78 Daniel's plan (Mental break fromsmut)
“What the hell is going on up there?” Daniel muttered under his nose as he watched his colleague dirty the floor with the content formerly belonging to his stomach.
“Fucking disgusting,” Norber said once he managed to catch a breath. He then brought his hand up and wiped his mouth clean from the filth before moving his hand on the handle of his gun. “I will fucking kill those kids!”
‘What the…’ Daniel tightened his lips as he continued to stare at the man. He then shook his head. ‘Whatever,’ he thought before looking up the stairs.
“What’s going on?” Daniel asked… only to distract his fellow policeman from what he saw and push him into following him.
And before Norbert could even answer, Daniel already started to make his way up the stairs, low-key manipulating his colleague to follow him.
“They took Relian’s corpse and hung it on the wall,” Norbert said with a grim look on his face. “And he didn’t die to zombies. I could clearly see the trauma only fists could inflict,” Norber explained, his face fuming with wrath.
‘That’s it?’ Daniel thought, freezing on the stairs when the surprise caused by the reveal proved to be too much.
‘I could understand some newbie freaking out over a dead colleague, but a veteran like him?’ pᴀɴᴅᴀ-ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ.ᴄᴏᴍ
Every single officer that came to the school when Mathew pretended to be a terrorist was a trained soldier. Most of them went through the hell of an active warzone in the past, while the rest had several anti-terrorist actions behind their belt.
“And guess what those bastards are doing right below his mangled body,” Norbert muttered while clearly holding his fury back.
“Judging from how you reacted, are they raping the corpses or something?” Daniel attempted to make an educated guess.
“If it was only that,” Norber commented, only to shake his head a second later. “Some of the girls they are raping are zombies… While the others are no different from fucking corpses at this point,” he added, his eyelids covering the upper half of his eyes.
And it was precisely at this point when Norber passed by his colleague as he rushed up the stairs.
‘That won’t do,’ Daniel thought, reaching out and grabbing his colleague’s collar. pᴀɴᴅᴀ ɴoᴠᴇʟ
“Not so fast,” Daniel warned, thanking the fate that his ability didn’t allow him to see the scenes Norbert experienced yet.
It was better for his wrath to explode only once whoever was responsible for the sights capable of nearly breaking a war veteran would be within reach of his hands.
‘I need to think of a song to which I will bash their heads and groins in,’ Daniel thought coldly.
“Why the hell are you stopping me?!” Norbert shouted, swinging his body around and slapping Daniel’s hand aside. “This is precisely what we trained and swore to stop from happening,” he said, staring daggers down Daniel’s face.
“And what are you going to do about whatever happens up there?!” Daniel slightly lost his nerve. “Are you going to jump over the gap, right into the loving hands of people capable of doing something that shook you to the core?!”
Daniel shook his head.
“Whatever happens up there, we can’t stop it right now,” he said before turning his eyes to the corridor they came from. And just like it was a few moments ago, it was currently filled with the corpses of zombies the two of them slaughtered. ρꪖꪕᦔꪖꪕꪫꪣꫀꪶ
“What do you propose we do?” Norber snapped, looking at Daniel as if he was actually siding with the students on the topmost floor. “Do you want to let them go free? Or maybe not do anything at all?!”
‘The situation really has to be bad for him to act like that,’ Daniel thought as he squinted his eyes despite not looking at his colleague. ‘That, or he has some trauma that connects to the scenes he just saw.’
Daniel didn’t bother to give his reply just yet. Instead, he walked down the stairs, only to stop above the nearest dead zombie.
Then, without a second of thought, Daniel smashed his steel-reinforced shoe directly into a former student’s head, crushing it with ease.
“What the fuck are you doing?!” Norber freaked out when the brain matter was sent flying from under Daniel’s shoe. He then raised his hand and wiped a small strand of zombie’s brain out of his sleeve.
“Did you forget already?” Daniel asked as he kneeled down on the bloody floor before pushing his hand right into the mess he had just made. And after a mere moment of moving his fingers around, he pulled his hand out with a small, shiny stone glistering between his fingers.
“Are those the cores that guy from before collected?” Norbert shook his head, his voice turning calm in an instant.
“That’s right,” Daniel replied, nodding his head as he turned his eyes to another zombie. He then proceeded to extract another core. Only when he rose up to his feet again did he bother to turn his eyes towards his colleague.
“Even if not a single one of the students on the top floor received a system, they still have an insane advantage of both the numbers and position over us,” he pointed out.
“So we should just give up on saving those few girls that still remained sane despite what they did to them?” Norbert asked, his voice turning extremely cold as he stared blankly at the fellow officer.
“No,” Daniel shook his head. “Not at all,” he added, only to kick his hand up, letting the cores jump out of his palm only to catch them mid-air a second later. “But didn’t you notice a strange peculiarity over the things that Mathew brought from the merchant up there?”
The existence of the merchant wasn’t a secret. All of the survivors from back when Mathew summoned it could see that young man suddenly manifest crates full of vital resources seemingly out of nowhere.
And it was pretty damn hard to miss a pendulum machine that towered over the edge of the floor before it ended up collapsing.
“And what could that be?” Norbert asked, the ice behind his eyes melting down a tiny little bit.
“It’s this obvious?” Daniel asked, opening his eyes wide as he looked over at his colleague’s face. “Weren’t the things that he brought exactly the things people needed at the time?”
Daniel turned silent. To the side, Norber followed in his example as he analyzed the stuff he had just learned.
And then, Norbert’s eyes opened wide.
“Do you mean to say that…”
“The merchant gave him exactly what he needed at that time,” Daniel didn’t bother to play some sort of weird games, giving out his answers right away instead. “And I do recall him declaring the need to control three merchants at once in order to do something next,” Daniel revealed the one detail that stuck in his mind through all this time.
“So you want to take over the merchant to lure him there?” Norbert asked, leaning his head to the side in an expression of slight disbelief.
“Back then, the merchant took the cores to provide exactly what Mathew needed,” Daniel repeated. “And judging from the determination I saw in his eyes, he seems to be our best bet for the moment!”