NOVEL NEXT Chapter 25: Locking Down
<Alex, Real - Prepare, High School Gym>
Alex almost laughed as he watched John and Pilar retreat, their eyes going wide.
"Oh!" Alex pulled out John's guns and handed them back. "Feel free to help, but please don't hit me?"
John took the guns back and nodded, turning off the safeties and getting ready.
Lenka tripped some mechanism that let the doors swing open, and Alex stepped forward, already swinging.
John's guns blazed, Pilar sent fire streaming outward, and even Lenka took a couple of shots with her crossbow.
Thankfully, there hadn't been that many zombies pressed against the door. After all, the gym door was only one of hundreds of doors on the block. Even so, there had been a few, and even with the back-line support, Alex had plenty of undead to reap.
On the pleasant side, with so much supporting fire, Alex didn't even take a single new wound.
<John, Real - Prepare, High School Gym>
John could hardly believe his eyes as this Alex guy tore through the zombies around the gymnasium's door. He was utterly fearless before them, but that made sense if he was as immune as he seemed to be.
So long as he wasn't utterly overwhelmed, there shouldn't be anything that they could really do to him. As to what he did to them? Well, everywhere Alex went he left nothing but dust in his wake.
John did his best to take out the undead that he could, pushing his skill and mana to their limit to kill as many as possible, selecting the higher leveled ones where he could to increase his experience gain for each unit of mana as much as feasible.
Beside him, his sweetheart was throwing fire in a similar manner to how he threw bullets. Though he knew that she was quite a bit less efficient than he was.
Still, she'll be essential when we fight something truly monstrous. He huffed a laugh, realizing that he'd already come to see zombies as nothing too awful even after his recent infection.
That was… a bit too close. I'm glad he was here to cure me, even if he was the cause as well.
Alex was a scary man in many ways.
Truthfully, of all the things fighting in the street outside this hopefully safe-haven, their new benefactor, Alex, was starting to seem the most monstrous of all.
If that's what this System allows, I can't wait to get some more levels.
<Alex, Real - Prepare, High School Gym>
The three minutes passed in a blur, and Alex found himself just off the sidewalk and in the street when Lenka called him back.
It hadn't felt like long enough, and Alex was turning to tell her so when his eyes passed over the main street off to his left.
Mainly, he saw the running, stumbling, shambling horde bearing down on them, less than two blocks away.
True, that wasn't that close, but there were also a lot of zombies.
That in mind, he acquiesced to her request, "Yes, ma'am."
He dove into the gym, and she closed the door. She was giving him a wary look, but she still decided to sass him, even if just a bit, "Can we go, now?"
He nodded. "Thank you, Lenka." He then looked to the other two. "And thank you two for the supporting fire. That was much easier than usual…"
John was shaking his head, but there was a little smile on his lips as he said, "You're a mad man."
Pilar shivered. "I know you're immune, but getting that close to them? That's…" She shivered again. "I don't think I could do it."
He shrugged. "There did seem to be an oddly large number of them. Any idea where all the corpse crawlers came from?"
He'd killed a lot of them. Briefly glancing at his notification, he was surprised to see that, in total, he had killed forty of those things.
I killed one every four and a half seconds on average? As he thought about it, that actually seemed low… Did they kill-steal from me? It probably didn't matter…
He barely kept himself from throwing a glare at the two regardless.
He was barely any lower on MP either, because he'd been able to dust them as bunches, only taking a single point of MP for every handful of slain in order to dust the bodies of the relatively easy-to-kill creatures.
Lenka did a couple of last things before closing the doors that led from the delivery receiving room into the storage room in which they found themselves.
From there, she went about arming the secondary layer of the defenses.
John nodded. "I was able to do some very basic research into what enemies we might be facing before we were in the thick of things. Zombie Crawlers spawn in the presence of sufficient undeath magic, and the city has been crawling with it for hours now."
Alex's eyes widened, ignoring the pun to go straight for the important bit, "Could they spawn in here?"
"No, no. They can only spawn in 'uncontested' areas… which I think means that if no one has active claim on the space? The city should be immune to being a spawning ground, but I guess enough people have tried to leave that the System considered it abandoned? At least the streets are. I don't really understand the specifics. Too new and all."
Alex gave him a searching look. "Initiate?"
John's eyes widened. "Hey, yeah. You?"
Alex nodded. "There are six of us here."
Pilar laughed, "And here I thought you were just a fun NPC."
