As the goblin fell to the ground, its jaw broken and its skin and muscles torn, Ashton let out a slight groan.

  [27/500]

  The trip was a bit annoying, but at least he got something out of fighting these monsters; some progress in this quest.

  He did collect some materials from each of them, but he had to leave a few things behind because it would have looked a bit too gruesome and would have taken too much time for the group that was staring at his back the entire time.

  None of the people that Ashton was leading were combatants. Sure, they had passed that first main quest and killed some monsters, but that was out of desperation and something that they had to do.

  Given the choice, they still wanted to pretend that doing something like what Ashton did was gruesome and unnecessary. Not that he cared. He just wanted to bring them to the primary school.

  They managed to avoid monsters relatively well, though obviously 'relatively well' always had its limits. When Ashton was alone and riding his bike, he could just speed past most monsters or simply divert his route so that he didn't have to bother with them, which is what he had done on his way to Market Street earlier. But right now, that wasn't an option. Even so, the monsters were relatively easy to avoid, for the most part.

  At least, if you knew the traits of different monsters, their habits, and what sort of traces they left behind. By just watching the scratches on the nearby cars, the footsteps left in the blood-soaked mud covering the roads, or the torn plants growing over the buildings at the side of the road, Ashton had a pretty good idea of the types of monsters around here and could direct the group to avoid catching too much attention.

  While Ashton had to kill as many monsters as he could for the quest, at the end of the day, it was more efficient to do that on his own than while he was protecting these guys.

  However, while it was annoying to do, something positive came out of this ordeal. Beyond just knowing that these people might be able to reunite with their loved ones.

  The counter in the quest given to him by the Executor of the End had gone up by 10. Protecting these people actively like this seemed to count as 'saving' them for the sake of the quest. If that was the case, then hopefully that part might be easier than he thought. The hardest part would be, as Ashton expected anyway, to find ten Marked.

  At least, no matter how annoying the quests were, they sounded pretty doable. And once he managed to properly escort these folk, Ashton could do what he needed to at the school and then move on. It wasn't far away, either. After turning around the corner, he could already see the school building stretching out over the brick walls, further reinforced through thick wooden boards.

  It looked like Rory had done quite a lot of work to protect the school already. The camp that the orcs had set up in front of the school had already been gotten rid of completely, too. As for the corpses of the monsters that had been stacked up nearby, it had paradoxically shrunken and grown while Ashton was gone.

  Scavenger monsters had clearly come here and already broke down most of the flesh, so all that was left were the bones that some beetles were still gnawing on. They would also break down with time, but it usually took a bit longer. However, from the amount of skulls in that pile, Ashton just knew that there were a good few more monsters in that pile than when he was here last time.

  Ashton knocked on the large gate that had been set up in front of the school. However, nobody seemed to respond. It was actually a bit creepy. He expected to hear at least a few people scuttering around the actual gate just to keep watch.

  "Okay everyone, I'll head in first," Ashton said to the group of ten standing eagerly behind him. "Something's wrong here."

  Maybe it was just a gut-feeling, but it hadn't been the first time that he encountered a camp of survivors that fell overnight. He just hoped that it wasn't the case here.

  Ashton looked at the wisp and directed it to move in front of the gate. He pointed the direction of the 'force' spell upward, and then quickly jumped up onto the elemental. Before his foot even touched the smooth surface, he could feel his body be thrown upward.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Beyond the gate, things looked even worse than Ashton had thought. There was nobody here. Tools and weapons were strewn around, but not a single person that was supposed to use them. There was blood, too... but no corpses.

  What happened here?

  Either way, for now, Ashton opened the gate for the group. No matter what it was, it was probably safer in here than out there, at least as long as Ashton was around.

  "Stay here. If something's wrong, just call me for me, I'll come right away." Ashton didn't even wait for a response before he started running around the outside of the school. The small garden where Poppy had been born was repurposed to grow vegetables, and the playground was sadly torn down. Instead, the wood was used to build more fortifications. But the real focus here was Rory's shack.

  There was something standing in front of it. Some... goblins?

