Anton headed north along Highway 1. His high speed and agility allowed him to move at up to 301 miles per hour, which equated to about 441 feet per second. Anton focused on the few undead that had strayed off to the east of the highway. They didn’t know they were being attacked until they fell to the ground, dead from one physical punch or slap to the head. He knew they were dead, but now they were deader. Was that even a word? Whatever, he’d received experience for destroying them.
There weren’t many that had veered off from the main grouping, only one or two skeletons or zombies every mile or so. That made cleaning up the edge of the horde a lot easier than he’d thought it would be. It looked like there were a lot more strays off to the west of the horde. That would make it problematic to engage.
One unfortunate side effect of his actions was that the zombies near those he attacked would turn and come toward the undead he’d just killed. That was causing the horde to spread out. Not something he wanted to happen. He wanted them focused on heading south. Anton activated Specter, which made things a bit easier. The dead couldn’t see him, so they didn’t react when one of the dead fell over. Another thing that was nice about attacking while in his Specter form was that he could see the spark of everyone's souls; the undead, it turned out, also had souls, but they were different in multiple ways.
The first undead he encountered weren’t that different from the normal people he’d encountered, though the spark that was their Soul Core was a lot lighter. The ones he was running into now were even more different, though. Instead of having a white pearlescent spark that he could easily see, the white pearlescent orb of their soul, which they did have, was cracked with dark lines throughout that took up at least 50% of the soul. As he moved up to one of the undead to take a better look, he realized that the souls weren’t cracked. Black streaks of death mana had wrapped around the undead souls and seemed to be squeezing as well as seeping into the soul cores they were wrapped around. Because some of the Soul Cores were still white, they were quite easy to notice when he looked around for them.
Anton noticed that the range of his ability to see the souls of anyone was attributed to his skill Aura Perception, which was only skill level 12. Right now, his range was limited to 200 feet, but his movement speed was high enough that he could move, look around, find an undead off by itself, and attack it with Spectral Reach. Once he started going after the Undead in this way, he was able to find and kill an undead every second as he made his way north.
Energy-wise, it drained him, but he handled that by Assimilating one undead every time his Psychic Energy dropped below 1,000. In this way, he made his way north, destroying the lone undead that wandered off while making sure to keep himself ready for anything else that came up.
As Anton reached the Casino, he didn’t need to see the life force of the undead to know that the horde of undead stretched out to the north as far as he could see. In fact, at a certain point, the pearlescent aspect of the undead seemed to disappear, and the ground seemed to be covered by a darkness that was darker than the night sky that appeared as twilight to him in this place. It was almost like a blanket of The Void covered the ground.
Anton floated up until he was at least 1,000 feet above ground and then headed north. He needed to see how far the dead had spread, and he had to do so quickly so he knew if he’d need to come down and thin out the dead before they reached Dover. Anton headed north along the highway. He kept his speed relatively low, to no more than 60 miles an hour. Thirty minutes later, he reached Wellington and had his answer. As he made his way north, the situation his family and the other survivors faced became readily apparent.
The undead had overrun everything everywhere. Below him were nothing but shambling bodies traveling primarily to the south and west. As he floated above the city of Wellington, he noticed that whatever had caused this didn’t originate in Wellington. The dead were funneling into the city from the northeast, which was where Philadelphia sat. He’d also started seeing different and larger zombies and skeletons. Nowhere did he see any evidence of the living, though
The undead below him no longer contained any hint of the pearlescent white he was used to seeing when viewing another creature’s soul. As he focused on the undead themselves, he noticed that these undead… were people. Or they’d once been people. There were no skeletons. Almost every one of the undead was a zombie. Animals, children, adults, the elderly. It didn’t matter. Each and every undead he could see to the north and west had solid black Soul Cores.
Anton moved up to one of the adults with a black soul core and reached out and activated Analyze.
You have Discovered the Soul Core of a True Dead.
True Dead were once living. The soul of the now True Dead has fled. Death Magic has thoroughly invaded and saturated the Soul Core and allows the corpse to be animated. While the Soul Cores of the Dead do not start out like this, this is the final state of all Soul Cores fully attuned to Death. As the Soul Core directly affects the Monster Core of the being harvested, Monster Cores of such creatures are highly sought after for specialized crafting.
