(Some details in this novel may differ from the game, including the timeline, setting, and character relationships)
***
“Where…
am I?”
The bewildered murmur disappeared into the noisy wind.
A young man stood in the middle of a somewhat run-down street.
He had clean-cut features, pure black hair, and calm, ink-black eyes.
He wore a faded cotton T-shirt and loose shorts, while a transparent grocery bag hung casually from his right hand, filled with crispy noodle snacks and ham sausages.
His name was Cael Veyne, an orphan who had grown up without parents.
He had no prestigious family background and no safe harbor to fall back on.
To make a living, he’d entered society at an early age, working various jobs and even cooking for a living.
Calm and reserved by nature, he lived a life so simple it was almost monotonous.
His only form of entertainment was opening his phone late at night after an exhausting day and immersing himself in the world of a game called Zenless Zone Zero.
Just a few minutes ago, he’d paid for his groceries and walked out of the convenience store near his apartment.
The warm evening sunlight and gentle breeze had still been brushing across his face.
Then a flash of white filled his vision.
The world spun around him, and by the time he regained his footing, everything around him had completely changed.
Beneath his feet was an old street covered in yellowed cracks.
The metal shutters of the stores on both sides were coated in rust, their glass windows riddled with fractures.
Streetlights leaned crookedly or lay toppled on the ground, while miscellaneous debris, torn plastic bags, and abandoned household items were scattered everywhere.
It was a desolate, ruined scene straight out of the apocalypse.
His ears were filled with panicked voices.
Shrill cries, ragged breathing, furious curses, and desperate shouts blended together into an overwhelming roar.
Everywhere he looked, countless residents were fleeing with deathly pale faces, scrambling forward in blind panic.
Terror was written across their expressions as they ran deeper into the street with everything they had, as though death itself were chasing close behind them.
Chaos, panic, and despair filled the entire district.
Cael’s mind went blank as overwhelming shock and confusion surged through him.
Before he could sort out his thoughts, frantic shouts erupted one after another.
“Run!
The Hollow is expanding again!
It’s still getting bigger!”
“Mom…
I want my mom…”
A little girl’s broken sobs pierced through the crowd, tightening the hearts of everyone who heard them.
“Damn it!
What the hell is Public Security doing?!
A Hollow expansion this big, and there wasn’t even an early warning!
All my savings and documents are still at home!”
“If you don’t want to die, then run!”
A Hollow?
The word slammed into Cael’s mind and froze him in place.
The next instant, a rough, urgent male voice sounded beside him.
A dark-skinned middle-aged man wearing a short-sleeved work shirt sprinted over and grabbed Cael by the arm.
“Hey, kid!
What are you standing around for?
You waiting to die?
Run!”
Seeing Cael’s blank, bewildered expression, the man frowned.
“Did the Hollow expansion scare you stupid?”
Cael abruptly snapped back to his senses and instinctively looked toward the end of the street.
At the far edge of the sky floated an enormous black sphere.
Neon-like streams of multicolored light flowed across its surface.
Purple, blue, and cyan Ether radiance twisted and churned around it, and even with the naked eye, he could see the edges of the sphere constantly swelling outward.
It spread like a bottomless abyss, mercilessly devouring everything in its path.
A Hollow!
The same shape.
The same fluctuations.
It was exactly like the Hollows he’d seen in the game.
Except seeing one with his own eyes was far more spectacular than anything the game could convey.
Everything had happened far too suddenly, but Cael still realized what had most likely happened.
He’d crossed into another world.
He knew a fair amount about the setting of Zenless Zone Zero.
It was a post-apocalyptic world, and its greatest disasters were Hollows and Ether corruption.
“Fuck!”
With his life in immediate danger, Cael suppressed the shock, fear, and confusion brought on by his sudden transmigration.
He tightened his grip on the grocery bag and stopped hesitating, letting the middle-aged man pull him along as he lowered his head and ran with the crowd as fast as he could.
He still had no idea what exactly was going on.
He could worry about that after he got away.
But how could ordinary humans possibly outrun an otherworldly Hollow that was still expanding?
The wave of multicolored darkness swept forward faster and faster.
A bitterly cold Ether wind rushed toward them.
The fleeing people behind Cael were swallowed one after another, their screams rising without pause.
In only a few dozen seconds, that chilling presence was already pressing against his back.
The next second, a sudden sensation of weightlessness struck him.
It felt as though he’d been thrown into the air before dropping back down.
He hit the ground hard enough to send pain through his backside as light and shadow twisted around him.
At the same time, all the noise in his ears vanished.
When Cael landed again, the same ruined street still surrounded him.
The buildings, road, and overall layout were no different from the outside.
The only difference was that the light had become somewhat darker and more oppressive, while the entire space was deathly silent and cold.
