The Z Gene - Chapter 11：City Silver Forest

However, anyone who could find the city was an expert, so the guards decided to not antagonize Daniel, the captain flew forward using his grey feathered wings that sprouted from his back and asked in a polite tone of voice:

“What job does sir have in our humble city?”

Daniel looked at the guards with wonder in his eyes, so mutations could even give humans wings, even though he was extremely strong and he could jump very high he couldn’t fly.

Daniel coughed a bit and introduced himself as a wanderer who wanted to visit the city, there were no such things as id’s in this time and age anymore so the guards could either let him enter or not.

The guard captain was indecisive when it came to this, it’s been so long since a visitor came that he didn’t know what he was supposed to do, even though he wasn’t sure of the protocols he decided to inform his direct superior first instead of letting Daniel enter the city.

As the guard flew into the city’s entrance Daniel decided to wait and observe the city’s exterior unlike City Magenta, City Silver Forest was created using the wood of the forest and it blended naturally in the giant tree, you had to look from above to see the ends of the city as it was extremely wide it’s center was balanced on the trunk of the tree and it had quite the tall walls, this was one of the few cities that escaped the zombie invasion due to its high altitude the gas couldn’t get to it and revive the dead persons of the city.

The captain guard flew quickly towards a giant building made of white wood that had inscribed on its front the words “CITY HALL”, here the mayor of the city was doing his duty, properly doing his paperwork and sometimes slapping his secretaries butt.

The mayor didn’t look anything special, he looked like a healthy old man with a normal physique, not tall nor short, not fat neither scrawny, he had a small white mustache on his face and his hair was done in a bun behind his head. He had on red-rimmed glasses that never left his face and he wore a black business suit with a green tie which had wings painted on.

The guard captain knocked on the door of the mayor and waited for his call, after a few minutes of waiting, the mayor said in a cheerful tone of voice:

“Enter!”

The guard entered the mayor’s office and bowed towards him with a humble look on his face, even though the mayor didn’t look like anything special he was the strongest and smartest individual in the whole city!

Of course, by strongest it didn’t mean physical strength but connections with the nobles and higher echelons of the city, he used his wits and connections to get to his mayor position, but not due to greed but by genuine want to help the citizens of the city, unlike the city leader of City Magenta, the mayor of this city was a good guy!

The mayor looked up from his paperwork and spotted the city guard captain and his eyebrows went up in wonder, why would the city guard captain come looking for him? But his answer clarified all the mayor’s doubts:

“Mr. mayor Daffie, a stranger came outside the city and wants to enter saying he wants to visit the city, It’s been so long since we had visitors that I forgot what I’m supposed to do so I decided to come to the mayor for instructions, please help me.” The city guard captain then bowed to mayor Daffie with an embarrassed look on his face and he scratched the back of his head with his hand.

Mayor Daffie took a pondering look and stayed like that for a few seconds before saying:

“What’s the strength of this individual? Any peculiar traits? How does he look?, Could you tell me Captain Maroof?”

Captain Maroof nodded at the questions of the mayor and said in a clear tone of voice so the mayor could understand everything properly:

“His body even though covered by a military coat can still be seen and it looks like he has great strength, he looks pretty young at most twenty or so years old and he has black hair and green eyes, oh yes he also had a little white cat on his shoulder which was sleeping.”

The mayor shook his head at the description, it sounded just like a normal young man and his pet and this made the mayor extremely weary! There were no normal people left in this world, people who looked normal were the most mysterious and dangerous!

Of course, since Daniel wanted to enter the city the mayor couldn’t stop him without a good reason thus he told Maroof:

“You can let him in the city but keep an eye on him, give him a house nearer to the city hall and see what his reaction would be then come back and report, also try to not aggravate him as his strength is unknown, anyone who can get to our city is no normal person, he must either be backed by a organization who wants a piece of the city or is a extremely strong individual, we can’t offend him. Our city even though in the top three for the population it isn’t even in the top fifty for the military might, we are quite weak but we have the environmental advantage, however, the environmental advantage is useless in front of true peak strength!”

After the mayor let everything out he indicated that Maroof could leave the office, the secretary winked as Maroof left the City Hall and Maroof blushed a bit, he was actually a timid guy.

Daniel waited patiently outside the city for Maroof when Ropego got up from his sleeping position and started to stretch on Daniel’s shoulder and yawned, then his eyes shined briefly as he saw the location they were in, they already reached the city!

Maroof appeared after a few more minutes after he found a good enough house that would be given to Daniel after he got registered in the city as a visitor. Maroof invited Daniel into the city and helped him check-in afterward he took him to the aforementioned house where he left him some food and pure water. Pure water was extremely scarce and it was a luxury, from the food it was obvious they took Daniel as being a great guest!

Daniel stopped Maroof before he left and told him:

“There’s no need to waste your pure water, give me any type of water, my body is strong and radiation gives it no problems, food also won’t be a problem just give me food once or twice a week and it should be enough, you don’t have to give me preferential treatment I do not need it.”

Maroof eyes widened at Daniel’s words then he took the pure water away and got him some irradiated water afterward he left and didn’t come back. After Daniel filled his belly with the dishes and drank the water he looked at Ropego and asked:

“How are we supposed to ‘liberate’ this city? It doesn’t look like it needs our help, everything looks ok to me right now.”

