Planning
After I finished interrogating the girl with the deranged eyes, I imdiately planned to report back to the others.
Although prior to that, I decided to at least give her so food, seeing as how she hadn’t eaten for the past 3 days or so.
“Here,” I solemnly said while I reached over and threw a half lted chocolate bar towards her feet. It wasn’t much, and honestly, it wouldn’t be very filling either, but at the very least, it was food.
“Ah-” The girl’s eyes locked on to the bar of chocolate before she imdiately leaped towards it. With frantic hands, she tore through the flimsy wrapper before devouring it fiercely. In the process, she resembled a feral animal; the way she gnawed and tore through the bar without a hint of sha nor decency.
As I silently stared down at her, I nonchalantly shifted my gaze towards the floating status window above her head.
Back when the apocalypse first started, when I used my [identify] skill on Hina, things like status effects weren’t readily visible to . I don’t know whether it’s because I leveled up my skin recently or sothing other contributing factor, but now, the status effect, [Near-starvation], was clear as day, plastered on the faint, transparent blue of her window panel.
I locked my gaze at that small window panel, ignoring the ravenous girl below it.
The girl in question made short work of the small peice of chocolate that I gave her. I observed that, despite her eating, the [Near-Starvation] effect still hadn’t disappeared. As expected, sothing like that wasn’t enough to satiate the system.
Maybe if I gave her more food? Would a granola bar work? Maybe so week old rice?
Either way, despite my curiousity, I wasn’t willing to give her anymore.
After asking a few more questions that happened to float across my mind, I quickly left the supply closet. While I had a few worries as to whether or not the girl might attempt an escape, it didn’t particularly cause panic. I banked on her own fear of the “Boss”.
If she tried to escape and make her way back toward her group, while it might cause a few complications for and the girls, it would certainly spell certain death for her.
Here’s hoping she ca to the sa conclusion.
****
After leaving the old science labroom, I made a beeline towards an adjacent classroom in the hall.
‘
This particular room wasn’t anything outstanding, rather, it blended in with most of its souroudnings. Together with its crimson stained door and a few human, as well as minotaur, corpses here and there, it looked quite common place within the current old school building.
Inside the room were the pair of sisters whom I’ve kept waiting.
“Yo,” With a nonchalant greeting, I stepped past a few splintered chairs and broken glass and made my way towards them.
“Ah, welco back Hide.” Hina greeted while of to the side, Cielle gave a comforting nod. “How did the, you know…. how did it go?”
“Well, it went as well as you might expect.”
I then explained and retold the information that our hostess had generously given us. Of course, I inford them not to take what I regurgitated at face value. While unlikely, there still existed the possibility that the hostage might be lying.
Although given her lack of loyalty, I doubt she lied.
I told them near everything. About the Boss, about the sli monsters, about the cafeteria group, and so of the people there. I told them everything, including so of the conclusions I myself ca to after hearing the information.
When I glossed over the information regarding the Cafeteria group, Hina’s eyes shined breifly as an almost unnoticable gasp of surprise escaped her throat.
At first, I thought she was just excited about the prospect of knowing that there existed a group of survivors sowhere, but the expression on her face was… sowhat different. A hint of what can be called, familiarity was present.
“Hmm? Sothing wrong, Hina?” I asked, a bit curious.
“Ah, no… well…” Hina tilted her head down as she awkwardly began scratching her head. “Truth be told, I know a few people there… actually, I’m quite surprised that they survived, although in retrospect, if its them, then it might be all the more possible...”
Overco with curiousity, a dangerous gleam flashed across my eyes, as I asked, “Who?”
She then told about the student council president. He was indeed one of the people whom Cher recognized back when she was still part of the cafeteria group, and in truth, he seed to be Cher’s close friend. A sort of childhood friend like existance would be the best way to describe him.
A person that’s been stuck with Hina for as long as she can rember.
