Author's Note: New chapter is out + in response to a majority of the comments from last chapter, out of fun, I made a poll.
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Aftermath
I gazed down darkly at the redheaded girl in my arms.
After the impromptu amputation, Cher had passed out- most likely from shock. Her face was as pale as a sheet of paper, and her forehead dripped down a dirty collection of grime, dirt, and sweat. Looking at her once more, I confirmed her new injury. The cut I made was clean slice, about 2 to 3 inches below her elbow. An overwhelming sea of red, around it, a vortex of white that threatened to consume everything around it. The bone had been so cleanly severed, that it was difficult at first glance to completely ascertain its original form.
Aside from that, the 2nd most striking aspect of Cher’s condition was the blood. Blood as red as the scarlet on a rose. A vibrant and vivid, heart pulsing sight that served as a stark contrast to the rust hued stains I long familiarized myself with.
The red liquid was a constant flow. A red waterfall that dripped and dripped with precious life energy. As if in direct correlation, the more fluid escaped, the paler and weaker Cher’s constitution appeared. Not even 30 seconds after my initial [Dissection], the very real fear of death by blood loss had already reared its fangs.
My body was moving before I even had time to think.
I tore free a long strip of fabric from my school uniform, and quickly made an impromptu tourniquet. I tied the piece of flimsy fabric so tightly to her thin arm that for a second, I could almost imagine her whole limb (or at least, what was left of it) going purple.
The bleeding somewhat slowed down, but did not stop immediately. Fortunately, it was to the extent where I could now more clearly inspect the open wound without fear of obstruction. The wound itself was red and pulsed vibrantly with life. In this type of environment, something so fresh, so vulnerable, so utterly alive was an easy target for infection and disease. While injuries and wounds were somewhat manageable, disease was beyond me. Infection was truly a monster we were graced not to encounter.
My first thought was cauterization. It might not be a pleasant experience for Cher, but a smallburn was in no way comparable to the risk of death.
While my mind played with this rather gruesome idea, it was then that I finally took notice of the looming figures that had gathered besides me. the stress, and excess concern flooded my mind, it was then that I noticed the looming figures next to me..
A slight tap on my shoulder. My head hastily swiveled sideways, and my attention was brought to the solemn eyed and dark haired girl behind me.
CIelle’s look of palpable concern was the first thing I noticed.
I looked blankly at her for a second, before the realization dawned on me.Cielle was a healer.
In my haste to get here, I had fought through a swarm of belligerent and strangler monsters. With no rhyme nor reason, my mad dash, which had accumulated a myriad of victims, also greatly fatigued me. What’s more, the combination of budding stress, gnawing concern, and mind numbing anxiety sort of left my mind a bit rattled. Forgetting such a crucial and innately familiar fact was proof of this.
I chided myself briefly, before I asked, “Cielle, can you-”
Before I could even finish, Cielle was already nodding away as her magic activated. A pale blob of [Blue Gemini] activated, and soon it bobbed directly towards Cher’s arm.
I waited expectantly. A part of me believed that Cielle’s ability might be able to regenerate a new arm, but a greater part of rejected that idea. Nothing in this life ever came easy, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to start now.
I waited, 5 seconds- 10 seconds, 20, 30, soon it passed one minute, but no new arm conveniently grew out from Cher’s open wound. Instead, a different sort of “healing” took place. over her stump, a new layer of skin, one with a hue of pinkish pale white, like the skin off of a newborn’s exposed head, covered her open wound. Cher’s hp quickly maxed out, and the pale new layer of skin stood as a testament, to the apparent “success” of the healing magic.
Unconsciously, I began tentatively touching her new skin. The flesh was soft, yet rather firm. At the same time, it felt undeniably delicate. As if a blade of grass could sever the whole thing in half. At the same time, I threw cautious glances over towards Cher’s unconscious face.
She showed no signs of reaction to my light prodding, which both worried and comforted me. The concern that she hadn’t woken up, even after her hp was brought back from the brink of extermination worried my briefly, but after confirming my memory of the first day of the apocalypse with this current event, those worries quickly vanished.
I believed that eventually, Cher would wake up. For now though, she needed the rest.
