novellhall Chapter 75 75: Weird zombie
Chapter 75 75: Weird zombie
Lilianne was still trying to say something, one of Ragnar's men raising his voice with her, when the air suddenly shifted.
Not with a bang. Not an explosion - just a subtle tremor, the kind most ordinary people would miss.
But Leon and Natalia felt it instantly, like the weight of the room had moved.
Roland was gone.
He didn't take a step.
He didn't blur.
He simply stopped being where he'd been.
For a fraction of a second the corridor felt emptier, and then…
Thud.
One body hit the floor.
Thud.
A second.
A third.
A fourth.
The Ragnar men who'd been standing tall a moment ago collapsed like puppets with their strings cut, weapons slipping from limp hands and clattering across the tiles.
No scream even had time to form.
Lilianne froze mid-word.
Leon and Natalia turned at the same time.
Roland stood several meters away as if he'd never moved, leaning lightly on his cane, his face just as calm as before.
The rest of the survivors recoiled on instinct - backs pressing into walls, someone letting out a small, involuntary whimper.
"A-Are they dead?" someone whispered from the crowd.
Roland looked at Leon and Natalia, as if he were answering them rather than everyone else.
"You don't need to worry," he said evenly. "They're not dead. I just stunned them for a while."
He sighed faintly.
"I'm too old to listen to more nonsense than the kind Marek already produces."
Silence flooded the corridor.
Even Lilianne didn't dare speak.
Roland didn't wait for a reaction. He turned and walked deeper into the base, tapping his cane against the floor at his unhurried pace - as if he'd ended a tedious discussion, not neutralized four grown men in under a second.
Leon stared at the unconscious bodies for a moment.
No blood.
No broken limbs.
Just limp silhouettes and quiet.
He looked at Natalia.
Tension still lingered in her eyes, but it was quickly replaced by controlled indifference.
"That solves one problem," she said softly.
"For now," Leon replied, nodding once.
A moment later they followed Roland, stepping past the bodies.
Leon glanced down again, checking their condition - breathing steady, pulses present, no obvious internal trauma. Roland really had only switched them off.
They moved deeper into the building.
Ragnar's base was more organized than Leon expected. One room held food supplies - stacked neatly, clearly separated. The best items up front, the worst shoved to the back. Another room had makeshift sleeping areas - mattresses for the chosen, bare floor for everyone else. In one corner, a small weapons cache: improvised metal rods, knives, a few shields made from doors.
Leon kept scanning as they went.
***
The fourth floor had once been the building's showcase level - wide windows, heavy curtains, long conference tables, and a few soft chairs along the walls, like deans and professors were meant to debate grants and university rankings here…
Not how to survive another night in a world where the dead stood up and ate the living.
Now Leon, Natalia, and Roland sat at one of those tables.
The rest of the room was dim. Light spilled in through the tall windows, slicing through dust hanging in the air. Several meters away, groups of survivors huddled near the walls. Most of them really were women - young, in student clothes: some in sweatpants, some in oversized hoodies, several with the hollow, bruised look of people who hadn't slept properly in days.
Leon connected the dots quickly.
There was a women's dorm nearby.
Ragnar must have gone there in the first days of the chaos - killed as many as he could, then "saved" the rest, building his little structure of power on fear and force. No wonder nearly seventy percent of the people in this base were young female students.
Natalia sat straight-backed, hands resting on the table, eyes focused and cold.
Roland leaned back slightly, like they were discussing faculty reorganization rather than taking over a group of thirty-plus terrified people.
"Transport," Leon said calmly. "We can't move all of them at once. Too much risk of pulling a larger horde."
Natalia nodded.
"We'll split them into smaller groups. First the ones who can walk without help. Then the rest."
Roland tapped his cane lightly on the floor.
"And we leave someone here temporarily. A power vacuum is always a risk for chaos."
Leon remembered the looks on the people by the wall.
They were scared. It was obvious.
Whenever he raised his eyes, several people immediately lowered theirs. Two men who'd belonged to Ragnar's circle stood stiff as if at attention, like one careless movement might summon shadow and black spikes.
No one raised their voice.
No one protested.
Every single one of them carried fear of what they'd seen on the street fifteen minutes ago…
Of a young man watching another human get eaten alive without a flicker in his face.
Leon knew they saw him.
And he also knew he wasn't a savior in their eyes.
He was something dangerous.
Then a quiet, slightly trembling voice interrupted from the doorway.
"E-Excuse me…"
The word hung in the air like it was afraid to step any farther.
Leon looked up.