She had a pretty good impression of the guy, although hearing her girly talk about the man’s personality, his habits, school accomplishnts, etc. was pretty boring, so I didn’t pay any particular attention to that.
“If it’s him… if it’s him, then we can definetely trust him!” Hina pumped her arms up as a resolute smile flashed across her face. The expression she made was quite… dazzling. One filled with hope, and relief… frankly, it was an expression that I’ve never seen before. I couldn’t help but feel jealousy towards the guy whom that expression was directed at.
Although such an emotion quickly passed, as I nodded and flashed a wry smile towards Hina. This was a good thing. Knowing that soone you once knew managed to survive.... While I may not have that many friends, even I could understand the sentint of such a revelation.
Anyways, I quickly changed the subject and retold the rest of the information to the duo. Eventually, after 5 more minutes of explaining, we ca to the last topic of our conversation; Hunger.
Or the be more specific, the dire situation regarding food.
While it may be true that both the Boss group and the cafeteria group faced a similar situation in that they now lack food, our trio didn’t have the sa problem. Being alone in a large building gave us the opportunity to monopolize much of the scavengable food products.
Although looking at our current supply, it would last at most a week, that is, if we only stuck to the scavengable goods. Eating monster at had flashed across my mind a couple of tis, but as expected it's impossible. This isn’t about physiological barriers though, but rather, in this environnt, with the seeping heat of sumr perating throughout the building, most of the dead bodies have started rotting.
Since our group didn’t particularly clear away the corpses like in the main building, the corpses have been left to rot all along the halls, and classrooms of the building. The heat may be bad enough, but the risk of disease and infection only increases when the “monster at” is scattered amongst the human corpses.
At the very least, there’s no possible chance of eating the monsters within the old school building. At most, we had a week’s worth of food for the three of us, although… there is another problem.
“Actually, I think there’s sothing you guys should know…” I began explaining my recent conclusion, one I ca to after directly questioning Cher.
In truth, even before we stumbled across Cher and her party, I already had vague assumptions regarding this theory. I only confird it after I questioned Cher.
“Regarding our food problem, no, regarding our own physiology….”
In short, human physiology has changed. It changed to better accomodate the changes brought by the system. While this much is obvious, otherwise how else could I get stronger after leveling up, there actually existed more subtle nuances of this change.
One of these changes tied together with human tabolism and the stamina bar. These two factors were definitely linked together. This connection between tabolism and stamina was first hinted to all the way back when I first viewed the status window for a granola bar. The fact that food could increase stamina wasn’t just so random effect. Eventually, through observation, I noticed that the lower the stamina, the hungrier a person gets in response. I experienced these sa waves of hunger when my stamina bar was dangerously low after the Werewolf battle.
This realization isn’t really that important though, what’s important is that in response to this connection, the human tabolism seems to have accelerated. In short, our appetites changed and we get hungrier more and more often. Even when the stamina bar is kept at max, hunger cos more quickly than it did in the past. To add to that, if our hunger continously increases, inversely, the stamina regeneration decreases as well.
I confird this with Cher when I asked her whether her stamina regeneration had slown down recently, which she replied with an affirmative yes.
Not only would hunger affect us physically, but it held disastrous effects “in-ga” too.
After I explained this to the girls, Hina nodded darkly, expressing her understanding with a grim frown. “If what you said is true, then that explains why the cafeteria group ran out of food so quickly.” She explained, “I an, if you take into account that we recently had a food drive, as well as the fact that this used to be a military base, so there’s bound to be food preserves near by, it would be next to impossible for less than 50 people to eat through all that within a week or so.”
“We’ll be facing the sa circumstance soon.” I added. “In normal situations we have about a week’s worth of food left, but if our bodies end up forcing us to eat more and more often then…”
My gaze inexplicably fell towards Cielle. This girl was a pri example of my theory. She ate more than the average person, despite the apocalypse like situation… although that could also be just because she’s a glutton, but I’d like to believe otherwise…
Upon noticing my gaze, Cielle tilted her head to the side, looking up at questioningly. After heaving out a heavy sigh, I turned back towards Hina.
