Approximately 40 minutes had passed since the poor girl had left and Alexander was already getting bored, playing the same game on his phone because he didn't have any others without internet, nor anything else on his phone to entertain himself. He had thought he was completely ready to travel to this world, but he never thought of the possibility of dying of boredom. Seriously, dying of boredom was the last thing he would have thought of, and even being the last, perhaps it would have been a thought so distant in his head that he wouldn't even have registered it.
Now the supermarket was in silence, only interrupted by the comforting hum of the commercial refrigerators and the music of some idols with good voices that Alexander had put on the ceiling speakers.
He stretched in the chair, lifting his arms above his head until his back made a satisfying crack.
The time on his phone marked 6:26 am, but the sky outside seemed to be even later; night had fallen and more streets were dark, and visibility was very low unless you went out with lamps or ended up crashing into some debris.
Alexander stood up. His figure, tall and dark-haired, was reflected for a moment in the glass window. With a bored expression on his face, his dull purple eyes blinked and moved away from his reflection, and he walked down the main aisle to the employee door that led to the back room, and from there, to the small area he had conditioned as a temporary apartment within the spatial bubble.
He took a hot shower. The water flowed smoothly and you could almost see the steam from the heat of the water, taking away any trace of fatigue or laziness. After a relaxing shower and putting on a new change of clothes, he commented to himself:
"If someone saw me right now, they would hate me to death or probably die of envy," he said while taking a bag of chips.
Just when he finished the last chip, his spatial sense—that invisible network that worked like a radar in his brain and was directly connected to his being—caught a movement in the outer perimeter.
By the way they were approaching, their speed, weight, and the way they kept covering each other, it was very likely that they were humans too.
"Interesting".
That was all Alexander thought before going to the counter. It really seemed interesting to him that in these weather conditions there were people going out, mainly because it was night and weren't zombies or mutated beasts supposed to have a kind of buff at night? Or was everything in those movies, animes, and novels nothing more than pure lies and the only real things are the characters?
Through the window, the silhouette of the ruined city began to spit out shadows. From the Black Fog that had become thick with the setting of the sun, five figures emerged.
At the head of the group came Valéry. Her face... apparently the sausage had given her a bit more energy than simple granola bars, because she even looked more alive than in their first meeting. But she didn't come alone. Behind her walked four men who looked like they had been chewed up and spat out by the worst of wars.
They wore improvised armor made from car tires, rusted metal plates, and mutant beast leather. They were armed to the teeth with jagged machetes, solid lead pipes, and a couple of sawed-off shotguns held together with duct tape. Their faces were weathered, full of scars, and their eyes seemed dead but still clinging to the will to keep living even in this hell.
They stopped about ten meters from the glass display. The four men stood paralyzed, their jaws literally dropped.
To them, seeing a clean supermarket with bright lights, shelves overflowing with colors, and music playing in the middle of the ruins of a city infested with poisonous fog, was like seeing an oasis in the desert—but an oasis that also offered massages and cold drinks.
One of the men, an immense guy with a scar crossing his left eye, took a step forward, pushing Valéry aside roughly.
"You weren't lying, crazy bitch," the giant growled, his voice sounding like crushed gravel. "There really is an intact warehouse".
Valéry stumbled but regained her balance quickly, frowning.
"I told you it was real, Kael. But remember what we agreed. This place has rules. The owner is not someone normal. The barrier is impenetrable. We come to trade".
"Trade?" Kael mocked, approaching the store with heavy steps.
"What damn fairy tale world do you think you live in, Valéry? If there's food, it's taken. If there's an owner, his throat is cut and we keep everything. That's how the new world works".
Alexander, from the other side of the glass, rested his elbows on the checkout counter, interlaced his fingers, and rested his chin on them. His expression was one of absolute calm, an amused smile dancing on his lips as he watched the drama unfold. He couldn't hear every exact word through the glass soundproofed by his power, but body language was universal. They were looters.