A young woman stood in the doorway - nineteen, maybe twenty. Her shoulders were slightly hunched, hands clenched in the fabric of her sweatshirt like she might bolt at any moment.
Roland offered her a gentle smile.
Not mocking. Not cold.
Just… human.
"You don't have to be afraid," he said calmly, voice soft but steady. "None of us here are Ragnar. You can come in."
The girl swallowed, as if introducing herself in front of three Evolvers took courage.
"My name is Karolina," she said quietly, though her voice steadied on the second attempt.
She looked at Natalia first, then at Leon.
"Could you… if it's possible… go to the women's dorm?" she asked after a beat. "There are people there. Not everyone managed to escape. They're probably… starving by now."
The room went even quieter.
Natalia's brow lifted slightly.
"Ragnar didn't clear that area?" she asked, genuine surprise flashing in her eyes.
If it was true, then several days had already passed since the start of the apocalypse. Without supplies, without support, without access to real food, people trapped on the upper floors of a dorm would be in terrible condition. Even rationing, even desperately looting vending machines and common kitchens - how could they have lasted this long?
Karolina shook her head.
"No. Actually… the K…" She cut herself off, like even the word was shameful. "Ragnar made it to the fourth floor before he had to retreat. He never dared go higher. He said those fucking zombies up there were… too weird. And terrifying."
Leon didn't move, but his expression shifted by a fraction.
An image flashed in his mind: the giant Crimson Horned Boar, its body still lying a few streets away. A monster that smashed buildings like matchsticks and made even Ragnar run just by existing.
If there was something like that in the dorm…
Or worse -
If the beast had already undergone its first evolution like the boar, but instead of investing in raw strength it had gone into agility, speed… maybe even mental abilities -
Fighting in narrow dorm corridors would be a completely different story than an open street.
And for the first time since Ragnar died, Leon wasn't one hundred percent sure the outcome would be obvious.
Natalia narrowed her eyes, catching the subtle change in his face.
She knew him well enough now to recognize when something genuinely interested him.
"You're thinking the same thing, aren't you?" she asked coolly. "That whatever's on the upper floors might be a monster on the level of that giant boar you killed earlier."
Roland, who'd been standing off to the side near the wall and hadn't spoken, visibly shifted at the mention of the giant boar. He looked at Natalia, then slowly at Leon.
Surprise flickered in his eyes.
Leon didn't deny it.
He didn't laugh.
He didn't brush it off.
Roland's brow furrowed as the facts began clicking together in his mind - the giant boar lying a few streets away, the force Ragnar had spoken of, the fear even the "King" had tried to hide. And now the same beast was being referenced like its death was already settled history.
And if Leon really was the one who had brought it down…
A cold shiver ran up Roland's spine.
For a moment he studied Leon more intently, but in the end he said nothing. He kept the thought to himself.
After a brief silence, Leon nodded.
"I'm at least eighty percent sure," he said in a calm, deep voice, "that the zombie - or whatever monster is lurking on the higher levels - is a creature of the Highest Order."
Roland tilted his head.
"Highest Order?"
Leon placed his hands on the table.
"When I killed that boar, I got a System message. Its level - and its name - indicated a clear evolution within the first phase. Its body was saturated with mana far beyond what we've seen in normal mutated animals. It wasn't a random mutant. It crossed a threshold."
He paused.
"If the System works logically," Leon continued, the tone of someone building a theory from observation, "then monsters don't grow in a straight line. They make qualitative leaps. Evolutions. Something like… orders of existence. Normal zombies, then mutated ones, then something that breaks past basic biology."
In truth, he was leaning on what Valeria had told him.
But he framed it as speculation.
A hypothesis.
Not a revelation.
"If Ragnar reached the fourth floor and turned back, saying the zombies were 'weird,' then he ran into something that clearly outclassed him," Leon added. "And since he was strong enough to dominate most ordinary Evolvers around here, that means whatever it is sits a rung higher."
Natalia stayed silent.
So did Roland.
But their eyes shifted slightly.
If Leon's theory was correct, it meant one thing.
To kill a beast like that boar, Leon's real combat capability had to be far beyond what his level alone suggested.
He wasn't just "a bit stronger."
He was something else.
Leon looked at Natalia, using the pause.
"I know you want to save those people," he said bluntly. "And I get it. But I'm going to be honest with you. I'm not risking my life fighting something of that caliber just to rescue people I don't know… and who probably won't even be able to say thank you without their voice shaking."
There was no contempt in it.
Just calculation.
"If it really is a creature of the Highest Order, fighting in the dorm's cramped corridors could mean casualties. And I'm not making mistakes because of emotions."