Chapter 188: Breaking The Wall

"...That’s it?" Sophia asked blankly.

"That’s it?" Naomi was the one to reply, repeating the question as she stared at Sophia deadpan. "What else did you expect? A royal meal? Wagyu beef steak?"

"I mean, that would’ve been nice." Sophia nodded with a half shrug, completely bypassing Naomi’s underlying taunt as she casually brushed it aside like a speck of dust.

Standing just behind her, Carmen sighed softly to herself, knowing that her sister was going to go in a humble-bragging mode right about now. It was a well-worn routine, as inevitable as sunrise.

"Wagyu beef is quite good and gives a lot of energy. In addition, it’s about noon right now—I always used to eat it around this time, so it would’ve been a good dish." Sophia sighed wistfully, gazing toward the blood-flecked wallpaper of the corridor. "Unfortunately, I was separated from my family and my butler... I really miss their cooking. It was so delicious!"

Naomi’s eyelids twitched at Sophia’s words.

The green-haired baddie might be thinking that it was a genuine sob story, but in the eyes of Naomi and the other two girls, who came from modest and humble backgrounds, it just sounded like an absurd, out-of-touch flex!

Expensive gourmet meals for casual lunch? Having a personal family butler on call? What the hell—they didn’t even have a cleaning maid at home and had to do every single chore and task themselves! The sheer contrast between their lives and this aristocratic runaway’s made their teeth itch.

Luckily for them, Sophia didn’t continue to flex more. In her eyes, she genuinely wasn’t trying to brag. If she actually wanted to show off her family’s sheer ridiculous wealth, she could’ve reeled off a dozen casual details that would make the girls truly curse out loud that the world was profoundly unfair.

"Lucky me though, I found the perfect chef for me here! He cooks quite well!" Sophia clapped her hands together, the crisp sound startling the girls out of their annoyance.

"Chef? Here? What about the ingredients? Are you guys using the hotel’s ingredients?" Rhea’s eyes widened in sudden realization. "I suggested checking the kitchen storage out earlier, but the awakeners decided that it’s not wise to do so when our strongest people are napping nicely inside their room."

Sophia clicked her tongue and waved her slender index finger back and forth, adopting the posture of an ancient, knowledgeable big sister delivering life advice. "You still have a lot to learn, girls! Follow me!"

Saying that, Sophia swiftly stepped backwards, pivoted gracefully on her heels, and began to head towards the stairs leading up.

Carmen sighed, pulling her pink sunhat lower over her brow, and followed her as well.

Unfortunately, Rhea and the rest didn’t follow her.

They stayed planted firmly on the third-floor landing, their sneakers rooted to the patterned carpet.

Sophia paused three steps up, tilting her head in confusion. Her pistachio-green locks spilled over her shoulder as she looked back down at the unmoving group.

She genuinely couldn’t understand why they were still feeling so resistant. Were they worried about lurking zombies? Did they not know about her raw strength and mystical nature powers that could dispose of normal zombies in a single hit?

Spoiler: They didn’t know, because Sophia hadn’t even bothered to mention that she was an Awakened in the first place. To them, she was just an unarmed, slightly hungover rich girl dressed in delicate clothes.

Regardless, Sophia had once again found some girls her own age. This time, she really wanted to make friends, unlike last night when she was drunk out of her mind and barely capable of stringing together coherent sentences.

"What’s wrong?" Sophia asked calmly, resting a pale hand against the banister.

Rhea, Vivienne, and Naomi all exchanged quick, silent glances. There was a small, unmistakable flicker of vigilance in their eyes. No matter how cheery, bright, and harmless Sophia felt, they couldn’t just blindly trust a stranger out of nowhere in the middle of a brutal apocalypse.

If it were the normal times before the system arrived, joining an eccentric rich girl for a meal would’ve been completely fine. But not now, when blood lined the walls and trust was a rare commodity.

Though, it wasn’t something that could be said directly to her face without turning things hostile. So, without even speaking a single word out loud, the three girls wordlessly managed to reach an unspoken consensus: they were pushing the blame onto Fredrinn!

"We honestly have been saved by Fredrinn before, and although we are hungry, we just can’t leave him behind like this," Rhea said, offering a smooth blend of half-truth mixed with half-falsehood.

While it was the complete truth that she liked him, that he had saved her life, and that she was profoundly grateful, there was no way she would actually stay behind here just for that noble reason. In reality, she would rather be as far away from Room 308 as physically possible, if only to stop her brain from constantly imagining the scandalous, lewd scenes that had undoubtedly played out behind that locked door all night long.

"Yeah... He saved me too, and although I saved him first, I am not ungrateful, unlike him. I would rather stay behind..." Naomi was the next to speak, crossing her arms defensively and lifting her chin with false conviction. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ

And before Vivienne could go ahead with her own fabricated excuse, Sophia’s expression shifted.

The green-haired girl didn’t argue. She didn’t plead or try to reason with them.

Instead, Sophia suddenly moved towards them!

Her movement was terrifyingly abrupt—her speed was vastly superior to theirs, blurring into a green-and-white streak that kicked up a sharp gust of air along the corridor. Before any of the three girls could even gasp or raise their hands to defend themselves, Sophia crossed the distance in a fraction of a second.

BOOM!

A deafening crack tore through the hallway as Sophia buried her slender, delicate-looking fist straight into the reinforced concrete wall right next to the frame of the room 308!