Chapter 13 Cry
Several hours passed before Dilan woke up.
Rubbing his drowsy eyes, he activated his Origin ability without looking at the state of his arms.
The lights of the hallways were still on when he took a glance in the direction of the cafeteria’s entrance, telling him that the generators were still working.
‘Should I go outside, and start hunting?’ Dilan wondered as he got up from the ground. Stifling a yawn he looked around to see where the others were.
It would be a hassle to move the furniture all by himself, and someone else had to be awake to barricade the cafeteria’s entrance once again from the inside.
As such, he disregarded this idea for now, before moving to the kitchen.
Amongst the 20 Survivors inside the cafeteria, only a few were awake.
Thus, a few pairs of eyes followed him as he entered the kitchen.
This attracted their suspicion, and they exchanged looks. But, when he didn’t leave the kitchen for more than half an hour the first awake survivor couldn’t help but enter the kitchen as well.
”I hope he didn’t eat all the snacks!” Ailee mumbled to herself, rubbing her drowsy eyes.
Even after trying to, she had not been able to fall asleep because the gazes of a few men that were glued to her bothered her a lot.-.
Furthermore, without a weapon by her side, Ailee didn’t feel safe enough to sleep soundly.
She had expected to see him hungrily gobble down all their food but the scene in front of her confused her.
Dilan had placed his spear on the table right next to the entrance of the kitchen, while he held only a pen and a noticeboard in his hand.
“What…are you doing?”
Dilan noticed the surprise in her voice when she opened the sliding door to the kitchen.
Thus, he simply smiled before answering,
“I just want to make rough calculations on how long our food will last. It looks decent for now, but once the hospital’s generators stop working we will have some problems.
Most of our food items will quickly go bad, so I considered clearing the first floor of the hospital before thinking of a plan to get some preservable food from the supermarket.
We could use it as an emergency stock when the generators finally stop working, otherwise, we will kill each other for a piece of lettuce.”
Dilan noticed that he had exaggerated a little bit with his explanation. As such, he added the last few words in order to ease the tension in the room.
But Ailee got his point.
She could only knit her brows while understanding the crux behind what Dilan was doing before nodding her head.
“Do you think it will be possible for us to stay here…like forever?” Her voice came out like a croak, and it looked like she took a while to gather the courage to ask this question.
Yet, instead of laughing it off, and reassuring her that everything will be fine, Dilan couldn’t help but feel that there was something wrong with Ailee’s question.
“Don’t you believe in the government? I expected you to say something like, ‘The government will definitely rescue us! Our taxes are so high! The military will definitely come in the following days!’ But you are talking about forever, which is a quite big word if I’m honest.”
Dilan expected her to launch a lengthy explanation to defend herself, but seeing that she had quieted down while pressing her lips together as if she was contemplating something, he thought that their conversation ended rather abruptly.
He averted his attention back to the fridge right next to him and started to count before noting down a few numbers.
“Even before the world went bonkers, the government was pretty useless…” Ailee began, only for Dilan to continue making his research, while listening to her.
“But right now…how are we supposed to survive if we have to fight against zombies, mutated animals, and even creatures that shouldn’t exist!?”
Her last few words were spoken in a hushed whisper, but they were overflowing with desperation.
She slumped to the ground as her legs gave in and started to sob, recalling fresh memories of the last few hours she had been trying hard to forget.
On the other hand, Dilan stopped moving as he looked at her.
“I thought all of you were inside the hospital when the Primordial Ascension occurred. How do you know about mutated animals and other creatures?”
Staring at Ailee intently, Dilan asked her a blunt question and didn’t even notice how much his demeanor had changed in an instant.
From appearing to be gentle and considerate while trying to figure out when they required new supplies, his eyes turned intense, and ready to fight at a moment’s notice.
This made Ailee’s mind go blank for a moment, preventing her from saying anything for a few seconds before she looked up at him again.
His sky blue eyes stared right into her soul, stopping her from sobbing further at once, while she replied,
“I..I saw a winged white horse flying through the air…I thought it resembled a Pegasus…and there was some weird, round-shaped bluish liquid mass on the second floor.
It was like…a portal or something like that. Tiny brownish beasts, the size of less than half a meter emerged from it, followed by horned rats…they…tore everyone apart…”
Ailee started to cry again, ignoring Dilan’s intense stare and sobbing bitterly making her unable to hear his next question.
“There is a gate in the hospital? Were you close enough to see what the notification said?”
Unable to hear him, she continued to cry.
Even after repeating his question several times, he received no answer from her.
Thus, he decided to let it be for the time being as he closed the sliding door behind Ailee before he started to count their food reserves once again.
He was not good at consoling people, and it looked like Ailee had lost someone important to her.
Witnessing the death of someone close was already traumatizing, but seeing a loved one being ripped apart right in front of you was even worse.
It was a very painful death, and Dilan didn’t even want to imagine how bad it must be to be eaten alive.
He had endured a lot in the last 24 hours, but there were still worse things that had yet to occur to him and he hoped that he would never experience something like that.
Two hours passed, and Dilan was finally done counting the food items.
Meanwhile, Ailee had fallen asleep, only for others to wake up.
But Dilan ignored all of them as he passed by Ailee, and left the kitchen.
Pinning the final result of his calculations on the wall, he took a look at them and was quite satisfied with the results.
They had rations for almost three months, even if their numbers increased to more than 30 Survivors!
That was far more than Dilan had expected to find in the hospital. It provided him with a little bit of reassurance.
As long as they worked together, everything would be fine. His earlier thought of wanting to stay in the hospital for some time only emboldened further.
With that in mind, he stretched his body before getting hold of the Reinforcement Stone Spear that was still lying inside the kitchen.
He saw that Oliver and the others were still sleeping, which was the reason for him to start practicing spearmanship with the short spear he was using.
It was even possible to use the spear with one arm while the only problem would be slightly inaccurate hits that he would have to perfect.
But the velocity of his thrusts was quite high.
Through this, Dilan figured out a way to increase his combat prowess, only for one apparent dilemma to flash through his mind.
“How can I get my hands on better weapons?… The Gate, maybe?”
Right now, the Reinforced Stone Spear was still fine, but he could feel that it wouldn’t take long until his weapon would be unable to pierce through his opponent’s defenses!