Chapter 19: Dispute

From what the goblins said to him, there were no more pig orcs in the stairs or in the reception.

The goblins didn't explore further as they came back with all the crystals they could find in the stairs.

There were much less crystals than Kennen thought.

There were only 24 crystals.

However, they killed a lot more than 24 orcs so where did all the crystals go?

"Well, we have seen monsters absorb crystals before so maybe they absorbed it as they lifted the corpses to cover themselves?" Kennen theorized.

His friends had a thought of realization after that.

This was probably what happened.

"Fuuuuuuuu…." Evan screamed in lowercase.

"All of that… for only this much…" Rafael chuckled.

Everyone was disappointed.

They fought against what seemed to be an army and privaled at the cost of the death of someone from their team.

The reward really didn't fit the feat.

"It can't be helped. We weren't prepared for this so we should be happy that we made it out alive and even got 24 crystals." Frank tried to be positive.

That didn't stop everyone from feeling disappointment.

Next, it was time to divide the crystals.

Ryan got a crystal to thank him for his help but the heavy lifting was done by Kennen and his friends and he also knew this so he was grateful.

Kennen decided to split the remaining 23 crystals equally as each of them received four with the remaining three would be given to Amelia.

James was dead so no need to count his share and the crystal formed from his body would probably end up in Amelia's hand so she would also get 4 in the end.

Honestly, Brandi didn't deserve to have any and she probably wouldn't accept any due to how much she contributed in the fight so she would get nothing.

With this, Kennen had now 20 crystals absorbed and the four he just took helped quite a lot against the fatigue he felt. He hadn't fully recovered but wasn't as tired as before anymore.

After deciding on the splits and absorbing their shares, Kennen and Frank went to check up on the girls while also giving their shares.

The two moved from the corridors to a room on the floor.

Amelia was consoling Brandi even though it was her who just lost a boyfriend an hour ago.

"Here's your share." Kennen handed the three crystals to Amelia, "There was only 24 crystals."

"That seems a bit low…" Amelia was confused.

Kennen explained to her their theory and what they needed to do next, which was cleaning the corpses, specifically, what she wanted to do with James' corpse.

"James and I didn't really talk about this… hum…" Amelia got emotional again, "I don't know… I need time to think about it."

Since she needed to think it over, Kennen and Frank left her alone and covered James' corpse with a drap before starting to move the pig orcs' corpses to the hotel's lobby.

Too bad that they couldn't use the armor or metal bat due to how big and heavy it was for any of them but they still stripped it off the pig orcs and put it away.

It could be of use later down the line.

Kennen and Frank were assembling the bodies on the eighth floor while the others were taking care of the bodies on the stairs.

During their work, they found Kevin's body. It was a bangled mess as it got stomped by multiple pig orcs so they decided to burn the body along with the pig orcs corpses.

They must have been on it for quite a while as daylight started to shine through the windows.

Everything was almost done. Kennen and his friends only had a few bodies on the eighth floor, where the last battle was, to transport down before they could burn the bodies in the hotel's lobby.

As they were about to go down the stairs, they saw the group of people that ran away slowly coming down the stairs.

"Look at that, the snakes came back!" Evan exclaimed at their presence.

Julio had a sheepish smile when he saw them, "Haha… so glad to see you guys safe!"

"I bet you didn't expect that to happen, right?" Rafael sneered.

"Haha… As I said, just happy to see you guys safe and sound." Julio tried to calm things down.

"Except, we aren't fine. We got bit by some snakes." Evan was determined to get his point across.

"What are you guys doing with the bodies?" A woman from their group asked, in hope to change the subject.

"Where are the crystals?" Michael asked,

"We snuff them. Why are you asking? You expected to get some?" Enzo asked back.

"Of course! We contributed to the fight!" Michael declared.

Kennen thought that Michael lacked completely any self-awareness and very selfish, those types of people really dared to say and do anything.

Really not someone he wanted to have close to him.

"You contributed as much as the turd I shat yesterday! How can you have the cheek to stand here and ask for crystals when one of us died! You should be on your knees, begging us to spare you!" Evan got more angry as he spoke and even manifested his powers on his two hands.

Enzo also conjured his bow with the goblins drawing their daggers and javelins.

"One of ours also died and it's was your fu**ing fault!" Michael didn't back down, "This is the least you can do! You think as stupid as those pigs and that we're as easy to kill?"

"No, you're weaker." Evan slowly advanced toward him.

Michael had shown a lot of courage right now, which was quite surprising, but the people around didn't look as confident and clearly didn't want a fight to break out.

"Yo! Yo! Chill out!" Ryan came up from behind and held him back, "We're all on the same side!"

"Nobody wants to have backstabbers on their side." Kennen pointed out to him.

"Alright, alright… Let's just all calm down and take a big breath. Let us apologize for running out on you guys. It was our first fight and it was something so overwhelming right at the gate so we panicked and ran away. I assure you, we all feel apologetic and guilty." Julio tried to appease Evan while motioning Michael to stop talking.

