"Alright, let's do a recap on what we have discovered." Arthur announced with his arms folded before his chest.
The three of them had shoved the dead bodies aside, organized the place a bit, and sat in a circle to discuss their next move. All of the items they have found so far were displayed before them, and Arthur was especially happy to see Matthew bring out the bottles of rubbing alcohol; they make for great makeshift hand sanitizer.
"I found a locked room in the dental zone, and a note that says the spare key is in room 7C." Matthew held up the bloodied note.
"Artie-"
"Arthur." The brit corrected.
"—Caterpillars brows and I were heading off to room 7-11 or the operation room to check it out. But we kind of got surrounded and barely managed to get here alive." Alfred finished his report, neglecting the killing glare from Arthur.
Matthew chuckled softly at the nickname, enjoying the company so far.
"I found three keys from the heap of corpses here. Key 7-11 is definitely for the operation room, and assuming key 3-13 unlocks the locked room in the dental zone, we still have key 2-4 unaccounted for." Clearing his throat, Arthur commented, and picked the ring of keys up from the display.
"We'll just check all 3 of them then, no problem." Alfred shrugged, pulled the guidebook over, and spread the map out before them. "We last sent the zombies running down to the west side of the 7th floor. Operation room's to the east, and now we have Matt and his dagger. The job should be a lot easier this time."
"Speaking of which, Matthew, have you used it before?" Arthur had noticed how clean it was when Matthew pointed it at them when they first met, and that made him question how the kid had managed to keep it clean all the way here.
Matthew shook his head, feeling perhaps a little embarrassed. "I don't get noticed easily, so I usually just sneak past the zombie crowds. But my family likes to go camping a lot; I have my fair share of experience with knives."
"That's great. We'll count on you to watch our backs then. We lost most of our weapons on our encounter with the giant spider. Alfred's got nothing, and I can't go around shooting arrows indoor. " Arthur requested, happy to receive a reassuring nod from Matthew. The lad's a little shy at first, but it's soon evident that he's the reliable sort. Who knows, his camper skills might come in handy in the near future.
Alfred on the other hand, had a thought of his own. "Don't get noticed easily you said… Matt, let me see your player stats."
"Eh? Ah… here you go." Puzzled by the sudden request, Matthew accessed it and showed it to the programmer anyway. The later gave it a glance from top to bottom, and gave him the thumbs up.
"Dude, your stealth points are amazing." Alfred announced, getting a questioning look from the other two. "Oh. Right. Guess I should explain. Your character develops according to the choices you make, for example, Matt here likes to hide and run instead of confronting the zombies. So his stealth points are a lot higher than his strength and damage points. Arthur, open yours."
The latter complied, and saw that his stats were rather evened out except for two components: intelligence and flexibility.
"You've fought quite a lot of zombies too so your skills are pretty balanced, but you plan a lot and your plans actually work fine, so your intelligence is automatically heightened. Flexibility is the ability to use household items to your advantage. Your flexibility was observed the moment you chose to use a kitchen knife as your weapon." Alfred explained. "My forte would of course be strength and damage points."
"Do these points do anything?" Matthew asked. "I mean, aside from being used for analysis."
Alfred nodded. "Depending on what your forte is, you get different stuff. Any weapon used by me will cause more damage compared to when you use it. For Arthur, in flexibility especially, he could craft stuff easier than both of us and can unlock more bag space with a few more points."
"And for stealth?"
"I gave it a super cool feature because I thought little will be able to pull the high stealth points off. At 80 points, you're practically invisible to the common zombies. Meaning Matt can just stroll about in a sea of them, and none of them will realize he's there."
Arthur had to admit, that did sound extremely cool and convenient. Matthew's current point was at an amazing 64, but he was certain that with him and especially Alfred around, the kid would have to risk running into a hoard of blood craving zombies instead of sneaking around then. That would seriously affect the progress of Matthew's stealth points, but should help him become stronger should be have to fight in the future.
Yeah, it's not all that bad.
…
Wait a minute. What ever happened to his kitchen knife?
Arthur quickly reopened his items tab, and started organizing the stuff inside while the other two watched. After searching through 20 plus cells, Arthur finally found the long forgotten kitchen knife lying at the bottom of the item tab. Retrieving it, he stood up and gave it a few testing swing, then sat back in satisfaction.
Back to square one, but never felt happier to fight with kitchen knife.
"Oh. That reminds me, I still have the pistol from the starter kit." Arthur's action of retrieving his weapon sparked a thought in Matthew's brain as the Canadian rummaged through his item tab to pull the pistol out, all loaded and ready. The trio exchanged a smile.
After a short discussion, the gun was passed to Alfred since both Matthew and Arthur were more experienced with blades. Returning to the plan to reinvestigate the operation room, they have decided to go with the triangle formation, with Alfred leading the way while Arthur and Matthew handled the tail.
They redistributed and traded resources here and there, but Matthew kept most of the medical stuff; a camper would by logic know more about wound treating than a teacher and a programmer.
With that, the plan was set and preparations finished. Alfred checked the time, and decided to call it a day first. Even though it's practically eternal darkness in the hospital, the zombies here still had rather fixed time of activity. It would be safest for them to move during early morning. So saying good night to each other, they settled the time of operation, and hit the hay.
Arthur found it extremely awkward to sleep in the same room with a bunch of dead people, but on well. There's a first time for everything.
I am trying so hard to update this story you have no idea OTL
Anyway thanks for reading this update-once-a-month fanfic. I try my best to make the story as logical as possible, but timezone is a very big problem. (Time difference between New York and London for example is 5 hours) So if later in the story you see very big timezone mistakes, please try to ignore it. /bows/
Hope you enjoyed it! ... Will try to update again before November ends ;v;