Becoming a Monster

He took one last look back before making his way to an area he was sure there would be something to kill. He just hoped it wasn't similar to the monster he just saw.

.....

"Wait! You said he was eating something from their hearts? Are you sure?"

In the cafeteria, Mark's group was discussing with Ishii and his group about Noah.

"We all saw it, he seemed to be quite interested in them too, he had a stupid smile after he was done. I'm sure those things benefited him in some way…I'm just not sure if we can do the same…The freak was eating the zombies hearts like snacks!" Alice began to recount what she saw as well and began to grow emotional when discussing Noah's new habit.

"….Why don't any of you seem surprised? Di- It's not the first time is it??" She noticed their odd behavior and came to her own conclusion. There was no way Noah just started to have that strange craving just after meeting them, of course these people saw him do it before.

'I knew it! That guy is crazy.'

On the other hand, the people who heard this new bit of information and didn't witness what happened during the scene at the gym were all confused.

'Eating zombies? What the hell?' How is he not a zombie yet??'

"You haven't seen it, but when we were back in the gym, we fought some kind of zombie boss! And he was crazy enough to eat it while it was still alive!"

"I still get shivers just thinking about it…I'm glad he's gone."

Everyone soon began to tell their different experiences with Noah, it was a huge eye opener for Ishii and his group. Just hearing about the showdown between Noah and the Zombie King in detail amazed them. This was also the first that Neal and Regina were hearing of Noah's deeds as well.

A cold sweat went down their backs. If they had known he became that crazy then they wouldn't have messed with him, at least not personally. The guy clearly lost more than just his mind.

"So what should we do now? Are we leaving?"

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Ishii didn't want to continue bad mouthing the person he admired. It didn't help that every time they bad-mouthed Noah, an intense glare came from the corner of the room. He tried to change the discussion to the main point of why they were here.

"Why should we leave? We have food and it seems most of the zombies were taking care of, right? It should be easy to wait it out here before help arrives, why waste our lives? Neal was the first to answer. He very much enjoyed the leadership he had so far, even though the world was dangerous in every sense of the word now, he wanted to enjoy this new role as much as possible.

He also wanted to build a better rapport with everyone so even when they shelter under the government's wings everyone would still treat him as their leader.

A lot of people seemed to be in agreement with Neal but then there were others who found what he said to be stupid.

"I don't think that's the right call." Ishii spoke, raising a few glares from Neal and Regina respectively.

"Well you are the one who came to us, it doesn't really seem right for you to try to come here and tell us what to do."

"Look, I came here because Noah said there were people here that could help us. If you don't want to come then that's your choice, I won't force any of you. I'm just saying that staying here isn't as safe as we think it is. That voice clearly warned us of something potentially happening.

Even if we manage to lay low here, we will always have to depend on others to save us because we will be left behind. We need to be getting stronger too, these zombies are already out pacing us, I don't want to imagine how hard it'll be to live if they grew stronger and we stayed this weak."

Ishii then began to sit up, noticing his actions, the people who followed him and considered him a better leader also rose. Unsurprisingly Ailetta and Bailey's group stood with him.

Jasmine sat rooted in her seat, she peaked towards Ailetta and Bailey, she wanted to stand with them too. Originally she was the first to be against leaving, it was her suggestion to Mark from the beginning to use the cafeteria as a base. However she realized first hand how dangerous the world really is and how fast you can lose everything if you don't have the strength to defend it.

Even leading a group required strength, she felt indecisive commanding and risking someone's life when she wouldn't be able to protect them.

She then looked towards Mark while deep in thought. From her view, it seemed that Mark wanted to leave too, but for some reason he wasn't getting up.

'Is it because of them?' She looked back over to Ailetta and Bailey. She began to think that Mark just didn't want to follow along in their footsteps, she couldn't go on like this.

"? Jas?"

"Mark, we are going to! How can you consider yourself a hero if you hide here like a coward? Weren't you going to show me that you were gonna be stronger than 'him'?"

"!" Mark's body shook hearing his older sister. He looked down towards the ground deep in thought.

'That's right! If I stay here then how much can I fight to level up? Fuck!' He bolted from his seat, scaring the people near him.

"I'm not a coward! No one was leaving so there wasn't any point of me getting up right now. Don't forget, it was my idea to fight the zombies in the first place!" He talked loudly to try to convince everyone of his words, it didn't work on his sister, but she didn't have to say anything, she just smiled inside.

"?"

"You guys are really leaving? You're the ones who experienced the worst of it and you're gonna go out there still? Isn't that stupid? Neal tried to talk some sense into them. He was ok with losing Ishii's group since the people that followed Ishii would be harder to convert over, but he didn't want his future prize to leave too. Jasmine turned towards him with an indifferent expression.

