On the way back, I didn’t avoid the fights against the monsters. Even though I obtained the skill that I wanted, I didn’t get much evolution orbs. I decided to fight them because I was also close to break my sensorial limit for the thirtieth time. So, I killed every single monster that I saw on the radar. Thanks to it, soon, I heard that annoying voice again.

‘Congratulations, you broke your sensorial limit thirty times. Now you will receive a random sensorial skill… your new skill has been selected; you obtained the skill: Search.’

Skill list:

Concentration Lv04 18%: Raises your attack power and range by 3% each hour. The bonus resets when you sleep.

Crosshair: Lv09 12%: Creates a crosshair in your field of vision to aim at enemies.

Radar: Creates a radar in your field of vision to detect any living creature on your surroundings.

Effective Range: Sensorial limit (30) x 10 meters.

Analyze Lv03 22%: Analyze and show enemies status and information. Cost: 01 MP

Spiritual Knife Lv01 20%: a weapon created by the spiritual energy of its user. It can be safely stored inside the user’s body. 10 MP will be used to summon and to store the weapon. It's able to ignore the target's defense. This knife will disappear after being used a single time.

Domination Lv 03 25%: It grants the user the ability to command other living beings. To activate the skill, you need their permission. Survivors currently under your control: 39

Meditation Lv 01 00%: By putting yourself in the lotus position, you can restore one point of MP every minute. Your MP can also increase by one point every four consecutive hours of meditation. Moving or receiving damage cancels the skill

Search Lv01 0%: By activating the skill, the user can search for specific items, monsters, or survivors in a particular range around him. Effective Range: Sensorial Limit (30) x 5 meters. Cost: 10 MP.

It was a pretty useful skill, but I already had the radar, and with my improved senses, I didn’t have to search for any living beings, I already could feel them far away from me. So, for the time being, that skill would only be useful for one thing: to find the mutant plants. I didn’t confirm the existence of those plants, but I was pretty sure that I was right.

‘Let’s see… I want to find a plant which can permanently increase my MP.’

I felt the energy leaving my body, and I also saw a light crossing half of the effective range of the radar. For a second, the radar became a sonar, but I didn’t find anything and nothing appeared in the radar.

‘I guess this kind of plant is scarce; I should look for something less formidable. I want to find a plant which can recover MP.’

Again the radar became a submarine sonar, but this time I saw something flashing on the radar and I also felt the presence and energy of a strange object. That had been a new experience; I had never felt the energy of anything. I could find living beings because they had a presence, and because of their movements, but I couldn’t feel their energy. Probably because energy wasn’t something which I could see or touch.

As expected, the plant was under the snow, but it was also hidden under a fallen tree. It took a while to get rid of the snow and move the tree, but eventually, I found a strange blue, glowing plant. It looked very frail, and it had a single leaf on it.

Blue Spiritual Plant: By eating it, you can recover 50 MP. While alive, this plant can produce every ten days a leaf which can recover 10 MP.

It was more useful than I thought, I could probably receive at least twenty evolution coins by selling it. But, the other effect of the plant picked my interest. While it would take a while to produce a single leaf, the leaf was terrific. I could probably eat ten of those quickly to recover a lot of MP. But, first I had to obtain ten of those before eating so many.

‘I can probably create more of those using the statue and create a garden, as weird as this may sound, it will be convenient to have it. But how can I keep this alive? Just putting inside a vase with sand?’

It was weird, the city was full of monsters and troublesome persons, and I was thinking about gardening. Although it was strange, we had to use everything useful in our favor to raise our chances of survival. While it may sound like a waste of time, we could create hundreds of those and make the survivors who don’t want to fight to take care of the plants. It wasn’t like we had to force all women, children, and elders to fight on the front lines.

‘Well, I’ll keep this with me for the time being.’

The cost of the skill was high, so I couldn’t just use anything that I could find anyway. Because I took my time fighting the monsters, I only arrived at the hotel after dusk, and like always a depressing atmosphere welcomed me. I sighed because of it, monsters were dangerous, but they were far less annoying. To my surprise, even Harry, Claire, and the others looked depressed. The first to notice my arrival was Claire, at first, she looked relieved, but then she showed an angry expression. The others noticed Claire expressions and also looked at the entrance door and saw me. Although only Harry looked relieved, all the others seemed pretty pissed.

