Thugs and Scums

Sitting on a light-grey stony rooftop, Dave frowned slightly as he concentrated his senses on what was happenning below him. It didn't seem that people inside the cloth shop were having a peaceful chatter with each other. He sensed six people below him: three from before and three new presences, all seemed to be male.

Dave didn't hear anything from below, only getting a general idea of what they were doing. 'Dammit! I'm already missing my Enhanced Five Senses skill. I should somehow enter stealthily into the shop, so I can hear them.'

Dave sighed as he recalled one of his skills he learnt with help of the System. Combined with Mana Sensing, it allowed him to have more advanced detective abilities and was one of the main skills he learnt as a swordsman.

'Interesting, when would my efforts bear any results in that dark space...I kept entering that space every day and endured the crushing pressure for every time, which was approximately 10-15 minutes a day. It's been already three weeks, and I think I'm getting closer to lit the first rune. Unfortunately, I don't know for what skill that rune was for.' Dave recalled the past three weeks he visited Regressor's Chamber.

Shaking his head to cast aside any distracting thoughts, Dave found metallic ladders leading below under a metallic lid. Silently opening it, he went down by the ladders and found himself seemingly in a small storeroom, where he found lots of boxes of various sizes. They should be unpacked batch of clothes.

As he descended to the floor, Dave could already hear angered voices from another room. Looking around him and trying to orient in a dim room, he slightly opened the metallic doors and peeked through them into the main basement. Although he was only seeing stacked rows of clothes, it became much easier to hear the content of their argument.

"Screw you, shitbags! We're not interested in your offer, so fuck out of here!" Slightly angered voice sound from his left as Dave tried to make sense of their conversation. 'Offer? What offer can three male students make in their situation? Better to worry about their own lives...'

"Watch your mouth, little shit! Our boss is giving all of you a chance to survive, so think it over, otherwise you may regret it very soon!" A hoarse voice sounded to his left and seemed to be slightly sinister as it had a threatening tone.

"And you call it an offer? Get out of here! It's bullshit, not an offer. We're doing fine without you and your boss, so fuck away." Next Dave heard a fierce but composed voice.

"Yeah! Your offer is a plain robbery, nothing else. We aren't gonna pass half of our food to you, shitbags. We're doing fine on our own and without your protection, so fuck off." A slightly younger voice sounded next as Dave could more or less understand what was happening.

He had heard that there were people who tracked down other students on the campus and forced them to enter their group while also forcing them to pass down their food to them. Of course, it was much easier to take food from weaker students rather than obtaining one yourself, but he never heard that such people would enter an area densely packed with zombies, endangering their lives.

However, he had heard who was the main person who stood behind such methods. He heard that Richard took a portion of food from other students, promising them his and his gang's protection. However, it was obvious that he was plainly forcing them to give him food. 'They talked about their boss. Should I check on him? Anyway, I'll lose nothing if I go after them.'

As he was thinking to interrupt them and force them to lead him to their boss, the same hoarse voice said, "Then, don't regret it afterwards. Rob, Stan, get some sense into them." With those words, it seemed that fight broke between the three of them.

'Hmm...I don't give a damn about their situation, but I still need one of them to lead me to their boss.' Dave thought inwardly as he decided to meddle into their affairs. He opened the door from a room he was in and went towards the source of sounds.

He said, "Stop it! I..." However, just when he tried stopping them, he was left speechless when he saw what happened in a span of few breaths. Two of the three were already lying on the ground, coughing and gasping for breath as they seemed to be hit to their solar plexuses. Their pipes were in the hands of the men standing right before them. It seemed that they easily took down two of them with bare fists and took their pipes from them.

Dave immediately noticed a hulking man with short black hair, seemingly 6 feet and 8 inches, that stood towering before two of them. He was just slightly falling behind a Giant and could even rival one of the smaller ones in size. He was physically built as thick muscles covered all of his body.

'Whoa! It's quite hard to find that huge human nowadays. How did they even think of attacking them? Did they feel braver with pipes in their hands that they even rushed directly at them? Damn! He is two or three times larger than me!?' Dave stared amazedly at the hulking big boy.

Although he had trained for the past three weeks, he didn't bulge in size or entered a growth sprout period. He was still as small as he was before the start of the second cataclysm with a small stature but with more refined muscles, which were more visible now due to strenuous training he had endured for the past weeks.

"You...you...you'll regret it. Our boss won't forgive you!" Shaking and trembling, the only one, who was standing and doing all the talking, tried to flee from the shop as he dashed towards the exit doors, gripping a metal pipe in his hands.

However, as he started running, just after several steps, he crashed into someone and stopped in his tracks as he felt a strong blow to his solar plexus. Coughing and feeling a sharp burning pain in his chest, he desperately gasped for breath and fell on the floor, supporting himself with his arms, as saliva dripped from his mouth.

"Oops! Sorry, but I can't let you get away. It'll be much better if we go there all together." Dave said it as he used Flash Step to jump right before him and hit him into the solar plexus.

"Who...are...you? Fucking...shitbag...where did...you come...from?" Gasping for breath, the male student said in a low hoarse voice as he stopped periodically in his words. However, inside he thought, 'Where did he come from? How did he appear instantly right before me?...And, why is he so fucking strong? I feel like I was hit by a metal gauntlet rather than a human fist.'

Frowning slightly, Dave gave another blow to him, this time hitting him into the stomach, causing the man to groan in pain, as he said, "Don't worry! I just want to meet your boss and you're gonna lead me to him. Pretty simple, right?"

However, the male student didn't hear him afterwards as he fell on the floor, pressing his hands onto his stomach. Seeing it, Dave sighed in irritation and turned to the original owner of the cloth shop.

"Who are you? Are you with them?" The young man, who stood behind the other two, said in a hostile tone.

"Oscar, get back and watch what you say," The man in front of him said in a worried manner as he turned to him and said, "Thanks, little brother! If you hadn't stopped him, that shitbag would have escaped and attracted attention from zombies outside."

'Little brother!? Ehh...whatever!' Dave sighed inwardly as he said to them, "What are you doing in a cloth shop that's located in a crowded area. You may consider going somewhere else."

"Well, we don't get a chance to choose where to settle down when everything turned crazy." The man smiled bitterly as he said it. "Whatever, I'm Luther. The big man next to me is my friend, Brook, and the boy behind me is my little brother, Oscar."

"Hey, I'm not a boy!" Oscar remarked in dissatisfaction, causing Luther to smile lightly.

"David, a freshman student in Business Major," He said as he shook hands with the one in the middle. Luther seemed to be the one who had a final say in everything. His body wasn't as huge as Brook's, but he was physically built as Dave felt his strong grip.

"Then, you're our junior! Brook and I are already sophomores. But Oscar has only entered the university this year, so he should approximately of your age." Luther was talking energetically as he put his arm over the shoulder of his little brother.

'Well, they do look alike. Both of them have sharp facial features and light-brown hair. But Oscar's hair is slightly longer than his older brother's. Well, Luther looks like the most reliable among them.' Dave silently remarked in his mind as he turned to the other three lying on the ground and catching their breaths. 'Well, better get them talking. No time to waste. Perhaps, I can even meet Richard today.'