They had hidden inside their rooms and locked the doors, so the Faceless couldn't get in, and Saya could see the relieved expressions on their faces when they saw her.
She thought they wanted to shout for help, but didn't dare because they were afraid of attracting the Faceless's attention. After all, she could see that the doors of several rooms on the ground floor had already been smashed apart.
Instead of shouting for help, someone had quickly prepared an A4 paper and written the words "HELP ME" in large letters on it.
Quick-witted.
Saya thought about saving these people but she hesitated. There were about ten of them... And ten people was not a small number at all, and a crowd would be much harder to move around silently. Not to mention that she still had to find a way to kill all the Faceless and collect all of their Origin. She couldn't do that directly while they were watching without having to explain herself, and after she explained, they would probably try to kill the Faceless and collect their Origin as well…
Nope, that wasn't going to happen. She would save them, but only after she dealt with all the Faceless first.
Saya admitted that this way of thinking was selfish and heartless, but there was a Human Centipede lurking around Building A, and who knew whether it was the strongest one or not. If she wanted to survive, she had to make herself even stronger and gather as much Origin as possible.
Then, once there were no Faceless left, those people would be saved automatically.
Besides, they had managed to hide until now. Hiding for another hour or two wouldn't kill them.
The Faceless wouldn't be attracted to them as long as they stayed quiet, and these people were doing a pretty good job of that.
The important thing was figuring out how she could kill all the Faceless before saving them.
Picking them off one by one would take far too much time, and there was also the danger of being overwhelmed by a group of them. She needed some way to deal with them faster and more efficiently.
If only she had an AoE skill like in games… Then she could lure a bunch of them together and unleash the skill...
While lost in thought, Saya happened to notice several motorcycles parked beside the dormitory. Unlike the building that were covered in a layer of red flesh or drenched in blood, these motorcycles looked fairly intact…
Wait! Eureka!!
She might not have a skill like the ones in games, but she knew a way to achieve a similar effect! And it was very easy!
Ignoring the pleading looks of the survivors, Saya increased her movement speed and focused more on dodging. She didn't want to stop just because of a few individual targets, because if her plan succeeded, she would take down the whole group at once.
Instead, she would use sound to lure the Faceless away from the path, creating a wide passage that would make her plan easier to carry out.
On the way, she also passed by the other girls' dormitories, and this time, she ignored those signals for help as well.
Then, when she stepped out of the alley and onto the main road, her stats had changed noticeably.
[Name: Takagi Saya
Strength: 8.6
Agility: 3.5
Endurance: 7.8
Perception: 6.5
~0~
Skills: Pain Resistance: Reduces the body's sensation of pain. Proficiency: 0.6%]
If she needed a benchmark for comparison, Saya guessed that while an ordinary person would have average stats of around 5, professional martial artists would be around 7 or 8 points, while people holding Guinness World Records would be around 10 points.
For an ordinary person to reach the level of a professional athlete would take decades of hard training at the gym, along with a strict diet.
And she had shortened that gap of several decades in just over an hour.
Stepping out of the alley, she saw her target: the parking lot.
It was a parking lot for students staying in the dormitories, and there had to be more than a hundred motorcycles of all kinds here.
Here, she found three Faceless, who had probably once been parking lot attendants. Without hesitation, she charged straight toward them.
The first weakness of the Faceless was the way they sensed things. They would only react when she entered their sensing range. That meant that even if she charged straight at them, they wouldn't know until she got close enough.
It gave her plenty of time to calculate her attack.
Their second weakness was that they had all the weaknesses of humans.
Her first strike was aimed at the head of the nearest Faceless and killed it instantly. The second one charged at her. Before it could grab her, she immediately raised her leg and kicked it hard in the chest, sending it falling backward and blocking the path of the third one following behind.
Saya had never thought that the old, clichéd move so often seen in action scenes could actually be useful in real life. You learn something new every day huh.
She swung the club again, delivering a clean blow to the third one's head and sending it to join its friend. The last one crawled back to its feet, but before it could attack, she brought the club down on its head. Every one of her swings was with all her strength, and every blow instantly killed its prey. Three burning characters floated up, one Strength and two Endurance, and she picked them all up.
