“Wow. That's a lot of wolves,” Angelie stated, admiring the pile of carcasses before her. “What are we even going to do with these? If we leave them alone, won't it attract more monsters?”

“Forget about those,” Gon said waving his hand away. “How are Neon and Matthew doing?”

“Matthew came out unscathed, and Neon is...” Angelie hesitated. She looked at the ground, averting her eyes from Haru and Gon. She bit her left thumb's nail before continuing: “His shoulder was bitten and he was bleeding a lot. Matthew used basic first aid on him, but... I don't know whether he will be fine or not.”

“Maybe you should look for yourself,” the farmer said before moving towards Hansel's house to check up on Hansel and May.

---

The first thing the two hunters saw when they entered the musician's house was an open first aid kit laying on the table next to Neon sitting on a chair. Matthew was standing the wounded Neon, applying gauze over his body.

“Ah! Mr. Gon and Mr. Haru, welcome back!” the man of action greeted, happy to be reunited with the other two people who followed him on the reckless mission to protect Angelie and Pierre.

The latter however, weren't as excited to meet him again. Despite having gauze applied on him, blood kept slowly seeping through the fabric, painting small droplets of crimson on the white gauze. The boy asked with a trembling voice: “Neon... are you okay?”

“He will be fine. The wound is not lethal,” Matthew answered as he finished putting bandages over the gauze. “We don't know whether we have the same constitutions as our previous lives, so at worst we might be dealing with hemophilia. If that is not the case however, then these wounds should heal naturally after give or take a week of rest.”

“And there you have it! You shouldn't worry about me anymore,” Neon laughed before quickly shifting his tone. With a serious look on his face, he asked: “What about you two? Are you hurt anywhere?”

“W-We are fine. Most of the wolves were cut down by Gon,” Haru answered. “You should have seen it! He cut down one wolf after another! It was like cutting butter with a hot knife!”

Feeling awkward not knowing what to say, Haru tried to liven up the mood by narrating the story of the recent event. Noticing his effort and seeing that the two were safe with his own eyes, Neon sighed in relief.

“Ah, yes... It was brief, but I saw it. It is an impressive sword, Mr. Gon.”

“Thanks,” the swordsman briefly remarked. Gon didn't pay much attention to the compliment as he was looking at the wooden sword in his hands. “I didn't think much of it because it was a life-threatening situation, but it really does only react on the ‘mutant beasts’, doesn't it?”

“I guess so,” Haru answered. With a brimming smile, he then added: “With Gon on our side, we don't have to fear the Anomalies anymore!”

“At least, not when it comes to the mutant wolves,” Neon spoke with light pessimism in his voice. “The Baron considered natural disasters as Anomalies as well, and I doubt that that sword would be able to stop earthquakes, droughts and tornadoes from rampaging the land by just swinging it around.”

“Speaking of the sword... Neon, we have yet to confirm our items' abilities, have we? Try drinking from your gourd and see if it does anything this time,” Matthew advised, unaffected by the negativity.

The patient did as the doctor instructed and took a big gulp from his gourd bottle. He waited for a couple of seconds, but nothing seemed to happen. While Haru and Neon were disappointed by the lack of flashy indications, Matthew explained that the effects might be a slow or unseen process.

After giving the explanation, the doctor carefully inserted his needles all over Neon's acupuncture points at the area covered by the gauze.

Regardless of whether it had any actual effect or not on his body, Neon was already happy enough that he didn't have to embarrass himself by moving his body into a weird pose during the entirety of the process. He didn't feel any pain from the needles, but throughout the whole process, he jolted in surprise every now and then as he felt simultaneous small sparks shocking his nerves at the places where the needles had been inserted.

“That is normal in acupuncture. Though, it seems that my needles didn't show any impressive indicators of its function either. In any case, if Eric's memory serves me well, then I should have hastened the healing process of your wounds. However, it doesn't seem wise to open the gauzes right now to confirm whether it works or not. With that in mind, I plan to do the confirmation tomorrow instead.”

“Alright Doc, what's our next plan of action?” said a voice coming from the entrance. It came from the girl wearing a Japanese winter school uniform, May Springfield. Her distinctive red ribbon that usually rests on top of her head relocated, enclosing the collar of her uniform as to fit her attire.

“...for now, let's call everyone over at the village center. We need to have a discussion about a lot of stuff that happened today.”

