City Hall

The digital clock on the wall reads five twenty.

In the lobby of the motel, fourteen people were gathered around a single person. All of them armed with melee weapons of their choice.

Out of the fourteen people, eleven of them had baseball bats as the weapon. The remaining three each had their own unique weapon—a knife, a wooden spear, and bare fists.

The man who was the center of them all had a round shield on his left arm while his right arm held a worn-out baseball bat. There are numerous chips and cracks visible on the baseball bat's body.

Of course, it was Jun.

An hour has already passed, and the infected on the streets have already scattered. When they were resting, everyone finally felt more closer to each other. They started telling about their personal lives and even their dreams. Seeing their warm attitude with each other, Old John's group finally decided to join them.

Old John introduced the two people behind him. The petite woman was Emma, her niece; she takes care of the overall housekeeping of the motel. The macho man was Jorge; he serves as the security personnel of the motel.

After their introduction, the group asked them what their plan is, which is currently none.

Old John's too old to look for his family while Emma's too weak to go and find hers. Jorge didn't even care about the issue as he said that he'll just follow Emma.

Jun, of course, wouldn't let them jump on board without knowing if they can fend for themselves. Since they want to join his group, they need to earn it and must contribute in the future.

After explaining the plan, which is to help the three newcomers to level up safely, Jun walked towards the door.

There's a lot of scattered furniture in the lobby. They set it up like a maze so the infecteds couldn't charge directly at them.

When Jun reached the glass door, there's already a thin horizontal light peeking on the eastern sky.

Jun turned to the experienced members of his group. "Don't kill the infected. If it's possible, just disable them. Once the three of them reached level one, you can try and level yourselves, okay?"

Everyone nodded affirmatively.

Jun slowly opened the door outwards.

Before he could even do anything to attract the infected, some were already charging at him. Maybe they saw him or heard the soft squeaking of the glass door.

Jun ran back to the group. If it weren't for the three newcomers, he would gladly take all of the EXP for himself.

The whole group seemed calm, except for three people. Old John and Jorge looked rather anxious as they fixed their stance repeatedly. They also tried changing how they gripped their weapons, too many times. Emma, on the other hand, seemed pale and will probably run away if given a chance.

Jun chose to give them some pep talk. "You three need to calm down. We'll do most of the work, so just make sure that you kill them quickly. Also, try to hit them in the head, and it's way better if you kill them in one hit. Well, if you like the feeling of bashing heads, then feel free to enjoy yourself."

Jun's pep talk doesn't seem to be effective, but he chose to ignore it.

"Okay, everyone ready!" Jun shouted as loud as he can, wanting to attract more infected.

The first wave of infected came, and the main group, Jun, Adrian, Sheila, and Edward, disabled them. They stayed in front and killed the incoming infected until the three from Old John's group killed all of the infected.

Jun have considered a lot of things for this. He isn't risking his life for a mere carbon alloy shield that could get stolen by someone or get scrapped when the item receives too much damage and become unusable.

There are two main reasons why he's doing this. The first and apparent reason was to get as much EXP as they could while having a valid reason to do so. People would undoubtedly be dissatisfied if he openly forbids them to take part, and so there was the main group and the support group.

Things could sound reasonable if you phrased them correctly.

He explained that the main group would fight first, and any infected that goes past them should be dealt with by the support group, that's why they're the support group, the backup.

When the main group gets exhausted, the support group would then swap with them and fight in front. But when they're not, they have to loot the dead bodies.

This strategy was accepted without any questions. Some members of the support group were actually happy that they don't have to fight the infected.

The second reason that Jun was risking his life was because of Old John. People don't know, but Jun knew his secrets. It was all thanks to Evo's help doing some research.

They were doing background checks on Old John, which is normal when taking new clients, then they found something interesting.

His family was once a renowned blacksmith. Though times had changed, their products were still being sold and used for artistic purposes.

When Jun fired a shotgun at the Hunter infected, named by Edward, and it didn't die. He knew. That guns would become useless after some time. That Hunter seemed to have evolved a few more times compared to others since its body and skin were completely different. Luckily, they haven't met a Destroyer that evolved up to that level, and the one he killed yesterday seemed to be lower-ranked.

With the infected evolving and guns starting to show signs of being ineffective on evolved infecteds, he needs to think of something for them to survive in this new world. And the one he thought of is making weapons and armors for them to use, in short blacksmithing.

Remember the bones of that Hunter? It was so durable that it didn't even get scratched by a shotgun fired at point-blank.

If they could use those bones as weapons, wouldn't that be wonderful? The problem would be on how they could manufacture them, but that problem is not his concern anymore.

When there was no more infected coming in, they finally relaxed. The main group didn't even request a switch since they weren't feeling exhausted.

Everyone leveled up by one and distributed their points however they liked.

Jun put his two points into power, which now reached 17 points. The lobby was filled with pools of blood, but there were no bodies to be seen.

Adrian and Jun walked out of the motel. They did a full survey of the surroundings to make sure that there are no more groups of infected before inviting everyone out.

"Let's go," Jun said, walking confidently towards the city halls direction.

They regularly encountered groups of infected. Most of the groups have at least five infected in them.

After the repeated fighting, the group fought fluently and more effectively. Their roles started to become evident as most of the females chose to loot the dead bodies while the men fought.

Besides the scattered infected on the distance, there's only trash and abandoned cars to be seen on the streets.

After walking for ten more minutes, they stopped after seeing what's in front of them.

The national highway is filled with hordes of infected. There are no gaps between them as the infected brushed on each other's shoulders as they walk.

Jun was about to lead them back and searched for another way when suddenly, gunfires echoed in the area. The sound is coming from the right, where the city hall is located.