Since I was really excited about that cape, I decided to venture myself outside the hotel when I saw some weak monsters passing by. It was freezing outside, thanks to the snow. However, that wouldn’t stop me. But, when I touched the door, I felt a strong grip on my left shoulder.

“Where do you think you are going?” Claire asked, showing a cold smile.

“I’m going to find the seven dragon balls.”

Although that was the kind of thing, Harry would say, Claire, didn’t think my answer was funny. But she understood my sarcasm and the reference, and that surprised me.

“Don’t ask stupid questions; I’m going to kill some monsters.”

“Why?” Claire asked while looking worried. “We are already obtaining a lot of orbs and coins using the truck; there’s no need to put yourself at risk. Besides, we’ll need your help tomorrow. If you get hurt, we’ll have to delay our plans.”

“I need more evolution coins, and I don’t want to wait until tomorrow. Besides, I’m just going to kill the weak monsters. If I hear some heavy steps or see something on the radar, I’ll return. By the way, are you spying me or something? You reacted pretty fast to stop me, and you are quick to kill the monsters that I attack.”

“Don’t get the wrong idea,” Claire said, showing an annoyed face. “Since I still owe you, I don’t want to see you die before I can repay my debt. I don’t like to owe any favors to others either. Besides, your skills are necessary to this group, so I have to keep an eye on you before you do something stupid.”

“As I thought, anyway, I don’t intend to die anytime soon. So you don’t need to cover me, and if I die, you guys can create a radar, it’ll be less effective than me, but it will do the job. Now, if you excuse me, I have work to do.”

Although I said that, I only left the hotel when some weak monster appeared in front of the hotel and I couldn’t see or feel the presences of any mutant polar bear, mutant dire wolf or the mutant snow leopard. The others I could kill with a single explosive bolt on their heads, but these three wouldn’t die that easily. But I would be able to do that with the forest guardian’s cape. I wonder if I could change that name, it seemed like a thing an environmentalist would use, and I couldn’t care less about such things.

Even though it was a pain for me, Claire kept an eye on me for the rest of the day. It seemed like I was her responsibility like I was one of the kids. Although I didn’t say it, I was thankful for their actions, but it was somewhat unnerving. But she had motives to do that, on my resume, anyone could find at least ten stupid and crazy actions that I made in the last thirty days.

Once in a while, I could feel Harry’s group stare. It almost looked like they think I had a death wish or something. In the end, I managed to obtain more one thousand evolution coins. And since I had been patient, no monster managed to hurt me. If I were just a little bit ruder, I would rub that fact in their faces, but fortunately, I wasn’t.

On the following morning, I woke up in high spirits, even though it was still snowing, because after observing the survivors’ camp in the east, I probably would be able to create the cape. And finally I would be free from that depressing hotel, I would only use that place to sleep and nothing more, just like before.

‘Well, maybe not… I don’t have the necessary MP to keep the cape working non-stop. But if I can increase my HP and STA by doing some exercises, I can do the same to increase my MP. But what exactly?’

The kids studied, but I didn’t hear them talking about their MP, suddenly increasing. So, I had to do something else. Maybe read some books would increase my MP, but I didn’t want to spend fifty hours reading books to raise only one point. It would be too inefficient.

‘Let’s see… if there are items that can restore MP, there are also probably items which can permanently increase my MP. But that won’t be enough; I want to keep increasing my MP. So, I need a skill.’

Skill: Meditation

Info: By putting yourself in the lotus position, you can restore one point of your MP every minute. Your MP can also increase by one point every four consecutive hours of meditation. Moving or receiving damage cancels the skill.

Price: 15000 Evolution Coins.

‘My next aim is already decided, but I wonder if I really can keep myself in the lotus position for eight hours. Well, it’s not like I have any other choice. It’ll take a few more days, but this skill will solve many of my problems against the most dangerous monsters.’

I didn’t want to admit it, but I was feeling that I was beginning to like the whole situation. Since the criminals’ incident, I felt something weird inside me, like something was missing. Slowly, the memory of me taking their lives was getting weaker, and that made me feel even stranger. And since I discovered that my family was together, I noticed that I didn’t have any goals. Without any purposes, how can a person live?

I felt the emptiness inside of me, so to get rid of that feeling, I focused myself on killing monsters as much as possible. That would help the city and the other survivors. But I wasn’t worried about the others anymore; I was only worried to make myself stronger. I didn’t want to see any monster blocking my way; I wanted to be free. I fully understood that when I saw Harry’s astonished face.

“Why are you grinning?” Harry asked.

I froze on the spot, and thanks to it, I noticed that I was really grinning. With that new skill, I could imagine myself killing dozens of powerful monsters, and because of it, I felt great. I didn’t want to be stronger to see others bellow me, but I still felt that something was wrong with me. Strength was necessary to survive, not to fulfill the emptiness of a person.

“It’s nothing; I was just daydreaming.”

