To Lam Linh, the scene before her was a visceral nightmare. To Thien Anh, it was merely the brutal rotation of the natural food chain.
With cold, detached precision, he gathered the small skull and the mangled fragments of limbs, stuffing them back into the ruptured abdomen of the mutated rodent.
"Rest in peace. At least your passing provides me with the materials to endure," he muttered, his hands pressing down firmly to "re-package" the carcass.
Rip!
In the midst of the task, the back of Thien Anh's hand brushed against the rat's yellowed incisor. His tactical Kevlar glove—a material designed to withstand combat blades—was sliced open with effortless, surgical ease.
A thin line of blood welled up. Thien Anh paused, his eyes narrowing. He didn't care about the wound; he was staring intently at those two curved, serrated teeth.
"Incredible sharpness. Cuts through Kevlar like paper."
He made a mental note. If utilized as arrowheads or dagger points, these would be formidable armor-piercing weapons.
Lam Linh, having finally finished retching, turned back with a face as ashen as a corpse. Her voice was a fragile tremble.
"What… what are you planning to do with those bodies?"
Thien Anh stood, peeling off the ruined glove.
"Maximum utilization. Hides for clothing, teeth for weapons, meat for Thien Lang, and the hearts… are for us."
Seeing Lam Linh about to double over again, Thien Anh's voice hardened into a command.
"I know you're repulsed because they fed on a human. But you need to get used to it. If you want to live, you must do things you never imagined before. A pristine moral compass won't fill an empty stomach."
He stepped closer, placing a heavy hand on her shoulder. His voice dropped an octave, resonating with a grim weight.
"You need to live for your revenge, don't you? And I need to live to find my family. We both have purposes. Don't let weakness stand in the way."
Lam Linh took a long, shaky breath, wiping away her tears. She nodded with a newfound, brittle determination. "I understand. I just… it was the shock. I'm a doctor; I'm accustomed to death, but this 'half-digested' reality is…"
"You'll get used to it," Thien Anh cut her off. "Now, get the arc welder from the storage. Those damn rats chewed a hole through my door."
...
The sizzle of electric arcs filled the dim air of the bunker entrance, sparks cascading like tiny stars against the cold steel.
Thien Anh, masked in a welding shield, meticulously reinforced the gouged sections of the alloy door with spare metal plating.
Lam Linh sat nearby, watching the blue flare of the torch. She asked softly:
"Mr. Huy, are you planning to head for the government base? Or are we just going to hide here forever?"
Thien Anh paused the torch for a brief second before resuming his work.
"We have to move eventually. This place won't hold out. Noi Ha is a coastal city. According to the intel I gathered, the polar ice caps are melting; sea levels are going to rise. Sooner or later, this bunker becomes an aquarium."
"Not to mention…" he added. "The risk of radiation leakage from the nuclear plants to the North is still a variable."
Lam Linh's face drained of color. "Then… why aren't we leaving now?"
Thien Anh let out a dry, hollow laugh behind his mask.
"With what? You have no idea what's out there. This is just the periphery—low-tier monsters. Once you leave the Safe Zone and run into mutated beasts as large as skyscrapers, you and I are nothing more than appetizers."
"Is it really that terrifying?"
"Worse than hell. So…" Thien Anh cut the welder and flipped up his mask. "The only way out is to bolster our strength. We must become so powerful that the monsters run when they see us. Understand?"
...
Dinner that evening was conducted in a somber, heavy silence.
Thien Lang reheated the pot of braised meat. The rich aroma filled the room, but Lam Linh's stomach still churned at the memory of the skull inside the rat. However, seeing Thien Anh eat with such clinical efficiency, she forced herself to swallow every spoonful. One must eat to survive.
Azure Sky used her tail to flick the television on. A special emergency broadcast was airing, the anchor's voice strained with a sense of high-alert panic.
"...Emergency Bulletin: Multiple super-volcanoes along the Pacific Ring of Fire have erupted simultaneously. Gargantuan plumes of ash have blanketed the atmosphere, effectively severing the planet from sunlight..."
The screen displayed global temperature graphs plummeting into a vertical nose-dive.
"...Global temperatures are in a free-fall. Scientists warn we are entering a 'Mini Ice Age.' However..."
The anchor paused, a note of grim irony creeping into his tone.
"...This has inadvertently saved coastal cities like Noi Ha. Instead of rising to submerge the land, the sea is beginning to freeze at the shorelines. The threat of tsunamis and flooding has been temporarily repelled."
Thien Anh set his bowl down, staring intently at the screen.
"A blessing and a curse," he murmured. "The flood is frozen. But in exchange, we are going to freeze and starve."
An Ice Age would annihilate most crops and livestock. Food sources would vanish overnight.
On the screen, footage of riots began to surface. In areas where government control had evaporated, humans were slaughtering one another over a bag of rice or a bottle of water. Looting, assault, murder… the law had dissolved, replaced by the most feral of instincts.
Thien Anh looked at Lam Linh, then at his two beast companions.
"The world is filtering its blood for the second time. This time, it's with hunger and frost. Steel yourselves. Soon, we won't just be hunting monsters… we'll be facing humans."