Choose Your Apocalypse (A LitRPG Apocalypse, Progression, System Fantasy) [CYA]

<Alex, Real - Endure, High School Gymnasium Shower>

Alex let the hot water run over himself fully clothed, first getting off the worst of the gunk and gristle.

The luxury of the feeling allowed him to calm down and process what he'd read so recently.

The rot tendrils had been level 13. They should have been well within his ability to kill, given the fact that they were only Uncommon, but he'd struggled due to their swarm nature.

His Force Burst had been effective because of the confined space, but he suspected if he encountered such a thing in the open, it would be an entirely different story.

He would have squashed spiders and thrown the rot tendril away until he was out of mana, unless he could get above it, assuming that the ground was hard enough to act as an anvil.

I need better area of effect attacks, or to improve my use of Force Burst.

The experience gained wasn't bad, and the fact that his acceptance of it had worked, blessedly confirmed that the shower was a safe location, allowing him to enjoy it even more. It didn't take him anywhere near level six, but he wasn't about to be picky.

He'd get plenty of experience soon enough.

Once the outside was at least mostly cleaned, he pulled his clothes off, straight into his Inventory. Immediately pulling them back out again to scrub with his hands even as he let the hot water sluice over his bare skin, bringing a very necessary feeling of purification.

As to the other two notifications? He'd gotten two new Attributes, resistances to curses and magical venom.

He wasn't sure if he was happy that the System had avoided falling into the trap of considering venom and poison the same when they absolutely were not, or if he was annoyed that he'd almost died because of that distinction.

Regardless, his Life could now fight both curses and venom directly, which seemed to mean that such wouldn't be considered wounds for him, even if it wasn't instantly cured.

He didn't quite understand it, but it did seem like he'd gained something permanent from drawing his Life back out of enemies that he'd slain.

If he had to guess, he gained a bit of something that they, themselves were capable of, at least something that their Life was able to do… while they were still alive.

What was more, they had levels, which was amazing as it meant that, in theory, they could level up. It seemed like he'd needed to gain the ability to resist something at least a bit—not just bear through the damage—and only then could he begin to improve his resistance to it.

It made a certain amount of sense, now that he considered it.

It bore experimenting with… when he had the time.

He turned off the water before pulling a towel from his inventory and drying off. New clothes followed shortly thereafter.

Now was not the time to experiment, as much as he wanted to. Now, it was time to go back into the awful basement, check this new entrance into the school, and see what new horror the mysterious tanks of liquid held.

And all that was barely a precursor to their venture out into a zombie infested city…

Alex sighed.

It was going to be a busy day.

He pulled up his resources as he made his way back into the basement, wanting to be sure he understood what he had available.

Alex Johnson
HP: 2350/2350 [Max: 2880]
SP: 1508/2232
MP: 907/1100

He'd gotten back all but 530 of his Life and health, but not too much of his mana, and it seemed that the experience had been rather traumatic, at least if his stamina was anything to go by.

He deeply hoped that he'd be able to get his Life back somehow. The bracketed 'Max' seemed to indicate that he could, giving that hope something to lean on.

He pulled a bit of jerky from his inventory and popped it in his mouth, chewing as he descended the last couple of steps.

He felt… off. As if he'd been sick for a while and had just then been able to rise from his bed.

Almost like a fifth of my Life is gone… That was the most likely culprit, and he hoped that the feeling wouldn't last either.

Pilar and Natasha turned to him as he came in, both women smiling.

Pilar greeted him first. "Are you feeling better now that you're cleaned up?"

Alex grunted. "Yeah. I appreciate your attempts to help me."

Natasha clapped him on the shoulder. "Of course. My class practically makes it a requirement."

He huffed a laugh. "Yeah, yeah." He shook his head and let out a long sigh. "Any idea what we have here?"

He gestured toward the large vats, moving the women's attention there. Pilar shrugged. "Not sure. My Analyze won't return anything."

Alex tried his and got nothing for his trouble. With a grunt, he tried one point of mana into each Detect Unlife and Detect Life.

The first gave an odd sort of resonance without giving any true information. The second flooded his mind with vague impressions of everyone near at hand and in the school directly above. The second skill also caused an odd resonance with the liquid before him without telling him anything about it.

He sighed, shaking his head and looking down. "Nothing."

That actually reminded him of his inability to detect the rot tendrils earlier, and he looked to the walls.

The symbols that had been there were burned and cracked from the fight and subsequent clean-up. As they hadn't been more than marks on the wall to begin with, he wasn't surprised that they'd failed to continue to work.

His eye next fell on the sphere of liquid that was just over half-full.

