Chapter 34: Laziel Discovering a Secret

No matter how loud her screams were, none seemed to hear her. From the other occupants in the room, she also heard their pained groans.

At this time, her consciousness wasn't completely gone yet. The sounds of these zombies munching on her flesh as she was bound to a rope made her hopeless. Her stomach churned.

A sudden bite on her neck made her eyes blur with tears. It also dragged her consciousness back, enough for her mind to give rise to one thought: those zombies seemed to be coming from outside… how did they manage to get in?

Before everything went black, she saw a vague figure at the door. Who opened the door? Who was it?! She was sure that she hadn't offended anyone yet.

Darren hadn't hated her for Nyra's sake, Cassias… she remembered his angry look when she almost delivered herself to those zombies and instantly dismissed it.

Nyra… Laziel… the Brown family…

Before she could think further, she couldn't bear the excruciating pain and completely passed out.

The only sounds left in the room were beast-like growls and snarls and the sight of zombies with rotten flesh feasting on living humans, each fighting to take a bite.

***

Meanwhile, everyone who was trying to get rid of zombies and mutated animals suddenly heard a loud rumble. The earth below shook and a few people who were standing near them just now were gone.

They looked around in fright, their hearts trembling with fear. Many questions rang in their heads, and some of them ran away to save themselves.

"What is happening?" Henry frowned. He looked around as he counted his people. Some were directly followed whenever he went as a group. "Where is Daniel?"

It was Daniel who had provided them a lot of information about the Valez and his former group, which was led by that male lightning ability user. The female fire ability user apparently had a close relation with Darren.

"Boss, there's important news!" a thin man came up to him, wearing an excited look in his crafty eyes. 

He was just a small lackey under the Brown family, but after delivering this news, he would surely get noticed by Henry Brown, right? So, as soon as he received that information, he went to find Henry at the fastest speed.

"What is it?" Henry asked, warily watching as more people disappeared. There were some kind of holes, and most likely those people had disappeared there. He didn't dare to check yet.

The thin man took a deep breath and told him, "It's about Darren Valez. When the earthquake happened, he also disappeared along with his groups!"

Henry's eyes flashed when he heard that. Because of the uncertainty of the place, he ordered all his subordinates to retreat, prioritizing safety.

Cassias was among the people that had fallen into the sudden holes appearing at the earth's surface. He and Laziel had just finished exterminating a hive of insects with explosives.

Laziel groaned as he tried to stand up. Bruises formed on his feet due to the fall. He looked up, and light shone from the opening above. They had fallen into some kind of tunnel, and the surface was a few meters high.

"Where the hell are we?" Laziel scrunched his face, his voice panicked as his eyes landed on his surroundings. Besides their current place that was illuminated by the light from the opening above, other sides of the tunnel were filled with darkness.

Cassias' eyebrows knitted together, looking extremely troubled. He kept on gazing at the opening above and couldn't find a solution.

"My eldest sister is still out there. What if she also falls into an earth hole somewhere? But she is alone!" Laziel clutched his head in distress. "I shouldn't have left her alone in that room when she was digging for those crystal cores."

"Do you want to try to take a walk in one of the two directions?" Cassias asked.

Laziel took a deep breath. His eyes fixated on the dark tunnels and he couldn't deny that he was scared. In such dark places, what if they met an unknown danger?

Then he remembered Nyra. In his mind, he already imagining his sister stranded somewhere alone. He steeled his heart and slowly nodded at Cassias' offer. He swallowed.

"I guess that's the only way we can take. There doesn't seem to be any way we can climb up there. We might find the end of the tunnel somewhere," Laziel muttered, reassuring Cassias or maybe himself.

They began walking toward the darkness. Along the way, they found some zombies inside. The moment they heard their footsteps, the zombie would let out beast-like snarls, which were easily identified.

Still, it was hard to fight them in the darkness.

By the time they reached an area with another opening above, Laziel laid exhausted on the ground. "Cassias, bro. Let's take some rest here first."

Cassias nodded. It would be easier to identify an attack if they could see the light shone from above. He took a seat somewhere in the dirty ground, his eyes thoughtful.

They nearly spent an hour there. Laziel got up, and he looked at the light above wistfully. The cruel reality that they might not survive hit him…

"What is this…!" As soon as Laziel clutched the thin, rope-like thing that had fallen from above, he jolted and hurriedly threw the thing away in fright.

The slippery scales instantly made him recognize that it was a snake, not a rope. He must have gone so crazy that he even hallucinated.

"Hey, Cassias, where are you going?" Laziel pursed his lips when he saw Cassias walking in the direction where he had thrown the snake to. 

He had no choice but to follow him with trepidation in his heart, intending to pull Cassias away quickly. "Hey man, don't scare me. Have you been bewitched?"

The moment he walked into the darkness, he stumbled upon someone's back and fell down. He thought that he had met yet another zombie and readied himself. 

Cassias was the one who killed most of the zombies earlier. He was the only one who could accurately pinpoint where they were. Meanwhile, Laziel didn't dare to stab around if he didn't hear the zombie's inhuman sounds first.

Laziel heard the sounds of footsteps and found that Cassias had gone back to the illuminated area. He was worried, so he hurriedly followed.

"What is it in your hand?" He asked him, finding a small bundle. A mutated animal?

Then, he watched with widened eyes as Cassias took a bottle of water out of nowhere. He turned his head to Laziel, and his lips curled up into a smile. "You can keep secrets, right?"

Although he was smiling, Laziel felt a chill down his spine and the look in the man's eyes. He hurriedly nodded. He didn't know that Cassias could be so intimidating.

"Definitely." He swallowed. Cassias must have some kind of inner space, like Zerra?

Cassias sat down and unscrewed the lid of the bottle. He began to run the water on the unknown bundle in his hand carefully. 

Worried that he might have really gotten bewitched, Laziel asked him. "What is it? Mutated animal?"

Cassias merely hummed in response and continued to clean whatever animal it was with the water. The animal wasn't too big, like the size of a small cat.

"Is this some kind of rare wolf or something?" Laziel, who had been watching Cassias cleaning it until the animal turned into a snow-like appearance, asked in wonder.

"It's a fox," Cassias answered him and caressed the unconscious fox.