CH 95

Chapter 95 – Day-to-day rescuing

It was now the second day of rescuing (and leveling up) activities.

“Who’s there!?” One person shouted.

“Who!?” Another shouted.

“I’ll take you to a safe zone!” I told to the people who called out to me.

But then, I heard a zombie groan.

“Not you!” Rintarou quickly stabbed his knife into the zombie’s head.

“O-o-ooh! I’m here! Help me!” The person shouted.

This time, we got a pretty good harvest.

It seems like quite a few people have been living near the shopping district.

We faced no drama in particular, and succeeded in rescuing thirteen people today.

I got three levels, and Iroha got two.

***

On the third day of rescue activities, we went to a residential area located behind the shopping district.

“Kimino Asuka…? No way…” A girl said as she saw us.

For the first time since we started those rescuing activities, we found a student who went to the same school as us.

“Oh my, it’s Katou. It’s been a while.” Asuka replied as she decapitated three zombies.

“Are you really Kimino…?” Katou muttered.

“I am.” Asuka replied.

In about three minutes, we wiped out all the zombies surrounding the mansion.

“It’s dangerous here, so why don’t you come with us to the school?” Asuka told Katou.

“Eh? Uhn… Is it really safe there…?” Katou asked.

“It is. And you can also shower there at night, so I recommend it.” Asuka replied.

We had heard that there was a well in the temple within the shopping district, so we created a barricaded road connecting it to the school.

Due to that, the water problem, which was previously quite worrisome, has now been mostly solved.

“U-uhn… Okay, I’ll go. I’ll persuade my family too.” Katou said.

“Alright, then prepare your luggage in thirty or so minutes, okay?

“Ah, you don’t need to bring a wallet with you though. Even if you bring one, we’ll probably just burn the money anyways.” Asuka replied.

That was not a lie. People at Miyabigaoka have started playing a game of burning 10,000 yen bills, to see which ones burned the brightest.

“I-I understand… I’ll do as you say, so… Please don’t leave me…” Katou said.

Then, when we were on the way home, Asuka told me, “You know… I was actually bullied by that girl before.”

Oh… “Well, I’m not sure if I need to say it, but getting revenge for that now would be…” I gave her a troubled reply.

But Asuka didn’t seem to mind it. Or rather, she smiled brightly, a smile that seemed to come from the bottom of her heart, “Revenge…? Aha, to be honest, I didn’t even consider it, you know?

“I think you might understand it, Senpai. What happened back in those days right now just feels… I don’t know, like such a faraway memory? It’s almost like an event that happened in a dream to me.”

And that was the end of our conversation on this topic.

As for Iroha, Mr. Norio and Kousuke’s team, they discovered a community of about thirty people hidden inside the station’s basement.

Those people were on a really rough spot, to the point they had to kill the elderly and babies just to reduce the number of mouths that needed to be fed.

When they were offered to come to the school for safety, they gladly accepted our offer.

Thanks to this, both me and Iroha got five levels at once.

We got some great results today!

***

Not much happened on the fourth day of rescues.

We might have already found most of the survivors in this area.

So, after we finished the usual search in the morning, we decided to spend the afternoon carrying supplies that were scattered around, instead of doing more rescuing.

I hadn’t really noticed it before, but the city’s center is really packed with supplies.

According to the teachers’ rough calculations, even if logistics were to stop completely, we should still be able to survive for ten or so years, just from using the supplies available in Tokyo.

Of course, it depends on how many people are alive, so it’s a rough estimate in the end.

On another note, some people have recently started saying that they were now living a richer life than what they lived before the world became like this.

But even if they say that, there is still a long way to go before we can go back to our old lives.

Electricity supply is insufficient, we don’t have access to fresh vegetables anymore, the shower water is cold…

On another note, thanks to the fact that many of the refugees were used to this kind of work, we were able to strengthen and extend the barricades.

For the time being, our immediate goals are to connect the school to the station with a safe road, then use the underground space below the station as an emergency shelter.

Things seemed to be progressing well, and the situation was fairly stable.

Of course, we never know when things might go awry though.

As for levels, both me and Iroha got one.

***

On the fifth day of rescuing, a clash between refugees occurred.

The more I listened to it, the more ridiculous the story was… Basically, it was a fight between drunken people.

They felt that they had no motivation to do anything in this apocalyptical world, so they decided to go violent in their drunken haze.

I can understand where the thoughts might have come from, but it’s no good to have a fistfight over that. Especially in this case, where they actually used broken beer bottles to fight.

Kousuke ended up having to intervene, and he ended up getting stabbed by one of the broken beer bottles on the stomach.

Of course, I was able to immediately recover him by using Healing Magic IV, but…

“To think I have to rely on your magic even for this kind of thing, Senpai… I-I-I-it hurts! It hurts! Be a bit more gentle! It hurts!” Kousuke said as I extracted the glass shards.

As for the two people that quarreled, Mr. Gouzou said that he gave them some severe punishment.

Apparently, Mr. Gouzou also got a reputation for giving tearful sermons to people who mess up, sermons that involve saying stuff like, ‘Those children are doing their best for us!’ or something.

On a side note, I didn’t even remember who were those people who got on the drunk fight. Had I seen them before?

Well, in any case, we were able to rescue three people today, but my level didn’t go up.

***

We decided to take a bit of a break from doing rescue operations.

We had looked around here and there, but we were finding basically nobody in a ten-kilometer radius from the school.

Still, since we knew that there could still be more people seeking help, we put out some posters pointing people to the school, saying that it was safe there.

Also, public order was starting to reach a good state now, so even ordinary people were able to walk outside the barricades to some extent.

The people making the barricades were also planning on expanding the walls soon.

Basically, they want to create a second safe area, to let people have a place to evacuate to, even if the first layer of barricades is breached. Similarly to that famous anime involving titans.

Also… We ended up stealing a bunch of plastic models from a local toy store, the kind that you need to assemble yourself.

Probably because of that, building plastic models ended up becoming a fairly popular hobby inside the school.

As a result of this new fad, a formerly unemployed man, who was incredibly knowledgeable with the methods of building plastic models, ended up becoming quite popular.

The school building started smelling of paint though, so a rule was quickly established, allowing people to only build plastic models on the roof.

***

And today, we decided to take a short trip to try finding more people.

We were using two light trucks for transportation.

Mr. Norio was driving the car ahead. The passengers were me, Iroha and Kousuke.

The car behind us was driven by Mr. Gozou. Rintarou, Ritsuko and Asuka were its passengers.

At one point we found a car blocking our way, but, after we drained its gas, Iroha blew the car away with a single punch.

She seems to have maxed out Superhuman Strength, so Iroha must now be more powerful than the monsters, never mind the zombies…

“I hope we can find some people today.” Iroha muttered while lightly rocking on the truck’s seat.

“Yeah, hopefully so. I also want to try leveling Healing Magic and Special Sword Skill to the limit, like how Momoka asked me to.” I replied.

Furthermore, I also want to start improving the Attack Power skill.

The Defense and Magic Resistance skills are quite helpful, after all, even if I’m not actively aware of what they’re doing for me. Attack Power will probably feel similar.

I was quite relaxed as I thought of those things…

“W-what the?” Mr. Norio muttered, “Damn it! This is bad!”

It was then, that the incident happened.