Given the grim situation, no one expected much from lunch. This was especially true for Tsunade. Although Li Ke had prepared food for her, she had been picking at a single piece of bread for an hour without finishing it.
The reason they didn't light a fire to cook was simple: all three of them were terrified of alerting the zombies. If the horde discovered them before the Blood Moon officially began, they would be forced into combat early.
Cold luncheon meat and plain water did nothing to boost their morale. Instead, it just made Li Ke feel drowsy. Yet, with his nerves strung so tight, he didn't dare sleep. The Blood Moon was clearly arriving ahead of schedule. The last thing he wanted was to be fast asleep when it started—that would be a death sentence.
Kiri was faring much better than Li Ke. While she had never seen a spectacle quite like this, the battle-hardened gunner possessed a strong heart. She managed to relax a bit, eating her food while tracking the movement patterns of the distant zombies.
Unlike Li Ke, she was curious about where these zombies were heading. The path they had taken earlier aligned perfectly with the horde's advance, yet they hadn't spotted this many zombies back then. It was genuinely baffling.
Furthermore, the way the zombies actively avoided the impassable cliffs puzzled her deeply.
It didn't make sense. If the zombies could see well enough to map out the terrain, then Li Ke's group should have been spotted long ago while observing them.
But if the zombies couldn't see, how did they know they couldn't cross the cliffs?
"This world really is something else..."
Kiri absentmindedly twirled her revolver, continuing her watch over the valley they had riddled with pits, as well as the slightly clumsy explosive traps Li Ke had set up.
These zombies lacked weapons and special abilities. Even if there were hundreds or thousands of them, their threat level was only equivalent to a single squad of Kartel soldiers.
Kiri had faced down hordes of Kartel troops more than once. Since these zombies lacked both siege capabilities and ranged attacks, she wasn't afraid at all.
Still, staring at the sheer volume of the undead, Kiri chewed her luncheon meat and couldn't help but ask, "How did you survive the last one?"
Li Ke shook his head. He didn't really know how he had survived the last Blood Moon either. To be exact, he felt it was a miracle he had even managed to climb onto the gas station roof, let alone survive an onslaught of so many zombies.
But right now, past experience was completely useless. No matter how he looked at it, this was entirely different from last time.
It hadn't started this early last time, nor had it moved this fast!
"I don't know. By the time I climbed to the top of that gas station, I was right on the verge of blacking out. When I finally woke up, it was already the next day. I have no idea how I survived. I figured a fire might have burned the zombies to crisp, but I don't have any proof."
Kiri nodded. She remembered clearly that on the day they arrived, the ground was covered in all sorts of charred bodies. If that was the case, it made sense.
Though she didn't know why the zombie corpses had vanished afterward, it at least explained how the horde had been wiped out back then.
"Is that why you piled up so much wood and fuel down there?"
Looking down at the lumber and gunpowder traps, Kiri nodded. She was just making small talk, trying to help Li Ke calm his nerves.
"Yeah... I just don't know if it'll actually work, or if we need to throw on even more fuel."
Li Ke trailed off for a moment. His eyes darted continuously between his watch and the sky. A sinister crimson stain was slowly swallowing what was left of the visible moon.
He didn't want to gamble on whether something even more terrifying would show up tonight. But going by how the game usually progressed, escalation was practically a guarantee. He squeezed his firearm tightly, desperately hoping the cold metal would offer some shred of security.
Soon, though, he forced himself to find another way to distract his mind.
Pulling out a stack of empty tin cans, Li Ke began pouring gunpowder into them, setting them aside one by one as they were filled. Lacking actual hand grenades, this improvised alternative was his only option.
As for how he would detonate them...
Li Ke didn't expect these things to work like reliable, standard grenades anyway. He was just keeping his hands busy. At the very least, he figured they could be used to ignite the wooden barricades down below.
Seeing what he was doing, Kiri walked over. She pulled out some scrap paper and began helping him fashion crude fuses.
These makeshift fuses wouldn't last long enough for them to light the cans before throwing. However, they could easily be tossed into areas that were already on fire to trigger an explosion. And even if there wasn't an active fire, Kiri could easily detonate them mid-air with a well-placed shot from her revolver.
