Chapter 272: Underground Bunker Survivors

The two of them led us to the lower floors of the mall while I followed behind them, walking just a step behind them.

It was quite clear that the one known as Jhou’tiv was at least taking this role seriously as he led the way without complaints while also swivelling his head around, presumably to look out for Anomalies.

On the other hand, the ponytailed guy known as Otis was just following beside him looking unbothered and... Dare I say... Bored?

He even yawned once and didn’t seem worried about any Anomalies suddenly appearing at all, making me wonder if this guy has even seen them before.

How the heck can this guy be so relaxed out here? Or does he believe that since we’re here, there’s not really any threat to him so he can just be relaxed about it?

Well... The irony here was that the Otis guy was right because there weren’t any Anomalies inside the mall so it was actually wasted effort on the other guy’s part to be so on guard.

"You really cleared out all the monsters?" The Jhou’tiv guy muttered when we reached the entrance of the building, having descended through the floors to find not a single one of those creatures.

I turned to him, "This is the third time I’m telling you guys, yes. We cleared out the creatures in this area. We made quite a lot of noise when we were fighting our way in so I’m pretty sure we attracted all the monsters around the town. The only thing that we need to worry about are the larger monsters that seem to only react to scent instead of just sound."

He turned to raise an eyebrow at me, "They have such a thing?"

"I would have thought you guys would know this better than me since..." I trailed off, managing to stop myself from completing my sentence where I pointed out they were locals while we were visitors.

He seemed to have come to his own conclusion about my words since he just nodded and continued to lead us out of the mall.

The other guy followed behind him, not even giving us a glance as he walked past us.

We stepped through the streets of the town and it was here where the carnage was clear for these two to see.

Piles of Anomaly corpses were littered across the street, evidence of the battle that took place earlier.

At this point, I believe there were no more doubts that I was telling them the truth and the Jhou’tiv guy simply nodded at the sight before continuing to lead us through the town.

We moved to the street behind the mall, walking past the suburban houses and empty streets that were now eerily quiet.

We walked past the empty houses, keeping an eye out for any of those larger sized Anomalies in case there were a few hiding somewhere.

"Never seen this place so quiet before..." Jhou’tiv muttered more to himself.

Otis rolled his eyes, "What are you talking about? It’s not like there’s people partying around the block nowadays."

The bald guy scowled at him, "You wouldn’t know, Otis... You’ve never been out here on your own before. You will still hear the groaning and growling coming from the creatures as you sneak through the streets. Now... There’s really no signs of them anymore."

"There still might be the big ones," I warned him, keeping an eye out on the houses around us.

As if on cue, one of the houses suddenly exploded outwards, revealing one of those larger monkey wolf hybrid Anomalies charging towards us.

"AHHHHHH!!!" Otis screamed in a rather high pitched voice.

Jhou’tiv also froze up, his face turning into one of dread, probably thinking his life was finished.

"Olivia," I called out, deciding to leave this to her.

She jumped at the chance enthusiastically, the red Oni charging straight towards the Anomaly fearlessly.

Jhou’tiv let out a distressed sound and he was bracing himself as Olivia got closer, more because he believed she was going to get flattened by the monster in front of her.

Instead, Olivia ducked under the attempted grab from the Anomaly before throwing an uppercut at it.

Her fist connected with the Anomaly’s chin with a thundering crash, the entire monkey wolf hybrid launched up into the air before its head was separated from its body.

The body crashed down with a thud, its head following suit after a moment.

Yeah, it stood absolutely no chance against Olivia.

I turned back to face the both of them, "Let me repeat again. We killed the monsters in the town."

Jhou’tiv turned back to me and slowly nodded his head, finally trusting my word for it.

Olivia returned to my side, looking quite satisfied at being able to show off her strength before our two guides took over in leading us again.

Otis had also gone quiet, though it looked like he was now staring at us with narrowed eyes.

Is he one of the ones who think that mutants like us should die or something?

He wasn’t saying anything though, so I also decided not to ask.

Moving further down the street, we found the blue house the woman told us about and well... I’m not sure if there could be anyone here anymore...

The entire building was levelled to the ground and only small parts of the wall remained which was how we even know the building was supposed to be blue in colour.

Both our guides looked at the destroyed building with different reactions.

Jhou’tiv was giving us a sympathetic look while Otis was completely ambivalent about it, simply looking at the destruction like it was another piece of the scenery.

I wasn’t really concerned about the house though, since we were told there was an underground bunker, so that’s what we needed to find.

I took over the lead to walk around the house, looking for any signs for an underground entrance that might lead to our target.

It wasn’t even that difficult to find there was a pretty big armoured trapdoor in the ground which was currently busted open and by how the doors were curving inwards, it was broken by someone or something from the outside.

We gathered around it and Jhou’tiv gave me a solemn nod, "You have my condolences... Stranger."

He’s not even going to suggest that the people inside could have survived here though... I guess I was also of the same idea as well anyway...

But this guy was still thinking that we wanted to meet the people here as well because we were acquainted with them or something. We are most definitely not and we were only looking for more survivors we could try to save.

I peered into the hole, trying to see if there was anything inside.

There were the broken remains of a ladder in the ground below, which would have been our way in but was obviously not possible right now. Not that we would even really need to use that to begin with since it was just a short drop down anyway.

Though I guess for a normal person, a drop like this would be fine but they probably wouldn’t be able to come back up without some assistance.

I was just about to suggest jumping in until I heard a skittering sound coming from somewhere in the darkness below.

I trusted my instincts and pulled myself back, right before one of the wolf monkey hybrid Anomalies jumped out of the darkness and bit where my head was earlier before disappearing into the darkness again.

Great... If there’s Anomalies down there... I highly doubt there’s any survivors then...

Otis had the same idea as he scoffed, "Guess they’re all dead. Tough luck pal. At least we don’t have to waste any more time out here."

Jhou’tiv shot him a look but he ignored his companion, the guy just smirking at me expecting a reaction.

I ignored him and just went ahead to jump inside, my feet hitting the ground with a soft thump.

The look of surprise from those two was worth it since they probably never expected me to just jump into what they would consider a monster trap at this point.

Sure enough, I heard growls coming from the darkness around me and several Anomalies rushed at me, their claws extended towards me.

I summoned my floating hands and beat them down one by one, smashing them into the ground like a game of whack a moles and killing them before they could get to me.

My guardians soon joined me as they jumped in as well, aiding me to clear the underground bunker of the remaining Anomalies within the darkness.

Both men above the hole simply watched on with their mouths hanging open in surprise as we showed them just how exactly we could clear the Anomalies.

Still... I realised that there were no other entrances inside this underground ’bunker’, which really was just someone’s basement that was made more sturdy.

Which means... The survivors that had been down here... They’ve already died and the Anomalies we were currently killing were most likely their mutated forms...

At least... We’ll put you all to rest this way...