A fleet of vehicles pa.s.sed by a huge wooden rectangular road sign with words written on it, "You are now entering the territory of Dawn Village" and below those were, "1 mile away" and there seem to be a map below it.

"It seems they are already doing a ma.s.s recruitment by putting up ads on the roadside" Leo murmured when he saw the road sign, indicating where the camp is located and obviously, Leo wasn't even bothered if there are people that have malicious thoughts towards his Stronghold.

In the truck, when Prince Ashton saw those words, he sighed lamently, "How the country has fallen, that anyone could just a declare that this land is their own territory".

Hearing him, Brock sighed sadly and said, "We can't really do anything now your highness but save ourselves. The land won't go away but we will if we die".

"Dawn Village...? It's Dawn Village! Finally! We're near!" inside one of the buses, a woman excitedly yelled when she those words written on the road sign and with her words, an excited ensued inside the bus followed by the other buses.

A few hours later, a fleet of vehicles veered off from the highway road and rode along a dirt road, following Leo.

*****

Dawn Village or most commonly known as the Dawn Stronghold.

"Quick! They are almost here! Zabu, Are you ready!?" Aria frantically said.

"Of course! Leave it to me! I'll make that so called prince p.i.s.sed his pants when he sees me!" Zabu raised his head high and confidently thumped his chest with his fish.

Rachel, who was beside Aria nodded as she gesture for him to sit down. They are currently in the middle of the Stronghold waiting Leo and Prince Ashton's arrival.

Zabu is currently seated on a simple chair while surrounded by available core members of the Stronghold like Rachel, Henry, Aria, Amanda, Mich.e.l.le and Alastair while the rest like Alex, David, Austin and the rest are outside doing their own objectives designated to them.

While outside the gates of camp are more and more survivors flocking towards them as the people probably saw the posters scattered all over the place towards the surrounding cities, towns and villages of the Stronghold Camp, promising them food and a safe place to start anew and there are at least already over a hundred of them camping outside. After all, no matter how everyone wanted this survivors to come inside but without Leo's permission the gates can't be opened even if they forced and it was already a miracle that they were able to open the gates when they facing the horde of zombies before.

A man can seen walking dejectedly away from the gate and walked towards a group of nine people wearing ragged clothes like they haven't taken a bath for days now while surrounding a campfire where they can be seen boiling different kinds of flora inside the pot.

Noticing a man walking towards their direction, one of them said, "So, how did it go? Can we finally go in?"

The man snorted and sat down on the vacant ground and said, "They said we can't go in yet unless their leader ordered them to do so and open the gate for us"

One of them suddenly stood up in anger and threw a poster on the ground and started stomping on it, "How dare they!? The poster clearly said we would be provided a safe place to stay and food but they aren't letting us in at all! This is false advertis.e.m.e.nt!"

"Shus.h.!.+ It's already fortunate enough that they are already even giving us food to eat or we would have already be starving right now, just be patient. There must be something going on inside that they are not allowing us inside yet" an old man stirring the things inside the pot calmly said which made the man shut up and the rest contemplate what the old man said.

"Right, what Old Mac said is correct and I don't mind waiting as long as they let us inside in the end rather than roaming around those G.o.dforsaken places where you can't even get a goodnight's sleep, always wary and afraid that a zombie would suddenly lunged at you from out of nowhere and eat you" one of the men said while nodding his head.

"Yeah, we should just wait kiddo"

"But we can't just sit here all day and do noth-"

"Shut up! I know you are frustrated and we are too but we can't do anything about it! This is their place and their rules and if they say we can't come inside yet then we can't and they won't give a d.a.m.n about what you say or think!"

"Look over there!" the old man angrily pointed at the armed people guarding and patrolling around the walls and continued, "I was once been a soldier but I can clearly feel that there are at least two or three seasoned soldiers among them and the rest might still be green behind their ears but those people are clearly trained to shoot anyone that threatens their lives and they wouldn't hesitate to kill you if you provoke them! So stop causing a ruckus or you would just make our situation worse than it already is!"

The old man took a deep breath and said softly, "Kiddo, the world isn't the same anymore where there are police officers who keeps the order of society in check but the world now is...where the strong survives and weak discarded or devoured" he shook his head and stopped saying anymore and continued to cooking earlier.

Hearing the old man's words, the rest sunked in to a deep silence even including the groups near them who was able to hear his words and was about to cause a ruckus near the gates but stopped when they heard the words the old man uttered and stopped in their tracks and went back to their own campsite and just sat in silence as their hot headedness was like suddenly douse in cold water waking them up from their daydreams that the world is still the same, where there is still law and order. Of course that doesn't mean that here aren't any law or order anymore but this time it was clearly different, it was the law of the jungle where the strong preys on the weak.

Brooooom~!

"Hmmm…?" every single survivor staying outside the walls immediately looked towards the direction where the sound is coming from.

*****

"The leader is here! Quick, go and tell the others not to f*ck up and go tell Ma'am Rachel that her son is back!" Isaac, who was standing on the wall excitedly instructed the guy beside him whom the latter nodded and immediately ran towards his fellow survivors inside the camp and pa.s.sed them the news so that they can prepare.

"How exciting! Fooling prince. I wonder what the boss scheming, hehe" Isaac chuckled and slowly walked down from the wall.

'Seeing a prince, huh? I've never met one personally before' Isaac thought as he walked over where Zabu and the others are standing at as they awaited for Leo's arrival.

Inside the truck, Prince Ashton jumped down and looked at the people camping outside before his attention was brought back to the huge wall in front of him.

"So this is the Dawn Village. I wonder what's so important about this place"