A Sudden Raid
One of the reasons everyone had given this survivor group a positive evaluation was the presence of children. In a harsh world where even adults struggled to survive, the fact that they were keeping children alive suggested they weren't an especially vicious group. The tentacle tail, which had been a slight concern, had already been touched by numerous people several times and unexpectedly surrendered its body without resistance.
The children who had been stroking the slightly cool body of the tentacle tail for a while looked at my horns and spread both arms, hopping up and down. It seemed they wanted to touch the horns, so I bent at the waist and lowered my head. Small hands reached out to feel the horns, their faces filled with wonder. Meanwhile, hands had been subtly groping my breasts and buttocks for some time now. Perhaps because there were so many people surrounding me and I showed no reaction, the number of wandering hands gradually increased.
Hmm. Are there few women in this group? Seeing not a single woman here despite the presence of children, it seemed either there were no women at all, or they had been moved elsewhere for protection. Either way, fewer women meant good news for Horana's group.
“Ahem, that's enough now, folks.”
Deckard, who had been watching, finally intervened when the touches grew too blatant. The men withdrew their hands with expressions of regret.
“My apologies. Everyone's been through so much that they're not in their right minds.”
“It's fine. It seems you're short on women.”
“Ahem, unfortunately so. Here, put some clothes on first.”
“Yes.”
Embarrassed by my direct question, he cleared his throat awkwardly. Since I was already wearing panties, I put on the dairy cow bra and then slipped into an unremarkable black skirt and white blouse.
“Now I'll put the handcuffs on.”
“Yes.”
At his gesture, a man carrying thick metal handcuffs approached. With a metallic click, the cuffs locked securely around my outstretched wrists.
“Thank you for complying so readily with what might be considered a rude request. We'll do our best to make you comfortable until they return.”
With an apologetic look, he personally led me to a relatively well-furnished empty apartment on an upper floor. After giving me an entire ordinary household to myself, he placed instant food and water on the table, then locked the door.
“These survivors are more gentlemanly than I expected.”
Though they had groped me out of pent-up desire, they didn't seem like fundamentally evil people. Hmm. I suppose I'll just wait quietly until my family returns.
With nothing to do, I lay on the bed staring blankly at the ceiling. Darkness had fallen outside the window. The city, its electricity cut off, lay submerged in pitch-black darkness, with only starlight shining. Unlike Earth, there was no moon, making it truly pitch dark. While I could barely make out shapes with my night vision, I heard the door open and a man carrying a lamp entered. At his gesture to come out, I rose from the bed and followed him.
Guided by the flickering lamplight, I descended the stairs and arrived at a wide underground space where the survivors had gathered.
“You're here? In the evenings, we all gather together to pass the time. It's to conserve what little light we have.”
“It seems your supplies aren't very plentiful.”
“We've managed to scrape together this much from the surrounding buildings. Truthfully, we can't hold out much longer……”
At his honest words, the men around us also wore weary expressions. So even in such dire circumstances, they had made a cautious judgment without wavering despite my brother's sweet persuasion. The trusting looks in the men's eyes and the fact that the elderly man named Deckard was clearly fit to lead the group.
“Horana's group has taken control of the city center, so their supplies are extremely abundant. They're even farming on their own, so there shouldn't be any problem if the survivors here join them.”
“I heard. But this is a dangerous age to trust others easily. We can't take the risk without confirmation.”
“I understand. It's only natural for someone responsible for a group.”
“Thank you for understanding.”
The face of the man sitting in a chair with his eyes closed was etched with unmistakable fatigue and worry. Among those gathered by the small light, there were also women with children. I wasn't sure if everyone was together, but there were two elderly women, one young woman, and four young girls—far too few compared to the number of men. With only one person capable of bearing children immediately and just four girls who still needed to grow, this group's future looked uncertain in the long term.
Through scanning, I confirmed there were 31 young men visible. They all looked gaunt, likely from rationing food, but none showed signs of illness. How many of them would be chosen by Horana and the other women? I hoped they would be men of character worthy of dominating them.