Working side by side, the two of them kept assembling gunpowder cans while maintaining a cautious watch over the surrounding zombies.
As the blood-red light grew more intense, the zombies' agility and perception noticeably sharpened. Several times while scouting, Li Ke and Kiri were nearly spotted. If they hadn't ducked their heads back in a flash, they would have triggered the horde prematurely.
Time ticked away, second by second. By the time they felt a twinge of hunger and began picking at a little more food, the crimson moon took its final turn under Li Ke's tense watch...
And turned completely, entirely blood-red!
Almost instantaneously, every single zombie within and out of sight unleashed a synchronized, deafening roar. Bathed in the eerie glow of the Blood Moon and the swirling desert sands, the entire horde snapped their heads around in perfect unison, locking eyes onto their exact position.
Vile, distorted expressions twisted their hideous faces. Under the moonlight, their half-rotted bodies looked like a demonic legion surging straight out of the depths of hell.
They pivoted as one collective mass. Then, with a bursts of speed that would put Usain Bolt to absolute shame, they sprinted wildly toward Li Ke and the group.
The same zombies that had carefully avoided the terrain earlier now completely ignored the towering, man-made cliffs. They threw themselves forward wave after wave. Even though many in the first wave broke their legs instantly from the sheer drop—only to be trampled to death under the relentless feet of those behind them—the endless stream of monsters kept charging, sprinting madly toward their defenses.
As they stampeded forward, an eerie green light began to flare up from deep within their bodies. Li Ke could see it clear as day. With every step they took, a radioactive green glow pulsed violently from their torsos, their eyes, their mouths, and down their limbs.
The yellow desert sands were swallowed up in an instant by a black, suffocating torrent of death.
Kiri's finger squeezed the trigger on instinct as she barked out an order.
"Fire!"
Li Ke pulled his trigger on instinct. Guided by the game System, his machine gun muzzle flashed relentlessly. Bullets tore into the charging zombies, knocking a fraction of them down or neutralizing them as they advanced.
But it wasn't enough. Li Ke and Kiri could stop over twenty zombies in a single breath, but against a surging army of the undead, that was a mere drop in the bucket. In the split second it took the two of them to reload, Li Ke watched as the first wave of zombies tore through the halfway point of their man-made canyon.
The wooden traps he had meticulously placed were quickly overwhelmed. Even though the sharp stakes impeded some, the monsters pressed on. A few were pinned directly to the spot, but the sprinting zombies behind them simply surged forward, advancing relentlessly toward their positions.
Li Ke reached for a Molotov cocktail, but Kiri stopped him.
"Don't throw it yet! Wait until they bunch up right below us! I'll detonate it with a shot once you toss it!"
Kiri shouted over the noise while maintaining a steady rhythm of fire. Thanks to her superior marksmanship, every shot was precise, effectively stopping the approaching threats.
She wasn't panicking, but she was concerned that an anxious Li Ke might mishandle the firebomb in their current position. It was obvious that Li Ke lacked formal combat training, and she wasn't about to risk a mistake.
"Got it."
Li Ke took a deep breath, put the Molotov back, and returned to shooting alongside Kiri. Many zombies fell under their combined gunfire.
But it still wasn't enough. Two people could not create a sufficient barrier. Worse, the 15-round magazine limit was proving to be a major tactical bottleneck. They would fire for a few seconds, then spend an equal amount of time reloading. Maintaining a continuous stream of suppression was impossible.
This vulnerability allowed the zombies to close the distance rapidly. If they had modern light machine guns with high-capacity magazines, Li Ke and Kiri could have established an impenetrable defensive line.
Gunfire echoed across the desert. No matter how hard they fought, their efforts felt small against the seemingly infinite sea of monsters. At the base of the cliffs, a mass of fallen zombies had already piled up. Meanwhile, the fresh waves arriving behind them had reached the base of their pillar, beginning to claw at the soil underneath.
The zombies were trying to climb or dig their way up to reach the elevated platform. Li Ke and Kiri noticed the behavior and locked eyes, sharing the same realization.
