After a few minutes, people start to snap out of it. And most of them starts to break down. I guess that losing two of us to a random beast is a bit too much. The problem is if nobody take care of the situation we will die. As much as I would like to let the leaders take care of the group, I have information that they don’t have. Well it looks like I can kiss my loneliness goodbye for now.
Moving, I gather the three leaders. I would have liked to leave mister greed out of this, it’s better not to create any form of tension in the group. I told each of them to take one or two people and to follow me. Greed took two of his friends, Tom took Stones and the girl took two of what seems to be her classmates, a boy and a girl. It seems the shock prevented them to even try to reject me taking the lead.
While they choose who to take I went toward the heavily injured people but fortunately, the injuries weren’t that bad. Since they were already lying down, I let them be. I still checked by using [Observe] but they only lacked between 1 and 2 third of their HP. They all have a maximum of 100 HP like me. Some of them were already starting to recover their HP by a small margin. But the most important was that none of them suffered from a continuous loss of HP. Well at least if HP have a real impact on physical condition. I don’t think that they were in danger. Not right now at least.
I then moved to the two dead bodies. The first one had his upper half completely eaten. I couldn’t do much for him but I promised I would ask the others to bury him. I still took his firearm and the ammunition he had on him. I know it’s corpse looting but survival is the first priority and this will help greatly. If we have the time to use it. And no I never fired a gun but I would rather misuse it myself than being shot in the back by someone.
By the way, the girl followed me since the wolf accident and doesn’t look like she wants to leave my side. Well I guess that since I prevented her to run straight to her death she is a little bit thankful. Anyway, I then head toward the second corpse. Blood leaked from his nose, mouth, and ears. His eyes are red from the blood vessel popping and they are wide open. I close them and head toward an empty place.
On the way, I ask a seemingly less shocked man to bury the corpse with the help of other people once he has completely calmed down. Even though they don’t have shovels, they can use stones or something.
After a minute or so the three leaders and their friends finally get there. And I began to explain how everything happened. I omit my skills and only talk about the actions of the wolf and what I learned from him. It seems they have a hard time believing that the wolf let us be because he wanted to.
Once they finally accepted everything I told them, I moved to the main point. Which is, to set up an expedition party. They all begin asking questions, each of them trying to prove their idea was better. Oh man … I wish I had the leader aura. Seeing as they don’t plan to stop bickering, I simply raise my hand signaling them to stop talking and they listen to me. Or not. They don’t even notice me except go- I mean … Stones, I totally did not forget your first name.
“Hey!”
Wow, Stones uses ‘Hey!’ It’s super effective! Anyway, now that I have their attention I need to know who was able to stay calm during the whole event.
“Okay, I think we need to go back to the clearing and setup a group of people to search for a place for the night. The party needs to be made of quick and discreet people. And another group need to take care of the situation at the clearing. We need to set up some basic defense there in case the-“
“Are you stupid?”
Wow surprise surprise, Greed thinks he has a better plan.
“I certainly don’t but I do want to know why you’re thinking otherwise.”
“Duh, we have just been attacked by a fucking monster and you want to stay right where other monster could attack us? Obviously, we need to flee as far away as we can!”
“Okay, can anyone tell him why it’s better to stay here?”
I turn toward the rest of the group expecting at least two people answering but they all look at me agreeing with Greed. Maybe I should learn his name.
“Did anyone observe the wolf?”
“A wolf? Really? I didn’t see it, are you talking about the one who killed two of us?”
*sigh*
“I’m asking if you used your skill.”
Hearing my words, they all visibly tense. I guess they thought I was talking about the bonus skills. Huh, If I can bait them correctly, I can make them say they have secret skills and thus learn what they are. I wait for their response and Greed is the first to talk. Of course.
“So, you are the first user?”
Okay I learned several thing, I’m guessing that a skill has been given to the IDs 1 to 10. Greed doesn’t know of the existence of user 0 (me) and It’s also a guess but I don’t think Fatty knows about me either. Well now, time to play dumb.
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“First user? Did you get a secret skill or something?”
“Stop screwing with me, the screen said I was user 2 that means you are the first user!”
Ignoring him I turn toward the other.
“Did you guys get a skill too?”
After a few seconds, Tom nods while the girl leader shakes her head.
“What is the lowest rank?”
“It’s Maël, she’s tenth.”
“Hey, you’re ignoring me? They basically told us you were the tenth user or more like the first one.”
“When I talked about your skill, I meant your observe skill. But if I had to guess, that means that your two friend are probably part of the ten first user and that the one you talked to before is the ninth one. And sorry but I am not the user number one.”
He looks doubtful but when he checks his skill list and see the [Observe] skill he almost turn red from anger. I guess that he didn’t want people to know that he had a skill. Too bad.
