“It really is beautiful isn’t it?” I said softly to my guest approaching from behind as if speaking too loud would ruin the moment.

“It is.” She agreed with a soft voice just as I had. Unless something unexpected happened the conversation would most likely be in the same tone of voice throughout it’s entirety.

After a few minutes I could tell she was itching to ask whatever it was she came out here for.

“Sigh… Ally, hurry up and ask already” I laughed lightly as she relaxed.

“About earlier… when I accused you… I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking straight and I did something stupid and against the trust you have in me. I’m sorry for doubting you…” She trailed off as she refused to look me in the face.

“It’s fine. Your brother and I may be fine with the apocalypse but I know it hit you a lot harder than us. Your worried about your parents right? And taz… I don’t blame you for it.” I said easily as I messed up her hair a bit and went back to my star gazing.

“I-it’s not just that. I didn’t want to believe in it so I didn’t. The prospects of there being gods on this world just felt so… fucked up. It made me feel weak, weaker than I ever have been. A god screwed up everything in our world so easily but now there’s more of them? I… I just didn’t want to accept it” She said as she hung her head in shame.

“Ally… I really will start questioning your trust if you think I’m someone that needs your apologies. Who do you think I am?” I scolded lightly as a small chuckle escaped her mouth.

“Yeah, the great and mighty Jean Paradox, rich kid extraordinaire and a publically recognised top ten in the ‘guys you would want to marry’ with third place in looks and fifth in wealth. Hmph, what was I thinking, apologising to a playboy like you… thankyou though.” She trailed off after her little mood brightener.

“I bet I’m number one now” I said smugly while thinking about my charisma stat and the newly gained wealth of twenty gold coins from mister baby god.

I wouldn’t check the store till later however since I wanted to go over it with all of us.

“It’s annoying that I can’t refute that” She sighed. Truthfully when you get to such a level to be in top ten things are mainly based off of your public image rather than the difference between looks. With my looks alone I got to third place but in the top three the other two where on par with me but had a better public opinion. There was never really a perfect score for it but now I know that I’ve outstripped them considerably, if they are even still alive. I have the right to be arrogant about it but I usually only use arrogance jokingly rather than adopting it as a personality trait.

“The city is a lot more beautiful than I imagined it to be without lights and people” I commented after a long while.

“Mhm” She agreed as the silence once again returned.

Over the next few hours we continued to chat about random things that had no relevance as we basked in the view that three in the morning till dawn could provide us with. The sunrise was spectacular, a golden red colour that seemed to eclipse our surroundings for hours as it began to climb high enough to illuminate the world. It only lasted a short amount of time in reality but the moment made the scene become longer. It was the best sunrise I had ever seen which was ironic considering the state of the world.

After a long while Page and Ace began to wake up and I told them all the things which I had been putting off till now. Of course I wasn’t so insensitive to talk about Page’s circumstances with Ally when she could hear it but I let her in on everything else, including the information about my achievements and gods message while explaining everything which happened to Leo and me since it started. Although it was a less… disturbing version, I also made sure to tell them about our experiments with the cats. Page got teary eyes and I tried to explain that I didn’t like it either but I feel like she’ll be angry with me for a while.

The question about why she started talking in third person completely failed when she answered with “Page has always talked like this.” As if she didn’t even remember talking in first person and even with Leo’s attempt at explaining that we met her talking to us in first person she denied it, there’s not much we can do in that situation.

Ally told us about the start of the apocalypse for her which was the same as we already knew but with a bit more details while page surprised me by being able to remember everything (other than the first person) so my worry dropped a bit. If third person was the only thing she ended up with after such severe mental trauma then it’s better to be thankful for it being only this much.

The siblings and their little brother decided to come back to the school with us as shown by the note they slid under the door at around seven in the morning and the market was limited by level so even with the money we couldn’t get anything worthwhile besides slightly better weapons and equipment than the ones dropped by zombies which we already had covered. There was a little information package for ten silver which told us some basic information like it being technology that doesn’t work anymore rather than electricity but it also said that it would come back a year from the day it was cut off. It was mainly so that people couldn’t use guns or bombs to wipe each other out as soon as zombies arrived.

Crossbows still worked according to the package but all guns, bombs and technology was cut off other than the generic gas explosion types. The bombs just outright disappeared if they where bigger than a fifty metre blast radius but the rest we will have to put up with once the year ends.

