The Many Faced Man

I woke up to the sounds of lots of zombies groaning and m.o.a.ning. I look out the window. A horde seems to be passing through the neighborhood.

It's like the apocalypse version of living near railroad tracks. Albeit a train will just run you over if you stand in front of it and a horde will both run you over and voraciously consume your flesh, so a horde is a bit worse.

It's still essentially the same thing. If your not a dumbass who stands on railroad tracks normally, then your probably not stupid enough to stand in front of a horde that's moving through. Unless your me of course, because I'm special like that.

So, I ate my breakfast of an orange and dry cereal as I watched the horde go by. Surprisingly, it was quite entertaining. They trip and fall on their faces and mess themselves up a lot.

I saw one extra-muscly zombie in the lot of them though, so I'm guessing that means the zombies also level or evolve as well. No, I think everything does in this world now, since that is what happens in novels too after all.

All the plants and all the fish and animals and monsters. I know I saw a number of weird looking plants on my way here. I mean in terms of abnormal over-growths, I didn't think too much on it before, but... They are all likely either going to compete with us for supremacy or try to exterminate us on principle.

It'll be interesting in the future, for certain. The only question is if I, or even people in general, can get strong enough to take part. Currently, I'm already falling behind!

I pump myself up, I'm totally gonna get my first level today! I nab my cart and my club and by the time I finished, the horde had already passed by, so I headed out on the road.

At around 8-ish I arrive at a very tall apartment complex in the downtown area. There is a good size courtyard surrounding it all, and has comparatively less zombies than the surroundings. It's still all in one piece too.

With a glint in my eye I approach the entrance. It looks like the perfect hunting ground. I might even find survivors while I'm here too.

As I go up to the entrance I find a group of maybe five zombies pressed against the glass doors trying to get out of the building...

It says "Push" on the door from this side...

It probably never occurred to these zombies to try "Pulling" the doors...

I go up to the doors and take my metal club to meet the glass. After a few hits it makes deep cracks in the upper window of one of the doors. One zombie jumps and breaks through the glass with its arms.

Getting momentarily caught on the remnant glass, I grab a long thin knife from my cart and ram it into the zombies eye. I twist it a bit inside to scramble it's brains then yank it back out. The zombie dies, another jumps on top of it taking its place.

I quickly grab my club hard with both hands, smashing it over its head. It almost became like a game of whack a zombie. Except all the dumbass zombies stick their head out the same hole, they aren't as smart as the moles.

Every time a zombie came over the dead one it would do so clumsily. I had plenty of time to bash it's head and send it falling back. Eventually all their brains stopped working from getting bashed many times.

None of them came over anymore. I finally pushed open the other door and dutifully made sure each of their brains were thoroughly smashed.

I shoved each of the bodies out of the way of the doors.

In case of the need for a quick escape, this was a necessary step. Although it also opens the chance of more coming in from outside.. I have a vague feeling like there is more likely a threat to be encountered on the inside. This was a large apartment building, and it was a little too quiet.

I start my way down the hallway, making sure to kill each zombie I meet. I do so until I've cleared out the 1st floor lobby, hallways, and recreation areas. Then I go and wipe out the zombies on second and third floor hallways.

Then I go on back to the second floor. I check through and wipe out the zombies I find in each room. Except one room which must've been having a party or something, because there was hella' zombies in there. I left that room alone.

I moved heavy metal stuff from other rooms in front of the door to that apartment, just to make sure they stay in there. Seeing how there are zombies turning up in closed room settings. It seems besides the asteroids, was there something else that caused them to become zombies?

Like a disease or radiation pulse or something? Only those that can withstand that and also be lucky enough to avoid heat waves from the impacts could have survived the initial purge.

While thinking that I moved up and cleared the fourth floor hallway. Then I went down and started clearing rooms on the third floor again. With this clearing strategy I could be more sure no zombies would trap me in while I was clearing a room.

My zombie killing speed and skill with my club seems to have grown a bit with familiarization. At the time I've finished clearing the 5th floor hallway and 4th floor rooms it's already around 11am. Moving up to the 6th floor hallway I hear some faint crying mixed with zombie noises.

There is a small group of 4 zombies trying to attack the door to a cleaning supplies closet. I go up and pull one zombie towards me. After pulling it's 'aggro' I quickly dispatch it with a sideways blow to the head.

Then I pull the next two, killing one by one. Last one, I just sneaked up behind and smash it's brain in without it even noticing me. Then I walk up to the door,

{Me}"Excuse me, are you hiding in there? I've killed all the zombies out here so it's safe to come out."

