The distance between the shelter we are heading to and the place I met my group was twenty kilometers. It wasn't that long of a distance, but when you're traveling with many people especially the one that has a child and an old man, the journey is definitely going to be slow. Not to mention that I need to constantly be aware of the monsters.
Since there is nothing urgent that needs me to arrive there as soon as possible, I decided to delay the journey more than it should have. I thought it would be good to train the group while we are heading to the shelter. Aside from the usual exercise, I want them to experience in fighting the monster.
Unfortunately, their physical body isn't ready for that. That's why I increase the training and exercise by three times today. The moment they collapse, I will ask Theo to heal them and they will continue their training. The process continued to repeat for hours later. This also helps Theo in controlling his ability to use it more proficiently.
"Why do we need to listen to her and doing all of this training? It's not like we're in a military," I could hear Ryan whispers to Gunther. I restrain myself from smiling as I heard they both complaining. Poor guys, they don't know that they are on my recruitment list. There's no way they could run from me.
"Theo," I call out to the guy with brown hair. He instantly respond to me like a soldier with his hands touches his forehead.
"Yes, ma'am."
"How are you feeling? Do you think you can control your ability properly now?" I gently ask him.
"Yes. I think it's a lot more easier to use my ability now compared to before. But I think I almost reach my limit," he says with a tired face.
Of course, he used his ability on almost twenty people multiple times so it's natural to feel tired. I touch his shoulder to heal him. The touch only lasts a few seconds so he won't suspect anything.
"You should be okay now. Go warm up your body. Your training will starts from now on," I lightly push his body so he will quickly move. He looks at me in confusion.
"I thought my training was to master my ability?"
"That's your first task. Your main training starts from here. Now go quickly before I double it up. I will tell you what you need to do after you finish warming up." He finally obey my words and starts to do the basic warming up.
. . . . .
I always 'clean up' the whole area first before giving them any training such as running for five hundreds meters and repeat it for twenty times. At first, I got a lot of critiques since I even asked the old man and the child to do the running, so I ended up left them out. But now, we have a healer in our group so there's no excuse for them this time.
If I am to be honest, I think I have gone really easy on them. When I see how slow they are running, I'm tempted to make a monster chasing behind them just so they could run faster. How are they going to survive in this world at this rate?
As I almost shake my head, a person with his whole body glowing passed by me. His complexion looks terrible as he doesn't even bother to wipe the saliva flowing out of his mouth. I swear that I see his eyes almost completely turned white after running for more than three hours non-stop. The only thing that keeps him going is his healing ability.
"He's about to pass out in three... Two... One." My guess is spot on as he finally collapse on the ground. I walk towards him and casually pick him up to bring him back to our camp.
"Oh, the leader is back," Natasha greet me and lead me to the place they already prepared for me to put Theo down. It's just a simple blanket being laid out. As many people often fainted during training, they began to prepare this in advance.
"I guess he's indeed a genius. Even when he fainted, his healing ability still didn't deactivate," I comment as I observe the glowing that doesn't fade on his body. I already expected his healing ability to be powerful since I already saw it in the novel, but seeing it in person still amazed me.
"Will he be okay? Won't it put too much strain on his body if he used his ability too much?" Wayne ask in concern. I tell him it's okay. In fact, I didn't let Theo used his ability alone. I constantly use my own ability to aid him.
"Make sure you guys get plenty of rest. Tomorrow, we will do something different." They all look petrifies at my statement, like they knew it won't be anything good. I just let them be to meet the awakened trio.
The moment I approach them, they are all startled like they just encounter a monster. They look around as if to search for a place to hide and when they couldn't find it, they push the strongest among the three of them in my way. I found them to be quite funny.
"What's wrong? If I bite people, I won't search for normal food to survive." My nonchalant words seems to make them even more frightened.
"What do you want?" Clara takes the courage to confront me.
"I just want to ask about what happened between you guys and Theo. Why is he avoiding you guys so much? Aren't you guys friends?" I still ask even though I know the answer.
"T-that..." They can't look at my eyes as they try to answer. I didn't plan to meddle in their business but these guys are quite useful so I decide to help them a little. Because if I don't, Theo might kill them.
"Theo used to have a brother who is a year older than him. He has a pretty useful ability which is to create illusions to distract the monsters. The three of us always worked together with him to kill the weak monster," Ryan starts to talk since he's the most open out of the four of them, including Theo.
"One day, we were fighting a monster in front of a convenience store while Theo was gathering food. Since the monster we have encounter so far was as big if not bigger than human, we never thought about the possibility of a small monster. That's when it happened, a snake-like monster sneaked up on Theo's brother and bit him."
"I guess he got poisoned." He nods to my comment. "What happened after that? You didn't treat him?"
"No," he swallowed. "We left him. Despite the monster's size, it's body was full of poison so we decided it's not worth it and left him. Of course, Theo found out about it and..."
"You guys had a fight but because he couldn't survive alone, he was forced to stick with you guys. That's understandable but why you guys picked up on him after that? Hm?" Their body visibly shaking at my words.
I remember what they said in the novel.
"It's not our fault that the monster suddenly appear! What can we do? We don't have any antidote or healing ability to treat him!" Clara shouted defensively.
"But how can you just leave him like that?! He clearly asked for your help!"
"Hey, how can you blame us? Aren't you the most useless one? You don't have any ability! We fought all the monsters for you to gather foods! You should be glad that we even share with a good-for-nothing like you!" Gunther let out all his frustrations and anger towards Theo.
"Right. How about you gather our foods on your own? It shouldn't be hard. All you need to do is avoid all the monsters. Of course, you can also leave us if you want. But think about it, will you be able to sleep peacefully at night?" Ryan whispers to him. Then he turned to the others.
"What do you guys think?" They all nodded their head and agreed with him.
That's the reason why I found Theo on my way to the mini market. It shouldn't make any sense when he, a guy with no ability, was searching for food for his friends who are awakeners. I look at them coldly. Although I plan to recruit them, but that doesn't mean I will treat them kindly.
"You better apologize to him. I'm not saying this because I'm siding with him but because I don't want him to take unnecessary revenge."
I don't tell them that Theo is planning to kill them since it will complicate the matter. I also don't mind if Theo want to take revenge on them by making their life difficult, I just can't let him kill them
"One more thing. Each of you will lead a group on a mission tomorrow. If any of the people in your group make any mistake, got lost or died, you, the leader, will take full responsibility. Understand?" My tone is colder than usual to give them a warning. They give me a silent nod before getting dismissed.