While Liam and the small group of students paved their way through the desolate streets of the university campus that was adjacent to the gymnasium, a few students were lost in thought.
The countless raindrops that poured down onto the ground were akin to the numerous thoughts and questions that flashed through their minds only to disperse all over the ground, unanswered.
"I thought we would go to the hospital since we will be able to find more people there…" He mumbled to Rex, who looked back at his friend with a wry smile.
"Don't look at me like that…I'm the stupid one here…" Rex tried to joke, but he ended up making a fool of himself.
"The answer is pretty simple," Another student appeared next to Rex and Kian at this moment. He was slim, wore thick glasses and he had a hard time properly wielding the steel spear that felt like a heavy iron hammer in his hands.
Rex and Kian didn't really like this classmate, Ludwig, because he was full of himself. Ludwig was intelligent and he had great prospects to be accepted in the country's most privileged university. There were even rumors about him receiving scholarship offers from various companies who wanted to fund him during his time as a student. However, he ended up rejecting all of the ludicrous offers because he earned more than enough money from stock trading, which fueled his arrogance only further.
Nonetheless, Rex and Kian didn't say anything. They remained silent and waited for Ludwig to say something.
"The hospital is, obviously, a place where patients are treated. Most are ill, old or crippled, including some who are missing a limb or two, or hit their heads hard when they were still young. Only a few will be able to fend for themselves in the hospital, which means that even if Liam finds some survivors now that almost 24 hours passed, they won't be of any use.
No matter how powerful Liam is, or what kind of tricks he has up his sleeve as a half Devil, he won't be able to kill thousands of monsters all alone while taking care of helpless, desperate, and shocked survivors. The heavy downpour could become an advantage since it will be difficult for monsters to smell any scent in the open but it won't even be possible to rush through the entire hospital before Liam, and even more so all of us, would end up as lifeless bodies lying in a puddle of our own blood!"
Ludwig made it quite obvious that he didn't think highly of Rex and Kian's intelligence. The two boys squinted their eyes but they nodded their heads after a while.
"I guess the library is a better place then. There are only two big floors and a rooftop. I know a few idiots who were recently giving studying a try, they'll definitely fight with their life on the line, no matter what," Kian mumbled after a few seconds of silence.
He knew that his older cousin and a few of his friends chose to sell their gaming consoles to spend more time studying after they finished their daily training schedule. Their grades had taken a hit since they were trained and played too much.
Kian quickly followed Liam with faintly gleaming eyes. He was confident that Liam knew very well what he was doing, and was not going to change his plan even if they had some suggestion, yet he had asked for their opinion since he was a little bit stupefied about their reaction when he unmasked himself.
Unfortunately, Kian was thinking too highly of Liam.
Liam's mind was flooded with sudden doubts since he had received an unexpected reaction from the natives. He was also not sure where he was going or what would actually await him. There hadn't been a map of the city in the gymnasium and he couldn't really ask anyone about everything he had wanted to know until now.
It had been more important to hide his identity, after all!
While they were on their way to the library, they didn't encounter a lot of monsters. They evaded the most crowded areas and created a rather secure way to the impressive structure of the library.
Liam had expected a lot when he heard about the library but it was a great looker, for sure. The library was of rectangular shape and adorned with large glass windows that let in plenty of light, usually. Right now it was raining cats and dogs, and it was already a wonder that they could see everything in their surrounding area quite clearly.
The exterior of the library was made of brick and stone. There were also several wooden pillars that supported the entire structure.
As Liam and the students approached the library's entrance they found shards of broken glass as far as they could see.
"...blood," A quiet voice said all of a sudden, and it was no sooner that everyone's head turned to the right where they saw some broken large glass windows and the blood of monsters sticking to the jagged corners of the broken glass that had been left behind as they had stormed inside the library.
Liam ignored the blood. He rather focused on the situation around him, where a handful of corpses were unveiled to him.
As he stepped through the wide-open, arced entrance gate of the library, he and the others were greeted by those corpses.
The walls of the library were lined with shelves upon shelves of books, followed up by comfortable reading nooks scattered throughout the space. Most corpses on the first floor were near those nooks, which allowed everyone to accurately guess what had happened there.
The students behind Liam suppressed their screams and tried to hide their shock at the sight of the mangled, mutilated, and half-eaten corpses.
"Isn't it too quiet?" Olivia asked once they had passed halfway through the library's first floor. Liam nodded his head and prepared himself to fight monsters that would jump at him from his blind spots.
However, nothing like that happened, which turned the quiet and studious atmosphere in the library into something even more fearsome.
'Is everyone dead?'