The World Cataclysm

'Dammit!' Dave cursed inwardly as he felt pain with every move. The pain was even harder to bear than in his past life since such a burden was too sudden for his untrained body. When he came up with such training in his past life, his body was already trained to a certain degree due to training he had taken as a soldier.

However, he had never trained methodically before the 2nd Cataclysm, and that resulted in his weak stature. Furthermore, his special training may have been too sudden for his organism, explaining the great pain he was enduring. Well, the first day was always hard, so he just needed to bear with it. A slight decrease in pain wouldn't matter when it was already unbearable. It was still painful...

Currently, he was outside the dorms, trying to scout their surroundings and trying to note down approximate danger levels of different university areas. He was drawing a map on his notebook and jotting down notes about some dangerous areas, like a number of zombies, how packed they were and the chance to meet an evolved zombie.

On another page of a notebook, two sentences were circled, emphasizing their importance for his plans. They were the word "Devourer?" and three words "Richard the Tyrant?" with question marks at their ends. Different locations were written below them.

Dave had left a dormitory building half an hour ago and had gone hunting solo. Killing zombies blocking his way, Dave had been heading to a certain area. When he reached a needed location, Dave entered one building and went to the highest floor to observe everything from up above.

'Near the main library...I can't see anything resembling Devourer. Ehh...' He sighed helplessly as he took his pen and crossed out two words "Main library" in his notebook. Although it had been only a week and there was a chance that Devourer hadn't even appeared yet, Dave decided that he waited enough to it to appear.

Since he didn't know where Richard was hiding, Dave had the only way to wander through a university and search for them. At least, that way he could hunt zombies and stumble upon some clues that could help him with finding Devourer or Richard.

Devourer was a rare type of zombies that was much stronger than its kind. However, rather than saying that it was simply strong, it was more correct to say that Devourer had a special ability. They were able to feed upon other zombies and assimilate their strong points, like the agility and reflexes of a Hunter or the strength of a Giant.

Usually, cannibalism was quite rare among zombies, and Dave didn't know why zombies wouldn't eat their own kind. Perhaps, they couldn't stand a foul taste of their own flesh or something prevented them from eating each other. However, it was normally common sense that zombies won't eat each other.

But that common sense didn't seem to work on Devourers. They didn't differentiate between zombies and humans, every living creature was food for them, hence, they evolved much faster than other zombies. Since they could obtain biomass from both humans and zombies, Devourers weren't restricted by the absence of humans in their surroundings, there were more than enough zombies around it.

Moreover, Devourers were literally what they eat since they could assimilate strong points from their food. Devourers that ate Giants were stronger than those that fed upon ordinary zombies. The same could be said about Devourers that consumed more Hunters.

The presence of Devourer in the university was devastating in his past life. Even one Devourer was enough to send ranks of students into chaos since it alone killed several dozens of students. They had a black layer of armour plates on their bodies, black sharp claws and long corrosive tongue that could reach several meters away from them. Their bodies were as big as Giants, but they were as agile as Hunters. They more resembled unknown monsters than zombies by their appearance.

However, Devourers had strong territorial instincts as they form a nest in one territory until there was nothing to feed on. Then, after eating every living creature around their territory, they move to the next one, bringing death and destruction to everywhere they set their foot on.

At the last stages, Devourers would be pretty much invincible if they weren't killed at the time. At least, it was hardly possible to kill them at low levels. In his past life, Devourer caused a great load of trouble to Evelyn that she was forced to avoid it till they got strong enough to kill it. In that, its strong territorial instincts was an advantage to them. However, even then, it took joint efforts of several Evolvers to kill it, and several of them had also died at that time.

Their problem was that they found about its presence too late, five months later after the start, and the Devourer had already grown strong enough to threaten the lives of students of a whole university. It was considering that Evelyn had already formed her group of students that had survived for several months surrounded by a swarm of zombies.

Therefore, Dave needed to kill it before it became unstoppable. First, he planned to keep checking all places it was seen in his past life once in a week, so it won't leave unnoticed by him. Of course, there was a chance that it hadn't even appeared in the university yet, but Dave didn't want to risk it.

Moreover, there was the second problem that Dave needed to deal with, though it had more relation to people themselves rather than to zombies. However, the problem was much simpler than the first one. To explain it simply, a certain student blinded by newly obtained power started his own tyranny over other students, establishing a group of thugs and delinquents.

That tyrant's name was Richard, and as far as he remembered, Evelyn was the one who killed him. He heard that Richard was a delinquent before getting into university and that he had bullied other students even before zombies appeared.

He also planned to deal with the future tyrant. However, he had heard a piece of information that Richard had awakened an innate ability, and Dave didn't found it strange since Richard needed something special to back up his tyrant status, so it wasn't hard to deduce that he must have awakened some sort of power.

But he was more worried about the effects of his ability. He had heard that his ability gave him invincible defence to physical attacks. However, Dave thought that he would somehow manage to deal with him. Since if his ability made him invincible to physical attacks, then how did Evelyn kill him? He was sure that there should be some catch with Richard's ability, otherwise he would have been the one to lead a university group rather than Evelyn.

Dave wasn't doing it because he wanted to save other students at the university. No, someone else could take the role of a hero, he didn't need it. He just wanted to get rid of the future problems at their early stages before they escalated too much and became harder to deal with. Having dealt with them, Dave could easily unify their university and form a full-scale base without a hitch.

Planning his next actions, Dave carefully observed his surrounding from above yet couldn't find any tracks of the Devourer. However, instead of finding a Devourer, Dave became a witness to an interesting scene.

"Argh!"

"Argh!"

"Argh!"

...

Zombies were chasing after five male students, who were fleeing from them. Only one of them had a weapon from the System, and all of them were running in one direction. No matter how fast they ran, they couldn't lose their pursuers as they desperately ran to save their lives.

Their lungs were burning! Their stomachs were empty! Their muscles were aching! Their minds were hazy from lack of sleep! They were mentally exhausted as they were tired from surviving. However, still feared of death, they desperately clang for every chance to survive.

Trying to escape into the main library, they headed to the wide wooden doors. The first one to reach it hurriedly opened the door and held it open, waiting for others and wanting to lock it when everybody reached the building.

However, the last one to follow after them tripped on the ground. Zombies quickly overtook him and gnashed their teeth at his flesh, tearing chunks of flesh as blood dripped from their mouths. Sobbing and crying at the start, the male student was calling his friends, "No! Save me! Hurry and save me!"

But he couldn't say anything less since a zombie gnashed its teeth to its throat, tearing its vocal cords and trachea. His friends stood near the wide wooden doors, watching how their friend was being eaten by zombies, yet no one moved to help him...He was already bitten, so anyway they could do nothing to save him.

Instead of helping him, they hurriedly locked doors of the main library as they were grateful to be the one to survive, and at the bottom of their hearts, they thanked the male students for buying them time.

Observing everything from above, Dave didn't try to save them, nor he tried to take them with him to the dormitory. Truthfully, he didn't give a damn about them since dying would become more common than living in the future. People die, and that's was a normal situation taking their situation into consideration.

Furthermore, he didn't want to have helpless simps in the future that wouldn't be able to protect themselves. He wanted them to go through a trial by fire, so they wouldn't be completely defenceless when they would reach them and save them.

It was for a better good. It was better to have a bunch of elites that were able to survive on their own than pacific morons that couldn't take care of themselves. Therefore, Dave didn't meddle in their affairs as he headed to the next location where Devourer had been seen.