The World Cataclysm - Chapter 57: Parting

A short while later, 2 students, one male and another female, stood in the middle of the group, surrounded by other students and looked upon with dissatisfied eyes. They were students who had also stole food from the storage room, though only small snacks such as chocolate bars and sucking candies. However, stealing was still stealing.

In front of them, Evelyn and Dave stood glaring at two students coldly. These students cried out, “Please, it’s just small snacks. We have plenty of them in the supermarket.”

Hearing it, Dave smirked only as he noticed that the male student was the one to shout that they weren’t some criminals. For him, it was truly amusing how the male student had tried to manipulate other survivors and hide in the masses. ‘Funny!’

At a loss of words, Evelyn sighed in exhaustion, understanding that leading a bunch of other students would be much harder than she had expected. “I won’t gonna hear your excuses. Both of you will get the same punishment as Andrew; no food for you today.”

‘Fair enough!’ Dave thought inwardly. Though both didn’t take as much as Andrew, the same punishment needed to be given to establish a discipline among other survivors. Well, with everything wrapped here, he needed to inform Rebecca and Rachel that they would be setting soon towards their dormitory building, so he said, “Then if we’re finished here, I would excuse myself. I need to check on Rebecca and Rachel.”

At that time, Evelyn was already back at counting boxes and bags of food, but when she heard Dave, she said, “Okay! Wait a bit before leaving. You can eat with us and pack some food in your backpack before you leave. You helped us a lot!”

“En…” Dave nodded his head, looked at her scarlet eyes last time, and strode to the same office room where Evelyn had awakened.

When he entered it, he saw Rebecca and Rachel who were leaning on the wall, and Mary who sat near to lying Arthur. It seemed that they were able to find some soft cushion to lie him on. Well, the supermarket had a variety of items in it, so it wasn’t surprising that they were able to find it.

Greeting others, Dave asked Arthur, “How are you feeling now?” However, when he noticed that Arthur was trying to sit straight, he suggested, “Try not to move too much, it will be counterproductive for you.”

“Not bad! It’s quite relaxing to lie down here when Evelyn doing all the job. Honestly, this week was quite exhausting.” Arthur chuckled as he recalled how they eventually got trap inside the supermarket.

He, Evelyn, and Mary were finally able to find a bit of free time in their schedule, so they decided to party up in Arthur’s room, making a small party of three. However, something unexpected broke in the supermarket, where they were buying snacks and drinks for the party.

Actually, they had an opportunity to flee from the university, but Arthur decided to help and got mingled with the whole situation. Of course, Evelyn and Mary followed him. He didn’t know that they will eventually get stuck in the storage room.

“Evelyn is also having it hard, don’t be happy when Evelyn is doing everything.” Mary pouted as she pinched Arthur’s arm. He cried out from pain -or he acted that way to soothe her girlfriend’s anger- and grumbled, “Ai! I’m injured!”

Dave had only smiled lightly at them and turned towards Rebecca and Rachel as he said, “Get ready, we’re leaving after eating something here. We can’t remain any longer here since Adam might be worrying about us.”

“En…I’m already missing a soft bed,” Rebecca said as she rubbed her stiff shoulders. She seemed to nap a bit in her free and it wasn’t as pleasant as in the dormitory.

“Ahh…I’d like to have a shower.” Rachel joined Rebecca as she sighed. On the other side, Arthur and Mary winced slightly at their remarks. Well, it was unsurprising since they were stuck in the underground basement and were isolated from such comfortable things before everything happened.

Noticing their reactions, Dave smiled as he reassured them, “Don’t worry. You’ll have time to visit the dormitory building in the future. If we could cooperate well enough, we can make a small post in the supermarket to guard food, and transport other students to a residential area.”

As he mentioned, Rebecca and Rachel flushed in embarrassment as they forgot that survivors in the supermarket were isolated from such conveniences for a week. Both of them apologized in embarrassment, “Sorry! We didn’t mean to do it.”

Of course, Arthur and Mary didn’t find a fault in them, on the contrary, their thought started drifting about quicker getting into the supermarket. After half an hour, Evelyn called them to eat, and Dave discussed with Evelyn their future plans.

Since both of them were students from the same university and since the survival was the main priority, both of them easily agreed with each other to cooperate and shook their hands. It was meaningless to be fear each other when they had a common enemy in face of zombies. It was nice that Evelyn understood that point.

According to their agreement, both of them will work towards making the university a safe place to live, clearing it from all zombies. Also, they had agreed that, first of all, they would pave the way to link the residential area with a supermarket.

Dave believed that both sides would benefit from it since side would get quite a large amount of food, so their side won’t worry about obtaining one in the near future. Also, it was advantageous to link the residential area with a supermarket since plenty of useful facilities were located near it.

On the other hand, Evelyn could start transporting students to the dormitory buildings where were good living conditions. Probably, it was the start of establishing a survivor group in their university.

Restocking his backpack with food, Dave’s group parted with Evelyn, Arthur and Mary as they headed towards, what seemed to be, the direction of their dormitory. Well, they had a long way before they reach their base.

If he could briefly describe the current state of their university, Dave could have said that it was extremely chaotic. Although there weren’t many zombies wandering on the first day, zombies were everywhere now.

No matter how hard they tried to avoid collisions with ordinary zombies, Dave found it harder to lead Rebecca and Rachel without attracting any zombies. It was just unrealistic to avoid each of them even with Mana Sensing, so he changed his tactics to killing obstacles on their way.

However, Dave wasn’t so much worried about reaching dormitory. Indeed, it was difficult, but he believed that it wasn’t impossible. Something else was worrying him more than reaching their base.

Glancing at zombies wandering in the university, Dave thought, “Why their progress is so small? 10 days have already passed, but zombies didn’t seem to evolve much so that it would be harder to increase my level in the meantime. Should I concentrate more on training my skills? But if I’m right, it’s such a waste for beginner’s buff.”

Hunting zombies for more than a week, Dave had drawn a logical conclusion. For an unknown reason, drop rates of Treasure Chests are much higher than in my past life, so Dave believed that it was only temporary due to it only being the beginning, like a newbies buff in games.

He didn’t want to waste it, but, other than killing mid-rank zombies, he wouldn’t get any Treasure Chests from zombies weaker than him in any way, so he might not waste his time on it if he won’t gonna benefit from it. Dave opted to concentrate more on his skills than increasing his level, but he still wanted to get to level 10 as fast as he could.

If he could increase his level at least by two levels before going there, he could level up already at that place. The only problem was that he didn’t know you much time it would take from him, considering the slow pace at which zombies are evolving.

Pondering about his future, he was called by Rebecca, “Mr David, I think there are people in that building. Look at all zombies that had gathered before the doors! We need to help them!” Saying it, she pointed to her left.

They were already close to the dormitory building and were much closer to the area in which they were hunting previously with Adam and Brian, so he was quite surprised to see a group of zombies gathered before a building and banging its door.