Chapter 11
I followed Gavinu outside.
The boy did not give me any explanation, yet I could guess why he had woken me.
I turned my gaze to the window.
In the distance, I heard the moans of zombies.
It was not the usual predator’s roar I always heard.
It was closer to a scream.
They were being hunted, and there were only a few groups capable of doing that.
It was the knight order.
That was proof that things were proceeding according to schedule.
“…I think they are survivors.”
It was a simple answer, yet the boy forced the words out with difficulty.
His expression was awkward, like someone watching an uninvited guest approach.
“What should we do? Should we wake the other two and face them?”
“Face them?”
I reacted as if his answer was unexpected.
There were many possible responses to newcomers, welcome them, help them, or ignore them. I had not thought the very first answer would be to fight them.
“There is a chance they are raiders who want our food or our base.”
“Right, that is possible.”
“If that is the case, we need to prepare. There are not many of us, and this dormitory is weak on defense.”
It was not a bad judgment.
He already looked better than the idiots who would offer up everything they had just to cling to life.
‘Talleon and Gavinu are nothing more than passing extras, yet they are growing. Maybe leading these kids would be a better choice than sticking to so-called named characters.’
Named characters did not always survive to the end.
They possessed exceptional talent, but that alone was not enough.
They needed knowledge.
They needed luck on their side, and they had to gather comrades.
After many playthroughs of the game, all of that experience had settled deep into my mind.
“If they come here, I will deal with them. Gavinu, go wake the other two. Then stay in the room until I give the signal.”
“What if they try to get rid of you?”
I stayed silent.
I could not claim that such a thing would never happen.
Contact with the knight order was part of the plan. But everything after that was improvisation.
I put a hand on Gavinu’s trembling shoulder.
“In that case you will have to decide. Move in whichever way lets you guys live.”
The boy hesitated, then turned away.
Once I saw him go back into the room, I focused again on what was happening outside.
I pressed my eye to the crack of the door.
The knight order had come close enough that I could see them clearly.
There were four in total.
One woman and three men.
‘They are the Order of the Star.’
The order that protected the Academy was divided into three groups.
They took their names from the celestial bodies in the sky, and were called Sun, Moon, and Star.
Each community had its own personality, but the Order of the Star in front of me was the most moderate among them.
They did not discriminate between survivors, and they saw survivors as the weak who needed protection.
At least, they did so as long as their patience held out.
[Main Quest - Encounter with the Knight Order]
[Clear Objective - Either eliminate the knight order to remove the danger, or join them and move to their base.]
[Difficulty - (A-)]
[Reward - 30 Coins.]
I frowned.
It was clearly written in the quest description.
The knight order was a danger to the player, not a salvation.
The (A-) difficulty had been calculated against my current level.
That meant even a very skilled veteran would not be able to clear this easily.
I needed a plan.
I needed a certain amount of luck as well.
‘What should I do?’
Taking the route of eliminating them was impossible with my strength alone.
I would need to dig traps in advance and lure them into them.
Of course, if they turned out to be friendly, there was no need to take that risk.
However, my experience playing the game had taught me something.
I had learned to the point of disgust how much of a pack of thugs the knights could be.
“This is Dormitory Four, right?”
“According to the map, it is.”
“Yet it is so quiet it’s scary. Who wants to go in first?”
“If no one volunteers, I will go first and—”
While they were deciding who would enter, I opened the door from my side.
All of them gasped and swallowed their breath in surprise.
One man translated his emotions directly into action and drew his sword, leveling it at me.
“Who are you?”
“As you can see, I am a survivor. A student of the Academy.”
“You are not wearing the Academy uniform though?”
“If you want, I can go change into it and come back out, but is there much point to that?”
“Are you the only survivor?”
“Come inside for now. It is not a good night to be chatting outdoors.”
Despite my invitation, they did not enter easily.
Suspicion filled their eyes.
They looked away from me and studied the hallway and stairs.
They wanted to check for traps.
‘They must have run into trouble on their way here. It had probably been nothing but bad.’
I did not feel any anger at their wary gaze.
Anyone could claim to be innocent with words alone.
In this world, lies were as common as truths, if not more.
I opened the half closed door all the way.
“If you still can’t trust this, you don’t have to come in. I just think spending the night outside is not a very wise choice.”
“…The boy is right. Besides, we need rest. We used too much stamina getting here.”
The woman at the back answered.
Her eyes behind the helmet looked terribly exhausted.
Her body swayed back and forth.
One of her comrades had to support her to keep her steady.
“…Excuse us then.”
The man I had spoken with first dipped his head briefly.
I shrugged and let them in, then closed the door.
‘It’s worse than I expected.’
Their silver armor was smeared here and there with blood.
They must have fought while scouting.
Yet some of the stains did not look like zombie blood.
They looked like human blood.
Zombie blood was yellowish or pale green, and had nothing to do with those dark stains.
[Clever] told me my deduction was correct, yet if I said it aloud, it would put me in a problematic position.
‘Either they had wounded someone, or killed someone.’
If they had used swords and magic on people, that alone was reason enough to be cautious.
I carved that information into my mind and opened my mouth.
“You are from the knight order, right?”
“Sorry for the late introduction. My name is Austin.”
The man who called himself Austin still had not lowered his sword.
The blade had drunk oil and blood until it had lost some of its original sharpness, yet it still looked capable of cutting down someone like me easily.
‘Even if he’s worn out, I must not fight him. He would be at least Mithios, or maybe Vetus tier.’
In the world of THE Survival, the standards of strength were divided by tiers.
Mithios was seventh tier, and Vetus was sixth.
They were on a different level from me, a mere Novice.