On another account, I wondered why Cielle’s skill hadn’t regenerated a new arm. After some pondering, I came to the simple conclusion that it was a problem of limitation. Like how the human body can’t regrow missing arms, [Blue Gemini] held a similar limit. The demand for such a feat was simply too much of a burden, either for the body, or for the skill, possibly both.
It was an unfortunate discovery, but nonetheless, useful. At the very least, we discovered the extent of [Blue Gemini]’s capabilities..
I forced myself to pry my eyes away from her stump, and briefly checked her status once more.
I confirmed the status effects, [Shock] and [Anemia] were activated, but luckily, there weren't’ any, more life dangering ailments currently in effect. The important part was that Cher survived. Although I said that, glancing over at the pale faced girl whose lips were a delicate blue and whose eyelids fluttered in uncomfortable ache, well, my reassurances weren’t so reassuring.
I wanted to move Cher off of the dirty cafeteria floor, but an irrational fear overwhelmed me. What if I moved her too roughly and something wrong happened? I panicked at the thought, and instead, I settled with resting her head on my thighs. It was sort of like a lap pillow. No, actually, it was a lap pillow. It was an odd feeling, having a girl’s delicate headrest, exposed on my lap. It was an odd feeling indeed, but strangely enough, I did not hate it.
The reversed gender roles did not go unnoticed by the way.
Cher’s face somewhat softened after her head touched lap. Seeing that contorted forehead unclench, I couldn’t help but let out a sigh of mild relief.
After minutes of severe, teeth clenching tension, it was as if a wave of fatigue overloaded my body. My shoulders sagged, my eyelids dropped, and for the first time, I finally noticed the ache of my own body. The wounds- light scratches and small bruises- I incurred on my haste to get here throbbed in dull pain. it was unpleasant, but still somewhat bearable, in spite of things.
It was during this brief respite that my vision wandered for the first time.
The first person I noticed was Cielle. She was standing up, looking slightly over me. Her expression was unreadable, the pale panic from before had faded away some time ago, but still, she stood by, like a mother hen vigilantly protecting her chicks. Her eyes were constantly glued to Cher’s worthless expression. They stared, almost glared, fiercely, a look of dubious consternation was evident in that monotone expression of hers.
It made me slightly jubail to see Cielle so worried about our injured teammate.
A few paces away from her, I also noticed her sister. Hina stood stock still, like a faintly vibrating statue. Her shoulders were visibly trembling, as if a massive cold front had suddenly swept across the room, and chilled her very core to ice. Her expression was also a sight for sore eyes. Thin, pale, and ghastly, I could make out her slightly redenned eyes behind the pair of porcelain white fingers which covered most of her face. I was out of earshot, but I heard a quiet, almost mournful murmuring coming from her.
I wasn’t here for the majority of the part, so I don’t quite know the details, but seeing her current state filled me with a sense of odd unease. I vowed deep in my head to bring the topic up once the situation was all cleared and danger was confirmed to be suppressed.
After a quick evaluation of Hina’s disheartening demeanor, my gaze once again shifted. Unexpectedly, I saw an oddly familiar silhouette. Kido.
The guy with a harem, Kido what’s-his-name was currently limping over towards our direction. He was accompanied by a party which consisted of himself, the other, vaguely familiar girls from his ‘harem’ and another female, presumably a new addition to his growing collection. God can only wonder how this guy managed to snag another girl in this type of situation, but that wasn’t really important right now. The new girl, was someone of rather medium stature. Her eyes were slightly slanted, and as expected, she could be classified as “cute”. What was striking about her, aside from her semi-erotic painting, was the wizard hat that adorned her head.
Before I could say or do anything regarding the approaching party, a blood stained, and sweat drenched shirt obscured my vision. For a dull moment, I stared blankly at the new person’s flat chest, a canvas of dirt white, before my eyes shifted upwards, and I glanced up at the President’s face.
“H-...How is it?” He asked, a hint of timidness in his voice.
“... It could have been worse.” I replied back in a soft whisper. I was almost afraid of waking Cher up. “At least… I was able to stop the acid from spreading too far up her arm… yeah, it could have been worse. Much worse.”