The next morning. After sleeping together overnight, people left to attend to their respective tasks, and I was locked back in the room. While I sat blankly passing time again, the outside grew noisy. Thinking my family might have returned already, I looked out the window, but the atmosphere wasn't that of a reunion. People on bikes armed with iron plates and spikes were surrounding the apartment, making a racket. They were honking and shouting something, and it was clearly not a friendly situation.
For some reason, Deckard and the men opened the defensive wall at the main gate and went out to attempt direct conversation. Being on an upper floor and with the double windows blocking sound, I couldn't hear the conversation, but from the tense faces and stiff movements of Deckard and the men, it seemed like a crisis situation.
The moment I assessed their numbers, one of the men riding behind on a bike started up a chainsaw, and the bikes' engines began to roar louder. Hmph. I couldn't let the men I'd finally found be taken by what were clearly lawless thugs. I immediately turned around, grabbed the leg of a wooden desk, swung it hard, and hurled it at the window.
Thud! Crash!
The heavy desk smashed through the glass, shattering it into pieces, and I leaped out after it. Controlling my rapidly falling body in midair, I used the falling desk as a stepping stone to jump and reduce my speed, then landed on one of the men who was stupidly looking up.
Boom! Crack!
“Aaaagh!”
Along with the sound of the desk shattering on impact, a scream erupted. Though I'd reduced the impact by stepping on the desk midway, the man who took the full force of the fall from a high floor on his shoulder rolled on the ground screaming in agony from his shattered shoulder.
After rolling on the ground to absorb the landing, I stood up and surveyed my surroundings. Both the enemies and the survivors were frozen in shock at the sudden intrusion. Without giving them time to regain their senses, I immediately leaped up and began neutralizing the nearest man. I kicked the jaw of the front rider on one of the two bikes, blocked the club swung by the man behind with my horn, and punched him in the face. Immediately after, I spun my body, charged toward the bikes while dodging incoming attacks, and pulled out a wire from my left hand to swing it widely.
When I pulled the wire caught on a fallen bike taut, the wheels of the bikes spinning around were severed by the wire, causing them to lose balance and topple. Amid the chaotic crash, I sensed attacks coming from the side and behind, lay back to dodge them, and raised both arms to block a chainsaw with the handcuffs.
Clang! Sparks flew as the metal handcuffs scraped against the spinning blade of the chainsaw. The moment the metal chain connecting the handcuffs snapped, I struck the side of the chainsaw and sent it flying. The man holding the chainsaw wore a shocked expression at my near-superhuman reflexes. The moment our eyes met, I smiled and struck his throat, knocking him unconscious.
Though they were armed and riding bikes while swinging weapons, they were nothing more than street thugs or gangsters, posing no real threat to me. The one-sided battle of dodging their haphazard attacks and targeting vital points to neutralize them ended when the last man was struck in the groin by the tentacle tail, foaming at the mouth as he collapsed.
“Good job, Tail.”
I stroked and praised the tail that had mercilessly targeted the groin to neutralize the enemies, then counted the number of men I'd taken down. Five men had been defeated while fighting Deckard's group, and I'd handled twenty-two. A total of twenty-seven. I didn't know where they were from, but judging by their equipment and skill level, they felt like an advance party.
While wrapping vital energy around my fingertips, which had been scraped while using the wire to disable the bikes, Deckard approached with a dazed expression, examined the fallen men, and spoke.
“Heh…… So you really were just letting yourself be restrained. Impressive.”
“Oh, I broke the handcuffs. I'm sorry.”
“No need to apologize. What value do useless handcuffs have? If anything, we're the ones who should be thanking you. Thank you for your help.”
“Survivors should help each other to stay alive.”
At my words, a smile mixed with relief appeared on Deckard's face as he quietly watched me.
“I think we can trust you. Give me your hands. I'll remove them.”
“They're already useless handcuffs, though.”
“Hahaha.”
He laughed heartily and removed the handcuffs whose middle chain had been severed, leaving them dangling separately. Clink. Leaving the remnants of the handcuffs rolling on the floor, he spoke.
“These people…… I don't know where they're from or what they're doing.”