Ropego narrowed his eyes and criticized Daniel’s lack of wits:

“It looks ok on the surface but what do you know about its underground societies? Anyway, the leader of this place will invite us over these days, you should be able to see that since they gave us a house near their City Hall, this means that they are wary of us, you weren’t trained as an assassin thus you can’t feel it properly, but there are quite a few strong auras near the City Hall.”

Daniel tried to feel these auras himself even though he wasn’t trained as an assassin his senses enhanced by the Z Gene were enormous, thus after a few tries, he could feel a few auras that were quite strong but still weaker than him. But there was also one aura that was a bit stronger than him. This was interesting to Daniel as up till now there was no one who could rival him, but there was someone who was stronger than him in this city?

Even though the city had a few experts their army was quite weak, the city guards weren’t strong at all, even if Daniel used five percent of his power he could destroy all of them with his pinky finger. Even though they had the wings mutation, they didn’t have anything else, they were just sentries.

Even with the lack of many experts of the previous City Magenta, Daniel thought that with his new subordinates if he wanted to he could subjugate the city if he wanted to, even though there was that aura that was stronger than him, it was barely so, Daniel could maybe get stronger during the fight if the circumstances were right so there was nothing to fear in this city.

Ropego continued to goad Daniel on:

“You need to fully clean this world of this evil scum who prey on the weak no matter how good the society looks on the surface, in the other city the underground society was already on the surface that why you could resolve things so quickly, but we didn’t investigate this city at all! We must do a full investigation of the city before you can say we can leave, even though it looks peaceful on the surface and the people also look happy that doesn’t mean everyone is happy, We strive for equality for everyone don’t we boy?”

Ropego was really going all out with his hidden messages trying to trigger the mission that was washed into Daniel’s brain, however, Daniel already broke away from the mission and was only keeping up a facade for Ropego, he also wanted to see where this plan was going to take him if things progressed beyond things he could stomach he would stop himself immediately. Even though he didn’t feel like a hero anymore he still didn’t want to kill innocent people for no reason, it was in human nature to think like that and Daniel was still human on the surface.

But he needed to play along with Ropego thus he just nodded at him and said:

“Since you put it this way I cannot ignore the pleas of any suffering person, If I see an innocent that’s mistreated it’s my job to make sure he gets justice and what’s fair to him!”

Ropego was gloating inwardly thinking that the brainwashing turned Daniel into one of the persons that would die first in this wasteland environment, fortunately, if this kind of person got the strength to back it up they could become true heroes!

The Iron Bunker wanted to create a hero, but it was hard for true heroes to surface in such a world where self-benefit was always put first, even though things looked normal under the guise that everyone was ok in the city, City Silver Forest wasn’t that peaceful but what it did was still bearable compared to the city lord of City Magenta. To live comfortably in city Silver Forest you just had to work twenty-four out of twenty-four no breaks, it was basically slave labor, of course, people were paid with food and water instead of money, the hardest job was farming but with some biochemical engineering, the people of Silver Forest could create crops from the tree’s bark instead of the ground.

Some of the crops even had beneficiary mutation effects!

As the crops were planted in the sawed trunk of the mutated tree which was irradiated heavily, all of its crops would have some degree of radiation, but only very few radiations were beneficial towards the human body, unlucky ones could even die from radiation poisoning as the radiation concentration would be too high to be ingested.

Of course, those were rare cases as the farmers did their best to create safe food with the help of the biochemical engineers. But some cases couldn’t be avoided, of course, the people who died had their families compensated.

Even though the families were stricken by grief at the death of their beloved they still enjoyed the compensation very much, some people even tried to poison their family members intentionally to get their hands on the compensation!

These people were not compensated though as every death by poisoning is heavily investigated by the city guard and the mayor’s helpers which have great investigation abilities, even though their combat strength was lacking they had other skills that are useful in this chaotic post-apocalyptic world, even though their skills would be useless if the city was going into direct pandemonium, they still prided themselves in their investigation prowess as they never guessed wrongly nor did they make a fatal mistake.

Daniel was sitting cross-legged on the bed dozing as his Z Gene was working itself to continue the upgrade of the helix tree.

Ropego was watching Daniel and was happy inwardly, his progress was great and from what he heard it was even better than Costil’s!

Of course, Costil had more subordinates as he focused on that but Daniel’s Z Gene strengthening was more than two times higher than his!

In City Barrow now known as the capital of the Zeta Church Costil was petting a black-furred cat with a golden eye and a green eye as the cat purred it said in a light female voice:

“I can teach you more about your powers and how to expand them, I was sent here by an extension of God’s will!”

Costil suddenly smiled and grabbed the cat by the neck ready to break it at any moment:

“Oho, you think the god bullshit is real? I just wanted to have fun with these people, there’s no God, who sent you here? maybe the people who took away some of my memories?”

He showed the cat a grin that exposed his elongated canines, the cat was extremely startled by all of this and wanted to escape but Costil’s grip on her neck was too strong!

Costil looked directly in the different colored eyes of the cat and said in a low and cold tone of voice:

“Now tell me what you know you shitty cat, or else you won’t have a good end, believe me, I’m not keen on liers”