“No matter how much we food we have now, it still won’t be enough. Unless we find “another” source of food within the School, then...Honestly the best thing to do would be to escape this dungeon as quickly as possible...”
After hearing all this, Hina finally let loose her own dejected sigh. She turned towards , and with a tired expression, she asked, “So, what do we do, “Leader”?”
I squinted tersley before turning away.
She recently started calling “leader” since soti ago, and it kind of made uncomfortable…. although my minor concerns aren’t really important right now.
To so up our situation, we have three major problems; The Boss, Food, and the dungeon itself.
I mulled over the situation for a bit, tightly shutting my eyes while I rocked my head back and forth in an effort to think. Eventually, I let loose my own sigh, while stating, “For now, let’s focus on the more pressing problem at the ti, which is to say, let’s first deal with the Boss and his hostility.”
The food problem can be pushed back as far as a week, while the dungeon and our hopes of escape will have to be dealt with in the future.
Together, we brainstord various ideas and thods to deal with the Boss and his loosely contructed raid of students. Things like waiting out within the Old School Building, launching a frontal assualt before he attacked us, etc. were thrown into the hodgepodge of ideas we ca up with. Ultimately these ideas were shut down.
For one, they had more than a few problems. We couldn’t exactly wait out the storm for an indefinite period of ti, seeing as we had a tir in the form of our food supply. Plus to add to that, it’s unhealthy to stay in a place surrounded by corpses. Neither could we just recklessly attack, there were too many unaccounted variables in play for that.
I turned towards Hina, hoping her above average IQ might be able to co up with sothing decent. I saw a flash of recognition fly through her face before her expression instantly darkened and she scratched her head listlessly.
“Did you co up with sothing?” I asked.
“Well, I did but…” She hesitated briefly, before giving up and sighing. She looked up at rather shyly before she began explaining. “I did co up with sothing but it might be a bit risky.”
Hina proposed that we should et up with the 50 people within the Cafeteria. Of course, she awknowledged the risks that ca with such a reckless action. For one, we could instantly get ganged up on or we could get mistaken for mbers of Boss’s group. Getting backstabbed or killed wouldn’t be quite surprising either.
Hina’s argunt was that there was safety in numbers. If we had the backing of 50 people, alongside with our own abilities/skills, we could avoid any serious injury from the Boss. Although it was pretty obvious that her main motivation was to et up with the President. As expected, the allure of a friend in an apocaylpse was too great.
Hina probably expected to shoot her idea down. It was fairly obvious, going by her hopeless expression.
In the end, I sighed, and stated, “That’s a good idea, it would be better this way, given our current circumstance.”
“Eh?” Hina widened her eyes in shock.
“Hmm? What’s wrong? Weren’t you the one who thought of this idea up?” I lightly teased.
“I-I did think it up, b-but I honestly expected you to say no, Hide….”
I floated a wry smile before I turned away to stare out the window. “There’s no reason to refuse though. True, this plan might hold a bit of risk, but our current situation demands such risks. And like you said, there is safety in numbers.”
To add to that, I also had another motivation. While we could temporarily escape danger from the Boss by sticking with the Cafeteria group, I was thinking a bit more long term. In the near future, we would need help in order to beat the Dungeon Boss Monster and escape the Dungeon. What could be better help than a group of 50 or more people? Plus the existance of the skill user within their ranks would definetely be useful against a future Boss Monster.
For the sake of escaping, it was necessary to build good relations.
After we ca to a unanimous consensus, we instantly began planning our next move.
****
(Pov Change)
Within the hallways of the main school buidling, a group of more than a dozen people were spread out. Their vigilant eyes scanned every nook and cranny of the building as their feral-like teeth gritted in desperation.
Like Hide had presud earlier, the Boss had mobolized his n to search the souroundings all in order to flush out Hide’s existance. They scored most of the main building, outside of the cafeteria.
