Raven walked up the broken road with a blissful smile on her face that almost looked ecstatic. With every step she took, she felt her power grow ever so slightly.

There was nothing in her vicinity that could be still said to be standing. Trees, houses, and even power poles were all trampled under the monsters as they made their way up the slope in groups of hundreds.

Raven looked from left to right, seeing the open space around her with the destroyed village. How long had she been waiting for this? How many months-long hibernations did she have to go under to still be alive 150 years later to witness this?

She had struggled quite a lot, but it had all been worth it for her.

As the people died under the Crawler’s feet, they empowered her, and that empowering to her felt wonderful. The closest thing she could compare it to was drinking a glass of cold water on a hot day after not drinking anything for nearly half the day.

The emotions she felt as the souls of the dead entered her to empower her were almost a form of erotic pleasure for her.

She looked around, searching for anyone that might still be alive. Strings of black goo-like substance reached out from her body, flipping through whatever was close around her to find any people that were still alive.

Not that the crawlers would leave anyone alive. They had the power to directly see the souls of those in close vicinity, and with her order to kill anyone they found, there was no doubt everyone was dead.

Still, she didn’t know what powers one had. Anyone could have the power to conceal even their souls. In that case, she tried her best to find them. After all, if one was strong enough to blind the Crawlers, they would certainly make for a far better meal than any other person.

She continued walking up the steps. The path she walked on was no longer the roads that were kept pristine. They were broken everywhere as the Crawler slammed their way up the mountain.

She saw a small stream of water flow down a different path as their original stream was blocked by the damage that the crawlers were doing to the land.

Her feet and most of her legs turned black as something covered them up entirely. The muddy water moved through them, but they didn’t wet her feet at all.

She could hear the distant screams of the people who thought they could hide inside their houses. She heard the screams of the people that tried to fight back and died.

She took a deep breath as the pleasure continued filling her up once more. Even after years since she got her revenge on those that killed her parents, she still felt the same pleasure from the ones that died around her.

Still, there was something that felt a little wrong to her.

She had already arrived at the Defenders headquarters which was fully destroyed, the people that fought there were nothing but red smudges on the ground, with most not even having any body parts intact.

Yet, despite being this far up, the pleasure she felt from the ones that died was... quite little. 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

It was still the most intense pleasure she had felt in over a century, but still... something was wrong. She should be feeling more after killing so many people. She couldn’t understand what was going on.

The Crawlers were now destroying the 1st and 2nd quadrants. They were on the lower section of the two quadrants, but with the land narrowing as it went up, it wouldn’t take more than a few minutes for them all to reach the top.

By now, more than half the people of this town should have died, yet there was nothing that she felt that came close to making this true.

"Did not many die?" she wondered. If that was the case then most of the people must have been at the top of the slope, around the mansion. They were trying to find a way out of this sudden apocalypse they were facing, trying their best to survive.

The best place to do so would be the top of the slope for sure. And she worried about what they would find in their desperation there.

She didn’t want them to find the cave or the door inside the cave. While she was certain no one could unlock it, there were certainly people with powers that would need to do that. She needed to kill those people as soon as possible in case they found a way out.

She wasn’t worried about her brother at the moment, as he should be hidden inside the bunker underground. She most definitely didn’t have to worry about him. Still, there was nothing wrong in making sure nothing bad happened.

"Tsk," she clicked her tongue in annoyance at having to get her mind off of the pleasure she felt. She looked around and quickly called some Crawlers that were moving behind the many, not doing much.

The Crawlers stopped as they were ordered to do so.

"Go to the top of the slope and kill everyone that is close to the cliff wall behind the mansion," she told them.

The Crawlers didn’t understand a command. They didn’t have the intelligence to do so. What they understood were faint impressions that conveyed what Raven wanted them to do and instinctively did that.

The Crawlers didn’t understand what a mansion was or what the top of the slope was. They understood that they had to ignore the people here and leave far away so they could kill people there.

That they were capable of doing.

Once the crawlers were gone, she went back to being blissfully ignorant about the pain and deaths that the Crawlers did, simply finding pleasure in it all.

She ignored everything as she made it up the slope, the broken buildings, the destroyed roads, and even the destroyed speaker systems through which her brother had tried to ask for her help.

She had no idea that her brother was in any form of danger at all.