As always, the four of them took turns in leading the pack through the streets, taking care to avoid running into any other monsters that may have been around, keeping their heads down as much as possible and using their special abilities to their advantage when necessary. Luckily, their current location was pretty close to where Sophie said she had entered the city from earlier yesterday, before the apocalypse. Their route would take them straight towards a road leading away from the city, with only small buildings along their path to slow their progress.

As much as they wanted to avoid conflict, it wasn't possible to avoid all of them. They'd made it much of the way through a labyrinth of side streets and back alleys when [Presence Detection] pinged, indicating the presence of more monsters.

Five of them. They were only level three, according to [Assess], and they looked humanoid enough to be people, but unlike every other creature they'd seen so far, these five all wore armor over their clothes, looking almost ready for battle. Lance felt her heart drop in his chest upon seeing them. How many others might be around? Had the System turned everyone into monsters like this too? Were there any other normal people left?

"We don't have a choice here," Lance said. "They're in our way. Let's push them out."

With that, the four of them charged forth into the alley. A dumpster had been overturned, and the monsters were milling around it its remnants.

Sophie raised her hands—and ice formed above her fingers and started rushing toward the closest monster: a large man with dark hair wearing black armor and carrying a sword on his back. The icy projectiles hit him at high speed, piercing through his body before he could even react; it didn't look like they had done much damage, though. At least not from what they were able to see with their own eyes.

One of the other monsters tried to strike back, only for it to get impaled by one of Sophies' icicles as well. She then swung her arms wide, aiming for the group's main target, but just missed him when he moved aside. They weren't doing too badly, all things considered, so Lance decided to let them take care of themselves for now. He wanted to save his [Mind Attack] for something more important than killing another monster.

The rest of the battle was gradually growing more chaotic: Jacob used his sound ability to obliterate a monster when it swung at him while Grace fired a couple shots of flame. One of them burnt up in instants, but another was barely affected.

Alright, maybe he would participate. He could use some experience, anyway. Having more points would always be useful.

He reached out for its mind. The level three monster had no mental defenses whatsoever, and [Mind Attack] demolished it, reducing it to a spasming mess of flesh that soon sank to the ground, dead.

[Enemy defeated!]

Three left, one of them injured from Sophie's attack.

"Thanks!" she said as she ran towards Lance, her eyes bright and eager with excitement. "Still have enough juice to take them on!"

Lance nodded—but as much as he wanted to let her take charge, the presence of the other three monsters bothered him. What if they were like those others? What if they were stronger than their levels indicated? A part of him wanted to run away: to go back into the safety of the alleyways again; but then he'd be leaving Sophie behind to face these creatures with people she didn't trust, something he didn't want to think about even for a moment.