Chapter 47 First hurdle
Everyone clearly understood what Kathrine had comprehended as well.
Contrary to Dilan who fought and earned his resources, the others would simply stay safe in the cafeteria and depend on him to save them. Thus, they knew that they were simply too weak to demand anything.
He didn’t exactly request a lot from the three newcomers, considering that the three horned rats were taking their last breaths and would die soon, either way.
In simple terms, one could even say that the three nurses would free the rats of the pain by killing them.
It was not necessary for them to continue writhing in pain for several more hours because they would die, either way.
Nevertheless, the nurses couldn’t help but exchange nervous glances and hesitate for quite a while.
But that was something Dilan expected.
It would be weird for them to simply take the rats from him and kill them without feeling anything.
However, what astonished Dilan a little bit was the fact that the youngest of the three nurses, Mira, chose to volunteer first.
Her gaze moved between the rat horned dagger Dillan held in one hand, and the horned rats. She gulped nervously before saying,
“Lay it on the ground…p…please…”
Mira was not able to think properly anymore. Her entire life had changed in the last six days, and she had been worried about all kinds of tragedies that would befall her.
But what she didn’t realize at first was a simple fact that not only her life had changed, but that of everyone else around her as well.
The Primordial Ascension had turned everything mankind knew and abided by upside down.-.
In the end, it was just a bunch of humans who had quickly accepted the change and adapted to it readily, while others wanted to believe that they were dreaming, or that all of this was a bad joke.
At first, Mira was like most of the others, not daring to believe that the world had changed to the worst possible, but her beliefs and thinking had slowly changed.
She thought a lot about her behavior the day before and understood that fighting powerful monsters was not just risky, but life-threatening.
This is why Mira struggled a lot, only to accept that it had been quite dangerous for Dilan to take them in without imposing any kind of conditions or restrictions.
At the end of the day, if they didn’t contribute in any way, they would just be baggage using up the group’s limited resources, and living space, after all.
Seeing how Dilan looked right now, it was quite obvious how dangerous life outside the safe zone truly was.
Dilan and the others created this safe zone by risking their life.
This made it quite obvious that these so-called abilities, Mira had heard about, were very important to them.
As such she just did what she ought to do!
‘I…probably shouldn’t attract too much attention for the time being…I…just want to be alive, and safe…’ She thought while looking at the horned rat Dilan put on the ground.
He handed her the horned rat dagger, while one of his feet pinned down the rat to hold it in place.
The monster was not even able to squeal anymore, and its last efforts to escape were mild twitching.
Dilan didn’t say another word and just watched her trembling hand hold the dagger as she bent down.
Mira was almost kneeling on the ground with one leg, trying to stop herself from shivering, the white of her knuckles clearly visible.
Her face was drained of all color too, but nobody said anything, not even the other nurses.
Everyone was quiet and watched Mira who gathered all her courage to stab the rat with the rat horn dagger.
After taking a deep breath, she plunged the dagger in the head of the horned rat on her first try, killing the half-dead rat in an instant.
But Mira couldn’t be happy about that.
Witnessing the way the little beast flinched one last time after the dagger dug deep into it, she felt like vomiting.
She retched, and the dagger fell from her hand before she tried to jump up, and move away from the corpse, before throwing up.
This reaction of a repulse was quite common, even more so for someone, who was young, naive, and never felt the disgust of killing a living being with their own hands.
The feeling of the dagger blade cutting through the skin, and flesh of the monster, followed by the crush of its skull had been too much for Mira to handle and witness up close.
She had been a savior of lives in her profession, not someone who would take lives mercilessly.
As such, she didn’t even see how the ability crystal congregated next to the rat’s head.
Dilan made no move to pick up the ability crystal. It was not his, to begin with.
Instead, he released the claws of the Clawed gloves before piercing with his hand in the head of the horned rat.
When the others saw him casually breaking the skull of the horned rat before squashing its brain to take out the Essence crystal, they couldn’t help shuddering.
“Urgh, do you have to make it look so disgusting?!” Kathrine couldn’t help but ask. Her body shook once when she saw Dilan’s rather gruesome way of obtaining the crystal.
Upon hearing her, he turned around with a confused expression on his face.
‘Maybe he is a little bit dumb?’ She thought, not sure if that was it.
However, Dilan was truly confused because he didn’t think that it was disgusting to take out the Essence crystal as he did.
It saved quite a lot of time and effort.
But instead of saying anything to Kathrine, he just sighed before cleaning the gloves.
He lay down the Essence crystal next to the ability crystal, which he slid through the floor towards Mira, who was still retching and coughing violently.
Dilan believed that she would recover from the shock and digest it in some time, considering that the situation was quite a lot for a young girl such as her.
Standing up, he took one of the few plastic garbage bags they found before placing the horned rat into it.
The rat horn, Essence crystal and dagger had already been retrieved, so the rest of the rat’s corpse was quite useless.
After all, none of them wanted to try eating rat meat.
Nobody was desperate enough to do this…for now.
Once he was done, he put down the other two horned rats on the ground.
They were not even able to move anymore. Laying the dagger in front of the two horned rats, Dilan looked at the two other nurses. He didn’t have to explain what was required of them.
Because Mira took the first step, the two nurses could only comply as well.
Even if they didn’t want to kill a living being because their job was to save lives, and not to take them, their deepest desire was to survive.
With that in mind, they managed to somehow kill the rats and two more Essence crystals and ability crystals popped up for each kil.
The two nurses were not as affected as Mira, and they immediately thought about absorbing the Essence crystal, which then crumbled in their hands, leaving behind the grayish ability crystals.
“The Essence within the level 2 horned rats might not be enough to level up, but after you kill a few zombies, it should be fine.”
He informed them, knowing that they wouldn’t suddenly be brave enough to be willing to go out hunting or anything like that.
Dilan simply stated facts, he was not demanding anything.
However, his hidden meaning was that if they were to bind the ability within the ability crystals, they would have to either fight, or do something that made everyone’s life easier.
At least, that was what everyone presumed Dilan to mean.
Whether that was the truth or not didn’t really matter to the Survivors, right now.
They simply assumed Dilan to be whatever they wanted- their savior, a warrior or simply their provider.
Because they were imagining things, the three nurses looked at the ability crystal in their hands before turning their attention to Dilan once again.
Mira had stopped vomiting and was now simply watching him with a pale expression.
She had just overcome the first important hurdle in her life, to fight her fears, and that she had to do some unpleasant things if she wanted to survive in the merciless world Milarn had turned into.
Just a moment later, her gaze returned to the ability crystal before she stated the name of her ability and her assumptions about it.
“My ability is called [Green Fingers(Passive)] Tier-0 ★★★. I guess that is for gardening or something like that?” Mira said after a short moment of hesitation.
Mira showed her willingness to bind it to herself as she presumed it to be quite helpful to stay out of combat, but still be of use to the group. The ability would come in handy once they were to start farming something.
It was not too hard to imagine that they would run out of food supply and have to look for food sources in the future as well. As such, creating and nourishing a farm was one of the most likely long term solutions.
Dilan just nodded his head before he said,
“If you focus on upgrading this passive skill, while learning more of it, you could become a farmer with lots of benefits and little issues.”
He didn’t really care if she wanted to keep the ability or not, but if she chose to pick the ability, she should be determined to continue doing it long term and not give up midway, that would be a total waste.
Nobody truly knew when they would get their hands on a second ability.
As such, it was only obvious for their first ability to be of use for them.
Mira just nodded her head before binding the ability to her.
Thus, the ability crystal crumbled, leaving the two other nurses with their respective abilities.