Novel Full 117 Strange fight
“Guys, let’s focus,” Mathew ordered in a hushed tone while raising his hand up.
The young man didn’t need to tell the girls to stop. The meaning behind his gesture was obvious enough for the rest of his group to fall into the line and slow down before coming to a complete stop.
“Enemy?” Nadia asked after slowly making her way to Mathew’s side.
“I can see a small group of them ahead,” Mathew whispered before pointing in the direction of the enemy with his hand. “There isn’t enough of them in that group to get any real number of cores,” he then commented, judging every possible scenario through the perspective of their objectives.
This was a scouting mission for a reason. A reconnaissance, one could say, as its greatest aim was for Mathew’s group to see for themselves how dangerous it was to wander outside the boundary of the fortress.
“I say we take them on,” Leila took her time to reach the head of the group. Even though she would usually display a pretty rowdy behavior when on a mission, she knew how to behave..
“I’m tempted to do just that,” Mathew admitted only to then bite down on his lips.
“But?” Leila asked, turning her eyes to Mathew’s face. “The way you said it, you have some doubts. What kind of doubts do you have?” she asked, only to turn her eyes to Nadia, confronting her disapproving look. “What, he asked us himself to not take his leadership for granted,” Leila pointed out before shrugging her shoulders.
“I’m worried that fighting them will attract more zombies,” Mathew explained the reason behind his hesitation before the small conflict between the girls could turn into a real argument.
‘Dealing with how not everyone within my group might like everyone else is a part of being the leader of the group, isn’t it?’ Mathew thought to himself before moving his focus back on the zombies ahead.
“Well, we won’t achieve anything by doing nothing,” Daria finally joined with the others after making sure the backside of the group was relatively safe. “Right now we can only pass by them, take some path around or just confront them,” she listed out the three absolute options they had.
“To move around them, we would have to make a huge arc,” Nadia pointed out. “That would only mean a risk of encountering other groups in less favorable areas, further away from the fortress.”
“And I don’t think we can move past them unnoticed,” Leila added while sparks of excitement appeared in her eyes.
‘She clearly wants to go in,’ Mathew thought, bitting on his lips even harder than before.
And then, his teeth cut right through the delicate skin of his lips, making a single drop of blood ooze out of his mouth.
“They started to move,” Nadia took a point.
‘Is it my blood that attracted them?’ Mathew instantly connected the dots only to then swallow a gulp of his saliva. “I guess that forces our hand,” he said, standing up to his feet while raising his ax on his shoulder.
The zombies saw him. And while one could hardly call them fast, they appeared to now move faster in their direction than when they simply sensed the blood.
“Take the sides, I will push the center,” Mathew ordered as he rushed ahead.
There was no telling how the zombies communicated. Did they communicate at all? Or did they all start to move because they all felt the scent of Mathew’s blood?
This and many more questions rushed through Mathew’s mind as he calmly walked in the direction of the approaching group of zombies.
Mathew pushed his left leg out once he got close enough. But instead of stepping on it, he used his extended leg to balance out the weight of his weapon pulling him to the back.
And from this extremely unstable position, Mathew took a wide swing from his shoulder, bringing the blade of his weapon down on the nearest zombie’s head.
“I already forgot,” Leila said while swinging her machete and freeing one of the zombies of the burden of carrying its head on its neck.
“Forgot what?” Nadia asked while kicking away a zombie that got too close to her, making its claws reach her fair skin by the hair width. She then used the momentum of her kick to turn around on her other leg before decapitating another zombie.
“I forgot how easy they are to kill,” Leila finished, slashing yet another head off a zombie’s neck.
“If you keep that speed up, you girls will make me inferior as a man,” Mathew jokingly pointed out. He then swirled in place with his ax only to cut right through a zombie’s chest, splitting it in half.
‘And I need to kill some of those zombies to level up,’ he thought, painfully aware that at the current moment, levelwise, he was the weakest in the whole group.
“As long as you are not tired by the nighttime, you will be okay,” Daria commented with a tiny smirk on her lips. She then swung her hand, only to claim another zombie’s head without even looking.
“That’s pretty sexist of you,” Mathew replied, unable to hold himself back from smiling.
This entire situation was insanely weird. They were in the middle of the combat with beings that were dead-set on killing them… And yet, they still had both the time and the freedom of mind to just chat and joke around.
“To think a day would come when someone would call me sexist!” Daria exclaimed in a faked act of exasperation. And at the same time, she swung her hand, cutting the throat of another zombie. “Fuck, I missed,” she then cursed, only to pounce on the injured zombie before smashing its head off its neck with a single slam of her fist.
“And now you got all dirty,” Nadia commented as she rolled her eyes. She then brought her machete down, slamming it right down the middle of the skull of a zombie she stepped on. “I don’t mean to lecture you, but if you act that reckless later on, won’t it become quite uncomfortable in the longer missions?”