>>6338901Hassan and you are ushered into the Condemned Zone after displaying your hunting license to the guards. The perimeter gate appears to have been haphazardly set up around the city blocks that make up the Zone. Yet inside, everything is different.
Vines crawl over buildings and houses, and flowering shrubs have appeared like pus on unattended wounds. The constriction and weight applied by these plants is already creating cracks in some structures. It's eerily quiet. There are fairly new-looking cars and bicycles strewn about the empty streets. And somehow, the mist from before doesn't reach this place. It's a blue sky all over.
Didn't they say that the Condemned Zone was recently declared? This place looks like it's been long reclaimed by nature. There is a saying that flowers bloom where monsters gather, but...
"Weird, isn't it?" Hassan chimes in, as if reading your thoughts. "They say it's the work of the monster that's moved in here. I mean, think about it. Chaotzakka's crawling with bounty hunters, but they had to cordon off a whole section of the city? Must be bad news. They're downplaying it in the official reports as a temporary measure, but this isn't the kind of thing the Double-O does..."
The Zone reminds you of pictures in a history textbook back at school. During the First Great Wave, before the Bounty System was established, it was common for towns and cities to be wholly surrendered to monsters. Civilians were given days, if not hours, to evacuate. But those days were supposedly over.
The other hunters have begun to disperse. You don't sense the presence of monsters here, but they wouldn't be visible around the outskirts of the Zone. You wonder where you should go first...
>Let's follow [write-in]. They look like they know what they're doing.>Let's check out one of the buildings. Maybe we can find some loot.>Let's go deep and strike out on our own. We won't find anything but small fry if we stick to the borders. 