Two Kakuna hung from one of the bare trees like a pair of makeshift swings, while several enormous white cocoons lay beneath them.
‘Judging by their size, there are probably a few adults inside.
How did those poor bastards manage to piss off a whole group of Caterpie?’ Leon wondered, deliberately giving the trees a wide berth.
He had no idea how those people had ended up wrapped like dumplings, but suffocating to death had to be a horrible way to go.
He had no intention of sharing their fate.
After taking a detour of several hundred meters, Leon finally crossed the street and reached Entrance Six of the mall.
With both the water and electricity cut off, the entire mall was pitch-black.
Leon had no choice but to turn on his phone’s flashlight as he ventured inside.
The first floor was mostly occupied by snack shops and restaurants.
Leon’s destination was the basement level, where the largest supermarket in the area was located.
Crunch.
Crunch.
As Leon cautiously made his way forward, he suddenly heard a faint, repetitive sound, like some kind of animal gnawing on bones.
Knowing that humans were also potential food for Pokémon made his scalp prickle.
That sound made it far too easy to imagine something unpleasant.
Just as Leon was about to move away from it, a dark figure suddenly lunged at him from behind.
Before he could turn around, a pleasant fragrance washed over him.
A hand clamped over his mouth, and the person behind him whispered a warning.
“Don’t make a sound. A pack of rat monsters has taken over this place. If we attract them, we’re both dead.”
The voice was quiet, but Leon could tell it belonged to a woman.
She continued, “I’m going to let you go now. Whatever you do, don’t shout.”
Leon hurriedly nodded.
Only after making sure he wouldn’t make a sound did the person behind him carefully remove her hand from his mouth.
Finally able to breathe properly again, Leon quickly pulled away from her and braced himself against the wall, gulping down air.
He was about to shine his phone’s flashlight on her to get a better look when she warned him, “Turn that off. Those rat monsters are extremely sensitive to light.”
Leon didn’t hesitate.
He immediately switched off the flashlight.
“Were you heading for the supermarket downstairs?” the woman asked.
Leon nodded.
“I’m out of food at home. I wanted to see if I could find something there.”
As though she had expected that answer, the woman let out a heavy sigh.
“Forget it. That’s the rats’ nest now. Going down there would be suicide.”
“Come with me. Those rat monsters like dark, damp underground places, so the sixth and seventh floors are relatively safe.” With that, she turned and led the way.
Leon quickly followed.
They took the emergency stairs, since the elevators had stopped working long ago.
As she walked ahead, June introduced herself.
“My name is June Sutton. Before the monsters appeared, I was a public security officer assigned to this district. Now I’m the leader of the survivor camp in Central Star Mall.”
Hearing that she had been a public security officer put Leon a little more at ease.
June was actually fairly well known around here.
She had something of an online following, and the fact that her precinct had chosen her as one of its public faces suggested that, at the very least, there probably wasn’t anything seriously wrong with her character.
Leon introduced himself as well.
“I’m Leon Reed. I just graduated from university.”
“What did you study?”
“I have a master’s degree in classical forging.”
June: “…”
Her steps faltered.
She turned and gave Leon a strange look.
Classical forging was an incredibly obscure field.
It wasn’t much of an exaggeration to say that if Leon’s professor died, Leon himself would probably become one of the country’s foremost experts in classical forging.
After all, as far as he knew, Titan University in Vine City was the only university in the entire Asteria Region that offered the program.
Perhaps realizing that her reaction had been a little excessive, June said awkwardly, “That’s… a pretty niche field.”
Leon nodded in agreement.
“It definitely is, but the university guarantees us jobs after graduation.”
And it really did.
The moment Leon finished his master’s degree, the university had hired him as a teaching assistant.
Once his professor retired in a few years, Leon would become a professor at Titan University, one of the country’s top universities.
That was a much better position to be in than all those graduates who could fall below the employment cutoff at any moment.
There was only one Terra Federation in the world, after all, and this was a capitalist society.
Under the slightly awkward atmosphere, it didn’t take them long to reach the sixth floor.
Standing before a locked metal door, June knocked three times.
Each knock followed a deliberate rhythm, almost like a coded signal.
A moment later, Leon heard the lock click.
The metal door slowly opened, revealing a chubby young man on the other side.
When he spotted Leon behind June, he asked in surprise, “Sister June, you picked up another one?”
“Yeah. This kid had the same idea you did. He wanted to head down to the basement supermarket for supplies. If I hadn’t stopped him, he’d probably be inside those rat monsters’ stomachs by now,” June explained.
The chubby young man scratched the back of his head and gave an embarrassed chuckle.
“Heh, can’t really blame him. How was he supposed to know how dangerous it is down there now?”
June might have sounded like she was poking fun at Leon, but the young man himself had come to the mall yesterday with exactly the same idea.
He quickly changed the subject.
“Come on in, Sister June.”
June nodded and led Leon inside.
The sixth floor was spacious.
More than half of it was occupied by a small marine museum, while the remaining space contained several toy stores and an arcade.
June’s survivor camp had been established inside those toy stores.
Noticing Leon looking around curiously, she warned him, “Stay away from the marine museum across the way. There are a lot of aquatic monsters in there. They don’t seem able to leave the water, though, so they’ve been quiet so far and haven’t caused any trouble.”
Leon nodded and committed the warning to memory.
The chubby young man handed him a leaflet.
“These are the camp’s safety rules. They’re the last guidelines the Federation issued. You’ve probably seen them already, but you should read them again.”
Leon took the leaflet and began reading.
Rules for Surviving the Apocalypse
[1.
Ghost-type monsters preferentially attack densely populated areas.
[2.
Beware of monsters that disguise themselves as unusual plants.
[3.
Avoid exposing yourself to the open sky whenever possible, or you may be hunted by flying monsters.
[4.
Sewers are extremely dangerous.
Stay away from them.
[5.
Humanity has already lost the skies, the oceans, and the forests.
[6.
The smell of blood attracts omnivorous monsters.
[7.
Monsters don’t necessarily hunt because they’re hungry.
Seven rules.
Behind every one of them were countless lives lost.
Leon asked worriedly, “How many people are in the camp? If there are too many of us, won’t we attract Ghost-type monsters?”
The chubby young man walking ahead of him countered, “Which do you think has more people—this place, or the apartment complex across the street?”
Leon fell silent.
There had been quite a few survivors in his own apartment complex.
The Pokémon had appeared completely at random, so unless someone had been catastrophically unlucky and had one materialize right in front of them, most people who stayed inside their homes had survived the initial disaster.
There were exceptions, however.
If a Ghost-type Pokémon that fed on life energy appeared nearby, the entire surrounding area could become a dead zone.
“Most of the people in our camp either came here looking for supplies from the supermarket or were already working in the mall. We did lose quite a few people when the monsters first appeared,” June said as she walked ahead.
“But there really aren’t that many of us left. Even counting you, there are only thirty-seven people here.”
That really wasn’t many.
Leon immediately relaxed.
Based on the information he’d seen online before, a gathering of only thirty-seven people shouldn’t be large enough to attract the attention of Ghost-type Pokémon.