  "There's no way they ran away scared because of some goblins..." Ashton whispered. He quickly approached the shack, and before the monsters even turned around, he crushed one of their skulls with his staff. The wisp shot at one of them as well, using the force spell on impact to fully concuss it. If it wasn't dead, then-

  At least, that was Ashton's thought process at first. But instead, something more surprising happened. The goblin's head was torn off and was shot away.

  "... What?" he whispered. That definitely wasn't normal. The impact of the wisp, especially with the force spell, wasn't weak, but it wasn't strong enough to tear a head off. Something was wrong. He realised when he only saw two messages in his peripheral that something was really wrong. Ashton killed two goblins with his staff, and the third was decapitated. But there were just two death messages. And they called for even more trouble.

  [You have killed a [Zombie Goblin] and offered its life to the [Daughter of the Scarlet Heart]]

  [You have killed a [Zombie Goblin] and offered its life to the [Daughter of the Scarlet Heart]]

  "... Zombies? Seriously?" Ashton's face went pale. How the hell did zombies get in here? There wasn't a sign of them outside. So either, this all started in here, or all the zombies outside of the school were eradicated already before they could spread too far out.

  Zombies were genuinely terrifying at lower levels.

  Once people got a bit stronger and their resilience stat increased a bit more, they tended to get a bit of a resistance to these things, but not now. Was the council seriously throwing both a wyvern, a massive lizardman tribe, and zombies at them at the same time? What the fuck was wrong with this difficulty?

  In Lumia, there was a fairly large town, a former capital of one of that world's smaller countries, that had almost completely fallen to zombies. Once the infection spread enough, all the new monsters that spawned were already zombified. This was a truly terrifying type of monster. And if they were here...

  [You have killed a [Zombie Goblin] and offered its life to the [Daughter of the Scarlet Heart]]

  Ashton crushed the decapitated head of the zombie goblin with his staff. They could only be killed if their head was fully destroyed. Well, this guy would have died after a little while anyway, since nothing could survive with just a head, but it would have taken a while.

  He quickly knocked on the door of Rory's shack, "Yo, someone's in there, right? This is Ashton."

  Only a moment later, the door was swung right open. Inside was Rory, with a couple of kids huddled together in the corner, shaking and clearly scared.

  "Oh thank fuck, it's you, laddie!" Rory breathed a sigh of relief, looking at the corpses on the ground. But a moment later, he glanced around the rest of the open area, seeing that it was completely abandoned. "Is everyone else really gone?"

  Ashton sighed, "What happened here, Rory?"

  "... Some guy came here, died, and then got better. That's what," Rory grumbled into his beard. "Managed to get some of 'em in here, but most of the bairn were shoved back into the school when... some of the teachers turned."

  With an annoyed snarl, Ashton looked at the monsters. "How did goblins get in here? Zombies can't resurrect those that are already dead."

  "... There's, uhm... Listen... One of the adults that came after you left was tryin' to figure out a way to get them to join our side. Had a class called 'Tamer', apparently."

  Ashton didn't even need to ask what Rory meant when he said that they 'had' the tamer class. "It's possible to tame humanoid monsters, but it's much, much harder. So these goblins were captured so they could try it anyway?"

  Rory slowly nodded. "The body of the guy himself's somewhere 'round here."

  Dead already, then. Good. When people turned into zombies, their skills and abilities were sometimes kept intact. A zombie tamer would be fucking horrible.

  "What about the 'guy that got better'?"

  "... Inside." Rory looked at the school building, and Ashton grimaced already. Fuck.

  "What was he liked after he turned?"

  "... Different. Looked a ton more lucid than others that turned."

  Ashton placed his face into his hands for a moment to think. "Alright. For now, Rory, please stay here. I'll bring a few people with family at the school here in a second, I brought them here from the camp at Market Street. They're non-combatants, so they can't fight on their own."

  "Oi, neither can I!"

  "Yes, but together you should be able to protect yourselves," Ashton sighed. "Just cover up as much skin as you can. If you get bit or scratched, worst-case, cut off the infected part. You should have the strength for that by now."

  Rory's face went pale. "Lad, you can't expect me to do that... I'm nae doctor."

  "If it comes up, today you are," Ashton turned around. He had to get the others here quickly so he could deal with the 'Zombie Man' inside.

  This wasn't just a random infection. It seemed like some psycho had such a zombie-like personality, that after becoming a Marked, they fully turned into one.