"I think maybe it's like in those novels, where eating a corpse core might give you powers like Quentin's," Samuel speculated.
"You've got quite an imagination. Go ahead and try it!" Ryan said, dismissing the idea but encouraging Samuel to test it out.
"No way, but maybe we can get dumb William to try it!" Samuel shook his head, then smiled mischievously.
"You're really something!" Ryan laughed. "But speaking of which, that busty woman, she's the one you mentioned, right? The one with the baby face and huge breasts?"
Samuel thought of Lily and her impressive figure, feeling a shiver of excitement. "Yeah, that's her! She's this year's intern. But I prefer the other two..."
Ryan was thinking of Hannah and Abigail.
One was a cold beauty with long legs and pale skin, the other was into cosplay, with a stunning figure and a fun personality.
Just looking at them was enough to make him drool. If he could spend a night with them, it would be worth living a few years less.
"Those two are gorgeous! I wonder where Elijah found them!" Samuel swallowed hard.
"Damn it! All the good women are taken. Why can't we get any?" Samuel cursed.
"Yeah, and I don't get why Quentin isn't more aggressive. With so many of us, we could easily take that guy down. If we did, those women would be ours for the taking."
"Quentin is too righteous. It's the apocalypse now, who cares about morals and laws?" Samuel complained.
"Right, there must be tons of supplies in that mall. Why should we let them keep it all? And those women, if we subdued them, they'd be ours to do whatever we want..."
"Ryan, you think the same? Just seeing those three made my body react!" Samuel sighed.
"How about we get some more guys together? I noticed a couple of them were also eyeing those women. We could take over that place."
Ryan hesitated. "But what if Quentin doesn't agree?"
"Once we've done it, he won't have a choice! With all the supplies from the mall, if he tries to object, the others will back us up. And if it comes to it, we can break away from him and control the mall ourselves!" Samuel's excitement grew, his voice rising.
"Shh, keep it down!" Ryan warned.
Despite their thoughts, they didn't dare show their intentions in front of Quentin.
He was the only awakened one in their neighborhood, having single-handedly cleared it of zombies.
He was their de facto leader, respected and feared.
Ryan had once been the tyrant of his building, forcing a woman from downstairs to be with him.
He enjoyed it for two days until Quentin cleared out the zombies.
He encountered a few more zombies during this process, which he didn't kill but instead controlled using his consciousness seeds.
His second-level consciousness seeds could contract up to 20 people or animals, and he had already used 16 slots.
Since he was about to get a large batch of corpse cores, he contracted 4 more zombies and fed each one 2 corpse cores.
His stock of corpse cores quickly dwindled to 10, and this was after Daisy had given him her 5 and Lily's 6, and he'd exchanged for two more from Quentin.
Raising zombies consumed a lot of corpse cores, especially when it involved mutation and awakening.
In his previous life, he only raised ordinary zombies and didn't worry about corpse cores.
At that time, he couldn't control first-level zombies, so he didn't think about strengthening them.
He didn't usually have to feed them corpse cores, and if a zombie became too hungry and weak, he would kill it, which even allowed him to earn some corpse cores.
Despite the troubles, there were benefits.
If any of the seven zombies contracted in the past two days could bring him one or two useful abilities, he would be thrilled.
After thoroughly checking the underground supermarket and confirming no zombies were left, Elijah opened the skulls of the dead zombies to extract cores, gaining 5 more, then started organizing supplies.
He glanced over the perishable items, including simply packaged bread slices, pure milk, sausages from the deli section, loose soybeans, peanuts, bulk pickles, and some long-lasting fruits and vegetables like apples, potatoes, and onions.
There were definitely spoiled items, and the supermarket was filled with a pungent, rotting smell from decaying fruits, vegetables, fresh meat, and seafood, as well as some refrigerated and frozen food that had gone bad.
Unable to determine what was spoiled by smell alone, Elijah tossed aside anything with mold and loaded everything else into shopping carts.
After Hannah and Lily filled the box truck and armored vehicle, they came down to help Elijah organize the supplies, packing ten days' worth of provisions into each shopping cart.
Abigail and the mutated female zombie, along with three zombie saleswomen, guarded the storeroom entrance, so there was no fear of anyone coming.
Quickly, they sorted dozens of shopping carts worth of supplies.
Elijah felt pleased looking at them; all these were potential corpse cores!
But soon, he faced the problem of how to transport them out.
The warehouse's freight elevator and the supermarket's elevator to the first floor of the mall were powered from upstairs, so they couldn't be used.
The only way to push the carts out was via the escalator connecting the mall to the supermarket.
Although the escalator was a large slope that could be used without power, it needed to be padded with cardboard.
But first, Elijah had to clear the zombies in the mall.