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After hours of fruitless searching, they still could not locate the mysterious youth. Although in consoltation, they did happen to stumble upon two familiar faces. These faces were currently covered in dirt and gri, all the while passed out.
A bespectacled youth who waved around a silver sword rather carelessly, slowly entered the abandoned class room where one of his lackeys had found the two. After entering the room, he was imdiately t with the rather irritating unconscious faces of two people he hadn’t seen all day.
Seeing the thin line of drool slide down the bald one’s face, while the brown haired one’s eyes rolled back into his skull irritated the youth. Their sorry state caused bubbles to form within his starving stomach, as the violently strong urge to kill the two before him pulsated throughout his very being.
Of course, he restrained such a reckless emotion. For the sake of restraint, he took a deep, hollow breath and exhaled slowly. He had learned from before. He wouldn’t make the sa mistake twice. Last ti, when he ceremoniously killed Kenta, he had lost a valuable source of information, all due to his lack of control.
If Kenta had been kept alive, things like knowing the youth’s appearance, or how he fought could have been discovered. Back then, he had been careless enough to not even ask about such simple things.
He had regretted that, and as such, he determined to not make the sa mistake twice. At the very least, he would only kill one of them. He would definitely, definitely keep another alive.
He walked briskly towards the two, and without much dialogue, sent a vicious foot directly towards each of their abdon.
thud!
With a resounding bam, the heel of his shoe drove itself deep within the duo’s stomachs, causing a series of painful spasms to rocket through their system. This in turn elicited agony filled groans to surface.
With a heavy feeling of fatigue, Ryuuji and Bentley woked up with a start.
Their eyes floated lazily across the room until finally, they ca to rest onto the solemn figure before them.
Without waiting for the two’s responses to form, the youth imdiately spoke. A hint of irritation and annoyance seeped into his very words, but nonetheless he continued talking.
“Oi, you two, play rock paper scissors,” He commanded, “Do it now.”
Hearing this sudden demand, the two could do nothing but stare blankly at the youth’s face. Their brains didn’t even get the opportunity to proccess what just happened before the youth’s scowling expression intensified.
“Ah, ah, ah, you useless piece of shits!” His brow furrowed in displeasure as he cursed loudly. “Fuck it, never mind… instead of rock paper scissors, why not a ga of thumb war?”
The youth’s incessance towards playing a ga only served to further confuse Ryuuji and baffled Bentley. In the end, while holding in this seed of doubt, the two wordlessly began playing.
After a brief 20 seconds, Bentley ca out on top. Honestly, this was a natural occurrence, since he had a pretty strong thumb.
Bentley flashed a small smile, an act of quiet celebration. While he didn’t know why he was forced to play the ga, he still felt the small joy from winning.
Amidst this celebration, the youth stood, silently observing. Without a second’s pause, he wordlessly drew back his sword and plunged its tip deep into Ryuuji’s shoulder.
“A-aah…”
Before the man could utter anything, the youth just as nonchalantly removed the sword. The small, 5 inch gouge in Ryuuji’s shoulder quickly began to bubble, making a series of popping sounds at the sa ti.
Ryuuji scread out in terror. He pawed at his shoulder, but that only served to increase the pain he felt. In the end, he could do nothing but look on as the hole in his body grew. It bubbled and popped, like soone had doused his body with corrosive acid, his shoulder lted until eventually, the hole grew so large that his left arm downwards eventually separated from the rest of his body.
“Hah...hah...hah….”
Ryuuji exhaled roughly. The pain was imnse, but what made it even worse was the quiet realization that he could do nothing to stop this pain. He knew that he was powerless. That he had no other choice but to sit still and weight for the silent embrace of death.
Unfortunately, the youth in front of him had other plans.
Without saying much, the youth once again plunged his sword into Ryuuji’s body, this ti, he aid its tip at the man’s right knee cap. This additional incision caused another resounding scream to reverberate within the classroom, although the youth payed it no heed.
