Killing a blender or a vacuum was one thing, but this? This car fell into a completely different category of monster. The red vehicle didn’t sprout a mouth or teeth or any other twisted mutation like the others had. But the way its engine snarled, the deep mechanical growl that shook the air, and the shriek of its tires skidding on the pavement, trailing white smoke, was threatening enough.
June didn’t wait. Seeing that it hadn’t launched at him immediately, he bolted. His legs moved on instinct, and for a second, he was shocked by his own speed. Not superhuman, not like flying, but fast. The kind of fast that made wind whip past his face as he ran, heart pounding.
He leapt on a burned-out vehicle, hitting the ground hard and rolling up to his feet in one motion.
The red car shrieked as it turned and charged. It didn’t hesitate, it slammed directly into the burnt car, metal crumpling with a violent crash. The impact launched him off balance, knocking him to the ground, but he scrambled up before it could reorient itself. He ran again, zigzagging between wrecks, trying to use its size against it. The thing had speed, but not grace. It needed time to pivot.
June dashed toward a rusted, half-collapsed truck and without slowing, climbed up its tilted hood before vaulting onto the roof. From this higher ground, he turned and looked back, breath ragged. The red car growled below, engine rumbling low, its front bumper smeared with the crumpled parts of the last car it had torn through.
It itself didn’t took damage though, not even a scratch.
June’s stomach dropped. Throwing rocks was out of the question. His knife was useless. Even his Stasis Lock, he had a gut feeling it wouldn’t do much. The car was too big, too heavy, too… inorganic. He needed a better plan, but nothing came to mind.
"I'm sorry!" In a desperate bid, he yelled down at the circling car. "I was a fool for waking you up!" He apologized, voice cracking.
But the red monster car was having none of it, it growled even harder, engine revving like an angry beast as it rammed repeatedly into the truck's side, making June's perch shudder dangerously.
It either wanted blood.
Or oil.
Or him.
Fortunately, the truck turned out to be a bigger, meaner monster than the car, and despite all its furious attempts, ramming again and again couldn’t do much more than roar, spinning in place like an angry animal that had just realized it couldn’t bite through iron.
June, realizing this, let himself settle down, legs crossed atop the truck’s scorched roof, and casually pulled out another piece of half-melted chocolate from his pocket.
“Yeah, take that,” he muttered and threw the wrapper below on the car, provoking it more. He ate carefree.
Without realizing it, an hour passed. Then two, and June was getting baked in the sun outside. His eyes narrowed and he sneaked a look at the car. It had calmed down a lot but was still hissing.
June wondered for how long it could go before it ran out of gas. That gave him hope, but only a little. He didn’t know how long it could stay like that.
Hopefully not forever, he muttered under his breath, then looked around the lot again and began sketching a plan in his head.
There was a patch of overgrown weed off to the side, soft and thick enough to muffle a fall, and if he landed just right, maybe he could disappear without making a sound. He waited, watching the car with narrowed eyes, counting breaths and letting the wind shift before making his move. When the moment felt right, he jumped. The landing wasn’t perfect, he rolled a bit too hard and hit the ground with a rough skid, but it was quiet. Or it would’ve been, if not for the brittle leaves that crunched beneath his boots. The engine flared back to life immediately, growling with renewed fury as the car spun to face him. Tires screeched, and it launched forward.
“Hold on!” June yelled, and in a last-ditch move, he jumped toward it instead of away, closing the distance by just enough to trigger his skill. He landed hard on the hood, boots thudding against the metal, and without hesitation, activated it.
STASIS LOCK.
Due to area restriction, only half of the car was halted, but even that half worked wonder.
Eighteen seconds....
June leapt from the car and didn’t look back. He sprinted, harder than he had in his life, twisting down empty roads, cutting sharp around buildings, ducking beneath broken signage, his breath ragged and chest on fire as his legs carried him farther and farther from that cursed parking lot. He didn’t slow until he was sure he could no longer hear the sound of wheels or roaring metal behind him.
Finally, hands on his knees, he bent over to catch his breath, eyes fixed on the cracked pavement beneath his feet.
“Okay,” he muttered between gasps, “new rule: don’t touch anything unless I absolutely have to.” Who knew what other sleeping monsters were out there, waiting to be woken up and chase him through the streets?
But as his breathing slowed and he lifted his head, a different thought came: Why all of these animated entities were hostile. Can't there be a few good ones?