“Anyway, these skill could be useful, we need to know all of them to maximize our chances of survival. Back to the point, if you had used this skill, you would have noticed that the wolf was level 83. Which either means that we are in a high-level zone in which case we are doomed whatever we do or he is the overlord of this zone meaning no high-level creature will attack us here.”
“That doesn’t prove that you are not the first user and that means that you let these guys die without acting.”
“Can you tell me again what you did when he released his aura?”
I didn’t need to know because everyone had the same reaction they were frightened and so was I. Plus I did warn him but he made his choice. Anyway, it seems they are ready to carry out my plan.
“Okay we need the stronger people to stay here to start to build defenses and choose people among the rest that will carry the expedition. They need to be quick and nimble. I will lead the expedition”
Seeing as they immediately agree, I guess they consider me as a weakling. I don’t blame them as I am not ripped but that’s because I’m wiry. However, that doesn’t mean I am a weakling. In fact, I think I can take on most of them without difficulties. After all, after several years of practicing several martial art and combat sports, I have almost no difficulty fighting one on one. Stones might be a problem since he looks like he knows how to fight too and Greed looks too crafty to my liking. And as usual when I’m in crowded places, I don’t stand straight and give off an impression of a pushover.
I’m not breaking their expectation though as I would rather rely on myself to find a shelter. While we were planning, the others took care of the corpse and gathered beside us. They buried them and even made two tomb stone but after thinking about it I would rather cremate them. I don’t know if it’s possible but I would rather avoid zombies attacking us at night. Well it’s not like I’m going to ask them to dig them out.
Our group turns toward the rest and I wait for them to explain the situation. Which never happens. It seems I need to make my own speech. Yeah, I love talking to large crowd especially when the topic is survival against supernatural creatures! Hum sorry my mind wandered. Anyways!
“Hum … Hello. I know it’s a bit abrupt but we need to prepare our survival. Regarding the wolf incident, basically he will let us be without interacting with us. As for his reason, it’s because he can and he wants to. Some of you may know but you have an observe skill. And when focusing on something, you obtain basic knowledge regarding it depending on the level of your skill. When using it on him I learned that he was level 83. He leaves us alone because we don’t pose a threat to him. But that means that this place is safe from other high-level beast as it is likely his territory. We can still encounter low-level beast against which we can do nothing. That’s why we need to find a shelter. We decided to make two teams. The first one composed of the strongest, will start to build defenses here. That’s in case the second team, the research team doesn’t find a shelter before sunset.”
“…”
Okay that’s what you call leaving your audience speechless.
“Okay everyone! Please start to form groups according to what … he said. We only need around 10 people for the expedition. For the construction team, we need as much people as we can. Those who can’t do either of those tasks go talk to each other and take note of everything important like allergies, sickness, special condition, anything you can.”
Hoho, don’t worry, I won’t hold it against you, in fact I don’t think I told you my name so it’s logic you don’t know it. Plus, you thought of important things I overlooked. Well then, after thanking him, I start to walk toward the clearing without waiting to see if they follow me. Man! It’s tiring to order people around … On the way, I notice that the girl I paired with is still following me. Could it be! My first harem member? Well that’s probably what any protagonist would think at this point, except if they are the thick-headed type. I personally don’t long for a harem. In fact, I’m more of the romantic type, you know not necessarily true love but there needs to be some sort of connection at least. Well that’s all assumption since I’m still single. Maybe I should use this situation to my advantage? Well I will think about it once we’re safe.
Once at the clearing, I wait for the rest to arrive. After a few minutes, everyone is here and they already made the groups. 8 boys and 2 girls come toward me. They are obviously the research team. Among them is one of the lackey of Greed, thus I guess that he wants to monitor me. There is also Eleanore but the rest are unknown to. I look at each of them and immediately kick out two boys and the other girls since I don’t think they are nimble enough. They try to protest but quickly stop once they see I’m ignoring them. In the end, they go back to the rest of the group. The rest of them start to introduce themselves but I cut them shorts explaining we don’t have time.
Well I think they introduced themselves regardless when I climbed to the top of one of the giant trees surrounding us to have a better view of the place. I doesn’t work that well since we are surrounded by bigger trees but I do see a mountain to the north. Well it is to the north only if the sun is still rising from the east. It is at around 2 hours of walking which means 6 hours to go once, come back and return with everyone. And that is only if we find a shelter immediately. We could end up finding nothing. I do think we’ll find something though. Let’s add an hour or two of searching. That totals to 8 hours with enough luck.
The sun rose for less than an hour. Which means that we can hope to get around twelves hour of sun if the days are similar to back on earth. Maybe more which would be better or maybe less which could pose a problem. Well we’ll see depending on the time it is when the sun is at its highest.
We head out in direction of the mountain by walking. We take a litter of water for two people from the small rations we have. Fortunately, they have already set up a second expedition to find a spring or a river. We will also need to find food. But I guess it is secondary. Anyway, leaving behind the clearing we head to the mountain hoping to find a shelter before the night.