Well guess what? I got a part three for ya!

“Hive, please be okay!” I could hear sobbing around me as something was being forced into my mouth. I could feel someone grabbing my chin and moving it up and down, almost as if forcing me to chew. Whatever I was chewing, it felt soft… warm… it melted in my mouth.

I slowly opened my eyes with a groan to find a half eaten loaf of bread in my mouth and Sun quickly backing away. Was she trying to feed it to me?

Weakly, I reached up and grabbed the loaf, biting back into it. Unfortunately, this wasn’t like your traditional video game. Eating this bread didn’t make me feel better instantly, but I could feel the effects gradually occurring.

I weakly sat up, looking down at my arm. It was covered in scratches. I could vaguely remember what happened. All those zombies…

The zombies!

I quickly looked out the broken window to see what was going on. Loud groans echoed through the village, but… so was the smell of smoke.

I looked around to see all the zombies burning up in the daylight and trying to run away before their bodies fell into a pile of dust, only leaving behind scraps of stinky rotting flesh.

‘That’s just nasty,’ I thought to myself. But I’m the bright side, we had survived the first night. I went from house to house, breaking down the barricades over the doors I had managed to get to last night. Miraculously, a good number of villagers had survived.

And the minute the villagers came out of their homes, they started cheering my name (which they probably overheard from my friends). “Hive! Hive! Hive!”

I almost felt guilty… and a bit overwhelmed. Back in the real world, I was a bit of an introvert. Social interaction was very draining and sometimes anxiety-inducing. This was certainly one of those times.

But for the time being, I put on a happy facade and waved. This village seemed like it needed protecting. I wouldn’t mind doing such a thing. If I’m a hero to these people, then I may as well embrace this role.

”YOU MONSTER!!”

Of course there’s always that one guy.

We all turned to the back of the crowd and saw a lone villager crying as he gripped some sort of ripped cloth. I could piece together what he was about to say.

“How can you idiots chant his name?! If he were really a hero, there wouldn’t have been any casualties! And yet this is all that’s left of my wife!” He walked up to me and held up the cloth right in front of my face. Good thing one’s sense of smell is stunted in this world.

Some of the other villagers were trying to calm him down, but he kept insisting that I was the bad guy. Like I said, there’s always that one guy whose judgement is clouded… although I’d be lying if I said I didn’t sympathize. If I was the only one who lost a loved one in an attack, I’d be a little cross with whoever was supposed to be ‘saving’ these people.

Should I say that out loud? Probably not.

“I understand you’re upset,” I said in a calm voice. “Loss is hard. I’ve lost lots of people in my life.” I couldn’t help but look back to all the funerals I had been to. My grandparents… my step-mom… “But I promise you, I’ll do everything in my power to make sure you and the rest of this village don’t meet the same fate.”

The villagers seemed to mumble among each other. Did I say something wrong?

One of them eventually stepped up. “What will we do? How will we protect our village?”

I looked around, trying to find an answer. The mountain we scaled to get here! There was a cave opening in the side. I then turned to my friends and made a motion to huddle up.

“Allie, get us wood. Lots of it. I wanna see a chest relatively full when we’re done.” “Mystic, get an animal farm going. We’ll need multiple sustainable food sources.” “Sage, go with Mystic. If she can get wool, make us some beds so we can sleep.” “Sun, you’ll come with me. We’re gonna go mining in that cave over there.” “We’ll all reconvene at the end of the day.”

We all nodded and split up. The others went on their way while Sun and I made our way towards the caves, pickaxes in hand.

If we wanted to survive, we’d need everything we can get our hands on.