The surrounding area was deathly quiet, with only the faint crackle of burning flames.
Leon held his breath, his ears straining to catch every sound around him, his nerves as taut as a drawn bowstring.
But that silence did not last long.
A deafening, thunderous roar suddenly exploded from the direction of the distant mall.
This roar was far deeper and more savage than the snarls of the E-Rank Zombie he had just faced, carrying immense, overwhelming deterrence.
It rolled across the sky like muffled thunder, even making the ground tremble slightly beneath his feet.
Even from this great distance, he could feel the terrifying power contained within it.
Just from the sound alone, he could tell this unknown monster was several times more fearsome than an E-Rank Zombie.
It was absolutely an existence Leon could not hope to fight against in his current state.
Leon's face changed drastically in an instant, his heart plummeting into his stomach, every hair on his body standing on end.
A crushing sense of mortal danger wrapped around him like a vice.
Without the slightest hesitation, not daring to waste a single second, he spun around, wrenched open the car door, and jumped inside.
His fingers twisted the key frantically, the engine roaring to life instantly.
He slammed his foot down on the gas, yanking the steering wheel hard.
The tires screeched against the ground, and he sped away without hesitation toward the fortress, pushing the car to its absolute limit.
He only wanted to escape this cursed place as fast as possible, terrified that even the slightest delay would let that terrifying monster catch up.
When he was just one kilometer away from his safe fortress, Leon immediately hit the brakes and stopped the car.
He willed it, storing all the vehicles away in his Infinite Storage to avoid the engine noise and body reflection exposing his whereabouts.
He slung his rifle over his back, hunched his figure, and used the cover of the street ruins and broken buildings to sneak forward quickly with quiet, cautious steps.
The furious roars from the mall behind him still echoed faintly in the distance, the oppressive feeling lingering.
He stayed fully alert the entire way, his gaze sweeping every dark corner of the streets and alleys, on guard against any scattered zombies hiding along the path.
He advanced carefully on foot for more than ten minutes, until the fortress finally came into view.
After confirming there was no movement around, Leon rushed forward quickly.
He unlocked the outer wall gate, then the protective barrier gate, and slipped inside.
The iron door slowly closed and locked firmly behind him.
Only when he was completely within the safe zone did he let down his taut guard, gasping for breath.
His back was already soaked through with cold sweat.
Leon glanced at the blood and grime covering his body, then stood up and walked into the fortress bathroom.
He took out a bottle of water, cut open the mouth of the bottle with a knife, and stored the empty bottle back into his Infinite Storage.
Then he pointed at the bathtub, and two hundred bottles of water appeared instantly, the gurgling flow filling the tub almost to the brim.
He swept his hand again, storing all the empty bottles away, and every plastic bottle in the bathtub vanished without a trace.
He hesitated for a moment, then took out another hundred bottles of water.
After storing away the empty bottles, the bathtub was finally filled to the brim with clean, pure water.
"It's been so long since I've had a proper bath," Leon murmured softly.
Half an hour later, he reluctantly climbed out of the tub, carefully washing his body with the purified water.
After drying off, he took out clean clothes from his Infinite Storage and put them on, storing the dirty clothes away in the space as well.
When he was done, he took out the mangled corpse of the E-Rank Mutated Zombie.
Leon stared at the E-Rank Zombie's forehead, took out his dagger, and sliced it open.
It was completely empty inside.
He shook his head in disappointment, even though he had known the odds were slim, he had still clung to a sliver of hope.
With a wave of his hand, the zombie corpse was stored back into his Infinite Storage.
He opened the pale blue System Panel.
After the intense fight and the frantic rush back, Leon was ravenous.
He wanted to check how much food he had left, to pick a satisfying meal.
But when his gaze swept across the light screen, he froze suddenly.
There were two icons for ordinary zombies, and one icon for the E-Rank Zombie.
"What's going on here?" Leon frowned, deep in thought.
"Did the number of ordinary zombies hit a cap and split automatically? But this is Infinite Storage, isn't it?"
He tapped the second ordinary zombie icon with his finger, and a charred zombie corpse immediately appeared on the floor.
With just one glance, Leon spotted something wrong.
There was a slight bulge the size of a thumb on the zombie's forehead.
He knew that mark all too well.
Anna had had the exact same bulge on her forehead.
Thinking of Anna, a sharp wave of grief washed over Leon's heart.
Poor little Anna. Who had done this to her?
He would find that damned butcher, and slit his throat open.
Leon took a deep breath, forcing himself to steady his racing mind.
His hands trembling, he sliced open the zombie's forehead.
A soft white light glinted from within. It was a Crystal Core!
Leon reached in and pulled it out.
The Crystal Core was diamond-shaped, as clear and translucent as crystal.
Even after being pulled from the zombie's body, it was not stained with a single drop of blood.
His hands shaking, he stored the Crystal Core into his Infinite Storage, then immediately took it out again.
He looked down at the System Panel.
The Crystal Core icon was still there.
In that instant, Leon frantically took out Anna's body, opening the wooden crate holding her remains.
He pressed one Crystal Core to Anna's forehead. There was no reaction.
He placed a second one on it. Still nothing but cold, lifeless stillness.