Creature Type: Zombie, True Dead
Level: 1
Anton read the information from Analyze and wondered if other types of magic could create different types of Soul Cores as well. It made sense that there would be Death cores for the Undead, or should he refer to them as the Dead? Could there be Soul Cores for creatures of Light or Darkness? What about Soul Cores for creatures with the affinity he held to the Anti sphere of magic? Could he possibly convert a Soul Core to that? Could Anti-Magic even animate something it had sucked the life, or death, out of?
As these questions raced through his mind, he had a thought. Hadn’t he once read a book where monsters had been corrupted into Voidlings, which could almost be the element that he relied on, though not quite the same thing? The void in that setting had hated life. His magical affinity was anathema to all kinds of magic, as far as he could tell. No, for him, it looked like trying to share his affinity meant absorbing them to fuel his power. So, he either had to allow others to grow and coexist or become like a singularity and devour everything. If he were being truthful, he’d rather have people around, though he could still feed on those who would be his enemy, of course.
Anton’s thoughts were drawn back to the Death Core he was touching as it began to give under his touch. It was almost like….
As Anton watched, the Death Core he was touching unraveled. The zombie dropped to the ground as the darkness that had been the Death Core exploded into ephemeral vapor.
Congratulations! You have destroyed a Level 1 Zombie. 100 XP Earned.
Anton checked his Event Log to try to figure out what had happened.
Warning: You are touching a Death Core.
Your Anti-magic field is detrimental to the magical configuration of Death attuned Cores.
Death Core Structural Integrity 99.9%
~
Death Core Structural Integrity 50%
Death Core Structural Integrity has failed.
The Energy animating this True Dead has been disrupted.
There had been a Warning, but warnings in his Event Log didn’t pop into his vision. Interesting. Another interesting thing was that it looked like his very touch was detrimental to creatures containing cores of pure magic. Anton had a thought. He moved over to one of the undead that was closer to Dover. Its core was threaded with the pearlescent energy of a normal soul core. The white energy he associated with life or spirit. It was tainted with Death mana, but it was still mostly normal. Anton reached out and touched the Soul Core while he checked his Event Log.
Nothing happened.
So, it looked like if a creature was wholly made up of one type of magic, he could disrupt it, but if it contained the remnants of a soul or had been created with a soul, it wouldn’t be disrupted. That might be very useful going forward, especially if he had to face elementals. Maybe he could touch their cores as he tried to defeat them?
This difference in soul cores seemed to be a new thing because he couldn’t remember there being a difference before. Of course, he’d never run into the undead before, well, except for those vampires, but that was before the reset. Maybe there were more changes to the fundamental interactions of magic than he’d thought.
Anton’s thoughts were brought back to the horde of undead and dead below and around him. Wilmington was due north of Dover, with Philadelphia to the northeast. Baltimore was due west of Dover, with Washington, D.C., to the southwest. If Death Mana was converting people to undead, there could be more than a million converted people between those three cities, probably closer to two or three million.
Suppose he was killing about 200 undead in a packed area. If his range was 100 feet, that was about 10,000 square feet. Anton looked back toward the highway and road. The horizon was approximately 14 miles away, and it was packed with the dead for as far as he could see with his superior intelligence, he figured that equated to just over 500,000 True Dead and Undead per square mile.
What the hell had happened? There were going to be far more undead than the soldiers could handle. If this was the result of a Death Node, it couldn’t be just the result of a Death Node; something else had to be going on.
He'd have to make his way to Philadelphia to see what was creating this horde of dead, but first, he needed to create a gap or gaps in the horde of undead working their way south. If he could do that the soldiers protecting everyone would get to rest and recover.
Anton zipped back south to just north of Smyrna, where Highway 1 and 13 crossed. The dead, for their part, were following the highway, and that point in the highway created a natural choke point, which he was going to take advantage of. Once again, the thought that the horde was being guided or at least ordered crossed his mind.