He sighed and rubbed his face, then turned slowly to take in his new surroundings.
The streets had widened, the homes rising taller and more clustered together. Ahead of him stretched a wide plaza, littered with cracked benches and dead fountains, flanked by rows of storefronts, some smashed open, others sealed tight. There were old cafés, collapsed banks, shuttered supply shops, and one massive building at the far end of it all, its name still barely legible in chipped red letters mounted high above the doors.
ALLMART.
June stared at it, then let out a slow breath. It was the biggest and only mall in the town so there was bound to be a lot of good stuff to loot inside. He strolled forward cautiously.
…
[VOICE IN HEAD]
[You have entered: “Allmart – Sector 3 Supercenter”]
Tier III Complex-Dungeon
[Classification: Civilian Resource Dungeon Construct(Multi Floor) – Type: Retail Hub (Looted)]
[Dungeon Status: Core terminated]
[Core Neutralized: [Marketing Construct: “The Brandfather”]
[Threat Level: Low → Variable]
“Allmart thanks you for shopping. Allmart never closes.”
…
This again… June reckoned that anything with closed walls could probably be designated as a dungeon. Maybe that was the rule. Still, it made everything more complicated than it needed to be.
This Allmart was marked as a third-tier dungeon, though he had no idea what that actually meant. Size, maybe? That was his best guess. He hoped it wasn’t something worse. The only saving grace was that it appeared to be already looted, which might spare him from encountering any sentient horrors inside. Still, the threat level being "low to variable" gave him pause. Something might remain, an echo or hostile entity lurking in the shadows of abandoned aisles.
Just to be safe, June had broken off a small metal pipe from one of the rusted vehicles in the lot, one that thankfully hadn’t come to life. It felt good to hold something solid again, even if he didn’t quite know how to use it.
The Allmart’s front glass doors were shattered, but he didn’t walk in blindly. He picked up a chunk of concrete and tossed it inside first. When nothing moved or screamed or opened up to bite the rock in half, he approached slowly. Then, poking forward with the pipe like a medieval soldier with a spear, he nudged the doorframe and made sure it wouldn’t try to devour him. Only when he was confident it wouldn’t eat him alive did he step inside.
Just beyond the entrance, he spotted a few broken vending machines lined up along the wall. Surprisingly, some snacks were still trapped inside. He managed to pull a few free, mostly stale chips and plastic-wrapped cookies. He didn’t care if they expired, he was pretty sure his magic-like passive characteristics would keep him from being poisoned.
I need a backpack, he thought, popping a gummy bear into his mouth as he moved forward.
It became clear quickly that almost all the smaller storefront doors inside had been broken open. Looters had come and gone. But, luckily, not everything was taken.
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There were still clothes. A lot of them.
It struck him as strange at first, so many untouched racks of high-end clothing and shoes. But then he understood. People on the run, people hiding—they wanted food, water, warmth. Clothes came later. Expensive brands and flashy colors didn’t matter when survival was the only priority. Faded sale banners hung limply from the ceiling, advertising discounts for a world that no longer existed. Moreover, the only light inside came from broken skylights and cracks in the windows where sunlight pushed through. But the deeper he went into the store, the darker it became. The back half was already swallowed in shadow, thick and unmoving.
June found himself in a shoe section. The place was overflowing. Dozens of rows, all packed with every kind of shoe imaginable. Sneakers, boots, sandals, dress shoes, even some designer ones in glass displays that had already been smashed open. He moved between shelves, scanning carefully, weighing his options. He needed something practical. durable, and something that fit. His current shoes still stuck at size five were squeezing so tight he could barely feel his toes. Blood flow was a suggestion at this point.
He considered everything he could in the moment, comfort for long walks, traction for running, flexibility for climbing or maybe even fighting, and durability for whatever the weather might throw at him. Choosing shoes turned out to be way harder than he expected. Too many options. Too many variables. It almost felt absurd. Eventually, he settled on a pair of rugged black ranger boots he broke from a glass. They had thick soles, ankle support, which seemed enough to give for long treks. If he had to walk out of the city and into actual wilderness, they’d hold up. Though, now that he thought about it… the city itself was wilderness. Overgrowth, cracked roads, trees clawing through the skeletons of buildings, yeah, everywhere was taken over by wild now.