He nodded, before sighing in a terribly exaggerated manner. The ache in his eyes hurt me.“Damn…I’m sorry.” He spoke as if it were directly his fault. “She- you, the both of you look like Hell.”
“Both?” I asked, my voice rising in a confused tenor.
“Yeah…Although you don’t look as bad as her” - he indicated to Cher - “You… you look like shit.”
His voice was like a dull ringing that floated endlessly somewhere in my stream of consciousness. It took me a while to register what he had actually spoken, before unexpectedly, a dry chuckle escaped my horse throat.
My eyes swept across the room. In one fleeting gaze, the blood along the floor, the dead corpses, the destroyed partitions, the anguished victims, grieving survivors, all of it, I took in. The conclusion of tonight’s battle was a toll heavier than anything I’ve witnessed since the start of the apocalypse.
“Ha~” I sighed. My eyes found themselves staring back up at the president once more. “ I’m pretty sure we all look terrible right now.” I had noticed beforehand that, like the rest of the cafeteria group, the president was struggling just to maintain an upright position. “... How many people did we lose?”
He bitterly bit his lower lip as his head hung down. His eyes stared down at a reflection created by a pool of crimson red beneath his feet. A pool of blood created by Satou’s own body.
“We… about 10 people give or take. Also…” His gaze swept over to one of his friends, one of the twins. “Virgil was killed in the process…”
“I see…” For a moment, I felt bad about not knowing the twin’s name. That feeling passed quickly just as my gaze stared off into the distance. A lapse of comfortable silence soon took hold.
I don’t know how much time passed. It could have been an hour, it could have been 1 second, but the silence was broken by an abrupt voice.
“I’m sorry.” It was the president. “I should have known… I wasn’t prepared. I knew he was going to do something, but… but… because of me, a lot of people died. Virgil died, Cher lost her…” His gaze momentarily shifted towards Hina for a brief instant before he once agains stared down at the reflection by his feet. “If I only… If I only wasn’t so…”
His accumulating grief, his bottled up regrets, just as they were about to break free and flood forth like an unhinged damn, a sudden interruption abruptly stopped him.
“Hide!” A voice. It was vaguely familiar. “Hide! That’s you isn’t it Hide?!”
I turned around to see a familiar guy’s half sprinting-half limping form. As expected, it was Kido. He flashed me a weak, but somewhat full grin as his half sprinting came to an abrupt stop. Ah, let me correct that. It wasn’t that he stopped, but rather he tripped.
He flailed forward, only to come crashing down towards me. I quickly stopped him with an outstretched arm.I caught him, but even before he had the time to recover, I immediately pushed him off, sending him backwards, where he met a chorus of frantic females.
His unseemly struggle came to an end as he rested besides the crook of two of the girls behind him. With a flashy grin, he hung his head down, somewhat embarrassed, before he looked up once more. A toothy smile on his face, he once again greeted.
“Mayo Hide! It really is you! You-you-you survived!” He yelped somewhat ecstatically, watery dew was plainly visible besides his eyelids. His lower lip quivered. I don’t know whether that was due to shock or utter happiness.
The atmosphere he radiated was somewhat out of place in this type of environment, but the bright eyed lad before my eyes did not seem to pay any heed to that.
“*sniff* *sniff* I-I can’t believe someone else from our class survived… *sniff*” His show of genuine tears brought a flurry of attention from the girls next to him. The sole guy, surrounded by ogling woman and concerned parties paid them no heed as he continued to stare fixedly. The tears in his eyes only continued to accumulate.
In short it was creepy.
“Ah, um… yeah…” I muttered somewhat distantly as I avoided eye contact.
“Kido?” the President raised his voice as he glanced over at the man between the girls. His somewhat narrow eyes turned back over to me, as he asked, “Hide, do you know this guy?”
“Ah, well…” I pondered for a moment. I seriously wanted to say no, but looking at Kido once more- a man whose face was slightly above average, but made even worse looking by the tears that now freely dropped his face… yeah, I still wanted to say no. “ I guess I sort of know him.”
“*sniff* Yeah, Hide and I are friends!” Kido abruptly shot upright as he responded by himself.
“Er… I don’t think that’s quite…” My protests were stopped, as Kido began a rambling of incoherent nonsense.
