Lackey's Seducing Survival Odyssey

Chapter 1724: Arrival of Hell: Part-3

Jonathan Vale’s POV

Around this time, the government stopped providing rations to the shelters, and people slowly descended into panic. The military attempted to suppress the growing chaos with armed force, pointing rifles at desperate civilians and firing warning shots whenever the crowd became uncontrollable.

Fear… kept everyone in check for a while, but hunger was a far crueller enemy than bullets.

Once starvation consumed people… even death itself no longer seemed frightening!

“It’s only a matter of time before blood is spilled inside this shelter.”

I muttered quietly while explaining the situation to my parents. Both of them lay on their thin mattresses, their bodies having withered to skin and bone after months of barely surviving.

Their sunken eyes stared blankly at the cracked ceiling, and every breath they took sounded shallow and painfully laboured.

They remained silent for a long moment before my mother slowly turned her head toward me.

“D-Did you… hear anything about Aether?”

The moment his name left her lips, an indescribable feeling tightened around my chest.

While searching for food every day, I had also searched for my friends whenever the opportunity arose.

Every abandoned street, every collapsed building, even some shelters… I searched them all.

It was all in vain.

“Even if I found him… it’s not like he’d be in any better condition than we are, right?” I muttered with a bitter smile that never truly formed.

How many times had they asked about him during these past few months?

I honestly couldn’t remember anymore.

Nor could I understand why they continued asking.

At this point… he had most likely died somewhere amidst the destruction like countless others.

“Maybe…” my mother whispered weakly before coughing softly.

My father forced out a faint chuckle, though it sounded more painful than amused.

“Yeah… but we just wanted to see him one last time. Did you forget how much you changed because of him? Hah… perhaps… he became the big brother we never had. Before we leave this world… we just wanted to see his face once more.”

His already frail voice had become barely audible. Compared to my mother, his condition had deteriorated far more severely.

I clenched my fists so tightly my nails dug into my palms as I bit my lip. Slowly, I stood up, walked out of the small cabin, and quietly closed the door behind me. Resting my forehead against the rough surface, I closed my eyes and desperately searched for some way to end this nightmare.

Honestly… I didn’t know how I had managed to keep myself together for this long.

Although my condition wasn’t as severe as most people’s, I could feel my own body approaching its limit with each passing day.

“M-Mr. Jonathan?”

A soft, trembling voice called from behind me.

Taking a slow breath, I turned around. At first, I thought the young woman had come to ask me to fuck her or something, but my eyes quickly noticed several others standing behind her.

None of them spoke. They merely looked at me with strange, unreadable expressions before glancing toward the cabin where my parents rested.

Without saying a word, they gestured for me to follow them.

Inside a separate room sat the General, the man responsible for overseeing this shelter. His exhausted face looked years older than when I’d first met him, and the deep shadows beneath his eyes revealed that sleep had long abandoned him.

After meeting my gaze for several silent seconds, he finally spoke.

“Mr. Jonathan… I won’t waste your time by dressing this up with comforting words.”

His voice was calm, but every sentence carried the weight of despair.

“We’ve completely run out of rations. For reasons we still can’t explain, every wild animal disappeared nearly eight months ago. Since then, our food reserves have steadily vanished. Every day, people grow thinner.

Every day, someone else collapses.”

He lowered his eyes for a brief moment before continuing.

“This isn’t happening only here. Every shelter across our remaining world is facing the same nightmare. We’ve already lost countless elderly people and children because we simply couldn’t feed them. The only ones still holding on are teenagers and young adults… and even they’re beginning to fail.”

His fingers tightened against the table.

“The crops refuse to grow. Every field has turned barren. The forests that once stretched for miles have become lifeless deserts filled with dead trunks and dust. Water is the only resource we still have… but even that’s beginning to change. The oceans have risen without warning, contaminating freshwater supplies little by little.”

I listened in silence.

None of this was new to me.

I’d seen it with my own eyes.

I simply waited for him to reach the reason he’d summoned me.

After what felt like an eternity, the General slowly lifted his head. His expression remained firm, but his eyes betrayed a guilt so deep it was almost unbearable.

“So… rather than allowing your parents to slowly starve to death and rot… we reached a unanimous decision.”

He paused, his voice growing hoarse.

