At Silver Oak University, in a small dim room within the medical building, seven people sat or stood around the room in a makeshift circle. These people were Sylas and Swain, who came to rescue Sam, and, inadvertently, rescued three other nursing students and a medical professor. Swain was actively trying to convince two of the girls to go along with the plan he made.
"Almost everyone around us turned into these zombies. We can't just sit in this room until someone comes to us. We don't know when that could be. We need to go look for other people, for food, for water!"
"Exactly! Almost everyone turned into a zombie! They want to kill and eat us! We can't go out there with them. We have to wait until someone saves us. Don't be stupid and put everyone in danger just because you have a hero complex. You already failed once and we had to come save you!"
One of the nursing students, Cam Fitch, was arguing against Swain's plan to leave the temporary safety of their dim room. She was objecting to every point he made while getting progressively louder with each objection. The plan was being discussed for the last five hours while Sylas and Swain were healing. Cam and Swain had been the loudest voices once the possibilities were whittled down to just these two. Finally tired of the commotion, Professor Medina stood up to take charge of the situation.
"Enough you two. If you can't come to a conclusion then we'll vote for the two plans and see what the group decides. You don't have to vote. All those that want to stay in this room until someone finds us, raise your hand now."
Cam instantly raised her hand with a smug expression on her face until she looked around the room. The only other person with their hand up was another student, Diana.
"That's two for staying. Those for searching for other people."
Everyone but the two who voted before and the teacher raised their hands.
"There we have it. We'll be leaving when we're ready."
Cam Fitch stomped her foot, let out a muffled scream, and started cursing everyone under her breath. Sylas watched the show with a hint of amusement. He knew about this classmate of his wife's and she was acting exactly how he expected when she didn't get her way.
He removed the bandages on his arms to see the scratches from the zombies had mostly healed. The only evidence of the precious wounds was the light pink new skin that was still in the process of healing. It was the same for his chest where the squirrel had torn him up. Getting out of the bed he spent the last seven hours in, Sylas stretched his body like he had seen Swain do during warmups for his baseball practices and games. He felt sore as he stretched but there wasn't any pain which made him appreciate Sam and her skill even more than he already did.
Swain also removed his bandages and stretched him, but was much more vocal with his praise of Sam's skills. Cam, who was sitting in the corner of the room, shot a look filled with venom at the back of Sam's head upon hearing Swain's words which Sylas had noticed.
Swain stretched out his arms, opening his hands to the sky and then stood still for a few seconds until there was suddenly a large quad headed axe in his hands. He had learned that the System provided an inventory space for gear dropped by killed enemies. They had tried to put other objects into his inventory but none of them disappeared from his hands. The drawback was that it took five seconds to summon the weapon from the inventory so he would be pretty helpless if he was caught off guard.
Since Swain had a new weapon, his bat went to Sam as she was the only one who stepped up to help during the fight with the pack of zombies.
"If anyone has a bag, you should empty it before we leave. We'll need to be able to carry any food we find. We should also bring some medical supplies."
Looking around Sylas had noticed three backpacks scattered about the room so he incorporated them into the plan as well. He had them fill one of the backpacks with medical supplies, which Professor Medina slung on her back, and the other two backpacks were picked up by Diana and the student who voted to leave the room. Cam had huffed and looked away when Sylas looked at the backpack next to her.
"Alright, listen up. Our final objective of this outing is to get to the student center. We've discussed it and thought it's likely that's where people may gather in this situation. There is a large area in the building for us to gather and it should be decently easy to fortify the couple of entrances to the building. We'll be heading to the cafeteria first to stock up on food. Remember that we don't know the situation outside anymore. It's about eight hours at this point so the entire situation may have changed. Stay in a line and stay quiet as we move. Get the attention of the person in front of you if you see something."
With a short speech, Sylas renewed his grip on his bat and slowly opened the door to the room. Peeking through the opening, he didn't see any movement therefore he continued to slowly open the door all the way. He stepped out of the room motioning for the group to follow him. Swain was directly behind him ready to swing at a sign of movement.
They crept through the hallways of the first floor of the medical building. It was deathly quiet with the smell of death lingering in the air. Someone stepped in a puddle of blood which made their shoes squeak with each step against the vinyl flooring. Sylas heard a muffled noise so he looked through a glass pane of a door into one of the classrooms they were passing. Several zombies were in the room with one of them running into the projector screen that was pulled down creating a noise with every step. He could see several bodies among the desks that had been devoured.
With another nod to continue moving, the group came upon the scene of their earlier fight. It didn't appear as though anything had disturbed the corpses once Sylas and Swain were brought away to heal. Sylas saw the large zombie with an IV pole still sticking out of the back of its skull. He used [Analyze] on the zombie and was surprised to get more results this time.
[Zombie]
[Level: 5]
[Tier: 0]
[Rank: Baron]
[Strength: 15]
[Vitality: 10]
[Dexterity: 3]
[Agility: 4]
[Intelligence: 1]
Looking at its stats, Sylas understood why Swain's many bat swings didn't do any noticeable damage as well as why he and Swain were knocked down in only one hit. This zombie had the highest stats Sylas had seen so far although he did admit to himself this was only the fourth time seeing stats so far. He had seen his own, Sam's, Swain's, and now this zombie's. What he didn't know was if he could see the stats because he had leveled up, helped to kill it, or because it was dead.
He shook himself out of the train of thought and continued over to the large glass door entrance of the building. Stopping for a moment as he scanned the outside of the building, he reiterated a few points in a low voice.
"Remember, stay quiet, stay in the group, and get the attention of others if you see something."
Sylas placed Swain a step in front of himself as they left the medical building and turned right towards the cafeteria. He wanted Swain to lead so he could pay more attention to their sides and rear. Having someone he could trust guarding the front let him relax enough to take in the full scene. When he did he got a little confused. He could see some corpses that weren't like the others.
When the zombies had their fill of their kills you could tell it was a human who did it by the shape of the teeth marks on the remaining skin and the four nail scrapes from their hands, but some of these corpses were different. There weren't any scratch marks or recognizable teeth marks on these. While confused, Sylas kept moving along with the group for a few more minutes until he saw the first one.
There was a corpse of a zombie and it had been torn apart and devoured. Sylas didn't think another zombie would have done that otherwise the ones he had seen in the medical classroom would have been tearing at each other instead of coexisting. He placed his hand on Swani's shoulder to stop him and the group halted.
"There's something off with this one." Sylas motioned to the zombie remains. "It's almost as if a"
Before he was able to finish a growl sounded behind the group, followed by another three. Spinning around to face it, he finished "dog ate it."
A pack of four dogs were twenty feet away from the group stalking towards them while growling. Swain, Sylas, and Sam started to slowly walk towards them while Sylas quietly laid out a plan.
"Swain, try to hold two of them until we can help, finish them if you can. I'll get the other two. Sam, you stay a couple feet behind me and look for an opening to hit one of them. If the dogs get past us then use the backpacks as a shield."
As he finished speaking, everyone but Cam and Sylas himself felt a small boost to their stats. Sylas used [Analyze], saw two level 4s, a level 5, and a level 6 [Mutt]. Sylas muttered "They're getting stronger and fast" under his breath as he got ready to fight.
The level 6 [Mutt] howled as a signal to start and the pack of dogs ran at the group.