Sooner than I thought, thanks to the electric bolts, I returned to the survivors’ camp in the north after destroying ten beehives. Charles was still there, and even though he couldn’t see me, he could hear my footsteps. I needed to train my espionage skills.
“Already?” Charles said, surprised.
“Yeah, now just shut up and return when they call you back. I’ll follow your footsteps and don’t try to look back or talk to me.”
“Got it,” Charles said full of enthusiasm, even though he was still terribly wounded. “What is your plan once you enter the hotel?”
“Don’t worry about it; just act normally.”
My plan was pretty simple; I would enter the hotel, use the statue to learn the domination skill, and create dozens of time bombs. Then I would put them on the most powerful armed men since they were probably the members of the brotherhood, and set them to explode at the same time, and that would be a few minutes after they began to use the survivors as a bait. That was why I destroyed a few more beehives than I initially planned. With luck, I would be able to control most of the armed men. I would test that skill and kill those who didn’t obey because that would prove they were under command the other members of the brotherhood who stayed in the hotel.
The best scenario would be if I could kill all the brotherhood members at the same time. Since they wanted to obtain more evolution coins and orbs, all of them will probably leave the hotel tomorrow morning. But even if that doesn’t happen, once I have the power to control most of the armed men, I’ll be able to force the remaining members of the brotherhood to leave the hotel. And in the outside, I’ll be able to get rid of them. They could control the survivors inside to cause trouble, but no one can fight inside the hotel. So, in the end, the numbers will solve everything.
‘I just hope things will go that smoothly.’
I was very close of breaking my sensorial limit for the thirtieth time, so my next skill could be handy and make me feel less uneasy. But I didn’t want to lose the opportunity to enter the hotel with the survivors, I didn’t have time to lose, so I rushed to return.
After a few minutes, I heard a shout of someone giving the survivors the order to return. After that I listened to a dozen of others shouts, Charles got up immediately, even though that effort really hurt him. He and the other survivors looked like zombies thanks to those orders, their brains ignored the pain and just made they obey.
Slowly, I began to follow them from behind. Since Charles knew that I would follow him from behind, he made a little more effort to walk slowly to be the last to arrive at the hotel. Carefully, I put my feet on the marks he left on the snow. I couldn’t leave a single trace of my presence to be seen, I couldn’t even move a little bit of snow, or my plans would be ruined. Luckily, the armed men looked carefree as always, so they didn’t wait to count the survivors. All of them just entered in the hotel without a care in the world, but at least they let two of them keeping an eye on the entrance door. However, even though those two looked pretty serious on their job, they didn’t notice when I passed by them.
That hotel had almost ten times more survivors than the hotel I stayed, so, that place was ten times more depressing. Nearly all the people there looked pretty tired, they looked like they didn’t have a decent meal in days, and I could see even more resignation on their faces than the survivors in the other hotel. The trembling bodies of the young woman being caressed by those armed guys and the fear I could see in the children eyes made me feel that I was in a place devastated by war. No, I was in an area devastated by war.
My mother told me when she was still single; she traveled around the world in those humanitarian missions. Because of the corruption of some governments, she saw countries destroyed by civil wars. Many of those civil wars only ended after decades of conflict and after the loss of hundreds of thousands. But after the war, the problems didn’t disappear. After the conflicts, the population had to endure many hardships. They would be treated as objects or worse; they would be looked down by other humans like they were worms. And that was the situation inside that hotel. The women were treated like objects, and the men were treated like worms to lure the monsters.
Until that moment, I had been lucky. Somehow, I survived my first battle, and I obtained the power to fight. Most people .after fighting for their lives, obtained a single skill, but I obtained two, and thanks to it, I was alive. I couldn’t even imagine myself crossing the city without the immense help of the crosshair skill. I killed the monsters, and I almost died many times by their hands, but in the process, I began to look down on the others. Because I could feel their stares, but I couldn’t see their courage to fight. And I blamed them for their cowardice, but that wasn’t the normal thing to do? If a person doesn’t have military training, their relatives disappeared, and monsters appeared, most of the people would hide. It wasn’t about being brave or be coward; it was about following your survival instincts. I only left my home not because it was the best thing to do; it was because I wanted to see my parents and siblings. I wanted to see them so damn hard because I was a coward too. I walked for miles while bleeding because I knew that I couldn’t do anything without them.
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After I discovered my parents and siblings weren’t in this area, I kept fighting to bring them to my side, but if they had died or if I didn’t find a single clue about them… I would probably be among the survivors in this hotel.
‘I think… I should change my perspective a little bit. I can’t blame the others for losing the courage to fight after they see a parent or friend dying in front of their eyes. Family and friends are important pillars of a person’s life if a person loses them, it makes sense to lose the courage to fight at the same time.’
