Undying Warlord

"Who wants to survive?"

Dilan's voice was loud enough for everyone to hear him, however, it lacked the empathy one would expect to hear when asked such a question.

For several seconds the survivors were unable to say anything. They had hoped that Dilan would become their savior but in the end, they didn't dare to believe that their prayers had finally been answered.

Thus, nobody dared to lift their hand, let alone open their mouths to say something.

Dilan didn't think that none of the present survivors wanted to say something. Yet, upon seeing the fear and uncertainty in their eyes, he merely nodded his head.

'Looks like I'm scarier than presumed…well, maybe, they're just conflicted?'

He could tell that everyone in the underground shelter wanted to stay alive. His question had been a rhetorical one that didn't need to be answered, in the first place.

But Dilan still wanted to hear some sort of answer, receive some kind of response.

He waited patiently without saying anything further and without moving a single inch.

His gaze was unwavering and Dilan merely turned to his right when he heard a huffed noise from that direction.

"I..w..w-want to survive!" The weak but shrill voice of a small child reached Dilan's ears. He looked at a malnourished young girl, whose clothes were torn apart. Patches of dirt and grime covered her revealed skin.

At the first glance, one might think of her as a beggar but that appearance was nothing out of the ordinary in the underground shelter.

What surprised Dilan the most were the girl's eyes. They shone with the intent to survive and overcome all kinds of struggles.

Nobody he had looked at inside the underground shelter had been able to maintain eye contact with him, let alone mustered courage to express their desires.

As such, Dilan smiled lightly before he took a few steps forward. A moment later he bent down while his eyes were still fixated on the little girl.

"You're a little fighter, right? What is your name?" Dilan ignored everyone else in the surroundings as he focused on the little girl in front of him.

She was, at most, 10 years old, but the last two weeks had forced her to act like a grown-up. The things she had seen since the Primordial Ascension had begun were terrifying, to put it simply.

Dilan could not even imagine how a young child must have felt after the beautiful and innocent world they had known all their life was transformed into something vicious and bloodthirsty. Milarn had changed in its entirety but the child in front of him seemed to adapt better to the new situation than anyone else.

She was also the first one to realize that Dilan wouldn't act like the knight in his shining armor, which was what the other survivors had hoped for.

A single glance at him had told the little girl that Dilan had his own motives for coming to the underground shelter and to act like a 'savior'.

To the little girl, this realization meant that she had to make a lasting impact and to show Dilan that she was ready to follow him.

"My name is Esla, Sir!"

Esla, the young girl, had lost both of her parents and her brother on the first day after the Primordial Ascension.

She had cried for days until her eyes ran dry and no more tears trickled down her cheeks. Despite being alone, and becoming an orphan overnight, Esla wanted to keep living.

Esla knew that this was a selfish thought but recalling how her dying mother had told her to survive, while her zombified brother tore their mother apart, she could only grit her teeth and do everything necessary to keep living.

In the end, Esla found herself in the underground valley with everyone else. There were fewer survivors than she had expected and it was a shame that nobody dared to fight.

But it was not like she was able to fight either. She had always been physically weak and couldn't even hold an iron pipe properly in her defense. So how was she supposed to fight even if she wanted to?

Various emotions raged within Esla which was something Dilan was clearly able to perceive.

'I've really found a fighter,' he thought with a faint smile on his lips.

"You're a brave girl, Esla. This is a small present for being courageous enough to step forward!" Dilan took a Bronze Tierless Essence crystal out of his backpack and handed it to Esla.

'I hope the Essence's potency won't be too much for her to handle.'

Dilan wanted to give her a Tier-1 Essence crystal but he held back because Esla was still a child, a malnourished one at that and she looked as if she would collapse at any moment.

With quivering hands, Esla held the Essence crystal Dilan gave her. She recalled how her zombified brother had torn a similar Essence crystal out of their father.

It had crumbled in her zombie brother's hand before he had moved forward to kill their mother.

Recalling that horrifying scene brought tears to her eyes once again. It had been two weeks since she had shed tears and didn't want to cry.

However, she was unable to hold back the emotions that emerged from the depths of her consciousness.

Dilan was dumbfounded by Esla's behavior but he didn't say anything. He merely patted her head in awkwardness.

"Everything will be fine now. Once you're ready, just think about absorbing the Essence within the crystal."

Dilan noticed the numerous gazes around him. Nearly everyone knew what Essence crystals were. They had seen some of them in the hands of the Ascenders, who had been hunting on the surface.

Others had seen them after their family, friends, and colleagues had been killed by zombies and other monsters.

As such, they wanted to get their hands on Essence crystals as well, despite not knowing what use they had.

If monsters killed each other for these Essence crystals and Dilan handed them out like a treasure, they had to be valuable!

"I want to survive as well!"

"Me too, Me too!"

"I as well want to survive"

"M-Mee too"

While nobody except Esla had dared to reveal their desire to survive before, everyone was slowly joining the crowd of survivors after the little girl had taken the first step.

Some were led by the desire to procure an Essence crystal but their reasoning to speak up was not something Dilan could be bothered about.

He had a different plan in mind instead of spoon-feeding more than a thousand survivors. That was something he never did, even when his group had only hovered around the number of 60!

"I can save all of you, but don't think that I won't demand anything in return."

Even if that was something everyone should have expected, Dilan's words which he uttered in a cold voice made them hesitant to approach him.

The survivors had planned to follow Dilan from that day onward but halted the moment he spoke about demands.

'He didn't even save us yet, but wants to demand something from us already?! Isn't that too much?'

Similar thoughts like this flashed through the minds of nearly everyone. A trace of anger could be seen in the eyes of a handful of survivors but that was not something Dilan was concerned about.

The corners of his lips curled upward when he noticed the commotion his words caused.

'This is even better than expected.'

Dilan nearly chuckled because the plan he had come up with on a whim seemed to work out perfectly.

"I want you guys to fight."

These words stupefied most of the survivors.

If they had the courage or strength to fight by themselves, they wouldn't be hiding underground, waiting to be rescued by some sort of savior.

Dilan's words were confusing and nobody truly understood what was on the mind of the newcomer.

He was just too much of an oddball…

"Against each other or what…do you mean?? We are not barbarians…not yet…"

One of the survivors, who was standing close to Dilan, mumbled to himself the moment a weird possibility formed in his mind.

He was already too tired to think straight but the survivor still imagined the chaos and bloodbath that would have ensued if Dilan were to demand what he had just mumbled.

"Of course not against each other…why would I even waste my time saying that I want to save everyone, if I start a survival of the fittest contest or something like that?"

Dilan was not sure what was going on in the mind of the survivors from the underground shelter but all of them were extremely suspicious of him, despite the hope, which had flared up within them.

"I want you guys to fight for your own survival. This involved fighting against monsters as well… though not everyone will have to fight!"

The moment Dilan finished speaking, the entire underground shelter went eerily silent.

This confused him a lot but when he looked at the faces of the survivors, Dilan felt that they had misunderstood the reason for his arrival.

'Do they think I will take them in and turn them into meatshields or a suicide squad? I have better things to do than that!!'

While Dilan grumbled to himself, he noticed only now that a commotion was created as hundreds of voices reverberated through the underground shelter.

"What…do you mean?"

"W-w-we will die…no please not…"

"I don't want to fight monsters… I will die! ARGHHH!"

A woman sobbed while pleading, " Please don't force us to fight monsters…"

Dilan knit his brows while hearing everything. He took a deep breath and tried to stay calm, just to sense a big headache crawling up his head.

'I guess it won't be as easy as expected…'