Returning to the camp, not too tired, the first one to greet the heroes was Geographer. Paul quickly told him that everything was fine and the team had completed the assigned task. Now the question was how quickly they could transport people through such terrain. By rough estimates, crossing through the mountains of corpses would take no less than 10-15 minutes, apparently. However, it was important not to stay there for too long, as one could get poisoned or something worse. There wasn't time to wait for the corpses to stop decomposing.
"What should we do?" Paul asked, looking at the Geographer, who was brainstorming some kind of plan.
He looked slightly tired. The whole way, he had been encouraging those who felt despair or fear. He assured them that everything would be fine and prevented the morale in the camp from falling apart to avoid a split.
Many people in the camp began to trust him, truly trusting him. It was worth noting that many looked at him with smiles and hope in their eyes. He was slowly becoming their hero, while Asan and his strike team were becoming the personal torturers of the Geographer.
"Alright, we'll have to go, but... Give us time to prepare, twenty minutes should be enough" said Geographer, turning around and starting another speech about the dangers ahead and the horrors awaiting them.
Desperation could again be found in his speech, but also motivation that charged up the entire camp. At that moment, the first plan was devised, which would help slow down the spread of the corpse poison at least a little. Extra t-shirts were taken and torn into strips. Boiling water was used to sterilize the rags, making makeshift masks out of them. These masks would serve as a kind of homemade gas mask, sufficient to cross the alley of corpses.
The men who were larger in build volunteered to carry more weight to speed up the group's progress.
After some time, the group moved forward. Asan wrapped his nose and mouth with a cloth, feeling how hot it was. Since they didn't have time for it to cool down, he had to almost immediately wrap it around his face. The smell of ammonia and sulfur was slightly diminished, replaced by the smell of dampness, but this was much better than before. After about ten minutes, the group was near the corpses. Asan was in front and, turning around, he noticed the dejected looks on people's faces.
Their expressions spoke for themselves.
Many simply closed their eyes and tightened their masks on their faces, not wanting to see the hellish display of death around them. Asan did not share this happiness since he was ordered to constantly monitor the surroundings, unsure if Ronnie could be hiding among the corpses or attack from the side while the group crossed this territory.
Finally, everyone started moving.
Literally stepping over the bodies, Asan couldn't help but glance at them. Most were missing body parts, and their faces were torn apart. In the worst cases… even the heads were gone. However, he noticed something else. Besides the clothes of power plant workers, there were also uniforms of firefighters, medics, and what seemed like police officers. Asan wanted to engage in looting, anticipating that he might find firearms, but this idea quickly left his mind upon looking down again. This, incidentally, also became a kind of salvation.
The people from the camp simply raised their heads upward so as not to see the scene around them, but this had its consequences.
"A-A-A-A-A!" A scream came from behind Asan, making his heart nearly stop. He sharply turned around and saw a man carrying a bag of grain.
Crane approached him first, starting to help him up. It turned out that the man had raised his head and lost his balance, falling right onto the corpses. He screamed because the picture of the bloody sky quickly changed to one of lifeless faces, in whose eyes was horror. The man immediately vomited, forcing him to remove his bandage.
Another person also vomited at the sight, setting off a chain reaction that made almost everyone panic.
"Stop panicking! Keep moving!" Paul shouted, drawing everyone's attention.
After a minute, the group continued moving forward.
The man who had fallen among the corpses was now covered in blood, though thankfully not much got on his face. The sight was terrifying. He looked like some kind of maniac; if he appeared on the street in this state, people would either take him for a realistic cosplayer or a criminal. They had to eventually leave the Valley of Corpses, and this happened fairly quickly. They had gone through that hell.
Asan removed his mask with relief and took a deep breath of fresh air. Each member of the camp greedily inhaled, as if they had been sitting in a basement for an eternity. At such moments, one truly begins to appreciate small things like air that wasn't filled with the smell of death and decaying bodies. It took the group about ten minutes to catch their breath and move on. Of course, it couldn't be denied that this passage shook most people's nerves.