I took my cat with me as well, much to Leo’s annoyance. He only recently found a reason to hate cats even more than before so he sees it as a little demon that he is forced to put up with rather than one of the cutest and smallest cats in the world. I’ve had tiny for five years now and she was the only thing in that house I had attachment to other than my necklace. She’s just so cute and she loves sleeping on my shoulder… believing such a cute thing is evil is borderline heretical but since he’s my friend I will accept his dysfunctions and treat him the same despite the obvious mental impairments. It’s okay bud, we all support you.

Ally on the other hand was ecstatic about tiny and I’m sure many other people would be too so I had decided to be careful with who I trust to handle her in case she is catnapped.

About three quarters of the way to school I felt a rapid projectile enter my area sense range and quickly turned to see an arrow zooming directly at Page. To aim an arrow at a child… who the fuck would do such a thing? My stats let me pull her out of the way before the arrow slid past and hit the road a few metres in front of us with sparks as the shaft snapped but it was close and there was already another one coming at me.

Dodging it as another arrow slid uselessly along the ground I began to order the others.

“Retreat for now. We’ll circle around later to take out the archer but we’re too exposed here.” I said quickly as they followed my orders. Well not like they’d refuse in this situation. No one would want to stay here.

I really didn’t expect something like this so soon but I can’t say it is unexpected either. There will always be the odd person who survived while actually having some skill and judging by the experience it seems humans give more than zombies making them better targets for efficient levelling but I believed that morals would keep this sort of practise at bay for a while longer. They where either one of the scum or their mentality was a lot stronger than most people and the end result was like a tiger being given wings due to this apocalyptic situation.

In a sick and twisted way the thought of them thinning out the herd that will be coming towards the school came to me and I considered leaving them alive but at the same time they could get into a vantage point near the school and pick off the people inside when I’m not around to sense it or are too far away, not to mention their potential for growth being enough to make them a future threat.

As we ran five more arrows came at us and two where fired so fast that I didn’t have time to completely block them as they where aimed at both sides of the group. Somehow I just managed to stop the arrow by using my own hand as a sacrifice which hurt like a bitch but it would regenerate soon so I wasn’t worried.

“Ally, Leo, Cover Page and hole up in the mall. You three should go with them as well but if you feel safer legging it to the school or somewhere else go ahead. Leo if I don’t meet up with you within two hours leave without me no matter what.” I ordered as I left before they could object. I already got them into the alleys and they saw where the shots came from so hopefully they will be fine.

The arrows hitting concrete was loud and attracted all the zombies within 50-100 metres so I quickly started backtracking through the alleys around the group and heading towards the direction I saw the archer.

Far sight made it easy to follow the arrows path back to the archer and he was around ninety metres away on top of a five story building. They won’t have enough time to flee the building due to the size, an amateur mistake but I don’t know if they have a rope leading down so I went as fast as I could.

The building itself was rather old considering how centralised it was in the city but thanks to that it had balconies lining the levels instead of the new trend of having massive glass covering everything in a single sleek and shiny design. Using my new stats I could jump up to the first balcony and pull myself up before repeating the process. I made sure not to be seen getting here on the way just in case they where still on the top level but when I got to the third floor I felt something within my area sense, a frantically running person. Jumping back down to the lower balcony I ran down to intercept them at the stairs.

Pocking my blade through I made it so the flat of the blade hit his forehead and made them run into it, nocking him down.

“Who are you? The archer looked difference so give me a reason not to kill you” I said coldly before they could gather themselves again.

“I-I-iii I’m just someone he captured as a distraction man, please, let me go. I d-didn’t want to be here but h-he threatened to kill my friend if I didn’t” He begged.

“Crap” Cursing as I ran to the top of the stairs as fast as I could.

Bursting onto the roof once I judged it safe with area sense I immediately saw the dead body of a tied up 27 looking female who I’m guessing was the friend. No loose ends huh…? Fine, then I’ll stalk that guy until he comes back to finish him off. People who can hunt people so easily wont let their prey escape… hopefully. Onestly that was a load of crap but it was the only lead I had. There really was a rope and I have no idea where they are again. The ‘prey’ is the only option now.

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Using the same rope I scaled down the building as fast as I could before getting to the second from the bottom balcony and directly dropping down. It was time to follow.

After an hour stalking the guy I was ready to give up. He was going the opposite way from my friends and I was on a time limit. Sticking with it I followed for a few more minutes as he finally stopped running and started to relax his guard, believing it to be safe. Of course that was when I found out how much of a cruel bastard this archer really was as an arrow was shot at him as soon as the guy relaxed but I was too far away to help even if I wanted to now and I didn’t want to lose him again because of this doomed guy so he became a sacrifice. To kill the prey just as they thought they had escaped… how disgusting.

