The World Cataclysm

*Sighs* "Dammit! It's so boring here! There is nothing to do other than chatting and playing cards with each other. We have stuck underground for weeks already." The student complained as he played a card from his hand.

"Stop whining. If you're so bored, then go and fight zombies on the surface. Don't spoil our atmosphere and whine to someone else, probably, to someone who cares about it." Another student said exasperatedly as he heard it several times already. He anxiously looked at the only card in his hands and stared at the last card thrown on the ground. Then, smiling triumphantly, he played his last card and said, "Ha! I win! Eat shit, chocolate is mine!"

Beaming with joy, a slightly skinny student reached for six chocolate bars and pulled all of them closer to his side. Every student that played cards betted a piece of chocolate as a gambling stake to spice up the game. Laughing, the student suggested in a lively tone, "It seems that luck is on my side today! Let's play again."

"No, it's already a time. We need to stand in a circle, otherwise we may be the next ones to end up there. Our boss won't let it slide." Another student that played cards said worriedly as he hastily stood up from the ground and headed to the largest group of students. Other students, as remembering what time it was, quickly followed after him.

Gathered in a group, more than 30 students made a circle as each student held a sort of blunt weapons in their hands: metal pipes, mops, brooms and wooden sticks. In the middle of an encirclement, two students were holding a female student who was trembling and shouting, "Release me! I did nothing wrong. Please, stop it."

From the other side, another student was dragging a zombie. Its arms and legs were tightly tied up by a rope. Unable to move, it thrashed and struggled, trying to free itself. When its growls reached the held female student, she paled immediately as begged them to spare her.

'Why did I end up like this? I just mumbled that such activities are inhuman and we should stop doing them. Why did he hear me? Why was he passing right behind me when I said it? I even dragged Isen with me.' She lamented inwardly as tears welled up in her eyes and as she glanced at gentle-looking male student.

On the side, the skinny man was held by another pair of students as he struggled to free himself from their grips, "Lara! No, release her. She did nothing wrong! Why are you doing this?"

Every student had different reactions to what was happening before their eyes. Some of them were giggling without any restraint as they regarded it as the way to escape from boredom, some of the students were watching everything with a complicated look in their eyes, while some of them stood on the sidelines, observing the scene calmly as long as it didn't involve them.

In the beginning, when they just flocked into a group of students and were thinking about how they would survive, they had never imagined that they would be able to calmly watch something like this in their lives. Yet a month with a despotic boss was enough to change them.

At first, after gathering them all together, their boss dealt with people that stood up against his decisions on his own, dragging them on the surface and feeding them to zombies. However, after a week, he grew bored of it and thought it wasn't worth his time, so he pitted a zombie against his offender and made such gatherings compulsory to attend.

Moreover, he thought of it more as a punishment or a trial rather than a death sentence. That way, he could let other members of his gang get accustomed to the presence of zombies, getting rid of a natural fear of zombies, and give a second chance to people that stood up against his decisions.

It was pretty simple; if the fighter could win against a zombie, then their boss would give a second chance to the student that offended him and let the student live, if not, then the student would be eaten by a zombie. After a month, their boss comprehended that he was short on people who could truly go against zombies and be any of use to him in an actual fight.

In the beginning, every student was appalled by such gatherings, to the point that most of them threw up on the first day and talked about how inhuman it was. But their boss quickly shut them up. As time passed on and as more such fights were organized, people slowly got accustomed to it, stopping vomiting at the first sight of blood.

People that tried to stop it were either killed by their boss or ended up pitted against a zombie themselves. Their boss spared no one and held everyone in fear, so most of the students quickly discarded any thought to end such gatherings. Hence, with no one to stand up against his decisions, even such gatherings became less frequent. It had been already a week since the last one.

...

*Sighs* "Such a shame to let a woman die in that way. It would have been better if he let me play with her. I would have enjoyed my time with her." With a vulgar smile splattered on his face, a tall and muscular student said it as he stared at the woman in the middle.

"Shhh! Our boss strictly prohibited forcing ourselves on the women in our group. Watch your mouth or you may end up killed by him." A student next to him glared at him anxiously as he warned him not to get into trouble.

"And what would he do about it? He's already having his way with a woman in one of the empty rooms. And those fucking sluts won't even go near us, either flirting with the boss or clinging to people close to him." He said irritated.

"Stop whining. If I had been you, I would have already zipped that troublemaker's mouth and shut up for the god sake. You're not the only one, so stop with your complaints. Moreover, we don't have many women in our group, so don't scare all of them from us or I'll kill you." The same student glared coldly at the man and said threateningly.

...

As students were whispering between each other, a male student that dragged a zombie to the woman threw a metal pipe on the ground near Lara and took a small knife from his pocket. He glanced at the students who held Lara and nodded to them.

At his signal, both students released her from their grips and quickly made a distance between her and them, but they also stood behind her, so she won't run away from it. Not feeling the slightest happiness from getting free, she quickly reached for the pipe thrown on the ground. Gripping it as her life depended on it, she still stared beggingly at the man who held a knife in his hands.

Nathan, the man with a knife, was quickly acknowledged as the right hand of their boss since he was the second strongest among them after their boss. Compared to others, he had a bat as a weapon and was one of a few with an actual weapon obtained from the System.

He stared at the woman indifferently and quickly cut the ropes that tied the zombie. Getting free, it first quickly leapt towards the man, but he, with a swift movement, took a step sideways and tripped the zombie with his foot. As it fell, Nathan quickly pulled a distance between them, making it focus on Lara rather on himself.

Trembling slightly and biting her lower lip, Lara firmly gripped a pipe in her hands. When Nathan tripped the zombie, she hesitated to approach it yet quickly understood that she missed a chance to attack it when it was down.

Standing from the ground, the zombie stared at Lara with its dull and emotionless eyes, and, driven by pure hunger, quickly dashed towards her. Its mouth was covered in blood, and it had a bite mark on its right cheek, giving it a more fearsome appearance.

Panicking, Lara desperately swung the pipe in her hands as she tried to land a hit on the zombie. She had never fought in her life, not to say that she never went against a flesh-eating monster in her whole life.

Dang!

As she swung her pipe without even looking at the zombie, she felt like her pipe hit something. But when she got a clear look in front of her, she regretted looking at it. As the pipe hit it on the head, it seemed to get more angered as it leapt at her, pressing her down on the ground.

"AAAAAAH!"

"No! Lara!" The grieving shriek sounded from the sidelines.

...

Several seconds later, the zombie quickly ended her life as it gnashed its teeth into her throat. Observing everything from the distance, Nathan quickly approached the zombie, busy feasting on Lara, and quickly killed it with a blow to its head. He also crashed Lara's head to prevent her from returning as a zombie and said coldly, "Dispose of the corpses."

Isen, who got a clear view as his friend died miserably at the hands of a zombie, cried out, "You beasts! How could you do it with her?" Tears streamed down his face as he stared at the disfigured cold corpse of his friend.

Some students in the circle giggled as they watched how Isen cried. One of them even shouted, "Don't worry! You'll follow right after her."

...

As four students approached the corpses to move them to somewhere else, a metal door could be heard opening from the other side of a circular room.

Clang!

"Dammit! It seems I should have come a bit earlier. Poor girl, I didn't expect it to be so bad!" The icy voice sounded from the opening as a young man with a scarred face went out of it. He held a Steel Sword in his hands and had two scars on his face: long one on his right cheek and one over his left eye.