He quietly repeated this process. Stabbing, then pulling back. Stabbing, then pulling back. The youth pierced a series of random body parts rather casually. He watched with almost deadpan eyes as he whistled a certain the song to himself.
Almost instantly, various holes, in various different locations from the right hand, left pelvis, eye socket, neck, and so on, filled Ryuuji’s body.
In truth, Ryuuji’s had been dead for quite so ti now, but the youth seemingly didn’t notice and kept on stabbing, completely focused on his work. After so ti had passed, and Ryuuji had now been left in a state resembling a puddle, the youth casually flicked his sword while grumbling, “Damn, I still haven’t leveled up although I worked so hard recently...”
Bentley,throughout all this had stared wide eyed, and in shock. Rather than feeling pity for his friend, he secretly rejoiced in the fact that he had won their earlier ga.
After expressing his displeasure, the youth let loose an irritated sigh as he turned and stared fixedly at Bentley. Casually, he propped the sword against his shoulders before asking airily, “What happened to that weapon of yours?”
Caught off guard by the random question, Bentley gulped down the feeling of ever increasing fear, before he replied, “I, uh, I lost it.”
The youth nodded understandingly. “I see, that’s unfortunate. Don’t let it happen again.”
“Y-yes!”
The youth turned his back towards Bentley, this ti he used his sword as a makeshift cane, causing a series of thundering thuds to resound with every step he took.
He lazily left the room, but not before he turned a crooked eye back at Bentley. “You better work hard, you piece of shit. After all, we still have a few more rats to catch.”
*****
In the end, we choose to wait out the initial fervor within the old school building. We camped out here for 2 days. Our current food supply would only last us at most for 3 days. Things wouldn’t be this bad normally, but since Hina insisted that we feed the girl I kidnapped, I was left with no choice but to share.
Today was the day we decided to go back to the main building. Our destination was the School Cafeteria, a large location that took up about 1/10th of the main building’s total land space. Before hand, we decided that we would go around the Boss’s initial “territory”. We would circle around, traveling through the third floor, before we entered the library.
This school’s library was rather large. It spanned three floors of the main building, and was conveniently connected to the Cafeteria. Instead of directly traveling to our location, we would use the library in order to get there. If it was like this, then our chances of encounter would drastically be reduced.
One more situation we faced though, was in regards with our hostage- Cher. I was against bringing her along, but Hina was once again ardent in that we couldn’t possibly leave her alone in this place. Cher had kept herself confined within the supply closet, never once leaving, so it was most likely that she had no clue as to the state of her surroundings.
If we left her in a place covered in corpses… well, I don’t think that would play out very favorably for her psyche.
In the end, I was reluctant, but we decided to bring her along with us.
On the day we decided to finally head out, I introduced Cher to my companions. Of course, as I had expected, she was surprised. After all, throughout these two days, I was the only person allowed to check up on her. Cher probably assud I was alone, which is natural.
Or rather, I give off the loner vibe.
Anyways, after a series of tense introductions we finally began to leave.
We didn’t exchange any words as we traveled through the old school building, making our way to the third floor and towards the connecting skyway.
Watching Cher’s reactions to the corpses around the building was rather amusing. She would gulp, gasp, and make the occasional gagging noise. It’s fortunate that she didn’t throw up, after all, that would be a waste of food. Her various, ever changing facial expressions kept from getting bored until we finally reached the skyway.
Once we passed through the skyway and entered the main building, I cautioned the rest to keep quiet. I made an extra point to Cher, telling her that if the Boss found her, she would probably get killed.
This elicited a fearful nod, as she covered her mouth with both her hands rather hastily. Those sa hands tightly clenched her face as a trickle of cold sweat flowed down her brow. Her eyes bulged fearfully as she looked at my bemused expression with indescribable emotion.
Let reiterate, but Cher’s reactions were indeed pretty funny.
