Orion decided that he'd had enough and called it a day. Yuuma and Rio had gone through a pretty massive battle and weren't in any state to go out with him today. He left with Mai, who, once again, didn't bother giving him the chance to talk to her and disappeared directly, leaving him alone in the middle of the street.
"Damnit, I needed to ask her something," he shook his head while looking at the approaching zombies and his clean clothes. "Yeah, I'm not interested in going through another horde and getting my clothes ruined…Maybe I'm not really built for the apocalypse, considering how regularly I need to clean myself."
After some thought, he decided to backtrack instead of taking a longer route so that he wouldn't run into too many zombies. He didn't want to go home and change into a third new set of clothes. Still, despite barely two hours having passed since he'd cleared the way, the roads were already starting to get crowded with zombies. It left him both perplexed and confused about the origin of those zombies. It wasn't difficult to imagine them being produced in a factory-like nest since most of them seemed to retain their past human identities and had clothes and accessories on them from before death. As for clones, he couldn't really identify any repeated zombies either.
Mai still made the occasional appearance to support him, but it seemed more like she wanted to kill a zombie or two instead of helping him. Because with the lower number, he really didn't need her help. Still, her help indirectly prevented quite a few situations where he would get splashed with blood from the zombies.
Back at the apartment, Mai finally appeared when she unlocked her door, giving him the chance to finally talk to her.
"Mind if I see your sister?" He asked. "I want to examine her state if you don't mind."
"Okay," she agreed, unlocking the door and entering. "Come in."
"You don't mind that I lied about my whole situation with your friends, do you?" He asked.
"It's your business, Orion. As long as you can heal Nodoka, I won't mind even if you are a genocidal maniac."
I call her without an honorific, and she snaps at me like I just committed a crime, but she's free to call me by my name…rude ass Ice Block. If I didn't know the stuff that Yuuma told me, I'd probably keep thinking that she has a shit personality.
Orion didn't even realize that his eyes held an intense look that conveyed, 'I can fix her.' A look that he would come to regret the day he expressed his intentions. But that was for a later time. For now, he shook the extra thoughts away and entered her apartment, following her into Nodoka's bedroom.
Immediately upon entering, he was left speechless. The blonde not only had a different outfit on today, but her bindings were also different. With her hands tied behind her back and her legs folded up to be tied to her hands, she was lying on her stomach with a red ball gag inside her mouth. The metal collar was still attached to her neck with a padlock, with its attached chain being nailed to the wall in a very permanent fashion.
"I have to ask…Is this a fetish? Why do you have your sister tied up like a bondage model?"
Mai looked at him coldly. "She has bouts of agitation where she struggles and writhes around. These strict bindings make sure that she doesn't hurt herself. That gag is to prevent her from chewing through the ropes. I don't usually leave her alone for more than two hours."
"Got it…" He paused as a thought came to his mind. "You don't have to answer, but did you have this skill from before or only learned it while trying to keep your sister restrained?"
The room's temperature dropped by a couple of degrees as Mai turned to look at him menacingly. "Guess."
"It's been four months since the apocalypse hit. It's completely normal to learn a new skill based on needs," he didn't push her. "So Nodoka turned the same day the apocalypse hit, right?"
"Yes."
"Hmm… Your friend was right about one thing: she is definitely different from the other zombies that are essentially rotting corpses. She definitely has more to her…"
He stepped forward and put his fingers on her neck, trying to check for a pulse. Her eyes gained a sense of ferocity as she struggled, but Mai's bindings were of very good quality, completely keeping Nodoka suppressed.
"She's warm, has a pulse…She's downright alive if not for the loss of her rationality and memory. There is definitely hope."
He had a thought and communicated with his gear.
Research: Zombie Virus Cure (Nodoka)
Origin Energy Cost: 10,000,000 to 100,000,000 Units
Tsk, I'd thought if I tried to make a specialized cure for a single person, it might take a smaller amount of time and Origin Energy. I'm really reluctant to spend so much Origin Energy on a damn cure… I could improve my physique stat up to a hundred million with so much Origin Energy. I'd directly shoot up to Dragon Ball Z levels of power with that… Then again, that should technically be the end goal for my presence on this planet. Healing Nodoka and getting Mai to follow me is kind of just a bonus to that.
