My 100th Rebirth a day before the Apocalypse - Chapter 936

Chapter 936: Chapter 936 The Heroes

“Thank you, heroes!!!” some of the survivors shouted, bowing toward Kisha, while others rushed to help those who had collapsed back onto their feet.

Kisha only gave a light nod, not taking their words to heart. She had never believed in heroes.

Heroes, in her eyes, sacrificed others for the so-called greater good. She, on the other hand, cared only for the people closest to her, for their greater good. She neither needed thanks nor a crown for what she had done.

After all, it wasn’t just her and Duke who carried the weight to save all these people; everyone had fought, everyone had contributed. This was no one-woman feat, but a collective struggle.

And she knew better than to let people place all their hopes on her. Too much reliance would only weaken them and undermine her true goal of forging alliances with other shelters and camps.

It was best to stir these people just enough, raise their morale, keep them driven, and let them push toward becoming a stronger shelter. The stronger they grew, the more they could contribute back to HOPE Base.

With only the right amount of encouragement, Kisha wouldn’t even need to openly instruct them to act as HOPE Base’s eyes and ears or to treat her base as the greater force in their alliance.

They would reach that conclusion on their own. And if they didn’t grow dependent on her protection or her base’s resources, then they would surely rise into a reliable shelter, one that could provide meaningful support to HOPE Base. That was all Kisha could really hope for.

Who would have thought Kisha’s gamble would pay off so well? In time, this shelter, no, the entire Maple Leaf Town, would rise as one of the pillars supporting HOPE Base in its struggle against rival factions and shelters.

Because Kisha and Duke had nearly wiped out thousands of zombies here, the horde population had plummeted. With most mutated zombies already taken care of by their own kind, only the ordinary ones remained, making it far easier for the locals to keep the town clear and expand their territory.

Step by step, their shelter would grow to encompass the whole city, able to house more survivors and steadily build manpower and strength.

In the years ahead, they would come to be known as one of the strongest shelters in existence. And with their deep ties to HOPE Base, they could trade for nearly anything they lacked, allowing them to live lives not far from the world before the apocalypse. But that, of course, was a story for another time.

“Savior, please don’t leave just yet! Allow us to host you and serve you our finest food!” The second-in-command rushed toward Kisha, still clutching the gun distributed by the STAU earlier, as he tried to curry favor.

He remembered Adam’s warning well; HOPE Base was not a power they could afford to offend. Clinging to the City Lord’s thick thigh was the wisest choice, and he committed himself to treating Kisha and her people with utmost respect.

After all, the City Lord of HOPE Base had personally come to their aid; he felt indebted, relieved, and overwhelmed by a mix of emotions. Offering them what little they had was the least he could do.

Though he knew Kisha and her people likely enjoyed far more luxurious meals back at their base, he still hoped they would recognize his sincerity in trying to host them properly.

Kisha also recognized the sincerity behind his gratitude. To him, their intervention wasn’t just a kindness; it had saved them all.

Though this had only been a mission Adam posted on the mission board, everyone knew the stakes had skyrocketed a hundredfold with the appearance of a mutated zombie on the verge of evolving into a zombie king.

That single creature had brought chaos and nearly spelled their doom.

If she and her people hadn’t arrived when they did, Adam’s entire shelter might have been wiped out. In fact, as far as Kisha could recall from all her past lives, she had never once heard of a shelter in Maple Leaf Town survived.

Despite the city once being a bustling business hub, no other stronghold had ever taken root or survived here, most likely because of that very same mutated zombie.

And Kisha wasn’t wrong. The mutated zombie she had killed was far more twisted than even a human; it had wiped out countless shelters weaker than Adam’s, not for food, but for sport.

Survivors were stalked, toyed with, and then slaughtered once it grew bored. It didn’t even eat all its victims; instead, it reveled in the hunt itself. The way it drew out their terror before striking was proof enough that the creature still carried over its psychotic tendencies from when it was still human.

It wasn’t just a monster driven by hunger; it was a predator addicted to fear and the thrill of killing.

Had Adam not crossed paths with Kisha when he did, their fate might have mirrored that of Kisha’s past lives. They would have ended up as playthings for the mutated zombie, while their young and elderly slowly perished from hunger, even within the supposed safety of their shelter.

The men and women would fight desperately to protect their loved ones, only to be picked off one by one, never knowing who would be taken next, until all that remained was a miserable, inevitable end.

Adam and his people had met a miserable end. Their mental defenses had long since crumbled under the mutated zombie’s relentless torment, as they were herded like sheep awaiting slaughter.

The constant fear of death alone was crushing, but not knowing when it would come, while watching their loved ones die one after another, as they felt powerless to stop it, was a torture beyond any hell they could endure.

Some even attempted suicide, but the mutated zombie never allowed it. Those who tried were punished with deaths far more gruesome than the rest, their anguish-filled screams deliberately amplified so the survivors would lose any thought of defiance.

In this way, the mutated zombie could keep them in line, forcing them to live in despair until, one by one, the survivors became little more than soulless husks, broken like rag dolls. By the time none of them had the will to resist, they no longer amused the creature.

In the end, it simply slaughtered them all, ironically granting a kind of twisted mercy in death.

Among the very last to fall was Adam. But by then, his mind was already shattered; death meant nothing to him anymore.

Or so the mutated zombie believed. By then, Adam had already awakened his ability; he was only waiting for the right moment. Hidden beneath his broken exterior, he carried the resolve to use his own core to self-destruct, ensuring that the mutated zombie would perish with him.

Even in captivity, Adam remained the leader of his shelter, the strongest among them. And because of the mutated zombie’s twisted habit of saving the strongest for last, tormenting them to prove how useless their strength truly was, Adam endured.

But arrogance and madness made the creature careless. Adam seized that opening, sacrificing himself to drag the menace into death alongside him. That single act was the reason no zombie king ever emerged from Maple Leaf Town in Kisha’s previous lives.

But since Kisha had no way of knowing these details, when the memory flashed through her mind, she simply pushed it aside. What mattered now was that she had successfully altered the fate of the people from Maple Leaf Town, and that alone was already a tremendous accomplishment.

With that thought, she and Duke remained as the shelter residents busied themselves, clearing an area to cook and prepare a small feast in their honor.

This time, Kisha no longer felt it right to refuse their sincerity. Even if they didn’t have much, she accepted their gesture wholeheartedly, believing that Adam and Jason were still out on a mission to gather crystal cores and supplies from her base.

When they returned, they would surely bring enough supplies to replenish the shelter’s stock. More importantly, she and her people had just solved their greatest predicament and saved them from the total annihilation that had befallen them in her past lives.

Seeing that his wife had no intention of leaving and instead chose to spend time with the people of Maple Leaf Town’s shelter, Duke stayed with her. Soon, the group was ushered into the leader’s office, where there was a more comfortable couch for them to rest on while the others busied themselves with cooking preparations.

Duke, Kisha, Sparrow, Vulture, and the other core members were guided inside, with the shelter’s second-in-command personally attending to them.

Kisha had also wanted to bring her grandparents and brother in with them, but her brother was more eager to be outside, gathering the spoils of war and helping collect crystal cores from the zombies they had just defeated.

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