Out of nowhere, the trio in the kitchen stood up quickly and walked over to Leo with long steps. Although Leo expected them to come together around him, their facial expressions looked very strange to him.
'What is it? Did something happen to them while I was away? Could something have happened to Hazel and Sarah? Well, I don't mind though.'
Finally, when it came to the distance of stretched arms, they didn't look worried; instead, they appeared serious for a reason he couldn't understand. Even though Charlotte and Adam were checking him for any visible injuries, Willie seemed to be holding back his laughter.
"Did anything happen to you?"
Even though his internal organs were badly hurt, he made an effort to hide that he was injured. However, When Leo heard what Willie had said, he felt he could no longer hold back his internal injuries and coughed up a mouthful of blood.
"Hahaha... Leo... hahaha... tell me the truth, did you really give Adam a condom on his 18th birthday?"
When he heard Willie, he felt flustered by the question and looked at Adam, who was trying to hold back his laughter and understood everything without needing to say a word... His brother was disloyal to him!
'You fucking bit*h Adam! What's the issue with it? He had enough wealth to get everything he desired, so I believed I should offer him something he genuinely needed. Which man does not require a condom? I chose a safe option!'
When he coughed blood from his mouth, all three of them stopped laughing and looked at him with concern. While remembering their fun stories from the past, Adam forgot that Leo had just come in from outside.
"Did you get hurt?"
"Is there anything you need?"
"..."
All three of them were worried about him. Willie and Adam expressed their concern, while Charlotte examined every part of his body. This was difficult because he was covered in blood, but it wasn't his own.
"Oh, now you care about me? Why don't you keep talking about me and sharing my secrets behind my back while I take care of my injuries?"
He laughed out loud while making fun of them. Hearing him, all three of them looked sorry and kept saying, "We're sorry!" over and over. Feeling pleased with his teasing, he headed to his room to rest and regain his energy.
"Try not to stress too much! I'll take a little break and I'll be fine, so there's no need to worry."
Leo mentioned that he had several broken ribs, but he didn't talk about his internal injuries because they didn't need to know about that. Even if they knew he was seriously injured, it would just lead to unnecessary worry for them.
As he walked into his room, he really wanted to lie down on his bed and let his muscles relax, but he pushed through the pain and changed his clothes instead. However, that was the most he could manage because he felt that if he stayed on his feet any longer, he would collapse from exhaustion.
With a heavy grunt, he lay on the bed and began to think about his future plans.
'Let's avoid solo hunting for a few days, and we should head to the cafeteria before we run out of supplies. University still has a long way to go before it becomes a safe place to live. I believe there are other Enhancers at the university, but I'm not sure where to find them. I'm confident I'll meet them someday. Nothing will go wrong if I tighten things up a little, right?'
Leo was so tired that he couldn't think about anything else and quickly fell into a dream world.
...
He had a strange dream.
Leo was trapped in a small, dark room, and for some reason, he felt very sad after sitting there for several days. If Adam and Willie had seen it, they would have recognized it as a storage room where they stayed for a few days.
Leo was eating canned food and crying over the loss of his best friend. He wept until he had no tears left and eventually fell asleep from exhaustion.
Stuck in a storeroom, he felt lonely and bored, which was making him feel crazy as he kept checking on the zombies outside. He was trapped in a minimarket for more than a month, and his grip on sanity was slowly slipping away. Only exercising repeatedly had helped him to calm his mind.
One day, he saw that two zombies had walked out of a minimarket, leaving just one behind. He noticed an opportunity... an opportunity to exit the storeroom. He might only have a small minimarket to explore, but that was plenty for someone who had been trapped in a storeroom for a month.
After planning carefully and facing near-death experiences, he managed to defeat it. Still, he moved slowly through the minimarket, watching the zombies' actions through the clear doors.
Out of nowhere, everything became unclear as he found himself in a different location. And it hit him!
He was very hungry! He had never experienced such hunger in his life!
His stomach was growling as if it were eating him from the inside, but he pushed himself to complete his tasks.
Two years into the Holocaust, food was very hard to come by. Ordinary people like him received just enough to survive, barely keeping him alive. After a year, he was discovered in the minimarket, while the university campus had come together to form a united survival group. They were busy cleaning the campus of monsters and avoiding certain forbidden areas.
Even then, he felt content just to be alive—feeling useless and weak but still alive.
Is it wrong to want to be alive? He realized it wasn't.
Is it wrong to hope for a better life? Wishing was something that happened all the time.
Did he deserve to live? No, that was his belief. He often thought about what it would be like if Adam were the one alive instead of him. Would Adam have performed better than him?
There was a big difference between the status of enhancers and regular people because hunters could go outside, defeat zombies, and become stronger. He wanted to get a weapon from the system and defeat monsters, becoming stronger with each kill. He harbored jealousy towards other Enhancers and felt melancholic about his own life.
Feeling unhappy with his life, he saw an opportunity in his third year when city officials arrived at his university with armed individuals. He decided to become a soldier to earn enough contribution points to purchase a weapon from the system.
He believed his life would be different from what it was before!
He imagined a brighter future for himself!
After months of tough training, he completely lost control over his own life. He became a soldier, a pawn, or, as he felt, cannon fodder, forced to follow every order and put his life on the line for little reward.
After a year of cleaning a significant portion of their city, he left behind groups of soldiers and used his contribution points to buy a weapon and a Skill Book.
Even so, his life didn't change much, except that he was free and in control of his own life. His time as an enhancer became much riskier because he had to fight monsters that were several levels above him all by himself. Although his life became more risky and dangerous, he felt content with his freedom.
He trained and learned skills from other Enhancers, adjusting his stats to make himself even stronger. He learned meditation, Mana Application, Flash Step, swordsmanship, reinforced breathing, and several other skills through his hard work. He dedicated himself to learning them so much that his commitment could be seen as extreme.
He considered each of his actions, examined the system, collected information on other monsters, and planned out strategies and tactics. That was the way he spent his final two years. He focused on finding ways to make himself stronger, living in his own world and ignoring everything else. He had some people he knew in the city, but no close friend to rely on.
He struggled with mana, lacked natural talent, and showed no clear offensive skills, but somehow, through hard work, he managed to survive in a chaotic world. After two years, he entered the ranks of Enhancers and was labeled the weakest.
In two years, he had become strong enough to survive and was eager to explore beyond the city and join expeditions with other Enhancers. Maybe he would get the opportunity to look for his uncle's family.
But even then, he lost his life in a sudden wave of demons that swept through their city. So the question becomes...
Would he have lived in a different way if he had an innate ability?