Because of how bad the situation had become, none of them had any appetite for lunch. This was especially true for Tsunade. Even though Leo still prepared food for her, she spent a full hour without finishing a single piece of bread.
The reason they didn't light a fire to cook was simple. All three of them were afraid of alerting the zombies, letting them discover their position before the Blood Moon, which would force them into an early fight.
Cold canned meat and water did nothing to raise morale. Instead, it made Leo feel a bit drowsy. But with his nerves stretched tight, he didn't dare sleep at all. The Blood Moon was clearly arriving earlier than before—falling asleep now would be suicidal.
Kelly, on the other hand, was in much better shape mentally. Although she'd never seen a scene like this either, a seasoned gunner who had lived through countless battles had a far stronger heart. She could stay relatively calm, eating while observing the movement patterns of the zombies in the distance.
Unlike Leo, she was curious about where all these zombies were heading. The direction they were moving in was the same route she and the others had taken earlier, yet back then they hadn't encountered anything close to this number. That made no sense to her.
What puzzled her even more was how the zombies deliberately avoided cliffs they couldn't cross.
That was clearly strange. If the zombies could see the terrain ahead, then Leo and the others, who had been watching them this whole time, should have been discovered long ago.
But if they couldn't see…
Then how did they know they couldn't cross the cliffs?
"This world really is bizarre…"
Absentmindedly spinning the revolver in her hand, Kelly continued observing the canyon they had dug into a mess of pits and trenches, along with the rather crude explosive traps Leo had left behind.
These zombies had no weapons and no special abilities. Even if there were hundreds or thousands of them, they were no more threatening than a battalion of Kalett soldiers charging in.
Kelly had faced hundreds, even thousands, of Kalett soldiers more than once. And those enemies had firearms and siege capabilities. These zombies had neither ranged attacks nor real breaching power.
She wasn't afraid.
Still, chewing on cold canned meat while staring at the endless horde, Kelly couldn't help but ask,
"How did you survive last time?"
Leo shook his head. He honestly didn't know how he had survived either. To be precise, he felt that even climbing onto the gas station roof back then had been a miracle. Surviving an attack by that many zombies afterward was something he couldn't explain at all.
And whatever happened last time clearly couldn't be relied on now, because everything was different.
Last time, it hadn't started this early.
And it hadn't escalated this fast.
"I don't know. After I climbed onto the top of that gas station, I was basically about to pass out. When I woke up again, it was already the next day. I have no idea how I survived. I think maybe the fire burned the zombies to death, but I don't have any proof."
Kelly nodded. She remembered clearly that on the day they arrived, the ground had been littered with charred corpses of all kinds. If that was the case, then it made sense.
Even if they didn't know why those corpses later disappeared, at least it explained how they were destroyed.
"So that's why you piled so much wood and fuel down there?"
Looking at the wooden structures and gunpowder traps below, Kelly nodded again. She was really just making conversation, trying to help ease Leo's nerves.
"Yeah… I just don't know if it'll actually work. Or if we need even more fuel."
Leo swallowed, his eyes constantly flicking between the time display and the moon in the sky. Red was steadily creeping across the surface of the moon.
He didn't dare gamble on whether something even worse would appear tonight. Based on game logic alone, it was practically guaranteed.
He gripped the gun in his hands tightly, hoping it could give him at least a little sense of security.
But soon, he found another way to distract himself.
Taking out several empty cans, Leo began filling them with gunpowder, setting each one aside after it was done. Without grenades, this was the best substitute he had.
As for how to detonate them later…
Leo didn't really expect these to function as proper grenades. At worst, they could ignite some wood.
Kelly, however, walked over, pulled out some scraps of paper, and began helping him make fuses.
The crude fuses didn't allow for lighting and throwing safely, but they could be tossed into existing flames to ignite and explode. And even without fire, Kelly could simply shoot them midair with her revolver to trigger them.
So the two of them continued making gunpowder cans while keeping an eye on the zombies around them.
As the blood-red glow intensified, the zombies' mobility and awareness increased as well. Several times, while observing, Leo and Kelly nearly got spotted. If they hadn't quickly pulled back their heads and eyes, they might have already drawn attention.
