With the others yelling in the gym Baladan and Boss had been in the back discussing about the potential of gaining new abilities and possibly fusing them.
Boss: "I'm not saying we should help people grow just to kill them off or anything… however if we have to go up against people in the future then we should capitalize on this chance and grab all of their abilities!"
Bal: "I also think it would be a good idea, however let's keep this to ourselves for now. We wouldn't want people to freak out thinking we were going to tear open there heads for their ability"
Boss: "Then it's settled, we keep this between us while out of the work district. When we head back we'll pull our people to the side and inform them of our findings. I just don't know if people will be ok with splitting another's head open just for another person to benefit"
Bal: "I'll worry about that, you need to worry about the whole settlement. I'll get the gems if people decide to be our enemy"
Boss: "Looks like it's time to to get what we came for then!"
———
Baladan quickly told him about the survivors inside the science building before they left the secluded room. Immediately they are greeted by a large group of men and women yelling "Fight" at the top of their lungs as Randy stood on the stage getting them all riled up.
Randy: "Oh! Hey Boss! I think I got them a little to heated, they are ready to go out there and kill something!"
Boss was trying his best to hold it back but in the end he let out a loud laugh enjoying the moment as everyone else was screaming as if they were about to tear somethings head off.
Boss: "GOOD! Everyone! We will be heading to the Science Building! Each of you will grab whatever weapon you can and clean up after us! Baladan, Randy, Rosa, when we are inside unless absolutely necessary we will only cut their limbs! The rest of you will each kill 2 of the Shadow Corpses before you pick your abilities!
I will warn you now, you will be forced to register the ability chosen when we get back to base but if you put your faith in us we will make sure you are treated fairly!"
The yelling quieted down but the excitement never left them. Instead each of them started looking around for anything they could use as a weapon while the rest of the actual fighters stood to the side waiting for orders.
Bal: "I will go ahead and head inside, their bites have no effect on me. Honestly that's the only reason I survived going to the building. If it wasn't because of that you guys might still be here waiting for Ryder to do whatever he wants"
Rosa: "Then I will come with you! I will just stay to the side making sure you are ok while we head inside"
Randy: "I'll go too, I want to scout out the underground parking lot while searching for the keys to the buses"
Boss: "I'll follow behind soon, I'll get these guys situated with the rest of the fighters while you disable the undead inside. Good luck and don't die you 3"
———
The 3 of them had walked into the front door, it had been covered in blood. There was even some chunks of flesh on the ground. When Baladan saw them he couldn't help but shiver a little bit, after all it very much could be a chunk of his body that was laying there.
Rosa who would almost always watch Baladan immediately saw the sudden shiver. This caused her to look at what he was staring at, there she saw a couple chunks of flesh soaked in blood.
When she looked back towards him she could see many holes across his legs and his shirt revealing little bits of skin with bite mark scars.
At that moment she realized he might be looking at a piece of himself laying on the floor! Her expression was that of extreme anger! While Ryder was ordering them around and forcing them to do whatever he wanted, Baladan was fighting for his life getting bitten and torn apart by the Shadow Corpses killing all that came across him.
Randy: "…I feel like I'm going to puke… it smells so bad! Look at the ceiling! Blood is dripping from the roof, it looks like a scene from one of those slasher films!"
He could only look to Baladan with pity, what was he supposed to do? He was under the control of another while one of his friends was put into a swarm of infected in such a tight area.
Bal: "Let's get moving, I can't remember if I killed 330 or 230 of those creatures… with how many people come to this school every year there should be around 1,000 left after killing the horde in the parking lot before. So it's either 670 left or 770"
Randy was dumbstruck after hearing how many could be here.
Randy: '1,000? Holy shit! How many kids are usually inside a school anyways!? I haven't been back for a long time but… was there really that many kids in a cafeteria all at once? It doesn't feel like there are literally thousands of people in one building…'
Soon they walked up to see the camera move over to look at them. Immediately Baladan looked at it before getting a little closer.
Bal: "Which way do we go to get to you? Just move the camera in the way we need to travel, if we need to go the way you are facing already then don't move"
After a couple seconds it moved up to look down the left hallway from the entrance. Currently they where at the beginning of the right hallway.
Bal: "Thank you, we will be heading that way taking out everything along the way"
He then turned around heading down the hallway the camera points at. His hand now grasping his crowbar as he leads the way.
It wasn't long till a group of Shadow Corpses could be seen walking up and down the hallways. What really bugged Baladan was how smart they actually were! When he got there he watched as one of the undead casually brought a hand up and pulled on the handle just to open the door to let more of its kind out of a science lab to the side.
Bal: 'This is getting way to out of hand, if their intelligence grows further it will be terrifying! What if these undead were able to use guns, what about actual weapons! Fighting techniques, vehicles! Explosives! They might as well be considered evolved humans at that point just with a lust to consume the living!'
What shocked Rosa and Dandy wasn't the opening of the door. No what shocked them is 70 undead suddenly running out of the room towards them!
Randy: "What!? Aren't they supposed to be really slow!"
Bal: "They used to be, now their bodies seem to have adjusted to the Mana. Be carful they won't immediately go for the bite! They will hit you and try their best to ware you down before going in for the kill!"
He ran forward swinging his crowbar at the first undead coming at him. Instantly it's head caved in killing it on the spot, unfortunately he couldn't just stop there. If he could slowly break their limbs he would but at the moment he was fighting 70 enemies at once so he didn't have that luxury.
With Rosa following up using her own fire attacks and Randy using a machete to cut into the zombies as they came it was almost like the undead was funneled into a incinerator/grinder.
When most of the undead was taken out they began to break their limbs before throwing them to the side of the hall ready for execution.
Exp: 55,900 (Next Level: 120,000)
Randy: "Ha…Ha… that was intense! I can't believe you killed around 250 of these things by yourself! What are you a monster? Are you even the real Baladan!"
He laughed a little obviously joking as he tried to catch his breath. With Rosa's support and Baladan's quick attacks Randy was only able to help if some of them slipped by, however what he didn't think was going to happen was Baladan purposely sending a couple over to him in the middle of the fight!
However this seemed to be calculated, each time a undead came towards him he was already done with the last one. Instead of trying to kill him with the undead it felt more like he was feeding Randy free exp.
Bal: "Already tired from just that? Man you must have gotten soft during our 2 year break huh? I bet you didn't even work out properly right?"
Randy: "Laugh it up Bal, some of us aren't young anymore! During the 2 years some of us had to retire from the gang just because our bodies wouldn't work like they used to. However, I have noticed that the more I level up and increase my stats with my Aura my body has been getting younger I guess, why do you think I look so young right now?"
Bal: "Good, then maybe we should hunt down our old gang members who retired and teach them Aura so they can come back. I bet they would enjoy bashing in some skulls like the good old days!"
Randy: "Ha! Like you can remember the good old days! You were in diapers when we had been riding up and down these streets in our full glory!"
Bal: "Yeah, yeah, let's just get to this room that the cameras is pointing to. I'm sure someone interesting has to be there if they thought to get control of the cameras like this. I will always welcome brains over brawn!"