You were assigned to a new position "Slave behind the camera".
As a "slave behind the camera", you are being granted the right to use the "Camera" app, but you can access it only with your boss' permission.
Before the girl could say anything, the boss waved his hand and Nica saw a system message. She was really confused at first, but started laughing as soon as she read it.
"Another "dark" humor lover," thought Annette.
"I am Nica and I assure you, I can handle this job!" The girl stated confidently.
"Ha, alright alright. Get behind this laptop, Annette will teach you and help you along the way," there was another laptop now, near the one that belonged to Annette. It had only the "Camera" app installed and nothing else.
"Now we need to somehow connect it to the wearable camera," Sergei spoke, looking at the screen of the second laptop, which was showing the same thing as the first one.
"I think, it can be changed here...," Nica clicked on the "Signal source" button. There was a small menu where it was said that the source of the signal was the owner of the haven. The girl quickly changed the signal to the "Wearable camera 1" source, but the screen instantly went dark.
Boss returned to the apartment building on Earth and brought Solomon along.
"How's it now, Annette?"
"We got the signal. Tell Solomon to move a few feet away from you. Yes, that's it, I can safely confirm, the second camera is not focused on you!"
"Excellent! Solomon, get your men - twenty people should be enough. Bring the meat shields... I mean, the beastmen, don't forget Gai and... You can choose the rest. Oh and one more thing," the boss waved his hand and in front of them appeared a box, filled with walkie-talkies and headsets.
"Give one to Nica, she'll be the one responsible for your group. You can give the rest to every other member of the squad. Tune them yourselves, half to my frequency, half to yours."
After giving out the orders, boss returned to the real world and began clearing the apartment building on his own - there was no such thing as too many experience points after all.
"Boss, I inspected all floors. There's a big zombie on the seventh floor, in the apartment to the left, it's alone and, by the looks of it, it's in the middle of evolving."
"Hm, sounds like a perfect moment to get some loot and free xp!" Boss smirked and ran to the seventh floor.
There were a few zombies on the stairs which caused him some problems. It was a bit hard after all, to fight enemies that were descending the stairs, plus zombies weren't exactly graceful creatures - it looked like they could stumble any second and fall down onto the human in front of them.
After the sixth severed head there were no zombies left, the headsman reached the needed floor and stopped in front of the right door - or rather in front of what was left of it. It used to be a pretty good iron door, but now it resembled a piece of a twisted metal. When the big guy was breaking into the apartment to have some alone time, it didn't really care about the door, even though theoretically, it should have been smart enough to know how to open it... Or maybe the door was just locked.
"Move forward and turn left, the target's by the window," Annette pointed out.
Boss nodded, letting the girl know that he'd heard her, took his level 3 gun and entered the room. A two-meters tall, hulking zombie was curled up on the floor near the window. The body of the zombie was changing and it was glaringly obvious. Bone outgrowths were slowly growing from its back, bone spikes were protruding from its head, its legs were growing longer by each second. Fortunately for Sergei, the zombie completely ignored him.
"You're so ugly, you know," he said, walking closer and looking at its face. The face was slightly elongated and its teeth have turned into fangs.
Having finished talking, boss materialized his black sword and plunged it into the zombie's ear with all his might. The sword met some resistance at first, but soon the bone gave in. The zombie twitched a few times and died.
You killed a mutated zombie, level 2 and received 50 experience points.
Congratulations! You accumulated enough experience points and reached level 8. As a reward you receive 2 stat points.
"Nice, put it all in strength! Eighteen points of core strength, plus four points from my boots, equals twenty two points of strength. Very good! Now. You're not gonna be a cheapskate, are you?" Asked the smiling man, who enjoyed shamelessly killing innocent, sleeping zombies... Sergei sent the corpse to the abyss. "A blue one!"
Boss' happiness knew no bounds when he picked up the blue egg of reward. But the happy man didn't get any time to enjoy his treasure...
"Boss, Solomon says the squad's ready."
"Huh? Yeah right, wait a sec," Sergei sent the reward to the warehouse and summoned twenty one soldiers to the real world.
Then their forces were divided into two groups, eleven soldiers each: boss' group went downstairs, while Solomon's soldiers left behind to clear the seventh floor and upwards.
The tactic was simple: the beastmen, immune to the level 1 virus, engaged in close combat and the rest helped them. When the apartment was cleared of zombies, part of the soldiers would leave behind to collect the goods, the rest headed out to the next apartment.