Time crawled forward.
When hunger returned and they reluctantly ate a bit more, Leo watched as the moon—
Little by little—
Turned completely red.
Almost instantly, every zombie they could see—and those they couldn't—let out horrific howls. Under the Blood Moon and swirling yellow sand, they all snapped their heads toward Leo's position and charged.
Their faces twisted into terrifying expressions. Their half-rotting bodies, bathed in crimson moonlight, looked like monsters surging straight out of hell.
In a single moment, they all turned as one and sprinted toward Leo's location at a speed that would make even Usain Bolt feel ashamed.
The zombies no longer cared about the towering artificial cliffs. They hurled themselves forward in waves. Many in the first group shattered their legs from the fall, only to be trampled into true death by those behind them.
And yet they kept charging.
As they ran, green light began to flicker within their bodies. Leo saw it clearly—their torsos, eyes, mouths, and arms all glowed with an eerie green radiance as they moved.
The yellow earth was instantly swallowed by a black tide.
Kelly instinctively pulled the trigger and shouted,
"Open fire!"
Leo did the same. With the system's assistance, the machine gun spat out lethal muzzle flashes. Bullets tore into zombie bodies, knocking some down, blowing limbs apart.
But it was useless.
Together, Leo and Kelly could drop more than twenty zombies in an instant—but compared to the endless horde, it was nothing. In the brief moments they spent reloading, zombies had already charged halfway through the artificial canyon.
The wooden traps were obliterated on impact. Even when sharpened stakes pierced zombie bodies, they didn't care. Some were pinned in place, only to be trampled or pushed aside by the rushing mass behind them.
Leo pulled out a Molotov instinctively—but Kelly stopped him.
"Don't panic! Wait until they reach the bottom before throwing them! Don't light them yourself—I'll ignite them with bullets!"
She spoke while firing nonstop. With her exceptional marksmanship, every shot blew apart a zombie's head.
She wasn't panicking, but she was worried Leo might fumble and ignite a Molotov too early. He clearly wasn't trained for this kind of combat.
"Okay."
Leo took a deep breath, put the Molotovs away for now, and continued firing alongside her. Zombies kept falling under their attacks.
Still, it wasn't enough.
They couldn't form an effective fire net. The 15-round magazine capacity was deadly. Every two or three seconds of firing required two or three seconds of reloading, completely breaking sustained suppression.
That was why the zombies kept advancing.
If they had even two modern machine guns, they could have created an impenetrable wall of fire and cut the horde down relentlessly.
Gunfire echoed without pause.
No matter how hard they tried, their efforts barely mattered against the infinite tide. Beneath the cliff, crippled zombies piled up thickly, while new ones reached their position and began attacking the untouched soil beneath their feet.
They were trying to climb.
Or dig.
They wanted to reach Leo and the others.
It shouldn't have been possible—but when Leo and Kelly realized what was happening, they exchanged a glance and saw the same thought in each other's eyes.
This was bad.
That soil was their backup escape route. Beneath it was their underground shelter. If it was breached, they'd lose their last retreat.
"Damn it! These things just won't stop!" Kelly cursed angrily as she watched the unending horde rushing closer.
It made no sense.
The zombies' relentless charges didn't thin their numbers at all. Instead, they let even more zombies from afar close the distance, as if the entire world's undead had learned their location at once.
"Throw the Molotovs!"
Gritting her teeth, Kelly gave the order.
Leo didn't hesitate. He threw two bottles out the window. Just before they hit the ground, Kelly drew her revolver.
Six shots rang out.
The Molotovs shifted midair and ignited, forming a blazing curtain of fire that washed over the charging zombies below.
At the same time, six zombies' heads exploded.
In the blink of an eye, Kelly's revolver was reloaded, and she shouted again,
"More! Or it won't catch!"
Leo hurled twelve more Molotovs in pairs. Kelly's revolver blurred into streaks of motion, igniting each bottle while continuously blowing apart zombie skulls.
The darkness was instantly lit up.
Leo could clearly see the zombies below now—their already grotesque faces twisting even more hideously in the dancing flames.
