Esper Harem in the Apocalypse-Chapter 1054: A Familiar House in the Woods

"A civil war?" Rudy raised his brow with a confused yet anxious look on his face. "What does that mean?"

Eric stared at Rudy blankly for a good two seconds before replying, "A civil war means people from the same—"

Before Eric could finish explaining, Rudy interrupted Eric and uttered, "Of course I know what it means. I am asking, what do you mean by that?"

Eric glanced around in the woods cautiously and said, "Come with me."

After saying that, Eirc went deeper into the woods.

Rudy followed him while scanning the areas. He was worried that a monster might attack them or they might have a hidden nest somewhere in the forest.

Of course, he wasn't scared, since he knew he could easily take care of any monster. Still, he didn't have any experience in combat and had no idea how to utilize his powers properly in a fight. Using it a bit more could destroy the entire town.

"Where are we going?" Rudy asked as he continued to scan everything around him with his supervision.

Eric jumped over a fallen tree as he said, "We are almost there."

Eric had used his power to jump over the tree since it was big and an ordinary person wouldn't be able to jump over it without someone's help. So Eric waited for Rudy so he could help him, but much to his surprise, Rudy easily jumped without breaking a sweat.

Eric was a bit surprised but didn't say anything. He knew Rudy wasn't a particularly athletic guy, so him jumping over the tree had definitely raised suspicions.

While following Eric, Rudy noticed there were a lot of fallen and decayed trees. Not only that, but the surroundings seemed to get worse.

At some distance, Rudy saw the area blocked by a high end security machine with a camera mounted on top of it.

'I think I might have read about this in the article. But I had no idea it was this close to our town. Although we are currently in the middle of nowhere, the chances of someone getting lost here are as high.'

Rudy checked his phone, and as he had expected, it was out of network.

Eric stopped and brought his bag in the front.

Zips

He opened the zip and seemed to be looking for something in the bag. Two seconds later, he took out a strange-looking mask that could cover the entire face.

"Here." He tossed one to Rudy and wore the other one.

"Three years ago, a portal had opened here, and it went unnoticed. Tens of thousands of high-ranking monsters had come out of it and by the time the hero organization noticed it, the monsters had bred into millions and created their own city here.

There were a dozen houses nearby, but fortunately, no one lived in them. Dealing with a large number of monsters was impossible at that time. The hero organization wasn't well organized and they couldn't afford to send their strongest heroes to die here.

Had they sent ten thousand heroes, 99% of them would have died. Not to mention, the monsters would have spread out everywhere and it would have been impossible to catch them. They would have caused havoc and massacre.

Think of it as a bee nest. If someone throws a stone at it, all the bees get scattered and make a mess. Thus, they came up with a plan to—."

"To nuke the area…"

"How do you know that?"

"Uhh… What kind of question is that? I live like 45 mins away from here. And obviously, the entire world knows about it."

"It was said to the public that a powerful weapon was used. They did that because of the backlash they could have received for using a nuclear nuke."

"Well…" Rudy shrugged his shoulders. "Was using the nuclear nuke truly necessary, though? Any nuke would have done the work."

"They didn't want a single monster to survive, and even if they did, they would have died from strong radiation." Eric glanced at the closed area. "Even after all these years, it is still so strong. Normal citizens and even low-ranking heroes are prohibited from entering this forest. So no one knows anything about the radiation. They just think that the monsters still live here and it's dangerous to come here."

Eric pressed something on the device he was carrying and the lights on the security machines turned off.

"Let's go. I rebooted the system and it will be back up in 15 seconds. We have to hurry before that."

Eric used his powers and ran as fast as he could, while Rudy was casually running and matching Eric's speed.

"..." Eric was speechless. He could not comprehend what he was witnessing, but it wasn't time to ask questions.

They gradually slowed down their running speed and now traveled at a walking speed since Eric said they were far enough to not be detected by the radars.

"Can you tell me where we are going, though?" Rudy asked curiously, but he had a frustrated look on his face. He was growing impatient and Eric's vague replies weren't helping.

Eric had purposefully revealed the information of 'civil war' to Rudy to make him interested. Nonetheless, he knew that Rudy would have had his back even if he hadn't done that.

Rudy was continuously using his supervision to scan and see if there was something up ahead, but all he could see was debris all around him. Occasionally, he spotted a few skeletons here and there, but there were no other apparent remains of the monsters who once ruled the forest.

Just a minute later, Rudy spotted a house about one and half kilometers away from them. Except that, there was nothing around. Rudy had already guessed that it was their destination.

The fruit on patience is said to be sweet, but for Rudy… it was strangely painful.

When they reached the spot and Rudy looked at the house, he saw a vision in his mind that didn't even last a second.

Little did he know, that house was where Rudy had crossed paths with Rias, not once, but twice.