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"Well…" Norbert averted his eyes. "It\'s been a while since I last had any booze."

Mathew froze in his spot. For but a moment, all he could do was blink.

\'Wait, is he for real?\' the young man gulped down his saliva. \'Still, booze…\' his thoughts quickly changed their direction as he focused on the item Norbert brought up. \'This might not be the worst idea ever!\'

Mathew only drank alcohol a few times in his life. It was something he could easily do without in his life. Yet, he was more than aware of the potential benefits that possession of alcohol could bring in this broken world.

\'It can serve as a reward, disinfectant, spice for cooking,\' he thought, his eyes turning towards his wives. \'Or spice for some nights,\' he thought, gulping down his saliva at the mere idea of adding vodka or wine to his nightly escapades.

"We…" Mathew opened his mouth, ready to support Norbert\'s proposal…

"We can\'t decide on the targets of our expedition simply because you want to have a drink," Nadia said. She raised her head and looked at the policeman along the line of her nose, not holding back the scorn bursting out from her eyes. "And we won\'t be able to bring it back with us either. So, if you really want to stock up on booze, shouldn\'t we leave the supermarket for the very end?"

Mathew swallowed down the words he was just about to utter.

"You are right and wrong," he then said, refusing to give up on the idea.

Now that he thought about all the perks of securing alcohol for his group, he wasn\'t going to abandon it just like that.

\'Although it\'s a good thing Nadia spoke so quickly, otherwise I would end up going against her ideas,\' Mathew thanked fate before clearing his throat and raising his voice a little. "I think we should still go to the supermarket. But rather than bringing all the stuff with us, we should secure what\'s valuable and hide it away in a less conspicuous place," he suggested.

"If the shop you guys want to go for isn\'t raided yet, it\'s likely to be raided sometime soon," Leila joined in on the conversation. "We don\'t know whether other survivors have the same convenient access to basic supplies as we do, so shops and warehouses might be prime targets for them."

"Guys, rather than discussing the shop option alone, we should rather compare it with our other objectives," Daria put in her two cents.

And just like that, the group started to move again. Yet, before they get to reach any real conclusion, Norbert twitched before stopping in his tracks.

"Guys, there is a small group of zombies ahead," he announced, stretching his hand to point at a nearby alley. "They already sensed us and will be coming out in a few seconds. There is a total of twenty-seven of them."

The entire group stopped.

A group of twenty-seven zombies couldn\'t even be considered a threat to them, not after all the levels they gained over the first three days.

\'Still, this is going to be one of the rare fights out in the open for us,\' Mathew thought, taking a deep breath and resting his hand on his saber\'s handle right as the zombies started to come out from beyond the corner. \'As such, we can\'t miss this exercise!\'

There were no evolved or advanced zombies in the group that Mathew\'s party encountered. Yet, there was something extremely peculiar about this small horde that the young man and his companions couldn\'t ignore.

"We were a little too late," Norbert muttered. He then tightened his hands into fists in a powerless fury.

The group of zombies consisted of three extremely worn-out ones that could still move only by some sort of miracle. The rest of the group, though, was in a pristine state, with only one or two wounds marking their bodies.

\'Just a little too late,\' Mathew thought, gritting his teeth.

Just a single look at the group was enough for everyone to realize that the zombies currently out for their blood… were humans until recently. Meaning, if they were to set out for the expedition a single day in advance, they would likely be in time to help out and gain twenty-four more followers rather than twenty-four more cores.

"Guys…" Mathew muttered after a moment, upon realizing that his entire group ended up frozen by the realization. "We were too late. There is no changing it now," he said, pulling out his saber and pointing its chipped blade at the nearest zombie. "The most we can do, right now, is to give them a proper closure."

Mathew didn\'t wait for anyone to stomach his words. Instead, he took a step forward before cutting the head of what used to be a teenage girl. She was still wearing her uniform which implied she attended a nearby middle school. Judging from her age, she was likely a senior, only a year away from entering high school.

\'What a pity,\' Mathew thought. Yet, as sad as he was, it didn\'t affect the speed at which he started to mow down the rest of the zombies.

"What a pity," Nadia muttered, voicing out Mathew\'s thoughts for him while jumping in to help out.

The rest of the group soon followed, clearing out the entire group in a matter of a single, short moment. And as they moved forward only a few paces and took a glimpse into the alley the zombies came out from, they could see a whole lot of zombie corpses resting on the asphalt road.

"Should we gather the cores?" Leila asked a pragmatic question. It was something that was on the top of everyone\'s mind, yet something no one dared to voice out.

Mathew took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

\'We should do it,\' he thought, gritting his teeth as the lifeless face of the young girl that he finished off first appeared before his face.

His entire body twitched.

\'How come is it affecting me?\' Mathew asked himself, weirded out by the sudden outburst of hesitation. \'I didn\'t feel any of it back when clearing the school out of zombies that I used to know, so how come I\'m troubled by victims I never met before in my life?\'

Mathew heaved a long sigh before rapidly slicing his saber down, forcing all the residual blood on it to fall down to the ground. He then knelled down and tore away a piece of cloth from one of the corpses before properly cleaning all the residue from the blade.

"I don\'t know what exactly…" Mathew muttered right as he threw aside the dirtied cloth and stood back up. "But something changed," he announced with a void look in his eyes.

"I don\'t see any zombies anywhere near," Norbert announced after a moment of silence that followed Mathew\'s statement.

"That means, they all died because they failed to kill those last three zombies," Daria whispered, her face twisting in slight anguish.

\'Something definitely changed,\' Mathew repeated in his thoughts. \'And not just for me. Everyone seems to be affected,\' he thought, looking around at his companions.

The young man closed his eyes yet again, keeping them shut for three long seconds. He then forced them open and took a deep breath.

"Isn\'t it annoying how we need to stop whenever we want you to scout the area?" Mathew suddenly threw a seemingly random sentence, eager to change the topic.

"Huh?" Norbert twitched, properly guessing Mathew\'s words were about him and his ability. "What do you mean?"

"It\'s just a random idea," Mathew said before putting a small grin on his lips, "but wouldn\'t it be nice to find a wheelchair for you?"