The skyscraper towered with 30 floors, each becoming a walking graveyard for hundreds of zombies who once might have been busy office workers. The office atmosphere that was once bustling now replaced with dragging footsteps and empty groans.
Without relying on his Sacred Gear, Azlan relied on Touki to finish off one by one the zombies on each floor. The process was methodical, efficient, and merciless.
Compared to the physical strength and speed beyond reason possessed by Titans, these zombies were far weaker. If chased by Titans, ordinary people would almost impossibly escape just by running. But zombies? They were many times slower and stiffer.
Time had done its job. However many months or years since the plague struck, these zombie bodies had begun to rot, drastically reducing their mobility capabilities. Even Azlan who was once weak before obtaining the Longinus-class Sacred Gear, Divine Dividing, could defeat dozens of zombies thanks to their slow and uncoordinated movements.
Moreover, winter had frozen part of their body moisture, making joints even stiffer and their movements twice as slow as their already slow "normal" state.
As a result, Azlan with an iron rod reinforced with a Touki layer crushed the skull of every zombie he encountered easily. After ensuring they no longer moved, he would drag the corpses to the edge of broken windows, and throw them down.
The elevators were totally dead. The only way was through the dark emergency stairs, which he had to climb every time he moved to the next floor. The sound of his footsteps echoed in the silent corridors, only interrupted by zombie groans and short collision sounds.
Everything went smoothly, could even be called boring, until Azlan set foot on the 13th floor.
◆━⊰✧⊱━◆
"So rotten. This aroma... more than just zombies. This is a human corpse rotting for a long time."
Azlan furrowed his brow. The rotten aroma in the air was very pungent, far worse than frozen zombies.
Living and surviving in war zones, he was already very accustomed to death, including the pungent smell of corpses that didn't have time to be buried.
"Grrr... Uuugh..."
Azlan's arrival and the sound of his footsteps attracted the attention of this floor's inhabitants. About fifteen zombies, with shabby and tattered office clothes, turned around and began stumbling toward him. Their empty eyes and gaping mouths as if offering an unwanted welcome.
"Before investigating the smell, let's finish the business here first."
Setting aside curiosity, Azlan shot forward. His iron rod spun in his hand, leaving faint blue traces. His movements were fast and precise.
*BAM!* *PUCHI!*
The first zombie, a man with a tattered tie, his head destroyed by a side strike.
*BAM!* *PUCHI!*
The second, a woman with broken high heels, collapsed after her legs were destroyed followed by a fatal blow to the head.
*BAM!* *PUCHI!* *BAM!* *PUCHI!*
*BAM!* *PUCHI!* *BAM!* *PUCHI!*
Azlan moved among them. The zombie sluggishness aggravated by the season's cold made them like slow-moving practice targets. His Touki not only strengthened attacks, but also protected him from scratches or bites that might contain disease. One by one they fell, the sound of bones breaking and bodies falling echoed in the open office corridor.
In less than two minutes, the fifteen zombies had become a pile of motionless bodies on the floor. Azlan stood in the middle of them, his breath hardly panting.
"Huff..."
Exhaling a long breath that formed white vapor in the cold air, Azlan tidied the blue scarf on his neck that was slightly messy due to his fighting movements.
After dragging and throwing the corpses of fifteen zombies from that floor out the window—an action that now felt like a routine of throwing out trash—he finally diverted full attention to the source of that piercing rotten smell.
That terrible aroma led him to a manager's room at the end of the corridor. Its door was slightly open, as if inviting while warning at the same time.
"The rotten smell comes from inside."
Without fear but still cautious, Azlan stepped in. Instantly, a wave of much stronger and denser rotten aroma attacked his sense of smell.
He ignored it, his mentality had been accustomed to the aroma of death. His gaze immediately fixed on the source: a figure lying on the dusty floor beside the work desk.
It was a woman's corpse. From her posture, she looked tall and quite slender. Light brown hair waist-length, tied loosely behind, with bangs cascading on the now pale forehead. Even in death, her smooth facial features depicted a woman who was considered very beautiful during her lifetime.
What a shame. That beauty had ended in a pitiful way.
"Looking at the corpse's condition, this woman died of starvation."
Azlan approached the lifeless body. He observed it carefully. This type of death was already too familiar to him. He himself had almost died the same way.
The corpse's condition strengthened his guess. Her skin that must have once been smooth, now looked sagging and appeared like parchment paper clinging tightly to bones. Her cheekbones and jaw protruded sharply, a classic sign of extreme malnutrition. Her eyes were closed, with deep dark circles like shadows. Her lips were cracked and crusted. Her clothing—an elegant work blouse and skirt—hung loosely on her drastically shrunken body, proving how much weight was lost before the end finally arrived.
"Time of death approximately seven to ten days."
Azlan's estimate while waving his hand to drive away a swarm of green flies buzzing disgustingly around the body.
"Most likely she's the same as me and Akane, someone from another world that's still mysterious why they could come to this world."
So far, Azlan had never met a single survivor who was a native inhabitant of this destroyed world.
All the people he met, Aki Tomoya, Kurokawa Akane, and Sawagoe Tomaru, came from other worlds.
"Oh, there's a bag. This must belong to that woman."
On the floor, not far from her body, lay a cream-colored woman's handbag. Azlan took it and opened its zipper.
Its contents were a portrait of normal life that had become extinct: a leather wallet, several lipstick sticks with different colors, compact powder in a cracked container, eyebrow pencil, a small bottle of perfume that was almost finished, a pack of tissues, and keys that were no longer relevant.
Azlan took her wallet. Inside were several sheets of banknotes that were no longer valuable, several membership cards, and most importantly: an identity card in Japanese characters he couldn't read. However, there was one document that had a photo and alphabet writing: a Driver's License.
"Minagawa Akane..." Azlan pronounced slowly, reading the name on the driver's license. "So that's your name, huh..."
"Hm? Akane said that different from Western people's family names that are at the back, Japanese people's family names are at the front. So... this woman's name is also Akane?"
Azlan was speechless as if there was a thread of fate connecting him with individuals named Akane.
"Never mind. I guess I'm overthinking. This is just a coincidence."
Azlan dismissed that odd feeling. Without further ado, with calm respect, he lifted the lightweight body of that unfortunate woman.
He brought her out of that building, looking for a vacant plot of land among the concrete jungle. There, with makeshift tools, he dug a shallow grave and buried Minagawa Akane, giving a bit of final honor.
After marking that grave with a stone, Azlan stood silently for a moment, then turned back. There was still work that had to be completed.
He returned to that skyscraper, went up to the fourteenth floor, and continued his silent cleaning task, facing every zombie he encountered with the same efficiency.