“So, do you feel any different now?” Carol asked.

Her only reaction to the second orb sinking into John’s palm was to gulp down the saliva gathered in her mouth.

“The same as before,” John sighed. “Which is, the same as even before that.”

‘Was it a failure?’ Mathew thought, only to roll his eyes a moment later. ‘I really shouldn’t let the moment influence how much my mood swings,’ he thought, slightly disappointed with his own reaction.

It was to be expected for the users of the system seed not to feel anything. As expected as it was for them to lose consciousness, cry out in pain, or moan out in ecstasy.

This was the first time anyone on this planet absorbed the seed of a system, so Mathew had no clue what the process would look like.

What he knew, though, was that the system itself didn’t make its owner powerful. Killing zombies to absorb the fleeting energy that powered them and then further gaining that energy from the zombie cores was the process that any system owner had to go through to grow stronger.

In fact, the system didn’t offer strength at all. Only the opportunity to gain it.

“I guess we should distribute the rest of the systems, then,” Mathew suggested. “Since now we know there is no starting bonus for the new system owners.”

This was also one of the many possible outcomes. Mathew had a tiny hope that all those who received a system seed would gain some sort of a starting bonus, an initial advantage to make them stronger than just normal humans…

Thankfully, that hope wasn’t big enough for Mathew to feel disappointed now.

“I guess that’s what we should do,” Carol muttered, taking a step back while averting her eyes to hide the uncomfortable look on her face.

“Wait, is that it?” John suddenly asked, sensing how everyone suddenly wanted to retreat.

“Yeah, pretty much,” Mathew replied, letting Carol retreat another step.

Of how easy it was for her to interact with others, she clearly had no wish to stay near the man right now.

He was one of the people who promised a system seed and all the opportunities that came with it. As such, it was damn hard for her to behave when those seeds… didn’t turn out to be as much of an instant gratification and powerup as the seed recipients clearly expected!

“If you want to see the effects of your system, you will have to start killing zombies. Alternatively, once we go back, if you will earn any cores from the fighting, you will be able to use them to grow stronger too.”

This was a plan all along, an idea planted in Mathew’s head long before he announced the tax that he would levy off all the cores the hunters would earn.

Still, the total sum of cores gathered during the expedition would be decreased by Mathew’s tax, then by the cost of all the system seeds they would need to buy for every surviving member. Then came the additional costs of the equipment the hunters would need to buy as well…

‘It now all depends on them whether they will even get a single core for themselves once we return…’ Mathew thought.

Even with all the deaths, the upfront costs for outfitting the surviving hunters were… huge. And decreasing said cost… was hard. But there was also one more element that the hunters had to take into account.

“You received an upgrade to your system seed because we wanted to see whether it will work or not. But keep in mind, that any further upgrades…” Mathew paused his voice and threw a long look at John’s face. “Keep in mind, that you will have to pay for them yourself.”

Mathew then turned around on his heel and left the scene, quickly catching up with Carol.

“Okay, we learned what we wanted,” she said while throwing an anxious look behind Mathew’s back. Then, her head returned to its natural position as she moved her eyes over to Mathew’s face. “So? What now?”

Mathew looked at the girl before looking away, to where they all came from.

“We clear the second field of corpses first, then advance to our destination.”

The main goal of the expedition was to reach the castle ruins, not to turn the newbies into hunters.

Letting the newbies grow stronger, gain system seeds, and become a formidable force was just a side-task that would make completing the main objective all the easier. But as the time went on, Mathew couldn’t help but wonder whether the delay was worth it, in the end.

‘At this rate, even if we stumble into another horde, it will be better to just avoid it,’ he concluded after taking a short walk through the current location of the group.

In the short time since he left John, Carol distributed the rest of the cores that she brought to the hunters and now was laying the finishing touches to get everyone to move over to the second field with corpses.

‘Hopefully, that will be our last stop on our way to the castle,’ Mathew thought, his annoyance growing with each minute that passed.

Thankfully, he didn’t need to wait for long.

“We are all ready!” Carol shouted once she managed to gather all the hunters and newbies in one place.

And as one would expect, she also carried a small bag filled with the leftover cores that the hunters gathered on the field of their battle.

“We are now moving to the second field of zombie corpses!” Mathew called out, more than ready to just get a move on. “Don’t be careless, some of those corpses might still be alive. Even if you see a severed head, make sure to puncture its brain before it suddenly snaps and bites you in your ankle!”

There were a lot more dangers involved in gathering the cores from the zombies. Just scratching one’s finger on a broken piece of bone while reaching to pluck the core was as good as being bitten. There were also the half-dead zombies that simply lost their mobility but not their lives…

And the more abundant the corpses on the field, the easier it was for someone to get careless and make a fatal mistake.

“This time, though, we are not going to clean all the corpses. Once we arrive at the scene, I’m giving you all…” Mathew took a pause to look up, tracking the position of the sun in the sky. “Four… No, three hours! In three hours, we are moving for the castle!”