‘I’ll just ignore them and began my training.’

That was my intention, so to avoid any problems, I touched the statue for a second, and then I left after confirming the safety of my family, but they blocked the way to the second floor. Again, with the sole exception of Harry, all the others looked at me with their arms crossed and questioning faces even Sabrina looked at me like that. It was kind of annoying being looked like that by a teenager, I guess an impulsive and stupid person like me doesn’t deserve much respect.

“We need to talk.” Sandra declared.

“Sure, let’s talk. But please be quick, I need to use every minute in this place to increase my MP.”

I finally learned the meditation skill; it would be a waste not use it every single moment inside of that place. Although I had a point, they looked even more pissed.

“Sit down,” Sandra said, showing a lot of anger in her voice and eyes.

“It seems this is going to take a while, let’s grab some chairs then.”

“No, you will sit on the floor.” Sandra declared. “So, sit down, right now.”

Geez, why was she acting like she were my mother? She already had a son and a daughter, and she also had to look after more than eighty survivors. She didn’t have to waste so much energy on a single person. But for the time being, the best thing I should do was follow her commands, or things would get a bit noisy. However, I really didn’t have time to waste, so I sit down and put myself in the lotus position.

“Are you trying to make fun of me, boy?” Sandra asked.

Her anger was reaching a whole new level; seriously, she really had to get so upset because I disappeared for a few days? I don’t think that was the cause; something happened while I was in the north. Although they didn’t look wounded or tired. Anyway, I knew that she was older, and she deserved respect, and I also knew that I was prone to annoy other people. But even so, it was hard to keep my composure in that kind of situation. She was one of the leaders here, but that didn’t mean that I had to explain or report to her all of my actions. Also, I didn’t have to obey her like a machine. Cooperation was fundamental, but to some degree, we all need to have some freedom. Or eventually, the survivors will become unable to make decisions for themselves.

“This is my new skill; if I stay like this for a few hours, I can increase my MP.”

That skill was handy, as long as I don’t move suddenly, I could even sleep while the skill was active, although I will have to practice a little bit to be able to do that. But it seemed that I also didn’t have much credibility among them, most of them looked at me suspiciously, like I was trying to make fun of them.

“It seems like I’m about to be lectured, why don’t you start, Claire? You are a teacher, after all.”

“Oh, yes,” Claire said, showing a cold smile. “This is going to be one hell of a lecture. Where have you been for the past five days?”

“Hunting monsters, what else I would do outside? Also, I guess I was doing some research; I found an interesting plant. It’s in my backpack; I will show it to you guys in four hours.”

Claire looked at me, suspiciously, but she didn’t continue. It seemed that she didn’t reveal about our secret talk to the others.

“Really?” Sandra sarcastically asked. “For five entire days and nights, you hunted monsters?”

“Yes, I’m getting the hang of it. Also, I learned the best way to destroy those beehives, just use some lightning, and the bees will become paralyzed and slowly die. However, that also will make their honey turn into stones.”

They looked pleased with the news, but only for a second, they wouldn’t let me go with just that.

“Your clothes look pretty clean, considering the fact that you fought against monsters for five days straight,” Sandra said.

“I created those before leaving; I wouldn’t have time to take a shower after all.”

The truth was, my clothes were almost destroyed and were dirty with blood, thanks to Ken. So I created a brand new set of my clothes while I was in that hotel.

“Ethan, please tell us the truth,” Harry asked with a serious expression. “You didn’t do something crazy outside, right?”

“Do you really think, I, from all people, would do something crazy? I’m almost the pinnacle of prudence and caution; I would never do something irresponsible.”

Harry laughed a little bit, the others seemed a bit less angry, but my sarcasm made me return to the start point. The first ones to give up on that were Rose and Sarah. Rose sighed deeply, and Sarah looked at me, showing a worried expression.

“Ethan, we all know that you aren’t the type to stay idle for a long time,” Rose said. “But, there are other ways to keep your mind busy. You don’t have to put yourself in danger, and you don’t have to do everything by yourself. I already told you this before, but you didn’t believe me. In that case, I won’t prove that with my words, but with my actions. I will wait patiently for the day you will be able to trust on us.”

