Infiltration

As Grant slaughtered his way through the large group of monsters, Ethan remained standing for a few more seconds before a loud slap reverberated through the area.

Grant momentarily glanced at Ethan and saw him rubbing his cheeks with tears in his eyes which made him smirk ever so slightly.

It looked like Ethan had come to a decision.

And sure enough, moments later, Ethan came charging up next to Grant and joined the fight as well.

"About time idiot. Took you long enough!"

"Ah shove it! I had a crisis of faith. Don't get carried away! You're still going to hell with that attitude and mouth of yours!"

Grant just laughed at Ethan's snippy comeback. It seemed like Ethan had managed to move past, at least began to move past, his trauma's.

Over the next couple of minutes, Grant and Ethan fought off the rest of the zombies and other monsters, before moving to a clean area and taking a moment to rest.

While they were sitting, neither of them said anything, but Grant passed a power bar to Ethan since it was getting close to mid-day. Grant had noticed awhile ago that he didn't really feel hungry anymore but he still kept eating three regular meals a day out of pure habit.

He had no idea how long he could go without food, but he enjoyed food so he didn't plan on missing any meals if he didn't have too.

After spending resting for 15 minutes, Grant and Ethan resumed their journey northward.

As they traveled, they continued to fight any and all monsters they found along the way, while clearing the path of debris and rubble. Luckily, other than the occasional level 25 or newly minted Enlightened Tier monster, they hadn't run into anything overtly strong.

Since they would inevitably have to lead people back down this path, they took a little extra time to clear a walking lane through down the road. Of course, they would pick up something with a wide surface area and then use their brute strength to blow debris out of the way, but it was effective so they didn't need to look for another method.

After a couple hours passed, Grant really wanted to pick up the pace and move quicker, but Ethan didn't have strength even remotely similar to his so he would leave him behind in a moment if he picked up the pace which forced them to maintain the pace they had been moving at all day.

For the first time, Grant really started to hate how large the city was compared to some other major cities.

Phoenix was built in a way that they expanded outward instead of upward which made the city cover a massive amount of space. The city was never intended to house the amount of people that lived in it before The Path's emergence so they had to constantly expand outward to provide enough housing for all the residents.

A few days before The Path's emergence, Grant had traveled to his friends house on the north side of Phoenix and it had taken him an entire hour of highway driving with no traffic just to reach his friends place.

So if it took that long to travel in car, on foot was much worse.

Eventually, the two of them managed to reach the highway that divided Tempe and Chandler, since the hospital was merely a half mile past the highway it meant that they were finally there.

Not knowing what to expect, Grant decided to hide his sword inside his rucksack and as well as all of his armor.

He had been less inclined to do it when he entered the Tempe Town Settlement because he knew people that were in the settlement itself so he could have grabbed them and left immediately even if things went sideways.

Since he didn't know anything about the Chandler settlement or what to expect, he figured that he would end up spending at least a day or two there to get the lay of the land before he inevitably approached the leaders to try and pitch the idea of moving to the dungeon.

Grant had Ethan pass his weapon to him to hide in the rucksack as well, but he allowed him to keep his armor since none of it was overly flashy and was unlikely to draw attention or be coveted by some overly greedy bastard.

For the first time since the start of The Path, Grant felt somewhat vulnerable again but he swallowed the feeling down and headed towards where the CRMC (Chandler Regional Medical Center) was located.

At first, Grant was concerned that their were in fact no survivors here because the roads and buildings didn't look like they had been touched since the end of the storm. Debris and trash were strewn about everywhere, making travel difficult.

It only seemed logical that if anyone was living in the area, they would have taken the time to make it easier to move around.

His concern however, faded away as they approached closer to CRMC because Grant could hear the sound of people talking to each other.

They weren't talking especially loud, but with his newfound stats and abilities, his senses had been heightened to an insane degree.

"Can you believe those old fucks thought we were going to keep feeding them even though they were completely useless?"

"Right?! This isn't some fucking charity. We have to fight monsters all day and then expect us to fucking take care of them? Just die already."

"Geriatric fucks.."

"Forget about them man! Did you see that woman that Andrew claimed for himself the other day? Lucky fuck.. she was hot as hell.. The look on her husbands face before Andrew killed him... fucking priceless."

The more Grant listened to these people, the more disgusted he became with them. What the fuck kind of people were running this place? Clearly this was not going to be a similar experience to Tempe where everyone had been working together.

In a bid to calm himself down, Grant stopped and stood still for a few moments while taking deep breathes.

Seeing this, Ethan didn't know what was going on, and since he didn't have his weapon at the moment, he took a boxers stance and looked around for any enemies thinking that Grant had paused because an enemy was approaching.

After gathering himself, Grant turned to say something about the situation to Ethan, but seeing the way he was standing, he couldn't help but chuckle quietly. Grant patted him on the shoulder to let him know that their was no danger and pointed at a building that was only partially destroyed.

After they got off the road and squeezed inside the building, Ethan was starting to look very confused.

"Ethan, you know my stats are high, yes?" To which Ethan just nodded his head in response, "Okay that will make this easier to believe then. I could hear people talking from where we were at in the road. I assume they were guards or something because I only heard three voices, but what they were talking about is not a good sign for what we are going to find when we enter the settlement."

Grant proceeded to tell Ethan what he had overheard and Ethan's face got darker and darker the more he talked.

Once he had finished relaying the conversation, Ethan was visibly disgusted.

"Grant, are you sure these are the kind of people we want to join our new community?"

Grant just shook his head side to side before pausing for a moment, "Those guardsmen may not be the kind of people we want. But I will bet you anything that those kind of people on make up a small portion of the total. You know the old saying, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The real problem here, is how do we deal with this situation?

I have no doubt that, if the need arose, I could kill every last person in that camp that opposes us. But should we not try a diplomatic route first?"

The moment those words left his mouth, Grant couldn't help but pause in stunned silence.

[Did I really just casually say I would kill people? I couldn't kill a zombie when The Path emerged and now I just threatened an entire group of living, breathing people?]

The severity of Grant's words must have caught Ethan off guard too because he just stared at Grant in stunned silence with his eyes opened wide, like he couldn't believe that his friend would so casual mention committing genocide on a small scale.

After a long bout of silence, Ethan eventually spoke up, "I don't think we kill everyone, Grant. That seems a bit severe. However, I think we should try to infiltrate the camp and see what information we can gather before making our next move. The problem is, I don't think they are going to let you enter with your rucksack. Especially if they figure out its some kind of dimensional storage."

Grant just nodded his head in agreement because their was no way that people who were that twisted and greedy were going to let Grant waltz into their camp without trying to swindle him of everything he owned.

"Alright lets do this. We take off all of our armor and stash it in the rucksack. Then I will infiltrate the camp tonight and stash our stuff somewhere. Then I will return and we enter the camp together in the morning with nothing but the clothes on our backs."

"Won't they be suspicious that we were walking out here among the zombies and monsters with nothing to defend ourselves?"

"You overthink things Ethan... did you not hear me describe their conversation? Clearly they don't give a crap about people. And if we appear weak and useless, they probably will let us in but pay little to no attention to us."