As Avelina stepped into the ‘camp’ of the ‘ground floor group’, which she realized she’d need to give a proper name soon enough, the first thing that she noticed was the thick stench of death that assaulted her nose akin to a wall of stench.

Even with all that had happened, she could feel bile rise up her throat and from the looks of it, she wasn’t alone. Even the normally stoic Jacob and Jennifer were having trouble and the already nervous Klaus was bending over and desperately trying to hold the content of his stomach down. The fact that Monica was still staying behind in the camp, alone at Jacob’s request, didn’t seem to help to calm him down.

The moment that Avelina felt that she could see through the tears that had formed in the corners of her eyes, clouding up her vision, she could finally get a good look at the source. In the room, there were two large piles of bodies. While she hadn’t found the pile of human bodies, including the ones she had seen when she originally arrived in this room, she did see a pile of strange oversized rats.

It seemed that no one had wanted to touch them so far, causing the corpses to pile up around the perimeter they set up near the door to the basement.

After her initial shock, she decided to take a proper look at the bodies of the rats. Quickly she realized something unsettling about them. Each of the corpses looked more twisted and unfinished than the last, almost as if someone had stopped an evolution in the middle of the process by pressing the B button and instead of their partner reverting back to their former form, they got stuck with traits of both.

Honestly the fact that they were helping these people had surprised her for a moment, but it made sense. Jacob didn't want them to hog all the experience from the rats, as that would make them too dangerous if they survived. Still, he had also told them to let every person they could die to lower their numbers a bit, hence why he had her attack the wounded guy before, plausible deniability. The story was that he succubmed to his wounds and they came to check out what was going on.

“You-”, She called out to one of the women loitering around while Jacob and Craig were having an angry discussion, probably about the dead guy, “Show me one of the more recent bodies.”

“M-me?”, The older woman, slightly too heavy, almost squeaked out.

“Yes, did I stu-”, As she was about to snap at her she caught herself at the last second, “Sorry for snapping, nerves. Could you please show me to one of them?”

Somehow even though she had even caught herself before she could get verbally ugly, the woman didn’t really seem that calmed down. For a moment a rush of annoyance flared up in the blonde as she wanted to demand what she had done that she deserved being acted like that around-

Before having that flame doused by the realization that these people were justified in how they felt.

To them, she most likely was just another one of Jacob’s little murder friends and given what had happened a few days ago, she didn’t blame them all for being jumpy around them. Honestly, the thing that hurt her the most was the simple fact that she couldn’t even deny the accusations and fears they held for her.

That stung.

Still, fear was a good motivator. The woman awkwardly guided her over to one of the rat corpses and pointed at it from a distance before speaking up once more, “We don’t get too close. Sometimes a living one hides amongst the dead...they got Liesbeth like that..”

“Hmm”, Avelina grunted to show that she had heard the girl before leaning as close to the pile that she could without having to actually get near it.

She inspected the creature from head to too. Its bulky frame, its slightly elongated neck, its disproportionate bulky forearms. The way that its stubby legs seemed to be bending a little bit weirdly and stiffly and then finally tried to get as good of a look at the curve that the back made, all while mentally making a few notes.

“Do you have one of the first ones still around?”, She finally turned to ask the woman next to her.

“No!”, the pudgy receptionist jumpily replied, “We just stacked...the pile on top of them. I’m sorry!”

Avelina’s blue eyes flickered up for a moment, annoyed at the way that she had been interacted with like some common thug, even when she was being somewhat polite. For a moment she debated explaining it and trying to get this woman to relax somewhat, before shaking her head. There was no point. She probably wouldn’t believe her either way.

“Point me out to one of the youngest you can then.”, she amended her request, her mood turning fouler. That would make it somewhat more difficult. Still, she’d manage.

Once she was pointed towards one of the older corpses, she could see a few hints of visible decay, nothing much. Just mainly that the stench that came from it was more pungent. She compared the features of this rat to that of the one she had already finished appraising before nodding her head and letting out a soft sigh.

“Shit.”, A rare curse left her lips as she stormed over to Jacob.

As she got closer to the pair of arguing men, she could slowly hear snippets of their conversation, but frankly wasn’t too interested in the powerplay that Jacob was no doubt trying to pull. What she had just figured out was more unsettling.

“And I say we don’t have anything left to give!”, Craig replied indignantly.

“Jacob-”, Avelina interrupted the conversation, “A word.”

For a moment, annoyance flashed through her leader’s eyes. Most likely annoyed at having one of his ‘subordinates’ act this casual with him in front of the ‘enemy’. Still, whatever jab he was about to make died on his tongue as he noticed the serious expression on Avelina’s face. Jacob was many horrible things, but dense wasn’t one of them.

“Yes? What did you find out.”, He asked, crossing his arms as he let his gaze drift to Craig.

“I don’t know if these people realized yet-”, Avelina started, gesturing roughly at the man next to her, “But those rats are still evolving. The fresher the corpse, the more human they appear. At first, they were really just slightly hunched over rats, but the later ones, their necks, spine and legs are more advanced and geared towards bipedalism. I might have even seen a stubble of a thumb on the paws of some..”

