In the darkness, Albert once again heard the rhythm pulsing from his chest.
What was happening to him?
What… had happened?
He sensed light.
And noise—along with a man's voice saying, "Don't worry. Dr. Lin just checked him. He's fine."
Albert's tightly shut eyelids trembled, then opened without warning.
"Sir, he's awake!" someone exclaimed beside him.
Albert gathered his senses and realized he was lying on the floor of the classroom.
Familiar faces stood around him: Hayes, Hayes's men—and Miguel.
Instinctively, he looked down at his chest. Where there should have been a massive bloody hole was now wrapped in gauze, faint traces of blood seeping through the first layer.
Albert reached over and touched it.
"Hiss…" It hurt.
But the surface was solid—not sunken or hollow.
Miguel seemed to read his reaction and spoke reassuringly, "Don't worry. The wound looks terrifying, but it didn't damage your heart. You're lucky. We disinfected it, treated it, and bandaged you up."
Didn't damage his heart?
Albert paused, masking the sudden shock that flashed in his eyes. "I see."
But he knew perfectly well—that tentacle with the maw had pierced straight through his heart, destroying his entire circulatory system. No normal human could survive such annihilation.
Ever since waking, Albert could feel something… different. He focused on the rhythm pulsing on the left side of his chest, and a strange thought surfaced.
He felt…
as if he had grown a new heart out of thin air.
Albert licked his dry lips, trying his best not to reveal anything unusual in front of the others.
"I… actually didn't die. Why are you all staring at me like that?"
No one dared to answer. Hayes gave a cold laugh, a hint of restrained anger flickering across his face.
"So you knew you could die? Albert, you're pretty bold."
Albert blinked in confusion.
What was with him? Why did he sound like he'd swallowed gunpowder?
He pushed himself up from the ground. The movement tugged at the wound on his chest, making him wince briefly. But he relaxed his expression quickly, acting clueless as he looked up at Hayes with a hint of harmless meekness.
"…Thirsty."
Hayes stared at him with that beautiful, ice-cold face of his for several seconds before gesturing at one of the men nearby.
Miguel chuckled softly. "Since he's awake, I can stop worrying. You two talk—I'll check on the others."
Once they were alone, Albert blinked, then leaned closer and whispered,
"You're… mad at me?"
"You know," Hayes said flatly, "if you didn't wake up soon, I was seriously about to slap you awake. Do you have any idea what you looked like when I got here? Your entire upper body was soaked in blood. I really thought you were dead. You should be grateful your life is ridiculously tough."
"…"
Because he felt guilty, Albert didn't respond. He wasn't sure if telling Hayes he had indeed died would make the man think he'd gone insane.
He barely believed it himself.
So he changed the subject. "By the way… that girl?"
"She was taken to another room by the school nurse to rest. She's fine, aside from the scratches from the ants earlier. But I don't think she's in a good mental state. Probably terrified."
Albert rubbed his chin. "Hmm."
Seeing him get his heart pierced and then watching him come back to life… yes, that would be terrifying.
She must've seen something.
But Albert hadn't decided whether he should ask.
Hayes clearly wasn't going to let him off that easily.
"So," he drawled, tone frosty, "I heard you played the hero and pulled her out of the mutant spider's mouth. How does it feel to sacrifice yourself like that?"
Albert recalled everything that had happened, and it felt like a dream. He shook his head honestly.
"Honestly? Not great. It hurt."
Humans were selfish creatures. If Albert had known earlier that he would suffer that kind of agony, he wasn't sure he would've stepped in.
At that moment, he had simply reacted on instinct. Thinking back now, he was terrified.
The world had ended—death lurked everywhere, brutal creatures were hiding in every shadow.
Staying with Hayes felt like living in a greenhouse. Safe, yes. But it dulled him—made him forget how deadly everything outside really was.
Not feeling the danger didn't mean it wasn't there.
Albert's honesty left Hayes unsure what to say for a moment.
After a pause, he finally spoke in a stiff tone, "I don't care what you were thinking. Whether it was impulse or you trying to show off—since you're following me, you listen to my orders. First rule of being under my command is obedience. Even if you're going to die, you get my permission before you die. Next time you try to save someone, think about whether you even have the ability."
What he felt wasn't anger so much as disbelief. Albert looked like someone who'd get winded doing basic drills, yet in a life-or-death moment, he told the girl to run first.
Soft-hearted, apparently.
Albert didn't have to help her. In the apocalypse, morality and kindness meant nothing next to survival. If anything, sacrificing yourself to help others was pure stupidity.
But looking at Albert's blood-drained face now, Hayes couldn't bring himself to say any of that out loud.
Albert seemed to understand the meaning behind his harsh words. He gave a faint smile. "Got it. I'll be careful next time. But… I do have one more question."
Hayes looked at him. "…What?"
"Commander Hayes." Albert leaned a little closer as Hayes crouched beside him, his tone earnest. "Those few seconds when you thought I was dead—were you actually sad about me, or were you just grieving the fact that you'd have no one left to smoke as grass?"
Hayes: "…"
His face went cold. "Mind your own business."
The Bloodscythe Ants finally retreated from the campus.
Not long after the signal flare was fired, the rest of Hayes' men arrived and joined the cleanup. With the seven or eight Evolvers Miguel brought, the group spent over two hours before they finally weathered the assault.
The ants had withdrawn all at once—like an organized, disciplined army receiving a sudden order. One second they were fighting humans with mindless ferocity, and the next, they surged back like a receding tide, vanishing into the feral jungle beyond the school walls.
It was unnervingly fast.
The campus became a field of remnants—severed Bloodscythe Ant corpses scattered everywhere… and human ones as well.
Those still strong enough gathered together, clearing an open space on the playground. They separated human bodies from ant bodies and rekindled the campfire.
The people who had been hiding inside buildings slowly emerged again, gathering silently around the flames.
Many ordinary, non-evolved people were injured, or had lost their companions. No one knew who broke the silence first, but soon, above the crackling fire, suppressed sobs spread through the cold night air.
Miguel stood quietly for a while, then began encouraging the survivors to divide up the dead Bloodscythe Ants for food.
In this damned world, whether something could be eaten—or whether it tasted good—no longer mattered. As long as it wasn't poisonous, people didn't complain.
Albert watched from the side for a moment, then stood up, worried they didn't know about the toxins inside the ants.
"The abdomen contains venom," he explained. "Make sure you don't puncture these sacs—and this part here is the poison gland. Don't eat it."
A few millimeters of normal ant wasn't worth eating, but a nearly two-meter Bloodscythe Ant still had some meat. Not much, though. You had to scrape it from inside the chitin shell with sticks—it felt a bit like eating a crab.
All the meat from a whole ant amounted to about one bowl. But for people who hadn't tasted fresh meat in ages, it was a godsend. Before long, everyone stood up and joined the search for edible remains.
They had long since grown accustomed to death. In a world like this, no one could guarantee survival. No matter how heavy their grief, living one more day was still living.
"Creek City's been having constant tremors these past few days," Miguel said when he returned, explaining to them. "We're afraid the same thing that happened to the military government last time will happen again, so we've been letting everyone sleep outside. It's cold, but safer."