"Huh?!"
Dan, Kaori, and Luna all looked behind them after they heard Mary's question. The last time they saw Fae was when she jumped out after them from the 2nd floor window.
"Did we lose track of each other in that cloud of dust?"
"I think so. I hope nothing happens to her, otherwise I don't know how to apologize to Eldun."
"Let's go back and find her!"
"..."
Dan knew that delaying their search would increase the chances of something happening to her. However, he was currently exhausted, so he wouldn't be able to protect the girls if they get surrounded by zombies again.
"Let's take a short break first. I need some time before I can use my [Weapon Control] skill."
"Alright."
The girls knew that it would be stupid to rush back into the city while Dan was tired, so none of them urged him any further.
As soon as they sat down to take a breather, Dan started hypothesizing about Ray's mutation.
"...How come he turned into that kind of monster…?"
As he mumbled his thoughts out loud, the girls remained silent to not disturb him.
"...What was the difference between Ray and all the other people that turned into zombies?"
Since Dan was never exposed to apocalyptic stories like the people from Earth, his thought process was limited. He had a wide range of assumptions, such as a difference in physique, which part of the body was infected, and whether or not Ray used an assortment of potions on himself.
He even wondered if Ray ate the flesh of an infected creature. As his thoughts went off into a tangent, he shook his head as he realized that he had no way to confirm any of his guesses.
Even though Dan was also concerned about Fae, as he looked back at the city, a fleeting thought emerged in his mind for a brief moment.
"Despite your transformation, you still won't let go of your treasured sword…"
***
Going back to the time when the adventurer's guild just collapsed, a cloud of dust surrounded the area within a range of 100 meters from the building.
While Dan and the girls were currently making their way out of the zombie horde, Fae and the others were scrambling about, trying to escape in random directions.
The zombies were picking them off one by one inside the dust cloud as the adventurers and guild advisors weren't able to defend themselves. Rather than relying on their vision, these zombies were extremely sensitive to sound, similar to the ones from Earth.
*ROAR*
The mutated Ray launched all the debris away from him as he stood up from the ruins of the adventurer's building. Shards of wood and stone flew everywhere, as many zombies, adventurers, and guild advisors sustained heavy injuries or died on the spot.
For the people that were still alive, they all immediately ran away from the source of the roar, since they realized that the monstrosity they witnessed earlier was still alive.
Ray began to cleave at any zombie or human near him as he went on a rampage.
Even though Fae's vision was impaired, she saw a few shadows run past her. Believing the shadows to be Dan and the others, she followed after them as she didn't want to lose track of them.
After she finally managed to leave the cloud of dust, she discovered that the shadow she was following turned out to be a group of 4 guild advisors, consisting of three middle-aged women and 1 man. They were covered in injuries as a few splinters were sticking out of their backs or arms.
Since there were no apparent bite or claw wounds on them, Fae looked away and started taking out the zombies that were approaching them.
"Where should we go?! This is my first time in this city!"
Fae shouted as more zombies swarmed towards them with every passing second. They couldn't afford to just run around the streets the whole time, as they would eventually get surrounded.
"My house is just at the end of that street! My husband turned the first floor of our house into a small cafe, so we should be able to survive there for awhile!"
One of the middle-aged women shouted as she hoped Fae would listen to her suggestion. Part of the reason why she pointed out her home was to check up on her family.
As Fae had been constantly killing zombies the whole time, her movement speed started to slow down and her arms became sluggish. The reason why Fae was able to keep shooting at the zombies with her bow was because she had been using her [Elemental Arrow] skill. This skill allowed her to create arrows with her mana, and if she wanted to imbue an elemental effect onto it, the mana consumption would further increase.
Although this meant she was able to keep fighting, it had taken a large toll on her stamina due to the repeated creation of basic mana arrows.
The moment they reached the entrance of the cafe, the middle-aged women unlocked the door with her keys, and closed it once they had all entered.
The cafe was eerily quiet, as there were no signs of any presence inside.