“We will end their suffering… and use their bodies to feed the others.”

He said with as much politeness as possible!

“…”

For several long seconds, I simply stood there, frozen.

My mind refused to process what I’d just heard. I blinked once… then again, hoping I’d somehow misunderstood.

“E-Excuse me, sir…” I said slowly, my voice trembling. “What… do you mean by ‘feed’?”

The General gave a slow nod, his expression remaining painfully calm.

“I know it’s difficult to accept, but… we simply don’t have any other choi…”

“SO YOU WANT TO EAT MY PARENTS?!! ARE YOU ALL FUCKING INSANE?!!”

Every ounce of strength left in my starving body exploded through my voice. My furious glare locked onto the General before sweeping across everyone gathered in the room, stopping on the young woman I’d once shared a bed with.

“Unanimously?” I barked, my chest heaving, ‘What about me? I am just hearing this shit, and you call this unanimous?” as the young woman hides behind others.

I gritted my teeth as the anger surged even more in my chest.

“Have all of you completely lost your damn minds?! They’re human beings!”

“SO ARE WE!!”

The shout erupted from the crowd like a dam breaking.

One voice quickly became many.

“We don’t have any food!”

“There aren’t any animals left to hunt!”

“What do you expect us to do? Sit here and starve to death?!”

“Your parents have become nothing but a burden!”

“You should be grateful we shared our rations with your family for this long!”

“Yes! They’ve already eaten our share! It’s time they repaid that debt!”

The room descended into chaos.

Desperate voices overlapped one another until they became little more than a storm of rage and starvation.

Their eyes no longer resembled those of ordinary people. Every pair of pupils seemed sunken, bloodshot, and frighteningly hollow. Hunger had stripped away reason piece by piece, leaving behind only the oldest primordial instinct buried within every living creature…

Survive!!!!

No matter the cost!!!!!!

I clenched my fists until my knuckles turned white and glared back at the General.

“Have you all lost your humanity?” I growled. “You want to eat another human being? That’s what animals do!”

“Mr. Jonathan.”

The General’s voice cut cleanly through the shouting.

“It is only a matter of time before everyone here starves to death.”

He slowly stood and walked toward me. His face remained unreadable, but there was no triumph in his eyes.

Only exhaustion.

“And it’s not just your parents.”

He pointed toward a young man standing among the crowd.

“He agreed to offer his grandfather.”

Then his finger shifted toward a middle-aged woman.

“She agreed to offer her mother.”

Finally, he looked toward a woman standing quietly in the corner.

“Every one of them has already decided to sacrifice someone they love… believing that doing so might give everyone else another chance to survive.”

His final gesture made my heart nearly stop.

“She…” he said quietly, “even volunteered her own child.”

!!

My eyes widened.

Only then did I truly notice the woman.

She held a tiny child in her arms, no older than two… The little boy hung weakly against her shoulder without making a sound. His breathing was so shallow it was difficult to tell whether he was asleep or merely conserving what little strength remained.

His tiny arms were no thicker than sticks, every rib visible beneath his torn shirt. I’d heard countless reports over the past several months that children were always the first to die from starvation.

Their growing bodies demanded more than this dying world could ever provide.

“A-Are you all fucking out of you—”

Before I could finish, the General spoke again.

“But we’re not monsters… So we refused.”

He paused before adding two words that chilled my entire body.

“For now.”

He gently placed a hand on my shoulder.

“Take your time and think it through. If you refuse… then no one here will stop you.”

His eyes met mine without wavering.

“You’re free to leave this shelter with your family.”

“Sir, they already used our…”

One of the men stepped forward in protest, but the General immediately raised his hand, silencing everyone.

“This is still a democracy,” he said firmly.

“The decision belongs to him alone. Whether he accepts… or refuses… no one here will force him.”

The room gradually fell silent.

Even if I walked away…

Where would we go?

No matter how I looked at the situation, this shelter was the only place we had left. Even if I somehow managed to carry my parents to another shelter, there was no guarantee we would be welcomed.

In fact, considering how desperate everyone had become, another shelter might prove even more terrifying than this one.

My father had already lost both of his legs, making it impossible for him to travel any meaningful distance.

