More Giants

Damien raised an eyebrow as he looked at Zenos.

"The ideas we come up with? I've created suggestions and asked for your agreement. If you had something better, you could always bring it up."

Zenos shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, I've always been the type of person that follows someone else's opinion rather than sticking to my own. I mean, you saw what happened when I tried suggesting something earlier. It didn't end up working out."

Damien rolled his eyes.

"Huh? Do you mean sneaking past the creatures? Didn't I tell you earlier that it wasn't a bad strategy, but not one that didn't fit the situation?"

Zenos blinked a few times.

"Isn't that just a nice way of saying it was a bad suggestion?"

Damien let out an exasperated sigh.

"Since when did your confidence just plummet like that? Seriously, it isn't a bad suggestion. I've actually been planning around using that very strategy you were thinking of depending on the circumstances we find ourselves in."

Zenos looked at him strangely.

"...Are you being honest?"

Damien raised an eyebrow.

"And why would I care enough to lie about you for something like that."

Zenos seemed annoyed.

"What? But you stated before that you're already creating plans around that strategy, how does that make any sense?"

Damien looked at him like he was a weirdo. In fact, even Killian began looking at Zenos like he was a freak.

"How in the world does that not make any sense? It's called putting some amount of thought to what's going to happen in the future so that you're at least somewhat more prepared for it."

Zenos narrowed his eyes slightly.

"But how are you supposed to plan for something when you don't even know what's going to happen? What if there's just... a horde of giant wolves charging towards us when we open the door?"

Damien's eyelid twitched.

"Um, the reason we plan in the first place is to have some sort of preparation for the unexpected."

Zenos shook his head.

"But you don't know what is going to happen!"

Killian couldn't help but interject.

"Are you even listening to yourself right now? I hate the kinds of people that always say that anything could happen in the future and look so happy about it. Realistically speaking, nothing really changes. You can predict what happens, don't you think?"

Damien cringed slightly.

"Well... saying that nothing really changes is a bit of an exaggeration, but you are right in that we can predict what happens at least to a certain extent."

Zenos clicked his tongue.

"Then did you predict that we would end up here?"

Killian rolled his eyes.

"Nothing really changed for me, which was what I expected."

Damien let out a helpless sigh.

"Yes, sometimes unexpected things happen, but that's where you improvise, make changes to your plan. Did you really not do anything like this ever? How did you even function as a human being?"

After saying that, silence fell. It seemed that Zenos didn't really know how to respond to that. The awkward silence persisted for quite a while, but Zenos eventually did answer.

"...Well, I've never really had faith in my own opinions. Honestly, even as I was executing my own idea, I couldn't help but wonder in what way it would begin to go wrong."

He looked down at the ground.

"So... for as long as I've remembered, I just make the decision to follow someone else's decision. To do what someone else has already done and succeeded."

Damien chuckled.

"You sound just like one of the average men in business."

Zenos blinked a few times.

"That's because I was an average man in the business."

Killian raised an eyebrow.

"I heard it was really hard to get into business in the first place. Don't you need like, countless connections even just to dip your toes into that kind of thing?"

Zenos shook his head.

"Correction. If you want any amount of success in business, you need countless connections. However, if you want to try your hand at it, realistically anybody that isn't a child could try their hand at it. I was one of those people that tried."

Damien chuckled.

"...You have to have pretty big assets to try though. All the big companies now have massive research facilities where they continually invent more things. If you want to make something new on your own, it's probably not something good."

Zenos shrugged his shoulders.

"Or you could be a dumbass that took out a loan."

Damien blinked a few times.

"How would a loan be able to get you anything? It takes months just to build up a thousand dollars of credit."

Zenos narrowed his eyes slightly.

"...Well, it was actually my I believe my grandfather's account, that was inherited by my father, which was then inherited by me. By the end, I was able to take out about fifty grand."

Killian raised an eyebrow.

"Doesn't that mean your grandfather and father both never got into trouble with money for their entire lives?"

