After realizing that he was no longer safe on the rooftop, Zane immediately re-entered the second building of the High School, where he popped the ten blood crystals he had received for selling the corpse of his victim to the Stalker into his mouth, consuming them on the spot.
Naturally, he received a familiar message when he did so. For every blood crystal he consumed, Zane received this series of messages in a bold blood red lettering almost as if he were living in a video game.
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[Blood Crystal Consumed!]
[Buff Applied: Living Dead]
[+10 XP]
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Zane stared at his xp bar after consuming the ten blood crystals and realized he had quite a bit more to go if he wanted to level up to level 3.
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[Current XP: 100/300]
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Everyone else, including Mr. Diaz, had perished simply attempting to get some food and water for the group from the cafeteria. If that was the case, then what the hell was the rest of the city like? These were the thoughts going through the other boys' heads as they cautiously eyed one another with fear on their faces before expressing this very sentiment.
"I don't know Josh... You heard the President. These riots are a nationwide phenomenon. We are supposed to stay indoors and button down the hatches until the national guard can restore order.
I'm sure our families are fine if they followed the same protocols... Besides, now that we know that a disease is causing people to go crazy, I don't want to get infected and turn into one of them, that would be horrible!"
Several of the other boys nodded their heads and were just about to agree with this sentiment when a girl approached them. They all knew who she was, as she was the girlfriend of the teenage boy who had suggested stealing supplies and abandoning the school.
There was a dreadful expression on the girl's face, and it was clear that she had previously been crying due to her puffy eyes. But nobody really thought anything of this, specifically because lots of girls had been crying since this whole crisis began.
However, what immediately caught the group's attention was the fact that this girl has some rations in her hands. A few peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, along with some juice boxes to wash them down. Considering the fact that all of these boys were starving, they immediately approached the girl as if she were their savior.
"Oh, my god! Kristen, where the hell did you get those rations? I thought that Ryan and his thugs weren't giving them out unless people contributed to the group...."
There was an evident tone of mockery in the girl's boyfriend's tone when he spoke of the concept of contribution. And he was laughing at his joke so much that he missed the fact that the girl had immediately averted her gaze when he spoke to her, and continued to do so even when she spoke.
Her voice was so meek it was almost a whisper. But it was clear by her words that she would not be elaborating on how she got her hands on the supplies.
"I don't want to talk about it... Can we just... Eat in peace?"
This was a curious request, but the girl's boyfriend thought nothing of it, completely unaware that there were still faint traces of tears running down her eyes even now. Of course, nobody else suspected that the girl had gone through an ordeal just to get some rations, because they were all too hungry themselves.
And it was because of this that nobody realized why the rations were being distributed so unevenly. After all, "contribution to the group" meant something entirely different if one was female....