You know, that looks a bit like a core… It couldn't possibly be a life core, right? It would be too convenient to have such a thing handed to me like this. Analyze still gave no information, but he had another idea.

"Do you mind if I try something?" He directed the question to the room generally.

Natasha gave a non-commital grunt, and Pilar frowned. "Will it destroy anything or use it up?"

"I don't think so? When I sent my life into the enemy, I was able to learn something about them when I drew it back in."

While that wasn't quite accurate, it was close enough to true that he didn't feel like he was being deceptive.

The women shared a glance before they both shrugged. Pilar answered for them both, "Sounds good to me, but then we need to check in with Grant."

Alex nodded, then placed his hands on the glass sphere. He transferred ten points of his life into the sphere, emphasizing that he wanted to learn not destroy or heal anything.

The transfusion went off without a hitch, allowing him to feel his life swirling within the liquid.

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Almost instantly, it started to diffuse, and Alex had the feeling if he delayed it would become unrecoverable.

That in mind, he called his life back with the same skill and another three points of mana.

The first thing he was sure of was that this was not a life core. That was mildly disappointing, but he hadn't really expected a racial advancement quest to be so easy.

The second thing, however, was that the liquid was concentrated Life… maybe? It seemed to be balancing on the edge between life and unlife, which made no sense to him. Those two things seemed to be opposites, so he was unsure how something could be almost either.

Still, it was clear that it would be a powerful… something. Honestly, his own understanding of all of this was far too shoddy to learn overmuch.

He felt like he might be able to claim it with his Life, but this time, he'd just sent it forth to learn what it could, and it had accomplished that incredibly well.

He conveyed what he'd learned, and stated that he thought drinking the liquid—or otherwise drawing from it—would advance one portion of his quest.

Natasha nodded. "We will talk with others, but if that's the case, I'm fine with you having it… once it's done distilling."

Pilar nodded her agreement.

"Well, thank you. Let's check in with Grant, then I think the plan is still to head out in… ten minutes or so?" He checked his phone. "Yeah. That's about right."

The three moved to the side tunnel, and Alex peered down it. It was dark, so he pulled his string of lights back out of his Inventory, imagining them wrapping around himself, matching the strings on the two women.

He got it mostly right, only having to fix a single coil before he proceeded.

It was a small passage, just seven feet tall and three wide. Fighting down there would be… less than good.

Every so often, there was what looked to be an access panel in the floor down the length. Alex bent down and opened one, revealing a very small service box for what appeared to be a roughly one foot diameter utility conduit.

No human sized enemy was going to come through there, though something like the rot tendril could… that actually was probably how they had come in, now that he considered it.

He closed the hatch and looked up, finally focusing on Grant—writhed in light—who stood at the far end of a forty-foot stretch, beside a steel door that filled the entire passage.

The man gave Alex an appraising look, followed by a nod of acknowledgement.

Alex nodded in turn, and nothing more was needed.

Pilar sighed, shaking her head, and Natasha laughed. "Men."

He decided not to address that, instead examining the door.

Grant cleared his throat. "Let me squeeze past you. I'm getting a bit… closed in, here, and I'll just get in your way."

They agreed, and he shuffled past them, making his way back to the comparatively massive basement room.

Alex looked closely at the door, surprised to find it not only locked but with a solid steel bar in place. Heavy steel brackets were affixed to the frame as well as being anchored seemingly deeply into the surrounding concrete.

"This looks like it would survive a battering ram."

Pilar nodded, clearly having examined it already. Natasha gave a small smile. "Yet, it might be the best means of egress. The street above still has many undead, and beyond this door is a series of passages that seem to lead under most buildings on the street. With your ability to destroy metal? We could gain less-contested access to essentially any building in the vicinity."

Alex grunted, firing off another Detect Unlife spell, this time with more mana.

There was a lot of undead above him as they seemed to be under the sidewalk at the very least, if not the street itself, but it didn't seem like any of the enemy had made their way down yet.

Are the service tunnels still seen as 'owned' by the city? The streets are public, and the public have abandoned them, but these are explicitly the city's and not for public use. If so, and the city still stands...

That might make sense, but he wouldn't bet his life on it, nor on it lasting even if it were true at the moment.

"You've looked past the door?"

Natasha nodded. "Yes. The bar moves easily, and the lock is just a toggle on this side. Beyond the door, the main cross passage is a bit more open but not much. The passages to the various buildings are marked with the proper address, and it seems like the pipes and utilities run through the floor, at least if the access panels are any indication."

Alex grunted. "So, we're going out this way?"

"Seems like it." Pilar agreed. "Kaylee liked the idea at the very least."