My mother was barely able to stand without assistance, and I was already reaching my physical limit after months of barely eating. If the people inside this shelter were already willing to abandon their humanity, then I couldn’t even begin to imagine what kind of monsters were wandering outside.

Just picturing those possibilities sent an icy chill running down my spine.

I didn’t want this outcome.

I didn’t want to sacrifice my parents.

I didn’t want to leave them behind.

Yet no matter how desperately I searched for another answer, every possibility eventually circled back to the same hopeless conclusion.

Without saying another word, I quietly nodded to the General before leaving the room. My feet carried me back to the small cabin almost on their own while my mind remained completely empty.

What was I supposed to do now?

Every idea I considered eventually struck an invisible wall that I simply couldn’t climb over.

“S-So… we really don’t have another choice… huh…” I whispered bitterly as I sat beside my parents and buried both hands inside my hair.

The world itself had become impossible to survive.

There were no fish left in the oceans.

There were no animals left in the mountains.

There weren’t even birds flying across the endless grey sky anymore.

Everything except humanity had disappeared without leaving behind a single explanation, almost as though every other living creature had quietly gone extinct overnight.

Why had this happened?

Why did humanity deserve this fate?

What had we possibly done to earn such a cruel ending?

Why?

WHY?

The questions endlessly echoed inside my head until every wall I’d built around my emotions finally collapsed.

Drip… Drip….

Tears streamed uncontrollably down my face as months of fear, exhaustion, frustration, and despair burst free all at once. I’d spent so long pretending to stay strong for my parents that I’d forgotten what it felt like to simply cry.

Quiet sniffles escaped my lips while I repeatedly wiped my soaked eyes, only for more tears to replace the ones I’d just brushed away. Through my blurred vision, I continued staring at my peacefully sleeping parents, and that simple sight made my heart ache even more painfully than before.

Every regret I’d buried inside myself resurfaced together. Every failed attempt to find food, every empty promise that tomorrow would somehow become better, and… every helpless moment slowly crushed my heart until breathing itself became painful.

Just then, my mother quietly murmured in her sleep.

“Jonn…”

A weak smile naturally formed on my face after hearing her call my name, but that smile disappeared almost immediately when another name escaped her lips.

“Aether…”

The moment I heard my friend’s name, something inside my mind suddenly stopped spiralling.

I slowly lowered my head and began asking myself a question I never expected to consider.

If Aether were standing where I am right now… what decision would he make?

Taking a slow breath, I forced myself to push aside my emotions and think as rationally as possible.

‘If my assumptions are correct, then this catastrophe isn’t limited to this shelter alone. Every city is probably facing the exact same nightmare, which means taking my parents outside would expose them to dangers even worse than the ones waiting here.’

My gaze slowly drifted toward my mother.

‘I already know what some of the other shelters have become. I’ve heard stories about women being treated like disposable tools, regardless of whether they were young, old, healthy, or barely alive. If another group captures us, then death might actually become the kinder outcome.’

A bitter laugh escaped from my lips before I could stop it.

‘It’s funny, isn’t it? Humanity spent thousands of years fearing wild animals, natural disasters, and monsters hiding in legends.

Yet when civilisation finally collapsed, the greatest threat was never nature itself.’

‘It was always other human beings.’

The thought lingered in my mind for several moments before I reluctantly returned to the problem in front of me.

‘If staying alive requires remaining with a larger group, then leaving this shelter isn’t a realistic option.

However, if staying here means… No, NO! There has to be another solution somewhere. I’m just… not seeing it yet…. hmm… hmm… come on…’

I continued thinking until my exhausted body finally reached its limit.

Without realising when it happened, my eyes slowly closed, and sleep claimed me where I sat beside my parents.

The sky remained permanently covered by endless grey clouds. Time itself had become meaningless in this dying world, leaving old mechanical watches as the only reliable way to distinguish one day from the next.

When I finally woke, my watch informed me that morning had arrived.

After splashing a little water across my face, I quietly walked toward the General’s office. My expression remained calm, but my heart felt heavier than it ever had before.

The General looked up the moment I stepped inside. Judging by his composed expression, it almost seemed as though he’d already predicted the answer I would give.

“So,” he asked calmly while folding his hands together on the desk, “have you finally reached your decision?”

I inhaled slowly, steadied my trembling heart, and finally opened my mouth.

“I will not…”