System Breaker: Surviving Apocalypse with Nine-Tailed Kitsune-Chapter 33: Citadels

Damon’s mind raced with questions as he stared at the two citadels. Both looked equal in distance away from him, though that wasn’t on his mind right now. What did, however, linger in his head was the ultimate condition in the events of a failure.

Death, a thing so final that it made him doubt if it was even real.

But before his mind could reach any concrete conclusion, Kitsune spoke.

"Sooner than I thought..." Her voice was barely more than a whisper. She seemed to be talking more to herself than to Damon, though he could still hear her quite well.

"You knew about this?"

"Not exactly. I knew about phases, but the specifics are different in every world."

Damon frowned. It’s not like knowing about the looming death sentence before would’ve changed anything, but he still felt like that was an important piece of information he would’ve liked to have known.

"The rules are simple," She suddenly continued, "Reach the objective or die. That’s how these things play out."

"Was it the same for your world?"

Damon’s question seemed to have caught her off guard slightly, as his usually fiercely composed companion took a moment too long to answer.

"More or less..."

Another thing on the back of his mind was the reward, which was the Ability Card. Although it was definitely a great deal, it fell a bit short, considering that the penalty for failure was death.

But before dwelling on any rewards and penalties, there was something else that gnawed on Damon’s mind, a far more current problem, the distance.

Right now, the gap between the ground and the islands was at least five hundred meters. Though there were buildings as tall as this before the apocalypse, they all seemed to have been completely destroyed, and now, above the city’s skyline, there was no structure anywhere near either of the floating islands.

"So... Which Citadel will you pick?" Kitsune suddenly asked, cutting his thoughts short.

Damon raised a brow. "What?"

"Both of them are at a similar distance away. Though the one there..." Kitsune glanced at the Citadel, which was floating near the inner city, "Seems to be near the Central Station. Perhaps you could even reunite with-" before she could finish her suggestion, Damon turned toward the other Citadel.

"We will go to the one there."

’I know the outskirts better than the city,’ he reasoned to himself, though that was only half the reason. The other half was that he wasn’t keen on going anywhere near the Central Station.

His duel with Kade still lingered in his mind. The more he tried to forget, the more images of the battle against his best friend returned. His departure from Central Station wasn’t one to be proud of, either. The moment Kade’s lifeless body slumped to the ground, Damon left. Without saying a word, without even a second look back, he left and never returned.

Kitsune didn’t ask at first, but as the weeks passed, she had given Damon occasional suggestions that surviving in a group was easier, and that’s what she wanted him to do more than anything, survive.

"Let’s pack whatever we need and let’s move. Don’t leave anything of value, we won’t be coming back here." Damon said as he strolled back into his shelter. He packed the cans of food he had stacked over the last few weeks, along with a couple of bottles of water, and he was ready to leave.

Kitsune had only packed one thing, her nightgown. Damon tried to protest, but she was determined for him to pack it in his bag, and so in the end, he had no choice but to simply pack it.

With that, the pair was ready to leave. Kitsune turned to her fox form and leapt on Damon’s shoulder as he began to walk toward the outskirts.

Over the four weeks he had been staying at the shelter, Damon had already hunted every monster nearby, so the first half of the journey was quite uneventful.

But as the distance had shortened in half, a sudden faint sound made Damon freeze mid-step.

It was a low rumble, almost undistinctible despite the silence that filled this part of the city.

Damon’s head whipped around, noting the broken buildings, toppled cars, stained streets, but no signs of any monsters.

’What the hell is that sound...?’

He continued to listen, the sound quickly began to grow louder and louder. His head continued to whip around, his eyes searching for any upcoming monsters until a sudden realisation struck him.

The sound... it wasn’t a living being, it was mechanical.

At that moment, in the far end of the street, he spotted an object moving quickly toward him.

’People?’

He himself wasn’t sure why he rushed to a nearby building before he already leapt over the broken window and pressed himself against the wall, peaking over the edge as the mechanical rumbling of an engine became unmistakable.

Suddenly, just as the object reached the point where he had stood a second ago, tyres screeched across the street as the motorcycle came to a stop.

Peeking over the edge, Damon saw a single figure step out of the motorcycle.

She had short black hair that barely reached the bottom of her ears. She wore a tight leather outfit that showed off her curves, paired with knee-high boots that made her long legs even more irresistible. Belt with a gun holster wrapped tightly around her curves, adding a tough edge to her look, one that made her impossible to ignore.

For a moment, she simply stood there until her head suddenly snapped toward the direction where Damon was hiding.

He whipped back as soon as her head turned.

’Did she see me?’ he lingered on the question before shaking the thought away.

’No, there’s no way.’ He told himself as he began to peek over the edge of the wall, only to find a gun pointed straight at his head, and a pair of black eyes staring right at him.