The Art...

The door looked massive but was actually quite light for its size. Alexander pushed it sideways and it slid smoothly to the left. Inside the room was dark, but not pitch black. There were faint traces of light coming from somewhere, but it wasn't enough to reveal the contents of the room. He patted the wall beside the entrance and quickly found the light switch. Once the lights came on, Alexander saw what lay ahead of him.

The cold storage was basically a room-sized fridge. Shelves full of boxes and pallet upon pallet full of stuff. It was stacked to the ceiling.

It was hard to tell what exactly it contained just by looking at it. He stepped inside and inspected the closest shelf. Most of the boxes were filled with all kinds of preserved food. He took out a pack of meat jerky and started munching on it while he examined the rest of the boxes.

Most of them held canned foods, and there were plenty of those. But some other boxes held condensed food pellets, mixed nuts, soluble mixes, etc.

"Well, if I suddenly need food I know where to go..." By that moment Alexander had finished the pack of jerky but the hunger didn't go away. He reached for the next box and opened it. He grabbed a pack of nuts and quickly dumped them into his mouth. There was easily half a kilogram in the pack, but as soon as he swallowed them, they simply evaporated.

This was weird. What was happening?

'Why does it feel like I only ate a little bit?'

He opened pack after pack, dumping all the contents into his stomach. Only after he emptied two whole boxes he felt that his hunger subsided a little bit. He was still pretty hungry though.

After emptying four more large packs of dried food, he finally felt somewhat satisfied.

'At this rate, everything here would only last me several days...'

This was indeed a problem. He didn't even know if it was possible for any large-scale food production to continue. With demons and mutated beasts everywhere, can anyone really farm? And if they do, what happens if the crops are destroyed by the monsters roaming the countryside? Or what if the farmers themselves get attacked by these creatures?

What should he do then? Should he risk going outside of the city and trying to hunt down some wild animals? What if they turned into terrifying monsters too?

But then again, he would run into demons and monsters in the city anyway, so it probably made little difference.

'No use worrying right now.' Alexander quickly wolfed down several packs more and stuffed several boxes into his spatial ring. In any case, he would be able to come back here if he needed more. On his way back, he moved the shelf to block the door again, this time hiding it completely.

He exited the store and carefully proceeded to enter a nearby five-story building. He moved past what looked like administrative offices and went straight to the roof. Once he got there, he started looking around, trying to scout out the situation around the mysterious pyramid.

It was even worse than before. Still afraid to approach it, demons swarmed the outskirts, but this time, they were also fighting giant ants the size of a dog. It looked like the battle had shifted to the vicinity of the pyramid.

'Just what the hell is inside of it?' He wondered.

Alexander scanned the area with his gaze. He saw many groups of demons fighting the ants. The students still sat close to the pyramid and looked mostly fine from where Alexander was. However, they still had no way of escaping this encirclement.

'There is no way I can deal with the entire army by myself...' Alexander, of course, considered just leaving. Wouldn't it be the best choice in this situation? But for some reason, he didn't. He didn't know why, but he felt like it.

He knew he could deal easily with the low-leveled monsters. He didn't really even need a weapon for that as long as not too many of them attacked him at once. He looked at his bow.

'This is a good opportunity for target practice. Maybe I can draw away a few of them and finish them off separately?' He was clear that it was better for him to kill as many monsters as possible. As long as he can level up, he will be stronger. As well as the fact that the demons and ants that were fighting right now, also probably grew stronger. If suddenly a monster too strong to defeat emerged, what would he do? Unfortunately, he didn't really have a way to kill a lot of them quickly.

'Or do I?'

He grabbed his bow and looked at the demons swarming around the pyramid.

'The energy arrow did explode that wall...'

A smile crossed his face. He quickly drew the bowstring and began pumping blood qi into an arrow. The arrow formed almost instantly.

'Not enough.'

He directed more energy to the arrow. The energy kept condensing, and several moments later the arrow didn't look transparent anymore. It began to shine brightly and powerful fluctuations began to emanate from it.

'This one is three times stronger than the first one... More!'

Heavy sweat poured out of his forehead. His body felt hot, and he felt like he couldn't keep this up much longer. But he continued pumping energy into the arrow until it was too hard for him to keep the energy condensed in the form of the arrow. This time, it was no less than twenty times stronger than the first one he shot. By this time he had already poured in at least eighty percent of his blood qi into the arrow.

It contained such strong energy that even over a hundred meters away, the demons still detected his presence. Several of them turned in his direction. Alexander aimed at a group of demons that seemed the strongest and released the arrow.

Xiu!