A chilling pause followed.
"And if anyone dares to cause trouble again," she added softly, though the threat behind her words was unmistakable, "I will personally have you thrown out of the base."
A cold shiver ran through the crowd.
Benjamin stared at her as if he were looking at sothing monstrous, sothing he could no longer comprehend.
"How can you...?" he stamred, his voice trembling with disbelief and anger. "How can you side with soone like her? She’s completely tainted!"
Ivy let out a soft chuckle.
"Tainted?" she repeated, tilting her head slightly.
"Angelina isn’t tainted," she said calmly. "She simply found a way to survive."
Her gaze sharpened.
"And she has contributed to this base. That alone is enough for her to stay."
With that, she turned and walked away, her figure steady and unbothered, as if the chaos behind her ant nothing at all.
Benjamin could only watch her retreating back, his fists clenching tightly as frustration boiled inside him.
After a mont, he turned back to the remaining people, his voice rising again.
"We shouldn’t stop!" he shouted. "We should continue protesting! Don’t listen to her!"
His eyes burned with suspicion.
"Angelina must have given her so kind of benefit! Otherwise, why would she protect her like this?"
But as he spoke, he began to notice sothing strange.
One by one... people started leaving.
So avoided his gaze, others simply walked away without a word, their footsteps echoing faintly as the crowd dissolved.
Benjamin’s eyes widened in disbelief.
"Wait... where are you going?" he called out desperately. "You can’t just leave! Don’t let them win like this!"
But no one stopped.
Within minutes, he was left standing there alone.
His chest tightened as anger and humiliation twisted together.
’Damn it...’
With no one left to listen, he could only grit his teeth and storm back toward his ho.
.........
What he didn’t know was that behind all of this, sothing else had already taken place.
After learning that Angelina might be expelled, Archie had made a decision.
Inside the base, there existed a hidden system: contribution points.
Guards of the prisoner earned the contribution points by risking their lives, preventing escapes, maintaining order, and protecting the base.
These points weren’t just numbers; they were a form of silent currency.
Once enough points were accumulated, a person could make one request.
Any request, so long as it did not involve becoming the base leader or killing.
Archie had spent years earning those points.
And when it still wasn’t enough, he borrowed from others, people who trusted him, people who respected his loyalty.
When he finally stood before Ivy, his request had been simple.
"I don’t want Angelina to be expelled."
Ivy had looked at him for a long mont.
She knew his record. She knew his loyalty.
And in the end, she agreed.
.......
Archie waited anxiously until the confirmation arrived.
When the docunt was finally placed in his hands, he let out a breath he didn’t realize he had been holding.
’It’s done ...’
He walked into the room where Angelina sat slumped on the sofa, her expression empty, her eyes dull as if she had already accepted her fate.
A faint smile appeared on his lips.
"Hey," he called softly, walking up to her and handing over the docunt.
Angelina looked at him, confusion flickering in her eyes before she slowly opened it.
Her hands trembled slightly.
As her gaze moved across the words, her breathing hitched.
Tears welled up in her eyes almost instantly.
’I... I’m not being expelled...?’
A choked sob escaped her lips as she suddenly stood up and rushed toward Archie, throwing her arms around him tightly.
"Thank you... thank you..." she repeated over and over, her voice breaking as tears soaked into his clothes.
"If it wasn’t for you..." she whispered shakily, "I would have been thrown out... I will repay you!"
Archie chuckled softly, gently patting her back.
"You’re overthinking it," he murmured. "You’re the greatest treasure I’ve ever gotten. I don’t need anything else."
His words only made her cry harder.
’Maybe life was cruel before...’ she thought, clinging to him tightly. ’But now... now I finally have sothing real ...’
.........
anwhile, Ivy had already shifted her focus to sothing far more important.
Finding the superior being.
Her eyes darkened slightly as she recalled Ember.
Even though Ember now laughed and spoke as if nothing had happened, Ivy couldn’t forget that mont, the pain she had endured.
’I won’t let that go ...’
She had already deployed half of her forces to track down the being’s location.
Yet, nothing. No clues. No sightings.
At one point, she even considered plastering Foreo’s face across the entire base just to flush him out.
And eventually, she did sothing just as bold.
She released notices using images of Annie’s mother and announced a reward for anyone who could locate her.
At first, she expected useful leads.
Instead, chaos followed.
People began showing up one after another, each more absurd than the last.
So used abilities to transform their appearances, trying to mimic the image.
Others were even more shaless.
"I am her," they would claim confidently. "Due to certain divine powers, my appearance changed."
Ivy pressed her fingers against her temples, a headache forming.
’Thank god I didn’t reveal that another being is using her body...’ she thought bitterly. ’Otherwise, these people would stoop even lower.’
Elsewhere, far removed from the chaos...
Martha and Kael had been making steady progress.
They now saw each other almost every day.
Even Martha’s attitude had changed.
"The best decision I ever made in my life was to chase after you," Kael would say with a grin, his eyes lingering on Martha just a second longer than necessary.
Each ti, Martha would pretend to ignore him, her gaze fixed on her book, but a faint warmth would bloom in her chest.
’This fool...’ she would think, though the corners of her lips would betray her.
As their relationship deepened, sothing inside Kael began to settle.
And then, he made a decision.
’The world is finally calming down... the zombies are gone, disasters have paused... who knows what tomorrow will bring?’
His fingers curled slightly as he thought about it. ’If there’s ever a mont to do this... it’s now.’
So he chose the present.
The mont he secretly told his family about his plan, the reaction was explosive.
"What?! You’re finally proposing?" Helena shouted, barely containing their excitent.
"You took long enough!" Felix teased, clapping him hard on the back.
Laughter, cheers, and whistles filled the room as they imdiately began throwing out ideas, their enthusiasm overflowing.
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