Demon Lord's Reincarnation-Chapter 1162: June & Mrs. Rose
Joking aside—well, mostly—with the number of people we have on our fold, we could actually use our numbers to our advantage, and adding traps, snipers, roaming groups, and our main force into the mix would just be overkill.
In addition, despite the group we took care of last time, who had evil intentions toward us, we were geared toward recruitment and poaching others to join us instead of outright committing murder.
To be fair, this approach was a little idealistic but realistically speaking, the reason randos popping out of nowhere to do bad stuff was just that they had to.
Of course, there were outright devils in this world who'd commit atrocities at the drop of the hat, but it was easy enough to fish them out of the pile because my groups would always keep keen observation before proposing recruitment.
And if they didn't pass the standard of being a normal human being, we'd take care of it as humanely as possible—depending on what they did—if they got too close or forced an interaction.
There were times when we had to take the lead because yeah, we can't just have people who kill and abuse for sport roam around the streets even if they were reducing the undead population by a bit.
And yeah, being the judge, jury, and executioner was a tough spot to be in but like Mr. Dewey making his traps be as effective as they could, in these times, we just had to.
We just have to be really responsible with it but the same couldn't be said for traps that could be sprung and kill just about anyone or anything.
It's a weird thing to say out loud but I think that I'm pretty much neutral good in my stance or in my alignment, which I think is an ideal way of setting a standard, but yeah, I had also surrounded myself with people who'd check me if I was going overboard and vice versa.
In any case, back to our conversation with Eden, I explained to her things that she shouldn't blow her lid over because there were just things they couldn't afford of doing and that was to be openly welcome to their home from all angles.
I let out a smile, "In a sense, I'm kind of relieved you feel this way because honestly? If I were in your shoes, I think… I think I wouldn't care as much given the situation."
Eden shook her head, "That's… Still…"
Kaley caressed her hair, "Look, that means you're still good people. Don't take this the wrong way but I— we were actually surprised at this place?"
"Because we're idiots and murdering bastards— Ow! Why'd you chop my head?!"
I chopped her head as well for solidarity, "Because you're an idiot but not a murdering bastard. You're honest to god too, and that's rare now. One of you guys was looking for medicine for his dad and he had to go a roundabout way just to ask me for some weed." Stay connected via m-v l|e'-novelbuddy.net
"Weed— Oh, Medical Marijuana? And what's wrong with being honest?"
"Nothing at all! It's just… Sometimes, being too honest just attracts the wrong people and it's gotten pretty hard to be vulnerable around people you don't know. You'd take a leap of faith just to meet with people and even we were ready for a fight when we got here. We heard some bad things from the people we rescued but we wanted to hear your side so that's why we're here."
"That's… I don't know if I should thank you or not…"
"Hah… It's a weird feeling, I know. And to quote your mother, a little bit of survivorship bias is going on but it's a nice feeling now that we got to talk like this, no?"
"Ah— T-That's true too…"
With that said, we ended the conversation after a few more minutes before we went down a different set of stairs to get to a different part of the GDMWC.
And yeah, the first thing we noticed was that this place of a few hundred people had more evacuees than the actual patients. Of course, they stressed enough that they took care of the elderly but we've only met a handful on the upper floors and the majority of the patients were retired vets that were around the same age as the old man.
But with actual old people who couldn't live on their own? They had their own special room—for obvious reasons—but as we reached the third floor, we came upon who I assumed as "June", a girl with blue hair and gothic-like clothes, reading a book to this older woman with auburn hair, who I assumed to be "Mrs. Rose", sitting on a wheelchair with her back facing us.
However, it didn't take long before we realized that it was taking everything from June to hold her tears as she was about to reach the end of the book she was reading as we came at the most unfortunate time.
"Oh no… Mrs. Rose…" Eden muttered as she held her mouth, tears about to come out of her eyes as well.
At this point, Kaley and I already gave each other a glance because a lot of people were in this open area of sorts and we couldn't just shoot or stab the back of Mrs. Rose's head while they were all present—not for technical purposes but for common decency.
But yeah, I already spotted a familiar handle on the "bookmark" June was holding with her other hand though everything could go all sorts of wrong if we waited that long. However, June kept reading the book to Mrs. Rose, determined to get to the final pages, and she definitely threw us a deathly glare when she noticed us come close.
But to my surprise, Eden began to use sign language with June to communicate indirectly so I did the same while she was looking straight at us.
[Keep going, we'll just stand by at the ready just in case…]