Finally, she managed to spot a half-collapsed convenience store by the roadside.
The storefront was completely lopsided, shattered glass littered the floor, and most of the display shelves had toppled over, but the roof somehow remained intact. Over in one corner of the wall, a relatively undamaged patch offered just enough shelter to block out the wind and rain.
Ducking low, she squeezed inside and pulled up an upside-down plastic chair to sit down.
Just as Suzy was settling in to gather her thoughts, a faint, subtle vibration rippled through the ground beneath her boots.
It was extremely light, almost as if someone had gently tapped the floor right underneath her feet.
Suzy’s entire body instantly went rigid. She lowered her eyes to stare at the ground, her fingers instinctively tightening their grip around the edges of the chair.
Then came a second thump, heavier than the first. A dull rumble echoed through the earth, sounding like a massive beast rolling over deep underground.
Immediately following was a third impact—the ground buckled upward violently before snapping downward in an abrupt collapse.
"Holy shit!" Suzy couldn’t help cursing out loud.
Without a single moment’s hesitation, she lunged toward the exit entirely on instinct.
The instant she sprinted out of the convenience store, a series of heavy structural snaps burst from the building behind her. She didn’t even have time to glance back as the road under her feet began to sway viciously.
It was as if an invisible, gigantic hand had seized the entire street, shaking it left and right while hurling it up and down. Loose rubble on the pavement rolled wildly in all directions during the tremors.
From not far off, the thunderous crash of collapsing walls echoed out, accompanied by waves of dust surging across the street corner like a breaking tide.
Suzy kept her posture low, sprinting toward a wider section of the avenue.
As she ran, she reached into the inner pocket of her jacket and retrieved the Earthbind Talismans Ming had drawn for her from her spatial domain. Slipping one between her fingertips, she channeled her spiritual energy using the method Ming had instructed.
The talisman paper burned away silently between her fingers, and a soft, pale halo instantly expanded outward beneath her boots.
At that exact moment, the ground beneath her felt as though an immense weight had suddenly pinned it into place. The asphalt, which had been heaving like ocean waves, unexpectedly became rock-solid and firm within that small radius around her feet.
Without slowing her pace, Suzy kept sprinting forward, keeping her eyes fixed on the floor illuminated by the soft halo.
The light didn’t fade; it clung tightly to her footsteps like an invisible shield, barring any widening fissures from opening beneath her feet.
So this is the power of an Earthbind Talisman!
Yeon’s recommendation really is ten times better than I imagined!
With no time to celebrate, Suzy pressed forward at full speed, desperate to throw off the fissure trailing behind her.
Yet she quickly realized a terrifying reality—that fissure seemed to be targeting her deliberately. No matter which way she veered, it pursued her every step!
Only the power of the Earthbind Talisman kept it from swallowing her whole.
Dammit, this thing is literally trying to hunt me down and kill me!
Suzy swore furiously in her head. She darted left and right, even intentionally testing its trajectory—sure enough, the crack followed her like a shadow.
She was so infuriated she felt like vomiting blood.
After sprinting a distance further, the fissure finally stopped pursuing her, allowing Suzy to slide to a halt and catch her breath. At long last, the earthquake gradually subsided.
"Is it over?" Suzy muttered to herself.
That sensation of being hunted down was utterly terrifying. She didn’t dare dive into her spatial domain recklessly either—after all, she had already learned a hard lesson from doing that before. The System was still unresponsive from spending energy on her teleportation; if she got swallowed into an abyss again, who knew how many years it would take before she could get teleported back out?
Just as she was reflecting on her situation, the System’s voice suddenly echoed in her mind.
[Host, I’m back online.]
Suzy was startled before feeling a mix of frustration and helplessness. "System! Didn’t you say you’d teleport me somewhere NEARBY?! Why on earth did I end up all the way in X City?!"
[I’m sorry... I didn’t mean for this to happen.]
It was a rare sight to hear the System sounding so sheepish and guilty.
"So what went wrong?" Suzy pressed on.
[I had originally locked onto a location near your drop point, but an external force interfered with the process, causing you to be redirected to X City. On top of that, a portion of my energy was forcibly siphoned away...]
That exact siphon was what had forced the System into a temporary hibernation, preventing it from answering her earlier.
Listening to the System’s explanation, Suzy was left speechless for a moment.
"What’s going on? What external force?" she whispered.
This time, the System gave her a starkly blunt answer:
[Host, we are being targeted.]
"Got it."
Suzy uttered those two words softly, yet a cold chill ran down her spine, weighing heavily on her.
Once again, she felt the profound, chilling reality of being targeted by that so-called "world order."
Fine. Whatever.
What else can I do if I’m being targeted anyway? Since it doesn’t want to let me live in peace, I’ll be damned if I give it the satisfaction!
Curse-muttering in her heart, Suzy took another step forward.
Just then, a low, hushed shout drifted over from diagonally across the street, as if the speaker was terrified of being overheard by something out there:
"Hey! You over there! What are you doing standing out in the open like that?! Get over here, fast!"
Suzy snapped her head toward the sound. Across the street, behind a half-open security door on the ground floor of a tilted apartment building, half a figure peeked out.
It was a woman with graying hair wearing a faded, washed-out padded coat. Clutching an iron pipe in her hand, she was frantically waving at her. Her eyes shone with a sharp intensity unusual for her age, filled with an undisguised urgency rarely seen in the apocalypse.
"Don’t stand in the middle of the road!" she shouted under her breath again. "That wave hasn’t fully passed yet, and another tremor could hit at any second! Get over here!"
While Suzy hesitated, a faint vibration rippled under her boots once more. Making up her mind instantly, she bolted across the street.
Suzy’s pace was rapid, and with the Earthbind Talisman active, her steps were completely solid. Still, she could clearly feel the ground shaking around her.
Strangely enough, the moment she stepped past a specific boundary line, the vibrations abruptly ceased.
Suzy froze in her tracks on the spot.
Sensory-checking her surroundings, she realized it wasn’t an illusion—the tremors had genuinely stopped!
How bizarre.
At that moment, the urgent voice called out again from a distance: "What are you standing there spacing out for? Hurry up and get over here!"
The woman’s anxious tone snapped Suzy out of her daze. Hesitating for a couple of seconds, she walked up to the gray-haired woman anyway.
Up close, Suzy realized the woman wasn’t actually old—she looked to be in her early fifties, her hair simply prematurely white.
Gripping her iron pipe, the woman glanced at her as if reading the confusion written all over her face. "That patch you were just standing on is an active seismic zone. What in the world were you doing over there?"
"Seismic zone?" Suzy repeated the phrase blankly.
"Yeah, a seismic zone! Don’t tell me you didn’t know?" At the words "didn’t know," the woman threw Suzy a thoroughly bewildered look.
Suzy shook her head honestly. "I really had no idea."
The woman’s expression turned somewhat peculiar. "You’re not hurt, are you?" she asked.
"I’m fine," Suzy replied.
The woman went quiet for a few seconds before explaining, "Ever since the quakes started here in X City, several localized seismic zones popped up. Everything outside these zones remains perfectly normal, but inside the seismic zones, tremors erupt at regular intervals. It’s extremely dangerous."
"Normal people stay far away from those zones... What were you doing wandering in there?" the woman pressed.
Suzy opened her mouth, completely at a loss for how to respond.
I had no clue that area was a seismic zone! The System dropped me right in the middle of it!
She didn’t blame the System, though—instead, she cursed the damn heavens in her heart.
Targeted. I am DEFINITELY being targeted!