"Thanks for the fun part, not really sure about being thought of as an NPC…"
John shrugged. "Well, we chose easy zombies, and we got…" he waved his hand vaguely at the doors leading toward the outside. "We got that. I sort of assumed that you were some System granted 'balancing' mechanic. Something like: 'Sure you might get bit, but stay close to this guy and keep him alive and you, too, can survive.'" He laughed at that. "It even explained our quest."
"Oh?" Alex titled his head. "What was your main quest?"
Lenka finished her preparations, and they moved toward the main room of the gym. Pilar answered for them as they all walked, "Get to the school. Bonuses given for the number of survivors we brought along."
Alex frowned at that. "We almost didn't come here… Is that what it said from the beginning?"
She nodded in response.
"I wonder if there are other groups sent to the other obvious defensive points." He then thought about the death-trap that the school itself would have been if they'd gone in the main entrance. "Oh… I don't like that."
When John gave him a questioning look, Alex explained about the locker rooms, and the zombies in the school itself.
John paled. "Will those outer doors hold?"
Alex glanced to Lenka, and she nodded. "Yes. The school-side locker doors are heavy, metal-reinforced wood. Solid all the way through. Nothing we've seen so far could get through them as we have them reinforced, not even a brood-guard."
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Alex grimaced. "Those do hit pretty hard…"
At that point they stepped out into the large room and found an unfortunate situation.
One of the adults who had come with John and Pilar was pinned to ground, thrashing, struggling, and gnashing their teeth under one of Natasha's Force Shields.
Everyone else was giving the situation a wide berth.
<John, Real - Prepare, High School Gym>
John groaned as he saw Wilmer pinned to the floor by some sort of magic.
His first thought after he saw that the man's zombification was complete was about how useful the restraining spell would be, but he immediately holstered the idea for a later date.
How did this happen? He was trying to remember everything that had happened in the chaotic mess that was their trip to this school, but he simply couldn't figure out when the man could have been infected. And the paralysis? We wouldn't have missed that.
John, himself, had apparently overcome the paralysis in some manner he still didn't quite understand, but Wilmer shouldn't have been able to.
The obvious solution presented itself to him. "Alex, they have different means of zombification. I mean, that was probably obvious, but I didn't even think about it. We fought off strange zombies in robes that sent a couple of beams of darkness toward us, but I thought they all missed or were blocked…" He groaned again. "Wilmer there blocked one of them. When I asked if he was good, he just grunted in response."
Alex's face was utterly stoic as he looked down at the turned man. "So, they can instantly turn someone? That's the current theory?"
"Maybe? It can't be that easy, or they'd have stayed to turn us all. I hit one of them in the chest, but I don't think that would have done her in. The others carried her off right after, though. So maybe they are more fragile than the others? Some sort of balancing against the increased speed they can turn someone?"
"Maybe… Did you know anything about the man?"
"Wilmer? No. He was hanging out of his apartment window when we were running by—apparently his building had zombies before many others—and he screamed for help. We were able to quickly rig a way to catch him—it was only three stories—and he came along with us. I got his name and not much else."
Alex nodded, still seeming oddly unaffected by the whole situation.
Does he just not see him as real because this is some sort of artificial scenario? Or is he just that cold?
<Alex, Real - Prepare, High School Gym>
Alex stared down at the man, trapped beneath a force shield.
Another one dead. He was gone before he came into my care, but does that make it better? He purposely didn't allow himself to think about the likely millions of others outside in the city who had died, were dying, or would die in the next few hours.
He couldn't allow himself to go down that road.
Throughout, Wilmer—the zombie—was oddly silent. So it was either operating under some compulsion to draw as little attention as possible, or someone else was silencing it.
"What happened?" Alex strode toward the zombie, looking to Natasha who stood over the man. He hitched, however, when he saw her level.
Natasha Kalshlov
Human, Level 3
She got two levels?
That meant that she'd probably gotten at least one in her Race as well… Or did it show Race level when analyzed, not Class?
I really need to read that book…
Natasha waved at the man pinned to the ground. "Apparently, he was already infected when he came in here." She shook her head. "We have cure potions, too. Pumpkin eating moron. He either turned in here, or something triggered him to break out of hiding. Either way, we caught him before he got anyone, and we've done a full inspection of everyone here. Unless there's some form of zombieism that can defeat Analyze and still allows them to talk coherently, or people didn't want the cure potion we were offering, there's no one in here that's a threat in that way."