Usually there were no more than three zombies in an apartment, thus the clean-up proceeded really fast. Solomon's soldiers could hardly be called professionals yet, of course - it was just a group of armed civilians, who had some training and who fought some zombies once or twice before.
...Not without problems, but all ten floors were finally cleared in the end. Each floor housed four apartments, which meant that they already gathered everything necessary for the settlement of forty families.
Everyone exited the building in an orderly manner. The beastmen stood in the vanguard, dividing the crowd of zombies that already gathered in front of the building in several groups.
"Not bad," boss commented, seeing the beastmen at work.
"We've been training this tactic for quite some time," Solomon answered proudly. He did, in fact, come up with this maneuver on his own and spend a considerable amount of time drilling it into the heads of those knuckleheads, that he was given to train... "It's not perfect yet, but it's a matter of experience."
When the undead ended up being divided, the soldiers attacked the nearest small group with all their forces, two to three soldiers against one zombie. It was faster and safer that way.
Meanwhile the beastmen lured the zombies away and ran around with them hot on their tails, doing their best to reduce their numbers any time they could. Soon all the undead, group after group, were consistently eliminated, even without Sergei and Solomon's involvement.
Twenty three corpses were sent to the pit, the loot was collected. Before throwing the corpses to the abyss, they additionally bashed in their skulls, just in case if some of them were faking it...
The situation at the second entrance to the building was much easier: there were no mutants there. Solomon's group started the clean-up on floors one to five, the boss' group - from floor six and above. The girls behind the cameras gave the soldiers the numbers and locations of zombies, while the leaders of each group gave out orders. If boss and Solomon spearheaded the attack last time, this time they decided to turn the attack into the training experience for their soldiers, thankfully all of them had a bracelet with the vaccine.
After the night invasion, they collected fifty eggs of reward, opening which was entrusted to Anne. She got two dozens of vaccines, a few level 1 armor sets and a few other things. The important thing was that there were no empty rewards - boss even felt slightly offended. When he opened the rewards last time - he got four empty rewards in a row...
The clean-up of all floors took an hour and a half. Boss' people left only bare walls in their wake... If it was possible to remove plastic windows - they would've taken those as well. Still, they even took toilets and bathtubs whenever possible. Each toilet and a tub - were the coins saved!
The third entrance got cleared out even faster - they were done in one hour and ten minutes; the last entrance was finished in forty minutes, as there were only two zombies wandering up and down the stairs. The apartments and their undead inhabitants were already cleared out by someone else - cleared out by the standards of ordinary people, of course, definitely not by a gang of crazy robbers who weren't above taking even the toilets...
Counting the zombies inside and outside of the building, one hundred and forty of those walking corpses were eliminated in total. Without counting a few minor wounds, one used vaccine and dozens of spent arrows, the operation has gone flawlessly...
There was still a lot of time before nightfall, so the squad headed to the next building. After getting rid of all the "bystanders" in front of the building, the group was about to enter through the first entrance, when the boss suddenly changed his mind.
"Annette, Nica. Solomon and I will go and stand in the middle of the building and both of you will inspect it thoroughly, or I think my imagination is getting the better of me..."
In just a minute they received an interesting information. It turned out that there was a small camp of survivors in the last entrance - fifty two people. They were located on the second floor, while the floors above were used as living quarters and storages. Aside from humans, there were only three zombies in the entrance that wandered in there by accident.
People in the camp saw unidentified armed group of people outside their building and were quiet scared, so they were seating there quietly, doing their best not to attract attention to themselves.
At first, Sergei considered adding those people to his haven, but then changed his mind. According to Annette, not so long ago, the leader of that camp was having fun with four girls, two of which looked visibly younger than sixteen... Of course, Sergei realized, that the girls may have took initiative themselves - as it was better to be a concubine of a strong man, healthy and well-fed, than be a proud maiden, but dying of hunger, zombies and other aspects of living in the postapocalyptic Paris. But Sergei didn't like people like the leader of this camp and as they say in the East: better to be the head of a snake than the tail of a dragon. Such a person could never become one of the residents of the haven.
Leading the party to the first entrance, Sergei summoned more people, to speed up their looting process. An hour later, three entrances were completely emptied of everything that could be unbolted or simply taken out - even the corpses of zombies that the previous marauders left behind were sent to the pit.
Having sent the additional helpers back, Sergei's group deliberately walked by the last entrance towards the direction of the next apartment building. And just for the sake of showing off, boss gave the most hungry soldiers some food. It was past dinnertime, after all.
