Apocalypse: Every Woman I Invest In Makes Me Stronger

On the translucent spatial surveillance screen, the mysterious girl’s slender silhouette slipped beneath the concrete lintel and vanished into the pitch-black basement entrance of the villa.

Ethan watched the empty, shadowed doorway for several long moments before exhaling a quiet, ragged breath and waving his hand to dismiss the interface. The projection dissolved into specks of pale light, leaving the wooden cabin enveloped in the soft, warm glow of the battery lamp.

Leaning his head back against the sturdy wooden headboard, Ethan’s jaw clenched as he pressed his left hand over the heavy linen bandages wrapped across his chest.

A dull, rhythmic throb pulsed deep within his muscle tissue.

The vicious wounds carved by the Blackscale Drake’s corrosive energy wave were proving far more difficult to heal than any ordinary laceration. Even after several hours of rest and the initial stabilization from Debbie and Tessa, faint, persistent traces of that foul, jet-black draconic venom remained embedded deep within his flesh. The dark toxicity actively resisted cellular regeneration, keeping the ragged edges of the burns inflamed and raw. A sluggish seep of dark crimson continued to stain the gauze over his sternum, and the surrounding skin had taken on an unsettling, bruised bluish-black tint.

Ethan lowered his fingers and studied the dark fluid glistening on his fingertips.

”That damn overgrown lizard...” he muttered under his breath, his eyes cold and narrow.

Since the apocalyptic collapse began in Silvermont City, Ethan had butchered mutated beasts by the dozens, severed the heads of elite evolved zombies, and clashed against rival human ability users. Yet nothing had pushed him so perilously close to the precipice of absolute destruction as that Quasi-King Rank beast. The memory of being pinned to the asphalt under the crushing weight of Space Imprisonment, with a vortex of corrosive black bile gathering inches from his face, was burned into his mind.

He had escaped with his life, but barely. And the margin had been razor-thin.

His gaze drifted back toward the dark window of the cabin, his thoughts shifting back to the surveillance feed he had just witnessed outside in Century Skyline.

”The secret Victoria has been hiding with such panic almost certainly revolves around that girl,” he said softly to the empty room.

The girl’s movements had been excessively cautious, keeping entirely to the shadows and checking the surrounding perimeter like a trained scout. Yet there had been zero hesitation in her path. She had navigated the cracked garden paths, bypassed the villa’s main entry, and slipped straight toward the basement crawlspace as if she had walked that route a thousand times before the sky turned red.

She wasn’t some starving, disoriented wanderer stumbling into an abandoned luxury estate by sheer luck.

She knew the exact floor plan.

Ethan analyzed the brief sensory snapshot his spatial anchor had captured. There had been no perceptible ripples of spiritual energy surrounding her frame—no psychic static, no elemental heat, and no spatial distortion. As far as his senses could discern, she was simply an ordinary baseline human who had not awakened an Ability.

Under normal circumstances, an ordinary survivor possessed zero capability to threaten him.

Still, her unannounced appearance inside Victoria’s abandoned haven raised a swarm of troublesome questions. Why had Victoria deliberately concealed her presence? Why had she panicked on the staircase, shouting at him to stay on the balcony rather than let him step foot into the cellar? And what was so vital inside that damp crawlspace that an ordinary girl would brave the night streets to retrieve it?

Ethan closed his eyes, steadying his breathing. He had no intention of recklessly squandering his remaining energy on an immediate investigation.

His physical recovery took absolute precedence.

Until his shattered wrist set properly, the corrosive poison was scrubbed from his chest, and his torn back muscles knitted together, poking his head into unknown variables was foolish. Once he stood back at the peak of his strength, he would have all the leverage and time in the world to confront Victoria and pull the truth into the open.

There was another pressing matter weighing on his thoughts.

The women remaining behind in the cramped underground air-raid shelter still had no idea that Penny was safe inside his Survival Space. If hours stretched into days without Penny returning from her unauthorized excursion to the residential district, Aria, Elena, and the others would inevitably assume she had been torn apart by the undead horde, causing needless panic in the bunker.

Furthermore, he had no way of knowing whether the Blackscale Drake was still patrolling the ruined avenue flanking the city library.

A heavy scowl settled over Ethan’s brow.

That apex predator had executed a localized dimensional lockdown with terrifying tactical precision. It hadn’t merely stumbled across him by accident; it had explicitly tracked his presence across the city and ambushed him at the intersection, sealing his teleportation before he could react.

How had it locked onto him in the first place?

Ethan rested his chin on his chest, sifting through every possibility.

Did it leave an invisible olfactory or spiritual tracking mark on my gear during our clash at the museum?

He checked his bloodstained tactical vest, then looked down at the dark soil beneath the cabin’s floorboards.

Or is it tracking the resonance of the Life Crystal?

The latter deduction carried far more weight.

The Blackscale Drake had originally been reanimated from an ancient fossil precisely because the Life Crystal’s primeval energy had bathed the museum halls. If the divine relic was the sole reason the beast possessed its second life, it was only natural that the creature’s senses would be hypersensitive to the crystal’s distinctive radiation, even across miles of concrete ruins.

Whenever Ethan carried or manipulated large spatial items, faint dimensional leaks were inevitable. Perhaps the monster had detected that faint scent lingering near the library.

Whatever the precise mechanism, Ethan was not a man who gambled with avoidable risks.

”I won’t set foot near the air-raid shelter for the next few days,” he decided firmly.

Although his Survival Space had successfully unlocked the passive Perception Shielding function—which, unknown to him, had already completely masked the Life Crystal’s spiritual signature from the physical plane—Ethan refused to take reckless chances with the lives of his companions.

In a direct clash, the Blackscale Drake’s armored resilience, corrosive breath, and spatial suppression made it far more lethal than even the mutated Tiger King. If he carelessly brought that nightmare down upon the concrete shelter, the cramped bunker would become an inescapable tomb for Debbie, Daisy, Sofia, and little Haley.

He would not put the women in mortal danger simply to spare himself the inconvenience of remaining hidden.

Taking a deep breath, Ethan closed his eyes and channeled his consciousness toward the opposite quadrant of the vast domain.

With a soft pull of spatial authority, his figure vanished from the wooden bed, leaving the room silent.