Chapter 161 Living Hell
In less than 20 minutes, the massacre caused by Dilan had painted the entire street red.
Small streams of blood flowed down the street but Dilan’s eyes looked at all of this with an odd sense of detachment that unnerved him.
‘Am I still human?’ That was the only question that flashed through his mind.
He was actually not sure why he didn’t feel remorse after killing several hundred monsters. It was only fortunate that he didn’t feel excited with all the blood around him.
Nonetheless, it was not as if he was disgusted either. Blood had become a constant companion to Dilan.
Usually, one would feel weird at the sight of hundreds of liters of blood but Dilan had collected the Essence crystals of all monsters while merely ensuring to not slip on the ground as if it was muddy water and not corpses he walked over.
His backpack was overflowing with his spoils of war, while his surrounding looked worse than the most terrifying Chamber of Torture.
Not a single monster dared to cross Dilan’s path, knowing that he wouldn’t hold back from harvesting their lives as well.
It was a new sight for him to not see even a single monster around him. Dilan nearly smiled at this sight, only to recall that he shouldn’t smile like a small child after having caused a bloody massacre.
[The strong decide over life and death!]
That was the most important factor one could state about Milarn after the Primordial Ascension had begun.
If Dilan wouldn’t kill the monsters around him, it would not be possible for him to become stronger and he would end up dead after turning into prey of stronger monsters.
The monsters he had just killed would have not hesitated to shred humans into thousands of tiny pieces to get what they wanted.
Such a thing was the ‘new normal’ in the new Era that had begun a little bit more than two weeks ago.-.
However, for everyone to understand and digest this, a little bit more time had to pass as even Dilan seemed to struggle to accept his own mindset occasionally.
But as he was perfectly fine right now, it was no problem for him to leave behind the battlefield without feeling the guilt of having ended numerous lives.
There had been a reason for him to massacre as well. Owing to the special effects of Essence crystals, it was possible to invigorate living beings, who were closer to death than life.
As long as they were still breathing, it would be possible to invigorate them. Whether they would survive or not rely on their will to live, and the severity of their state.
However, Dilan knew that humans who had been wronged and subjected to harassment could be saved as long as they absorbed Essence.
Thus, in order to save fellow humans, he sacrificed hundreds of monsters.
This was more than enough reason for him to kill without remorse.
Walking down the main street, Dilan disappeared in a side alley not long after before entering an inconspicuous building.
He opened the metal door by using some force before taking a look around.
The smell of stale air reached his nostrils, followed by all kinds of other unpleasant odors one would never want to smell together.
It reeked horribly but that was something Dilan had long since expected.
After all, the place he had just entered was one of the bigger human shelters he had found a few days before. It was one of the areas he had marked on the map of Rian and the first place he wanted to visit to start his rescue mission.
Walking down some metal stairs which began to rattle the moment his boots fell on the steps, Dilan gained a lot of attention right off the bat.
Seeing a human wielding a blood-smudged saber was already more than enough to cause a big impact on the few survivors, who saw him first.
However, upon seeing that the stranger had an ice-cold expression and the fact that his entire face and clothes were also blood-stained with fresh blood trickling down the floor, nobody was able to move.
Fear struck in the hearts of every single survivor who saw him, and even if they wanted to run for their life, nobody was able to, not even the few Ascenders, who had dared to fight against the terrifying monsters on the surface.
It had been their last desperate effort to get their hands on some food, to kill monsters and consume their raw meat.
But their attempt had gone horribly wrong and too many survivors had died while trying to procure food, and only a handful of survivors had returned.
They had managed to kill only three monsters but had lost more than 50 survivors in a gruesome manner, all of whom had been torn apart in front of their own colleagues.
The fear of death had lodged itself deep in their minds while the hope of surviving turned bleak.
Was there even the need to survive? Would it make things better? Was it even worth being to be alive after all the terrifying monsters appeared out of nowhere?
Maybe…just maybe..dying was better than desperately trying to stay alive in a world that was worse than Hell itself!
Numerous thoughts like these had been running through the mind of the survivors, who had been hiding underground.
They had barely enough water to not die of thirst. However, sooner or later, they would starve to death, turn insane and attack each other, or kill themselves.