Alex sighed. "Why's he still alive?"
She shrugged. "I figured you might have something insane you'd want to try?"
He found himself grinning at that. "No, but thank you."
He briefly considered feeding the man his blood, but he still remembered how awkward that had felt. He didn't want to do it with a struggling man who would likely as not be biting off his fingers before he could bleed sufficiently to matter.
Alex Analyzed the man.
Undead Commoner
Level 1
Just like the hallway. This time, though, he was able to see the twisted spark within him.
Alex shook his head. "He's a level 1. The lowest leveled of us should kill him."
Natasha gave him an awkward look.
"What?"
She cleared her throat. "That's you, Alex."
He looked around at the gathering Initiates. "Wait… seriously?"
They all nodded.
He groaned and sighed, then walked forward and beheaded the man before sending a pulse of Basic Life Transfusion through the dying corpse to dust the body.
Yet again, he felt his HP diffuse through the zombie, obliterating the remnants of whatever energy was keeping it undead, and once again, it was starkly different than what it had felt like with John.
Like… ladling the broth out of a soup instead of fishing for the solid contents? Yeah. When he'd cured John it felt like he was giving the man the full soup. This just felt like the broth. That's… interesting.
He was pulled from his thoughts by the kill notice.
Kill Notice:
You killed Undead Commoner (Common), level 1
Reward:
Experience to be granted when in a safe location.
"There." And with that, he glanced at his character sheet.
Character Sheet:
Alex Johnson
Life-Aspected Human (Rare), F, Level 2
Class: Life-Aspected Warrior (Rare), F, Level 2
Class 2: NA
HP: 728/780
SP: 308/460
Physical Stats:
Power: 21
Agility: 33
Fortitude: 26
Mental Stats:
Power: 17
Agility: 33
Fortitude: 20
Magical Stats:
Power: 13
Agility: 9
Fortitude: 11
Unused Points: 0
Attributes:
Blood:
Life Finds a Way (Unique)
General Skills:
Great-Blades Basics - Dadao (Common)
Advanced Kinesthetics (Common)
Inventory (Common)
Team Sense, Temp
Analyze (Common)
Danger Sense (Common)
Basic Mana Sense (Common)
Basic Mana Manipulation (Common)
Spells:
Force Burst (Uncommon)
Basic Life Transfusion (Uncommon)
Create Rations (Common)
Create Water (Common)
Detect Life (Uncommon)
Class Skills:
Life's Active Defense (Uncommon)
Class Bonuses:
All Life-Aspected Spells cost 25% less to cast.
Your Life-Aspected Spells' effects occur 25% faster.
Your HP is calculated at Racial Base + 10 x Physical fortitude.
Your MP is calculated at 20 x Magical Power.
Your effective Physical Power is 25% greater for physical attack and defense.
You take 25% less damage from Physical attacks when you are armed with a great blade and unrestrained.
Unrewarded Kills:
Zombie Ravager (Common), level 4 x 2
Zombie Ravager (Common), level 3 x 3
Zombie Ravager (Common), level 2 x 5
Zombie Corpse Crawler (Uncommon), Level 3 x 41
Undead Commoner (Common), Level 1
Natasha put her hand into the dust, and it vanished.
Alex frowned. "What are you doing?"
She shrugged. "Zombie dust has to be good for something, and you seem to leave a lot of it lying around." A sly smile spread across her face. "Speaking of which." Her eyes flicked toward the women's locker room. "Care to test how long after their deaths you can make the gunk go away? It would be nice to be able to use the facilities without so much… decoration."
Alex sighed, again. "Alright, let's go."
As it turned out, he could dust zombies even a half-hour after they were killed. That was good to know.
Five minutes later, he was done, and sitting with a cup of coffee in one hand and a cream-cheesed bagel in the other.
He'd taken all the items into his Inventory and tried to combine them as he wished, but he'd failed.
He'd only taken about twenty seconds to try, as he was exhausted and just wanted to eat, but it was still an attempt, and that's what counted… right?
His health was actually topped up even after what he'd lost for the dusting.
His magic power was slowly rising.
He didn't really know what was required to refill his SP—or stamina—though eating seemed to refill it a bit.
I'll probably have to sleep to get that back. For the moment, however, he just wanted to get his experience and, hopefully, a level in his race and class.
…if he was lucky…
He hadn't been having the luckiest of days.