Evolution (2)
Still, it was a massive relief.
The woman was fast, weaving through the narrow alleys between the studio apartments as if they were her own backyard.
Her movements were exceptionally nimble, and she seemed to know the geography of the neighborhood inside out.
In contrast, the evolved mutant's movements were sluggish.
The sheer power radiating from its bloated, massive frame could easily send a car flying, but its agility seemed to have suffered as a result.
Crash! Crash!
Unable to contain its rage, the beast resorted to smashing down building walls with its fists to clear a path.
It was a terrifying display of raw strength, but completely useless if it couldn't land a hit.
Come to think of it, this neighborhood had an unusually high number of collapsed walls. They were all the handiwork of this mutant.
"Kweeeeeek!"
A low, heavy screech reverberated through the air.
The frequency of the sound was different from any mutant screech he had heard before.
Jeron was certain that the creature had evolved.
It wasn't just a scrawny thing built purely for speed; it had adapted to wield devastating physical strength.
Even now, Jeron kept his eyes locked on the path of the woman and the mutant.
Even though he was watching from a distance, cold sweat beaded on his forehead.
It was a razor-thin margin, but the woman was managing to stay just out of reach.
Then again, any survivor who had lasted this long couldn't possibly be an ordinary person.
Just as the mutants had evolved, humans had struggled desperately to survive.
In doing so, humanity had evolved as well.
Jeron found himself silently rooting for her.
Please don't die in vain like that man I saw in front of the supermarket.
Boom!
Just then, a noise like a detonating bomb shattered the air.
Frustrated by the woman's nimble evasion, the mutant had smashed straight through a building wall to cut her off.
"Damn it!"
A curse escaped Jeron's lips.
The mutant's mindless charge had cornered the woman into a dead-end alley.
He hadn't expected the monster to plow through a reinforced concrete wall with its bare body.
Punching a hole in a wall was one thing, but ramming through it entirely required a vastly different level of destructive force.
Jeron quickly aimed at the mutant's head.
He had three rounds left in his sniper rifle. With a bit of luck, he might be able to kill it.
However, getting a clean shot was incredibly difficult.
Even in this desperate situation, the woman refused to give up on life.
As if proving that her survival so far wasn't mere luck, she deftly dodged the mutant's heavy, lumbering swings.
She occasionally lunged forward to stab with her dagger, but she only managed to leave shallow scratches. She couldn't deal any significant damage.
Every time the woman tried to slip away, the mutant anticipated her path and blocked her escape. It seemed the creature had evolved not just physically, but intellectually as well.
Jeron's scope swayed unsteadily.
If he missed, he would hit the woman instead of the monster.
I have to take it down in one shot if possible.
It wasn't just out of a desire to save her.
Up until now, he had always killed mutants at close range. He was curious to see if the Golden Key would still absorb mana if he killed one from a distance.
The second reason was his belief that a woman who had survived alone for this long wouldn't be a threat to him.
Since he had never spoken directly with a survivor of Earth, he also wanted to gather information about what had happened to the world after his death.
In the end, the battle concluded with the woman's defeat.
The mutant seized her by the collar, leaving her flailing helplessly in the air.
Click.
This was his best chance.
Jeron aimed at the back of the mutant's head and pulled the trigger.
Bang!
A deafening roar erupted, accompanied by a violent recoil.
Although he had propped it on the railing, this anti-materiel sniper rifle was designed to be fired from a prone position on the ground.
The massive recoil pushed his body backward.
Jeron quickly steadied himself and looked through his scope.
Is it dead?
He had seen the bullet hit its mark.
However, the recoil had thrown his stance off before he could see the immediate aftermath.
"Kweeeeeek!"
"Unbelievable."
It was astonishing.
Despite taking a direct hit to the head, its skull hadn't been pierced.
The bullet had only managed to cave in the left side of its occipital bone.
It seemed using mana was still the most efficient way to kill these mutants.
I really need magic.
A sniper rifle and simple blade work had their limits.
Fortunately, the woman was no longer in the mutant's grasp. It held nothing but a torn shred of her clothing.
She had apparently slashed her own clothes with her dagger to break free and escape.
Thud! Thud, thud, thud!
Screaming in a frenzied rage, the evolved mutant charged toward the commercial building.
The distance between Jeron and the monster was about four hundred meters.
Jumping to an adjacent building was out of the question due to the height.
He didn't have enough time to run down to the ground floor either.
Jeron made up his mind to face the beast on the fourth floor, which had a spacious lobby.
Avoiding the mutant altogether would have been the best option, but the creature was already far from fine.
The back of its head was caved in from the gunshot, and it was even stumbling, likely because bone fragments had lodged into its brain.
If the monster had been in perfect condition, Jeron would have reconsidered, but...
If things get dangerous, I can just open the portal and escape.
He could handle it the same way he did last time.
Jeron hurried down past the field of corpses, descending from the seventh floor to the sixth, and then the fifth.
"Kweeeeeek!"
The beast had already reached the ground floor.
Jeron arrived at the fourth-floor lobby.
Instead of standing in the middle of the lobby, he positioned himself with his back to a hallway corner.
A moment later, the creature showed itself.
He had seen it through his scope, but up close, its bloated body was beyond imagination.
Arnold, the legendary bodybuilder?
No, this thing was easily twice that size. Standing well over two meters tall, its presence was utterly overwhelming.
