"Well, I'm afraid you didn't see wrong," he replied calmly. "Those are zombies."
She stared at him, shocked.
"Zombies? Like in the movies? It was terrifying… I… how are we really going to survive, Kylian?"
"For now," he said as he sat down facing her, "we have to survive forty-eight hours. That's what was written in the first Act."
"You mean the hologram that appeared earlier?"
"Yeah. For now, we stay here. After… we'll see."
Silence fell again in the room, disturbed only by the distant sounds of screams and impacts coming from outside.
These zombies were people who had either been touched or who had breathed in a lot of those putrid smokes coming out of the meteors.
The meteors brought Ether into our world, the oxygen of the gods. An energy that mixed into the air with the property of awakening mortals. But those who received an overload transformed into zombies as the Ether destroyed their brains.
The others, those who absorbed it little by little, would undergo mutations in forty-eight hours.
Forty-eight hours. That was the first threshold we had to survive in Doomsday.
Then would come the second part of the first Act, where hiding would no longer be a solution.
Mei frowned, even though Kylian wasn't saying everything out loud. He could feel that she knew something from the way he was behaving.
Kylian couldn't say anything more to Mei, because angel Nanael filtered everything that happened in his Quadrant to transmit it to the Pantheons. Every anomaly, every inconsistency was therefore observed. It would be strange if he knew these kinds of things.
At least, he had to wait for the full system connection.
Kylian was sitting on the bed, his back slightly hunched. In the apocalypse, it was every man for himself. You had to be selfish if you wanted to survive, but at the same time… we weren't in Solo Leveling.
Becoming powerful alone, without allies, still meant dying eventually. There were acts that couldn't be accomplished alone.
But you needed strong allies, with versatile abilities. Not dead weight.
Mei changed in silence. She put on a loose t-shirt and jeans, her movements a bit mechanical, then came to sit beside him. Without a word, she gently rested her head against his shoulder, seeking reassuring warmth.
"Do you think we're really going to survive?" she asked after a few seconds.
"I fully intend to."
Mei understood what he meant. Even though he had protected her until now, she couldn't become dead weight, like earlier when he had to carry her while running through the bodies.
She clenched her fists slightly.
On his side, Kylian was deep in thought. He couldn't protect her all the time. So he was going to observe her adaptability, see how she behaved, and above all what ability she would awaken at the end of the forty-eight hours of Ether mutation.
"She's a psychologist… she'll probably be important," he thought.
"Let's rest, Kylian," Mei said as she lay down on the bed.
"You're right… we're going to need it," he replied, closing his eyes.
They fell asleep like that, in each other's arms, while the distant sounds of screams and muffled explosions still crossed the city.
***
POV: Kylian
Fortunately for me, I remembered the first Act perfectly. It was divided into two parts, and it was one of the most important acts because it had a direct impact on the entire future. The pantheons watched from the beginning. Nothing was left to chance. The second part didn't just consist of surviving, even if it meant being a coward holed up in a corner, but of becoming someone remarkable.
To attract the attention of a war-related god, you had to show courage, face danger, and kill as many zombies as possible. Conversely, if you wanted a merciful type of god, you had to help others, protect, intervene where others were in trouble. Everything had to be calculated to get a powerful sponsor.
The principle was simple. A god chose a mortal who resembled him or pleased him. And he became his sponsor in exchange for his power; the mortal had to obey his precepts.
In the end, we were just products.
And for me, the course of action was clear. Attract the maximum number of gods' gazes.
The gods love spectacle. You have to give them one, and as much as possible. This world was neither the first to undergo an apocalypse nor the last. We were just a new stage, and they were jaded spectators in search of novelty.
'Many powerful gods had already chosen their contractors in others; we had to do everything to attract the maximum.'
So I had to show a unique approach in the acts, while keeping an advantage over the others. Something different and above all entertaining in their eyes.
In the meantime, staying here for the forty-eight hours was the best option. All those who survived this first threshold would receive an exclusive innate ability, as well as the system that would help them evolve. That was the base. Without it, no one would go far.
With this idea in mind, I gently got up from the bed.
"Awake?" Mei commented.
"Yeah... what are you doing?" I asked.
"I couldn't sleep. So I decided to sort the supplies we collected."
"Ah… okay. And?"
"If we eat about two thousand five hundred calories per day, it should last about two and a half weeks. For water, we have about a week. If it's really a zombie apocalypse, water will become an increasingly rare commodity over time. Anyway, we'll have to get more elsewhere."
I nodded slightly while sweeping away my slight doubts.
She was a psychologist. Of course she would adapt faster than the others.