With the humans now safe from the zombie threat, Ren carefully slung Olivia and Slade over his shoulders one at a time, setting them in a secure spot aside from the chaos. He then turned his attention to the blocked cave entrance, determined to create a proper shelter.
Donning his knuckle dusters with a metallic clink, Ren began punching away massive chunks of rock and debris, his powerful strikes clearing space bit by bit to fully reopen the cave.
Once he'd opened plenty of space suitable for leaving Olivia and Slade comfortably inside, Ren stepped away from them momentarily and went off to scout for a reliable water source nearby. Luckily, he quickly found a clear stream trickling from the rocks, and he fashioned a self-made wooden container on the spot to store enough for their needs.
He already had plenty of fresh meat from the wolves he had slain earlier in his journey; because the meat came from beasts infused with energy, it naturally had a much better shelf life than ordinary game, staying preserved without spoiling.
Returning back to the cave entrance while carefully reining in the immense pressure emanating from his Whole Blood to avoid overwhelming the humans, Ren finally stepped inside the cleared space.
It was at that moment when Slade and Olivia started coming back to consciousness, their eyelids fluttering as awareness returned. Ren looked over at them with a mix of relief and curiosity, saying, "Awake finally—I have many questions for you both. I have brought you fresh water, and there is wolf meat ready too."
Slade and Olivia blinked up at the black-suited figure they knew as "Ren," still convinced in their minds that he was some kind of advanced mechanical lifeform from the apocalypse's twisted experiments.
Olivia, being the more curious of the two despite the lingering fear, spoke up first with an unusually straightforward question: "What are you?" Her inner thought was pragmatic—if Ren had planned to kill them, there was nothing they could do to resist anyway.
Ren felt a bit flustered at the directness and wanted to insist he was human like them, but the mysterious "???" listed in his species column completely stumped him, leaving him without a clear answer. Seeing him fall silent like that, Olivia planned to press him with more questions right away, but she was suddenly stopped by the loud rumbling of her own stomach and Slade's echoing it.
The growls were attention-catching in the heavy silence of the cave. Ren reacted quickly, saying, "Let me get you the meat right now." But then he noticed the cave entrance was still partially closed off, so he scratched the back of his covered head in mild frustration.
"I'll get you the meat right away. Don't go anywhere," Ren assured them before saying this and vanishing from their eyes in a blur of speed.
Olivia and Slade sat there waiting for a few seconds in tense quiet, before Olivia broke the silence first: "They don't seem bad at all, and there are zombies now—do you think there are other creatures out there too? After killing those beasts earlier, they did not seem to disappear like the leopard did. What do you think happened to them?"
After firing all these questions in one rapid go, Olivia looked straight into Slade's eyes with her big, expressive gaze. He could only shrug in response, saying, "I don't know—this is the first time for me as well." He did have some private thoughts brewing, but he did not plan to share them just yet.
Deep down, he did not know if Ren was somehow listening in on their conversation with hidden abilities. Slade thought that the disappearance of the leopard might have something to do with them being the only two humans present at that time, and the beasts not getting swallowed into the ground earlier might have something to do with other species now being present in the area.
He had also been deeply shocked by the sudden presence of actual zombies, yet he reflected that an apocalypse would not truly be an apocalypse without any zombies lurking in the shadows.
What truly worried him, however, was how many zombie settlements might exist out there, because there had been no mention of a second year like in that cryptic first meeting everyone seemed to recall.
Would the coming 12 months prove so brutally intense that humans would naturally start getting in touch—or clash—with other species scattered across this planet?
Not feeling at all optimistic about the coming future ahead, he glanced over at Olivia and thought to himself, "This will be the last time I team up with someone like this."
Just after completing that grim thought in his mind, Ren suddenly appeared right where he had left from, holding a freshly caught red rabbit with black paws that seemed to have pads glowing red-hot with latent energy.
Olivia and Slade strained their eyes but could not see the level of the dead beast at all; however, the intense pressure radiating from its corpse was no less than Dolores', maybe even a bit higher and more oppressive.
Ren also quickly gathered some dry wood nearby and fashioned a rough stove stand setup from it. Olivia rummaged through her inventory and got out the pots, pans, and crockery she carried. Ren felt a pang of envy watching her—he was never having enough downtime to spin the roulette and win these kinds of practical things for himself.
Every time he had spun it so far, it was only when he really needed something desperately in the heat of survival. Olivia wasted no time starting to cook the meat using the stored water and a bit of oil. She pulled out various spice powders from her pouches on her waist belt. Slade watched this closely and mentally smacked his head for even thinking this woman might have any poison hidden on her person.
Slowly stirring and mixing the ingredients with practiced care, she brought the water in the pot to a steady boil. Then, skinning the rabbit efficiently, washing it clean under a trickle of water, and cutting it into small cube-sized pieces, she added them all to the pot.
Waiting for just another few minutes as it simmered, the rich fragrance started to rise enticingly out of the pot. "Smells nice—how long has it been since I had something proper to eat," Ren suddenly lamented with a sigh.
He retracted the helmet of his suit inward and finally revealed his true face to Slade and Olivia for the first time.
Looking at his colorful bright hair that seemed to be glowing faintly with an otherworldly light, Olivia almost lost it completely and burst out laughing; Slade also had to stop himself desperately, pinching his thighs hard, but his twitching lips were betraying his suppressed emotions all the same.
Not caring about their reactions in the slightest, Ren picked up a spoon and scooped one filled with the steaming broth/soup, slurping it down noisily before exhaling a satisfied cloud of smoke. "AAH, how long, how long. Thank you, Olivia."
Olivia, not knowing quite how to respond to the compliment, could only nod her head awkwardly. Ren gestured toward them invitingly to also start eating without delay.
Olivia and Slade each took some broth and meat, sipping the broth first and then taking a hearty bite of the tender meat—suddenly, they heard the notification: Point +20.