An indistinguishable fluid—either blood or saliva—dripped from its mouth, and dark blood from its fractured skull soaked its shoulders.
Its fists looked like massive sledgehammers.
Its muscles writhed grotesquely beneath its skin.
Charging forward with its jaws stretched open nearly half a meter, it was impossible to believe this creature shared any ancestry with primates.
"Come on!"
The distance between them was roughly fifteen meters.
Jeron prepared to open the portal.
It was at that exact moment.
"Kieeeek!"
"What?"
A screech erupted from directly behind Jeron.
There wasn't just one mutant.
A sudden wave of panic washed over him.
If he had known, he would have opened the portal beforehand.
He had worried that opening the portal too early might make the creature suspicious, so he had planned to open it when the beast was ten meters away. But this development was completely outside his calculations.
In that split second of extreme peril.
The door to a corner office suddenly flew open, and a hand reached out, pulling Jeron inside.
Click!
The door slammed shut instantly.
Thud!
A scrawny mutant slammed against the door, shrieking wildly.
Jeron instinctively looked at the face of his savior.
Though she was incredibly disheveled, she was a woman with large, striking eyes.
Her hair was a tangled mess, and she wore thick, heavy layers of clothing.
She looks like someone...
"Hurry, climb up!"
"What?"
"We don't have time!"
Her urgent shout snapped him back to reality.
Jeron immediately grasped the gravity of the situation.
The scrawny mutant might be held back, but that muscle-bound brute would smash through the door in a heartbeat.
They had only seconds.
Jeron noticed a makeshift ladder propped up against a ventilation shaft.
He scrambled up the ladder and looked down.
The woman followed him up with practiced speed, kicking the ladder down the moment she reached the top.
Thud!
She quickly secured the vent cover.
Crash!
At that very moment, the office door splintered into pieces as both mutants burst into the room.
Jeron and the woman held their breath, watching the mutants below.
Fortunately, the monsters' attention was drawn to the window.
The shattered window had been cleared out cleanly, and layers of clothing were draped over the frame to allow someone to climb over safely.
This was the fourth floor, and jumping down would be reckless for a human, but the mutants' intellect hadn't evolved enough to realize that.
Mutants wouldn't die from a fourth-floor fall. They simply assumed their prey could do the same, projecting their own capabilities onto others.
The beasts roared furiously as they stared out the window.
"Kieeeek!"
"Kweeeeeek!"
The sheer volume of mana they released was suffocating.
This confirmed it beyond a doubt.
They were far more evolved than any mutants Jeron had encountered so far.
It was a highly unwelcome development.
Crash! Smash!
The mutants began mindlessly destroying the office furniture.
To make matters worse, the muscular mutant vented its rage by punching the walls, causing them to crumble.
What a terrible temper.
If it were human, it would have easily been classified as a psychopath.
After rampaging for a while, the creatures threw themselves out the window.
Thud!
The sound of them hitting the ground echoed from below.
Thud, thud, thud!
As expected, the fall had done no damage to their bodies. They continued to roam the area, shrieking like madmen.
"Phew..."
"Haa..."
Only then did they finally exhale the breath they had been holding.
Inside the cramped ventilation shaft.
The woman lowered herself down first.
"What are you doing?"
"Pardon?"
"If we stay here, we'll die."
It was Korean, a language he hadn't heard spoken in a very long time.
Although he had heard voices through the camcorder and read Korean in the diary, actually conversing with a Korean person was something he hadn't done in eighteen years.
He had countless questions and felt a wave of nostalgia, but this was hardly the environment for a chat.
Just as she said, those rampaging mutants could return at any moment.
Jeron followed her down the stairs.
They descended into the basement.
The state of the basement stairs was equally grim.
Blood was splattered everywhere, and there were even relatively recent corpses.
Of course, "recent" meant they had already been picked clean to the bone.
They reached the underground parking lot.
There were quite a few relatively intact vehicles.
However, the entrance to the parking lot was a scene of absolute carnage.
It seemed everyone had tried to drive out at once; over a dozen vehicles were smashed and piled up at the exit.
Despite the horrific sights, the woman moved forward without a single moment of hesitation.
In the underground parking lot, there was a manhole that connected to the city's drainage system.
It seemed like a solid strategy.
Moving through the underground waterways and only surfacing to farm resources would allow her to avoid the mutants' gaze.
Do those monsters not know about the underground waterways?
Jeron walked along the frozen drainage canal.
Corpses blocked the path at various points.
There were decapitated bodies, severed limbs, and many mummified corpses with their entrails hollowed out.
It seemed Jeron's assumption that mutants only roamed the surface was incorrect.
The underground tunnels were quite complex.
Since the city had lost all functionality, the water had dried up.
While it was safer than walking on the surface, encountering a mutant down here would mean certain death with nowhere to run.
As they walked along the tangled network of waterways, they came across a small alcove.
It was a narrow gap, just wide enough for a single person to squeeze through.
There were clear signs that it had been carved out artificially.
The woman slipped inside.
Jeron followed her through, finding himself in a surprisingly spacious area.
Rattle!
The woman pulled down a metal shutter to seal the small entrance, then flipped a switch.
Amazingly, a lightbulb flickered to life.
"Electric light..."
For the first time in eighteen years, Jeron witnessed a lightbulb illuminating a room.