“Easily...replaced.”

Emily whispered those words in her mouth before suddenly snapping up to Shaw.

“Those are people out there! Hundreds of living, breathing human beings! They are not numbers that you can put into your equations! Do they just deserve to die because you don’t think they’re valuable enough to protect? Because you don’t think they have potential? That is absurd!”

Shaw frowned for a second as she stood there and observed Emily’s furious outburst. The young woman was angry, and Shaw had to admit she was a little disappointed. She thought Emily would come to her senses after the massacre, but apparently, she was wrong.

She waited until Emily finished before replying in her usual cold and distant tone. The outburst from Emily hardly took her back.

“They don’t deserve to die. No one deserves to die. If it is up to me, I think everyone on this planet deserves to live in peace and comfort for the rest of their lives.” She tapped her fingers on the table as she stared fiercely into Emily’s eyes. “But what I think doesn’t matter. What you think doesn’t matter. What people deserve doesn’t matter. Plenty of people have died since yesterday, and plenty of more people will die in the decades to come. Saving a few hundred people here is meaningless.”

“Is this how you justify it? Justify your cruelty and your inaction?” Emily countered fearlessly. She knew the woman before her could kill her ten times over, but she took a stand nonetheless for what she believed was right. “Millions have died, so what is a few hundred more added to the count? What the hell is wrong with you?”

“What is wrong with me? Nothing. I just learned to ignore certain dangerous feelings a long time ago. I suggest you do it too.” Shaw frowned. “Feelings like empathy and compassion...they make you weak. They blind you from seeing what must be done. They get you killed. I thought you understood that after what happened on the way back. What we are talking about now...this is no different.”

“Oh this is very different.” Emily snapped back. “You actually have the power to help people! What level are you at now? Level 5? Level 6? If you choose to, you can keep the precinct standing against the NPCs and save a lot of people! You said it yourself! You know how to do it! On the way back, I was a level 2 player who didn't know what was going on! You are different! You actually have the power to act, but...but you just refuse to do it.”

“If I want, I can probably protect the precinct and the people within for a long time.” Shaw admitted. “But when I am wasting time here, everyone else will be growing stronger, and soon, my advantages will be gone. As I said before, it’s just not worth it.”

Emily sighed. She collapsed back into her seat in defeat and stared at the blank wall. Shaw bit her lips. She was truly disappointed by what Emily said and how she acted. It seemed like the young officer, despite Shaw’s best attempts, was a lost cause. Just as she was about to leave the room, Emily suddenly said something.

“How did you become like this, Shaw?”

“Excuse me?”

“How did you become like this?” Emily repeated. “I mean...a teenage girl like you. How did you get such a pessimistic view of life? I...I don’t know your background or what you have experienced, but you are so...cynical. So depressed. I can’t imagine what you have gone through to make you see the world and humanity so harshly. To make you so...scarred.”

Shaw almost wanted to snicker. What made her so cynical? Years of abuse and neglect as a child. Twenty years of hell against monsters and fellow humans alike. Watching everyone around her, people she cared about and didn't care about alike, fall in horrific ways while she herself survived. Being tortured and injured more times than she could count. Being given hope, only to see it snuffed out by the same monsters who doomed humanity. Finally, being the last human being to die, knowing that she just witnessed the full extinction of her kind.

“It doesn’t matter.” She simply stated. “I may be pessimistic and cynical and depressed, but these things will only help me survive. Help me get stronger. You call them scars. I call them assets.”

“Get stronger? Survive?” Emily suddenly chuckled. “And what is the purpose of that? So what if you do manage to get stronger?”

“Excuse me?”

“Look at yourself. You’re a psychopath, Shaw! You’re treating everyone else as tools! Those that are valuable you keep. Those that are not useful to you, you leave to die.” Emily raised her voice once again. “So what if you survive this game? So what if you even win this game? What is the purpose of surviving if you have become a monster yourself? A monster no different than the things out there! And what is the purpose of becoming stronger? Just so you can keep yourself alive even longer while everyone else die around you?”

“What makes you think I am trying to level up to save myself?” Shaw was raising her voice as well, perhaps without even realizing it herself. Why wouldn’t Emily understand her? Why wouldn’t anyone understand here? “You may never understand or accept it, but everything I did, I did it for the survival of mankind!”

