<h4>Chapter 218: Early Bird</h4>


    Seeing that the others nned to sleep now that they had gotten back to the base, Lake told one of the dwarves that would most likely be one of the first guards. "I''m going back out there to hunt for a while. I''ll be back every hour or so." Once that was said he walked out the door.


    Switching Detector to look for gargoyles Lake started down the road. "Hello, I need help." Turning around Lake saw someone on the streeting towards him. He wasn''t sure where they hade from because the road had been clear when he opened the door but he was pretty sure they were an undead so he was just going to kill them and move on.


    He made sure before he attacked though by switching Detector to look for undead. Seeing the guy start to glow, Lake asked. "Are you an undead?" He already knew but he wanted to see what the guy would say. "No, I''m not." It was a pretty weak lie but Lake was sure it would get a lot of people because it was so simple.


    "Can you prove it?" The guy was getting kind of close now and Lake thought about ending this but he was kind of interested to see if they would drop the fa?ade and attack or would keep it going even when he got close. "How?"


    Lake wasn''t sure how they differed from normal people in ways that you could see so he had nothing to say to this that made sense. "Cut your finger off." He was pretty sure undead would regrow their finger so this was a real test but it was impractical. "No. I can''t." Lake didn''t see why they couldn''t so he said. "Why not?"


    "Because I can''t afford to grow it back. I''ll be fingerless forever." This was a good cover story but Lake had an offer a normal person couldn''t refuse. "I''m an alchemist. I''ll get you a potion to regrow it once this is over."


    "How can I trust you actually will?"


    "How can I trust you aren''t undead?"


    The undead had gotten close enough to Lake that an attack on a normal person might work and with their conversation hitting a wall he felt there was a good chance they would go for it. Waiting with bated breath Lake didn''t even hear thest thing they started to say as they attacked.


    Dodging the attack, Lake said. "Why did you attack me?" It seemed the undead wasn''t going to keep ying along and just attacked him again. Pulling his sword, Lake used Imbue Fire and sliced them in half. Feeling the amount of Exp Lake knew this one had probably just emerged within the hour.


    Switching his Detector back to gargoyles since the undead usually announced themselves, Lake headed towards the center of the city only stopping twice to kill gargoyles. After he passed the city center and headed into the area that they had been working earlier, Lake started to see more monsters in general.


    He was starting to think undead were a lot like cockroaches because it felt like no matter how many he killed there were still one or two somewhere in the city. It was annoying because he wanted to be done with them but he guessed as long as there was a single gargoyle that evaded him and found prey he would keep running into them every few hours.


    Setting the bodies of the undead he had killed on fire, Lake moved into another area and saw there was a gargoyle on top of one of the buildings in front of him. Jumping up and using Crunch Lake sliced it in half before kicking it towards the edge of the city where the barrier was.


    He hit the barrier with the upper half of the gargoyle but seeing the new dent that was on the tip of his metal boot he wished he hadn''t done what he did. It was pinching his toe now so he sat down and took it off. Putting his hand inside of his boot and using all his strength to un-dent it, Lake decided it was as good as he needed it to be and put it back on.


    Wiggling his toes around he was satisfied with his work and was about to get up when he heard something he hadn''t heard in a day or so. Someone was screaming the kind of scream that meant they needed help. It sounded like someone who was getting dragged by a gargoyle and it meant there might have been another survivor in the city after all.


    Well he knew there were people here, just none that weren''t hiding extremely well. He was pretty sure most of the people had some kind of stone basement used for situations like these that were hard to find unless you could feel stone the way he had seen Grendia do. Running towards the sound Lake saw he was right that it was someone being taken away into a building and rushed down to slice the gargoyle that was doing it in half.


    "I cant believe someone was actually around. Thank you." Lake gave them a thumbs up while using Detector to make sure this wasn''t some trick. He didn''t think the gargoyles were very smart but that didn''t mean they didn''t know how to follow directions. Seeing this person was not an undead Lake started to talk.


    "Why did youe out?" This person wasn''t a fighter so they should have stayed inside unless there was a good reason they couldn''t. "We ran out of food or the people that were letting me hide with them did and since I was the reason they had run out so fast I agreed to be the first to go out and try to find more."


    Lake hadn''t thought of the fact that other people wouldn''t have enough food tost till they were let out of the barrier. This could be a real problem if this imprisonmentsted for a long time. He needed to lead his group to stock up on as much food as they could while there was still some that hadn''t been imed.


    He should also make himself a secret stash that he could use if the others went through all the stuff they gathered. He didn''t need to eat much so he would definitely be thest one left if they ran out of food entirely. "Well good luck with that." Lake turned to leave towards the market where he could start to bring food to a secret stash when the person stopped him.


    "Would you mind helping me get there and back? I have money." Lake would usually help if someone paid him enough but keeping himself fed was more important and he didn''t want to be inpetition with the person he had saved while he was scavenging for food. "No I''m sorry but if you get attacked again just yell and I''lle running."


    He might actually do this depending how sessful he was in his hunt for food. There had been plenty of food when they had gone to get somest time but there was no way to know how many people had been there since they had. If people were starting to run out of food they would risk a trip out to get more and since he had killed a high percentage of the monsters that were here they had a good chance of making it there just fine.


    Arriving at where they had gotten their food, Lake saw that it looked very simr to what he had seen when they left yesterday so it looked like there hadn''t been any people here since they left. It seemed the person he had just saved might have been the first toe out and from what they had said about them being a guest that wasn''t originally supposed to be where they were it made sense that they had been the first ones to start to run out of food since they had an extra mouth to feed.


    It was probably umon for people to let strangerse into their shelters so it would probably be another day before other people needed toe out to restock. Scooping arge amount of food into his arms, Lake started to run towards their base. He wanted all the food he gathered to be close to where he was staying so he was going to hide this in the building next to them before going to his group and telling them to get up.


    He wanted to get at least half of the food in the market for them so he was going to need help. The building next to them had its door closed so Lake used Mana Vision to see if there were any people inside. He had looked inside a few times passively but never really taken the time to do a good job.


    Seeing no one, Lake took his bundle of food into one of the bedrooms and slid it under the bed. Seeing that he had a lot of stuff all mixed together, Lake took the time to take out the stuff that would go bad first and move it to another part of the house. He chose to just set it on the table in the front room so if anyone came in they would see it and think it had been the food of the family that lived here.