"Seriously—how the heck are you still alive?"
When morning came, with the shopping mall still burning in random spots, what greeted Nach and the rest of his group was Shido's charred corpse.
Shido was dead, of course—?
Nach had even double-tapped the undead Shido by chopping off his head and kicking it off the rooftop—as if performing some kind of ritual to welcome a brand-new morning without worrying about incoming trouble.
After all, with no place to hide other than the last storage room on the rooftop, Nach couldn't share any intimacy with Saeko, Miku, Yui, and Mitsushima while everyone else was with them.
Therefore, the routine of intimacy at night followed by trouble the next morning was finally broken—at least, that was what Nach wanted to believe.
It felt like he had become sober from lust—or not.
The lustful heat he had gotten from his intimacy with Saki was still surging through his body, as strong as his morning wood.
Going back on track, the one Nach was surprised to see was none other than the supposed protagonist—Takashi.
The WcDonalds fast-food restaurant on the third floor of the shopping mall, which their group had used as a temporary base, was burned down.
But miraculously, the storage room where Takashi had been locked up, his hands and feet bound by ropes, suffered only minor damage.
The door had burned, which was probably why the smoke got in and knocked Takashi unconscious.
"You've got some really strong plot armor—well, maybe not that strong."
When Nach turned Takashi around, he was surprised to see that the left half of Takashi's face had almost third-degree burns.
Although the flames hadn't directly reached him, the parts of his body touching the floor had been burned by the intense heat.
Takashi was now headed for the Two-Face villain route, and Nach wouldn't mind taking the Dark Knight route.
Setting aside his playful thoughts, Nach patched up Takashi's face and the other burned areas with bandages handed to him by Yui.
He couldn't let him die yet. After all, Nach wasn't sure what would happen if the supposed protagonist died before the story even reached its discontinued part.
"Leave him to me, Aniki."
Hiro offered to carry Takashi, which Nach gladly accepted since he was already carrying Saki's body. Besides, he still had something else to do.
"Let's go find something to wear, Saeko, Miku."
"There should still be something decent left that hasn't been reached by the flames," Saeko said as she led the group, followed by Miku.
"I'm gonna find the best clothes for you, Nach~sama!"
As they went down to the third floor, the group saw the burned bodies of students who had been devoured and turned into undead.
"It's Takayama-sensei," Saeko said, recognizing his P.E. uniform even though his face was covered in blood, his left eye obliterated by a gunshot, his hair burned, and someone's rod and balls inside his open mouth.
Looking inside the jewelry store that Shido's group had used as their base, Nach saw a few students and survivors who were still alive and had survived the undead.
However, whether they would take them along wasn't the question.
It was either suffer a painful death from their severe burns—since it was unlikely they would find a doctor who could treat them—or choose to end their suffering right now.
"I'll leave them to you, Saeko."
"I'll give them a quick and painless death if they choose to."
While Nach and the others searched for a safe way down to the second floor, Saeko stepped inside the jewelry store.
Once she confirmed there were no undead inside, she drew her wakizashi and crouched beside one of the students, whose body—even his face—was covered in third-degree burns.
"Say anything if you can, so I can end your suffering."
"Tha—Sae…"
With those incomplete final words, Saeko beheaded the student with a swift, precise slash—and did the same to the other dying students and survivors before rejoining Nach and Miku.
---
After searching all the accessible places on the second floor, the only clothes Nach, Saeko, and Miku found that had survived the flames were black-and-blue firefighter uniforms on display.
"At least they're easy to move in and provide decent protection."
Once the three of them were dressed, even wearing the helmets, the group continued down to the ground floor and exited through the designated fire exit at the back of the shopping mall, since the front was swarming with undead attracted by the gasoline tanker truck explosion.
They continued encountering more undead, but with Saeko and Miku's enhanced strength, the group easily pushed through the main road until they found an abandoned microbus that could accommodate them all.
Counting everyone:
From Tominaga Hotel: Nach, Saeko, Miku, Yui, the young lady with a baby, the pair of middle-school and grade-school sisters, another little girl, and of course Saki's body.
Nach had promised to take her with them after all.
From the shopping mall: Mitsushima, Asami, Misuzu, Toshimi, Morita, Taniuchi, two more high school girls, the elderly couple, Hiro, and the still-unconscious Takashi.
That made a total of twenty survivors Nach and Saeko managed to find and rescue in the span of two days before they could finally head toward the Takagi Estate.
More than half of them weren't exactly the ones Kyoko had asked him to find, but Nach was, of course, going to collect his reward—not only from Kyoko, but from Shizuka as well—maybe even at the same time.
"Whatever perverted thoughts you're having, at least hold them back until we reach our destination," Mitsushima said, noticing Nach's grin.
"I know. That's exactly what I plan to do."
---
Author's Note:
Hey'a—It's UelUel, your lazy and lousy PoruShark writer who hasn't won any awards for this fanfic.
That's why I'm putting an end to this!
Jokes aside, I'm not dropping this fanfic just because I didn't win the contest.
It's fun to write, so I'm at least going to try to reach what I've drafted so far.
I'm not uploading it on Patreon yet, so you can expect this fanfic to remain totally free for now.
Or would anyone be willing to donate directly to my bank account?—lol.
If not, please consider sending Gifts and Subs to my book Return Fantasy.
Still, I was really disappointed about not winning an award, which is why I took a few days off.
On that note, please understand that I'll be limiting updates to at least three or four chapters per week since I'm starting a new story for a different contest while also finishing my ongoing book Days of Dungeon: From Simple Quest to Strange Adventure.
Anyway, there's still one more chapter before this fanfic reaches the end of Volume 1.
So keep reading—Extra in Highschool of the Dead