The group of twenty two people, half of which were munching on rabbit shish kebab on a skewer, was slowly walking past the building. Meanwhile, the girls were describing everything that was currently going on in the survivors' camp. The appearance of a strong group of survivors gathered everyone's attention, after all. People in the camp got glued to the windows and watched each step of the people that were passing by.
(fr) "Wait! Please wait, I'm begging you!" A skinny man came running out of the entrance of the building and started yelling rather loudly.
All the nearest zombies, including those who were previously inactive, reacted to his cries. There happened to be quite a lot of them - about forty, but all of them were coming from different directions. Some jumped out of the windows, some were wandering around the area, some were resting under vehicles, others - inside those vehicles.
(fr) "What an idiot..." commented one of the soldiers in French.
(fr) "Prepare for battle! Divide into groups of three and find yourselves a target! Don't stray too far, no more than fifteen meters away from the boss!" Solomon stood near his boss and started giving out orders.
Fifteen meters wasn't just a random distance - it was the range of boss' teleporting ability. If something happens, boss can save the soldier by teleporting him to another location or sending him to the haven. It was even possible to teleport everyone at once if the situation became really dangerous.
"Gai, you asshat! Stop stealing experience points!" Boss yelled, slapping the young "Legolas" upside his head.
It was easier to fight in the streets: there was more space, a lot of obstacles and hiding places. Thus it was rather easy to deal with the group of randomly scattered zombies, plus Gai got the opportunity to show himself in all his glory. His archery skill was on level 2, after all. The young man managed to shoot fifteen zombies until he got yelled at by his boss.
"And don't even think that your showing off will be enough to get Annette to forgive you - instead you can easily offend your teammates!" After getting an earful from his Boss, Gai guiltily hung his head. In the heat of the battle he didn't even think of the situation that way...
"Why are we only clearing the buildings on the left side, Boss?" One of the soldiers asked. All zombies were eliminated, and their corpses collected. The soldiers were given five minutes to rest and have a quick snack.
"Because we're heading to the center of the city and we'll never get there if we start clearing the whole street... We are almost finished anyway. One last building and we'll get everything we need."
(fr) "My dear friends, excuse my man for causing you trouble!" The camp leader came out of the building, surrounded by four men suited up in level 1 gear. The man that ran out of the building earlier was with them as well. The leader was sporting the level 2 gear. His hair was glistening from the amount of hair gel, he wore a bright smile but his rotten teeth ruined the image...
"What did he say?" Boss asked, giving the delegation a dirty look.
"He says that his man made a mistake, as if it wasn't his evil plan all along," Annette reported instantly. By her boss' orders she didn't take her eyes off the camp's leader, so she heard and saw perfectly well how he ordered the skinny man to ran out and provoke the nearest zombies.
"What do you want?" Sergei asked, annoyed.
"A foreigner? Unusual. My man cause trouble and me want apologize to you," the camp leader said and smiled widely.
The man was of average height, far from handsome, he had piercings in his ears, tattoos on his arms and looked somewhere around thirty years old. A lot of gold rings with huge diamonds could be seen on his fingers. An expensive watch on one wrist and a smart watch from Apple on another - another signs of showing off. The fancy pants was wearing expensive brand name clothes, and even had an expensive pen in the chest pocket of his jacket for some reason.
(rus) "From rags to riches..." Sergei thought out loud, looking at the scumbag in front of him.
"I... I not understand what you say... What language it be? Albanian?"
"Never mind, I don't give a shit about your excuses and about your man. You are slowing us down," boss scowled at the still smiling man.
"It be getting late. Stay with us, we give you food, and people to warm you bed," the man continued smiling.
"Not interested. Say, what you want to say, stop beating around the bush, my time is worth money," boss kept scowling at the smiling man.
"Ha, sorry sorry. Don't like to ask help this directly. You see, we be a small camp, and it be really hard lately... red zombie come, then monkeys come and steal humans, then horde be walking near... I see you strong people, it mean you have good camp. Take us to you!"
Warning! Mental attack. Someone attempted to compel you to "Take this man in front of you and his people to your camp, and take care of that man". The compulsion failed due to the difference in levels.
"Mind control, huh? Interesting?" Boss smirked and summoned the level 3 gun. One fast movement and the dipshit's head exploded like a watermelon, spraying its contents on everyone nearby.
The skinny man suddenly screamed and clutched his head. He kept screaming as if rats crawled into his head and started mercilessly eating his brain. The camp leader's bodyguards screamed as well, one even started bleeding from his eyes and ears.
