Chapter 44: Wait For Me, My Love

"Wow... your shamelessness pierces the skies, Sage."

"I have no idea what you are talking about."

"Hehehe"

Hazel was teasing Sage, and Kora let out a genuine snicker from the sofa. No one could believe Sage’s tone would change so quickly. He had practically complained to everyone about how he wasn’t a fan of how Damon was being pampered—

Now, he was not only recommending someone stronger than Kora to stay and protect Damon; he even went as far as regarding him the way Harvey is known to.

Putting aside Sage’s obvious attempts at sucking up. They all saw reason in having someone other than Kora, who doesn’t look like she cares about anything, to watch over Damon.

Damon kicked against the idea, since there was no need. Having one less from the team going to risk their lives would just put them in that much more danger. So, they left again with just Damon and Kora inside, left in the living room.

By this point, the survivor tally count had come and passed, as well as the update for the treasure box drops. Even now, there was still one treasure box marked as unretrieved on the event map, but it was far away from the current location; and even if it were, there was no chance of obtaining it unless it appeared inside the building.

"Are you really going back in to sleep?"

Damon paused his motion at Kora’s words. He was getting up from the sofa, and really was going to be heading to sleep.

"Yes?"

"Are you a Kola bear or something?. Why do you sleep so much ?"

"Is there anything I can help you with, Kora?" Damon responded to her question with a question of his own. He wasn’t about to begin going into details about his condition.

"Come sit here and have this..." she spoke with a nonchalant expression on her face as she stretched her console to Damon.

"I am supposed to be protecting you, right?. At least you won’t get sleepy playing this."

Damon was hesitant; he really wanted to go in and sleep, but even with the expression on Kora’s face, he could tell she was making an effort to make things less awkward between them after her previous actions.

Damon returned to the sofa next to Kora and received the console from her. He was actually curious about what she played all the time on it. Though all forms of telecommunication or satellite transmissions were down or progressively shutting down, compact devices like this still worked fine, as did several other functions on regular phones that had nothing to do with internet connectivity or transmissions.

As Damon saw what game Kora had playing on the console, he was both surprised and also had a thought that it actually made sense. It was a horror, zombie apocalypse-themed game, where the character runs through the dead of night fighting off flesh-eating zombies.

It was fun, and Damon actually enjoyed playing; for the first time, he got to see a different side of Kora. She was heavily invested, correcting and teaching Damon how to play, facepalming in frustration when he made rookie mistakes. It was a very energetic and fun atmosphere.

Elsewhere....A young man with dark hair and a small stature was tunnelling through a man-made underground system with a portable headlamp strapped to his head. He was perspiring heavily, wearing just a tank top stained from its former white to dark brown by all the mud, and below, he wore simple cargo shorts.

Every time the young man raises his palms to the wall of mud in front of him, it dissolves into motes of fine energy particles. It was fast and efficient, and he would take short breaks to recharge his consumed metal power before continuing again.

"I will need to draw in some mutants soon.... I am running out of supplies."

After tunneling for around thirty more minutes, occasionally staring at a map displayed on his system for directions, he stopped tunneling straight, and began to tunnel upward.

On a narrow street with a few mutants loitering around. The ground suddenly broke as the young man slowly poked his head out.

"Target’s found."

Marking the locations of these mutants in his mind, he tunneled back into the ground and went in their direction one after the next, sucking them into tunnels opened under their feet; binding them in thick mud, and landing critical blows to their skulls.

This way, the young man hunted a total of eight mutants in that narrow street before diving back deeper underground.

"Phew.... I am spent."

"At least I got four this time."

He had managed to secure four origin crystals, and using those, he purchased some items from the provision store to eat.

Jeremy had just been an ordinary office worker before this whole thing began, earning peanuts at a dead-end job; he could barely take care of himself with what he earned. Luckily he didn’t have anyone depending on him. Then, all of a sudden, their world had descended into this hell, and he luckily became one of those who awakened as an earth esper—

But Jeremy was no ordinary earth esper; her was an epic-grade earth esper. This allows him not just to control the earth; he could even cause it to cease to exist, even though that consumes a lot of mental points.

He was out on the street when all hell broke lose, and after higher in a nearby store for his life and almost being mauled to death by mutants; he had the brilliant idea to make the ground beneath their feat his home. So Jeremy dug his first tunnel, began to live safely underground; only coming up when he needed to hunt mutants for points.

But at the moment, Jeremy was on a mission. He had been alone and horny for all his twenty-eight years of life; and as soon as this apocalypse began, he had met his first love through the chat channels —

But the love of his life was in danger— he needed to go save her, wherever she may be, so they could both live underground safely and have underground babies. This was jeremy’s dream.

"Wait for me, my love. I am coming."