“Or so you claim, yet you wouldn’t even lift a finger and save a few hundred people!” Emily snickered once again. “Forgive me for having trouble believing you will save mankind, even if the opportunity presents itself.”

Shaw opened her mouth to reply, but her words died in her mouth. Emily didn't know a lot of things about her, but the things she said to her still made Shaw do a little reflection on what she had been doing since she woke up in that classroom.

She was so determined to abandon this precinct. Why? Sure, it would be wiser to establish a settlement in the future for the reasons given above, but those reasons were more minor obstacles than real issues. She was a level 6 player in a camp full of level 0 survivors, and she had twenty years of knowledge to lean on. Surely she would be able to handle these obstacles without sabotaging her future. With this precinct as a base of operation, she would be able to rally more survivors and players and expand her influence. The more players she had under her command, the more they would be able to help her back.

For instance, if she could feed a few dozen survivors some exp and turn them into players, these players would be able to hunt by themselves and level up even more. It would be a somewhat major investment, but it would be a very profitable one. Once they were just a few levels behind Shaw, these players could go out there and bring crippled prey back to Shaw for her to harvest. That would certainly be more efficient than Shaw going out into the wild and hunting the NPCs down one by one.

It would only be reasonable to believe that she would level up a lot quicker with an entire settlement behind her back and supporting her than if she was out in the wild alone.

Yet the entire time, she just skipped over this possibility. She kept on talking about assets and resources, but she actively chose to ignore the greatest asset of all. People. Not just certain individuals, but hundreds and thousands of people who she could rally under a singer banner. A single cause. A single leadership.

Her leadership.

There was a reason behind her subtle yet important decision. When Shaw was brought back in time from two decades into the future, all of the physical wounds and scars on her body disappeared, but the mental trauma she endured stayed with her.

She was still the same woman who witnessed everyone she knew die. She was still the woman who learned not to trust and grow attached to people because she was punished countless times for it. For countless times, she let her guard down and cared, only for those she cared about to be slaughtered before her eyes. After a period of caution, she would let her guard down again, and sooner or later, she would be punished again. Eventually, she forced herself to become desensitized and detached from everything, because the price of being emotional, being human, was too much for her to handle.

After she came back, she kept her distance from everyone. She didn't bother helping all the students back in the school when she could. She didn't bother helping the store owner after destroying his shotgun and rendering him defenseless. She only helped Emily and her people because there was an optional mission, and she only helped the man from the help because he had potential. Even in those cases, she made sure to interact with them as professionally as possible. She didn't want to know about them, because knowing about someone was the first step to caring about them.

She did her best to see all of them not as people, but as tools. After all, one couldn’t grow attached to a tool, and when a tool breaks, the person would simply find a new one.

Once upon a time, she was a compassionate woman. A woman who could smile and cry. A woman who could laugh when she heard jokes and offer a helping hand when someone else was hurt. But as Shaw survived longer and longer in the cruel world, that woman disappeared piece by piece until she was nowhere to be seen. In her place was a survivor. A survivor who saw herself and everyone else as means to an end. A survivor who was only kept going by the utter hatred toward the Developers. A survivor who hoped she never survived.

But things have changed. She was no longer the woman who was at best average among the players and the NPCs. She was at level 6 on the second day of the Launch, and taking her experience and knowledge into consideration, she was perhaps one of the strongest entities on the planet. She had the power to change things, and for maybe the first time, she had the power to protect those she cared about from harm.

She wouldn’t try going around and saving everyone she came across regardless of the situation, but perhaps she could afford to be a little less of a psychopath and a little more of a human.

With a light sigh, Shaw looked up at Emily again and her tone turned much softer. Perhaps in twenty years, everyone she knew would still die and she would once again suffer for allowing herself to be human, but twenty years was a long time. Plus, who was to say she would still be alive by then? If humanity was to go instinct once again, there was no way she would be there when that happened.

And just like that, a decision was made.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you have convinced me, Emily. Now...” Shaw gently tapped the table once again. “We are going to save this precinct, and here is how we are going to do it.”