Anton deactivated Specter 30 feet above the ground, activated Spectral Scream aimed directly below him on the corpses of the dead he’d just killed, and landed lightly. He then proceeded to clear out the area around him with four more activations of Spectral Scream. He ignored the kill and treasure notifications but was pleasantly surprised when a leveling notification appeared.
Congratulations! You have reached level 38
The next 36 minutes were a blur of Spectral Screams followed by an Assimilate to recharge his Psychic Energy. Every Combat turn. When had had a moment he noticed that his Notifications had exploded
Congratulations! You have Earned the Title Zombie Slayer I for killing 100 Zombies.
1,000 XP Granted
+1 to any damage you cause to Zombies.
~
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Congratulations! You have Earned the Title Zombie Slayer X for killing 5,500 Zombies
55,000 XP Granted
+10 to any damage you cause to Zombies.
Congratulations! You have Earned the Title Skeleton Slayer I for killing 100 Skeletons.
1,000 XP Granted
+1 to any damage you cause to Skeletons.
~
Congratulations! You have Earned the Title Skeleton Slayer X for killing 5,500 Skeletons.
55,000 XP Granted
+10 to any damage you cause to Skeletons.
Anton stopped reading his notifications and quickly checked each of those titles. Each title level earned him experience points, 220,000 XP total for all ten levels in each category. He’d also earned skill levels for Spectral Scream and levels for his Vampiric Pseudo-Specter Class.
Spectral Scream reached Level 18
~
Spectral Scream has reached level 45
You have reached Level 39 as a Vampiric Pseudo-Specter.
~
You have reached Level 127 as a Vampiric Pseudo-Specter.
His skill wasn’t going up very quickly, but his level of growth was explosive. Anton quickly assigned his attributes and then set them to be automatically distributed as he leveled so he wouldn’t have to worry about it. Before he continued going after the undead, Anton checked his Attributes. All of his base attributes had reached 500, almost 600. His effective Attributes were all over 1,000, with his Luck breaking 8,000
That’s not why he’d killed the Undead, though. He’d decimated a square mile of undead to give the people in Dover a chance. He needed to make sure he continued to do so. It looked like it was power-leveling time.
Anton activated Specter and followed Highway 1 three miles north until it crossed paths with Highway 13 again. This time, Spectral Scream only increased to level 89, and his level increased to 175. One thing that had changed was that each Spectral Scream was costing more Psychic Energy, which meant that he had to assimilate the dead more often, but truthfully, that only increased the time it took for him to clear out a square mile by 10 minutes. He was also starting to see some nice gains in his total Psychic Energy, which was now up to 9,793. He could use Spectral Scream nine times before he had to assimilate a couple of undead to regain the energy. One nice thing: there was almost no chance that he’d explode. The fact that there were so many dead around made this the perfect environment for him to earn Experience.
Over the next two hours, Anton repeated the process four more times. He didn’t gain any more Slayer Titles, but he was able to increase Spectral Scream’s Skill Level to 100 and his class level to 299. He’d increased his Class level 261 times in about three hours. That was a phenomenal level of Class progression, which the SYSTEM agreed with. All of his attributes had almost doubled again.
While he looked over his gains, he couldn’t help but think, could his luck have set up this scenario so that he would be able to level quickly without needing to rest? Anton shut down that train of thought. Why tempt fate?
He’d now created six pauses in the horde of undead headed south, separated by between three and five miles each time. That should allow Felix’s people to recover and prepare for each new wave of attacks. Hopefully, they’d be able to recover some of the Monster Cores from the undead because he hadn’t been able to. The SYSTEM had granted him a copper piece or two for each kill, but no Monster Cores. He thought it had something to do with the spiritual component of his Spectral Scream skill, but he wasn’t sure.
Now that the people protecting his family had a few pauses between monster waves, Anton needed to figure out where the horde was coming from. He activated Specter and headed northeast toward Philadelphia.
As he headed east, the undead were everywhere below him, making it very hard to look around and see what was going on in the material plane. Anton headed into Philadelphia proper and landed on top of the Comcast building, where he deactivated Specter and looked around. Below him, the dead and undead filled the streets. He was somewhat surprised when, less than 10 seconds after he’d appeared, a woman with jet-black hair, dark orbs for eyes, and an elegantly detailed dress that reminded Anton of a Kimono appeared above and looked down at him.