I sighed exaggeratedly just as Kido’s apparent cheerfulness came to a stop. He suddenly hunched over and coughed harshly. The girls next to him all floated worried expressions. They began to orbit him, half nursing Kido, while half fighting amongst themselves. All the while, Kido continued to cough, yet strangely enough, despite his pale demeanor and worsening condition, a half smile floated lightly on his pale expression.
In the confusion, I turned and stared back at the President. For a while know, I’ve noticed how severely… sick everyone’s had been. Aside from the group in front of me (counting the President’s scouting team), everyone else was unconscious and moaning out in pain.
“This… is this Wisp gas?” I vaguely asked, more muttered to myself.
The President’s eyes widened. He coughed once before replying, “As expected of you Hide. Yes Satou planted a trap before he attacked. He severely weakened our group with Wisp gas a few hours before the initial invasion. Due to its odorless and colorless nature, we didn’t notice anything before it was too late.”
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“I see…” I nodded briefly. My eyes swept through the prone figures of the ill, while my brain lost itself in thought. I was unconsciously stroking Cher’s pale red hair when I spoke. “I’d like to look for those Wisps and stop the further spread of the gas, but it has already accumulated to this extent… We’ll need to move the injured out of the cafeteria before any of them start dropping like flies.”
At my harsh words, the President’s expression grimaced, while he nodded in quiet agreement.
I glanced over at Cielle, who, through all this time, had been quietly looming over me.
“Cielle, go with the President and the others and help move the survivors. You have a skill that helps with status effects, right?”
“Yes.” She nodded brusquely. Through her thick pelt of tangled hair, I imagined that she was was staring directly at me, making as much eye contact as socially acceptable.
“Then, if you have enough mana, go and heal them, as you move the survivors.” I did not wait for a response before my gaze shifted to the President. “You, take your guys and help Cielle. She’s a cleric type, so she doesn’t have much strength, but her heals are pretty good.”
He nodded dutifully, commenting, “I’ve witnessed her healing myself, actually.”
“Okay, then…you…” I sighed as my eyes shifted once more over to Kido. By this point, he had dutifully stopped ranting, and was looking up at me with intensifying rapture and wide eyed eagerness. In contrast, the girls around him had somewhat awkward expressions. I noticed that the girl in the wizard hat was staring strangely at me. She looked lost, and probably didn’t know what was happening.
With inner resolve, I avoided Kido’s stare, and looked over at the Wizard hat girl. “You’re the skill user right?” I briefly remembered the President’s description of the girl.
“Yes?” She answered, her tone a mix of pant tiredness, abject boredom, and confusion.
“Why weren’t you here when they were fighting?”
My sudden remark caused a noticeable shift in mood. She fidgeted uncomfortably in her spot, momentarily forgetting the dull soreness in her body.
After a moment of uncomfortable silence, she replied in a quiet murmur. “I was unconscious…”
Before I could reply, Kido’s voice cut in, his tone was uncharacteristically crips, a layer of conviction in every inflection of his words. “It’s not her fault Hide. We were all unconscious. Even I couldn’t do a thing… I don’t quite know what happened exactly, but” His glance swept through the piled corpses around us for the first time. “But it's’ not her fault.”
Kido stared fiercely at me. I would have said defiant, but he had nothing to defy. I met his stare pensively, stock still as a statue and as tight lipped as a rock. There was no sign of movement whatsoever from me, aside from my constantly moving fingers, which periodically caressed Cher’s pale red hair.
After a while, I broke the silence. “I see…” I sighed another tired sigh. “Well, I’d like to know what her ability can do, but for now we’ll hold that off. Kido, you and your group can go move the survivors.”
Kido nodded affirmatively as he patted the wizard hat girl’s back reassuringly.
My attention then shifted from Kido over towards the whole group. “For now, move everyone into the library. If I’m not mistaken, the ventilation system for the library is separate from the cafeteria, so it should be relatively safe there. Afterwards, you guys will need to come back and begin moving the supplies as well. I don’t know whether the meat in the freezer can get contaminated or not, but it's better to leave it. We can just hunt for more food later.
Okay?”