But I could think about those things after doing what I have to do. So, I put those thoughts on the back of my mind. I had to learn that skill and create some time bombs, but I couldn’t do that at that moment. The lobby was crowded, and the statue showed the holograms when it was used, so I only could do that later. However, I couldn’t just wait there with the invisibility; I didn’t have that many bottles of lemonade left after all. So I searched for an appropriate place to wait until the right moment.
I decided to hide in the hotel’s kitchen, the armed men were too lazy to cook, and the other survivors were too depressed to cook their food. Besides, even though it was more expensive, the taste of the food created by the statue was top-notch. But even though that place wasn’t used to make food, once in a while someone would appear in that place and make me use the invisibility. Most of the people came in pairs, and they talked about their hardships in the hotel.
Thanks to my improved senses, I could hear most of the conversations inside that place. However, I didn’t hear anyone plotting anything; they were being controlled after all. I only heard about the things they suffered every day, and that only made me feel depressed and angry. Just by imagining my parents, siblings, Claire, Harry, and the others in that same situation made me want to kill the brotherhood’s members as soon as possible. But I had to be patient. Otherwise, I could make a mistake, and to solve that situation on the best possible, I couldn’t afford to make a single one.
A few hours after midnight, I could feel that everyone in the hotel had stopped moving. I would probably find a few guards, but at that time of the night, they would be probably sleeping while standing. They were just a bunch of assholes, after all. I activated the invisibility, and I headed towards the lobby. There, I found many survivors sleeping on the floor and two guards sleeping while sitting near the door. However, none of them would notice me using the statue, the hologram light was barely noticeable, and it also didn’t make any sound.
‘There’s no time to waste… skill: domination.’
Skill: Domination
Info: It grants the user the ability to command other living beings. To activate the skill, you need their permission.
Cost: 05 MP
Price: 5000 Evolution Coins.
Without wasting time, I learned the skill, but I had to spend five MP to activate and the same amount to give orders? I will be in trouble if I have to spend that much to control a single person. But there was nothing that I could do about such a thing.
Time bomb: It can cause two hundred points of damage in a five-meter radius. It can be activated at any moment by your will.
Price: 100 Evolution coins.
Although the time bomb was less efficient than the grenades, I immediately created twenty of them. Those bombs could be activated whenever I wanted after all, and two of them would be enough to kill a single member of the brotherhood. As fast as possible, I put those bombs inside my backpack. Luckily, the bombs were quite small. But I froze on the spot when I turned around, and I saw a sleepy face of a kid looking at me.
‘Holy shit…’
For a second, the kid closed her eyes while yawning, so I used that chance to activate the cape’s effect. When the kid opened her eyes again, she didn’t see me and fell asleep again. That almost made my heart stop, but soon I left that place and returned to the kitchen.
The next few hours passed very slowly, nothing happened, but my apprehension was rising. I couldn’t fail, or I and everyone else would be in trouble. Worry about what might happen, wouldn’t help me, but I still felt worried.
However, when the sun rose, I was calm again. I was doing my best to make the city a little better, and even though I wasn’t smart to elaborate a perfect plan, my plan was simple, and I had the necessary skills to deal massive damage to those assholes.
I was ready since early in the morning, but those assholes were too lazy, so I had to wait for three hours, only after that, they woke up. They wasted another hour while eating and complaining about useless things to the survivors, but eventually, they began to move. I headed towards the lobby while invisible to join them, and thanks to it, I saw the ten members of the brotherhood, and I also saw the leader of the assholes.
‘Oh, that is definitely Ken. No doubt about it.’
Their leader looked a bit familiar but other than that; his appearance made me understand that fact. He shaved his head; he had a lot of piercings on his ears, nose, and mouth. And since he wasn’t wearing a shirt, I could see a massive tattoo of a dragon covering almost the entire right side of his body. Every single thing on him screamed the word thug, even his depreciating smile. He was really trying hard to stand out from the crowd.
By the way, his nose seemed a bit strange, it was too big, and it looked a bit crooked. Was it me who did that? Honestly, I couldn’t remember much about the day of the fight. I could remember that I punched someone, probably Ken, but after that nothing. My next memory in my mind was me feeling a lot of pain thanks to a few broken bones and a few guys around me on the floor. Well, that really doesn’t matter. Unfortunately, it seemed that he wouldn’t leave the hotel.
Before I left, following the others, I saw Ken punching a girl who seemed to have the same age as Sabrina. That was probably Charles little sister, for a second, even though it was crazy, I imagined Elly on that girl position, and that made my blood boil.
‘There’s no point in getting angry; he is going to die today anyway.’
I never had any talents in my entire life, but I had the skills now to clean the city, so why not embrace that job?