Apocalypse Quest: Treasure Room

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Evan waited outside the door for a moment.

When no more walkers came out and no growls sounded from inside, he lowered the hammer and stepped in.

"Well, damn."

He stared at the man's corpse on the bed.

The man was bare-chested. From the waist down, only bone remained. There was a bullet hole in his temple, and his right hand still clutched a pistol.

Thinking of the female walker that had just rushed through the door, then looking at what was left of the man's lower body, Evan felt a chill crawl up his back.

"Hell of a bad day, buddy."

He felt a little sorry for the man.

Then he still went over and pried the pistol from the dead fingers.

Inside the open nightstand, he found half a box of spilled handgun rounds.

It looked as if the man had loaded the gun and killed himself in a panic when she bit down on him.

Evan looked around the room.

A motel room was only a temporary place to sleep. Including the bathroom, the whole space was not even five hundred square feet.

Rotten cheap fast food. An old tube TV covered in dust. Adult magazines scattered across the floor.

Finally, his gaze landed in the corner by the bed, where a pair of heavy leather boots sat quietly.

Black. Solid. Thick without being clumsy.

"You had good taste. I'll take these off your hands."

Evan smiled and collected them. This room had not been a waste after all.

The dead couple had checked into the room.

Evan had opened it with a hammer.

His version took a lot more work.

He grabbed a tube of toothpaste and two bars of soap from the bathroom, then walked out of Room 101 with the hammer on his shoulder.

"The rooms are smaller than I expected. Opening them one by one should be fine."

"Daryl, you take the first floor. I'll check the second."

"No matter how much we find, we meet in the courtyard in twenty minutes."

Evan gave Daryl the reminder at Room 102, then headed upstairs.

Clearing one room had only taken about two minutes. If they worked fast, the two of them could search most of the motel in twenty minutes.

At the landing, Evan stopped.

A blue vending machine stood in front of him.

He wiped dust from the glass and leaned closer.

One look made him grin.

"The owner knew how to run a business. Restocked this thing right before the outbreak, huh? Just sitting here waiting for me."

He reversed his grip on the sledgehammer and smashed the glass with the end of the handle. With a crash, rows of snacks filled nearly every slot.

After clearing away enough broken glass, Evan took an energy bar, tore it open, and bit into it as he walked upstairs.

"I'll grab the rest on the way down."

The instant his boot touched the second floor, a crisp chime rang beside his ear.

Evan's eyes widened.

He knew that sound too well. It was almost a special effect.

A light screen appeared in front of him.

[Apocalypse Quest (Resource Search)]

[An unnamed abandoned motel contains a treasure room stocked with brand-new resources reset by the system.]

Evan skimmed it and grinned.

"So you're just handing me loot now?"

The system's message was brief. It might as well have told him this was a bonus quest.

And the words brand-new resources reset by the system meant the room might contain things that never belonged in a motel in the first place.

Fresh vegetables. Usable medicine. Weapons, ammunition, common supplies, uncommon supplies. Anything was possible.

As the screen faded, a warm yellow exclamation mark appeared ahead of him.

'Quest started.'

Evan looked down the half-open second-floor walkway. This time, he could sense that something had changed.

He tightened his grip on the sledgehammer, swallowed the last bite of the energy bar, and kicked open Room 201.

"Here we go!"

The elderly walker inside had not even reacted yet. It was still staring at him blankly when Evan swung.

The walker flew backward.

With a hoarse growl, an elderly female walker crawled up from behind the bed. Her toothless mouth puckered as she tottered toward him.

"Look at you." Evan sighed. "I don't even know what to say."

He set the end of the sledgehammer against her forehead.

She could not move forward at all.

Her soft, toothless mouth opened and snapped at him with all the ferocity she could manage.

Evan could not hold back a laugh.

He had finally understood the saying that once something stopped being a threat, even its anger could become almost cute.

"All right, all right. Old ladies should get sunshine and rest. What's all the fuss for?"

He kept the hammer against her forehead and turned her around with gentle pressure.

Then he grabbed the back of her collar, lifted her like a sack of laundry, set her on the bed, wrapped her in a blanket, and tied it shut with the TV cable.

The walker wriggled inside the blanket like a larva, but she could not break free.

Looking at her toothless grimace, Evan rubbed his chin, still not satisfied.

He took a Christmas knit cap from an old coat rack and pulled it over her head.

Stillness.

The old woman froze as if someone had cast a spell on her. Every motion stopped.

She almost looked peaceful.

"There. Good."

Evan clapped his hands, satisfied, and put the sledgehammer back on his shoulder.

After a few steps, he stopped.

He pressed his ear to the wall. Room 202 was on the other side.

Growling.

The sound was faint, but the motel walls were thin and badly insulated. He heard it clearly.

After a moment, Evan's mouth spread into a grin. He lifted the sledgehammer high.

"Small hammer, forty bucks. Big hammer, eighty. Time to remodel."

He brought the hammer down.

The wall collapsed, taking the walker behind it to the floor.

Evan stepped over and finished it.

[Experience +300]

He looked around, saw nothing but a dust-covered TV, and walked toward the next wall without hesitation.

"If the treasure room has been reset, this isn't it."

Rather than waste time collecting old, dusty junk, he would focus on finding the system's treasure room.

Downstairs, Daryl froze.

After a long moment, he looked up.

"What the hell is Evan doing?"

"Thought we were searching for supplies. Sounds like he's tearing the place down."

Before Daryl could resume searching, another heavy crash came from upstairs, as if a bulldozer had started chewing through walls from one side of the motel to the other.

And that seemed to be only the beginning.

Evan broke through thirteen rooms in a row. Nearly half had walkers inside. Except for the old woman in the blanket, he killed them all.

When he checked his panel again, his experience had climbed to Lv. 13 (79%).

After dealing with the last walker in front of him, Evan exhaled.

He waited until his stamina recovered past halfway, then started smashing through the wall of the fourteenth room.

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