Should she change her name to the Head-Splitting Master? She was getting more and more used to this.
Anyway, after dealing with the three Faceless, the parking lot was now all hers. Good. That way, she could freely carry out her plan.
First, she wheeled a bicycle out and left it in a safe place far away from the parking lot. This would be the only thing left behind from the parking lot. Then she started prying up the seats of each motorcycle. After her Strength had increased, she didn't even need any tools; she simply used her bare hands to rip the seats off. Then she laid the motorcycles down and drained all the gasoline onto the ground.
Saya repeated the same thing with most of the remaining motorcycles. For a few of them, she didn't drain all the gasoline, but kept a lot of fuel inside. Only after there were no more motorcycles left to wreck did she stop, satisfied, and walk out of the parking lot.
Now she needed fire... Looking at the ground, she saw a few cigarette butts left near the entrance of the parking lot. That meant some of the staff smoked, and after searching all their pockets, she easily found a lighter. She stuffed it into her skirt pocket, then took off one of the Faceless's shirts and found a rock big enough to wrap it around. After that, she dipped one corner of the shirt into the gasoline.
The trap was complete. Now it was time to lure the prey.
It was very simple. Saya returned to that alley, to the place farthest from Building A, pulled out her phone, chose an epic Rock song, and turned the volume all the way up. The Beginning by ONE OK ROCK seemed to fit the requirements, so she played it and then started running.
The feeling was completely different from before. Saya ran much faster than she had before, even much faster than the sports-loving friends in her class, and she didn't feel tired at all. The combination of her leg strength and abundant physical endurance made her no different from a track-and-field athlete, and this made the next step of her plan even more certain.
She ran and ran, the feeling of the cool wind brushing against her body was truly refreshing. She no longer avoided the Faceless. Instead, she deliberately ran past them, making them chase after her. She did the same with the Faceless standing in front of the dormitories, even deliberately circling back a few times to lure as many as possible. They were fast, but they were still just ordinary people, while her speed could now be compared to that of a professional track-and-field athlete. Before long, there was a crowd of monsters behind her. Almost all the Faceless in the alley and in the dormitories were chasing after her.
It was kind of fun too, the thrill of being chased by a group of monsters, and the excitement of knowing they could never touch her, made her burst out laughing. Running and laughing like a madgirl, she led them straight into the parking lot.
Because she was much faster than them, it took a little while for the Faceless to arrive, and she used this time to throw her phone into the middle of the parking lot, then climbed over the fence and found a place to hide.
Not long after, the Faceless flooded into the parking lot. They had lost track of her, but they could still hear the thumping music, so they followed it. From a safe place, she waited until all of them had crawled into the parking lot. The process took nearly ten minutes, and once she was certain that every last one was inside, she acted.
She set the shirt on fire and threw it straight into the parking lot. Wrapping the shirt around the rock made it much easier to throw, and it burst into a ball of fire in midair. Immediately after doing so, she turned her back on the parking lot.
Now, Saya would like to say that she looked incredibly cool at that moment, with the screen slowing down to show her calmly walking away from the explosion and reaching up to adjust the frame of her glasses, with a sea of blazing red fire behind her.
The truth was that the moment she turned her back, she ran like a dog that had just seen a bone.
WHOOSH!! BOOM!! BOOM!!
First came the sound of the sea of flames bursting to life, followed by the sound of the motorcycles exploding, and finally, the heat wave sent her flying, making her crash face-first onto the ground. Scrambling back to her feet, she only heard a WHOOSH as something grazed past her ear, accompanied by a searing sensation. When she opened her eyes, all she saw was a piece of metal embedded in the pavement right beside her head.
Saya reminded herself: whatever you do, just don't imitate things from movies.
Looking back at her handiwork, Saya quietly felt proud of herself. The plan had gone perfectly smoothly. A whole bunch of Faceless had been roasted in those fierce flames, and she could see a large number of Origins floating in the air. It had really worked!
But how the hell was she supposed to collect all those Origins?
With nothing else to do, Saya simply sat on the bicycle and waited for the fire to die down. Hopefully, it would go out a little faster...
Little did she know, but the sea of flames in that parking lot would be the last thing she needed to worry about...