Still, just in case, he grabbed two other pairs: one fancy crocs and second sneakers. Simply because he liked them. While in his old life, the clothes and shoes he wore had always come from donation bins and secondhand piles in the orphanage storeroom, his new self wasn’t so willing to let those material desires pass by so easily anymore.
From there, he roamed through another dozen shops, his first goal being to find a proper change of clothes and whatever survival gear he could gather. And to his quiet amazement, there was plenty to be found. High-end merchandise was everywhere. June’s happiness slowly began to bubble over; this felt like a dream in the truest sense, a strange and silent mall where he could choose whatever he wanted without anyone watching, without having to ask, without needing to worry about how much something cost.
In front of a cracked mirror inside a boutique store, he tried on a pair of black-tinted sunglasses. He adjusted them, pulled a slight face, then squinted and tilted his head.
Honestly, he didn’t quite recognize the person looking back at him. He wasn’t sure he’d call him himself.
The boy in the mirror looked… older. Mature. A little like those senior kids he used to see at school, the ones playing basketball after class or hanging around near the gates in uniforms that somehow looked cooler on them than anyone else. His shoulders were broader now, his posture straighter, his hair longer, curving around the edges of his face in a way that gave it definition. Overall, he found himself pretty good looking.
He wondered, idly, if putting more points into Strength and Dexterity had triggered this change, and whether it might happen again if he continued growing.
He eventually settled on a grey jacket, which he had picked after combing through three different winter apparel stores. Beneath that, he layered a soft black hoodie and a pair of comfortable blue jeans. He had intentionally picked the clothes one size larger, just in case his body kept changing in the coming days.
Finding water, though, that had been much harder.
Three different washrooms had yielded nothing but rusted pipes and dry, corroded sinks. The only bottle of water he’d come across was half-full, its cap off and the inside cloudy with something sour-smelling. He’d sniffed it, winced, and put it down.
Thankfully, further into the mall, at the very center, just past what had once been a garden-themed seating area: He found a large decorative fountain. It wasn’t running, and the system itself was long dead, but there was still a shallow pool of water collected at the bottom, clear enough to catch reflections. It looked… clean. Or at least clean enough.
June hesitated. The water might be safe. It might not. He’d never read a survival manual in his life, and his old, slower brain had never held onto practical advice, but he had remembered a snippet of something once overheard—boil water before you drink it—and that was enough. So the next thirty minutes were spent scouring the mall again, this time looking for supplies to start a fire. He gathered flattened cardboard boxes from storerooms, and eventually hit the jackpot in a general goods shop where he found an entire unopened case of lighters, along with a few other useful odds and ends that caught his eye.
With a makeshift fire pit assembled near the fountain, he used two large metal buckets to collect water and heat it. While he waited, he trimmed his overgrown hair down to something manageable with a pair of scissors from a beauty store, then stripped out of his tight, sweat-soaked clothes and washed himself there on the tiles in open air. There wasn’t a soul in sight to be embarrassed in front of. By the time he finished, the sun had moved slightly across the ceiling glass. His reflection, now dressed in clean blue jeans, a soft black hoodie, and that light but cold-weather-ready grey jacket, looked almost like someone he would’ve seen in a television ad, someone walking through a bright commercial city, headphones in, eyes forward.
He didn’t look like the June he remembered. Not at all.
Next, he turned his attention to the pile of goods he’d collected throughout the mall. A small camera, still blinking with a cracked screen, he set it aside. Binoculars? Useful! A mobile phone, completely dead, and with no real use here, he tossed it into the scrap pile. A hunting knife with a serrated edge from an outdoor store, finally something useful, he kept with it kevin’s knife. A large insulated water bottle and water purification tablets, he found due to luck. Basic medical supplies salvaged from several stores: bandages, antiseptic, pain relievers. A compact sleeping bag rated for cold weather. Energy bars and preserved foods with distant expiration dates. A flashlight with spare batteries. Rope and duct tape—basics for any survival situation. A small metal pot for boiling water
Finally, June packed everything into the sturdy backpack he’d picked out. It was a multi-compartmented one with enough room to organize supplies methodically. He arranged each item with care, balancing the weight as evenly as he could manage. Honestly, he’d expected the whole thing to feel a lot heavier once filled, but to his surprise, it didn’t strain his shoulders at all. Just another reminder of how much investing in Strength was already paying off. Every movement felt smoother, more controlled. His body didn’t drag under weight like it used to.