The agony lasted fifteen seconds, then the man fell on his knees and burst into tears.
"Boss! People in the camp started going crazy, clutched their heads and started screaming like they were being tortured, now everyone descended into chaos!" He heard Annette's nervous report.
"What exactly is going on?"
"It looks like a rebellion... Two system users that were left in the camp were surrounded and knocked down by angry people. They were the only ones who weren't screaming in pain..."
"Is that so? And? Who won?"
"The rebels have beaten them to death..." Annette reported, observing the extremely cruel and bloody scene on her screen.
"Send someone after Alice. ...And what am I supposed to do with all of you?" Boss asked, observing five men that finally came to their senses. Well, the skinny guy was still weeping and punching the ground with his fists. The men showed no reaction to Sergei's words and just stared at him blankly.
"It looks like they don't speak English. Solomon, interrogate them, Alice will work as your lie detector," the boss ordered and teleported to his haven - he wanted to see for himself what exactly was going on in the camp. The camp was filled with grief: some people were crying, some were destroying the leader's private quarters, some were committing suicides...
"What on earth were those people forced to do under the leader's compulsion...?" Nica asked with a deep breath.
"We'll find out soon enough," Sergei shrugged, but he'd be lying if he said he wasn't interested.
Sergei returned back to Paris, but Solomon was still interrogating the five tied up men. Meanwhile, Sergei sent the camp leader's corpse to the haven - there it will be carefully stripped of anything valuable and then thrown into the pit.
"Boss, I finished the interrogation. The dead man's name was Daniel, he used to be the ex leader's right-hand man, but he got lucky to find the slot machine, so he stole the useless coins from the camp and bought himself a unique skill."
"Let me guess - with that skill he got rid of the previous leader and subjugated everyone in the camp?" Boss interrupted Solomon's report and asked looking in the direction of the camp.
"Not exactly... The leader's trusted people started going missing at first, then a wave of discontent toward the ex leader's rule started among civilian population. And then came the rebellion, and almost all the camp's soldiers defected to the side of the rebels. Then the leader was tried on some wild charges, and then fed to zombies as a punishment."
"Then Daniel said that he was going to become their leader?"
"No, he immediately said that he was close to the ex leader, therefore he was partly at fault as well, but the people's assembly decided that he was the only one worthy of becoming their next leader..."
"So complicated..."
"Then the new leader started the active expansion, started sending people to hunt zombies and conquer other camps, but the moment they got closer to reaching level 5 they all mysteriously died."
"Why would he do all this? Unless... He was hoarding the coins in hopes of finding another slot machine, wasn't he?"
"Yes, boss, during his rule..."
"Alright, enough talking. Let's go to the camp and quickly finish our business. It's almost dinnertime!"
The squad entered the camp without much problem, but since there wasn't much space, all the residents were gathered around in the yard behind the building. Which of course was already cleared of all zombies, along with the immediate surroundings.
After listening to them, Sergei offered them all standard living conditions in his haven - except for three people, who, according to majority, were sources of many problems. Those were quietly eliminated...
Forty four people signed the contract and were sent to the haven, but not before gathering all their belongings. Solomon and his squad returned as well, to make sure the newbies didn't do anything stupid. Meanwhile, Sergei and his squad started collecting the camp's property.
"Not bad," Sergei commented with a satisfied smile on his face, standing in the camp's treasury. "THE TREASURY" - was literally written on the door in bold red letters.
The weapons were stored in the room, the system and mundane ones. Nothing fancy, of course - just ten old guns, not a single bullet in sight, plus two dozens of bats and eleven level 2 swords. But there were forty four vaccine bracelets and six sets of level 1 gear.
And most importantly - there was a huge amount of coins! A literal small mountain of those, stood in the corner of the room. After sending it to the haven, the system showed that the coin balance of the haven increased by a little more than 120 000 coins. It was an impressive amount of coins for such a small camp...
There was almost no furniture in the camp, it was chopped up for firewood for economy of space, while all the residents slept in sleeping bags - well, aside from the leader and his trusted people, who could afford sleeping on luxurious beds. The food in the camp was in abundance, a few tons of canned meat, pasta and other non-perishable foodstuffs. Despite all this, many residents were starving...
Progress of the quest: 733/1000.
"Well, when I get to the Louvre, the quest will be completed or even exceeded. Easy-peasy," the boss closed the progress notification, listened to the soldiers' reports on the "searching operations", and they all returned to the haven.