Ryueen Kakeru swung the aluminum baseball bat with brutal efficiency, the impact crushing a zombie's skull in a spray of black blood and fragmented bone.
The thing crumpled, and he was already moving past it, not bothering to watch it fall.
Behind him, Albert wielded a crowbar like an extension of his massive frame, each swing sending another undead body crashing to the floor.
Mio Ibuki moved with predatory grace, her sword slicing through necks and joints with surgical precision.
The hallway of Advanced Nurturing High School had become an abattoir.
Compared to the mainland, where zombies swarmed in numbers that defied comprehension, this isolated island was practically a sanctuary.
The population was contained, manageable.
But "manageable" didn't mean "safe." Every corridor held fresh horrors—students they'd shared classes with, teachers who'd once lectured them, now reduced to shambling corpses with empty eyes and endless hunger.
The sounds of chewing and wet tearing echoed off the lockers, a constant soundtrack of apocalypse.
Still, this wasn't an ordinary school.
This was an elite institution, designed to forge students into weapons of intellect and will.
Physical weakness was the exception, not the rule.
Most students here could fight. Most had at least basic training in self-defense, in situational awareness, in the kind of ruthless pragmatism that kept you alive when the world went mad.
The exceptions were Class D—the "defectives," the ones rated F in physical capabilities, the students who had slipped through the cracks or been placed there deliberately.
Some of them had died in the first wave. Some were still hiding, praying someone would come for them.
Ryueen didn't think about them. Not yet. Priorities.
Hiyori Shiina moved close to him, her voice barely above a whisper despite the chaos around them. She was the sharpest among them—not in combat, but in observation. In seeing what others missed.
"Ryueen-san." Her tone was calm, analytical, even as a zombie lunged two meters away and was promptly decapitated by Albert. "The security cameras. They're still operational. Every angle, every corridor. Whoever's running things upstairs isn't just maintaining order—they're watching. They told the truth about this island being a viable base. The infrastructure is intact."
Ryueen's lips curved into something that wasn't quite a smile.
Dark amusement, perhaps.
Or the recognition of an opportunity.
"Good." He smashed another skull, the wet crunch satisfying in a primal way he refused to examine too closely.
"I'll be calling in some friends. People from the underworld who owe me favors. People who know how to handle themselves when the rules stop applying." He paused, surveying the carnage around them. "We'll see who really rules this place when the dust settles."
He gestured vaguely at the bodies—the ones that had been students, now reduced to twitching remains.
"Look at it this way. The weak ones, the waste of space—they're solving their own problem. Becoming zombies. Eliminating themselves from the equation. Less dead weight to carry when we start building something real."
Hiyori said nothing.
Her expression didn't change.
Whether she agreed or simply understood that silence was survival, Ryueen didn't care.
Results were all that mattered.
They moved faster now, a hunting pack cutting through the school's arteries. Class by class, corridor by corridor, they cleared their path.
The sounds of their passage were rhythmic—thud, crack, squelch, thud again—a percussion of violence that grew almost meditative.
Finally, they reached Class C.
The door was barricaded. Faint sounds of movement came from inside—not the mindless scraping of zombies, but the terrified shuffling of living humans. Ryueen signaled, and Albert put his shoulder against the barricade. It gave way with a groan of protesting wood.
Inside, their classmates huddled together. Some held makeshift weapons—chairs, broken desk legs, a fire extinguisher.
Others simply crouched, trembling, their eyes wide with the kind of fear that stripped away all pretense of dignity.
A few had tears streaming silently down their faces.
Ryueen stepped into the room, blood spattered across his uniform, his bat resting on his shoulder.
He looked at them—really looked—assessing, categorizing, calculating.
"Alright, all of you." His voice wasn't loud, but it filled the space completely. "Listen carefully. We're moving out. The mall is the next objective—that's where the food is, the supplies, the real resources. The school wants us to earn points, contribute, play their little game. Fine. Let them think that's what we're doing."
He grinned—sharp, predatory, utterly without warmth.
"But here's the thing about games. The one who controls the board doesn't have to follow the rules. We're taking the mall. We're controlling distribution. And we'll see who's really in charge when the points don't matter anymore."
A few of his classmates nodded, their fear slowly transmuting into something else—hope, maybe, or the desperate need to believe in someone who seemed to know what he was doing.
Others simply stared, too shocked to process anything beyond basic survival.
Ryueen laughed—a manic, unrestrained sound that echoed off the walls.
"Come on! Follow me! Let's show them what real leadership looks like!"
They followed.
Behind them, Kazuma Sakagami, their homeroom teacher, watched in silence. He said nothing. Made no move to assert authority, to correct, to guide.
He simply watched his students organize themselves around Ryueen Kakeru, and then—almost imperceptibly—he nodded.
A small acknowledgment. A tacit surrender of control.
He fell into step behind them, not leading, not opposing.
Just... assisting.
Wherever this was going, he had apparently decided that following Ryueen was the better bet than trying to maintain the old hierarchies.
The pack moved on, leaving the blood-smeared hallway behind.
The cameras watched.
Somewhere above, someone was counting points.
And Ryueen Kakeru was already planning to burn the scoreboard.