Some women were walking and sobbing, having imprinted the image of horror on the edges of their minds. The conversations in the group had completely stopped; everyone needed time. Asan found this delightful. As they continued walking across the field, wind turbines appeared on the horizon. Asan had seen them before many times. When they passed by them, all you had to do was look up and you felt incredibly small. But along with that came a terrible realization. Humanity was on the brink of death. Such majestic structures, the greatest engineering feats, the strongest weapons, and technological progress could not stop the system and the monsters it brought forth.
Since there was still a light breeze, one could see the turbines spinning, but knowing the system, they probably weren't generating enough energy for anything useful. Although it was foolish, they were still generating energy, weren't they?
"Asan, do you see how huge they are? This is really cool!" Asan's friend's childish voice pulled him out of his thoughts, his eyes sparkling at the sight of the large wind turbines.
Laszlo had seen them too, but he and Asan had never gotten this close to them before. While Asan felt sadness when seeing such wind turbines, Laszlo felt a childlike curiosity. They were different in this regard, yet they shared something in common—admiration.
For the boys, the whole world was still just Janschwalde, beyond which they had never ventured. The awe Asan felt while taking in the scene around him was immense. He was like a housecat let loose in a vast new world. Here and there, he explored everything with his gaze, getting to know the surrounding world. Laszlo was exactly the same, but he approached it with a slightly more childlike perspective.
The others looked at them like children who had just started to become aware of themselves and saw the world around them for the first time. Asan became so interested in what the world was like that he even motivated himself to reach the Alps and see the surrounding beauty firsthand.
So the caravan slowly moved forward. Some people told jokes, while others discussed the past, before the system. Thus Asan came to know the modern world of video games, and it turned out that there were many people playing them. Glancing at Alice, she somehow perked up her ears and listened intently when video games were mentioned. Maybe she had played them before too?
And so the group didn't notice how evening suddenly fell and the air became much colder. It was time to set up camp and prepare for sleep. Under the commands of the Geographer, the camp was quickly set up near a town called Heisenbrück. That's what Geographer had named it.
It was decided to go there tomorrow and replenish supplies.
Today the camp will rest. The strike team managed to get their own fire, around which five people were sitting. A black veil, like tar, covered the sky, leaving only a couple of fires to illuminate the area. Asan was currently enjoying canned peaches, savoring the delicious taste. Alice was chatting about something with Laszlo and Paul, while Crane quietly cleaned his axe of the white fluid from the creatures. The area was also filled with the smell of food being prepared by the old man.
"Hey, why don't we get to know each other better?" Laszlo suddenly suggested, lighting a cigarette and looking around the fire.
"What do you mean?" Paul asked, taking a sip from his water bottle.
"Well... What did you do before...
"What's all this about who you are, your interests, hobbies, what people usually ask each other when they want to get to know each other better?" the guy asked, inhaling cigarette smoke and "accidentally" blowing it in Asan's face.
"Well... I was a metal band guitarist" Crane answered first, to everyone's surprise.
Asan was genuinely surprised. This hulk was a guitarist? If he had expected anything from him, it would have been that he was a soldier, a police officer, or a guard. But a guitarist?
"I thought you'd choose something more combat-related... But this is cool too!" Laszlo said, surprised by Crane's answer.
"As for me, I was an orphan, just like Asan. I was into sports, chasing skirts, and trying to survive in the realities of our ant hills. In fact, there's not much to say about my life before. What I see now is already a new life for me" Laszlo decided to say about himself.
"I was..."
"I was a gamer" Alice said, surprising even Paul.
"Wow, really? So you're like… a gaming addict, right?" Laszlo asked her rather unculturedly.
"What?! This isn't addiction! It's just… a kind of hobby! I was actually at the top of the European union! They offered me money to join another clan! But I refused!" The girl started yelling and defending herself, which looked quite funny.
She had been acting so serious and untouchable, but now she looked ridiculous. Crane was right; her character wasn't very pleasant, but she was pretty straightforward. Although the topic of video games was quite interesting for Asan, news often reported that virtual reality had become the main source of profit for various betting companies, which made money from bets on tournaments organized by developers.
The conversations were promising to be interesting.