With a waypoint created, Leon started to scavenge, bringing things through the rift. Erik specifically told Leon to start with smallest item first. Without the request, Leon would go for the closest object, which was a heavy wooden shelf with all the goods still stacked up.

“I can’t believe I have to keep an eye on him,” Erik grumbled and checked up on his other unit. Astrid was resting under a covering and out of the rain. Her stamina recovered slowly. Her wisdom was on par with a normal person, so he didn’t have to constantly keep an eye on her. As for SS, she was still hiding behind a wooden shelter, watching the kids playing from afar. Her scrawny hands hugged the First Bible tightly. It was left in her care until Erik could examine it personally.

“I wish I have enough gold for another worker,” Erik said after giving some attention to the HQ and the stockpile list. Food count was increasing steadily while iron and wood increased occasionally. It was a good haul. Having another worker would speed up things considerably. “Maybe there is a gold or jewellery shops nearby.”

There should be at least one or two shops considering the size of the town. It wasn’t a large town by normal standard, boasting just over 3000 inhabitants. Half of its people took refuge at the hospital, situated south of the town’s plaza. The rest of the town was either sleeping in their home or at the forest to the north, helping with the greatest forest fire in recent memory. The inferno, which raged for more than a day was put out by the onset of heavy rain. This was thanked to Zeus and his power to manipulate the weather – somehow.

Unlike SS, Erik didn’t think Zeus was a possible ally. His lightning power was far too advance for him to be on his own. Ergo, Zeus was probably an ally of Luke. He did mention his friends when talking to Joseph and Victoria. Considering that Zeus took the effort to stop Lance’s from torching the town, he might have a conscience left – or he had other plans with the town’s inhabitants.

Fearing the truth, Erik didn’t want to ask Dell and confirm his growing suspicion. Anything to do with demons required sacrifices, virginal sacrifices. He should know. He was a sacrifice himself. Along with his classmates, he was fed demon blood and transformed into something inhuman. He was a Demon Spawn. His humanity remaining intact was his only salvation.

“If they are trying to open the gate, this town is already lost,” Erik recited the words Joseph had said to Victoria. Considering what he had becomes, the gate could only be the Gate of Hell. Opening such an unholy portal would require countless sacrifices.

Erik couldn’t fathom why Luke and his buddies would go to such length. As psychotic as Luke was, he obviously wasn’t insane. And neither was Zeus. With their godlike powers, they could be anyone, do anything. So why start an apocalypse? What could they possibly gain by destroying the world?

[…]

A young woman with unnaturally white hair came into his mind. Her mesmerizing purple eyes could literally steal a person’s soul. Despite only seeing her that one time, he felt a sense of familiarity. It was like they known each other for a very, very long time.

[…]

Erik shook his head and arched his eyes. “Dell?”

[Yes, Erik?]

“No, I thought you said something,” Erik replied and returned his attention to Leon and Astrid. What ever happened, he would not sit idlingly by and let people die. It was just not him. And to do that, he needed all the help he could get.

As Erik watched Leon worked, he learned anything the stockpile couldn’t store would be lost during transition through the waypoint. Items like aluminium foils didn’t appear in the inner world despite the stockpile couldn’t store aluminium. Since SS still had her gold block, it was possible to bypass the stockpile completely. As a test, Erik had Leon brought a hammer through. It didn’t break into wood and iron when he did.

“I must manually order them instead of issuing pre-set commands,” Erik said. After a few more test to solidify his theory, he had Leon stocked up on some equipment such as axes and handsaws. They were needed to harvest wood from the forest.

Once Leon cleaned out the entire convenience store, Erik had him move onto to the next store. Even the door was gone, converted into woods for wooden shelters. The next building was machine shop, and with some machine tools such as electric drill and pump stashed away, everything that weren’t bolted down was converted into resources.

Whenever there was enough wood, a wooden shelter was erected in the Settlement area, increasing the population of the inner world by two. It was sitting at 48. Since there was more enough room to rebuild later, Erik didn’t give too much thought on the layout of the housings. His main concern was gathering as much resources as he could before something else comes up.

And something did come up. Question marks appeared all over the map. The Shadows had returned and greater in numbers than before. There must be at least a couple dozens. Erik opened one of the question marks to be sure.

「There is something there, great Lord! 」– Leon Hammerhand.

