The Butcher misunderstood something important.

Just because I was deciding how much effort he was worth didn’t mean he had earned the right to survive long enough for me to finish deciding.

If he died sooner than my intentions, then that was his own fault. Not mine.

The second his grin slipped, the vines moved.

There wasn’t a single vine. There wasn’t ten or twenty or fifty.

There were hundred of them. And they all had one purpose.

They erupted from the shattered highway so quickly the air itself screamed around them as black thorns tore through gray flesh repeatedly. The Butcher roared violently while ripping apart every vine it could reach, but that had never been the point.

I wasn’t trying to restrain him anymore.

I was digging for treasure.

Vine after vine slammed toward the same spot between his eyes while the creature staggered beneath the constant impacts. Venom flooded every wound while the spikes dug deeper and deeper into flesh that was already starting to rot apart from the poison.

It was a three frontal attack, and I had an unlimited army of vines at my disposal.

The Butcher laughed once more, thinking that there was no way I could get to him. That there was no way that I, a puny human, could kill him.

He was wrong.

One of the vines finally punched through skin, muscles, and bone until it came across the thing that I wanted.

The sound changed immediately.

A wet cracking noise echoed across the highway before the vine buried itself deep inside the creature’s soft brain.

Found you.

The second the vine touched the core, I pulled.

Not out.

Away.

The crystal vanished directly into my space before the Butcher even understood what had happened.

I didn’t look at it, I didn’t care what color it was, and I definitely didn’t care how large it had gotten.

It had belonged to him.

Now it belonged to me.

And that was what mattered.

The Butcher froze for a moment, and then, like a puppet with its strings cut, he collapsed.

The massive body hit the highway hard enough to shake the surrounding vehicles while the remaining zombies immediately lost what little coordination they had left. Several simply stopped moving while others wandered aimlessly into the middle of the fighting like they suddenly didn’t understand why they were there anymore.

Honestly?

Kind of pathetic.

The Banshee’s remains were still twitching nearby. I knew she was dead. There was no way to survive without a core. But that didn’t mean that something else couldn’t eat her and take her body.

I sighed.

Then the earth opened beneath both evolved zombies and swallowed them whole.

No bodies.

No traces.

Nothing left except broken pavement and bloodstains already drying in the sun.

Better.

Behind me, the guys were still fighting through the remaining horde.

I was almost proud over the fact that they weren’t struggling anymore. They had learned what worked and was using that as a baseline.

Yuche’s metal spikes punched cleanly through skulls now with almost surgical precision while Zhenlan used compressed air to expose cores faster than before. Chenghai had stopped wasting energy smashing entire bodies apart and Lingyun’s flames burned in controlled bursts instead of massive explosions.

Progress.

Slow progress.

But progress.

When the last zombie had been killed, I walked toward the nearest corpse and crouched beside it before pulling a knife from my boot.

Then I stabbed directly into the zombie’s forehead and twisted.

A small yellow crystal rolled free.

"Congratulations," I announced while holding it up between two fingers. "You all get to play scavenger hunt now."

Lingyun stared at me. "You cannot possibly be serious."

"If children can do it, so can you."

That shut everyone up for a second.

I wasn’t being sarcastic.

In my last life, the adults fought while the children dug through corpses collecting cores afterward. Smaller hands worked faster, and everyone needed to contribute somehow if they wanted to survive.

The silence lingering afterward felt awkward.

Oops. I think they took that the wrong way.

"Well," Lingyun muttered eventually while looking down at the piles of corpses surrounding the highway. "That suddenly got depressing."

"It gets worse," I replied honestly before standing back up. "Wait until winter hits."

Nobody asked what that meant.

Smart choice.

Hours passed.

The sun started lowering slowly while the guys moved through the battlefield corpse by corpse, cutting into skulls and checking for crystals. Most zombies didn’t have them, but enough did that several crates in the SUV slowly started filling with glowing stones of different sizes and colors.

Red.

Blue.

White.

Yellow.

Orange.

One black crystal that Yuche refused to touch after pulling it out himself.

By the time the last corpse had been checked, everyone looked exhausted and were completely covered in blood and goo.

"Bring the cores to the SUV," I ordered while unwrapping a Snickers bar from my jacket pocket. After all, you’re not you if you are hungry.

Nobody argued, which was good.

Because I was getting... tired.

The bad kind. The kind that if I wasn’t careful would lead to my death. I had pushed too hard, taken too long to kill both the Banshee and the Butcher. That would teach me. In the future, I needed to kill faster and talk less.

I tried to take as step forward, but I managed to stumble over a tiny stone in the road.

I hated this part. I hated feeling weak. I hated to know that I had to depend on others for my survival.

I could only hope that I made it into the SUV before I blacked out. Maybe, if I was lucky, they would think that I was just taking a nap.

A girl could dream.

The guys headed toward the SUV carrying crates full of crystals while I stayed behind in the middle of the destroyed highway.

Then I took a deep breath and finished doing what I needed to do.

Silently, the ground split apart, opening beneath the wreckage in massive sections while abandoned vehicles, shattered concrete, zombie remains, blood, broken glass, and debris disappeared downward into the earth itself.

The highway folded inward and swallowed all evidence of what happened whole.

Layer after layer vanished until nothing remained except smooth open road stretching across the city like the battle had never happened at all.

Behind me, Chenghai stopped walking.

"...Why are you destroying the evidence?" he asked slowly. "Wouldn’t the military want to see the Butcher and the Banshee?"

I looked at him but I didn’t answer.

Because honestly?

I didn’t have the energy to explain why giving the military access to evolved zombie bodies was one of the stupidest ideas imaginable. They were fucking up enough with the zombies they were getting their hands on.

Yuche crossed his arms against his chest beside the SUV. "The army’s going to be suspicious when they realize all the cars disappeared too."

I let out a long sigh.

Annoying.

The earth shifted again.

Then started spitting everything metal back onto the road.

Cars.

Transport trucks.

Guardrails.

Pieces of signs.

Everything scattered back across the highway in twisted piles while the road itself remained smooth beneath them.

"Better?" I demanded flatly.

Before Yuche could answer, the world tilted sideways.

Huh.

That probably wasn’t— ideal.