“Who are you?” She asked in a sing-song voice that whispered across his flesh. While her voice sounded otherworldly, whatever magical components her voice had added slid across him as if he didn’t exist. He was immune to all forms of basic magic, after all.
“I am Anton. Who are you?”
“I see you have earned a Slayer Title for Zombies, Skeletons, Humans, Goblins, and Beetles, though the first two are both at level ten, which means you have killed at least 11,000 of my pets…”
“Oh, you can multiply that figure by at least. 100,” Anton said flippantly.
“Such insolence and disrespect. I am going to enjoy turning you into my pet,” the woman said as she flicked a wrist. A coil of black mana reached down and tried to spear his head.
The only bad thing about magic that was used against him was that anything he was completely immune to didn’t register in his Event Log, so he didn’t have a clue what spell she’d tried to use. Anton, on the other hand, had Psychic Skills and attacks that didn’t use magic. Anton activated Mind Bolt.
A bolt of mental energy leaped from Anton and slammed into the woman’s head. The woman and Anton froze for a moment before she reached up and rubbed her head, brought her hand down to make sure there was no blood, and then met Anton’s gaze, “I’ll admit, that did sting a little bit, but as you’ll soon see your attacks do not matter.”
As the Death Mage said the last, she made a flourish with both hands and a motion like she was lifting up something. Anton watched as the bruise that was beginning to form on her forehead healed instantly. He sent another Mind Bolt and another. He attacked her ten times in ten seconds to no avail. The Mind Bolt would slam into her head, and the damage would disappear instantly. Finally, he released a Spectral Scream, which also had absolutely no effect.
The Death Mage laughed, “Haven’t figured it out yet? I am linked to the dead. The damage you do to me is shared with my minions. Look around. I have a lot of minions, Fool!”
Some form of death link with her dead minions? Sure, he’d read about such things in games, but that shit actually existed? Anton looked around. The city was flooded with the dead. Even if they only had one or two hit points apiece, he’d be here all day trying to kill this bitch. Also, he had to know. Anton concentrated his gaze on the Death Mage and activated Analyze.
Race: Human
Increase Analyze Skill Level to unlock further information.
The look of confusion on Anton’s face caused the Death Mage to laugh down at Anton with obvious disdain, “Now you see your end, Boy! But since you wish to know, I see no harm in allowing you to know my class and level at least. I am Venneta AgedFlesh. Not my true name, of course, but the one you will see as you serve me for eternity. And you are a level 299 Pseudo Vampiric Specter? No matter, I’ll learn the secrets of that class from you in a moment. I did say I would tell you my class and level. I am a Mage of Death, Level 3,151.
“What! How?”
“What as a question, a wasted opportunity, Boy. How, though? How is an easy question to answer. I gain experience from every person I convert to the undead. I also gained some bit of experience from every creature they turn or kill. As you can see, my growth has been exponential. Additionally, I had a bit of luck to begin with. A Death Node appeared on top of me, and I happened to be within its protective barrier. I saw many people die touching the barrier before I reached out and claimed the Artifact powering it. In fact, the artifact is currently converting a celestial creature I found. I don’t know what to expect, but she serves Keres, the God of Violent Death, so I figured I should give her what her god desires,” Venetta said with a laugh and a lot more attention focused on Anton’s reactions than he liked, “You know her,” Vecna stated, it was not a question.
Seeing no point in lying, Anton answered truthfully, “I do.”
“Then witness her final moments before you join her,” Venetta said as she pointed at the ground below him where a grouping of dead parted to reveal Caitlyn lying on the ground, streaks of darkness spread through her body from a black gem that seemed to be resting on her forehead. What made it even worse was that the Sigil of Keres floated above her as it throbbed and grew brighter each moment.
Caitlyn? What were the odds he’d find her right before a Death Node gem finished converting her into a play toy for this evil bitch floating above him?
