Chapter 13 - Information

Rynold stood up and slowly approached the door. Since he couldn't remove the gauntlets anyway, he readied himself for what might come.

Besides, no person would knock on the door when they were going to attack someone. The element of surprise can only be an advantage to the attacker.

He slowly opened the door while Oliver was sound asleep on the couch. Rynold, still wishing he was asleep, opened the door only to find a young man in a military outfit with a sniper rifle flung across his shoulder.

"Can I help you?" Rynold asked, still skeptical that this person could only bring trouble to them.

"Finally! Somebody actually answered the door," the young man said enthusiastically.

The guy was rather young for somebody in the military and doesn't look any older than Rynold was. What's more, is that the young man seemed more like a greenhorn — somebody that looked like he was just pulled into the line of active duty.

"Anyway," he continued, "I abandoned my post to talk to you guys. No way a bunch of nobodies could survive what's out there. I'm Jack, a private in the army"

"Rynold. A pleasure to meet you," Rynold extended his hand and both of them shook hands. "So, why'd you come here, exactly?"

"Well, I was wondering if I could join you guys. The army has gotten their hands full because of the ghouls and other creatures. I already abandoned my post just to get here and I doubt that they would take me back." Jack was conflicted. He slightly wished that there was more action involved since his deployment.

"What's in it for us?" Rynold asked. After all, in the New World, you can't easily trust people since your life will constantly be on the line. And it would be a lot more dangerous if the people surrounding you would jump at any opportunity to take advantage of you.

"Information," Jack said with a serious look. "I may be a private but you learn a thing or two if you keep snooping around. Besides, I don't have anything better to do in there when all I have is looking through a scope."

Rynold stood in silence, thinking of an appropriate response.

"Why did they assign that post to you then? You want some action but how are you gonna do that in a sniping position?" Rynold was weirded out by the interaction. 'This guy is way in over his head!'

"That's what I said!" Jack said, still determined. "That's exactly the reason why I left. I want to fight in the front lines and beat the living daylights out from monsters."

"I'll have to ask the others first. In the meantime, you can stay inside until we discuss how we deal with this whole thing," Rynold basically gave up dealing with this guy but the decision wasn't entirely up to him.

"Alright!" Without a second's time, Jack went right into the house that the group was staying in, that is until Rynold stopped him by grabbing his arm.

"Give me your gun first. You wouldn't want to startle the others with you flaunting that thing all over the place."

Jack hesitantly handed over his gun to Rynold. Thankfully, he could easily just put it inside his inventory, making the young soldier open his jaw in amazement.

"You-you're an evolver?!" Jack was surprised by the turn of events and couldn't contain his voice, waking Oliver up from his sleep.

"Calm the fuck down, would you?" Rynold snarked at the volume of Jack's voice. "I have no idea what an evolver is but you're making way too much noise."

Oliver yawned for a full second and realized the stranger in the house. He immediately pulled out his dagger and flickering in and out of sight, approaching the stranger. Oliver made full use of the dagger's passive skill, One with Darkness, and poked the tip of the dagger to the young soldier's neck.

"Hey, calm down," Rynold said. He motioned for Oliver to put the dagger down. "This guy wants to join us."

Rynold explained the situation to Oliver and told Jack to stand aside for a little while.

After discussing, Oliver decided to leave the room for a while so that Rynold could get to his questioning. Tired and wishing he could sleep, Rynold moved up to Jack while Jack was messing around with the cupboards.

"Hey, what exactly do you know?" Rynold asked.

"Some things here and there like the barricades in the city and how to get out of here," Jack said nonchalantly.

"Tell m-"

"But on one condition," Jack interrupted. "You guys come with me to kill the spider nest."

"What?! That's insane!"

Rynold didn't even know what's inside the spider nest and it's insane if they would come and kill them. They don't have the means to kill the entire swarm easily even if they could kill one or two drones.

"We'll think about it," Rynold sighed. "But at least tell me what did you mean by evolvers."

"Right. Right. The evolvers are the ones who can do the thing you just did. Pulling things out of thin air and shooting fire and lightning out of thin air," Jack explained. "We call them evolvers in the army and they're considered elite soldiers in the army with a special status."

Rynold interjected, "But anybody in the world can evolve so I assume you don't have the same abilities that those soldiers do?"

"The barricade that I was staying at the time didn't have any way for us to acquire anything that would make us stronger. And even if we did, all of those things would go to the elite soldiers, making them walking armies."

Rynold urged Jack to keep explaining, "go on."

"When the whole thing started, I was still inside the police station for mandatory training and real-world experience. Good thing that I wasn't outside at the time or else I would've become a ghoul," Jack continued to explain while laughing at his fortune.

"And there were no people on the street because of the festival going on inside the city, huh?" Rynold guessed.

"Yeah. There's nothing we could have done at the time and the people in the station at the time barricaded the entire block."

"I get the idea," Rynold replied to the explaining Jack only to become less and less interested in what he had to say.

Now that he knows what the army actually had over them, Rynold didn't know what he could do. They were already powerless against regular soldiers in the army but it would be a lot worse when there was an army full of high-level people against them.

It was risky for them to stay in a house next to a barricade but they were also sandwiched in because of the barricade that, thankfully, didn't attack yet. Even though Jack might be sent as a spy, Rynold had no choice but to listen to this guy because they were clueless.

"I'm gonna get some sleep," Rynold said to Jack while making sure he was loud enough for Oliver to hear in the other room.

Rynold purposefully lowered his guard so that he would let Jack have the opportunity to attack. Oliver could then attack him if and when Jack attacks.

Lying on the couch once again, Rynold finally managed to fall asleep. He could trust that Oliver wouldn't mess up. Besides, if Jack managed to hurt Rynold in any way, he has no proper weapons that could actually kill him.

Meanwhile, Oliver was peeking from the other room while fiddling the dagger he held in his hand. Jack, on the other hand, was closing his eyes while looking like he was deep in thought. Both of the guys were doing their own things while Rynold started snoring like a log and occasionally screaming into the night.

'How have I been roommates with this guy for so long when every time he sleeps it looks like this,' Rynold thought to himself while chuckling.

The next day.

Rynold woke up from the bright ray of sunshine and sat up on the couch. He saw Jack was asleep on the other couch that Oliver slept on the other night.

Shaking his head, he got up and went to Oliver in the other room, only to find him asleep.

Rynold let out a slight chuckle and went back out to the living room and sat on the couch once again. He opened his inventory and pulled some bread to eat for breakfast. Rynold relaxed on the couch and heard footsteps from the stairs as soon as he finished eating.

He turned around only to find Elle going down the stairs — the awkward conversation that he was avoiding managed to bite him in the ass. Only two of them were actually awake in the entire house.

Hoping to avoid the entire conversation, Rynold left the room and went to where Oliver was sleeping. Waking him up only to see Spider Drones approaching from the window.