"It's because we experienced these things that we know we can't stay here. Hopefully you won't have to experience it yourself. Ishii was it? Are we going now or do you need to do something?"

It wasn't confusing that Ishii was surprised, he didn't expect so many people to follow them. He felt more relieved that he decided to follow Noah's advice and thanked him internally.

"Yes we should go now before it gets too late. No one knows if the zombies are capable of traveling in the dark, but I'm certain the animals won't have an issue. I'd rather make as much distance as we can before he needs to find shelter."

"Wa-Wait, wait dammit!" Neal called out to everyone leaving, he didn't want this. He would only be left with the cowards and just a few people who were prepared to fight. Wouldn't that mean they would be in danger if even just one creature like the one they mentioned before comes?

"Everyone we're going too! There should be bags upstairs, we should grab food and water before going. We might not find anything out there so its better to be safe.." He began to walk towards the group like he didn't just argue against them.

"Ne-Neal? Weren't we staying here?" Regina asked in astonishment. She felt more safe being in closed doors. She wasn't a fighter at all.

"I changed my mind. It's better if we stick together, there's strength in numbers and we can all keep each other safe." He almost broke character by saying this much. He didn't care about anyone, but himself. He wanted to follow them to keep himself safe.

It took them all a while to grab things from the store on the second floor. Ishii looked around looking for the mysterious shop keeper he heard so much about, but he was already gone.

After minutes went by, the group of a little over a hundred made their way out the building and began to make their way to the front gate.

The walk through the university was too quiet and that alone kept them on their toes.

They had finally made it pass the library without any noteworthy events happening. With that they were gradually starting to relax. However when they made it to the corpse of rats and zombie corpses on the side of the building is when they had to go on guard.

"You guys didn't say anything about these things being here."

"Well that's because they weren't here before, obviously they were attracted to the dead bodies." Alicia coldly responded to the voice that tried to blame them.

Ahead of them were a swarm of insects and not just any particular insects, but ants. From different spots in the vicinity, there were small and big mounds coming up from the ground, most likely from the ants digging through the ground.

People like Ailetta wondered why they never saw ants before when they saw other insects because they were so common . The ants now grew just as much as the other insects, most of them reached to the height of everyone's knees while there were a few overly large black soldier ants that were as big as Arachne. With the way the sun shone, their shells seemed to hold a shiny luster.

The size of the ants seemed to give the group of students a sense of alarm. What put them even more on edge was how easily the ants were lifting the corpses and carrying them into the holes and then another ant would emerge from the hole to replace it.

"What should we do? Do we fight them?"

"How many ants do you think there are? There could be thousands of them!"

"No…" The voices stopped and saw Jasmine kneeling over the ground. They would've assumed something was wrong with her if it wasn't for the small dryad sitting on her shoulder.

"There are a lot of them, but there seems to only be about a hundred of them if that. From my guess, I would say that growing under the ground killed most of them, but it's only a guess." She stood up and brushed her hair out of her face before facing everyone.

If it was anyone else, she would've been made with scruitnity after making such claims when no one there could verify it, but they were raptured by her mature beauty. Her ears, resembling cosplay, added a nice touch to her attractiveness.

"Jas, are you sure? If that's the case then we should fight! I'd rather fight these things th-"

"Crap they're coming!"

While the group were going through the fight of their lives, Noah had almost made his way to his first destination. It took him longer than he expected because he met some zombies on the way.

The zombies were made quick work out of just by Arachne and Fenrir alone. What took most of his time was obtaining all of their cores. Noah just couldn't help himself, even when he saw a dead corpse, he opened their chest to obtain his treasure.

However because of the constant stops, nightfall was gradually coming and he was beginning to feel the strain of the mental fatigue accumulating. For someone who spent most of their life reading, this day has been so exciting for him that he began to feel drained physically even when his body wasn't tired.

"I shouldn't go on like this…I'm in too much of a hurry for strength, but time waits for no one…Wait! It's not like I still can't receive experience while resting."

Noah was once on his way to the rear parking lot in the women's area, but playing it safe, he began to backtrack towards their dorms. He could clean up whatever was there, and at the same time he could implement his broken privilege as a monster tamer, especially when he now had a creature that didn't need to rest.

....

A/N: Everyone thank you for your support so far! Don't think I haven't noticed everyone's commentsm, even the ants was something I forgot about until someone mentioned it. I take everyone's words into consideration, especially your suggestions and criticism so keep them coming.

Also I won't be describing their fight in the next chapter but let me know if you would like to read about it. I can add it the next two chapters so let me know soon.