Chapter 20

As he amassed a formidable stash of tokens and organized them in his box pocket, Zack still couldn’t shake off the thought that the sponsor of lust legitimately enjoyed watching him choke the female examinees. Sure, the evil one wanted him to straight up torture and kill someone, which was objectively worse, but Zack was a member of the race called humanity which was anything but objective or logical when it came to a sex related topic.

So yeah, that sly notification was digging a hole through his mind and refusing to leave, no matter how much he tried to exorcise away the impure thoughts with monotonous token counting. It was only when the recipient of the choking came up and tapped his shoulder that he was finally freed from his mental prison.

“Are you okay? You look like you’re in a daze,” Alicia asked, her turtleneck now fully pulled up.

“Blanked out for a moment there,” Zack replied. “I was thinking about something.” There was no way in hell that he would reveal what he was just thinking about, especially with so many people around looking at him for guidance.

“Well, you’re the leader now, and it’s not great for you to be out of it like that,” Alicia replied. “What should we do now?”

Zack was back at attention, his mind rolling through the facts to figure out the best way to present them to his new two dozen or so followers. “Listen–” he started, as he gathered up the examinees and told them about his theory about how the examination would not end when they reached the gymnasium. He also told them about how the hounds killed several of the people outside of the gymnasium, since they couldn’t have seen that from the cafeteria due to its windows facing the opposite direction.

Their reaction was as he expected. Their receptiveness to him was significantly higher now that he’d proven his competence, and also due to the fact that his observations were substantiated with proof.

“I believe you, but that’s just downright cruel to not end the examination once we reach the gym,” one of the examinees reacted. “I thought they’d let us off the hook and let us go home, but we just have to endure more…”

“And it’s just going to get worse as time goes on, if I had to take a guess,” Zack added. “So let’s not get antsy and beeline directly to the gymnasium. We should take some food supplies, gather up some more water, and do some more searching to see if we can find anything useful.”

“By the way, have any of you seen chalk?”

At the sound of that, several of the examinees froze up tensely. Sofia broke the silence. “Wallace took all of it. He killed one of my guys while we were at the staircase. And for what? Just a piece of chalk?”

“Shit. That’s horrible. The chalk can be used for rituals and to cast spells, but why the hell did he kill someone over it? That’s just messed up.”

“You should be careful of Wallace’s followers as well. He attracted some pretty nasty people, and they don’t really have any problems killing people for what they need. Last time I saw, they were collecting flares, and they beat up anyone that didn’t hand them over,” Alicia explained.

“Yeah, those guys are assholes,” Nicolas said while nodding.

“Hey, you’re suspicious as well,” Alicia fired back.

“Can’t say you’re wrong about that, but I’m not so bad of a guy you know. Despite what you might think.”

“I think that Nicolas is a nice man,” Poppy piped up. “I can feel it.”

“My sister is a good judge of character,” Abe said. “You can trust her on that. If she says Nicolas is nice, you guys might not believe it, but I do.”

“Ah…” Patricia said, all of a sudden. “I think I know why the gymnasium was locked now. It’s because of freaking Wallace. It makes sense.”

A middle aged male examinee began to speak. “Why do you think that is?” It wasn’t just him that was curious about how Patricia came to that conclusion.

Patricia shrugged. “I deal with egotistical jerks like him all the time. He was so mad that he didn’t get the gold mark, he was practically seething during the lecture hall. So he wants to prove himself now. I bet he thinks that the way for him to shine in this examination is to prove himself superior to us, and that means locking everyone out so they can’t complete the mission. At least, that’s the feeling that I get.”

“Hm… you might be onto something,” Sofia replied. “Well, that’s our best guess as to why the gymnasium is locked. But that’s a real problem, isn’t it? How are we going to get in there if we can’t unlock the main entrance? And there’s going to be those dogs patrolling around too.”

“Maybe there’s a way around the back,” Abe offered.

“Could be,” Zack replied. “But don’t worry about that too much. I have the master key. Since you guys are following me now, you get to benefit from all of that.”

