Hamad was a normal policeman. 

Even though he wasn’t a high ranking officer, he was a responsible man. He had a loving family in Johor, a grandmother at Lipis, and relatives in Taiping. Right now, all he wanted was to go home. 

Though it couldn’t be said he was a special case. Everywhere the survivors were prayers for a return to normalcy resounded. Unfortunately, their prayers fell upon deaf ears.

All around the world the dead were rising and attacking the living. Chaos was omnipresent.

Luckily, humanity still had some hope. They had hope found in facing a common enemy. They had hope to unite against the walking dead. They had hope to rise against the man-eating beasts.

From Hamad’s perspective, the law of the jungle wouldn’t ever work. Humans were too complicated for something so simple.

During the fall, he was patrolling Joy Park, and given his combat training he was able to rescue a few people. Naturally, he became their leader. 

And on the first night, those 12 people, together, and watched as the dead arose as zombies. 

Unlike Azief’s conclusion that it was some alien experiment, Hamad and Co. believed that the zombies were due to some mutant virus. Perhaps he was influenced by his… macabre taste in stories, however, as he was a big fan of zombie apocalypse stories.

His right and left hands were a Chinese archer couple, Amber and Roy. They didn’t tell Hamad their Chinese names and, honestly, he didn’t care. With everything going on he had enough to worry about, let alone their names. 

When they classed up, Hamad chose to be a berserker, while the couple both chose to be archers. 

He, along with the rest of his group, had succeeded in killing Mutated Rat. Then, using some niche skills, they dug into the debris and bided their time, waiting for the zombie horde to leave. 

Shortly after the zombies had been drawn away by beastial roars they had broken out and killed a few isolated groups of zombies causing almost everyone to class up.

How ironic. They were hiding only a few kilometers away from Azief and by a stroke of fortune, this coincidence allowed them to survive.

Out of curiosity (and perhaps a dash of idiocy) they decided to make their way to where they heard the death cries of the beast come from. It was then that Lakshmi, an Indian woman, saw something. A gigantic beast corpse. Reporting to Hamad, the group walked over to the corpse and marveled at it. 

Roy and Amber shuddered, imagining what the beast would be like when it was alive.

“What is that?” Lakshmi asked.

“I don’t know,” Hamad answered with the World Orb’s translating function’s assistance. And as he approached the beast corpse he sighed. He was afraid. How couldn’t he be? Only madmen wouldn’t be afraid. 

He took a deep breath. Calm down. He needed to calm down. 

Crouching down and picking up a pebble, he turned to his group and said, “Fallback. I need to check whether or not it’s still alive.” 

The others nodded and complied. 

Throwing the pebble with all his strength, a dull thud rang out… and nothing. 

“It’s dead,” he sighed in relief. The others similarly sighed. Then, as Hamad was about to walk away, he caught a glimmer from the corner of his eye. Following this shine, he approached the beast corpse.

“Sir Hamad?” One of the Chinese called. “We have to go!” 

“Wait a minute,” Hamad said, preoccupied with trying to find the source of that glimmer. 

Suddenly, he found it. It was in the beast’s stomach. Reaching for a knife, he began to dissect the beast. Its flesh was hard as steel and he began to sweat. Finally his efforts were rewarded and he pulled a bead from the corpse’s stomach.

“Hell’s this?” he mused.

His hairs stood up. Danger! 

He was about to back away when something abruptly slammed against him. Whatever had slammed into him hit him at such a velocity that he flew back onto the asphalt. He winced as he felt that he had broken some ribs through his steel armor. No wait… his armor was also cracked. What kind of power was this?

Struggling to breath, he got to his feet and looked at his adversary. If he wasn’t wearing armor, he would have been gravely injured. 

His attacker was a young man donned in black clothing with a hood obscuring his face. He was a messenger of death.

Behind him, his posse gasped in dread. Hamad was the strongest in their ragtag bunch. If he was incapitatied in one strike from their new assailant, what could he do to them? Out of reflex, they began to ready their weapons only to be stopped by Lakshmi.

“Don’t! Stay your hands.” 

The hooded man was too strong. He even emanated an air of superiority. The air of strength. 

Azief couldn’t have expected that, as his level grew, he was slowly breaking past his mortal constraints. 

He wasn’t human.

No, he was a natural predator. This fundamental difference in status caused a sense of dread in the humans in front of him. Their survival instincts screamed at them that there was a gulf between them that they couldn’t cross.

The hooded man’s robe fluttered in the wind with an unrestrained and deadly aura. After a brief pause, he yelled.

His thunderous voice shook the very cores of the group. Fear seeped into the very core of Hamad’s being. Normally, he wouldn’t fear even if he had to face a group of 100 zombies headfirst, but the hooded man’s existence was too baleful.

“WHO ARE YOU AND WHY ARE YOU STEALING MY LOOT!”

It struck Hamad. At first, he thought the man had attacked them unprovoked, but now he realized. The bead. That damn bead was the man’s loot. 

Wait!

Hamad looked to the gigantic beast’s corpse and to the hooded man. If what was in the corpse’s body was the man’s loot… didn’t that mean he killed the creature?

Fuck.

Everyone took a deep breath as they understood that the hooded man’s statements implied.

The Hooded Man moved.

>>>>>>>>>>>> 

Editor’s Note: ♫ Guess who’s back, back again.

Sus is back, tell a friend. ♫ Miss me? Sorry for the delays. Got sick with a pretty bad case of strep. 104F fever had me in bed and recovering most of my break. And then afterwards my teachers collectively decided to pile a shit ton of work onto my head. Unfortunate as it is, the result was that these chapters got delayed ’til now. 

Author note: Sus really did a lot for me. A round of applause for him