Experience notifications flashed in the corner of his vision, but he had no time to care. Using the firelight, he continued picking off approaching zombies.
Fire. Shoot. Reload. Fire. Shoot.
The motions became mechanical.
He no longer knew how many shots he'd fired or how many times he'd repaired his pipe machine gun.
He only knew one thing.
It wasn't working.
The pit filled with more and more zombies. Even now, distant hordes continued to surge forward. His nerves dulled under the endless repetition, his ears filled with gunfire and screams.
His mind began to blur. The sustained pressure nearly crushed him.
Then—
The entire canyon shook.
Leo's foggy mind snapped awake as he saw countless zombies hurled into the air. Nails whistled through the sky, some slamming into their steel walls.
A massive section of the canyon was cleared. Burning zombies were flung into the towering pile of corpses near the cliff, igniting even more undead.
The explosion reignited his spirit. He turned and fired again with renewed fury, mowing down zombies climbing toward their steel shelter.
But after he killed over a hundred more—
Something happened.
Whether it was structural failure or sheer bad luck, a zombie managed to grab one of the steel plates embedded deep in the soil. As it was shot dead, it tore the plate loose.
Leo froze.
They had known this would happen eventually—but seeing their escape route severed still broke something inside him.
He began hurling gunpowder-filled cans nonstop, smashing them into burning zombies.
The explosions were weak. At best, they flipped three or four zombies. Most only produced sparks, ignited a few nearby corpses, and fizzled out.
Kelly didn't stop him. She simply kept firing, letting Leo vent his desperation.
It changed nothing.
The dead became stepping stones and shields for the living. Half an hour later, another steel plate was torn free.
Then a third.
A fourth.
Each one came loose faster than the last.
When the sixth plate fell, zombies had already breached the soil wall, tearing apart the fortress from within.
Leo threw can after can, but it was pure desperation.
When he ran out of explosives, the shelter beneath them collapsed.
Steel and soil caved in. Zombies near the steel house dropped three to four meters, but Leo and Kelly's hearts sank completely.
A slope of densely packed zombies now led straight to their steel house.
Leo glanced at the time—not even ten yet—and pulled out every remaining Molotov.
Kelly took one too, staring at the endless monsters ahead.
They couldn't stop them anymore.
At least, thanks to Leo's insistence during construction, no system blocks were exposed on the outside. Even now, they could hold on a little longer.
Molotovs rained down the zombie slope. They stopped conserving firepower. Leo even threw out entire bundles of gunpowder.
Watching sacks of black powder scatter through the air, Kelly actually twitched her lips into a smile.
"At times like this, only this world could be so ridiculous."
She fired her revolver.
The bullet tore through the burlap sack, blasting gunpowder everywhere. The airborne powder ignited instantly, forming a rain of fire.
The Molotovs ignited and exploded in succession, painting the black night in eerie, hellish colors.
The flames burned fiercely, nearly lighting up the entire canyon. Leo threw more gunpowder—and in a moment of madness, even tossed out most of his wooden boards.
Fire and debris rained down.
Yet even this hellscape couldn't stop the zombies.
They charged tirelessly, trampling flames, their bodies burning without slowing down.
Finally, the first zombie reached the steel house.
Its arm slammed into the thick steel plate with a thunderous clang, snapping instantly. It didn't stop. It struck again with its other arm, which also fell limp.
Then it smashed its head forward.
They never stopped firing, doing everything they could to prevent zombies from reaching the shooting windows.
But in less than ten minutes, it became pointless.
Dead zombies clogged the firing ports. They had to seal them shut and listen helplessly as the undead hammered on the steel house, thudding endlessly.
With no view outside, they could only hear the noise spreading, climbing—
Until even the ceiling echoed with impacts.
"This is… really hopeless," Kelly muttered.
Leo silently set down his gun and tossed her a grenade.
"If the house breaks… this'll be more useful than a gun."
"Thanks."
Kelly caught it and flashed him a playful smile—though no one could see it in the darkness.
Then silence fell.
But in that silence, Leo heard sobbing in the darkness, mixed with near-delirious moans.
He turned toward Kelly—
And realized the sound wasn't hers.
It was Tsunade's.