In unison, everybody nodded, even Kido’s girls, who were shooting me pretty scary glares a moment ago were nodding obediently to my words. Seeing this myself, I received their nods with my own.
“Then everyone, dismissed.”
The group quickly dispersed, shuffling off towards the direction of the partitioned spaces in the cafeteria. My surroundings were once again silent. A silence filled with Cher’s low breathing and the sound of distant moans. It was an eerie silence, which my aching and tired body relished.
For a moment, I briefly regretted not asking Cielle for a heal before she left, before I noticed the presence of one remaining individual.
“Hina…”
“....”
She quietly stood, her head hung downwards, her countenance still as pale as a sheet of unblemished paper. I hadn’t noticed before, but she had been standing directly in my line of sight since even before everyone else had arrived.
“Is something wrong?” I asked, my voice like a hot knife on butter as it sliced through the permeating silence around us.
“....” She was quiet. Eerily quiet. So quiet that it contaminated me with a tinge of unease, yet I could not confirm any of my worries. I could not see her expression. Her hair clung greedily to her face, her usually partitioned bangs hanging loosely and hiding her eyes nose and most of her cheeks.
The image was reminiscent of her sister’s usual appearance, yet, on her, on Hina, it was an eery sight.
“...” She remained silent. Although I did notice her shoulders were slightly trembling and her lips had began to quiver, she still did not say anything.
“...”
“...”
We did not talk for a while. Hina only continued to look down on the ground, while I continued to look up at her covered face. The silence between us was not like the familiar silence of an empty room, nor like the comforting quiet I had developed between Cielle and I. This quiet, this silence was oppressing. Dark, sordid, a melancholic pressure that wringed one's heart dry and left a man’s face hollow.
“I’ll go help the others…” And just like that, the oppressing silence came to an end, and Hina shuffled away towards the others, leaving with a lingering sense of unease that began to develop, like a budding flower deep in my heart.
****
I sighed tiredly. Now with no one around, my gaze once again wandered.
Without even realizing it, I was staring directly at Satou’s corpse. A headless figure that looked undeniably lonely in the backdrop of bloody floors and faintly penetrating moonlight.
I hesitate for a moment, before I gently lifted up Cher’s head and moved away from her. I placed a bundle of clothing (mostly my hoodie) beneath her head, before I moved over to the fresh corpse.
As expected, I was going to loot him.
The first thing I noticed was a paper thin book that rested lonesomely in a pool of blood besides the headless corpse.
“A skill book…” I murmured to myself as I went to grab for it.
Skill Book - Magic Clad: Acid Touch
An instructional manual to the magic skill variation of the [Magic Clad] technique. A rare skill drop that only has a less than 2% drop rate among specific acid type elite monsters or higher. The manual allows one person to learn the active touch, [Magic Clad: Acid Touch] a variation of the Magic Clad technique.
Effects
New Skill - Magic Clad: Acid Touch
Equip Skill Bonus
New stat - Corrosive Resistance
I read over the panel’s contents before I sighed tiredly. Like I hypothesized, this was indeed a skill book. In the end, rather than being excited over it, it left me wondering whether the skill book dropped because humans also dropped their skills upon death, or whether this was an effect of the Dungeon specific effect that humans were categorized as monsters while in this dungeon.
While I pondered, I quietly put away the skill. Whether I should learn the skill or not wasn’t even in consideration right now, as I continued to loot Satou’s corpse.
In the end, after some searching, I discovered 1 health potion, 1 stamina potion, 1 mana potion, and a bag of marbles, as well as an ominous red orb.
Elite Monster
Red Monarch Wisp - Level 20
HP: 100/100
As I pocketed the potions, I carefully read over the window panel above the orb’s head.
Unexpectedly, Satou was keeping the Elite Wisp around in his pocket. Such an act of callous carelessness was quite unheard of, leaving me with mixed lingering expressions regarding the owner of the dead body I was currently pickpocketing.
“For an elite monster, it’s hp is pretty low…” I quietly murmured to myself as I held the orb carefully in one hand up to my eye level. The orb itself was crystalline red, while a layer of ominous smoke, writhed in the pitchest black, continously exuded from the orb.