But I had his position now.

Going through the alleys and reconfirming his position a few times as I went I was getting closer and closer to the archer. It was unnecessary as he seemed to want to go inspect his prey but I wouldn’t allow him that chance. The guy didn’t turn into dust so he must have wanted the body for something I didn’t want to know and the least I could do was stop it from happening considering that I could have saved him if I did things differently. His body atleast won’t get fucked up by this asshole.

“-hat Jey jey? Did you, did you? We fina-“ The wind carried a bit of his sing-song voice to my ears as I worked my way closer.

“-ow we just nee-“

“-Hmm, but I’m annoyed. Why did such annoying prey appear? I’m supposed to be the hunter but yet that kid dared to try and hunt me… should we teach them a lesson?” He giggled stupidly.

“Oh, good idea! His precious little friends… yes, let’s play a game of self-sacrifice with that little kiddy. That will be so exciting!~” My heart grew cold as I heard his words.

Although the conversation where he is talking to himself is fractured and it’s hard to make out what he’s saying I heard that last part clearly. He wants to use my friends as hostages so he can make me trade my life for them. Based on what I saw on the roof he would kill me and then kill them anyway…

I’m so killing this bastard.

Once he was directly next to my little crack of an alleyway I sent out a throwing knife. He dodged it barely with a small cut on his cheek and brought up the bow with a smug smile, arrow already on the string and ready to be fired but I jerked my hand and he turned to dust.

Just in case I had another three throwing knifes in my hands that I released simultaneously with all the strength I could muster after my attempt at a controlled throw failed. I’m not used to the new strength yet so my aim is off if I go above a certain force which was why he even had a chance to dodge the knives but I compensated the accuracy with numbers and used my full strength. One pierced straight through his throat and spine while the other went through his left calf and the third missed by a few inches. He died almost instantly.

“What a fucking psychopath…” I muttered in disgust as I remembered the smile that only widened in the brief moment between the knife piercing his throat and turning into dust.

All that was left was a bow, the arrow quiver with twenty or so arrows and seven silver coins.

Although I didn’t really want to I picked it all up and ran through the backstreets towards the mall. Even if it was the loot from a man like that… I don’t have the luxury to throw it away, especially since Ally likes bows but all of hers where in a vacation home where she goes hunting half way across the continent.

“Your cutting it awfully close” Leo said as soon as I appeared.

“I didn’t expect the guy to be such a sicko so it took longer than I expected.” I said with a weak smile.

“Well he DID shoot arrows at us, even targeting page first… what did you expect?”

“I know that but I just assumed them to be someone who was trying to take advantage of the extra exp killing humans gets you, not… not full blown psychotic.” I shook my head wearily as I neglected to explain.

“Ally, catch” I said as I threw the bow and arrows to her.

“You killed him, didn’t you?” The male sibling questioned accusingly.

“Oh no, I gave the psychopath a lolly pop and sung him some songs and he happily handed over the weapons to turn over a new leaf” I layered on the sarcasm. I wasn’t in the mood for this idiots crap.

The sister glared at her obviously idiotic brother but I ignored them. The little kid they are leading around understood but didn’t seem scared which confused me a bit but I guess walking corpses that eat people alive has a way of doing that to people.

“What happened?” Ally supressed her excitement over the weapon to ask.

“He had two people tied up on the roof. One was a hostage while the other he sent away as bait with the threat of killing his friend. The girl was killed as soon as the guy was out of sight and I lost him since I went after the distraction by mistake. Following them, as soon as he relaxed and stopped running the guy appeared again and shot him while talking to himself as if there was another person there about how he was going to hunt us to catch me by using you guys as hostages. When I killed him… his smile only got wider before he turned to dust. He was a full blown crazy bastard.” That shut up the idiot brother but I didn’t care. It was plain disturbing and shutting up the idiotic bastard didn’t change that.

“Thanks for the bow” Ally muttered to me without any of the earlier excitement.

“Sorry, I ruined it, right? Sigh… I just really can’t calm down for some reason…” I said tiredly.

“It’s not your fault. I asked and you wouldn’t have lied to me so whether it is now or when we are at the school that I found out it makes no difference. Are you okay, Jean?” She tried to comfort me and she sounded sincere but…

“I’m not sure. Something’s really bothering me but I don’t know what and it’s so frustrating. I feel like I made a mistake but… I just really don’t understand. Why do I feel like this?” Despite questioning I knew there wouldn’t be any answers. How would she know what I don’t? It’s just… something feels wrong and I can’t help but ask…

“Idiot… thinking so hard won’t let you work out what’s wrong. Just wait until it comes to you naturally. Here, tiny’s been lonely without you so take her back and calm down” Her voice was warm and I smiled slightly at what she said as she gave tiny back to me. As she was talking she brushed the hair out of my face and made sure I was looking her in the eyes, an old habit we had when we where younger that died down after puberty. Even if it was old the gesture made me happy and I couldn’t help but smile softly.