"Ah, the classic B-movie thug gang," Alexander sighed, almost with tenderness. "There's always someone who thinks they're the king of the dump because they think they have the biggest dick when in reality it's as big as a woman's clitoris; let's see how long it takes them to crash against the wall of reality".
Kael arrived in front of the window. He was an imposing man, almost two meters tall, with muscles that seemed inflated by radiation or some minor mutation. He looked at Alexander with deep contempt, raising his huge homemade mace, a block of cement with rusted nails welded to a steel pipe.
Kael pointed at Alexander with a dirty finger and then made a gesture of cutting his throat.
Alexander did not flinch. He held his gaze, tilted his head, and raised a hand, making a kind and polite gesture for him to come closer, like someone inviting a friend in.
The scavenger leader, red with rage and humiliated by the total lack of fear of his prey, roared at the top of his lungs. He raised his heavy mace with both hands and delivered a devastating blow, putting all his body weight and the inertia of his muscles directly against the center of the large glass window.
The impact sounded like a cannon shot.
CLANK!
Kael felt his arms split in two. The recoil force was so violent that the steel pipe vibrated at a frequency that tore the skin of his palms. The mace bounced back with the same speed it had come down, hitting Kael directly in the forehead.
The two-meter giant flew backward as if hit by an invisible truck. He landed on his back five meters away, kicking up a cloud of gray dust, and lay there, writhing on the ground and letting out muffled groans while clutching his bloody head.
His three subordinates froze. Their leader's weapon, a solid block of cement, had collided with what looked like ordinary glass... and the glass didn't even have a mark.
Valéry, who already knew the routine, crossed her arms and let out a sigh of frustration, rolling her eyes. 'The good thing is I didn't try more than once to understand the defensive power of this place'. Although she showed a cold expression on the outside, she couldn't help but feel a little fear and a shiver inside. Before, she only tried to test the resistance of the glass and understood it wasn't something simple; now seeing the violent reaction it had, she was grateful for her intelligence and for having been cautious before, thus avoiding an accident like this.
———
From inside, Alexander couldn't help but laugh out loud.
He raised a hand and snapped his fingers. Using his spatial power, he made the double glass door of the main entrance slide smoothly, opening wide with a slight pneumatic hiss.
But the Black Fog and the heat did not enter. Alexander's dimensional barrier was still there, invisible and blocking all the weather and toxicity, only leaving a passage open—an invitation for the uninvited guests to enter.
The men outside immediately felt the air conditioning. A blast of purified air at twenty-one degrees hit their faces weathered by the toxic desert, bringing with it the scent of clean food, soap, and freshly made tea.
It was a psychological blow more devastating than any weapon. The three remaining thugs lowered their weapons instinctively, their eyes filled with tears at the sensation of that heavenly air.
Alexander came out from behind the counter and walked at a calm pace until he stood right on the edge of the open door, a centimeter from the outside world. He put his hands in his pockets and looked at the group.
"Good evening," he said, his deep and charismatic voice projecting effortlessly.
"Welcome to my humble establishment. I understand that etiquette norms have relaxed a bit since the world went to hell, but in my shop, hitting the glass is considered very rude".
One of the men, the youngest, swallowed loudly. He squeezed his rusty shotgun, took a step forward, and tried to act tough.
"Shut up, you idiot!" he shouted, though his voice trembled. "Get out of there right now and give us all the damn food or I'll blow your brains out!"
Alexander did not even blink. His smile did not disappear, but his eyes became a bit duller.
"Blow my brains out?" he repeated, in an almost bored tone. "How little imagination. Let's see, try it".
The young man, driven by panic and adrenaline, raised the shotgun, pointed directly at Alexander's chest, and pulled the trigger.
The roar of the shot echoed in the deserted street. A rain of lead pellets, propelled by homemade gunpowder, shot toward the supermarket owner at a lethal speed.
Valéry screamed and covered her head. The other thugs smiled, waiting to see the blood splatter the clean white floors.