A few survivors had already killed themselves because they didn’t see a future worth living in this new world.
However, that was not even the worst by far…. Fueled by hunger, some survivors had even considered eating the bodies of the survivors, who had committed suicide.
In the end, nobody had dared to be the first to eat the flesh of a raw human but there had been many, who had thought about it.
That was how desperate some humans had become which made them even consider becoming cannibals after barely eating anything for two weeks!
Dilan was not able to recreate the train of thoughts of all these human survivors but he could see the fear, desperation, helplessness, and numerous other emotions within their eyes.
The building’s basement was quite ordinary. Dilan took a look around as if he was inspecting a potential real estate property he wished to purchase.
He was calm and didn’t bother looking at the skinny survivors around him.
Their stench was overpowering, but it was as if Dilan didn’t even notice that.
The basement was a rather ordinary rectangular room. However, its size was several times larger than the cafeteria.
Dilan presumed that its size was around the same as the first floor of the Rian mountainside hospital.
This was crazy and astonished Dilan quite a bit.
“Is that one of the city’s shelters?”
He knew that there was a factory nearby but Dilan doubted that he had entered the factory’s underground warehouse.
It was possible but quite unlikely. Dilan’s attention was on the gigantic room in the basement and he merely glanced at the humans around him.
Because it had not been too long since he killed the last monster on his way to the group of survivors, Dilan’s presence was still comparable to that of a bloodthirsty and ferocious monster.
Nobody dared to stand in his way and the survivors instinctively backed away from him, crouching in the corners and huddling together by the walls.
They didn’t even notice it but their gaze followed the newcomer and a trace of hope emerged within them.
This was truly unexpected because there was no reason for them to feel hopeful. Dilan’s appearance should make the survivors believe that he was merciless and that he would kill them without hesitation.
However, this was exactly what gave some survivors hope.
‘He can defeat them!’
That was what was on their mind- The newcomer was able to defeat the terrifying existences on the surface!
The survivors in the underground shelter were not able to think about anything else but the fact that Dilan might be their savior.
Despite the fear that had been prying their minds and weakening their resolve, the eyes that followed him held also traces of desperation and hope.
Dilan noticed this but he first wanted to gauge how many survivors were currently hiding in the shelter.
‘More than a thousand?’ Almost half an hour passed before he halted in his tracks.
He had taken a good look and collected more than enough information to know what he had to do. The situation was more troublesome than expected because many old survivors and young children had fallen ill.
They needed more nutrition and medicines to get well. Using healing abilities was also possible but that was not important right now.
Nearly everyone was starved, and he perceived only a handful of Ascenders in the entire group of a thousand plus survivors.
‘Was nobody brave enough to fight or did the brave survivors die upon their first encounter with monsters?’
Dilan knew that a Zoo was near but what he was oblivious to was the fact that the brave Ascender’s first encounter with monsters had been none other than the Blue Tiger!
The Blue Tiger had evolved during the Primordial Ascension and it had fled from the zoo before it began its slaughter.
When it found out that Essence crystals nourished its body, and strengthened it, the Tiger had instinctively begun to attack more and more monsters, with humans being the highest-grade delicacy and easy prey all around it.
After all, each Essence crystal of a human being provided not only Essence but also status points!
That was why merely five survivors survived their encounter with the Blue Tiger nearly two weeks before Dilan found them.
No survivor from the underground shelter had dared to approach the surface, and the only times they opened the reinforced metal door was to let in more humans.
They had hoped that some human survivors they rescued would turn out to be their hero, their knight in the shining armor.
To their dismay, only their numbers had increased, and along with it the numbers of useless survivors, who couldn’t do anything but fear death while hiding in the underground shelter like a coward had increased too…
Dilan didn’t know anything about that but he understood that not a single survivor could be labeled courageous, let alone powerful.
However, that was no problem as the more Essences one absorbed, the less frightened they would be at the sight of monsters.
This was also why he calmly smiled as he approached the center of the underground shelter.
Clearing his throat after taking a deep breath, he spoke in a loud voice that boomed through the entire shelter.
“Who wants to survive?”