บท 14: Shadows of Bloodshed

"Feeling any better now?" Lucas inquired, looking at Lucy, who was still overcome by sobs. It had been around half an hour since they had settled there. Fortunately, no other human had entered and witnessed Lucy's reddened eyes, evidence of her tears.

"I still feel awful," Lucy admitted, her voice carrying the lingering weight of her emotions.

"If you'd like, we can stay here a bit longer," Lucas offered, understanding the need for respite. He wasn't exactly eager to encounter another zombie either; the outer ring had a limited number of undead, anyway.

"No, it's alright. Let's move on. You mentioned seeing people up ahead, right? I also want to meet them," Lucy said, determined to face whatever lay ahead.

"Alright then," Lucas agreed, helping Lucy to her feet and retrieving his bag from the ground.

As they walked, they were presented with three different roads branching off in various directions. The corner they had just come from marked one of the paths on the left side. The building's corner was connected to the mini-mart they had taken refuge in earlier.

"Let's keep going straight ahead," Lucas directed, gesturing for Lucy's benefit. "Seems like there aren't any new zombies around these parts," he added, surveying the empty road. The usual scene of a broken-down car and the green bloodstains left by zombies marked their surroundings.

Lucy's attention was drawn to the stains, her mind still feeling disoriented. She managed to speak, despite her state, "Lucas, if they kill the zombies, would they also encounter the system?"

"I'd assume so," Lucas replied.

Continuing their steps, a sudden black figure lunged at them from one of the buildings. Startled and gripped by fear, Lucy swiftly unsheathed her katana and swung at the shadowed figure.

"AHH!"

A voice pierced through the air, emanating from the black shape.

"Wait, what?" Lucas was taken aback, his astonishment clear.

Stunned and barely in control of her own actions, Lucy asked, "Lucas, did a zombie just scream?"

While she didn't fully draw the blade from its saya, the force of Lucy's strike should have sent the zombie stumbling a few steps back, just as expected.

The shadowy figure collapsed.

"Thud!"

All of this transpired within a mere five seconds. With the figure now visible, Lucas cautiously approached to get a clearer view, while Lucy, still processing the shock, remained a step behind him.

"HUH!?" Lucas exclaimed in astonishment as he looked down at the man before him. Blood flowed from the man's fractured skull as he rolled on the ground.

"Lucas, what's going on?" Lucy inquired; her voice was shaky as she slowly stepped closer.

Lucas extended his index finger to indicate the creature she had struck, just to the side of him. Now Lucy could see the figure clearly. It was no longer a mere shadow; a man was writhing on the ground, muttering and holding his bleeding head.

Seeing the person before her, Lucy's voice trembled. "AHH! Lucas, I... Is that a person?" Her uncontrollable shaking and racing heart betrayed her fear.

Observing her distress, Lucas walked over to the injured man. "Why did you rush at us?" he demanded.

The man continued to writhe on the ground, paying no heed to Lucas.

Lucas frowned. "If you won't tell us, we won't hesitate to finish you."

Whether prompted by Lucas's threat or the fear of being killed, the man's lips quivered. He regarded Lucy and Lucas with disdain before admitting, "You, brat, I was planning to rob your backpack."

"Oh, you mean this?" Lucas gestured toward his bag. "Why would you want this?"

The man's eyes met Lucas's with frustration. "What else would you carry around in that huge bag besides food?"

Listening to the man's words, Lucas couldn't fathom how someone would resort to attacking two young individuals like them on the road, especially so early into the apocalypse – it had barely been four days.

"So... do you have any other companions?" Lucas inquired, prompting the man's annoyed gaze.

"Of course not! If I did, you'd both be dead by now!"

"Bang!"

A shadow descended upon his head.

"Ahh!"

His sentence dissolved into a scream as a sudden throbbing pain struck his forehead. Lucas motioned to the weeping Lucy on the ground, signaling for her to come closer. Barely an hour ago, she had been grappling with the fear of killing a human, and now she had nearly done just that. With her feet heavy, Lucy approached, her sobs unabated.

"It's alright, Lucy. If the man came at me from the other side of the building, I'd have defended myself too. It's not your fault," Lucas assured her.

Lucy looked at him, lifting her head. "No... it's my fault. I almost killed him."

In response, sometimes the gravity of a situation forces you to make swift decisions. Even though Lucas was not entirely comfortable with his next move, he recognized that leaving the man unchecked could invite future harm. Despite knowing what he was about to do, he proceeded.