This was a serious problem.
They both realized the danger in an instant. Right beneath that area lay their backup base and escape tunnel. If the horde managed to breach the earth, they would lose their final fallback position.
"They just keep coming!"
Staring at the dense mass of zombies sprinting from the distance with no signs of thinning out, Kiri voiced her frustration.
The relentless charge showed no gaps. Instead, the endless stream allowed the distant zombies to maintain momentum as they closed in. It was as if every zombie had been alerted to their exact location, with the entire horde converging on their position at once.
"Throw the Molotovs!"
Gritting her teeth, Kiri gave the order. Li Ke didn't hesitate. He immediately hurled two bottles out of the window. Almost the exact millisecond the bottles cleared the frame, Kiri drew her revolver. Li Ke heard six sharp cracks in rapid succession. The thrown Molotovs instantly changed trajectory mid-air, bursting into a curtain of fire that rained down on the swarming zombies below.
Not only that, but six zombies also had their heads blown clean off at the exact same moment. In a flash, Kiri's revolver was already reloaded, and she barked at him again.
"Throw more! We need a bigger fire to lock them down!"
Li Ke didn't waste a second. He chucked another twelve Molotovs, two at a time. Kiri's revolver blurred into a series of afterimages, detonating the firebombs to keep the flames roaring while systematically popping the heads of the advancing undead.
The pitch-black canyon instantly lit up. Li Ke could now clearly see the faces of the horde below. Their already hideous features looked even more grotesque and twisted against the dancing, flickering flames.
Notifications of gained experience points flashed across the edge of his vision, but he had zero time to care about that. Using the firelight to aim, he began taking measured shots, dropping the zombies as they drew close.
Fire, reload, fire, reload...
The numb routine dragged on. He lost track of how many rounds he had fired, or how many times he had to quickly repair his pipe machine gun. But he knew one thing for certain.
It wasn't working.
He watched helplessly as the pit filled up with more and more corpses, while the swarm rushing from the distance showed no signs of thinning out. His mind grew numb from the repetition. His ears rang with nothing but gunfire and the shrieks of the undead.
His brain was turning to mush. The prolonged adrenaline rush and the crushing pressure were about to break him. But then—
The entire valley violently shuddered.
The sudden shock wave snapped Li Ke right out of his daze. In the next instant, he saw dozens of zombies blasted high into the air. A hail of iron nails buzzed through the night sky, some even pinging loudly against their reinforced iron walls.
A massive chunk of the canyon was instantly cleared out. The burning zombies were flung right into the piles of corpses that had already stacked nearly level with the cliffside, igniting even more of the undead.
The explosion gave him a second wind. He swiveled around, aggressively pulling the trigger once more to spray down the zombies that were creeping closer to their iron barricade.
However, just as he passionately mowed down another hundred or so zombies, disaster struck.
Whether it was because the defenses had reached their absolute limit, or because a zombie's hand happened to catch a steel plate deeply embedded in the earth, a falling zombie dragged a piece of their plating down with it as its head exploded.
Li Ke froze for a second. He and Kiri had anticipated this moment. Given the zombies' digging speed, the plates were bound to be stripped away eventually. But actually watching his fallback plan crumble in an instant made something snap inside him.
He began frantically throwing the gunpowder-filled tin cans, tossing them one after another onto the bodies of the burning zombies.
The improvised gunpowder cans didn't pack a massive punch. Even the most successful blast only knocked over three or four zombies. Most just produced a bright shower of sparks, set a few nearby monsters on fire, and then fizzled out.
Seeing his desperation, Kiri didn't try to stop him this time. She just silently kept pulling her trigger, letting Li Ke hurl every last one of the makeshift explosives they had made.
Yet, it changed nothing. Li Ke's frantic throwing didn't turn the tide. Though he killed more of the undead, their bodies simply became stepping stones and shields for the ones behind them. Another half hour ticked away. As Li Ke kept firing, he watched a second steel plate get ripped away. Then...
Then came a third, and a fourth. Each plate was torn down faster than the last.
