All-out Tower Defense: My Card-Drawing Talent is a Bit Strange

A long silence followed, neither side uttering a sound, both awaiting the final outcome. The slender figure gripped the note tightly, her heart pounding with tension, the unease of finding the others gradually surfacing in her mind.

I was really too anxious. When I saw a crudely modified drone inexplicably "crash" into the flower bed in front of my community without being attacked by any "weapons", I immediately started looking for the flyers that the drone had sent out before it crashed down.

And then, you just believed what was said above so easily. Have you really forgotten the darkness you witnessed in "that world"?

This is the apocalypse, the darkness should be even more terrifying, yet I believed it so easily, and now I'm risking my life to deliver myself right to their doorstep, isn't that just courting death?

After a long while, the voice lurking in the darkness rang out again, and at the same time, a floorboard in an inconspicuous spot in the house slowly rose up.

"Come in." A haggard woman poked her head out and gestured for the thin figure to come to her side. The thin figure hesitated for a moment when she saw the cleaver tightly gripped in the woman's hand, but then the thunderous sound in her stomach erased her last remaining fear. She quickly walked to the raised floor and slipped inside.

Following the descending stairs, the slender figure arrived at a relatively spacious underground space with another woman. The structure appeared to be the former underground parking garage of the community, with all entrances and exits blocked by various vehicles and debris, leaving only the passage they had come through.

Although the underground parking garage is quite large, it is now extremely crowded. There are makeshift tents made of rags everywhere, each containing four or five people. At a rough glance, there are probably over a thousand people here.

"Our location in Southern Xinjiang Province was originally the base of the Second Military Region. After those countless zombies suddenly appeared, the military region split into smaller units to rescue more people in various cities of Southern Xinjiang Province." Before the thin figure could ask a question, the woman beside her spoke slowly.

"The settlement we are in was originally formed by an infantry company, but many of these young soldiers sacrificed their lives to save survivors in the surrounding communities, and now only one squad is left."

Smelling the various foul odors in the air, the thin figure sniffed lightly. Just as she was about to cover her nose with her hand, she saw the dense crowd around her and fell silent. She simply followed the woman deeper into the underground parking garage.

"There are nearly 5,000 people here now, the vast majority of whom are students from the nearby Dandelion Comprehensive College. High school and junior high school students are the most numerous, followed by university students. They are the main force for defense here. Of course, there are also some primary school students and even kindergarten children, who are temporarily being taken care of by us ordinary residents who were rescued."

"Where are the soldiers?" the thin figure asked slowly.

"Some of their wounded soldiers stayed here to recover and were responsible for teaching the students how to use guns and some simple weapons. The rest of them went out to continue the search and rescue." The woman fell silent as she said this, and her small figure also fell silent.

The small, thin figure trudged through the crowd, glancing at the people in the surrounding tents. Some were of different ages, probably families; others were peers huddled together in small, makeshift tents, exchanging silent glances; and still others were several women quietly caring for a group of teenagers.

Upon reaching the central area of ​​the parking lot, the makeshift tents became sparser, but the people became more densely packed. A soldier missing an arm was explaining firearms to the students sitting upright around him.

Upon seeing the two arrive, another soldier, his upper body wrapped in bandages, emerged from a nearby tent. His lips were pale, and his steps were unsteady, clearly indicating that he was still recovering from serious injuries. Yet, he still walked toward the thin figure.

"Qian Daduo, communications soldier of the 34th Infantry Company, Second Army Corps of Qian Kingdom." The soldier slowly but firmly approached the thin figure and gave him a practiced military salute.

The small figure was caught off guard. Just as it was about to return the greeting, it heard a loud "hum" that resonated throughout the entire underground garage—no, to put it more bluntly, it should be said that every surviving native on the entire planet heard a voice from the depths of their own hearts.

"A defiled world, foolish beings who have violated the laws of civilization's advancement yet remain unaware, my Lord... in mercy, I grant you an audience. If my Lord is satisfied with your repentance for violating the laws, I will open the door to salvation for you; otherwise, this world will be occupied by the fallen, you will be instantly annihilated, and your world will become one of my Lord's insignificant collections. Good luck to you."

As the words in his heart fell, a red door slowly opened in the middle of the underground parking garage, revealing a countdown that everyone could understand, along with the words "Words?" or, more accurately, a verdict!

"Congratulations! You have been chosen to become the penitents of your civilization, and are now able to see our Lord. You have 10 minutes to select 10 representatives to go to our Lord's world and repent!"

Everyone in the underground parking garage, no matter what they were doing, was stunned. They all stood up and looked at the red door floating above the ground. The wounded soldiers who remained there were the first to react. Regardless of what they thought, they all instinctively pointed their guns at the red door that looked extremely evil.

"The Laws of Civilization Advancement..." Upon hearing this term, the slender figure couldn't help but recall a hacking operation that had once made her question the meaning of life. Yes, she wasn't some cybersecurity consultant; she was a hacker, and a top-tier one at that. But that experience had forever distanced her from that profession.

Because of his frail health and lack of friends, the thin figure spent his childhood with the internet. During a teenage angst, he thought it was cool to remotely access other people's computers with one click, so he learned various network technologies on the dark web.

She wasn't a super genius, but through sheer perseverance, she became a top hacker, active on the fringes of the internet, observing all sorts of strange and unusual things that are hard for ordinary people to imagine.

To be honest, although she didn't enjoy interacting with people, her years of living in the gray area had given her a lot of experience, and she thought she had seen all the dark sides of the world, until that day.

Out of curiosity, she clicked on the surveillance footage of a laboratory where the world's top scientists gathered, and what she saw was a video that she still can't forget, a video that can be described as anti-human.

Those scientists placed a baby that had just been "carved out" from a pregnant woman's womb—yes, you read that right, carved out—on the experimental table, ignoring the baby's cries and the woman who was nearly dead from having her womb forcibly cut open, and pointed at the baby's brain.