"No, Lucy. Repeat after me in your mind; he tried to kill us. Do you know what we should do to people like him?" Lucas asked.

"What?" she whispered, her voice trembling with doubt. Her stomach churned with a mix of guilt and unease, knowing she had come close to taking a man's life.

"Preparation is crucial. Sometimes we can't let those who try to harm us escape," Lucas instructed, drawing his dagger with a grin.

"Wait! Lucas! What are you doing?" Lucy exclaimed urgently.

"Watch and learn. This is my first time, too," Lucas responded calmly.

The man's heart raced as he finally noticed the dagger in front of him, his voice trembling in fear as he shouted, "Wait! What the hell are you doing? Let go of that, now!"

"I'm sorry, but you were trying to kill us," Lucas stated calmly as he drove his dagger into the man's eye sockets.

'It's quite crunchy,' he thought as he pushed the dagger further.

"AHHHH!" Both Lucy and the man screamed. Lucy collapsed to the ground and fainted. The man, writhing in pain with both eyes impaled, eventually lay lifeless. He had intended to end the kids' lives for a bit of food, but now he was the one meeting that fate.

"Well, that was gruesome," Lucas remarked as he cleaned his dagger with water from a bottle. He then carried Lucy into the building the man had emerged from before returning to drag the man's corpse.

In this lawless world, a world devoid of regulations, being compassionate could be a fatal flaw. The only distinction between this and dispatching zombies was that humans screamed much louder. Gazing out of the second-floor window, Lucas saw a horde of zombies drawn by their screams.

"I'm not a murderer," Lucas silently reassured himself while looking at the deceased man's body. "This was self-defense." Despite his occasional distaste for certain people, he never wished harm to the point of killing them. As he slumped onto the man's sofa, he pondered how he could have taken a human life before Lucy.

"This must be shocking to her now, but it will make her more resolute in the future." While ending a human life by thrusting a dagger into their eye felt vastly different, he was determined to rationalize it as an act of self-preservation. The warmth of a human body and the accompanying screams were sensations he hoped to put behind him, a reminder of the harsh reality he now inhabited.

"Why am I not gaining any experience? Is it because people who have never killed zombies and are still at level 0 earn zero experience?" he muttered, his gaze fixed on the window, watching the sunset. "Time goes by so quickly," he sighed.

***

Midnight

"Ugh!!" Lucy groaned as she awoke, her head throbbing. She managed to prop herself into a sitting position, feeling disoriented.

"Burr!!" The memory of Lucas dispatching the man came rushing back to her, and she stumbled, desperately searching for a bathroom.

"Vrokk!!" Her stomach revolted, and she emptied its contents. The stench was overpowering. The gruesome scene of the man's eyeball exploding still haunted her, causing her to retch once more.

"Hah!" After a seemingly endless three minutes, she finally stopped vomiting. She reached for a water bottle, rinsing her mouth and clearing away the acrid taste. As she stared at herself in the bathroom mirror, she realized her short black hair was a mess, but it hardly mattered. Muttering to herself, she questioned, "Is this really the right thing to do?"

Although Lucas had frightened her to the point of fainting, she couldn't fault him entirely. Since he had saved her from the zombies, she found herself becoming dependent on him, trusting his judgment implicitly.

As she used the water to wash her face, she ventured out to explore the house. Her thoughts wandered to the notion of taking a human life with her own hands. Would she ever be able to do it? Perhaps, as Lucas suggested, she should practice.

"Isn't that the man?" she mumbled, surprised to see the man's lifeless body on the floor. Approaching cautiously, she considered the idea of using the corpse to practice. "He's just a corpse, after all. Imagine he's a zombie," she reminded herself.

With some hesitation, she reached her hand into the man's empty eye socket. 'This is so repulsive,' she thought, suppressing her urge to vomit as she explored the hollow socket.

'Is this how it feels to be inside a human?' she wondered aloud, seeking confirmation. In a tentative move, she retrieved a kitchen knife and gingerly cut into the man's stomach. "It's so cold," she murmured.

With a bit more courage, she inserted her hand further, coming into contact with the man's organs. 'Is this what organs feel like?' she pondered, drawing a comparison to her own stomach. 'It's rather squishy,' she observed, engrossed in her self-guided anatomical exploration.

Unbeknownst to her, a bit farther away on the sofa, the boy smirked. 'She's certainly an eager learner,' he thought.

Both teenagers were absorbed in their respective activities and thoughts, and with that, the night eventually drew to a close.