Scavenging the Town

New chapter is live.

Settle in, take your time, and let's see what waits in the dark 🖤

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"Blood Moon kills give four times the experience?"

Evan's voice carried too far.

Nearby walkers turned toward him and began drifting closer.

For the first time, he regretted luring the Berserkers to the raider camp.

If the raiders had not killed half of them, Evan might have reached Lv. 11 or Lv. 12 in one night.

"Forget it," he said. "Greed gets people killed. I might not have been able to hold off that many on my own."

"Lv. 9 is good enough for now."

"Once I have a fortress, I'll find a way to squeeze the most experience out of every Blood Moon."

With that settled, Evan closed the log and opened the skill panel.

Now came the part he actually enjoyed.

Starting at Strength Lv. 6, each increase would cost two skill points.

At Strength Lv. 5, Skull Crusher had unlocked its next rank.

Two points into Strength to reach Lv. 6.

One point into Skull Crusher to reach Lv. 3.

Perfect.

[Strength Lv. 6/10]

[Rank: Strong]

[Strength and headshot bonus moderately increased.]

[You are very strong. Let the gym crowd be jealous.]

[Skull Crusher Lv. 3/5]

[Rank: Smasher]

[Specializes in destroying enemies and structures with heavy weapons like sledgehammers.]

[You're a certified smasher of things that get in your way.]

Dozens of ordinary walkers were closing in from all sides.

Evan pulled the Stone Sledgehammer from his inventory and rolled his shoulders.

His stamina and condition were recovering.

He grinned.

"Let's test the new build."

He jumped down from the car roof and swept the sledgehammer sideways, knocking down three reanimated raiders.

Evan felt strong as hell.

Even beneath the Wood Armor Set, his body had started to pack on lean muscle.

The Stone Sledgehammer had become several times heavier than the bone version, but in his hands, it did not feel much different.

Right then, he looked less like a survivor than a barbarian with a stone hammer.

When the stone hammer moved, it cut through the air.

If he had been fighting humans instead of walkers, the force of the swing alone might have made them retreat.

He swept the sledgehammer through the dead with strange, almost unstoppable force.

A dozen ordinary walkers could not get close.

After facing Berserkers, these shuffling dead barely registered.

"Slow as snails."

He roared and smashed horizontally into the walkers lined up in front of him.

Crack.

Two skulls burst like melons.

When the last two bodies collapsed, a notification appeared.

[Level Up]

[Level: Lv. 9 -> Lv. 10]

The dozen or so reanimated raiders were all cleared.

In a certain sense, Evan had destroyed the entire camp.

Not with his own hands, exactly.

But close enough.

He did not leave immediately.

Weapons lay scattered across the ground. Evan moved food from his inventory into the back seat of the car, then swept the guns into his system inventory.

Civilization had collapsed. Firearms were no longer being made in any meaningful way. Every gun lost or broken was one the world could no longer replace.

So if he could carry it, he took it.

Even broken parts.

Once the yard was clear, he went inside.

The house had two floors. As soon as Evan entered, he saw ammunition stacked in one corner and rifles propped against a rack.

After a quick count, the thirty-person raider group had left behind seven long guns, twelve handguns, and eight crates of ammunition.

That was a serious haul.

Evan's own team had one long gun in Merle's hands, one handgun with Andrea, and melee weapons for everyone else.

He took every gun and every round.

Thankfully, the system inventory stacked supplies neatly. The weapons and ammo only occupied a handful of slots.

Then Evan went upstairs.

When he opened the first bedroom door, he actually relaxed.

There were no kidnapped women inside. No half-dressed captives. Just rows of beds.

This was where the raiders slept.

"If a room full of women had shown up, I wouldn't even know where to put them."

He shook his head.

In the apocalypse, good intentions could hurt everyone involved. Taking in useless weight for the sake of feeling righteous was a good way to die.

Evan liked women.

He wasn't desperate enough to take responsibility for a campful of people just to satisfy himself.

If he ever entered that kind of arrangement, he wanted the terms clear and understood on both sides.

Maybe that was the butcher in him.

Nothing else here mattered.

"This place is done."

Evan checked upstairs and down, took the remaining food and gasoline, and headed out.

A full night had passed, but he did not hurry back to camp.

"Since I'm already here, I might as well finish searching the town."

The day before, he had only searched the area closest to Greene Farm. Half the town remained unexplored.

The battered car groaned and creaked like a machine that had spent twenty years rusting in the weather.

Evan drove east from the raider camp.

He passed houses without stopping. He only pulled over at commercial buildings.

Stores, pharmacies, bars, gun shops.

Places like that usually held more concentrated supplies and were easier to search.

The sky darkened quickly.

Evan spent the day checking three stores, one pharmacy, one bar, and one gun shop.

Unfortunately, all of them had already been opened. Their useful supplies were mostly gone.

He was clearly not the only person who understood where to loot.

The bar still gave him a few bottles of liquor and sealed packs of cigarettes.

By the time he stepped back outside, the whole town had sunk into darkness.

Aside from the occasional low growl of walkers, there was almost no sound.

Evan parked the car and chose a decent-looking house.

After putting down the walker inside, he moved in.

"The gas still works?"

He fiddled with the shower for a moment. About a minute later, hot water began to run.

Evan took off his clothes, folded them to one side, pulled a bottle of liquor from his inventory, took a drink, and sank into the bathtub.

"Modern conveniences," he sighed. "Every use might be the last."

In truth, he and Rick were not that different.

Both of them had only just begun facing the apocalypse.

Without the system, Evan had no idea what he would have become.

Even with partial knowledge of the future, life might not have gone well.

He opened the system casually.

He was now Lv. 10, with one unspent skill point.

For the moment, he did not plan to use it.

Strength would only get more expensive. Later ranks would cost at least two points, then three at the highest levels.

"Save it," he murmured. "Keep saving and..."

He had gone a night and a day without sleep, fought several groups of walkers, and pushed his body hard.

Sleep rose from deep inside him and swallowed him before he could finish.

Evan sank into the warm bath and slept.

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