Zenos nodded.

"Yes."

Killian shot him a glance.

"And then... you used all of it to try and start a business?"

After pausing for a second, he nodded one more time.

"Yes."

Damien shook his head.

"This is why I've always thought that the new inheritance account they made was a stupid idea."

Killian furrowed his brows.

"But don't you need at least like, two hundred grand if you want to start a business?"

Zenos shrugged his shoulders.

"If you want to start one that has a real chance of being successful, yes."

Killian's eyes widened.

"So you just had over a hundred grand lying around?"

Zenos blinked a few times.

"No. I had nothing. Our family was an average one, just barely making ends meet."

Damien let out a soft sigh.

"...So you tried to start a business with some chump change, then ended up failing miserably."

Zenos laughed.

"This will sound strange, but I actually succeeded... at first."

Damien raised an eyebrow.

"So you're that one in a million."

Zenos nodded.

"I just... got lucky, and the idea I chose, synthesized meat, just so happened to be the same as another company that began promoting that product hard. I was quite successful in the first few years and built quite a few facilities. I was ambitious, aggressively spending money further and further."

He paused.

"But it turns out there are unspoken rules among businesses. I'm still not sure what they are exactly, but I believe I stepped over one of them. And... I'm sure you can fill in the blanks from there."

Killian blinked a few times.

"That's... something."

Damien took in a deep breath.

"Well anyway, how much time do you think you'll need before you can start fighting again."

Zenos narrowed his eyes slightly.

"...Didn't Killian only need a few hours or so? My injuries might heal by then."

Damien gave a nod.

"Well, we can wait then."

Zenos furrowed his brow.

"What about Adonis?"

Damien sighed.

"He isn't even willing to talk right now. I doubt he'll be fine anytime soon. I would wait, but I'm a little concerned that we're going to starve to death. Hopefully, Adonis will be operational after we clear a few of these labs."

Killian's eyebrow twitched.

"But doesn't this lab like, have a big difficulty rating?"

Damien nodded.

"Yeah, but we can only be in this lab for so long. Hopefully, Adonis will recover soon enough, and we don't come into anything too bad by then."

Zenos frowned.

"...That sounds quite bad."

Damien laughed.

"Honestly, it looks like your strategy from earlier is going to come into play."

Zenos took a deep breath.

"Doesn't that mean we are going to be forced to the wall in desperation?"

Damien gave a small nod.

"Pretty much guaranteed, yeah."

At first, Killian had a frown. But out of nowhere, he suddenly burst out in laughter as though that was the most funniest thing in the world.

"There are no complaints here. It sounds pretty good to me."

Zenos let out a sigh as he looked down.

"I would complain, but that wouldn't change anything and I'd rather rest right now."

With that, the group rested for several hours more. By now, Adonis had fallen asleep, and it didn't look like he was waking up any time soon.

As for Zenos, he stood up, but there was a distinct frown plastered across his face.

"I still don't feel any better. What the hell is happening?"

Killian shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, the pain doesn't get any smaller for a while. It's more like that you get to used to feeling that pain."

Zenos was speechless for quite a while.

"...It seems I didn't give you two the credit you deserved."

Damien cracked his neck.

"Well, you can show your appreciation by helping us clear this next room."

A bitter smile formed on Zenos' face.

"You really are ruthless."

Killian rolled his eyes.

"It's not like we have a choice here, alright?"

Zenos sighed.

"Alright."

While Adonis was still sleeping on the floor, Damien and the others got up and prepared to do another room. There was only one room for them to go through from here, and so they decided to go through that way.

Killian coughed.

"So, what do we do if we see another one of those big ones? And what if there are multiple of them?"

Damien narrowed his eyes.

"We'll probably have to use our guns."

And after saying that, he slammed his hand down on the keypad, causing the gate to open up. As the weak flashlight shined into the room, almost like Killian had predicted it, it revealed two giant monsters right at the entrance.