...

{Girl in the closet}"Phew... Okay, I'm coming out then, watch the door."

A very pretty girl, about 5"7', very "properly proportioned" came out of the closet. A feast for the eyes to be certain. Brown hair and light blue eyes. She had answered in a very sweet voice,

{Girl from the closet}"Thank you very much for saving me. I thought for sure either they'd kill me or I'd end up starved to death in there. My name is Evalune by the way. Just call me Eva for short."

I nod,

{Me}"Will do, my name is Dugant, never really had nicknames so..."

{Eva}"I'll call you just that then. So what are we going to do now?"

{Me} "Are you Hungry?" I asked.

{Eva}"Very!!"

{Me}"There was some good food I saw back in an apartment I cleared out on the 2nd floor, let's go there and have lunch."

She nodded,

{Eva}"mhmm, let's go!"

Thus we ventured on down and had lunch. As we ate I asked her about herself.

{Me}"So, Eva, did you live here then?"

She shakes her head,

{Eva}"No, I was here to visit a friend of mine. I was headed up the steps to her apartment when the meteorites came down. I hid in that closet and stayed there.

When I came back out some zombies popped out and chased me so I ran back into the closet. I was stuck in there for days until you came.

I was really starving in there. I had snacks in my purse, but jerky doesn't last long when your hungry. Thank god you came along."

She paused,

{Eva}"Judging from your showing up here like this I'm guessing it's probably like this all over here huh?"

{Me}"Yeah, I've only met one other group of survivors up until now. I walked through another town on my way here. I only saw a few signs of pillaging, a horde of zombies, and no survivors.

I'm guessing this is extremely widespread especially considering this happened in conjunction with a freak asteroid shower. It's the stereotypical background of an apocalypse anyways."

I pause,

{Me}"You haven't fought any zombies yet have you?"

{Eva} "No, like I said, I've been hiding in the closet this whole time."

{Me} "I see.. do you know about levels?"

She makes an awkward face,

{Eva}"Um, no, I haven't heard anything about that."

{Me} "Oh."

An awkward silence...

{Me} "You see, this guy I met in that group I spoke of, he brought it up earlier. He made it sound like it was a normal thing though. The guy had a gun too though, so I was thinking, maybe once we kill enough then we would get it too!"

Her facial expression seems to twitch a bit,

{Eva} "Did you think, maybe, that guy was messing with you? I mean, asteroids and zombies are one thing. The world is not going to become a video game over-night though, that makes no sense."

{Me} "Oh."

My heart aches a bit. This girl, can't she even have a little sense of what is a man's romance? I can't even bring up a status window to prove her wrong, and I didn't get a welcome message either like they usually do in novels... it has to be real though. It has to!

I can only hope that I'll eventually start leveling or find a way to.

{Me}"Well, do you want me to try and help you to raise your level?"

{Eva}"Wawawa, well, it's supposed to be up to the guys to protect girls like me right? Plus, assuming your right, I would only be taking your own rightful experience, and slowing down your progress. I just couldn't do such a thing."

Her facial reaction is rather cute, but...

{Me} "No, that's just non-sense. This is obviously a dangerous world and you need to be able to protect yourself. I certainly won't be around to protect you forever, and you won't always be able to count on others.

I would be in the wrong to let you just hang around me. It's going to be nearly impossible for you to be able to survive long entirely dependent on others in this situation."

A somewhat annoyed and frustrated look appears on her face.

{Eva}"Your going to make me fight those zombies?"

She snaps at me.

{Me}"Lightly, yeah. I'll try to disable them before letting you go for the kill. Power leveling, since you don't have combat experience yet. Or, it'll still help you accustomize yourself to fighting them to some extent.

I have no intention of being your full-time bodyguard. So you should learn to fight regardless of the matter."

Her face softens a bit, but I feel like she is still angry underneath.

{Eva}"Okay then..."

{Me} "Are you rested up?"

She softly mumbles in response,

{Eva}"Yeah... let's go."

It's 2pm as we approach the 5th floor. I approach a door and tell her to wait outside. Then warn her to run back down to the second floor and hide if we encounter trouble.

Going into the room I grip my club's handle tight. Two zombies. Perfect. I walk right up to one, sweeping and knocking in it's right kneecap from the side.

It sort of dives toward me but I dodge and smash it's elbows. Moving swiftly I press on its back with my foot. Then I knock it onto the ground and smash it's left kneecap.

Fully disabled a zombie, oh yeah! Then I repeated with the other one which still hadn't realized my existence. After finishing I went out and called her in.