Frank put a hand on Evan's shoulder and gave a look that told Evan to let him handle this.

"An apology isn't going to cut it. One of our friends died because you people bailed on us, we will need more than an apology."

Frank didn't say 'otherwise' but everything could feel there was an 'otherwise' and what followed that wasn't something pleasant.

"Oh bullshit! Don't pin your friend's death on us!" Michael spoke again even with Julio holding him back, "We would have a lot more people able to fight if you just gave us the crystals instead of hoarding them, you think I don't know? Each of you took dozens of crystals! Your friend would still be alive now if you gave it to us instead!"

"Horseshit!"

"You mean we'll have more snakes and death?"

"Shit, we'll probably be used as bait by you guys."

Kennen's friends all indignantly rebutted.

Kennen wasn't sure how to fight would have developed if they had more powered people and they gave every crystal to them after they got to ten crystals.

It probably would have gone better with more diversity in their powers and more people to share the load but people with one crystal generally couldn't contend against a pig orc.

This was destined to be one of the what ifs that would plague Kennen's mind for a bit.

"What's done is done. What must we do to earn forgiveness?"

Julio understood the underlying meaning of Frank's words and preferred that the matter was resolved peacefully.

"Seventy crystals, or the door." Frank calmly said to him.

"Seventy?! Are you out of your mind?!" Michael instantly bursted out.

Julio ignored Michael's outburst, "The door? What does that mean?"

"My friends and I cannot live together with unapologetic betrayers so you guys would need to vacate this hotel."

The words were polite but Frank was definitely threatening them.

"You can't have us leave! You don't own the hotel!"

"You have no rights!"

Some of them shouted out in fear of leaving the hotel, especially after what just happened.

"There's no right anymore." Kennen stated.

"Yeah… We'll throw you out either willingly or by force." Evan slammed his fist together.

"You fu-"

"Shut up Michael!"

Julio interrupted Michael, "Nobody wants to fight here so if you want to die, don't drag us with you,"

Michael wanted to say something but saw the people from his group starting to put some distance between them while Michael had his knives manifested.

They clearly wouldn't back him up if a fight was to break out.

Julio turned his gaze back toward Frank and asked, "If we give crystals to you, you will allow us to remain and keep us safe, right?"

"Of course, we'll try our best to keep this place safe. We'll even share the food we find outside with you guys."

Frank remained amiable with them.

Julio looked at his people and some whispers were exchanged for a couple minutes.

"We accept our punishment but it'll take us some time to get 70 crystals." Julio said.

"No worries, you should be able to give us at least 20 per week."

"Fine."

Julio agreed to Frank's conditions and the matter came to an end.

They went left and probably all went back to their rooms to rest.

Kennen could see Michael struggling to contain himself, this deal probably wouldn't end well.

"I still feel it wasn't right to let them go." Evan said.

"We should have given them a beating at the very least." Rafael added.

"You guys are… quite intense. Chill, we're all human here. We should aim our muzzle against the monsters, not fellow men." Ryan gave them a concerned gaze.

"You never watched an apocalyptic movie or what? Humans are threats too." Enzo said.

"Yeah… and they are even crueler than the monsters." Kennen added.

"Alright guys, we get to tax crystals from them. We just make sure to keep an eye on them and never with them ever again." Frank reassured his friends.

"We don't have to keep an eye on them if we kick them out. Moreover, we are too busy to stalk them." Evan said

"We will never have to worry about them if they're dead."

Kennen was just putting his wild thoughts out but everyone was giving him a WTF stare.

"Just saying."

"Come on now, this isn't some chinese novel where you kill everyone that offended you."

"Alright, let's get this done quickly so we go back to sleep." Frank drew their attention back to their earlier task.

It took them another hour to assemble all the bodies in front of the hotel so they could burn them.

"I was wondering, are these guys edible? They look like pigs so it should taste like pork, no?" Enzo asked.

"I mean you can gut and cook one if you want, I'm going to stick with normal food until that runs out." Evan replied as he was the last corpse to the pile.

"You can have Jordan use disinfect on it just to make sure that it isn't poisoned." Rafael added.

"Nah, I think I'm going to stick to a normal diet." Enzo backed out.

Eating pig orcs wouldn't be such a bad idea.

Kennen read many novels where monster meat was consumed and there was no risk of poisoning with Jordan's ability but they probably shouldn't try it until it was last resort. Even then, they should feed it to a dog or something, to see if there was anything wrong with it.

Hopefully, they would find a settlement and grow their own foods before any of that happened.

"This is the last."

The goblins threw the last pig orc's body in the hotel to the pile.

After pouring some oil over the orcs, they lit a matchstick and threw it toward the pile.

"Finally, time to sleep now."

Kennen went back to his room as everything was finally done.

As for the barrier at the entrance, him and his friend could rebuild it later.