Chapter 26: A Sudden Tragedy

Odin performed a few more machete slashes and chops before ending his workout. Mastering the basic blade technique had erased all his grumpy emotions from before and raised his spirits. With the skill in hand, he was more confident in his ability to protect his sisters from the looming dangers of the apocalypse.

"All plans are moving forward smoothly," Odin thought as he dismissed the Origin Order's interface. "I only need to clear the zombies remaining in the resort, and then we'll all be safe, at least for the next few days."

Having made the resolution, Odin decided to act right away. He turned around, intending to head back toward his cabin to check on his sisters. But the next moment, he couldn't help but stop in his tracks as he noticed the two guards watching him from a dozen yards away with alternating expressions of fear, awe, and surprise.

"Have you finished arranging the survivors in the cabins?" Odin asked, glancing around. He immediately noted that the survivors were no longer outside.

"As you can see," Iris replied, breathing in deeply, "we have already arranged all the survivors inside the cabin beside yours for the moment."

"Can they all fit in a single cabin?" Odin asked with narrowed eyes.

"Arranging them in a single cabin allows us to protect them better, especially against sneak attacks from zombies," Christian replied. "But, young friend! Are you sure that you were not a member of a special-operations military combat unit before? How come your machete skills are so lethal? You almost seem like a veteran soldier who has trained knife techniques for years."

Odin smiled and shook his head. "I have been a university student at Montana State University for the past two years, and I have never been in the military," he said. "I only picked up some blade skills when I trained in a Japanese dojo a few years back."

"Is that so?" Christian raised an eyebrow. He seemed skeptical.

"That's the truth," Odin confirmed his lie without batting an eye. "Let's stop discussing unimportant issues. What we need to do now is to clear all the..."

"Aaahhh! Help! Help..."

Before Odin could complete his sentence, piercing screams filled with panic and terror echoed around the place.

"What's happening?"

A cold chill instantly swept across Odin's body as he turned around in one swift motion to fix his gaze on the source of the screams. He only breathed a sigh of relief after discerning that the commotion was not originating from the cabin where his sisters were hiding.

"I'm guessing that the survivors are in trouble," he said, tightening his grip on his machete. "We need to help them."

Before the guards could respond, Odin took off like an arrow and rushed towards the cabin. By reflex, his spiritual energy waves spread out as he reached the door in mere seconds. He could already tell that the survivors were fighting among themselves by analyzing the feedback of blurry images coming to his mind through his spatial sensing domain.

"Damn it! What has gotten into these people?"

Odin mouthed a few curses as he heard more terrified screams inside the cabin. He tried to unlock the door but realized that it was locked. He was about to kick it open, but he stopped after hearing a voice behind him.

"Let me," Christian said. "I have the key."

Odin stepped aside to make way for the older gentleman. "Hurry up." He said.

Christian moved fast and shoved the key into the keyhole. The door opened with a click, and he pushed it open the next moment.

"Oh, my God!"

The older gentleman gasped and immediately stepped back after briefly glancing inside the cabin.

Odin was startled by the abnormal reaction. He also stepped forward to take a look himself. But the next moment, a shudder ran down his spine as he stood there transfixed, looking at the hell-on-earth that was the cabin before him.

He couldn't understand how the events inside had progressed to such a chaotic extent. But he could immediately tell that the port-bellied man and five other survivors had mysteriously turned into zombies.

At the moment, they were assaulting the remaining two surviving healthy girls with brutal ferocity. Like starved beasts, they struggled within their ranks to take huge bites of the supple and tender human flesh. And soon, a foul bloody stench filled the entire room as the survivors' shrill screams slowly faded.

The six zombies soon cast away the mangled bodies and turned their scorching blood-red eyes towards the door. They growled threateningly and immediately rushed forward with unbridled savagery.

"Shit! Hurry and step back!"

Odin shouted at the two guards behind him as he readied his machete. He then took a step back and unleashed a horizontal slash just as the first zombie's deformed head popped out of the door. In one swift motion, he decapitated it and sent its head flying into the air while emetic blood and pus spewed out of its neck.

Whoosh!

Odin stepped back immediately as his spatial sense detected another three zombies trying to rush out of the door simultaneously. He immediately noticed that the culprits were the fat pot-bellied zombie and two females with knotted faces leaking yellow pus. They charged forward with reckless abandon and ended up getting stuck in the narrow entrance of the cabin.

Odin chose not to attack with his long machete after judging that the space was too narrow. He unholstered his Kel-Tec magnum from his belt before cocking it and removing the safety. His pupils constricted as he aimed at the head of the pot-bellied zombie that was still struggling to liberate itself from the jam in the doorway.

"BANG!"

A gunshot reverberated across the place the next moment as Odin pulled the trigger from almost point-blank range. With a single bullet, he punctured a bloody mess of a hole between the deformed eyebrows of the zombie, ending its sorry excuse of a life. He aimed and fired two more times to terminate the other two zombies.

"Four down, two to go."

Odin muttered under his breath as he turned his gaze toward the last two zombified humans remaining in the cabin. They did not notice that their 'colleagues' were already deader than dead and continued scampering forward fearlessly. Their intelligence was obviously lacking as they couldn't perceive the danger to their lives.

"BANG! BANG!"

Odin pulled the trigger repeatedly, and two more gunshots resounded the next instant. The two remaining zombies let out their final gasps and sank to the floor with lifeless eyes.

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[Killed six Pseudo-Type-I Zombified Humans]

[Origin Points +12, Current Origin Points: 44/40]

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"DING"

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[Current Origin Points: 44/40]

[Origin points enough to level up. Please confirm whether you would like to level up (Accept/ Reject)]

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