“Thanks Ally.”

“Are you two done now? I hate to interrupt your little star-crossed lovers scene that I’m sure netted you a handsome amount of charisma points but we’ve wasted enough time here already. We need to get moving again” Although Leo seemed as if he was annoyed his voice said otherwise, betraying the appearance he was going for. I mean his voice sounded perfectly happy, even smug, at interrupting the scene.

Even with Ally’s temperament she couldn’t help but blush in that situation and shoot her brother a glare while I chuckled at their ensuing fight. It was childish and quickly devolved into bickering over nonsense but the familiarity was comforting and dissolved the tension I had unconsciously built up without realising.

“You should ask already” I said to Lillian without taking my eyes off of their scene.

She hesitated a bit but then spoke.

“Are you dating her?” I expected it to be about their scene so the question surprised me.

“Why would you think that?”

“As far as I know both of you have never had any news of dating people while in school and that scene just now was overly intimate. I never really thought about it till now but… does ally love you?” Her voice sounded as if she wouldn’t believe me even if I said no so I thought about my answer a bit.

“We aren’t dating. I’m not sure if she loves me and while I’d like to say I know her well enough to deny it I won’t ignore the possibility but if she does I doubt she herself realises.” Because she is the sort of person to supress and ignore her emotions as long as it means keeping the little world she built for herself. Loving me… would shatter that world.

“Do you love her?”

“I wouldn’t know even if I did.”

There wasn’t any thought into my answer. Love stopped being something I thought about before I even hit puberty.

“Why would-“ “Let’s go!” Thanks Leo. I really didn’t want to deal with that.

I finally got tiny back which calmed me down a bit.

“Tiny.” I called coaxingly as I held her in front of my face.

She bopped me on the nose in reply which made me chuckle.

“I’m sorry I left you alone for so long. Well I guess you won’t understand anyway but I’ll try to make up for it.”

I set her in my hood so she could sleep without worry of falling off me. Small things, but a start none the less.

She was purring but after a while she had fallen asleep.

“And you wonder why you have so many girls after you despite the cold personality you portrayed.” Leo said sarcastically as the moment shattered. I felt a little flustered honestly.

“They never saw me like this” I defended.

“No but they saw the occasional moments where soft expressions like that where displayed. You are ridiculously beautiful.” Ouch, even the ice queen intervened to shoot down my defence but thanks… I guess? It really didn’t feel like a compliment at all…

“Look at it from his perspective. Purposefully acting cold and distant with everyone but yet has girls after them despite that. Even with looks like his there shouldn’t be so many in that situation and seeing his own expressions is impossible. Don’t bully Jean.” Ally, my hero!

“That defence is weak. There are pictures of him with expressions like that circulating so he would have been able to see it easily.” Wait, what? Isn’t that a little creepy?

“Why is it that I seem to be the only one surprised about this? Ally, Leo? What the heck?”

They both averted their gazes.

“Seriously!?”

“From memory Ally was bought out with a backstage pass to a band she likes but I don’t know about leo.” She even started whistling. Oi ally, are you really my hero!?

“Leo?” I questioned.

“It was a favour I owed. It’s not like you could have changed anything if you knew anyway so it was fine.” No guilt at all… should I say something like ‘as expected of Leo?’.

“So things like this can happen to people like you huh?” Dammit brother I’ve been purposefully ignoring the name of, I don’t need your pity of all people!

“Can I remind you people that we’re in the middle of an apocalypse? Please shut up.” Ouch. From a nine year old…

Sighing we all agreed reluctantly.

I’ve already noticed the increase in zombies within our back paths since we started the conversation, the whistling especially, so it was a good point but the atmosphere was something the others all needed to calm down a bit. Stress relief is very important.

After another hour or so of walking it suddenly hit me what I felt bothered by.

Guilt.

Guilt for letting that person die because of my negligence.

So far, all my human kills where of people I could justify killing for one reason or another. By nature my resolve is strong enough to do that much without any guilt. This guy however was a death due to my own inability. I even followed them for so long but yet I couldn’t save them in the end.

Sighing to myself I decided to put it off until later. Nothing good will come of letting emotions cloud my judgement while we’re outside of friendly territory after all.

