보관함
검색
홈 / Fantasy / Apocalypse My First Skill Was Immortality / Chapter Twenty-Three: The Ones Who Didn't Come Back

공유

Chapter Twenty-Three: The Ones Who Didn't Come Back

작가: Jake
last update 게시일: 2026-10-23 17:01:34

The first thing Jake learned about a monster attacking a settlement was that surviving it didn't mean the danger was over. The second was that people started counting the dead before anyone knew there were dead to count.

"Thirty-six accounted for," Marcus called from the east yard. "Three injured. Two still missing."

Graham stood beside the broken west fence, staring at the wide dip in the ground where the Burrower had vanished. Dust coated his jacket. A thin cut ran across his forehead, but he
이 작품을 무료로 읽으실 수 있습니다
QR 코드를 스캔하여 앱을 다운로드하세요
이전 챕터 다음 챕터
잠긴 챕터

최신 챕터

  • Apocalypse My First Skill Was Immortality    Chapter Thirty-Five: The Fever

    The fever came in the afternoon. It started with a shiver at the east fence, something Rebecca waved off as the wind. By the time they got her back to the side room, her teeth were chattering and the skin of her forehead burned under Jake's hand like a stove lid. "A hundred and three," Claire said, reading the thermometer with her mouth in a flat line. "And rising." Nora already had a basin of cold water and a stack of rags. They laid Rebecca on the cot, stripped the blanket back, and pressed wet cloths to her neck, wrists, and the soles of her feet. She moaned and turned her face toward the wall. The gray line on her arm had split. Two thin tendrils crept up from the wound, one toward the elbow, one toward the shoulder, faint as pencil marks and unmistakable. Jake stood by the door with his hands hanging useless at his sides. He hadn't felt this kind of helpless since he was sixteen. "Talk to me," he said. "What can we do?" "Not much." Claire didn't look up. "That's the honest

  • Apocalypse My First Skill Was Immortality    Chapter Thirty-Four: The Last Normal Morning

    Rebecca woke before dawn and asked for tea.Jake had spent the night in the chair by the wall, half awake, listening to the hum under the floor. It had faded around four in the morning, quietly, like a tired engine. When he heard the cot creak, he was on his feet before he'd decided to be."Easy," Rebecca said. Her voice was hoarse but clear. "I'm only awake. I haven't grown claws.""That's not funny.""It's a little funny."He untied her wrists himself, slowly, with the soft cloth strips still warm from her skin. She flexed her hands and looked at the faint red marks around her wrists. "Remind me to complain to Claire about the knots," she said. "She ties like a nurse and a jailer at the same time."It was the first joke he'd heard anyone tell since Emily died. He laughed, a short, rusty sound, and felt something in his chest unlock.The guard at the door found them a kettle. They had no real tea, only a tin of pine needles and dried mint that Nora called "a hot drink if you squint."

  • Apocalypse My First Skill Was Immortality    Chapter Thirty-Three: Rebecca's Fever

    Maya didn't ask again on the walk home.They left the annex at dusk, a ragged line of people moving down empty streets with Marcus's truck rumbling behind. Peter carried Sophie on his shoulders. Laura held Ben's good hand. Walter led, Kai limped at the rear with a bandaged forearm and his eyes on the ground. The Stalkers on the rooftops had vanished while Jake was dead, and nobody had explained why. Nobody wanted to.Jake drifted to the back of the line and Maya fell in beside him, a careful arm's length away."You don't have to tell me," she said quietly."I know.""I'm only saying it because I saw the trace stop. I wasn't trying to catch you in anything."He kept walking. Ahead, Ethan glanced back once, pretended he hadn't, and turned around again. A block went by, then another. A bus rotted at the curb. A dog's collar lay in the gutter with the leash still attached."It's my Awakening," Jake said at last. "If something kills me, I come back. Ten minutes later. Healed."Maya didn't

  • Apocalypse My First Skill Was Immortality    Chapter Thirty-Two: The Wrong Kind of Rescue

    Walter's radio crackled at four in the afternoon. He'd sent one short burst from the lobby when they first got inside, then switched it off to save the battery. Now the speaker hissed, spat static, and Graham's voice came out of it in pieces. "...truck on the way... fifteen minutes... stay where you are..." "Tell him no," Jake said. "Tell him to stay at the Ridge." Walter hit the button and shouted. The radio only hissed. A last chirp of static, and then the battery light went dark. Ethan swore. "He's sending people into that." Jake was already moving. He took the stairs to the roof two at a time, Maya right behind him. The access door groaned open onto flat gray tar and a low parapet. The plaza lay spread below them, empty and bright in the late sun. Around its edges, on every roof, the Stalkers sat folded like cranes. Thirty of them now. Maybe more. None had moved in an hour. A flatbed truck turned onto the far end of the street. It came slowly, with Marcus in the passenger

  • Apocalypse My First Skill Was Immortality    Chapter Thirty-One: The Building That Stayed Standing

    "Run," Jake said.Nobody asked questions. Kai scooped Ben off his feet with the splinted arm still tucked against his chest. Ethan tightened his hold on Sophie. Walter grabbed Peter's sleeve and Laura's wrist and pulled. Maya was already sprinting, one hand trailing along the wall as if the hum under the street were a rope she could follow."Where?" Ethan shouted."There!" Maya pointed down the block.At the end of the street stood a gray concrete building with no windows. The buildings around it had burned or collapsed or been torn open. This one stood whole, flat-faced and ugly, with a steel door and a wide open plaza in front. A faded sign hung over the entrance. A.R.C. REGIONAL MONITORING, ANNEX 4."Open ground," Jake said, and understood why Maya had chosen it. Pale Stalkers hated open ground. They needed walls and dark. In a wide plaza they were faster than people, but not by as much.The first one dropped off the laundromat roof behind them. Then another. They hit the pavement

  • Apocalypse My First Skill Was Immortality    Chapter Thirty: The Signal Under the City

    Maya set the badge on the workshop bench next to a creased photograph and didn't say anything for a while.Jake stood across from her with his arms crossed. Graham leaned in the doorway. Ethan was eating a heel of bread and trying to look like he wasn't hovering. The badge was ordinary plastic, scratched along one edge, clipped to a frayed strap. A.R.C. in small gray letters. ADRIAN under the photo. Under that, RESEARCH STAFF, LEVEL 3."I found this at the warehouse," Maya said, tapping the photograph. "The same box as the inventory sheet. I thought it was junk. Then the man came back with the badge."The photo showed six people in white coats outside a brick building. Jake knew the tall one on the left immediately. His father had one hand in his pocket and the stiff half-smile of a man who hated being photographed. At the far edge of the frame, mostly turned away, stood a man in a dark coat. A pale line ran from his temple to his jaw."That's him," Ethan said. "That's the guy.""It's

더보기

다른 추천

좋은 소설을 무료로 찾아 읽어보세요
GoodNovel 앱에서 수많은 인기 소설을 무료로 즐기세요! 마음에 드는 작품을 다운로드하고, 언제 어디서나 편하게 읽을 수 있습니다
앱에서 작품을 무료로 읽어보세요
앱에서 읽으려면 QR 코드를 스캔하세요.
DMCA.com Protection Status