The dust motes danced in the morning light as the two friends sat among the wreckage of the faculty room. The adrenaline was fading, leaving behind a rare moment of quiet.
Wyn wiped the lizard's blood off his axe onto a stray piece of paper. He glanced at Primo, his expression turning serious. "So tell me for real, Primo. What actually happened after Christmas Eve?"
Primo smirked. He should have known he couldn't fool Wyn for long. They had been inseparable since high school; when Primo's mother had gone abroad to work, Wyn's family had stepped in as his guardians. They were more than best friends—they were brothers.
"You caught that, huh?" Primo let out a dry laugh. "I didn't sleep for four days, Wyn. I slept for seven whole days. And the skill I got... it's not just 'Great Ear.' It's an S-Rank skill called Controlled Assimilation."
Wyn's jaw nearly hit the floor. "Seven days? No wonder you didn't reply to any of my messages... I thought you'd just ditched your phone in the chaos. But an S-Rank? Bro, that's insane. What does it even do?"
"It lets me assimilate the gene cores I consume," Primo explained, his voice low. "I don't just get a few points; I steal the stats and the skills of the creatures I kill. It's how I got so strong so fast."
Wyn whistled, a long, low sound of disbelief. "That's completely OP. I get why you hid it from the others. In a world like this, someone with a skill like that is either a god or a target."
"Yeah, and that's why I wanted the core of the python," Primo admitted.
"So how many skills did you obtain with that?" Wyn asked curiously.
"A total of four. Two from an injured mutated dog, and the rest from the python," Primo explained. He then told Wyn about everything that had happened from the moment he woke up until he reached the school.
Wyn silently listened to Primo's story, realizing his friend had gone through so much in just a single day. A wave of guilt washed over him; he felt terrible that he hadn't checked on Primo immediately after his own fever broke. He had moved into a private dorm outside the campus—since the school dorms were full—just to be closer for early varsity practices. He had been so close, yet so far.
"What about you?" Primo asked, leaning back against a desk. "What happened on your end after Christmas Eve?"
Wyn sighed, his gaze drifting to the window. "After the green light, I was out for four days. When I woke up, the world was already falling apart. The government was blasting emergency alerts telling everyone to stay indoors."
He described the horror he saw online and through his window. "The animals... they weren't just dying. We saw videos of pets and strays going limp, but the ones that survived became feral. They started eating the carcasses of their own species—even the ants were doing it. It was like they were absorbing each other to change. That's probably why there aren't thousands of beasts everywhere; they're eating each other to consolidate power. And then... the attack on the dorm happened. We had to run."
Wyn then shared his own status. "My skill is Great Strength (Rank D). It's an active skill. When I trigger it, it gives me a +5 bonus to Strength, but it drains my stamina fast."
Wyn's expression remained heavy for a moment longer. "I'm sorry, Primo," he said, his voice thick with regret. "I should've come for you the second I could stand. I shouldn't have let you face all that alone."
Primo reached out and gripped Wyn's shoulder. "It's okay, man. Seriously. None of us knew the world was going to end while we were sleeping off a fever. We're both alive, and we're together now. That's what matters."
After resting for a few more minutes, Primo knelt by the lizard's carcass. He used his makeshift spear to carefully extract the gene core. It was small, roughly the same size as the mutated rat's core Primo had found earlier, but it was a much deeper, more vibrant red.
"We'll save this for tonight," Primo said, pocketing the crystal. "We need to stay sharp for the rest of the day."
The struggle with the lizard had taught them a valuable lesson. Their current hunting style was inefficient.
"We need a better plan," Primo said, looking at his spear. "Most of the monsters we've fought—the dog, the python—they came at us. But that lizard? It wanted to run. If we're going to farm cores, we can't spend ten minutes chasing every small fry through a room."
They realized they needed ranged weapons to tag skittish prey and short-range weapons for tight corners where an axe or a long spear would be clumsy.
They decided to make a quick, cautious trip back to the school canteen. As they moved through the hallways, Primo's enhanced senses picked up dozens of small heat signatures and sounds. They saw mutated rats the size of cats, oversized cockroaches clinging to the ceiling, and more lizards. However, none of them were hostile. As soon as the beasts caught scent of the humans, they fled into the shadows.
"Don't bother," Primo whispered, stopping Wyn from lunging at a rat. "If we chase them in the open, we'll just burn through our stamina for nothing. We only hunt what we can corner."
The canteen was quiet. They moved quickly, rummaging through the kitchen drawers. They managed to find three heavy-duty kitchen knives. Perfect for throwing or as emergency daggers. And a small hand-cleaver, for Wyn to use in close quarters when the axe was too big.
With their new arsenal tucked into their belts with a makeshift sheat made from the apron they found, they headed back to the faculty building. They plan to clean it up of mutated beast since it will serve as their base for a while and they needed the cores to get stronger.