Danger Lurking Outside

"W-wha?! You killed them?!"

"Yes. There was no hope of saving them since they were already dead."

"B-but they're clearly still moving!"

"Although it may seem that way, I'm positive that they died. They turned into zombies after being infected."

"..."

"Well, if you guys don't open the door, I won't tell you anything else about these zombies."

"F-fine…"

Although he was a bit reluctant, the person inside finally decided to open the door.

*Clatter*

After waiting for awhile, the door slightly opened and a middle-aged man peeked his head out of the gap.

"P-please don't eat us."

"Haha. You don't have to worry about that. We're still normal. Right, girls?"

"..."

"Mhmm!"

Mary was the only one that replied to his words, as she didn't want to embarrass her father. The other girls were wary of the person behind the door, so they didn't bother to answer Dan's question.

"Ahaha. I knew my little girl was the best."

Dan laughed as he patted Mary's head. After a few seconds, Mary backed away from him as she felt her father would never stop if she let this continue. Although Dan was slightly upset, he decided to continue with the conversation.

"Well, do you mind explaining to us what happened here?"

"Sure… Please come inside and we'll explain what we know."

Although the middle-aged man was still cautious of Dan's group, he decided it was fine to let them in after seeing how they acted.

After the door was fully opened, Dan and the girls were able to see what was inside. There were a pile of tables and chairs beside the door, which was probably used as a barricade to prevent the zombies from breaking through.

As they walked inside, they saw two groups of people on opposite ends of the wall, distinguishing which group they each belonged to.

The people on the right comprised of middle-aged men and women, who were dressed in formal black suits and pants, Although the quality and design wasn't as exquisite as the ones from Earth, these formal clothing were pretty extravagant for the people of this world.

Luna easily noticed that all of the middle-aged men and women had looks of despair written on their faces, since she had been in an environment where everyone around her had similar expressions.

The group on the left comprised of rough-looking males, who were equipped with all sorts armor and weapons. Although they were irritated by the decision to let Dan's group enter, a lustful look quickly appeared on their faces when they spotted the beautiful girls walking in.

With the exception of Mary, the other three girls were immediately being stared at the moment they entered. Those guys couldn't keep their eyes off of them since each of the girls had their own unique appeal.

It was obvious to the girls that these lecherous guys were fantasizing all sorts of things based on the drool that leaked out of a few of their mouths. Kaori dragged Luna and Fae behind Dan to prevent the guys from ogling at them.

"Ahem. Well? Didn't you say you were going to explain what happened here?"

Dan spoke up as he didn't want the girls to continue feeling uncomfortable here.

"Tsk. Old man, I'll give you 5 seconds to beat it, otherwise you won't even have time to regret it afterwards."

One of the rough looking male from earlier spoke up, as he felt displeased from Dan blocking his view. He couldn't wait to enjoy these girls that delivered themselves over here.

Ever since everybody trapped themselves inside the room, these guys had no way of releasing all of their pent-up frustrations. They weren't willing to do anything to the middle-aged women, as any sort of desire they had would disperse the moment these guys looked at them.

So when Dan's group of girls entered the room, these guys immediately realized that their wishes had finally been answered.

"Who are those retards over there?"

Dan asked the middle-aged man that opened the door for him, as he ignored the remarks made by the other guy.

"U-um… Those guys are the adventurers of this city… P-please watch your language, as some of them have reached C rank already."

Dan finally realized why those adventurers acted like they were the superior ones here.

"Heh. Hey asshole, what did you say you're going to do to me?"

"Hah? I told you to get the f-"

The adventurer who stood up earlier had walked over to Dan as he spoke, but before he could even finish his sentence, Dan took the first move and kicked him. The kick caused the adventurer to fly towards the wall on the other side of the room. After he collided onto the wall, he lifelessly dropped onto the floor as his body became motionless.

"Heh. This little greenhorn doesn't even respect his senior."

"Why you!"

"How dare you do that to our friend!"

Two of the other adventurers stood up and rushed over to Dan. They had already drawn their weapons, as they wanted to take revenge for their friend.

Dan took out two scabbards from his swords and threw them at the two adventurers who were dashing towards him.

"Retards. At least learn to gauge other people's strengths before you do anything rash."

Dan didn't want to kill these guys, as he was here to gather information rather than going on a killing spree. The three adventurers were all knocked unconscious, causing the rest of their group to become shocked out of their wits.

"Take this as a warning. If you guys are thinking of doing anything to the girls in my party, you better be prepared to face the consequences."

After Dan threatened the rest of them, he took out his adventurer's license and showed it to everyone in the room.

"N-no way. A-ranked?!"

"You must be kidding me. Why is there an A-ranked adventurer here?"

As the adventurers realized that they shouldn't have messed with Dan, all of their previous impure thoughts quickly vanished as they didn't want to die yet.

"Can you please explain what's going on here? I didn't come here to teach these guys a lesson."

Dan directed his question to the middle-aged man for the third time, as even his patience was wearing thin.

"Y-yes. I'll tell you everything. Before that, I would like to introduce ourselves to you. Although I already mentioned those guys over there are adventurers, the rest of us are the advisors of the adventurer's guild. My name is Allen, and I'm the person with the most seniority here."

After hearing Allen's introduction, Dan briefly introduced himself as well as the girls in his party. He also mentioned that Fae belonged in their party, since he didn't want to bother explaining everything.

"It's a pleasure to meet all of you. Well, everything started about a week ago, on a morning that looked as normal as any other day. While we were busy processing quest inquiries and rewards, a few people suddenly ran out from the door connecting to the underground floor.

We were initially shocked since none of us knew what caused them to panic like that. Even though a few of them were covered in wounds, they didn't give us a chance to take a look at their injuries before they ran off into the streets. Although we were perplexed at the sudden situation, I decided to take a few other guild advisors downstairs to take a look, but all we saw there was a scene of carnage."

Dan and the girls could pretty much guess what happened with just that bit of information.

"Never had we witnessed such a scene in our lives, where the adventurers were attacking and biting each other. I'm ashamed to say that I was the first one to run for my life when those adventurers turned towards us. When I heard my colleague's pleas for help behind me, I couldn't even muster any strength to turn around and help them.

After a few of us managed to return to the main floor, we tried to get the adventurers to prepare for the imminent threat. However, before we could even ready ourselves, the same scene from before occurred as some of the adventurers started biting each other. Amidst all the chaos, some of us managed to escape and ran up here, before we barricaded ourselves inside."

"So that's what happened. Earlier, I heard you guys mention that some people might've returned. What did you mean by that?"

"There were a lot more people in here before. However, some of them became impatient and decided to force their way outside. Although less than half of them made it out of the building, we could see from the windows that something horrible happened to them as they took a few steps outside."

"What do you mean?"

"I-I don't know. None of us could make any sense of what happened to them… Their bodies just suddenly… fell apart… as if something dismembered them..."