CHAPTER 2 - The Start of the Dead
The darkness faded away.
The next thing I knew was that I was laying on grass. My whole body was erupting with pain but I managed to sit.
'Ugh, my head is killing me.' I muttered while rubbing my head. It was hurting so badly that I wasn't even able to recall my own name.
I looked around myself and the first thing I noticed was that this place looked entirely different from my neighborhood. I was surrounded by trees; eerie sounds could be heard coming from a distance. I thought to myself, Is this the afterlife? Am I really dead?
These thoughts were making me feel uneasy but I couldn't understand the fact that I was in a forest. I was so deeply invested into my thoughts that I couldn't see four more people were also laying around me.
One of them woke up, she was a girl who had blonde hair and looked no older than 18. She also observed the surroundings around her and then looked at me with disorientation. She squeezed her eyes and tried to focus on me.
'Who are you? And where are we?' she asked me.
'Good question, I wish I had an answer.'
She looked at me suspiciously for some reason and then started to rub her temples like she was trying not to go crazy because of this mysterious event.
'I remember that I was,' she recalled 'studying in my room and then I suddenly collapsed, like just fully blacked out.'
'That's weird.'
'Is this some sort of a dream?' She asked.
She proceeded to pinch herself which made her realize this wasn't a dream. She sighed in disbelief.
'The last thing I know is that I was ran over by a truck before getting transported here.'
'Ran over by a truck? Wait this can't be the afterlife.'
'I don't know, this environment is messing with our brains, maybe we should wait for the others to gain consciousness.
After some time, the rest of the people gained consciousness. They were disoriented and just like us were confused but eventually they became stable. Except for the guy in the hoodie, he was very mad and restless for some reason but he eventually became somewhat calmer.
We all gathered around and took our first stepping stone, we introduced ourselves to each other. Okay, let me summarize them for you.
The blonde girl I just met, her name is Kira Aoyama. She got here after passing out while preparing for a medical exam. Her age is as I guessed 18. She hadn't slept for 4 days and had also drank five energy drinks almost every day for a month. Well, that's a guaranteed death.
One of the guy is Yasuto Mori, he is tall, with dark skin and warm brown eyes. He said he was a firefighter and passed out during a rescue mission due to high inhalation of smoke. He was the oldest among our group as he was 21 years old.
The guy in glasses was Satoshi Aizawa, he had freckles on his face and he also looked very calculating like he was born ready to solve any problems you gave him. He had a bag on his back which had a flashlight. He also mentioned that he died due to a car accident. Sounds pretty similar to my death except I was hit by a truck. He was also the youngest being 17 years old.
The last guy or the guy with the hoodie, his name was Reiji Kuroda which he revealed after much persuasion. He didn't share any information about himself and was very restless like he left an important job unfulfilled before dying.
All of us were very different from each other, yet we had one thing in common.
We all died before getting transported to this world.
'I have heard of a world after death in books, but I didn't believe that until now.' Satoshi amused.
'World after death? Yeah it could explain this event.' I agreed.
'Are we the only people here?' Yasuto asked.
Then we heard an extremely loud sound coming from somewhere in the forest. It was so loud that we had to cover our ears to prevent the ear drums from bursting. I could hear something approaching us at a very fast pace but I don't think that they could hear that.
'I guess we will find the answer.' I said, preparing to confront the approaching problem.
Suddenly a creature appeared in front of us. It was double my height and had holes instead of ears on his head. It didn't have eyes but still gave away a murderous appearance. It had large claws and a mouth designed to gulp down humans easily. It looked like a walking nightmare.
'What is that?' Kira backed away in fear.
Before anyone could answer it leapt towards us with full force, it almost got me but I managed to dodge its attack.
I expected it to continue attacking us but it stood still, not making any sound like he was waiting for us to move.
'Damn bastard, stop wasting my time.' Reiji rushed towards it holding a knife which none of us knew he was carrying with him until now.
The monster picked up the cue Reiji gave and attacked with high accuracy. Reiji managed to dodge the attack and stab the creature on the left arm using his knife but I don't think it did much damage.
