30

Maybe it was the dragon egg I had stored within me. Maybe some of it's personality was bleeding through into me, and affecting my hormones, and personality. I wasn't even sure if it was a bad thing. A certain amount of bloodlust was needed to survive in a world that had fallen apart. The part I was worried about was would I even notice if my bloodlust became too much. 

I frowned to myself as I looked around at the people that had gathered. I straightened slowly. Picking up a few small things that the gecko had dropped when I parted it out. I wanted the skin, and the bones. I needed more arrows.

Bone arrows broke easily, but didn't require a mana core, and I could make as many as I wanted as long as I had bone fragments. I got bone fragments from everything I killed so I might as well use them. I could make better arrows in the field when there was no one there to complain about it. I stepped away from the rest, and let them do whatever they wanted with the rest. I was sure they were going to use the meat. 

Perishables would be hard to store once the electricity went out. Getting them used up first was just the smart thing to do. I sighed heavily once I was by myself. That bloodlust, and killing instinct worried me. I hadn't felt the impulse to kill any people yet. 

I could worry about my killing instinct when it turned more lethal towards humans. For now I needed to focus on raising my stats. Five star awakened appeared to be a rarity, and no one had really talked about them online when I last checked. There was little risk of anyone finding me out so I could pass of the exercising as just getting used to my higher stats. It made sense to sprint just to see how fast you would be in a life or death situation. 

It made sense to know the limits of your muscles in a fight. Adding one stat point at a time also made sense so that your strength wasn't suddenly jumping. Risking you causing damage where you didn't mean. It made sense to a logical cautious person. My personality might seem a bit odd in comparison to how much I'd be willing to risk in a fight. 

I didn't care. The better I was at killing. The higher my chances were. Even with my slowly increasing stats my chance at surviving for an entire year until the next awakening was incredibly low. The average idiot had a better chance then me. 

It didn't take long after that for the man in charge to seek me out. I still had an intense feeling of dislike towards the man, but I did my best not to show it. He wanted me to teach his son archery. I liked his brat even less then I liked him so I wasn't happy about it, but I was still one of the newcomers, and it got me onto the wall. I wasn't about to complain about getting onto the wall. 

I could hear the gunfire continually throughout the day so there was no doubt that there were weak monsters coming to the walls. Weak monsters was perfect for me to both strengthen my fire magic, and my archery skill as well as chipping away at the number of kills I needed to hatch this dragon egg. They would send a truck out to collect all the kills once in a while. Waiting to part them out until they were in the relative safety of the walls. I couldn't be the only one who'd found a use for the monster cores so far. 

A part of me wanted to get in contact with my family, but another part said that they hadn't tried to find me so why should I try to find them. There was also the possibility that they were dead from when the shit hit the fan just like Johnny's, and Sam's family. That part of me just didn't want to know if their fate was that dire. It strengthened my resolve to get stronger so I could go look on my own just in case they were still alive, and needed me. My soul stung at what I knew my mother would do if she was still alive. 

The way she would try to manipulate me. The way she would crush my soul. I could feel the dark clouds closing in just thinking about it. The pain I would feel knowing my family was gone would crush me, but at the same time it might be a relief to know that my mother wouldn't be able to manipulate me anymore. I picked up my phone off the edge of my bunk, and stared at the screen for a while.

There were no new notifications. Most of my apps had stopped working entirely except some of the games. I started deleting the apps that didn't work casually. My arms, and legs hurt from all the working out I'd done over the course of the day. Why did I want my family to call me right now?

Maybe for them to acknowledge I was alive, and mattered to them too. Why didn't I just call them? Why didn't I just text them? A part of me didn't want them to come down on me like my mom used to. If they found out I was alive, and didn't contact them they might blame me if something had happened. 

What if the reason they didn't contact me was because they didn't want to talk to me at all? What if they were already blaming me for all that had gone wrong like they did when I was younger? I dug my nails into my palm as I stared at my phone. I both hoped they were alive, and hoped they were gone because of how much pain they'd caused me. I'd moved out without saying anything because I was tired of being the parent, and the scape goat all the time.