Ilyas and Khai continued their journey, accompanied by a baby girl named Luna, whom they had found in Tanjong Malim two days ago.
They had now arrived at a homestay in Slim River and decided to rest there for a while.
While Ilyas was preparing food, Khai was asked to take care of Luna. He tried to put her to sleep, but the opposite happened instead.
Luna started crying loudly, causing Khai to panic—worried that Crawlers might be lurking around the area where they were resting.
"Waaah… waaah… waaah!!"
"Oh no… now she's crying. What do I do?" said Khai.
Khai tried everything he could think of to get Luna to stop crying.
He tried rocking Luna gently, massaging her softly, giving her the pacifier they had found during their journey, and even sang her a lullaby.
But none of it worked. Luna kept crying, leaving Khai at a loss.
"Ugh, taking care of this baby is so hard. Is this how my sister felt when she took care of me? Huhuhu… please forgive your foolish little brother, Sis Eliz."
Suddenly, Khai caught a whiff of something unpleasant.
"Hmm, what's that smell?"
The unpleasant smell was coming from Luna, who was still crying.
"Oh no, don't tell me…"
Khai moved closer to Luna and caught a strong, pungent smell coming from her diaper.
"Oh shit! She pooped! Ilyas!"
"What?" Ilyas called back.
"Help me out here."
"Help with what?"
"Luna pooped!"
"That's it? Just take off her diaper and put on a new one."
"Easy for you to say! Why don't you try doing it yourself?"
"Can you cook?"
"Ergh…" Khai fell silent, unable to come up with a comeback.
Holding his breath, Khai changed Luna's diaper and replaced it with a fresh one.
Finally, Luna stopped crying and fell into a deep sleep. Khai sat down, letting out a sigh of relief.
"No wonder you were crying. You just needed a diaper change."
About five minutes later, Ilyas arrived with food—rice and chicken soup. Khai looked at the meal with wide-eyed amazement.
He took a bite, and the warmth of the food spread across his tongue. Each mouthful filled his mouth with rich, comforting flavors.
The first spoonful brought back memories—as if the taste didn't just come from the ingredients, but from moments in time. It carried him back to sweet, distant memories of the past.
Khai nearly cried as he ate the chicken soup.
After finishing his meal, Khai lay back with a full stomach.
"Man… your chicken soup was amazing. I didn't know you could cook. Why didn't you make food like that during our journey before?"
"Because I didn't have the right ingredients. And also… because you've started training to control the Evo-virus…"
"…And that training takes a lot of energy. Just eating bread isn't enough to restore your strength."
After resting for about 30 minutes, Ilyas told Khai to resume his training—this time, focusing on channeling the Evo-virus to his ears.
Now that his energy was fully restored, Khai pushed himself, concentrating all his strength on directing the Evo-virus to his ears.
After about 10 minutes, Khai began to feel something strange.
He could hear the sound of trees swaying in the wind.
"Il, I can hear something," Khai said.
"Congratulations. You've completed the first stage of your Evo-virus control training,"
Khai shouted with joy, unable to contain his excitement.
But that sudden cheer startled Luna awake, and she immediately burst into loud cries.
"Oh no… she's crying again!" Khai panicked.
Ilyas, calm as ever, walked over to the crying Luna and gently picked her up.
Ilyas leaned down and began to sing a lullaby.
Though his face held no smile—haunted by a sorrowful past—he still poured his affection into the song he sang.
His gentle voice carried a sense of peace, as if the lullaby itself was a promise: that the world outside, filled with death and suffering, was nothing to fear. Here, in Ilyas's arms, everything would be okay.
In the end, Luna fell asleep once more in Ilyas's embrace. He carried her into the room and gently laid her in the crib.
What Khai had just witnessed truly left him in awe—it was as if he had seen a completely different side of Ilyas, one he had never known before.
"Wow, I didn't know you were good at putting babies to sleep," Khai complimented.
"I used to take care of babies, so I know how to get them to sleep," Ilyas replied.
Ilyas's mind wandered back to his past life, where he had once sung a lullaby to a baby boy lying in a crib.
Once the baby fell asleep, Ilyas stood up and kissed the baby's forehead. Before leaving the room, he whispered a soft "Goodnight" to the baby, his voice filled with warmth and affection.
Ilyas and Khai left the house and began discussing their next steps.
"So, Il, should we head straight to the next destination, or should we search for supplies first?" Khai asked.
"Let's look for supplies first. There are a few eateries around here, so maybe we can find some food or anything useful…"
"…And along the way, I want you to try improving your hearing. At the very least, you should be able to hear things from about 1 kilometer away."
"Okay," Khai replied.
"Once you've finished improving your hearing, then we'll move on to the next stage," Ilyas said.
The next day, they continued their journey toward Teluk Intan.
On that quiet road, corpses lay scattered, men, women, and children, all victims of the monsters that appeared, destroying everything in their path without mercy.
Blood flowed across the ground, mixing with the dust and destruction, creating a scene filled with an unspoken sadness and fear.
Three young men who had survived the Armageddon walked down the middle of a deserted highway. They were doing everything they could to survive in a world that had already fallen apart.
"Agus, where are we going? You said there's a safe place for us," Raden asked.
"Just follow me. I know where it is. I got the information from the radio yesterday," Agus replied confidently.
"What, the radio? There's no signal anywhere in the world right now," Raden replied.
"Yesterday, when we were scavenging at that shop, I heard something from a radio in one of the back rooms. They said there's an evacuation site not far from where we're walking now," Agus explained.
"You sure that information can be trusted? I got a bad feeling after hearing you say that," Raden said, clearly skeptical about the information Agus had picked up.
"You wanna die being eaten by monsters, or come with me?" Agus snapped, his tone edged with frustration.
They didn't really have a choice. Both of them ended up following Agus—because neither wanted to die from hunger or be torn apart by the Demigons that roamed the land.