"I like the undercover plan, they won't know me so I can get inside and take them out personally as soon as you appear and take their attention." You say.


The Old man simply nods and starts putting the map away carefully. "Then we leave in the morning! I will escort you closer but once we near the centre you will be on your own. Remember to act nice around them, can't have them attacking you before you get inside!"


You nod back and snack on a bit of what you think must be a human bicep muscle before getting a couple of hour of rest. As the mornings first light arrives you grab a few handfuls of flesh and you both set out in the jeep again, this time towards the city centre.


It's not long before you cover a good distance, riding is clearly faster than walking and before you know it you are walking away from the Jeep towards the city centre alone, the Old man heading off into a building to set himself up for a few days.


"Time to get things going then!" you think to yourself as you begin sensing infected ahead of you, already some mutants mixed in with the normal shamblers and fast types.

You simply move them aside, might be best not to approach with an army at your back

You don't want to appear too aggressive right away so you simply clear yourself a path through the infected, moving them aside as you walk and closing them back up behind you. "If this ring is part of their defense it's probably best I leave it intact, and having a large number of infected might be useful in an emergency." You think as you walk further and further in.


After a few hours you have given up counting all the infected in the area, this part of the city is made up of blocks of giant multi-story sky-scrapers which all must have had thousands of people inside each before the infection hit if not more. Now even if only 1 in 100 is left alive then that's still hundreds of infected for every building you walk past, and the mutants are everywhere too. You have no idea if they were strays, pets or migrated here after the infection had taken over but there was no shortage of food for them here at least. You move them aside like the others, a few feel slightly different when you try to take them over but they move aside like the rest and you ignore them once you know you are safely past.


It's nearly dinner time when you finally sense the gathering horde ahead of you. You carefully prepare your defenses and reach your mind out towards the city centre. You are just starting to sense something there when your senses show a strong green glow and you feel pressure on your mind. It's like an attack but weaker than the ones the Old Man put you through when you were training and you are a lot stronger now than when you were training so you don't even need to try to keep the pressure from your mind.

You they are weak, the Old man said he was stronger than them individually when he faced them before. Take this one out here and now. The second one won't be an issue alone.

You Aren't going to let some weakling push you around, they might have a lot of infected around them but it means nothing if their will is less than yours.


You leave the bare minimum defense against the attack then lash out as hard as you can against the Green haze in the city centre that you know represents you enemy. You know if you can crush them in a single fast attack that the second one won't stand a chance.


You visualize your attack and send it racing out, almost gleefully imagining the moment it shatters right through the enemies weak and neglected defenses and you crush their mind.


But it doesn't. Your attack smashes into a fully formed barrier, easily as strong as anything you could make. You feel it flex and buckle slightly but it is immediately shored up while the attack on you suddenly intensifies.


You realize your mistake too late, it was a trap to test whether you would attack and you failed. You frantically try to press your attack while holding your defense up but the enemies defense easily holds you to a stalemate while their attacks strains you defenses to their maximum. You try and think of a way out when the second attack slams into your mind and shatters your already weak defenses. You feel intense pain shooting through your mind.


You can barely handle the pain and are almost glad when everything ends.