XI

[1st]

The first thing I saw as I stepped into the room was the circle written in gray and green, which was to be expected as not only did it take up a large chunk of the floor space, but it seemed to brighten up the room, replacing the need for any lights. "What the?" I stared at the thing with eyes narrowed a smidge. After a few seconds of staring, I started to turn around, thinking about just walking away and pretending I hadn't seen it. I didn't know what it was after all, and busy as I was, I didn't want to put more work on my plate. Then my common sense spoke up. The chances of a big glowing circle being unimportant was just about zero and if it was, the only thing lost would be a few minutes.

So I found myself looking it over, a faint hum emanating once I was crouching at the edges. It was fairly standard as far as weird glowing circles came, with a handful of symbols which I assumed to be some ancient tongue lining the outer and center circles, the rest filled with alternating drawings of the moon, a horn, and mirrored crows. The whole thing was rather chuuni.

I carefully looked over every symbol, focusing on the way it was drawn, trying to make out the strokes.

Eventually, the symbols began to fade and I blinked, English letters suddenly in its place. I sighed and rubbed my eyes. As I began reading, I felt the beginnings of headache forming. Hopefully it would get easier with time.

Soul for soul, flesh for flesh, intent for binding. The trade of Kingdoms from □□□□□□□□ to Earth is our wish and sacrifices the payment.

Yeah, that was certainly ominous enough to be important, even if I couldn't quite get what that one word or the little bits in the inner circles meant.

Either way, it seemed anime logic had served me well since I knew what this was and that it was undoubtedly the work of either some secret cult or a rich person that had gone stark raving mad. Possibly even both.

I continued looking over the floor for any possible details that might help, heavily scrutinizing every inch in case anything else translated. All that came of it was throbbing which joined the ache.

That being done, I briefly glanced over the shelves of the storage shed. Neither of us had expected to find anything of use and were mostly right, the majority being miscellaneous accessories and tools, of which I had plenty; the sole exception being a couple large bundles of paper towels and a phone with some charms.

A few minutes later I was heading back to the main house, now thinking about what kind of nut job had done this. The only one I could make sense of was the owner of the house. Far as I could see, not a single bit of the shed had any signs of a break in or tampering and I doubted some guy they'd just met would be trusted with the key.

A sudden thought occurred to me. Or a series of thoughts really.

The accessories I'd seen inside must've belonged to someone right? There were plenty of people we'd offed earlier, some of those might be theirs. All the resources, not to mention the relative safety of the place, as I'd surmised, meant this was a tempting prospect for anyone who came. And during a breakout the most inviting places were just tragedies that hadn't happened yet.

I changed direction, heading to the pile of bodies. I went to the first body without obvious signs of a bite and looked it over. Nothing.

A zombie with no bites? That would mean they died of natural causes or disease and the body I was looking over certainly looked healthy enough when you overlooked the obvious. Searching through a few more, I found a couple more unbitten ones. Children.

While I wasn't all that confident in my ability to piece things together, I was pretty sure that the circle I'd seen had brought them back, or at least had a hand in it and that the people bitten might've been family of the children, eventually being infected when they couldn't find it in themselves to take down their kids, siblings, etc.. This was probably exacerbated by the adults, who'd been too strong to fight back, especially seeing as none of them were armed.

Since Highschool of the Dead's author had died, no one had known why everything started. In the fanfiction I'd read, the reason had always been medical, whether through pharmaceutical research gone wrong or some crazy government shenanigans. At least I knew what the circle in the shed did now. Kind of. Though I have to say I'd never even heard the possibility of it being magic, not to mention the fact I was still left with the why.

A god messing with humans for entertainment? Possible, gods were dicks in most any pantheon I saw. A cult trying to attain dominance over mankind by having them literally tear each other apart/gaining power from the dead? Also a possibility. Some pricks throwing a tantrum over how they were treated by murdering people? Wouldn't surprise me. Even with what I'd seen, there were still too many possibilities for me to try and narrow down at the moment. I sighed heavily before quickly offering my condolences to the bodies and going back to pick up the paper towels, Saeko making her way towards me as I did so.

"What were you doing?"

"Thinking about what a raw deal these people got." Along with some thinking and looting their bodies, but I thought it best not to say that as I looked at the stuff she had in her arms and pointed to it. "That it?"

"I left the rest inside until I could find you." She shook her head, beginning to walk back so she could get the rest of it presumably, with me falling in line shortly after. I'd been hoping nothing eventful would happen when we came out and after the talk with Saeko, I'd changed that to hoping that would be all that would happen. Not to say that I regretted making my choice. We'd found some good stuff and I'd gotten a tough talk out of the way, even if it was only for now.

As we got our find together to head back I wondered how the others were doing. The only ones I hadn't checked up on again before leaving were Hisashi and Rei, who I'd decided to leave alone as they'd gone on what I assumed to be a romantic walk. I think.

Even if Shido couldn't flip things on their head, some other problem rearing its ugly head wasn't out of the question, it would be best to head back.