To make matters worse, the moment the sixth steel plate was stripped away, several zombies managed to squirm right into the earthen walls. They had broken inside, and were now tearing down the bunker from within.
Li Ke kept hurling the tin cans, but it felt more like a final act of desperate madness. Once he had thrown every last makeshift explosive they had crafted, the shelter passage beneath their feet finally gave way and collapsed.
Steel plates and heavy earth came crashing down. The zombies, which had been dangerously close to scaling their iron fortress, instantly dropped three or four meters in height as the ground fell out from under them. Yet, Li Ke and Kiri felt their hearts turn completely cold.
Looking down at the ramp of squirming undead now building directly toward their bunker, Li Ke glanced at his watch. It wasn't even ten o'clock yet. Steeling his resolve, he pulled out every single remaining Molotov cocktail.
Kiri stared out at the seemingly infinite sea of monsters stretching into the distance. She took a deep breath and grabbed a firebomb of her own.
It was glaringly obvious that they couldn't stop the horde's advance. Fortunately, when Tsunade had built this fortress, Li Ke had strictly insisted that not a single System block be left exposed to the outside. Because of that precaution, they could still hold out for a little while longer.
They rained Molotov cocktails down onto the zombie ramp without mercy, no longer holding back a single ounce of firepower. Li Ke went so far as to hurl a whole sack of raw gunpowder into the air.
Watching the burlap sack tear open and spray black powder across the sky, Kiri's lips twitched. At a grim moment like this, she was the only one who could still find the dark humor in it.
"What a bizarre world..."
With those words, Kiri pulled the trigger of her revolver. In an instant, her bullet sliced right through the cloud of falling black powder. The sack violently erupted into a massive cloud of ignited dust, catching fire mid-air and raining down a dense storm of liquid flame.
This fiery deluge detonated the Molotovs they had thrown. The firebombs burst apart simultaneously, painting the pitch-black night in eerie, violent hues. The entire canyon looked less like a battlefield and more like the depths of a blazing purgatory.
The resulting inferno was spectacular, illuminating the entire valley. Seizing the moment, Li Ke kept tossing out gunpowder. Biting the bullet, he even dragged out the majority of his stored wooden planks and threw them into the flames to feed the fire.
Wood and gunpowder scattered across the canyon, but even this raging purgatory couldn't dampen the zombies' obsession with them. The monsters charged untiringly, stomping straight through the flames. Even as their bodies caught fire and burned like living torches, they never slowed down.
Finally, the first zombie slammed against their iron fortress. Its arm struck the thick steel plating with a dull, heavy thud, snapping the bone instantly. But the creature didn't care. It didn't think of giving up; instead, it slammed its remaining arm against the metal.
Another limb hung limply, shattered. Immediate following that, the monster savagely smashed its own head against the wall.
Even now, the two of them didn't stop shooting. They fired continuously at the monsters crowding their defenses, making sure no rotting hands could reach through their narrow firing slits.
But within ten minutes, they were forced to stop shooting entirely. It had become utterly pointless.
The corpses of the dead piled up so high that they completely blocked the firing slits. Left with no choice, they sealed the windows up tight. They were forced to sit back and listen helplessly as the endless horde hammered against their iron home, a relentless, deafening thud-thud-thud echoing through the walls.
With their vision completely cut off from the outside world, they could only listen as the terrifying noise spread, climbing higher and higher up the structure. Finally—
Even the ceiling above them began to rattle from the frantic clawing and pounding of the zombies.
"Well, this is what real despair feels like," Kiri muttered, unable to help herself.
Li Ke silently lowered his gun. Without a word, he passed a hand grenade over to Kiri. If their bunker was breached, a grenade would be far more effective than a gun at close range.
"Save it for the end."
"Thanks."
Kiri smiled as she took the grenade, flashing Li Ke a playful wink, though it was tragically lost in the pitch-black room.
Then, the air fell completely silent.
But in the heavy darkness of the sealed space, Li Ke suddenly caught the sound of soft sobbing, followed by a faint, agonizing moan that sounded completely devoid of reason.
Confused, he looked in Kiri's direction, only to realize with a jolt that the sound wasn't coming from her at all.
It was Tsunade.