Along the way we only ran into one more risky situation which was easily resolved by Ally shooting an arrow over the small horde into a glass window some distance away but otherwise we safely made it to the school by the afternoon.

Although I couldn’t immediately spot any zombies the same could be said for humans so it was safe to say the school hadn’t been cleared yet. I suppose it would be more worrying if it had considering the size of the place but I still felt a little disappointed at the extra work it would take. Honestly I just wanted to train. We wasted two days worth of time on our trip to both sleep and travel. Considering I was hoping to push for the achievements at the following stat benchmarks that was quite serious to me.

“Jean there’s a lock now. How do you want to get in?” Leo distracted me from my musing.

“The gate is still the easiest way. We’ll climb it.” Compared to the barbed wire the gate was certainly the better option, even if it was a little tall.

“Page I’ll carry you over with me while Leo will take your brother. I trust that you two can make it over fine yourselves.” Ally took charge.

“I can climb over myself” The kid tried to argue only to be stopped by ally’s glare. She’s a little defensive about that due to the height. No matter how brave or strong the kid is being on the ground and at the top of the fence is two different matters and falling due to that hesitation would be disastrous for the kids, even the two older siblings could die from that if they landed wrong.

“I guess I’ll stay here to catch anyone in case they fall then” And with that the great climb started… not really, the gate was only nine metres tall.

“Shit-!” “Brother!” Of course that lump of brainless annoyance would be the one I had to catch… sigh. Let’s just get this over with.

“Ooof” The air was taken out of his lungs as he landed and I had to bend down with the catch in order to avoid letting him hurt himself from a flat catch but otherwise he was fine.

Well, other than the sprained wrist. Dammit.

“Ugh… fine, hold my cat. If you drop her I will kill you.” I groaned as I brought him onto my back, much to both of our embarrassments. This was just plain gross.

And that is how we completed our grand gate climb, entered the relative safety of the school and granted a new mental trauma onto the oaf of a brother.

“When we left they where still in the drama room but they might be in the gym by now or hunting down zombies to clear the school out. We’ll head around looking for them in that order” I said simply as the others agreed without protest.

As we where walking we suddenly heard violins. It wasn’t some beautiful musical masterpiece like you’d expect with such instruments but an unholy screeching made by frantically playing it without any tune or delicacy. Even from a distance it was horrible.

For the next five minutes we approached this horrible sound and found zombies gathering in the gym. It seems their plan was to trap them all in there and pick them off one by one, there where thousands inside.

“Could that be any more fucking annoying?!” Leo yelled over the sound as we arrived at the gym.

“Ah, yep, it can be. Run. Run and don’t look back!” I yelled.

The sound stopped and a hundred or so zombies caught the end of Leo’s yelling and started to come after us.

“Dammit Leo I hope you’ll be stat dumping in luck or we’re all going to die in the future” Ally cursed at him as we ran.

It’s not like we couldn’t escape and in fact it would be fairly easy considering the zombies speed but dammit if it wasn’t annoying.

Thankfully we didn’t seem to interrupt whoever those annoying assholes playing the violin where as the zombies following us where the one’s who didn’t fit inside the gym but I’m sure we still surprised them.

The kids and siblings where panting while Ally, leo and I where fine but since they where safe for now I made a new course of action.

“Leo, Ally and I are going to go pick off that small horde and help clearing out the remaining zombies. I’ll be trusting you four to not get yourselves killed and look after tiny. Stay up here till we get back, the zombies won’t reach you here.” I said simply before jumping off.

“Page wants to come too! Why can’t page come?” She asked with teary eyes.

“We’re trying to clear up thousands of zombies Page. Even if most of them are trapped we can’t look out for you while we’re doing it. Protect tiny for Jean okay?” Ally said pleadingly.

“Fine…” She said sadly as she went to go sulk with tiny. She’ll be fine after a few minutes with that cuteness overload of a cat so I wasn’t worried. A little dejected maybe but not worried.

“Atleast the violins stopp-“ “Oh you just had to talk you fucking idiot!” Ally yelled at Leo as it started again.

“It wasn’t my fault!” He tried to defend as she just kept glaring at him. Sorry bud, as long as the anger’s not at me I’m afraid I won’t risk incurring her wrath to save you. Good luck…?

“Spread out in a net with twenty five metres between us. If ones in trouble we’ll be close enough to help while the net’s wide enough to stop us from being surrounded. No talking unless something’s wrong, we need to do this as fast as possible.” They both nodded and we jogged to our positions to begin picking off zombies.

It’s going to be a long day.