The two left the Dormitory building.
The asphalt road beneath their feet was no longer smooth as it once was, split apart by thick tree roots arching up from underground.
Out of the deep, bottomless cracks, unknown green plants peeked out in an overbearing manner, declaring nature’s re-conquest of this jungle of steel.
On both sides of the street, abandoned vehicles lay quietly in place.
Their windows had long been shattered, revealing pitch-black interiors.
Their bodies were covered in a thick layer of dust, with countless vines climbing up along the doors, even blooming with a few unknown white flowers on the roofs.
A gentle breeze swept up a few withered yellow leaves, swirling them on the ground with a soft rustling sound.
Sunlight cast huge shadows through the tall skyscrapers, slicing mottled light and shade onto the empty street.
Vines covered the outer walls of every building, and thick green shadows wrapped around the edges of broken windows.
A contradictory feeling of desolation and vibrant life filled the entire world.
Aside from the sound of the wind, there was no other noise in this space.
“This way.” Takagi Saya kept her voice extremely low, almost inaudible.
She pointed a finger toward a sidewalk almost completely overrun by waist-high weeds.
The two walked one after the other with light footsteps.
Akira took the lead, his body slightly bent and muscles tense, scanning every surrounding corner that could potentially harbor danger.
It was a distance of merely one kilometer, yet it took them nearly half an hour.
The scene along the way remained desolate.
An exquisitely decorated clothing store had its huge floor-to-ceiling display window shattered like a spiderweb, with the mannequins inside fallen onto the ground and covered in a thick layer of dust.
Next to it, a fast-food restaurant’s sign was severely faded; the huge golden letter “M” was snapped in half, hanging in mid-air and swaying back and forth with the wind, making a grating creak that suggested it could crash down at any moment.
Finally, after crossing an intersection blocked by garbage and abandoned cars, a massive square building appeared at the edge of their vision.
On the white wall, two large characters for “Supermarket” were spray-painted in bright red, though its prefix had long since vanished.
The supermarket’s revolving glass door was completely shattered, with countless glass shards covering the ground at the entrance, reflecting fine, glaring light under the sun.
Akira and Takagi Saya exchanged a glance and were about to slow their pace to carefully approach and scout.
Right at that moment, a roar sharp enough to pierce ear drums suddenly erupted from inside the supermarket!
Immediately following was the loud crash of collapsing shelves, the sound of metal twisting and deforming, and the dull thud of heavy objects slamming onto the floor—all mixed together, sounding extraordinarily jarring in the dead-silent environment.
Someone is fighting!
Akira lowered his body even further, poking half his head out through the gap between the bottom of a bus and the ground.
His gaze crossed the cold-glinting broken glass and peered into the supermarket.
Inside was a complete mess.
Rows of tall shelves leaned precariously, and countless goods were scattered across the floor—cans, biscuit boxes, and beverage bottles rolled everywhere, mixed with a dark red unknown liquid.
A tall figure was moving rapidly in the open space between the shelves.
Her movements were agile and nimble, each dodge packed with surprising explosive power.
It was a woman with an extraordinarily smoking-hot figure.
Her long, ash-white hair was neatly gathered in a bun behind her head, and an oval pair of rimless glasses rested on the bridge of her nose.
The gaze behind the lenses was terrifyingly calm.
Her attire was completely out of place in this apocalyptic environment.
A female school uniform that was clearly ill-fitting wrapped tightly around her mature body.
The collar of her white short-sleeved shirt was wide open, with the top two buttons long popped off; the tight fabric couldn’t fully conceal her breathtaking fullness, revealing glimpses of dazzling white with her every move.
The plaid miniskirt below barely covered her hips, fluttering upward with every violent dodge and jump to reveal a pair of powerful, beautiful thighs encased in black thigh-high socks.
“That outfit…” Takagi Saya also saw the scene inside from the other side, an uncontrollable flush rising on her cheeks as she whispered, “is way too exaggerated.”
The woman’s situation could only be described as precarious.
Two monsters closely resembling giant Dobermans were launching a frantic pincer attack on her from left and right.
These monsters were entirely hairless, their decayed skin clinging tightly to their bones, exposing dark red muscle tissues with dark veins visibly pulsing slightly within.
They had no lips, only a ring of crisscrossed, protruding sharp fangs.
Saliva mixed with black blood dripped from between their teeth onto the floor, making faint sizzling corrosion sounds.
The two monsters demonstrated astonishing hunting intelligence, continually circling left and right, using low growls and probing pounces to compress the woman’s maneuvering space.
Every time their claws scraped across the floor, clear white marks were left on the terrazzo flooring.
Suddenly, the hound on the left let out a roar and lunged fiercely toward the woman’s flank in a feint!
The moment the woman’s attention was drawn, the hound lurking on the right moved!
Its limb muscles instantly bulged as it turned into a blurry black shadow, silently pouncing from her blind spot with its bloody maw wide open, aiming straight for her throat!
However, just as those foul-smelling fangs were about to touch the skin of her neck, the woman acted.
Her center of gravity plummeted instantly, and her body bent backward at an angle that defied human biomechanics, her entire spine curving into a taut bow.
The hound’s sharp teeth, powerful enough to crush steel, snapped shut dangerously close to the tip of her nose, producing a grating crunch in the air.
The foul stench of rotting flesh and blood almost made her retch.
With this extreme dodge, her impressive bust heaved violently up and down, looking as though it would burst through her overwhelmed white shirt at any second.
“Roar!”
Having missed its strike, the other hound seized the fatal gap when her momentum was spent and her posture unsteady, leaping at her from the other side.
Its Sharp Claws, gleaming with a cold light, aimed right for her soft waist and abdomen!
The woman’s pupils shrank sharply.
Forcing her waist to twist in mid-air, she lost her balance and rolled awkwardly to the side, slamming heavily into a shelf of potato chips and snacks.
*Crash—!*
The tremendous force of the impact caused the entire shelf to crash down, and countless colorful packaging bags burst open, burying half her body.
Before she could even struggle to her feet, the two tacitly coordinated hounds had already adjusted their positions and were slowly closing in on her.
Akira’s gaze, however, remained tightly locked onto the woman surrounded by snack bags.
He wasn’t observing her exposed skin or her exaggerated curves; he was observing her condition.
Despite being in a sorry state, there was not a trace of fear or panic in her eyes; instead, there was a burning calmness and ruthlessness born from being driven into a desperate situation.
Her hands tightly gripped a spear that looked like it had been polished from a steel pipe, and her knuckles had turned white from excessive force.
But that spear was clearly unable to inflict fatal damage on the hound that could regenerate its injuries.
One of the hounds finally lost its last bit of patience.
Its hind legs suddenly kicked off the ground, its muscles bulging, and its entire body transformed into an arrow released from a bowstring.
Opening its bloody maw—large enough to swallow an adult’s head—it lunged savagely toward the spot where the woman had fallen!
The woman wanted to dodge, but having just rolled over, she was trapped by shelves and debris, leaving her with no time to make any effective response.
She could only watch helplessly as the foul-smelling, giant maw filled with interlocking sharp teeth rapidly enlarged in her field of vision.