I focused back on my surroundings. I used [Sensory Remapping] in order to enhance my sense of hearing. I shut off nurous other senses, like my sense of sll, sense of taste, and sense of pain. I even went as far as removing other senses such as my sense of temperature.
Like with my sense of pain, I discovered that I could manipulate senses outside the traditional 5 senses of sll, touch, hearing, taste, and sight.
Right now, my sense of hearing was about 6 tis greater than normal. This opened up a whole world of possibilities, enough so to make wonder whether I could train this into sothing akin to echolocation. But I’ll leave that for another ti, for now, I’ll focus on enemy detection.
Like this, we traveled through the third floor. Hina guided our way to where the library entrance was located, while I stood beside her and acted as an early warning system. Cielle and Cher stayed a couple spaces behind us.
Like we expected, we didn’t run into any monsters, but we did encounter a few complications.
We ran into 2 people along the way.
My hearing caught sight of them before they could pass us, so in order to stay undetected, we hid in an empty classroom. As the duo passed, Cher identified them as people from her group.
We quietly watched them walk, until eventually they passed by our location and turned a corner. After waiting a couple more minutes, we proceeded forward once more.
Without anymore trouble, we eventually arrived at the entrance to the school library.
I’ve been here a couple tis in the past. The library was a big place. One filled to the brim with books. I was reminded of this fact the mont we entered.
The first thing I noticed was the absolute quiet.
Even in normal circumstances, the library was a place that was quieter than usual, but now, devoid of life, it was absolutely silent. Even with my enhanced hearing, aside from our strained breathing, I couldn’t hear much of anything.
Normally, I might make out the sll of crisp paper, or the cooler than average temperature of this dimly lit space, but right now, all I could feel was the silent atmosphere.
Taking a few seconds to enjoy this rather serene mont, afterwards, I imdiately began moving. Once again, Hina guided us downwards. The goal was to make it all the way to the first floor, where the library connected with the cafeteria.
As we traveled through shelves and made our way past several books, I kept vigilant. I constantly strained my hearing for anything that might remotely constitute as noise, in the end, I was t with silence.
That is, until we reached the second floor.
At that mont, a resounding noise filled my ears. The slight sound of a door opening within the third floor. Normally, it was so quiet that one wouldn’t notice. In fact, aside from , nobody else in our party noticed.
I paused my step and listened. The small footsteps seemingly echoed throughout the library, making my heart thump with every crunch of wrinkled carpet that they made. Of course, only I could hear this noise, but still.
After a few seconds of listening, I noticed that these steps were made by more than just one person, and that they were moving in the direction of the staircase which connected the 3rd and 2nd floor.
In response to this realization, I instantly moved. I looked listlessly around the space until my eyes ca to rest on a partitioned section of the library. This place was enclosed or by imposing shelves that reached far above a person’s height.
I maneouvered our group to this section of the library and waited.
I told them briefly about what I heard, about how they could be part of the Boss’s group of scouts that were currently looking for us.
We held bated breath as we focused our stares towards the staircase. Second after second, minute after minute, eventually the resounding footsteps that only I could hear amplified to the extent that even the rest of my part could make out the noise.
We watched as the figures of 5 individuals entered our line of sight.
It was too far for to use [identify], but the group constituted of 3 guys and 2 girls.
One of the guys looked to be the leader type, quietly leading the way for his comrades. They briefly glanced around the room, and seemingly satisfied, they continued forward. They walked through the library heading towards-
-us.
It wasn’t that they had seen us, but rather, we were conveniently placed near the staircase that connected the 1st and 2nd floors together. If they had bothered to go from 3rd to 2nd floor, then it would only be natural that their goal be the 1st floor.
The group approached our location, bringing them closer and closer. From my current distance, I could make out a bit more of their features. Of course, despite this, I stayed quiet. I was debating whether to confront them or let them pass, when a small gasp ca from one of the people next to .
I briefly glanced to my side. This slight vibration of air ca none other from…. Hina.
Through her eyes, I could see the faint expression of familiarity fill her face.
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