Solo Cultivation in The Apocalypse

Hitori\'s hand fell off Reon\'s shoulder. He took a step forward, but Reon stood still. Even the room was filled with fog, and although he could not figure out the room\'s size from outside, he saw the room was quite small.

How big of a room do you even need to keep a dead body? The walls were covered in grey cushion-type material Hitori could not recognize– heck, he doubted he had ever seen that before.

A hand crept down to Hitori\'s hand. He glanced at his hand and saw a hand in his hand, then he raised his eyes when the hand clenched his hand.

"It is cold," she muttered, then walked past Hitori.

Kyoryu went to the entrance door to check outside. Kakashi waited by the room\'s side and started counting the cameras hanging from the ceiling.

Eya\'s eyes were fixed on Hitori and Reon and the bed in the middle. It was not even a bed, actually, it was an altar with a mattress over it and Hiroshi\'s body lying over it, covered with a sheet.

Hitori sensed the strange, sweet smell in the room. Then he noticed a camera hanging above him. Hitori glanced at the puffed gray cushions that made the room feel smaller than it already was.

Although it was cool inside, the air felt different, from the outside air, in a humid way. Not to mention, neither the Deceased Section nor the rooms had any ventilation, but the outside is less compressed than the inside.

He could only imagine how good he will feel when he leaves the Deceased Section. Will the summer heat feel satisfying for once?

Reon staggered across the room, she pulled Hitori with her and reached the bed. Reon stared at the cloth for a moment, then grabbed the front end.

Her grip on Hitori\'s hand tightened with every passing second she spent preparing herself for the worst. For anyone who had never done this before, it was hard.

Hitori had gone through the same, in his face, it was his sister– and the worst part was he watched her die. The nature of the conflict that got her killed confused him for weeks, then the guilt of never spending time with her started haunting him. It took him time, but he got over it.

He remembered that moment she passed away as fresh as new, and he also remembers her words. She had used her mana to make him lose consciousness, which helped him accept the fact.

But no one could do the same to Reon. Even if Hitori could, he would not. They were low on time and he could not risk her spending it on sleeping for hours.

"Do it, Reon," Hitori whispered in her ears.

She flinched and pulled his hand. One of her nails dug into his skin and let out a panicked shriek as he jerked his hand away. She did not have a chance to cut her nails recently.

The throbbing pain right under his wrist and below his knuckles started to disappear, but he still raised his hand to take a look. What remained just a crease of her nail– the shape of a crescent moon– no blood, no clotting.

"I-I am sorry." He thought he ought to apologize, but when he turned to her, Reon\'s eyes were fixed on her brother.

Hitori followed her gaze, and when his eyes met with the mess lying in front of him, he forgot what he was, what he was doing, why he was, and who the fuck he was. Everything he had gone through seemed nothing but a teenage (seventeen-year-old0 writer\'s fantasy novel– turning into a horror novel.

His eyeballs were missing from his eye socket, they were punched back into his skull; the area around his forehead was expanded like the head of a hammerhead shark. His nose was a curvy mess, some sort of a pretzel design.

A tear slid down Reon\'s eye, but that did not stop her from flipping over the cover.

His hands were missing and the wrist bone was popping. Although the blood had stopped flowing, the reddish shade around his wrist threatened to shoot a stream of blood.

Hitori\'s heart started jumping around, he knew he had to calm himself before things get out of his hands. But when Reon lifted her hand to flip the cover down Hiroshi\'s torso, he saw an incoming panic attack.

Hitori grabbed her hand with the same hand her nail had pinched him. "N-No, don\'t," he said, "you would not handle it well. I already feel dizzy."

Reon stared at Hitori for a moment, considering. Then said, "He is my brother, Hitori. I need to see what they did to him, or I would not be able to do the same– or worse– to them."

His heart raced. He could not define the feeling, whether it was the surprise or the shock, but he dropped her hand. "D-Do you not feel like vomiting?"

"No. Why would I vomit at the sight of my brother– well, mutilated brother?" Reon pulled the cover off his torso, revealing his strangled legs and missing feet.

Hitori\'s first instinct was to close his eyes. He knew he would not take it well, but he urged himself to look. Cause she was right– how would he get back at him?

Ignoring the broken legs, he saw a few holes in his thighs. Not just any bullet holes, these were see-through holes, since he saw the grey mattress the body was lying on, through the holes in his thighs.

When he had seen Kamiya\'s body, it was a different case. When he saw the gore in the games, he felt nothing. In fact, he thought he was gifted with the ability to deal with any level of gore.

He was proved wrong when a drop of blood from Hiroshi\'s ankle dropped on the mattress. Then it smudged into the grey mattress, changing its color to a brown shade.

For the first time in his life, he felt like throwing up. Hitori turned around and grabbed his chest. He had to force it down, so he swallowed the bitter liquid that had reached his mouth, and pushed it down his throat.

He glanced over his shoulder to see if Reon was offended, but she was busy staring at the deceased body of her elder brother– with whom she celebrated Christmas and New Year.

And she would have kept standing there for infinity if it was not for the siren alert. Hitori raised his head to hear the wailing siren.

The volume lowered but the wailing continued in the background. The radio screeched as it did before when they announced the CCTV System was back online; a robot said in its mechanical voice:

"Alert. We have criminals on the hospital premises. We request the patients to go inside and the guards to come forward."