The Shadows converged onto Leon, but with a few flashlights lighting up the store, they were kept at bay. They were still not strong enough to invade the light. This would change in the upcoming days as the Wall continued to be weakened. Instead, the creatures begat of darkness encircled Leon like sharks in a blood frenzy, waiting for the flashlight to die down.

With an oversize wrench gripped in both hands, Leon was ready to fight to the death. There was no fear in his eyes despite being surrounded and outnumbered.

“Can he fight against that many?” Erik questioned as he tried to make out the monsters hiding in the dark. Despite their ravenous growling, they weren’t mindless enough to attack their prey.

[These are lesser Shadows. They pose as much a threat as a hellhound]

“Hellhound?” Erik uttered and looked at Astrid’s screen. Despite there were no Shadows appearing on her side of the map due to lack of light, he had her returned to the inner world and grabbed some lamps and an axe just in case. He didn’t let her turn on the lamp just yet. Doing so would only invite troubles. Shadows were attracted to light and warm.

“Maybe I should find him a gun. That way, he could shoot the damn things while staying away from the dark,” Erik said after returning to watching Leon. Leon, in turn, watched the Shadows growling in the dark. Seconds passed. Minutes went by.

Boom!

Erik flinched as lightning flashed. His eyes went wide as he caught a glimpse of a Shadow. Its features were undiscernible due to being just a mass of blackness. It casted no shadow itself, and from what he could make of its body and shapes, he thought someone took a bunch of body parts and smashed them together and called it a day. Standing on six legs with numerous disjointed arms sprouting out of its wavy body, it was growling at Leon.

Darkness returned, and so was the silence. The Shadows faded away, melted into the darkness and returned to the space between spaces, the void between worlds. Their growls faintly echoed in the room, reminding Erik that they would return – and soon.

“Need to find a gun shop,” Erik said and ordered Leon to resume his scavenging. There was no time for idling. Once Leon exhausted his SP, he could rest, and the waypoint switched to Astrid. While her SP didn’t recover fully, she was good enough to go.

Erik spent time to direct her actions carefully while paying great attention to her stamina points. He found that if she didn’t exert herself, her SP remained the same. If she tried to do things exceeding her physical capability, the SP would plummet. Dragging logs to the waypoint greatly exhausted her. As such, she gathered branches with the axe instead. Each bundle she collected added 1 to 2 unit of woods at the cost of 1 SP. It as more efficient than hauling logs.

When Astrid exhausted herself, Erik switched back to Leon and had the man gone to work. Likewise, Erik paid close attention to Leon’s stats. Scavenging small objects didn’t cost any stamina. Only the larger one did. But thanked to Leon’s physical strength, he expended SP much slower than Astrid. His health point (HP) had also recovered after the rest.

“It would be great if I can manually distribute the points when I recruit them,” Eric said. A dedicated labour worker having high HP was pointless. They needed high SP and Strength. He could do without the brain and luck for menial task like lugging things back and forth.

[Erik. Your food stockpile is maxed out]

“Already?” Erik opened the stockpile screen. He hadn’t been paying attention due to the Shadows.

Unit: 2/10

Population: 56/56

Gold: 8/1000 (+54)

Wood: 19/1000 (+0)

Stone: 192/1000 (+0)

Iron: 314/1000 (+0)

Food: 1000/1000 (-50)

Like Dell had informed, food was sitting at 1000. It was maxed out. At the rate of deficiency, it would last him 20 days. But with all the new settlers coming to his Settlement, it wouldn’t last that long. He needed more – much, much more.

“Is there a way to increase the limit without building another HQ?”

[Not that I know of. You could stash them like those tools, but unlike the stockpile, they will rot if left outside]

“Oh? Food in the stockpile don’t rot?” Erik asked. He didn’t know that, but he did have his suspicion the moment food came into play. “See, you should tell me these things. Even if it seems insignificant to you, it might mean a lot to me.”

[Explain]

“I have been taking note. The system is simple. Anything that editable is classified as food,” Erik said as he glanced at Leon’s and Astrid’s screen, checking if they needed his guidance. Astrid was taking a rest. As for Leon, he was trying to break into the gun store with a sled hammer as the window and doors were bolted and barred.