"Second thoughts?" Mai's voice broke him out of his reverie.
"Nah," he shook his head. "Since I agreed, I'm going to cure her. You have my word. Having your allegiance is completely worth the cost of this cure. Plus, Nodoka is also special, believe it or not, and she comes with you. Whatever special power she has that keeps her semi-alive is going to be very strong in the future."
"I jus…ant...er…ack…"
Orion heard a faint and small voice that was completely unlike Mai's usual cold one and turned to see the same icy expression on her face as usual. That frail voice seemed nothing more than his imagination, but he knew it wasn't.
He smiled. "We'll get her back. I'm sure of it," he encouraged her. "Do you mind if I borrow your sword? I want to practice with it a little. You can keep my katana during that time."
Mai nodded and stepped out of the room, holding the door open for him to follow her.
Just as he stepped out, closing the door behind him, he found Mai's sword in front of his face, threatening to chop him to pieces in an instant.
"Can you not do that?" He asked, not intimidated in the slightest by her action.
"I could stab you through the head, and you wouldn't even know what killed you. Just keep it in mind."
"Honestly…" he shook his head without elaborating and extended his hand toward the sword's handle. He missed as Mai stepped back with the sword. She put it in its scabbard and held it by the blade end to hand it to him.
He was left speechless as he grabbed the sword by the handle, taking it out of its scabbard.
"It's not like I have cooties," he shook his head and placed his Katana on a table. "I'll be on the roof. Please be prepared to stay out for a while tomorrow. I'm planning to spend the entire day killing zombies. If I am to take care of your sister in any feasible timeframe, I need to speed things up."
"Hmm," she nodded.
Having already understood that she had no plans to continue the conversation, Orion immediately turned to the door and left her apartment, directly going upstairs to do some practice with her sword. Unlike his Katana, it was a European-type longsword that weighed around three kilograms, which was essentially nothing, especially when compared to his unprecedentedly heavy eight-kilogram katana.
Once he went up to the roof, he didn't immediately start swinging the sword. Instead, he sat down under the sun that was at its peak and started meditating. He was fully invested in bringing both of his techniques to a hundred percent integration. The Foundational Swordsmanship required him to practice, at least a little, with a few different types of swords. As for Foundational Strength Control, that required him to be both in tune with his body and to possess a sort of spiritual vision of his own body. It wasn't an actual spiritual vision and was merely a method of visualizing that would give him greater control over his body, but it was very useful. Even with just the theories, he had brought his efficiency and energy conservation to a minimum. Even when he'd done something as delicate as pinching Rio's nipple, he had been able to naturally control his strength to make sure that he didn't hurt her.
Once his meditation allowed him to actively visualize his internals, his efficiency and control over his own strength would improve by more than tenfold at the minimum. And he already had all of the knowledge with his own body as the reference, which meant that he only needed a single hour of meditation to activate that ability.
With that done, he started focusing completely on practicing the foundational moves of the longsword in his hand. He was only three-quarters of the way done in Foundational Strength Control, but the rest of it required him to perform the equivalent of a mixed set of multiple harmonizing techniques like Yoga, Tai-chi, and more, that would completely solidify his visualization ability. The issue was that those movements were very long and would consume almost five hours for him to complete. Without the single-minded focus that he had in his dreams, doing yoga for five hours was impossible for him without losing his sanity. So he had to mix and match between the two things.
Ideals were beautiful, but reality was a bitch. That realization came to Orion two and a half hours later. Having spent half an hour doing yoga after two hours of constant sword training, added to the previous hour of meditation, he had no interest in continuing his practice. Still, the fruits of his labour were a very good source of motivation and were the only reason he decided to continue training after taking a break.
Techniques:
Foundational Swordsmanship (Integrity 100% — Integration 34% -> 68%)
Foundational Strength Control (Integrity 100% — Integration 0% -> 77%)
"This building has power… One of these apartments has to have a Blu-ray player… Even if it's only Japanese movies, I'm down…"
Unfortunately, the day truly didn't seem to be going as per his plan. He found multiple Blu-ray players, but not a single movie. He didn't have the patience to look through the endless hard drives he'd found to get some data hoarder's stash of pirated movies. Ultimately, he could only bite the bullet and swallow his pride for the sake of entertainment.
He went over to the apartment across from his and knocked on the door.