Alright… I’ve still got half a day left, he thought, tightening the straps. Maybe I can find a better source of food, and a decent shelter. Then I can make this place a temporary base. Meanwhile, I’ll explore more of the town … maybe find someone. Or, if not people, at least something worth a bit of EXP…
With that, June slung the backpack onto his back and switched out the crude metal pipe for a proper baseball bat he’d found hanging above the sporting goods rack. It felt solid in his grip. More reliable. He gave it a few experimental swings and nodded to himself.
As he began walking toward the unexplored areas of the upper level, his thoughts drifted, quietly and curiously.
…How are echoes made? he wondered. The voice in my head says they are memory residuals, but what is a memory residual, like a dirt mark? Why did the orphanage have almost everybody's memory residual, and a mall is a pretty big place where so many people gather at any time. So why are there no echoes in any corner? Are they afraid? Or have there been people coming to this place who killed them to gain EXP and skills?
Hmm, this does seem plausible. June continued his internal analysis. Killing a Hostile Entity or clearing a so-called dungeon and Echo always gives EXP, sometimes skills, and they are rare as far as I can tell. Then there are passive characteristics, which I don't understand how they're different from skills, they seem the same to me…
But maybe, when there were people here, they might have hunted everything that could be killed and harvested the city before leaving for a better place…
Why is there no system for building something? Why can’t you get EXP by planting trees, or cooking, or helping someone? Why is everything about destroying, hunting, killing?
He didn’t have an answer. Just more questions.
His feet carried him to the second floor while his mind churned, but the moment he spotted the wide, open space ahead, his thoughts were interrupted. His eyes lit up instantly.
The food court.
A whole ring of stalls and counters and signs that once advertised burgers, noodles, coffee, fried chicken. It was dust-choked and long dead, but it still hit him with a pang of memory. He remembered coming here once with Sister Margaret, though the memory was blurred and hollow, the only thing he could recall clearly was that he’d eaten a really good burger.
He set his backpack down on a plastic table and jumped over the counter of a small coffee-and-bakery kiosk. It was cramped but dry, and in a rusted cabinet at the back, he found many sealed paper bags full of flour and other dry ingredients. Technically, all should’ve been useless, but inside the drawer, tucked beneath a receipt pad, he discovered an old beginner’s baking book, pages bent and faded but still readable. There were many simple recipes inside for making bread. Nothing fancy, but it was more than he’d expected to find.
It made him genuinely happy. Even if it wasn’t meat or fresh vegetables, it was real food, better than rationing out chips and gummy bears. He had nutritional bars, sure, but they wouldn’t last him more than a week, even if he stretched them carefully. This was something he could make. He wanted to start mixing ingredients right away, but forced himself to wait. Better to check every food stall first, make a full sweep. Thus over the next hour, June moved methodically from one food court counter to the next, carefully sorting and stacking whatever he found still salvageable. Flour, oats, sugar, powdered milk, dried noodles, even some unopened cans of soup and beans and a lot of bad, smelly meat. Still, whether the stuff expired or not didn’t matter much to him, as long it looked good and could be boiled or cooked, he could make it edible. He arranged everything into piles on the same table, grouping items like a proper scavenger.
And then he found something else. A vending machine.
A soft drink vending machine, half-hidden behind a toppled table near the back wall. The lights on it were dead, and the glass looked fogged from age. June stepped up to it, raised his bat and was about to smash the front panel open when the entire machine let out a low, mechanical gurgle.
It sounded like a wounded animal.
He froze.
Before he could back away, there was a loud clank—and a can of soda shot out from the dispenser with enough force to hit him square in the stomach. The impact knocked the wind out of him and nearly sent him tumbling backwards off his feet.
He wheezed.
The soda rolled onto the floor with a hiss.
June stared at the vending machine.
It had a mouth.
Sort of.
At the very least it was alive. Hostile Entity.
His hand tightened around the bat, fingers curling with quiet resolve.
"Of course," he muttered, exhaling slow. "Even the vending machines..."
"Time to harvest some EXP."
Fun Fact: When the Allmart Dungeon was still active, it became infamous for dropping bizarre loot themed around consumer culture. Survivors who managed to clear it often walked away with unlimited food rations (though heavily processed), mystery boxes, and strange but useful skills tied to consumerism and retail warfare.