At least, for the moment.
‘On top of that, if this is really Austin, he’s a selfish and calculating man.’
The knights who visited the dormitory were not always the same people.
They changed every time.
Austin was one of the more dangerous characters among them.
He was a complete dud among duds.
He was so bad that it made me wonder if this world itself held some kind of malice.
“Are you the only survivor here?”
“There are a few of my companions inside. Oh, don’t worry. They are younger than me, and they are not the type who would charge at a rock with an egg.”
Austin’s brow twisted.
Only then did he seem to realize he was threatening me, and he sheathed his sword.
“I am sorry. The journey here was not easy.”
“Where did you come from?”
“Line Tower. We live there.”
Line Tower was far from Dormitory Four.
It was about forty kilometers away I believe?
If the gray clouds cleared away and the fog thinned, you might be able to see it even from here.
“For now, could you spare some space for my comrades to rest? No, never mind. We should first hear about the situation in this dormitory.”
Austin changed his mind mid sentence.
A place where only a few students had survived up to now.
It was natural to assume zombies still remained.
Yet we were an exception to most cases.
“There are no monsters here.”
“None you say?”
“More precisely, there used to be, but now there are not.”
Their eyes all filled with disbelief.
The woman who had been supported shook off her comrade’s hand and stepped forward.
She gathered magic in both hands.
Yellow light spheres split apart, turned into dust, and scattered throughout the dormitory.
It was a detection spell.
After a few minutes, confusion spread across her face.
Her eyes fixed on me.
“It is true. I checked all the way up to the fourth floor and there is no sign of monsters. Also, there are three people in that room on the first floor. Including this boy, there are four people in the entire dormitory.”
When she announced this, the others clicked their tongues.
Only four, and they were still half baked kids, had secured the building.
No one could accept that easily.
“There must not have been many monsters. That is the only way it makes sense.”
“Maybe they are fully armed? No, even so, this is…”
“Maybe a professor or another knight group was leading them.”
“Idiot, if that were the case, this boy would not be the one greeting us.”
“Enough!”
The woman who had cast the spell suddenly shouted.
Her voice carried tremendous force.
The knights who had been arguing shivered and fell silent.
“Do you realize how ridiculous you sound, bickering like that in front of a kid?”
It was a perfect time for me to cut in.
I had no intention of explaining anything to them.
More than that, my attention went to the woman.
She took off her helmet, revealing her bare face.
‘So it’s her huh.’
She resembled someone I knew.
That was only natural.
They shared blood from the same parents.
In other words, they were sisters.
Lucille Rainwood.
She was the eldest daughter of House Rainwood and a senior knight of the Order of the Star.
“Big sister!”
Tania, who was supposed to stay in the room, rushed out.
She had been peeking through the crack in the door and then had recognized her sister.
“Tania!”
The two enjoyed their reunion as if they had not seen each other in years.
They clung to each other and shed tears.
I watched quietly.
“Tania is your sister, is she not?”
The others who surrounded them looked astonished.
They had found a family whose whereabouts had been unknown.
‘It’s a good thing. Come to think of it, Joshua had family too. Parents and a younger sister… He would never meet them though. She had not entered the Academy, and she would eventually be a body prepared for a political marriage to revive the family. She is probably receiving lessons at the main house to become a proper bride.’
The word “family” felt far too distant for me now.
It was a relationship linked by biology, nothing more.
When I tried to remember their faces, only faint afterimages wavered up like heat haze.
‘Focus only on the plan, Kang Minhyeok. You do not have room in your head for anything else.’
I let out a sigh of relief.
While everyone else was swept up in emotion, the only thing that mattered to me was that we were still alive.
* * *
After the commotion, the knights and students split into two groups, those who rested and those who chatted.
Gavinu and Talleon went back to their rooms, and two of the knights also lay down to rest.
The remaining people gathered in the dining hall.
“How did you manage to survive all the way here?”
Lucille looked more exhausted than any of the knights, yet the joy of seeing her sister again had brought life back to her.
Tania was no different, and the two stayed closer than was almost comfortable to watch.
“It is a long story if I start from the beginning.”
“That’s fine, speak freely. If it is your story, I will listen to all of it no matter how long it takes.”
Tania smiled and glanced at Joshua.
He sat alone at the very end of the long table.
‘It isn’t me.’
It was the leader’s job to explain how they had gotten here.
Joshua was the one responsible for the group.
She herself acknowledged that, but it was hard for outsiders to accept.
Joshua had introduced himself by name in front of the knights.
When they heard that name, one of the knights leaned close to Lucille’s ear and whispered something.
She could not catch the whole line, yet a few words reached her clearly.
Lazy… Joshua.
She could not imagine how much that little phrase would drag down Joshua’s reputation.
The knights did not show it, yet they began to look at him with discomfort.
Which led to the present, where he sat treated like a leftover scrap.
She clenched her fist.
She could have kept talking, yet it felt like she was stealing credit from someone else, and that bothered her.
‘If Gavinu and Talleon had seen this, they would have grumbled, telling me to be ashamed.’
Tania thought hard.
She needed a way to shift the focus that was fixed on her onto someone else.
She thought of a simple method and carried it out at once.
“Senior, is it alright if I explain everything to them?”
Tania succeeded in moving all the eyes that had been on her to Joshua.
That was her way of asking permission.
It also showed at a glance how the hierarchy inside the dormitory was structured.
Joshua, isolated like he was on a deserted island, smiled.
For a spur of the moment idea, he thought it was excellent.
He turned his head.
Lucille and Austin’s faces filled with shock.
“Sure. And while you are at it, bring them some water. Judging by their faces, they look like they need a drink.”