“A master key?” one of the teenagers said, his lips still crusted with cheesy tortilla chip dust. “How did you find something like that? Can you teach me?” He looked about thirteen, probably in his second year of middle school, and he and his friend had been gawking awestruck ever since the fight.

It was pretty clear that the teenager was getting a bit ahead of himself. “I’m Scotty by the way. And this is my friend Tim. If you ever need help, we’ll be at your service Mr. Abraxas,” Scotty said with admiring conviction, and he saluted Zack, a gesture that was so over the top worship-like and juvenile that Patricia had to avert her eyes. Then, Tim saluted as well.

These two teenage clowns… He had thought that it was overwhelming to deal with someone like Patricia who barely appreciated getting bussed and carried, but having someone on the opposite end of the scale like Scotty and Tim constantly following him like a butt-following-bug or a pair of overeager boy scouts was going to be a bit annoying as well.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Zack said. “That’s the first rule if you want to follow me around and learn. Don’t get yourself killed.”

“Okay,” Scotty replied, his eyes full with expectation.

“Alright,” Zack said loudly, now addressing all of the examinees. “Here’s the plan. We’re going to check as many rooms as we can for resources while keeping a close eye on our enemies. Since we’re a large group, it’s going to be tough to stay undetected. I need all of you to fill up anything you can with water, and bring it with you for Hamagku deterrent.”

“Excuse me,” the middle aged man from before said. “What’s a Hamagu?”

“It’s the name of the female demon,” Zack replied.

“If I may ask, how do you know this?”

“Being a gold mark comes with its perks,” answered Zack truthfully. He could tell that the quality of the information he was giving the examinees was instilling hope in them, a hope that they would be able to survive this ordeal alive, and also gave him a tremendous amount of credibility. That was good. The more in-line they were with his philosophies, the fewer casualties would occur.

“Now, let’s get moving.”

A flurry of movement filled the cafeteria as the examinees prepared to venture out into danger once more. They grouped up at the entrance to the cafeteria, and Zack counted roughly twenty people. It was quite a sizable group, if he had to say so himself. Almost statistically significant on its own.

“S-sorry, but I’m not sure if I want to stay in such a big group,” a woman said nervously. “It’ll just make us easier to track down since we’ll be making a lot of noise. We’ll be going first, if that’s alright.”

Although he wanted to convince her otherwise, the look on her face showed that she was already dead set on leaving. He knew better than to try to convince someone who had already made up their mind. And to be fair, her point had merit. “Be careful,” he told her. “This isn’t the best decision, but I can’t stop you. Good luck.”

The woman opened the door, looking both ways for signs of danger, and then left, with two of her comrades right beside her.

“Let’s go as well,” Zack said, hauling one of the mop buckets in one hand. He handed the other bucket to Nicolas. “Throw this onto her face in case we run into her.”

With that said, the party of twenty or so people stepped out of the safety of the cafeteria and into the halls, right as the clock chimed again, signaling the turn of the hour. Nobody looked particularly pleased about the ever-increasing danger, so Zack quickly led them to the bathroom sink so that they could fill up as much water as they could.

“That monster is coming this way,” Scotty reported with quick pants, having run back from his scouting mission.

“Alright, throw a flare to distract it and let’s move.”

That was the strategy they decided on after a while. It was best to use water as a last resort, so they made use of flares to direct it away from their search path. With this method, they scoured as many rooms as they could, producing some interesting items, some of which had faint glows around them. There was a flashlight, and a roll of duct tape, which sounded oddly reminiscent to Abe’s recanting of World of Corpses.

Another hour into their exploration, the clock bells rang again. Zack saw something that made him immediately bring in the rest of the examinees into a huddle next to a window facing the gymnasium. “One of the hounds just entered the building,” he said solemnly. “Right there, through the damaged window on the first floor. It wasn’t damaged before, must’ve happened recently.”

“What do we do?” one of the markless examinees asked.

Zack grinned from ear to ear. He’d observed the hound enough, and realized that it behaved exactly like the devil dogs from the game. “As long as it’s just the hound, we can fight it. Listen up–”