“Frankly, it is insane that something like this can change throughout hundreds of years, let alone a single day.”, She finally added, “I assume that if they get a few more days they’ll be able to properly walk on hind legs and wield crude weapons.”

Jacob nodded, for once genuinely grateful for the information before turning his gaze towards Craig, “And when would you have told us.”

“We didn’t know,” He huffed back, “And besides what even does it matter? Wow, the rats trying to kill us are changing slightly-”

“CRACK-”, The sound of Jacob’s fist impacting Craig’s face came out of nowhere but drew quite a bit of attention. The few fighters on Craig’s side, who weren’t guarding the door, quickly scrambled to their feet.

“The fuck you mean it isn’t important!”, Jacob almost roared out, “If those bastards are getting more human we need to kill them now.”

For once Avelina found herself agreeing with Jacob without any moral complications. If those rats managed to actually get big enough to be considered small adults, they’d probably kill everyone here with sheer numbers and that was before they could even get their hands on the weapons of the people they killed.

“How many fighters do you have left.”, Jacob added, glancing at Craig who was being helped up. His people didn’t seem to be too prone to stepping in the conflict as a few of them could see the reasoning behind Jacob’s anger and although they very much were enemies, the rat people hellbent on killing all of them were a bit more important.

“Fifty-three, if you push the definition a bit,” A tanned and well-built man interrupted the group. He was one of the few people who didn’t seem to be wearing some kind of business suit and instead had a more casual outfit. Still, that didn’t do much of hiding his bulging muscles that almost seemed to pop through his shirt.

Vaguely Avelina remembered him as the man who had walked past her while she had been staring at this very building. Another one of the people who didn’t quite belong in this specific Culling. He had a mean-looking axe hanging from his hips and a few bloodied bandages poorly wrapped around his arm.

“Barkley,”, He offered his hand to both Avelina and Jacob, “I’m in charge of the defences.”

As Avelina shook his head, she raised one of her eyebrows and let her gaze drift to Craig. It seemed that he wasn’t quite the leader that he styled himself to be if they already had a sub-leader for the only important task that was going on.

“Avelina-”, Jacob added after shaking the man’s hand, eyes narrowed, “Go and treat his wounds.”

For a moment Avelina wanted to protest, wondering why she’d have to help one of the ‘enemies’, before realizing that Jacob had probably figured out that Barkley wasn’t supposed to be here as well and thus would be here and thus could potentially be brought over.

The large man, easily standing at 6’5”, raised an eyebrow as he glanced at Avelina. He seemed more curious than anything else. Jay passed her bag with medical supplies to Avelina, more than enough to keep a group of ten supplied, far from enough to threaten fifty people.

“Medical student.”, She simply clarified, causing the older man to nod.

She guided the man to a nearby free chair before sitting down in front of him and pulling out a few supplies. First, she used one of the daggers that they kept around and only used for medical procedures to cut open the bandages that were wrapped around his left arm, allowing her to inspect the wound.

It was pretty bad looking at first glance, but the bite-mark that it was covering up hasn't gone down to his bone.

“This is going to sting.”, She said as she put a bit of the rubbing alcohol that they had found on some bandages, the most sterile thing they had and leaned forward to rub the wound clean. To Barkley’s credit, he barely made a noise. Still, barely making noise didn’t mean that his face hadn't been contorting the entire time that she was trying to disinfect that messy wound.

“I can bandage it up normally and it will probably heal, but if you are up for it, I’ll stitch you up.”, Jacob had asked her to treat him, but she wasn’t going to be sticking a needle in that massive tower of muscle without clear consent and a warning.

“Just bandage it. My muscles are pretty dense, so I doubt you’d get a needle through it.”, He replied, offhandedly revealing one of his skills.

Avelina’s eyes shot upwards, meeting the man’s serious gaze. It was clear that it wasn’t some ‘slip-up’, but a deliberate action. For a moment she hesitated. She didn’t want to tell too many people her skill, but as she tested out his muscles with the needle, she could feel a resistance greater than normal.

“Don’t worry about it.”, She finally replied and pushed her [Clean Cuts] enhanced needle into his skin, penetrating through his defences with the disinfected needle, allowing her to cleanly stitch the wound close.

“Handy.”, Was the only thing he replied after wiping some of the sweat from his brow. After all, disciplined and hardy as he was, it wasn’t an easy task to have your flesh stitched back up without painkillers. It had exhausted him, mentally, something which most likely was making his tongue a bit looser than it should be, “So what is he like, Jacob.”

Avelina didn’t even need to glance up, having seen Jennifer hanging around her as a guard with her while she had been stitching him up, causing her to simply smile and pat him on his good shoulder.

“Different from Craig-”, She replied vaguely, not wanting to potentially let anyone overhear her badmouthing Jacob as the last thing she needed was that psycho looking over his shoulder constantly, “You’ll see."

Experience gained for healing [Brawler, Lv. 6].

Huh. That was new.