"So… Is anyone going to talk?" Achilles asked, looking around them. In the hallway, they were surrounded, but in the stairwell, he could simply block it with a barrier and flee if things went south. Not that he couldn't simply restrict any of these lovely people from attacking him and the Koreans.
One of the people in the halls spoke in a hurried and desperate tone.
"Are you all… human? Like, not those things that started killing everyone… those monsters?" She asked, her hand holding a knife, shaking subtly. Achilles noticed the tremor, and he could almost see her entire body trembling. How goosebumps formed on her skin, the slight twitch of her jaw as she waited for their response.
He didn't know how he was able to see so much detail, even more so since almost her whole body was covered by clothes. So it was strange how he could see through her sleeve and notice such things.
"Oh, we just camp from Central Park. Some bullshit monsters attacked us, and I killed them." He said, raising his hands, trying to show he was trustworthy and friendly. Humans always lowered their guard ever so subtly when an unknown person showed they weren't violent.
But, there was also another method for gaining their trust, and that was with material goods. Any human, good or bad, could be swayed with items. It was how people interacted, after all. Conversations, dealings, buying, and selling were all trades that humans did, either with physical goods or with their words.
He slowly knelt and summoned some food out of his inventory. Some fruits in a basket and some other things like meats, dairy items, and even medical supplies.
The people in the halls were naturally suspicious, but Achilles knew damn well human curiosity usually trumped human cautiousness. It was their base nature, after all.
A man of small stature slowly approached, and Achilles slid the baskets of supplies to him. He then stood up slowly, keeping his hands raised.
"See? We're not here to hurt anybody. My friends here told me they were checked into the hotel before this whole bullshit happened, and we just wanted to stay here for the time being." Achilles explained in a clear voice.
Of course, he was mentally dying inside. He hated talking to large groups of people, especially if he was trying to bring comfort and trust to their minds. He never liked being in the presence of a crowd. It was always loud and annoying to him, unless the mood suited him. His mind buzzed, and a part of his chest felt hot as he spoke.
The people lowered their makeshift weapons after receiving the food, and Achilles lowered his hands, slowly approaching and taking out more supplies, distributing them to the people.
"You must all be hungry. They're not poisoned, if you've wondered. I couldn't possibly find a poison strong enough to actually kill anybody in New York City of all places." He said calmly.
The trio watched him interact with the people calmly, and they put their weapons away, walking to their room that they had been in before. Kimsung himself thought it best to let Achilles take care of the people for now, before they would meet and talk about their next steps.
Achilles himself had collected large amounts of all kinds of food from the stores the entire time before he even met with Kimsung and the siblings, wanting to test the depths of his inventory. So far, he had collected close to ten-thousand, seven-hundred and twelve items of food or medical supplies from the many shops all over the city, and just giving the people hiding in the hotel some of it wasn't even a drop in his stores.
Honestly, he preferred giving them his food instead of keeping it all for himself, since many of them must've been stuck in this building for a long time.
Later, after giving all the people from the tenth to the seventeenth floor some food and supplies, he met with the trio in their room, mentally exhausted as he plopped down on Heidi's bed, ignoring her slight complaint.
His mental battery was completely spent, and while he wanted to sleep in an empty room by himself, he wanted to have a proper time to talk with the trio.
"Alright, let's get this bullshit over with. What're we talking about?" He asked, sighing as he unsummoned his shoes and trenchcoat. He had learned how to equip and unequip his clothing a few days ago, and it was a useful thing to know, especially if anything happened and he needed to act fast.
Keido spoke first, sitting on his bed with his hands together.
"Let's do a simple rundown of our skills, so we can understand each other better." Keido looked at Achilles, and the man understood the hidden meaning in the words.
'We want to know what you can do, and how you can do it. He honestly expected it, but he didn't care, as long as they didn't know everything.
"Uhhh… Basically I can make these invisible barriers that I can make visible, but only by a little bit. They look like glass when I do. Also, for some reason, I've been able to see through stuff or like… know its structure, for like, the past couple days. It's pretty weird."
Kimsung's eyes widened a bit because he hadn't actually expected Achilles to be this advanced already. What Achilles said was weird; it was actually the development of his skill's second ability.
The abilities of a skill were always given after a rank up, and only got more useful to the person as they gained them. For instance, Kimsung's second ability, once he reached F-rank, would be called 'History'.
It would allow him to see the history of things, their past, and anything that had happened to them a certain amount of time ago.
'History' was an extremely useful skill, since it showed him a past version of whatever he wanted to know the history of. Like his 'Future Sight', it was inexplicably invaluable. If he were tracking a monster, he could simply use 'History' and find its current path.