“Excuse me, can I take but a moment of your time?” Pavel asked as he approached Mathew in the position from where he overlooked the entire new camp of the expedition.

“Oh, it’s you,” Mathew muttered with his hands crossed on his chest. “Took you longer than I expected to approach me.”

The young man looked at and then scanned Pavel from up close.

This particular young hunter caught Mathew’s attention quite a while ago already. Ever since his exploits during the battle, Mathew kept a close eye on what Pavel was doing, learning a little bit more about the potential leader of the hunters than just how he acted in times of battle.

And to be frank, what Mathew saw struck so close to home, he couldn’t help but entertain the idea of replacing Carol in her position as the official leader of the hunters.

Not because Carol did anything wrong to deserve the demotion, but because Pavel was just such a great fit and had every right to remand a promotion!

“Let me guess, it’s about that guy…”

Mathew rolled his eyes the second Pavel opened his mouth.

“There are a lot of things that we need to discuss. And the topic you mentioned is just one of many,” Mathew muttered before looking around and spotting a place within the ruins of the town that looked like a nice area to sit at. “For now, let’s go there,” Mathew suggested, pointing at the area he just noticed. “It should hide most of the sounds and sights if we talk there.”

Harvesting the zombies was no easy or pretty task. Still, it had to be done… Or rather, gathering the cores from the zombie corpses was the second most important job that the hunters had during this mission and the most important job they had in general!

Still, even after seeing all sorts of things in the last few weeks, Mathew still couldn’t get used to all the gore.

He could live with the bloody and messy imagery that surrounded him from every side, but it wasn’t something he particularly enjoyed.

And what was quite interesting, Pavel appeared to be just like Mathew in this regard… Or to be more precise, in quite a lot of other areas as well.

“So?” Pavel attempted to kickstart the discussion once they retreated from the small hill in the very middle of the field of corpses of Nadia’s making and to the zone that Mathew noticed.

It used to be an underpass located at the very corner of the street, with residential apartments hanging above the commercial buildings on the ground floor.

Shielded from the sky by the upper floors, the two of them instantly felt a little bit more secure. With the front of the shops behind them and concrete columns holding the upper floor barring huge numbers of people zombies from passing through the underpass, Mathew could speak his heart out without any worry that someone would approach the two of them without him noticing.

“Let’s not delay this any longer,” Mathew sighed right as Pavel sat down. He then sat down right by the exceptional hunter and leaned to the back. “First thing first, the topic that you came to discuss, the guy that you shot and then left for zombies to finish the job.”

Pavel’s face visibly darkened.

All the institutions in the world that forbid all sorts of crimes… were gone.

There was no military to enforce government rule. There was no police to make sure the laws were followed.

But even though there was now no one who could judge him, Pavel’s actions were too heavy for the people around him to ignore them.

“Regarding that topic, I only have one question,” Mathew muttered before taking another pause.

Sure, he liked Pavel. Not on a personal level as he never really interacted with him before, but Mathew more than just enjoyed Pavel’s approach to a variety of topics.

From how he handled the rest of the hunters during the battle, even though the decisiveness that he showed when ridding the hunters of the element nearly led towards their annihilation, and at how great he was at pushing the menial work on others…

Mathew liked all of those qualities, as they perfectly suited the position that he had in mind for the guy.

But that didn’t mean he was going to make things easy for him!

“What is it?” Pavel asked after enduring only a few moments of silence.

Mathew took a long breath. He then looked up, as if the texture of the underpass roof was worlds more interesting than Pavel’s face.

“Was it necessary?” Mathew finally asked the question once he ran out of the means to delay it. And this time, it was Pavel’s turn to stall.

At first, he opened his mouth, ready to reply right away… But in the end, he didn’t do so. He pulled his mouth shut and lowered his head, staring at the tips of his shoes while a long wrinkle appeared across his forehead.

“Back then, we were just a bunch of kids who were thrown onto the battlefield and told to survive,” Pavel started. “It was already as hard as it would get to keep everyone’s morale relatively high, but when he started to bring chaos for his…

“Was it necessary?” Mathew asked again, butting in right in the middle of Pavel’s sentence. “This is the only question I asked. I don’t need you to explain the circumstances. Just answer the question.”

Once again, the underpass filled with silence.

Pavel was struggling. He had his jaw clenched and his hands pressed into fists. Still, he sat down obediently on the outside bench that Mathew noticed.

“Yes,” Pavel finally came to find his answer as he raised his face and looked Mathew in the face. “Maybe there was a way to prevent what happened from taking place. Maybe if I acted faster…” Pavel cut his voice and lowered his head again.

This time, Mathew didn’t interrupt, waiting for his schoolmate to organize his thoughts.

“No, that doesn’t matter,” Pavel came to some sort of a conclusion and he raised his face again. “Back then, in that very moment? Yeah, it was necessary.”

Mathew looked back at the fellow young man. And after one heck of a tense moment, he allowed a small smile to crawl up on his lips.

“I see,” he muttered before stretching his hands up and then leaning his entire body to the back. “The topic’s settled then. Now, let’s talk about system seeds.”