Chapter 68 Was it necessary?
After he beheaded Leon, Dilan fell silent.
He was simply standing in the middle of the cafeteria, holding his longsword, and looking down at the headless corpse.
An entire minute elapsed while he stood staring at the corpse as if he was in a trance before a sigh escaped his lips.
He could feel all the stares at him as he walked over to the sliding door of the kitchen, and bent down to pick up one of the large blue garbage bags.
Returning to the middle of the room, Dilan picked up Leon’s head which he threw inside the bag before covering the remaining body with the large garbage bag as well.
Afterward, Dilan picked up the unmoving body. He approached the cafeteria doors, lay aside both the corpse and the Captain’s sword to calmly open the chains, just to pick up both the garbage bag and his longsword and walk outside.
A moment later, he vanished into the darkness of the night.
The only sounds that could be heard inside the cafeteria were the quiet sobbing of the recently rescued women, while everyone else was eerily silent.
Kathrine had known that Dilan was able to kill humans without being too affected by it.
Even she was able to kill in anger.
However, Kathrine still had frequent nightmares of the two men she had killed, except Max, who could rot in hell for all she cared.
As such, she felt that her mind, heart, and stomach were in a big conflict, arguing whether Dilan’s decision to behead Leon had been the correct one.
It was quite obvious that he wanted to kill Leon, but punishing him in a different manner would have worked as well…or maybe not?-.
A better punishment in her opinion would have been forcing Leon to stand in the front row while fighting zombies and other monsters…or maybe even to let him be eaten by a zombie, right in front of everyone…
But even that would have killed Leon at the end of the day. He had been at level 2 or 3, at most.
As such, without the necessary combat experience, he would have died as well.
Maybe, dying at the hands of zombies would have been even more painful and inflicted more fear in the hearts of those who watched him die.
Kathrine was not sure about this, but she could tell that Dilan had chosen the most impactful way to show his dominance.
He didn’t accept anyone disobeying him, even less if it was about something that could create chaos in their group if he did not nip it in the bud right away.
The way he handled the situation might have looked extremely cruel on the outside, but every single Survivor would think twice before daring to consider raping one of the female Survivors, let alone even nearing them with ill intentions.
It was the most effective way for Dilan to make everyone understand that he was impartial and ruthless if necessary.
Simultaneously it also showed his empathy for the weak, including the fact that he had saved one of his people from being raped.
Numerous thoughts flashed through the mind of the Survivors. Some believed that Dilan had gone overboard with his punishment, while others liked the fact that he stayed firm on his rules, no matter who dared defy him.
All the women were glad about the fact that he had saved one of them from being raped.
But even then, beheading Leon seemed a bit too violent for some of them.
However, this just showed clearly that the current world had changed, and that it was necessary to be ruthless.
After all, if he allowed everyone to do whatever they wanted, Dilan would not only lose the Survivor’s trust but also their willingness to stay loyal to him.
It was important to have a backbone and to stick to some basic principles even if one would spill blood like water. Otherwise even being powerful wouldn’t be enough to make his people stay!
More than half an hour passed through Dilan had not yet returned.
Not a single Survivor was able to fall asleep, even if their body was dead-tired.
“Wasn’t that too cruel? I understand that Leon should have been punished for attempting to **** someone…but beheading him directly…isn’t that too much??” A middle-aged man asked in a concerned voice.
He vividly recalled every single moment of the execution, the way Dilan’s eyes had gleamed in a maniacal rage and the sound of the blade cutting off Leon’s neck like dead meat. Shivers ran down his spine at the mere thought of it.
“Are you stupid?? Too cruel!? If Dilan would have allowed one of his men to **** someone without doing anything against it, the entire group would have turned into a batch of lecherous wolves!
With the impact he created by killing Leon, nobody will dare to ever lay a hand on one of us without our consent!”
It was a rather beautiful woman, who shot down the middle-aged man vehemently, and many other women nodded their heads in agreement.
Even if Dilan was scary, he stood by the rules he had set, and did exactly what he had said, retorted rule-breaking with violence!
In the end, the discussion continued for quite some time, only for silence to follow suit afterward.
Everyone was waiting for Dilan, and nobody dared to be too loud to speak their mind after he returned.
Meanwhile, Oliver had gotten up from his mattress to wipe Leon’s blood away. He was one of the only men, who was not exactly astonished about Dilan’s action or the way in which he enacted the punishment.
Pierre was also quite calm, but those who were trying to imbue discord were the Survivors like the old man with the broken hand, and the old woman, whom Oliver didn’t know as well.
The rescued women had stopped crying and were also waiting for Dilan.
After an excruciating wait of 40 minutes when everybody’s eyes kept darting to the doors, Dilan finally returned to the cafeteria.
The first thing he figured out was that the doors were not yet chained.
That meant nobody had tried or succeeded in locking him out.
Dilan had presumed that some would attempt throwing him out of the group after his rather violent outburst.
However, when he saw that nobody was asleep when he returned, Dilan could only press his lips together in a thin line.
He had hoped to prevent encountering the weird gazes of everyone, which was why he had taken his sweet time to return after disposing the body.
Throwing the corpse out of the hospital didn’t take long after all!
Not sure what words would be the best to say in the given situation, Dilan cleared his throat before he asked,
“Does anyone have a problem with what I just did?”
His voice didn’t sound angry as he had calmed down of his anger that had been solely directed at Leon.
As such, it almost felt like the current Dilan was entirely different to the one they had witnessed just 40 minutes before.
Of course, there were Survivors that had a problem with murder, but nobody dared to open their mouth in front of him.
All of them knew that killing was not something extraordinary anymore, not in the new era that had been forcibly thrust on them by some unknown existence.
Because of the new era, and the things they had already witnessed it was not as if they believed that Dilan was at fault.
It was just the way in which Dilan had acted, his ruthlessness, and the fact that he didn’t show a sign of hesitation while beheading a fellow human that scared everyone quite a bit.
“W-Was it…really necessary to kill him?” One of the rather old men dared to ask in a trembling voice. He seemed to be in his 60s, and one of the new Survivors.
The old man’s question didn’t sound like an accusation or as if the old man tried to blame Dilan.
Rather, it was more like the old man wanted to know Dilan’s reasoning.
Understanding what was on the mind of others was important, and Dilan understood what the old man wanted from him.
Thus, he thought about the best way to answer this before he chose to reply honestly.
“I think my reason is quite simple. If I were to give only one reason for beheading Leon it would probably be the fact that he tried to **** someone.
Let’s say, I would have allowed him to stay alive and forgiven him for his ghastly act.
What should I have done next according to you? Maybe you would want me to let him stay here, or would you rather want me to throw him out of the cafeteria?
In the end, the most likely decision would be to exile Leon from the cafeteria. Considering that he was an Ascender, the chances for him to survive on the first floor were quite high.
But what would happen after I exiled him? Outside the hospital, he was bound to die, and on the other floors, he wouldn’t have survived either.
As such, he was likely to attack our groups of hunters, whether it was for the sake of killing, or as a means to secure a barter in order to exchange his hostages with food and water.
That way, it was already better to kill Leon than to have unnecessary future problems with him.
However, that is not the most important…what would happen to my authority if I were to allow others to break my rules, just like that?
If I would have exiled him, and something were to happen, others would blame me, and it would be even worse if I would have ignored his misdeeds.
Everyone would start doing whatever they wanted because I allowed the first one free reign.
In the long run, our group would fall apart, and chaos would descend, unleashing the worst amongst us…
And that is certainly not something anyone here wants to happen, right?”