After I recovered, I shook my head and said those words. But Harry didn’t look convinced. Well, I couldn’t care less about his opinion. Besides, it wasn’t like I was planning something terrible to do. I just didn’t want to stay in that hotel more than the necessary.

“Dude, you are spending too much time using the statue,” Harry said frowning. “You should spend more time interacting with the other survivors.”

“Is that all that you wanted to say?”

“… No,” Harry said after a few seconds of silence. “Mom wants to talk to all of us before we leave to investigate the survivors’ camp in the west.”

She would only repeat the same words from yesterday, but since I already had finished my business with the statue, I joined them. And like I had expected, she didn’t say anything new. But I guess that kind of thing had to be done to keep the survivors working together.

To my surprise, Sandra decided to stay in the hotel and let Sabrina and all the kids go with us. It seemed that she intended to raise the power of the group. But that was fine, after all, we didn’t saw on the map any survivor on the aside from the three survivors' camp. But I wondered if she had any other motive, after all, the kids were our best-ranged attackers after Rose, Claire, and I. She probably was considering a clash with the group in the north, but I couldn’t imagine her giving orders to the kids attack other humans.

Probably I was just overthinking; she probably sent all the kids to make them obtain some coins and make them upgrade the mini-helicopters. Their weapons could barely scratch the new monsters, to kill a single mutant lemming, all the kids had to attack at the same time. It was a bit sad seeing them feeling an intense headache after breaking their mental limits, but it was for the best, to make them able to survive.

Before we could even get near the survivors’ camp in the west, I already had the necessary amount to create the cape. I could barely wait to create and test it, but I contained my excitement because Claire and Harry would bother me. Their intentions were good, but annoying things were annoying even when those were done with good intentions.

Since the survivors’ camp in the west was farther away than the one in the north, we had to kill many monsters. We tried to kill the monsters as fast as possible, but even so, the truck received a lot of damage. Soon, they will have to upgrade the truck or add an auto-repair function. Unfortunately for them, I won’t be able to help. Until I get the meditation skill, I won’t use a single evolution coin.

Although we faced a lot of monsters on the way, once we were three miles away from the survivors’ camp, we didn’t encounter many monsters. Something was off, and everyone looked worried.

“I think we shouldn’t approach more than this.” Harry declared while frowning.

Sarah would use a lot of MP to spy the survivors’ camp from that distance, and she wouldn’t be able to do that for a long time, but that couldn’t be helped. While Harry kept driving around a block, Sarah began to use the espionage drone and soon she understood why didn’t find many monsters in that part of the city.

“I can see some jeeps moving around, and those are equipped with mounted machine guns,” Sarah informed. “There are four of them, one in the north, other in the south, the west and east of the survivors’ camp. They also are in a hotel identical to ours, but something is weird.”

Even weirder than human beings using other human beings as bait and batteries? I couldn’t imagine what Sarah was seeing. But still, they fought a lot to be able to create four jeeps equipped with machine guns. The persons in the jeeps were probably scouts, and they were responsible for keeping the perimeter around the survivors’ camp safe.

“What do you think is strange Sarah?” Rose asked.

“Each jeep has four persons,” Sarah answered while scratching her head. “But I don’t see any women among them.”

“What is so weird about that?”

In my opinion, she was the weird one to see something strange in that fact. It wasn’t like all women had useful skills like Sarah, Rose, and Claire.

“Sarah, tell us what you can see near and inside the hotel,” Harry said.

“I can’t get too close, or they will see the drone,” Sarah said. “They have four towers around the hotel, there are two men in those towers, and they are equipped with very long rifles. The snow is making it difficult to see from afar, so I’m not sure about the things inside the hotel. Maybe I’m wrong, but I can't see a single woman outside or inside the hotel.”

Now that was weird. Those hotels were big, but, what were the odds of us not finding a single woman in the lobby precisely at that time? Two minutes passed, and Claire didn’t say a single word, by her expression, she looked surprised with something. We didn’t have time to waste, and she didn't tell us what we wanted to hear.

“Sara,” Claire asked. “What’s wrong?”

Sarah opened her mouth, but no sound came out of it. She did that a few times, and then she breathed deeply to compose herself.

“I can see a woman,” Sarah answered. “A dozen of good looking guys surround just one, and she, none of them are wearing shirts, and they look to be very muscular.”

So much useless information, what was she trying to imply with that? We just needed to know if those people would be good allies or not. Since I couldn’t see or feel any monsters nearby, I decided to see what Sarah was seeing; my eyesight was better so I would be able to see more than Sarah was able to see. And just like her, I became speechless.

“My God… I fought for my life for more than thirty days, and an unknown woman had time to create a reverse-harem.”

I saw a woman seated on a throne while being fed and massaged by a group of bodybuilders… nothing would surprise me more than that. Not even if one day I see a mutant dinosaur… please. I don’t want to see one.