“She is almost there; watch now; this should be interesting,” Venetta said.
Anton ignored her. He had four elemental node gems in his inventory. They couldn’t work on or for him, but maybe he could use them to help Caitlyn. Anton activated Specter and practically teleported to Caitlyn’s side. He didn’t hear what Venetta said, nor did he care. Anton was completely focused on Caityln as he reached out and touched her Soul Core as he activated Analyze.
Name: Caitlyn
Race: Human
Class: Soldier (Rare)
Level: 107
Hit Points: 5 of 1,265
Stamina: 0 of 2,517
Mana: 0 of 1,758
Increase Analyze Skill Level to unlock further information.
Anton had no time. He deactivated Specter and pulled all four Elemental Gems from his inventory at once. Anton was just able to detect a pull when all four gems leaped from his hand and slammed into and were absorbed by the black gem against Caityln’s forehead. As the elemental node gems touched the death gem, Anton felt the presence of Venetta as she swooped in for the attack, which probably would have killed him if not for the wave of raw magical energy that washed out, ignored Anton, and blasted the mage away from him. The horde of death around Caitlyn and Anton didn’t fare so well. Every creature struck by the wave of energy instantly vaporized as the wave raced outward.
Anton looked down and watched as Caitlyn opened her eyes. Eyes lit with actual Black flames. She rotated to a vertical position, nodded to Anton, and then vanished in the direction the Death Mage had been thrown in.
***
Caitlyn had been fighting for her existence. An insidious presence had been worming its way into her mind and her core. It had wrapped around every aspect of her and began to squeeze until she had thought that she would die. She’d been patrolling to the north, noticed the horde of dead, and followed it all the way back to Philadelphia where she’d been captured by that bitch. She’d been on the verge of giving up when the Goddess’s voice had rung through her mind.
Not Just Yet, Child
A moment later, Caitlyn’s mind was flooded with Notifications as pain flowed through and racked her body. She tried to concentrate on the Notifications, but it was hard.
Warning, All Resources have reached Zero
Death has Embraced….. Error!
You have…Error!
ERR…OR!
Elemental Node Gem of Death cannot interact with other Elemental Node Gem due to SYSTEM rules.
Error!
Elemental Node contained within an Anti-Magic Field is Touching Elemental Node Gems.
Anti-Magic Field withdrawn
ERROR!
Elemental Node Gem of Air in contact with Elemental Node Gem of Death
ERROR!
Elemental Node Gem of Earth in contact with Elemental Node Gem of Death
ERROR!
Elemental Node Gem of Water in contact with Elemental Node Gem of Death
ERROR!
Elemental Node Gem of Fire in contact with Elemental Node Gem of Death
SYSTEM Corruption Detected.
Assimilation Intent Detected.
Elemental Assimilation by Celestial Granted.
Elemental Node Gem of Death, Artifact, Assimilated
Elemental Node Gem of Air, Artifact, Assimilated
Elemental Node Gem of Earth, Artifact, Assimilated
Elemental Node Gem of Water, Artifact, Assimilated
Elemental Node Gem of Fire, Artifact, Assimilated
Race Changed from Human to Elemental Celestial
Immunity to Air, Earth, Water, Fire, and Death based attacks 100%
Mana Regeneration increased by 60 per Combat Turn, 6 per second.
You are an Elemental Node for five Elemental Mana Types.
WARNING!
Mana Available Exceeds Current Vessel.
Excess Mana Converted to Hit Point Limit
Excess Mana Converted to Stamina Limit
Excess Mana Converted to Psychic Energy Limit
Excess Mana Released.
You have killed…
Error, you did not kill
Errors Resolved!
Artifact Link to Venetta AgedFlesh has been severed.
Congratulations! You have reached level 176
Conviction Earned: 5,907,000
The Goddess Keres is Pleased. Yet, an atrocity has occurred without intent or by the will of the Gods.
Would you like to permanently spend five million Conviction to become the vessel of Keres Wrath, Yes or No?
Caitlyn looked at the prompt, understood immediately that there was only one answer allowed, and sent, As long as that bitch dies, to her Goddess, and chose “Yes.”