This was bad.
They’d been swallowed by the Hollow.
The middle-aged man collapsed beside Cael, gasping for breath with an ashen face.
Only numb despair remained in his eyes.
Scattered around them were more than twenty other survivors who had also been swallowed.
There were people of every age and condition among them, and all of them huddled in corners, waiting for whatever unknown fate awaited them.
“So we really couldn’t outrun the Hollow…”
“What do we do now?”
“All we can do is stay here and wait for Public Security or an official Hollow survey team to rescue us.”
The middle-aged man’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he lowered his voice.
“We can only hope this shallow section of the Hollow doesn’t produce Ethereals too quickly…”
The moment he mentioned Ethereals, everyone’s expression changed.
The numbness on their faces instantly gave way to terror, and the atmosphere grew even more oppressive.
Cael’s heart sank as his knowledge from the game rapidly surfaced in his mind.
After a Hollow expanded and swallowed an area of reality, it needed some time to accumulate Ether energy before low-level Ethereals could emerge.
Monsters weren’t supposed to spawn the instant an area was swallowed.
And yet, something unexpected happened.
“ROAR!”
A deep, violent beastly roar suddenly erupted from around the corner of the street ahead, harsh enough to make their ears ache.
Ether trembled through the air, and the ground faintly vibrated beneath their feet.
“It’s an Ethereal!
A Tyrfing!
It’s coming this way!
Everyone, run!”
A shrill scream shattered the dead silence.
The dozen-odd civilians gathered nearby instantly broke into chaos, screaming in terror as they scattered in every direction.
In their panic, they shoved one another aside, and the situation completely spiraled out of control.
A Tyrfing?
Wasn’t that one of the most basic Level 1 melee mobs in the game?
It wasn’t particularly agile, and its attack pattern was simple.
It was one of the weakest monsters for rookie Agents to practice against.
Sure, an ordinary person would have trouble dealing with a Tyrfing, but as long as they had a weapon in hand, they should at least be able to hold their own for a while.
Acting on instinct, Cael kicked aside some debris and pulled a rusty iron pipe roughly as thick as his thumb from a gap in the rubble.
He prepared himself for a fight.
“What are you doing?!”
The middle-aged man stared at him in confusion.
“Don’t tell me you’re actually planning to fight a Tyrfing.
Do you have a death wish?”
“Uh…
a Tyrfing shouldn’t be that strong, right?”
The man looked at Cael as though he were an idiot.
“Tch.
You’re insane.
Go get yourself killed, then!”
Another roar echoed through the street.
Cael turned toward the sound.
A massive figure slowly stepped out of the shadows.
It stood over two meters tall, towering far above an ordinary adult human.
Its body was thick and powerfully built, covered in a layer of hard, dull gray-black Ether crystals with sharp edges and vicious patterns.
Its head was grotesquely twisted and deformed, while a black core constantly trembled within it.
Its right arm held a massive Ether-crystal blade high in the air.
An icy blue glow flowed along the weapon as Ether energy coiled around the blade, and an oppressive pressure rolled off the creature.
This fucking thing was supposed to be a low-level Tyrfing?!
The Tyrfing standing before him was nearly as massive as the elite enemy Dead End Butcher from the game!
The iron pipe slipped from Cael’s hand and hit the ground with a piercing clang.
The sense of scale on a game screen and the visceral pressure of facing a monster in reality were two completely different things.
The violent Tyrfing gave them no time to react.
Its heavy footsteps thundered against the ground, sending fragments of stone flying through the air as the terrifying monster locked directly onto the two closest people—
Cael and the middle-aged man.
The two could only grit their teeth and run for their lives.
But the monster’s strides were enormous.
The distance between them rapidly shrank.
Death was right behind them.
The middle-aged man’s pace gradually slowed.
Conflict, guilt, and despair covered his face.
From the corner of his eye, he watched the Tyrfing closing in step by step before turning toward Cael beside him.
Helplessness and apology filled his eyes.
He still had most of his life ahead of him.
He couldn’t die.
He had a family.
A wife waiting at home for him to get off work, and a daughter who had only just started elementary school.
He absolutely couldn’t die inside this Hollow.
“I’m sorry, kid.”
The middle-aged man’s voice was hoarse, filled with overwhelming guilt.
“My wife and daughter are still waiting for me.
I can’t die…
so…”
Before he could finish, the man’s expression suddenly twisted.
He abruptly stopped, lowered his knees, and used every ounce of strength in his body to shove both hands hard against Cael’s chest.
“What the fuck—”
Cael instantly lost his balance and stumbled backward.
As his vision flipped upside down, the enormous crystal blade glowing with cold, ghostly blue light rapidly expanded within his pupils.
Then it came crashing down toward his head.
It really helps the fic grow!