The World Cataclysm

"What!? They put a blade on Rebecca's neck to obtain your backpack." Adam frowned as he exclaimed in anger. "Shouldn't they have been thankful instead?"

Judging from his expression and the way he responded, he didn't seem to be bothered when Dave mentioned that he killed two of them, only growing silent for a moment. Adam believed that Dave didn't kill them needlessly and had a reason to do it.

However, others immediately paled a bit as they winced in their places. Adrian and Sara had heard a lot about him from Adam and Brian, and only now understood how terrifying he was, talking about killing with a straight face as it was nothing.

"Yeah, so if any of you meet any people outside, then don't lower your guard and be ready for everything. Don't trust others easily." Dave warned them as he looked at everyone. Trying to cheer them a bit, Dave quickly changed the topic. "Okay! Then, let's decide how are we going to cooperate with people in the supermarket."

Nodding his head, Adam quickly got to the business, "First of all,... Can we trust them?" It was the only question that bothered him, considering how Rebecca had fallen into danger when she tried to save strangers. Other things were manageable if both sides could hold to the end of their cooperation without pulling any tricks.

Thinking about Arthur's almost suicidal innocence and kindness, Dave nodded his head without any further thought. "Don't worry about that. I've already seen people who are deciding everything over there in person and personally checked them, so we can cooperate with them without any hitches. They're dying to get to the dorms."

Adam nodded his head as he decided to trust his best friend's judgment. When the discussion turned to the survivors in the supermarket, Brian shook slightly in excitement as he raised his hand. "Oh...oh...Are there any beautiful female students among them?"

"..." Both Adam and Dave were struck speechless at his question. Clearly irritated, Adam snapped at him, "Damn, Brian! We're talking business here. Why do you even care about are there any female students or not?"

"I don't want to hear it from you, from the most popular freshman student. Compared to you, women rarely show interest in me." Sadness flickered in his eyes as he said it. "But now, if I become strong enough, I would have a chance with a woman." Saying it, Brian's expression brightened as he stared expectantly at Dave.

"...Well, at least, you got the motivation to grow stronger. Yeah, there should be some female students among them, so don't worry about it." Dave sighed lightly as he looked helplessly at Brian.

Hearing him, Brian pumped his fists upwards happily. Musing over it, Dave smiled slightly as he turned to Adam, "However, it might become harder after we join hands with them. There lots of stuff to organize and do, and I don't think of anyone fitting more than you, Adam. You need to fill that role."

Immediately, Adam changed in his face as he said, "Hey! We both came to study the same course. Why am I doing all the work? Just say you're too lazy to do that shit." He fumed over several seconds as he hit lightly on Dave's arm.

"Adam, you know, you're more accustomed to dealing with such stuff. You've been involved with it from a young age, while I'm new at it. Furthermore, you can also choose people who'll help you." Dave laughed awkwardly as he explained himself. However, he truly didn't want to deal with that shit since he wanted to have more time on training.

"Fine! I'll do it." Adam grumbled as he agreed to it. He also didn't want to do it, but he agreed that he was more fitted to it; at least, he was more communicative than Dave and knew how to deal with people.

After convincing Adam, they had also discussed other points, more talking about future plans and what they would do after joining hands with Arthur and Evelyn's side. Precisely, it was Dave and Adam doing all the talking while others just listened to them.

After discussing everything in the kitchen, in a short while, everybody returned to their own rooms. Dave quickly grabbed some canned food in the kitchen and ate it, deciding not to take any food taken from the cafeteria's storeroom. It was still needed to be counted and sorted to keep track of it.

"I'll be returning to the room first. I'm tired as hell." Dave said to Adam as he finished eating. Adam nodded his head as he returned to his calm state of mind, playing with his spoon in the air. He wanted to quickly get a hold of his innate ability, so he tried using it on small objects such as eating utensils.

Entering his room, his eyes fell on the soft bed as he wanted to just take a nap for a bit, but he quickly resisted the temptation of sleeping as he dragged his body up on the bed and to the cross-legged position.

Quickly entering a meditative state, Dave started to absorb blue clusters of mana, deciding to do another meditative session two hours long. Currently, he had 26 points of mana, and the upper limit that he could reach was 55 points, considering his intelligence and spirit.

Usually, you couldn't increase your mana pool more than intelligence and spirit stats multiplied to each other. Dave had 5 points in spirit and 11 points in intelligence, so his upper limit was 55 points, and the closer he is to that limit, the slower he will approach that limit.

When it came to magic or mana control, these two stats were the only ones that determined your magic power. As mana had appeared in the world, the term of a soul became much clearer than before since Status Window clearly showed spirit stat.

It was harder to define the soul. With body, it was much easier: strength, agility and stamina...quite simple. He would also open another two stats related to the body when he reached level 10. They were body toughness and vitality stats.

However, the matter of soul was more evasive than commonly seen stats, but even then, System had shown two stats related to it. The intelligence stat showed the quality of the soul and aided with processing speed and mental calculations, while spirit defined the quantity of the soul, or how big it was. At least, he understood that much.

Moreover, both of them affected different aspects of magic. Since magic spells used spiritual power as much as they used mana as fuel, it was important to develop both soul and mana pool for magic-users.

Increasing intelligence would also increase the attack power of magic spells, while increasing spirit would affect the numbers of spells you could cast, and if a magic-user overexerted himself in terms of spirit than they would either feel mentally exhausted or even faint at some point of a time. It was partly a reason why Rebecca had fainted; she overexerted both her spirit and mana pool.

Being low in spirit and being low in mana were usually followed by the following symptoms: if you overexerted your spirit, then the symptoms were terrible headache, mental exhaustion and fainting occasionally, while mana drainage was followed by feeling nauseous and weak like you had ridden the most terrifying roller coaster.

As he spent more time meditating, Dave had felt as mana absorption was becoming smoother over time. Feeling it, the smile crept on his face as he immediately understood what was going on...He had entered a deep meditative state, which was quite rare to have. Even in his past life, he had experienced it only twice, and his gains were tremendous.

And now, after regressing, he had entered a third deep meditation in his whole life, two lives combined.