Chapter 392 Last Favor



"Kill it!"

Someone from amidst the newbies shouted.

But Mathew was already on top of the situation. All he had to do now…

Was what?

'I can't cut it like that!' Mathew despaired.

Even if he were to slash the zombie's neck and somehow avoid cutting the girl below it, the zombie's head would still stay attached to the girl's shoulder, its teeth messing up more and more of her flesh.

"AAAAARGH!" the poor girl screamed her guts out while the flesh of her shoulder and neck were mangled by the broken teeth of the zombie.

"FUCK!" With no other option, Mathew reverted his hold on the saber before throwing his fist right into the side of the zombie's head.

Pac…

The rotten flesh and broken bones of the zombie's skull offered little to no resistance to Mathew's fist. Not stopped by anything solid, it went right through the side of the zombie's head, ending up nearly halfway inside its head.

Thankfully, as disgusting as it was, the damage to the zombie's brain ended up massive enough to lay it down to rest. As for the girl that it attacked, though…

She was currently wriggling on the ground while holding both of her hands to the massacred side of her neck.

A huge chunk of her flesh remained in the zombie's teeth, leaving an ugly and already festering wound that kept on bleeding more and more.

'Shit, what do I do?!' Mathew froze.

Even if he had some magic bandage on him, the wound was too damn ugly!

"Shit!" Unable to produce any smarter sound than a simple curse, Mathew dropped down while ripping his own shirt apart. Once by the girl's side, he bundled the cloth in his hand before pressing it against the poor girl's wound.

"Keep it tight!" he shouted, hoping to somehow get through the girl's pain to make her cooperate.

For but a second, the bleeding somewhat stopped. Mathew's shirt was so damn dirty that the dirt itself somehow solidified, turning into glue when interacting with water. And once it soaked in the girl's own blood, it formed a nearly impenetrable barrier.

At least for now, this makeshift dressing managed to somewhat stabilize the girl's state.

"What the hell are you standing around like that?!" Carol erupted as soon as she appeared on the scene, lagging just a short moment behind Mathew.

·ƈθm Her face was tense.

'We were just talking about how she wouldn't let anyone get hurt,' Mathew thought, gritting his teeth in a powerless fury.

There was nothing he could do anymore. The makeshift bandage could only delay the inevitable. After all, the only way to save this girl right now was to grant her a system seed.

Sadly, Mathew didn't have enough cores to buy even a single seed. And even if he had, the girl would bleed out before they could carry her back to the fortress.

'Such a pity,' Mathew thought, taking a quick glance at the girl.

Her face was pale, likely due to the already extensive loss of blood. Her hands were nicely pressed against Mathew's bloodied shirt… But her eyes were strangely calm.

'She accepted what happened?' Mathew tensed up, weirded out by the temperament of the dying girl.

"Quick!" Castor somehow ended up down before Mathew's legs, already half in a bowing position. "The serum, give her the serum!"

His eyes were honest. For how annoying he was… he really did seem to care about those two wives of his.

"It's no use," Mathew spoke softly. "She's already gone."

The first real casualty of the expedition… and likely one of the many to come.

The power of the system that Mathew and his girls enjoyed skewed their preception of the threat of the zombies. For them, they were mere annoyances. Save for the big and challenging bosses, normal zombies were just objects to be farmed for cores.

But before the people with systems came out, the majority of humanity lost to those zombies. And the newly recruited hunters… were just that.

Just a bunch of humans that dared to raise their hand against the fate that awaited everyone in this world.

"What?!" Castor asked, shocked so much that he refused to just turn his head around and check for himself. "It's impossible for her to die. We were talking about how we would survive this together just an hour ago…" he muttered, his voice growing more distant with each word.

'Shit…' Mathew cursed in his thoughts again.

And then, he did what a leader of this ragtag group had to do.

The young man lowered himself on his knee and placed his hand on Castor's shoulders.

"Look at me," Mathew ordered in a voice that indicated anyone who would refuse wouldn't bode well. "Look at me!" Mathew repeated while giving Castor's arm a shake.

"She's gone."

This time, Mathew allowed himself the use of a slightly more somber tone.

"She bled out to death. The one solace is that she likely didn't feel much pain in the end," Mathew added, more than willing to lie if he could somehow raise the now desperate morale of the expedition team.

"How can you know that…" Casper whispered, digging his fingers deep into the flesh of Mathew's sides.

"I saw her eyes," Mathew said, saying some truth in between all the lies he was willing to utter. "At the end… she was at peace."

Mathew looked away from the guy at his feet and up to where the girl's corpse lay.

The blood already stopped flowing out of her wounds. Her body visibly deflated, deprived of the huge portion of the liquid that kept it in its natural state.

Mathew closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

This ugly situation wasn't over yet. And before things could get far worse, there was one last thing that he had to do.

"As gravely wrong as it sounds, she can consider herself to be lucky," Mathew stated before raising his eyes and looking across all the members of the expedition. "Right now, we can still bury her. Rather than turning into a monster, she will be at peace," Mathew said somberly before turning to look at Castor again.

"And I believe it's you who should do her this last favor."