The monster retaliated using his other arm and punched Reiji hard enough to send him flying backwards.
Just before the creature could close on him, Yasuto rushed towards the creature. One thing I could say was that he was fast. Even before the creature could turn to face him, he kicked the creature at the Iliac Crest region.
It was a perfectly executed maneuver, it caused the creature to stumble back a little. An opening for a decent strike was created as the creature dropped its defense temporarily, it was too busy trying to gain back balance. Yasuto took the advantage and tackled its legs hard. This made the creature fall down backwards causing him to expose its abdomen area which it couldn't defend with its hands as it had to brace for the fall using them.
Before Yasuto could utilize the created advantage, Reiji pounced out of nowhere on the monster, his mouth had little blood coming out of it due to the monster's previous attack but his eyes were full of rage, still the monster deflected his attack easily.
He got hit hard once again which caused him to slam into a nearby tree painfully, he tried to get up once again but his body gave up. I think he had received enough blows from the monster to knock himself unconscious. Yasuto hurried towards his out cold body to protect him from the monster.
I took Reiji's dropped knife and Satoshi waved at me to grab my attention. I looked at him and he pointed at the monster's ear which was only a hole. He gestured me to put the knife into that hole.
Kira nodded at me and we both ran towards the creature.
[Chemistry Sync : Pre-Developed ]
(Chemistry Sync, an connection that gets built up between two survivalist, often during time of desperation. It is a unique connection which makes survivalists more connected to each other admist battles. A system that has been running for centuries during which both the survivalists can understand each others antics properly without the need of conversation, but it also leads to more energy expenditure. In other words, their mind has now become one.)
The monster was somewhat confused because it could hear vibrations from both sides, this was highly effective as it reduced its accuracy to a great extent. It decided to slash in my direction but I ducked down and drove the knife into its arm, the power was enough to cause the monster some pain.
It swinged the arm into which I had drove my knife with great strength in in order to fling me off his body but my grip was strong. It took his hand backwards again to swing again. I looked at Kira and knew what to do. I took off the knife out of his arm quickly and threw it towards Kira who had already made her way near the creature.
This allowed me to fall down on the monster, I purposefully slammed into the back of the creature using my legs with great momentum, the sheer force made the monster arch down.
Kira materialized this chance quickly and drove the knife right into the monster's hole on its head. The monster became stiff and fell down.
I got off the monster's back and gestured my approval to Kira, I felt very drained for some reason but it didn't concern me much.
I turned towards Satoshi.
'How did you know the monster's weak point?' I asked Satoshi in amusement.
'It's simple. Let me explain it,' he said 'the ear is connected to the brain through the auditory nerve in humans, we humans have cochlea which creates the sound coming from outside into electrical impulse, then this is sent to our brain through the nerves. But I observed and figured out that this monster does not have this system. It had specially designed ears which sent the sensation from our body's movement directly to the brain. It didn't need any electric impulse as it didn't detect sound but the vibrations around it, which meant it didn't have any proper ear structure like us. His brain was adapted to feel the impact through the ground or change in air pressure. In short, his brain was much more vulnerable to outside attacks due to the holes on his head which behave like open doors welcoming direct physical attack to his brain, but in trade for this weakness it could interpret its surrounding's vibration or changes extremely fast.'
I looked at him completely dumbfounded. How could he possibly calculate so much in less than a minute of time just by simple observation?
'That does explain a lot.' Kira said.
Yasuto approached us with Reiji's unconscious body on his back, he had a serious look on his face.
'We have to get someone's help, we need to stop this bleeding.' He said looking back at Reiji.
Kira observed the wound on his head, well she was a medical student so we could trust her in this work.
'The wound is thankfully not much of a serious problem but in case of an internal bleeding it could be problematic. We need to find someone with bandages in order to stop the bleeding first.' She said.
'Alright then, let's not waste time.' I said.