As the smoke continued to spread and spread, it only took my 5 seconds to realize the danger of this orb. After exposure to obr’s smoke, I felt a sudden wave of nausea. I knelt down on one knee, my brow wrinkled in a furrow of displeasure as I unconsciously threw the orb away. It slid harmlessly over the puddle of blood before it came to a stop against a cafeteria wall.
After it had separated from me, the Wisp abruptly stopped its production of black smoke. From this distance, it looked merely like an oversized red marble, although, my prior experience not a minute before told me otherwise.
I had no clue why such a dangerous and debilitating monster was snuck snuggly inside Satou’s pockets, but it left me with little hesitation. I grabbed the bag of marbles at my feet, and I carefully aimed, and threw one, swirl patterned marble across the room and over towards the Wisp.
The marble, fueled with all my strength, and assisted by my dexterity stat, whizzed through the air and impacted the Orb square in the center.
I saw a piece of it chip off, a smoke of black rising from the break. I observed its health drop by 20 in the process.
Satisfied by my first hit, I began lobbing more marbles at the Orb from a safe distance. Not a minute later, and after 4 more marbles, the Orb crumbled to dust, in its place was a new skill book that rested on the floor besides the cafeteria door. A confirmation of my victory quickly followed suit, and flashed before my eyes.
Achievement: You have slain an elite monster.
The elite monster: [Red Monarch Wisp] was a species leader. For defeating a species leader, Wisps will no longer spawn within the dungeon.
Reward(s):
+2000 exp
+20 unallocated points
I flashed a briefly complacent smile but even before I could celebrate any longer, another panel immediately followed.
ding!
Dungeon Notification
All Species leaders have been eliminated. Dungeon checkpoint reached. Remaining players will receive the following rewards.
+ 1 level up
NOW ENTERING NEXT PHASE: CALCULATING
An eerie silence fell upon the cafeteria, no, it fell upon the entire school. Not a single sound could be heard as that single panel continued to aimlessly float in front of my eyes. For some strange reason, despite the reward, I did not feel happy. Rather, a strange sort of unease welled up in my heart. An unease which forced me to shift uncomfortably in my spot.
Suddenly, from the corner of my eye, I could see an approaching figure. It was Cielle. She was jogging lightly in my direction, behind her followed the President. Going by their expressions, I concurred that the panel had paid them a visit as well.
I met eyes with the President, and just as he opened his mouth to speak, a resonating ding rang in our ears.
ding!
Dungeon Notification
NEXT PHASE INITIATED
The following changes have been made.
Monsters aside from the Dungeon Boss and the players will now receive an additional 50% increase in stats while in the vicinity of the dungeon.
The Dungeon Boss’s sphere of influence has been increased to accommodate the whole of the Dungeon.
New Monster: Shadow Lurker has spawned.
All Monsters aside from the players are now under the direct control and subordination of the Dungeon Boss.
The rush of information was almost as shocking and mind boggling as the sudden quake beneath our feet.
The tiled floor suddenly rumbled like the husky tremor of a baritone’s throat, while the tables and chairs rattled like a shaking leaf under the pressure of a cold autumn breeze. The dungeon was growling. It felt as if the dungeon was growling.
This quake only lasted for less than 10 seconds before it abruptly stopped, only to be followed by a low growling that originated from out into the dark recesses of the school. I shot a worried glance over at the other two, only to see their attention focused in on the sound. Their jog forward abruptly came to a stop as they stared out into the parted double doors of the school cafeteria.
Meanwhile, the low growling only continued to intensify. It was a unified cry, one that originated from every direction of the school. It came as a continuous, harmonious orchestra, one which drowned out the moans of the survivors and filled our hearts and minds with a certain sense of growing anxiety.
The growling continued, growing more and more forceful. It evolved into an earsplitting cry, a roar that reverberated and echoed out through the building, almost shaking it to its very foundations. This ear splitting roar, which stopped us almost dead in our tracts, lasted for a minute before it eventually died out, replaced by a lapse of unnerving silence.
The silence was short, painfully so, yet in my mind, it was also excruciatingly long. A drawn out silence that tested the very limit of my mind, but only lasted for a mere 5 seconds.
Then the carnage began.
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Author's Note: If you enjoyed this chapter, or like this story in general, rate and review pls.