But the blood never appeared.
Twenty centimeters from Alexander's chest, the pellets simply stopped. They didn't hit a visible shield or fall to the ground. They remained suspended in the air perfectly static as if the laws of gravity had decided to take a vacation and leave those bullets out of their authority, like flies trapped in amber. The kinetic force of the shot had been neutralized in a fraction of a second by the young man's spatial will.
Time seemed to stop for the scavengers. They looked with open mouths at the bullets floating in the void.
Alexander sighed, took a hand out of his pocket, and made a sweeping gesture with his index finger, as if brushing away a nuisance.
The suspended pellets spun in the air and shot back, not toward the man who fired, but toward the shotgun itself. With a precision that defied any physical law, the pieces of lead hit the barrel of the weapon, shattering the rusted metal and making it explode in the thug's hands.
The young man screamed in pain, dropping the smoking remains of his weapon as he fell to his knees, clutching his burned hands.
"As I said," Alexander continued, without raising his voice, as if he hadn't just defied gravity and ballistic physics, "bad manners. Now, I'm going to make this very simple for you, because it's late and I want to skip all this trouble". He took a step forward, standing on the threshold, his figure silhouetted against the bright light of the store.
"In here, I am the law, physics, and the fucking god who decides who eats and who starves. Weapons don't work against me. Brute force doesn't work against me. If you try to rob me, I'll turn you into a compacted cube of meat and throw you into the fog for the rats to eat. Is that clear?"
There was no response. The thugs were terrified. Even Kael, who was awkwardly getting up from the ground with his face covered in blood, looked at Alexander as if he were death itself incarnated in a designer T-shirt.
"Excellent," Alexander said, returning to his relaxed tone, clasping his palms together. "Now that we've established the corporate hierarchy, let's talk business. Valéry, my first VIP client. Come in, please".
The woman, still trembling from the demonstration of power, walked timidly through the spatial opening. The moment she crossed the threshold, she felt as if she had entered paradise. The pure air cleaned her lungs and the light illuminated her dirty face.
"You brought your friends. I suppose they have merchandise for me," Alexander said, walking back to his counter and sitting down comfortably.
Valéry nodded vigorously. She turned to the thugs still on the street.
"Dammit, Kael! I said we came to trade! Throw your weapons on the ground and take out what we found at the bank!" she shouted at them.
Kael, with his pride shattered and his stomach empty, did not dare to reply. Hunger and terror were great motivators. With trembling hands, he dropped his mace on the sidewalk. His companions did the same with their lead pipes and knives.
Once disarmed, Alexander allowed them to enter the premises one by one.
The men walked down the clean white aisles as if they were stepping on a minefield. They looked at the packages of cookies, the bottles of mineral water, and the cans of preserved meat with religious reverence. They were crying. Murderous men, hardened by the last year of brutal survival, sobbing silently in front of a dairy section.
They reached the counter. Kael, with his gaze lowered, unslung a dirty backpack from his back and emptied it onto the immaculate surface of the cash register.
A heavy metallic clinking filled the air.
Thick 24-karat gold necklaces, diamond-encrusted rings, solid gold Rolex watches, and small bullion bars they had looted from a ruined bank vault spilled onto the table. In addition to the gold, three similar red Cores fell.
Alexander looked with interest at those red spheres; he could feel that this could be beneficial for him; the energy those spheres contained was more than they let on at first glance.
"What are these red spheres?" Alexander could not help but ask as he took one; he pressed it lightly, "They are quite hard".
"They are zombie cores; with them, you can awaken abilities you might have an affinity for. Just like me with fire, or Kael with his constitution," Valéry replied. She was surprised because he didn't know this basic knowledge; if so, how did he get his ability? Could he have eaten one of those things? That should be impossible.
"I see". Ignorant of the other people's thoughts, Alexander looked at these spheres more closely. 'Will I be able to awaken more abilities if I use these things?'