“The system considered a bag of table salt as 1 unit of food,” Erik pointed out. “I don’t think anyone realistically eat a bag of salt for lunch. If that the case, anything non-perishable or long lasting should be stash outside as emergency rations instead of being stockpiled.”

Considering the overall size of the tile, reaching almost 1 square kilometre, Erik could pile up a lot of things and still have plenty of room to build. The Headquarter was a huge building, but it didn’t take up the entire Grassland tile. With the grid now overlayed the tile, complex layout was possible.

[That is interesting]

Erik nodded and looked at his iron stockpile. He had enough for the time being, and considering iron were everywhere, he rather kept the guns for the Armoury later instead of breaking them down for their irons. While it took longer to bring items into the inner world than Scavenging, it was worth the time. Once the door broke down, Erik took control of Leon’s action. If he let Leon alone, chances are, Leon would blow his brain out with a shotgun.

With half the town asleep and the other half at the hospital, looting shops after shops was like taking candy from a baby. By dawn, Erik had enough guns to start an army and rations to keep them fed. As for the Settlement area, it had a total population of 86 people despite there were enough shelter for at over a 100. These 86 people were the souls Erik absorbed at the morgue. To get more settlers and establish a powerful economy, he would need a way to get more souls.

[Aside from killing, you can try and harvest the recently deceased]

“What am I, a fucking soul reaper?” Erik questioned and sighed. He couldn’t kill people and harvest their soul to increase his power. And sitting around, waiting for people to get killed without trying to save them was just as bad. “Back to Plan A then.”

[Rescue the one called SS? She is not in danger. She is sleeping]

Erik rolled his eyes and had a quick look where SS was. She was sleeping on top of his body. “Can you not call her ‘the one called SS’? Just call her SS or Sophia. And that was the old plan A. New plan A – we’re going to rob a bank.”

[How is robbing a bank advances your power?]

Erik opened his mouth, but no words came out. His mind drawled blank. With the settlers, he had a steady supply of Gold. So, what he needed was a way to build a Barrack or an Armoury. He couldn’t demolish the Headquarter to do that.

“I like money, okay?” Erik snorted and looked at Leon’s and Astrid’s display. He zoomed out to see the surrounding before arching his brow. “How come I haven’t seen a single person in town? Isn’t it morning?”

Erik rotated the camera, so he could take a good look at the dark sky. The rain had stopped, but the thunderstorm still covered the entire town, giving it a gloomy feeling. And without people around, it looked like a ghost town. It was too strange.

With adequate stockpile of woods, Astrid headed back to the hospital. As for Leon, he was ordered to scout the town to find some people. It didn’t take him long to accomplish his mission. They were resting in a pool of their own blood just outside the police stations. Their bodies riddled with bullets, making their faces unrecognizable. From their clothing, they were civilians.

Nearby, a few masked men chatting away like it was normal day. Their assault rifle slumped around their shoulder with its handle held by one hand. Grenades and a pistol holstered by a belt wrapped around their waist. One of them was watching over a wounded woman. From her uniform, she was a cop. To her side was another police officer, but he was executed with a bullet through the head.

“That bastard makes it rain the entire night. It was already hard to gather up the town without being wet and cold and chased by fucking demons,” one of the men cursed before exhaling smoke through a small hole in his mask. The men next to him took a mouthful from the cigarette and passed back to him. “And now we have to play babysitting. Why can’t we just fuck the bitch and slit her throat like the rest? She killed two of our men.”

“Because she’s a virgin,” another man said. He was patting down bodies and stealing their wallet and valuables. “Can’t kill virgin or kids. I kind of understand the virgin part, but why kids?”

“Because kids are virgins?” the third guy spoke up. He was looking at the gloomy sky.

“No, no, no. I heard they needed to reach puberty to work,” the looter replied and got up. He then approached his buddies and enjoyed the cigarette.

“And where did you hear that?” the rapist asked.

“When the boss is talking to the witch,” the looter said.

“Minus? I wouldn’t mind putting her in her place,” the rapist said and took the cigarette. He dropped it when lightning strikes the ground, deposited a young man. “Wait, Zeus, I didn’t mean it!”

“I don’t care what you do as long as you do your job,” Zeus said and dropped the unconsciousness girl on the ground along with her silvery chains. “She was hard to find. If she wasn’t a virgin, I would just turn her into ash like her dumbass friend.”