I gave her a small knife and told her to kill them. Both of the zombies continue to thrash about violently. Clearly they were hungry for her flesh, but they couldn't do nothing about it.

Eva stood there shaking. Then walked up and stepped on the zombie's back, pressed it down a bit and then suddenly stabbed down in a rigid motion and did so again and again and again...

It was a bit of overkill, it was clear she was panicking about it somehow turning to bite her if it did survive, she wanted it to stop moving before she stopped stabbing. Without realizing her stabbing was still forcing it to twitch despite it being dead.

We continued on fighting through a number of rooms, killing numerous zombies.

Then she stopped with a surprised look on her face. Her bell like voice rang out, "I made it to level 1!" She said with a smile on her face and blood on her hands.

I stopped for a moment. You made it to level 1?!? You only killed 10 zombies!

Then she excitedly moved over to the next zombie and executed it similarly with two stabs to the head. She straightens up and walks over to me,

"I recieved a class when I first leveled up, and now I've got the [Apprentice Druid] class. All that gardening I used to do really paid off, hehe."

"Cool!" I say.

"Do you notice any big difference?"

"Not really," she says, "From the log, all my stats increased by one. I also gained three new stats called Plant Attunement, Wood Aura, and Aura Capacity. Each of which is still at 0."

We talk more about it a bit, and earnestly, I was excited for her. Nowhere near as much as she was excited for herself, obviously, but still. As long as she keeps leveling up she should be able to gradually exceed the human limits.

But I thought to myself, she only needed 10 kills to get to level 1. I have killed at least 150, maybe 160. If you get the system faster due to talent, then my talent is at least much lower than Eva's.

That thought alone was depressing enough, the girl who didn't believe was the one with talent in what she didn't believe in. So depressing... and I even helped her get there, handed it to her on a silver platter... I'm not jealous, I'm not!

We go on and hunt a number of other rooms, clearing one floor and moving up to the next. However, a significant difference appears now that she has the system. With each zombie that dies, you can see them deflating slightly after she kills them.

Dragging one of my kills and laying it next to one of hers.. the difference between them is clear as day. Her kills lose a fair amount of their body mass after death. Which was actually extremely interesting, at least from my view.

The system is just laying claim to parts of their bodies? What parts, why? To what end?

As we kill through more of the rooms, an answer comes back. Looking over the area by the zombies Eva killed, glowing wisps of light (energy?). Began to flow through the air and gather together.

As they did, thin wisps of black and green seemed to join together with them. Coagulating and compressing themselves into one solid object, a book.

I pick it up and look at the title on the book. [Intro to Necromancy] it is a very plain and black book, with those letters written in big plain English on the front.

It was such a standard sort of format I thought, if there is a game-style store later.. it may be labeled STORE in gray letters. This level of originality is astounding.

It gives off the feeling of being sort of a joke. But then, when I open it up, the book is no longer English.

Strange symbols, emitting a strange corrupt aura. I can weirdly feel a sort of aura weaving odd patterns through the air around me.

The aura emits creepy distorted 'noise', impossible to make heads or tails of. Cold sweat runs down my back, I shut the book. I look over at Eva.

She says,"What's up? That book something good?" Sweat still running down my back I reply, "you didn't feel that?"

She shakes her head, "No, let me see it though." She takes it right out of my hands. And flips it open. Again the aura flows out. But she just frowns.

"I don't understand these symbols or letters at all. Nor do I feel anything from it. You want it?"

"Yeah," I reply, "I don't like the feel I get off of it but it's something I might need later on."

She nods, "Right! You helped me starting out, you should at least get that much as thanks. To the next room then!" And marched off.

One level and she is ready for the world huh?

"Eeek!" I hear a screechy scream from outside and I rush out. She had opened a door up on her own and four zombies had come running at her. She thereby came running back in my direction.

My mind fatigue increased in an instant, what is wrong with this girl? I went up and rescued her despite her luring zombies onto me, lecturing her on being too reckless.

She apologized profusely, and I reminded her we should be working together. I then proceeded to help her kill more zombies. After she had killed 15 more zombies she had leveled up again and became strong enough to easily handle a zombie on her own.

She used a large kitchen knife I'd given to her with continuously increasing accuracy. Progress was really slow compared to the day before because I spent most of it helping her learn. It was already later in the night by the time we finished clearing out the sixth floor rooms.

We settled down for the night in one of the apartments that was clear from the beginning and free of blood or damage. I discretely poured some of the water with ashes over the surface of the door, ensuring it was covered well. Then, I went back and went to sleep.