The two sisters were really a fantastic combo. Sarah could transmit her feelings just by showing her pure and sweet smile, Rose was rough, but she didn’t hesitate in saying those words. She would always express her feelings without holding them back. For a second, I considered changing a little bit, try to rely even a little bit on others. I thought about sharing my actions, my motives, and feelings with them. But soon I put those thoughts on the back of my mind. That wasn’t a thing that I wanted to do; besides, if I really wanted to keep solving the problems from the shadows, I had to keep some distance from them.

Even I wasn’t such asshole to say something sarcastically at Rose’s sincere words, so, I just kept my mouth shut while the two sisters were leaving. Harry looked quite pleased, thanks to Rose and Sarah actions, but his mother, sister, and Claire still looked upset.

“It seems this one hell of a lecture is already over, so, what happened while I was away?”

Claire glared at me, but I ignored her. Sandra and Sabrina, on the other hand, looked more tired and annoyed, but they didn’t look at me, they looked at the map on the ceiling.

“Well, you see,” Harry said while carefully choosing his words. “Two days ago, the woman in the west came here with her men.”

That surprised me a lot, but what surprised, even more, was the fact that they didn’t fight. I mean, I didn’t saw any sign of battles outside the hotel.

“She didn’t come to fight,” Harry added. “She came to warn us, and she demanded tribute.”

“Tribute?”

“Yes,” Harry answered while looking very uncomfortable. “She warned us to not mess with her, and she chose five men of this hotel, and she demanded us to offer her those men. She gave us ten days to send those to her.”

I was speechless; I couldn’t believe such a thing happened. That woman was even crazier than I thought. She understood that we weren’t a threat to her, so she came here only to say that. How could such a nonsensical woman obtain so much power to control almost one thousand survivors? No matter how much time I would waste thinking about such a question, I would never find an answer.

“Let me guess you are among those five men and she looked very interested in you.”

“How did you know?” Harry asked, astonished.

Claire facepalmed, and Sandra’s and Sabrina’s face were red thanks to the anger. They couldn’t tolerate the fact that woman was treating Harry like an object. I finally could understand why they were so upset, Sandra was just using me to relieve her stress. I guess that was for the best, or else she would do something crazy when he sees that woman again.

“Anyway, what’s the plan? Sacrifice a few to save the majority? What the chosen ones said about the fact?”

“We won’t negotiate with the crazy bitch,” Sandra declared. “And we won’t sacrifice anyone.”

“Are you sure? I don’t think their treatment would be that bad.”

I mean, what would be the worst thing she could force them to do? Massage her? Lick her feet? Or they would join in her night adventures? I don’t think she would use them as bait to lure the monsters, but even if that were the case, anyone would try to keep some distance from a woman who let hundreds of women and children die.

“Not a single one of the five wished to join her side,” Sandra said. “So, we will fight. She is dead wrong if she thinks that she can do whatever she wants because the city is full of monsters.”

I guess this time I won’t have to do the dirty job on the shadows. I honestly felt good because of it; even though I preferred that way, I wasn’t smart enough to solve big problems on my own.

“So, we will make contact tomorrow with the survivors’ camp in the north and negotiate with them.” Sandra declared.

“I see, then I’ll rest as much as possible to go with you guys.”

“No, you won’t go with us,” Sandra said while shaking her head.

“What?”

“We have been too lenient with you,” Sandra said with her arms crossed. “You have to grow up and understand this city isn’t now a place where you can do whatever you want and when you want. So, to make sure that you won’t do anything irresponsible again, we selected a few individuals to keep an eye on you. They will follow wherever you go.”

“I think you are getting ahead of yourself; there’s no one here who can follow me if I use my invisibility. Besides, I won’t disappear anymore. So, you can rest assured.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Sandra said. “Claire will be responsible for keeping an eye on from now on; recently, she obtained the necessary skill to do it. So, she will follow you twenty-four hours a day, and since the kids are always with her, they will follow you too. You can hunt as much as you want on this hotel surroundings, but keep in mind the kids will be in danger if you act without thinking. From now on, you two and the kids will be responsible for keeping our surroundings peaceful.”

I became speechless with that news. That would be way too troublesome, to make matters worse, I felt a chill when I saw Claire’s mischievous smile.