228 The darkest place is under the candle
“We can rely on just the system alone,” Mathew muttered, sitting down directly on the bloodied ground while doodling with his finger directly on the ground. “If we had someone capable of watching our backs with a gun, maybe we could avoid getting that unlucky guy to the state he is in,” he said, glancing over at the school building.
As the entire area was now more or less safe, the unlucky hunter ended up held in one of the classrooms on the first floor of the school, within the wing opposite to the one where Daniel carved out the wall with his fist to make the shaft accessible.
In theory, the level-one zombie cure was supposed to hold the unlucky guy in his current state, stopping his symptoms from getting any worse. Yet, knowing how wicked the merchant could be at times, Mathew didn’t dare to take any risks.
As such, if the worst were to come to be, the survivors in the school would likely be safe from the singular zombie roaming around while both the hunters and Mathew’s direct group would easily notice such a zombie roaming around.
“You shouldn’t think about that guy too much,” Nadia whispered, snuggling up to Mathew’s side as she looked down at his doodles. “It wasn’t your fault,” she then added, trying to raise his spirits.
“It’s okay, I’m not blaming myself,” Mathew replied with a smile. He then shook his head to get rid of the unpleasant thoughts. “I’m just trying to use this unfortunate event as a lesson.”
“What did it teach you, then?’ Nadia asked, leaning her head on Mathew’s shoulder while actively encouraging him from the side.
“That we can’t just skip all the benefits our society brought to this world,” the young man replied impassively. “Our small group can use the touch grass feature to heal… but what if someone breaks an arm? Gets infected? Or even goes down with a normal cold?”
“They would be pretty much fucked,” Nadia admitted.
“The same goes with guns, food or you name it,” Mathew said only to doodle down the list of things he could see worthy to salvage from the city from the top of his head. “Even if we can obtain some if not most of those things through merchants,” he raised his eyes from the doodle and glanced over at the girl plastered all over his arm, “wouldn’t it be better to just obtain that kind of stuff without wasting cores for it?”
“That would definitely make saving up the cores easier,” Nadia agreed, nodding her head only to then raise it up as she immersed herself in her thoughts. “If I do recall, there should be a hospital relatively nearby,” she then added, turning her eyes towards the direction the hospital would be.
Yet, as soon as she turned her eyes away, Nadia’s expression soured. She then brought her eyes back only to lower them to the ground.
“That place, just like anything towards the town’s center, will be swarming with zombies,” she muttered and shook her head. “No matter how useful it would be to get those resources, I don’t think it’s worth risking our lives for it.”
“Yeah, you are right,” Mathew nodded his head. ‘We are already lucky that this school is on the relative outskirts of the town,’ he thought, only to look in the opposite direction to where Nadia looked. “How about points of interest towards the edge of the town?” Mathew then suggested, lowering his hand over the ground with the intention to draw some sort of map… Only to realize that he had no ability to do it at all.
‘To think I would come to miss online services so quickly,’ Mathew thought, rolling his eyes over his own naivete. ‘Thinking about this, we didn’t really look for useful stuff around the school at all,’ he then realized, only for his face to tense up a second later.
“The convoy…” Mathew muttered.
“What convoy?” Nadia asked, pushing her upper body forward and then leaning her head to the side to get a proper look at Mathew’s face.
“The convoy that wasn’t here in my original run,” Mathew replied, shooting up to his feet and grabbing Nadia’s hand. “The very first thing that changed about this version of the events because of my own actions,” he added, fighting off the desire to smack himself in the head.
‘I was talking and interacting with Daniel and Norbert for three days straight… How could I forget about their own equipment?’ he thought, ready to scout the situation despite the near impenetrable darkness of the night.
“Are you guys ready?” Leila’s voice stopped Mathew in his tracks.
‘Right, there is still this bet to do,’ the young man recalled, twisting his lips in an ugly grimace. Yet, before the annoyance could settle properly in, his expression relaxed only for a small smile to appear on his lips. ‘Rather than getting annoyed by it… can’t I make use of this opportunity?’
Mathew turned around only to see the rest of his harem along with Carol and the arrogant hunter coming down the ruins of the southern wings.
“Yes and no,” Mathew replied, allowing a small smile to creep up on his lips. “We are ready to fight, but we are not ready to start it just yet,” he said, shaking his head only to reaffirm his grasp over Nadia’s hand before pulling her along the school’s barrier.
“I don’t even want to ask what sort of plan did you come up with,” Leila muttered, beckoning the rest of the people to follow her only for the girl herself to follow right in Mathew’s footsteps.
Their journey didn’t last long. As soon as they circled around half of the school’s perimeter, Mathew came to a stop, standing right by the tiny gateway at the back of the school’s compound.
“There they are,” he muttered, looking down at the bloody scene of a carnage that occurred right outside of the school’s premises on the very first day of the apocalypse.
And then, his lips formed one of his rare, genuine smiles.