Alex sighed and nodded. "Well, let's get the rest of the group, then. I think it's time to go. Who's going to lock this behind us and let us back in when we return?"

"Kaylee is arranging something."

"Oh? I suppose I should have expected she'd have thought of that already."

Pilar chuckled. "Yeah. She called us while you were unconscious. Apparently, her map of the school expanded down into the ground as soon as we cleared this place out. There are no more 'dead zones' in the map, so she thinks it's unlikely there are any more old basements."

"That's good to know."

Natasha had already pulled out her own phone and called the coordinator of their group.

Less than five minutes later, Mr. Weston and John had joined them in the basement along with two other teachers who had large—even if not quite as cavernous—Inventories.

The Inventory training teacher was examining the large vats with his two fellows, speaking in low tones, and Alex decided to just ask the man. "Do you know what that is?"

Mr. Weston nodded, smiling to the other two before answering. "Indeed. The tanks are filled with a mana conducting gel. When fully saturated, it loses all viscosity. These were the mana batteries of the school, though they no longer seem to be hooked up." He frowned. "I'm not sure how the defenses were powered with these removed from the circuit."

Alex shrugged. "I've no idea. They had twelve hours of power even so."

Mr. Weston's eyebrows rose. "Only twelve? Well, that explains it. That's the backup power. These should keep the defenses up for a week, as well as powering quality of stay magics, like creating food and water. I was wondering why those systems hadn't activated."

Alex was suddenly uncertain. "Should we… hook it back up?"

The teacher gave him a look like he was insane, and the other two chuckled. "Absolutely not! I talked with Ms. Kaylee, and the System has granted a System-linked repository of power. That is far more efficient and accessible than this. Plus, that one seems unlimited, where this one is decidedly not."

"Oh… okay? What about this still-looking thing? What's that?"

Mr. Weston chuckled again, but then he gestured to one of the other teachers, an older man with white hair and beard and a santa-claus-level belly. "I'm Mr. Southard. I teach several units of our Life and Magic Skills class."

Alex extended his hand, shaking with Mr. Southard. "My apologies. I'm Alex Johnson." He then turned to the final teacher, a petite blonde woman. "I apologize for not introducing myself."

She took his hand, shaking it with a smile. "Ms. Woods, history and English teacher."

"Good to meet you both."

The two teachers smiled in return, and then Mr. Southard cleared his throat. "You called it a still-looking thing. Honestly? It's likely exactly that. Some madman set this up to distill the fully saturated fluid into something akin to what the System uses. In theory, it should be able to empower anything System or magic related, if used properly."

Alex felt his spirits rising. "Oh? That's amazing. How?"

The teacher gave him a baffled look. "How am I supposed to know? I only know that the stuff is useful if you can acquire it, and I have vague knowledge of how it might be created—much as I imagine you know how beer is brewed—that doesn't mean you know how to do it, or how to process the beer after it's been brewed."

"Oh…" Alex sighed, a little disappointed. "I guess I can understand that. Thank you." Alex sighed once more. Yet again, that would have been a bit too easy.

He glanced to Ms. Woods, and she held up her hands. "I'm just a serial fidgeter. I've used that to work on my Inventory. That's why mine is so expansive. I'm not actually very knowledgeable about things like this."

"Fair enough."

Mr. Southard cleared his throat. "I would suggest leaving it be. We'll have to call in an expert to sort this out once the disaster is passed…"

A System notification went off in his head.

Quest Complete [Brood-Guard?]
Brood-Guards are created creatures designed to protect creatures as they are turned to undeath. If these are here, something more must be going on.

Investigate the High School for other signs of foul play.

With the high school claimed and much of the remaining populace momentarily made safe, the mystery grows. Will the basement, connected to the city at large, hold the answers you seek?

Yes, it did! Congratulations. You now have vague knowledge of what you have found.

Rewards:
You get to keep this wonderous object.

Apology Tutorial Adendum:
Wouldn't it be nice if it was just what you needed for some other quest? But that would be too convenient, right?

I guess you'll just have to find out.

Alex glanced toward Natasha and Pilar, they both grunted, looking his way. Pilar spoke first. "I got the promise of merit for completing this 'quest' as well as vague mention of a safer path to our goal."

Natasha nodded. "Same."

Grant called from down the hallway. "Quest complete! Nice."

Alex sighed. "I got something too. Tell you later."

The two women arched their eyebrows, with Natasha's eyes flicking to the sphere.

Alex felt a little guilty that he was going to take the item, but the System had granted it to him… After a moment, he set the guilt aside. This wasn't real, so anything he could extract while maintaining his humanity would be a win for him without harming others.

Regardless, it was time they were off.