As the woman was about to walk inside to see if her family was here, Fae reached out her arm to block her path.
"Careful. We don't know if there are any zombies inside."
"What nonsense are you speaking about?! Dear, where are you?! I finally made it back home!!!"
The middle-aged woman began to yell hysterically, as she couldn't believe her ears when Fae suspected that there were zombies inside. Dan had already explained to them yesterday that infected humans would turn into zombies, as well as a brief summary of their infection abilities.
"Quiet! You're going to attract all the zombies by yelling."
"NO! DEAR, SON, WHERE ARE YOU?!"
As the voice of the woman got louder, the man behind her took out a small pouch from his belt and poured some powder onto his hand, before throwing it at her face. The moment the woman inhaled it, her eyes rolled upwards as she passed out onto the floor.
"What did you do to her?"
Fae raised her vigilance due to the decisive act of this middle-aged man.
"Relax, that was just a sleeping powder that is normally used to capture small animals. I didn't want my colleague to attract any of the zombies outside, so I had to use it on her."
Fae lowered her bow away from him as his words sounded pretty reasonable.
"I'm sorry for doubting you just now."
"No need. It was a normal reaction considering what I just did. I think my colleague was just too worried about her family, causing her to become emotional."
Fae digested his words as she felt it made a lot of sense. She was also worried about her own family back at her village, but she knew she wasn't able to do anything about it at the moment, so she put it into the back of her mind.
*BANG*
Loud banging sounds could be heard from outside the building. The woman's unreasonable actions had already attracted the zombies to their building, causing the rest of them to glare at her with their hate-filled eyes.
"Let's quickly barricade the door by stacking up some of the tables and chairs!"
The middle-aged man took the lead as he grabbed some of the tables from the dining room. Fae and the remaining women followed along as they also grabbed some of the chairs and tables.
"Grr…"
Minutes later, the banging sound subsided, but they were still able to hear growling on the other side of the door.
"Fuck, we should've stopped her from screaming earlier!"
"It's too late for that. Why don't we just gag her mouth for now, to prevent her from yelling as soon as she wakes up?"
"Good idea."
As the remaining guild advisors talked among themselves, Fae had taken this opportunity to check out the rest of the building after she ensured the door was sturdy enough.
After half an hour, she went back downstairs as she told the guild advisors that there was nobody else inside this building.
"I'm going to take a rest in one of the rooms upstairs. Knock on the door if you need me."
"Sure."
As she entered a guest room with a spare bed inside, Fae locked the door and immediately fell onto the bed.
The heavy consumption of mana used up a lot of her stamina, as she was nearly out of energy when they entered the building. Since she had been tense the entire time, the moment she realized this building was safe, all the energy left her body as she passed out.
***
After spending the whole day searching through the city, Dan and the girls weren't able to find any traces of Fae. Kaori had no way of using [Minimap] to locate her since she didn't realize Kio had never invited Fae to the party.
As a result, Dan brought the girls outside the city when it was almost dark and set up camp in the wide-open plains. He then told the girls to rest inside the tent as he would be responsible for watching their surroundings.
This repeated for a few days before he eventually gave up and decided to leave, since he needed to prioritize the girls that were still alive.
"Girls, we can't waste anymore time here. Perhaps Fae already died a few days ago when we separated…"
"But…"
"I know it's hard to accept it, since you girls became friendlier with Fae, but there's nothing we can do now. I'll apologize to Eldun the next time I see him, but for now, we need to go to the harbor town."
The harbor town was directly south of Karkin, but it might take weeks for them to reach it since they didn't have a horse-drawn carriage. Dan wanted to head for the other continent, as he hoped that place would be free of zombies.
"But if we leave now, how will we find Kio and Miyu?!"
"As long as they're still alive, we will eventually reunite with them. The most important thing now is to get somewhere safe."
Although Kaori and Luna didn't want to leave, they had no other choice but to follow Dan since they didn't have the ability to protect themselves.
On the next day, as soon as the sun appeared on the horizon, Dan and the girls packed their bags as they started walking south with a dejected look.