We all roamed around the forest without a clear destination, the objective was to find a house where Reiji's condition could be prevented from getting worse. Minutes converted into hours, yet we couldn't see a sign of life in this dead forest. We were slowly losing hope and night time was approaching quickly.
Just then we saw a house. But the house looked shady itself, it looked very displaced as it was in middle of nowhere and also gave out an ominous vibe.'
We looked at each other helplessly, we were not sure if we should enter that house after that incident. Everyone was hesitating except for Yasuto. He walked straight towards the house.
'Hey! Hold on for a second man.' I pleaded.
Yasuto kept heading towards the house without looking back in our direction. We could tell that he was not gonna back down.
'Does each of you fear for your life so much that you hesitate to save someone else in their time of need? Is this what defines us as humans—backing away from our injured comrades just to selfishly value our own lives? Call me a fool if you want, but I'm not resting until he's okay.' he said in a determined tone.
We were left speechless; he was willingly put his life at risk for helping others. I could tell that he was very selfless and compassionate.
He knocked on the door and we braced for whatever was on the other side. Not for much time the door slowly creaked open. A middle aged man in his late fifty was standing on the other side. He had scars on his face and whole body which made him look frightening but he had a kind smile on his face.
'Oh!' he exclaimed 'New survivalists? Come in! Don't be shy.'
We hesitated once again but decided to follow Yasuto into the house. His house was well maintained and gave an odd sensation of warmth and comfy. Everything was okay till now.
He said Yasuto to lay Reiji on the bed in the guest room, we all gathered there and the old man came into the room with a syringe. The syringe had a weird blue colored fluid in it, this made me concerned if choosing help from a stranger was a good decision, but then I didn't know anyone in the room properly so I remained quiet.
He injected it into Reiji's arm. In no time, Reiji began to glow with a faint blue aura. The stunning part, however, was that his wounds were knitting themselves back together automatically. After the strange light vanished, Reiji's body eased as he drifted into a deeper sleep.
The old man backed off and said 'Well that should do it, let's leave him alone for now as he needs rest in order to recover.'
We all sat down in the living room and the old man looked at us 'You must be wandering what was that liquid that I injected into his body. Right? Well it is an advanced medicine made by the brewers in this world. The blue is the weakest of the three types of healing drugs as it only heals physical injury.
'Then what is the use of the other two?' Kira asked.
'Well I will not confuse you by telling them, you will eventually learn with experience but I can give you a hint, the three were designed to fix the three important components of our body.' He answered.
We decided not to argue further but our questions were far from over.
'Why did you call us survivalist?' I questioned him.
'Well, in this world, everyone is born into a different role—survivalists, brewers, and so on. Survivalists make up the fighting class; they are capable of battling while cooking up strategies at the same time. Also, remember that while survivalists have abilities, not all of them do. Those without specific abilities are usually significantly stronger in one or more of the three components that I mentioned earlier.' He responded.
'There are also monsters here too, right?' Satoshi piped up.
'Yes, this world is full of monsters, they usually range from harmless to deadly class based on their power and most importantly which component they cause harm to.' He answered.
We explained the features of the monster we had encountered right now and he thought about it a little.
'Ah! got it,' he exclaimed 'the one you encountered right now was none other than Audio. It belongs to the Hazard class or the second lowest class in the tier system. Hazard class entities are easy to defeat with experience but new comers find it a little difficult to face them.'
'Also,' I said 'thanks for letting us stay here and also for treating our friend.'
'No problem, it is my job to help new comers learn to survive in this dangerous world. Now, all of you should go and get some sleep. Tomorrow I will explain you all what to do next.' He suggested.
We all were too tired to say anything else, so we agreed and he designated each of us to a separate room to sleep in. No wonder he had so many rooms in his house even though he lived alone.
As I was lying on my bed, I felt firm to face all these challenges with full strength and maybe reunite with Max. It was a small spark of hope in my mind but I was determined to achieve it. As I was thinking about all this, my eyelids felt heavy and in no time I fell asleep.
THE SHIZUMORI SEARCH ARC BEGINS.