. And on both sides, the cracked pavement gave way to dense treelines that pressed in close, dark and still. The kind of trees that had grown wild and untended, branches tangled overhead until they nearly swallowed the sky whole.
Lucas slowed instinctively.
The power plant's cooling towers were visible through gaps in the canopy, rising above everything else like pale giants.
They didn't look too far out.
But the only way forward was down this road, with nothing but tree cover on either side and absolutely no way of knowing what was hiding inside it.
He stood at the edge and listened.
Wind. Leaves shifting. Somewhere deeper in, something that might have been a branch snapping under weight.
Or might not have been.
[TheSmartOne: That seems scary.]
[Salvation_Father: Stay in the center of the road. Away from the treeline.]
Lucas didn't respond to either of them. His eyes slowly scanned the trees around him, carefully watching the shadows between the trunks.
Nothing moved.
At least, nothing he could see.
That honestly wasn't reassuring.
He took a slow breath and stepped forward, by now the sun had already started to set.
Surprisingly, despite the constant rustling from the bushes around him, nothing attacked. No infected creatures burst from the trees. No monsters came charging at him.
As time passed, Lucas gradually lowered his guard and picked up his pace.
"Hey guys, I have a question," he said after a while. "Why hasn't anyone restarted the power plant yet?"
From what he had seen so far, the area didn't seem that dangerous. He couldn't understand why all those self-proclaimed heroes in the city hadn't handled it already.
"Also… do all of you live in this country? Isn't it weird that you all ended up in the same stream?"
[TheSmartOne: The system connects streamers to nearby viewers first, but I think anyone in the world can still watch.]
"Then why are there only three of you watching me? Even with people dying, there should still be millions alive."
[TheSmartOne: Skill issue. Go check your friend's stream instead. She's farming viewers.]
"Right… Stacy."
Curious, Lucas opened her livestream.
She was still sitting in the exact same place he had left her.
Yet somehow, her viewer count had climbed past two hundred.
"That's insane…"
He stared blankly at the screen.
He was out here risking his life in the middle of nowhere while Stacy was doing absolutely nothing and still attracting viewers faster than him.
"Maybe I should just quit and go wait for my miserable life to end," he muttered with a sigh.
But turning back now wasn't an option.
He had already reached the power plant.
From the hill above, Lucas could see straight into the compound.
His expression stiffened.
Bodies were scattered everywhere.
Some were torn apart completely. Others looked half-eaten. Blood covered the concrete like someone had dumped buckets of red paint across the ground.
Lucas nearly gagged.
"What kind of monster did this…?"
Almost immediately, a loud howl echoed through the forest behind him.
Lucas froze.
As the last rays of sunlight vanished behind the trees, Lucas finally understood the truth.
The forest had never been empty.
Whatever was hiding inside had simply been waiting.
Low growls echoed through the darkness, rapidly getting closer. Branches snapped violently as something rushed toward him at terrifying speed.
Lucas didn't hesitate.
He turned and sprinted straight for the power plant fence.
By the time he reached it, the growling was practically behind him.
Adrenaline surged through his body as he grabbed the fence, scaled it in one motion, and dropped hard onto the other side before continuing to run.
He didn't dare look back.
Lucas rushed across the compound and slammed through the nearest door he could find inside the power plant.
Then he quickly shut it behind him, breathing heavily as silence filled the room once more.