---

Noon had yet to arrive when everyone gathered at the meeting place. By the time I exited my house, everyone was staring daggers at me, excluding the musician who was still asleep at his residence.

“Hansel, although I am grateful that you warned us about the wolf attack, I have to ask you this: Why did you hide the existence of the security room from us?”

What do you mean why? It's not as if I have the obligation to tell you about everything that I found in my house. In the first place, I don't even know whether I can trust you guys in the first place. We were all summoned at the same time with barely any explanations whatsoever, and your first plan of action the moment was to separate the group? I admit that scouting is something that we have to do eventually as a group, but shouldn't we establish trust in the group before we do so? It is fortunate that everyone came back safe and sound yesterday, but who's there to say that you weren't leading the other three to a trap?

“...Hansel, aren't you going to say anything?”

Ah, right. I need to actually converse to communicate.

“To summarize, I didn't and I still don't trust you.”

“...is that it?” the man in white coat dumbfoundedly asks, to which I responded with a nod. What, did he think that he can suddenly obtain my trust? Trust is something that needs time to grow.

“That's such a... never mind,” the doctor sighs as he puts his hand on his forehead. He looks at me straight in the eyes, and continued talking: “Before we left, I saw multiple screens at that room. Were you able to view other places other than this settlement through those screens?”

I nodded.

“Then, could you let us use the security room?”

And let you monopolize the security room? The security room which is literally located within my house? My humble abode? I don't think so.

“No,” I firmly refuse.

“Mr. Hansel!” the man with a black fedora screams. “We are stranded together with zero knowledge of this world. The more knowledge we have, the more likely we survive in this unknown world. I can somewhat understand if you don't trust us since each and everyone of us are strangers, but could you at the very least cooperate with us?”

Neon... He is a fool who acts first and thinks later. I admit that altruism is a good trait to have, but if your plan to warn the two about the wolves is to rush over to them and receiving the attack with a direct confrontation, then it is no different than a suicide mission. It is rather frustrating to admit that even I am trusting him because of his stupidity. Unlike Matthew, he at least didn't try involving others in his reckless actions.

“...I will tell you if I see something worth mentioning. However, I do not allow anyone to access the security room without my permission.”

“Thank you,” Matthew says.

“With that out of the way, I assume that we can move to the real topic? That is, whether everyone else has a secret room?”

The doctor flinches before confirming me.

I am not dumb enough to believe that I am special. If I was granted access to the security room for finishing what anyone could barely consider a puzzle, then there should be at least one other person who must have a special room as well. Considering everybody was surprised at the existence of my special room, they must have another type of room.

“I doused the hearth when I found this,” I say as I present a black card. “I am rather surprised though. To think that the house we were granted not only provides us protection and food, but even--”

“Yea, yea, yea, we can talk about that later,” the little girl intervenes. “For now, shouldn't we check our houses have the secret room or not!?”

“Erm...” Gon raises his hand. “If it is a black card, then I have one of those too.”

---

The group of seven opened the room on the second floor at Gon's house, and was greeted with multiple rows of swords ranging from multiple sizes, weights and shapes. From the one-bladed katana, to the classic gladius, to the heavy zweihander, to the curved scimitars.

It was an arsenal of swords.

Some were relieved to see that they have weapons to train with instead of household items, while the minority that consisted of May and Hansel were indifferent as they didn't have any intentions to improve their physical strength in the first place.

Gon was impressed by the gallery of swords for a short while, when he suddenly mentioned he wanted to throw a wolf meat barbecue party because he was starving for lunch. Matthew and Hansel were slightly concerned about the edibility of the meat, but everyone complied in the end and left the arsenal behind without taking anything.

Using Jun Xu's memories, Gon drained the blood from the carcasses while crafting an impromptu grill using his household items. In the meantime, those who have yet to find the black card proceeded to investigate their houses, only to be disappointed as they failed to find them. On top of that, there appeared to be no secret rooms in their houses either.

In the afternoon, Pierre finally woke up. After a quick checkup by Matthew, the musician was then suddenly invited to Gon's barbecue. During the party, he was given the summary of the events of the past couple of hours. Seeing the wounded Neon and the seasoned grilled meat on his plate, the musician believed the story without doubt and thanked everyone for their kindness.

As everyone continued recounting the prior events to Pierre, they got to tell him about the arsenal.

“Oh, a black card? I have that as well,” the musician nonchalantly said.