Using their formation, Lux led Bob and the others safely to the outer wall of X High School.
Along the way, they only encountered a few scattered zombies, which felt strange to him.
The beige concrete ground was dotted with darkened pools of blood, containing tiny bone fragments.
"Wait here for a bit. I'll go check the situation at the school gate."
After clearing out a convenience store that had already been mostly looted, Lux had HK416 and MDR take Candice and Bob behind the counter while he carefully moved toward the school gate alone.
Jumping the wall would be easy for him, HK416, and MDR. But Bob, a man in his late forties, wasn't like them. A fall from that height could easily cause fractures, severely slowing them down.
And with Candice, she'd need one person on each side to help her climb over.
If they could use the main gate, it would save a lot of trouble.
A zombie with its back turned appeared in Lux's sight. To prevent it from roaring and attracting others, he used lampposts and trees as cover, silently approaching from behind.
His katana flashed, piercing straight into the back of the zombie's skull.
Thud.
The corpse collapsed heavily to the ground.
Lux continued advancing cautiously.
The closer he got to the gate, the more confused he felt.
He had expected a large number of zombies wandering around here. After all, when the disaster broke out, most panicked students would have tried to flee the school immediately.
Yet he hadn't seen any dense hordes.
Only scattered zombies.
The danger level of this school seemed far lower than he had anticipated.
Soon, Lux arrived at the front gate.
The once clean and tidy entrance was gone.
The ground was covered in a dark-red, meat-paste-like sticky substance, emitting an unbearable stench.
Within it, Lux could see white bone fragments and what appeared to be pieces of human organs.
Even though he had cut down quite a few zombies over the past two days, Lux still couldn't help feeling nauseous.
It was obvious that on the very first day of the disaster, this place had hosted a brutal zombie slaughter.
However, to his surprise, when he looked from the main gate into the campus, he only saw what seemed to be a single dark figure slowly moving near the teaching buildings—apparently just one zombie.
What puzzled Lux even more was that not only the gate area, but the entire campus ground looked as if it had been covered with a dark-red carpet, formed from congealed blood plasma and minced flesh.
The scene before him was no exaggeration—a sea of blood and meat, just thinner than one would expect.
Lux activated the microphone on his tactical headset.
"The situation is a bit strange… there aren't many zombies inside the campus. It looks like someone has already cleared the place, but I don't see any zombie corpses… it feels… like the area was flattened by a steamroller."
"Could it be that the remaining survivors inside the school attracted them away?"
"That's possible. Either way, now's a good chance to enter X High School. From what I can tell, it doesn't seem very dangerous for now. I cleared the way here already. You, MDR, bring Candice and Old Bob over."
Lux spoke through the headset.
"Roger."
HK416 replied briefly and cut off the communication.
Before long, HK416 and MDR escorted Candice and Bob to Lux's position.
Upon seeing the lake formed by pooled blood and flesh on the ground, Candice gagged and vomited everything she had eaten that morning.
Bob's face turned pale as well. He closed his eyes and only opened them again after a long moment.
"Set up a perimeter. I'll use the binoculars to observe the interior."
Lux pulled out a pair of binoculars from his hiking backpack—the ones he had found yesterday at the outdoor gear shop—and looked toward the buildings inside X High School.
"What's the big deal? Just one zombie? Lux, you can handle that easily, right? This is way easier than when we grabbed the car yesterday."
MDR said confidently.
"...No, something's off. This place feels wrong. There should be over three thousand people in this school. Judging from all this blood, a lot of students must've died. So why are there barely any bodies, and only one zombie left? This is really suspicious."
"Lux, look! Fourth-floor window at ten o'clock—there's a light signal. Someone's using a mirror to reflect sunlight at us."
MDR suddenly said excitedly.
Lux immediately adjusted the binoculars and saw the reflected light she mentioned.
"Sir, let's go, quickly!"
Bob excitedly pulled out his hand axe and urged them on.
Although the dark-red, carpet-like sludge inside the campus filled him with dread, knowing that there were still living people in the school made him believe his daughter must still be alive.
"No matter what, this is our best chance to rescue the target. Let's begin the operation, com— Lux."
HK416 almost called him "Commander," but quickly corrected herself, remembering Lux didn't want his identity exposed in front of Bob.
"You're right… everyone be careful. Stay a bit farther back. I'll handle this zombie alone."
Lux nodded. He didn't know what had happened inside this high school, but the survivors there might very well include Bob's daughter.
He also wanted to leave this eerie place as soon as possible.
Drawing his katana, Lux was the first to step into the campus of X High School.
The fact that there was only one zombie made him even more alert. If something went wrong, it would definitely be related to that lone zombie.
The sticky sensation under his feet made him extremely uncomfortable. Although his military boots prevented direct contact with the gelatinous mass, it still felt like walking through a swamp, filling him with unease.
Katana in hand, Lux approached the solitary zombie. MDR and HK416 followed behind him with Bob and Candice.
When it noticed humans rushing toward it, the zombie—previously sluggish—suddenly accelerated severalfold, charging at Lux at something close to a hundred-meter sprint.
It was Lux's first time dealing with a zombie that fast, and he was genuinely shocked.
Fortunately, after being enhanced by the gene modification serum, his dynamic vision had improved drastically—he could fully track this speed.
Considering that this campus seemed to have only this one zombie left, it being faster than normal ones wasn't entirely unreasonable.