“They're most likely from the east, based on the city. There are other survivors gathered at the harbor in the southwest.”
“Is that so? It's fortunate that many people have survived.”
“It's not that fortunate a situation. The people at the harbor are extremely violent. Judging by these men, it seems the east is the same.”
“Hmm, the east was a factory district with many foreign workers from poor countries. These men just now also spoke with an awkward accent, so they didn't seem like locals.”
“There's almost no room for compromise, then.”
It was a bit awkward to say, but people from poor countries had such strong bonds among themselves that if they formed a faction, it would be difficult to assimilate them. Moreover, since they already seemed organized into a violent group, the possibility was even lower.
“Everyone! Tie these men up tightly with ropes!”
At Deckard's words, the men nodded and hurried over with various ropes, beginning to bind them securely. With my arms crossed under my chest, I kept watch for any remaining enemy movements when the tentacle tail rolled up and neatly pulled down my skirt, which had been exposing my underwear. Hmm, it seemed these were all of them. Still, since contact with the advance party had been lost, they would definitely come to check. Preparations for that would be necessary.
A short while later, the completely bound men were lined up and locked in an empty house on the first floor. After that, together with the men who were sending me looks of admiration, I built a temporary defensive line around the apartment. We piled obstacles in the passages based on the apartment walls and scattered sharp objects on the ground to block the bikes' approach. Since the men had been forced to come out earlier because those thugs had threatened to set the apartment on fire, maintaining distance was crucial.
After completing the temporary defensive line, I spoke with Deckard in the management office at the entrance.
“For now, we've blocked all the paths where bikes could enter, so they'll have to come on foot if they want to get in. Without armed bikes, the danger decreases significantly.”
“Even so, the situation of being isolated hasn't changed. We can't hold out long anyway since supplies are already scarce……”
His words trailed off, and after closing his eyes in contemplation for a moment, he opened his mouth with a look of resolve.
“We'll join the survivors in the city center. Will you accept us?”
“Of course. That's why we came here.”
“Thank you. To think you'd care for even us, who have nothing in this ruined world, you're like saviors.”
“Civilization may have collapsed, but surviving humanity must continue to live.”
“I wish there were more people like you……”
He sighed with regret. I told him that I would stand guard here, so he should prepare to leave as soon as my companions returned. After nodding, he returned to the apartment, and I leaped onto the roof of the management office and activated the radar at maximum range. As the range increased, precision decreased, so I had to sit still without moving.
After standing guard like that for several hours, rapid movement was detected at the edge of the radar. The occasional movements were plant monsters moving slowly, which was clearly different. The object moving in a straight line toward the apartment gradually drew closer and came into view. As expected, the person on the bike stopped at a distance and observed this side through a telescope. Since it would be troublesome if they returned with information, I took out the rifle Elisa had gifted me in Eden from my dimensional pocket. Elisa had said it was a sniper rifle with extremely enhanced accuracy that would achieve perfect hit rate when linked with the aiming system, but I hadn't had a chance to use it until now—this was the first time.
I took out the rifle, which had been stored in the time-stopping dimensional space and was in the same condition as the last time I'd checked it, assumed a position, and entered firing mode. With the predicted impact point automatically displayed in my field of view and real-time aiming correction, I precisely aimed at the head of the man holding the telescope. Bang— The moment I pulled the trigger, the man, who had noticed he was being aimed at through the telescope and opened his mouth, had his head blown off and died. Thanks to the built-in silencer, I handled it with a relatively quiet noise level of bursting air, then approached, removed the body, and dragged the bike back. Though it was relatively quiet, perhaps because the rifle's noise couldn't be completely eliminated, Deckard had come out.
“Didn't I just hear a gunshot? Was there an intruder?”
“They came to scout because there was no contact from the advance party. I've dealt with it, so don't worry.”
“I see. You killed them?”
“Yes.”
“It's a pity that even in this world, people have to kill each other.”
He muttered bitterly and returned to the apartment. After that, scouts came two more times, but their heads were likewise blown off by sniper shots. When three scouts sent in succession disappeared without a trace, they must have sensed something was wrong, as no more scouts came.