He let out a raw, guttural roar, taking out a hundred Crystal Cores.
A pile of the shimmering cores scattered across Anna's body, but there was still no movement at all.
"Anna..." Leon clutched Anna's cold hand, breaking down in uncontrollable sobs.
"What do I have to do to bring you back to me?"
"I will definitely find a way to resurrect you. Please, just trust me."
Ten minutes later, Leon's mood gradually calmed.
He closed the lid of the wooden crate, and stored Anna back into his Infinite Storage.
Then he took out a Crystal Core and pressed it to his own forehead.
The Crystal Core, hard enough to withstand a bullet, melted the moment it touched his skin.
It shrank and vanished in an instant, turning into a stream of energy that seeped into his body through his skin.
Leon gritted his teeth, clenching his fists tightly.
Three seconds later, an excruciating tearing sensation spread throughout his entire body.
Even though this was not his first time enduring this pain, it was still almost unbearable.
Pain, pure, unadulterated agony.
He pressed his forehead against the wall, not making a single sound.
He knew he would have to endure this pain many more times.
The physical pain was nothing compared to the searing, crushing agony in his heart the day Anna died.
A full twenty minutes passed before the pain slowly faded away.
Leon felt the new power coursing through his body.
Now, if he had an axe or a baseball bat in his hand, he was confident he could take on three or four ordinary zombies at once and wipe them all out.
He took out another Crystal Core.
Whether it was because his physique had grown stronger, the pain of absorption this time was slightly less than before, fading completely after just over ten minutes.
After that, Leon took out Crystal Cores one after another, absorbing them continuously.
He continued like this for three full hours, absorbing a total of fifteen Crystal Cores.
He clearly noticed that the pain from the Crystal Cores lessened with each absorption.
But the physical enhancement from the ordinary Crystal Cores was growing weaker and weaker.
Presumably, his physical fitness was already high enough that the effect of ordinary Crystal Cores was becoming more and more limited.
The sixteenth Crystal Core.
The moment it was pressed to his forehead, Leon immediately picked up on something out of the ordinary.
The Crystal Core was absorbed completely in an instant.
A scalding hot stream of energy surged wildly from every limb and bone in his body, all rushing rapidly toward his heart.
Moments later, the heat burst forth from his heart again, flooding through every blood vessel, muscle and fiber in his body.
He could clearly feel something slowly condensing deep within his heart.
Roughly ten minutes later, this strange state gradually subsided.
Leon could feel with absolute clarity that his physical strength had just surged by a massive margin.
He had leveled up. This was an absolute, heaven-sent blessing.
He took a pair of pliers from his Infinite Storage, and squeezed down with a slight amount of force.
A sharp crack rang out.
The hardened steel pliers were snapped clean in two.
Leon stared at his hands in disbelief, turning them over and over again to examine them.
Just then, the furious roars of zombies suddenly rang out outside the fortress, along with a harsh, screeching sound of scraping metal that cut straight to the ear.
Leon rushed to the observation slit, peering out through the cold moonlight.
No less than several hundred zombies had gathered around the perimeter of the fortress.
The outermost barbed wire fence had already been torn apart and knocked down by the horde, and they had broken through to the outside of the second layer of the defensive wall.
They swarmed the wall in dense masses, slashing madly at the concrete with their sharp claws.
The zombies at the back kept shoving forward, and it would only be moments before they stacked themselves into a corpse ladder, climbing over the wall and storming the fortress.
Leon had never encountered a situation like this before.
While zombies grew exceptionally berserk at night, they would never launch an unprovoked attack without the draw of sound or light.
This bunker had been specially modified.
No sound from inside could escape to the outside, yet every movement from outside could be heard clearly within.
He took an instinctive step back, only for his foot to step on something hard.
He lifted his foot and looked down, only to see a Crystal Core lying on the floor.
He had no idea if the Crystal Core could emit any kind of signal, so he casually stored it into his Infinite Storage, before turning his gaze back to the movement outside the wall.
A bizarre scene unfolded the very next second.
The previously crowded, frenzied horde suddenly fell silent.
It was as if they had lost their target in an instant, and began wandering aimlessly in all directions again.
A thought struck Leon's heart.
He took a Crystal Core back out of his Infinite Storage, his eyes locked firmly on the zombies outside the wall.
The moment the Crystal Core appeared in his hand, the previously aimlessly wandering zombies locked onto their target in an instant.
They erupted into a berserk frenzy all at once, roaring in unison and charging madly toward the bunker.
Leon quickly willed it into storage, retracting the Crystal Core back into his Infinite Storage.
The horde immediately lost their target again, reverting to their aimless wandering state.
"Could it be that zombies can sense Crystal Cores? That the cores hold a fatal attraction for them?"
Leon tested it repeatedly several more times, and the result was the same every single time.
As soon as he took out a Crystal Core, the horde would charge the bunker in a mad frenzy.
The moment he stored it away, they lost their direction and wandered off in all directions.
This discovery made Leon wild with joy.
He had noticed several green-glowing E-Rank Zombies mixed in with the horde, and the Crystal Core held the same fatal attraction for them too.
If that was the case, he might finally have a way to kill that mysterious, terrifying zombie that had let out that earth-shattering roar from the mall earlier.