Chapter 33
I led Eden to my room and rummaged through my desk drawer. Inside was a map of Brunel Village I had prepared in advance.
I spread the map out on the carpet and plopped down, ushering Eden to sit beside me.
“Will Mr. Rudfercher be alright?”
At my question, Eden stared intently at the map. He remained silent for a long while before finally managing an answer.
“If he’s lucky, he’ll have survived. And that guy has always been the lucky sort.”
However, Knox was a man of intellect, not brawn, just as Eden had said. It was far more likely that he wouldn’t be able to survive alone among those monsters.
To say he wouldn’t die simply because he was the most prominent sub-male lead in the original story felt incredibly irresponsible now.
I had to firmly acknowledge that fact. This wasn’t a novel anymore; it was reality.
I stole a glance at Eden.
No matter how hard I tried on my own, if this was a world without a cure, there was no point in struggling to survive. The number of monsters would only keep growing, and unless someone developed a treatment, they would devour humanity until the very end.
And to reiterate: no matter how many antibodies Eden possessed, it didn’t mean he was immortal. Just as getting a vaccine shot doesn’t make one invincible.
In that sense, I decided to treat Eden’s life as being as valuable as my own from now on—whether he liked it or not.
“I have a way to distract the things outside.”
Eden, who had been staring at the map for a long time, looked back at me. I pointed to Happy House on the hill marked on the map.
“I’ve installed bells on the mountain behind Happy House.”
Next, I pointed my finger toward the mountain indicated behind the mansion.
“Those things seem sensitive to sound. If I pull the string from here, the connected bells will ring. If noise comes from the forest, their attention will shift that way, right? That’s when we make our move outside.”
As Eden listened to the story about the bells, his face looked as though he had a thousand questions. Right, he was probably wondering why on earth I’d installed bells in the first place. But in the end, Eden swallowed his questions and remained silent.
Good, a wise choice. I muttered to myself. Since things have turned out like this, don’t bother prying; just accept it as a stroke of luck and move on. I gladly overlooked his silence.
Anyway, the only problem was that the bells were just a temporary distraction to keep the monsters away from the mansion; they couldn’t actually drive them off.
“I think it’s best to keep watching them from the observatory and put the plan into action when their numbers drop even slightly.”
“I agree. Right now, they’re still gathering, so it might even backfire.”
Ultimately, Eden and I decided to check the observatory frequently and wait until the monsters grew weary or their numbers thinned out.
However, their numbers did not decrease as easily as we had hoped.
