It was getting dark.
For hours now we had been using hit and run tactics on the horde the violin built up with the group who gathered them playing every thirty minutes of so to gather them together again when they chased us.
Honestly it would have been easier to take out the horde if they weren’t gathered so the time used to do it annoyed me but I still accepted it because it meant that page was safe since they where gathered within my sight. Well, she would be safe where she is anyway but being away for so long makes it a small relief.
Right now there are only around fifty zombies left even after the violin attracted them and maybe a few stragglers across the school. The progress is good but… ugh. The smell is horrible. Close to five thousand zombies bodies, dead but still there since the combat never ended where piled up around the area. Zombie blood covered my clothes and stayed because of that and I was walking through rotten corpses and blood constantly, even getting brain matter and minced bloody flesh in my boots. Utterly disgusting. Worst experience ever.
About an hour ago Ally and Leo started to feel sick so I immediately made them withdraw. I think it was just the smell getting to them but seeing as I’m still going I can only assume that the blood on their skin has started to slowly effect them. Thankfully their zombies despawned once they left so that blood is gone but their vitality wasn’t enough to stay here forever, though I was sure they’d be fine. It was just over-exposure in the end and I don’t think the god would make this RPG apocalypse have such a bullshit system but just in case I made them bring their vitality up to a hundred with stat points. They weren’t far off anyway and from what I could tell the hundred mark was a qualitative change so I think they’ll be fine.
“Jean right? Lea asked if you could leave those fifty alive and lead them into the ball storage room. She said she wants to use them to level up the people who haven’t killed any zombies yet.” So Lea is still leading? Good. She has some capabilities at least. The guy is someone I don’t know however, probably someone else she found in the school.
“Sure. It won’t be hard.”
He ran off back to wherever he came from and I did as I was asked.
“Oi! Over here you rotting pieces of crap!” That attracted all their attention rather than the one or two following me before.
Keeping at a fairly close distance and occasionally yelling I got to the ball storage room and went in.
There was a person I saw hiding behind a pole in the gym and once inside I could see another waiting at the second door for me to get them all in. Once inside the door we came through was closed by the one hiding behind the pole and I dashed out the opposite door before the chick could react. Shutting it, I finally leaned against the door behind me and sighed. Even with the stats hours of combat was really tiring.
[Ding!]
[You have levelled up x2!]
‘Status’
[Status Menu]
Name: Jean Paradox
Level: 15
HP: 1720
MP: 1690
Strength: 174
Dexterity: 201
Vitality: 162
Intelligence: 159
Wisdom: 162
Charisma: 162
Luck: 100
Unallocated Status Points: 103
Didn’t my vitality improve too much? Well I guess I was covered in zombie blood for ages but my stats seemed to have grown a bit more than I expected.
“Finally all that crap is off of me. Fuck it feels good not to be covered in zombie.” I groaned as I pushed off the door.
“Nice to see you again as well Jean.” Lea was the girl who was waiting at the door, I realised.
“Are you an idiot? Why did you play the violin to get them into a horde? It would have been so much easier to hunt them one by one, you know that, right?” I instantly questioned as I felt the frustration leak into my voice.
“We… had an incident. A girl was bitten while we where fighting and her scream attracted more to us. We lost half the group because we got surrounded and if not for the timely intervention of Theodore, a one year junior to us, distracting them and creating an opening we all would have died. We didn’t even know there where other people in the school until then so it was a pretty grim way to find out. They had a plan to trap them in the gym and pick them off slowly from above but there where more than we expected and we couldn’t close the doors. If not for you coming back then we would have a horde moving through the school together.” She sounded sad and tired.
“It wasn’t a bad plan but you forget that we had hundreds of thousands of zombies here just a few days ago. There was obviously going to be too many of them still as only so many of them could have left with the horde.”
“I think we all knew that but everyone was scared to fight again after losing their friends or hearing about us losing them. It’s kind of a moral killer to be slaughtered by the undead. Anyway I saw Leo and Ally with you before but they left about an hour ago. Is there anyone else or is it just you three?” She tried to change the topic.
“Lillian, her two brothers and a little girl named Page we picked up on the way. Ally and Leo left because the blood being on their skin started to make them feel sick but they should be fine with over a hundred points in vitality while I didn’t feel sick at all, period. I’ll introduce you all later. For now you should have your people gather up all the loot from the zombies and spread it out among them. The money can buy you some basic gear to equip them with and there might even be some rare drops I haven’t seen before from the sheer number we killed so be careful you catalogue it all in case it could be something that stabs you in the back later.” I told her seriously.
“Noted. Did you find out anything while outside?” She asked hopefully.
“Animals can be infected and a normal cat was able to jump around ten metres due to the strength increase the zombie infection gave it. Dead bodies can be infected and come back even faster than live ones as long as the head isn’t damaged. There’s also this which we bought from the shop for two silver. The shop is unlocked at level ten by the way and you get more options the more levels you gain” I said as I handed over the information package which I kept in my pocket the whole time.
“Oh, and there’s an inventory for money but not items.” I added on as an after thought.
“How’d you find out the body stuff?” Her voice was a little disturbed
“I came across a weird situation that made me worried about it and even though it disturbed the hell out of me Leo and I tested it out on two cats. That’s why we also found out that the body won’t disappear if you don’t want it to. Trust me I’m a cat person so it really disgusted me but there was nothing else I could test it on.” I grimaced and she thankfully didn’t pry further.
“So you didn’t find your sister then?” My expression became sad.
“My sister died years ago. I was just trying to delude myself into believing that with magic she might have come back… I’m sorry for letting that delusion affect you even if it was in a small way.” I told her sincerely.
“When I didn’t leave the school it wasn’t because of anything like fear or uncertainty. My family died several years ago and I’m just a young master who inherited their left over fortunes. Considering I had the same hopes I can’t exactly blame you for it.”
“You hid your background well in a school that lives off of rumours.” I smiled slightly.
“As did you. All those girls crazy over you didn’t even realise your sister was dead or that you even had one. They are hard to hide but it’s better than giving the snakes venom and making the rest pity you.” She said sounding tired for the first time since I met her. Granted our interactions where limited but it was still enough.
“That’s true. I’d rather not see those looks again and mum even went as far as to stop people coming to the funeral so she didn’t have to see them. I didn’t really try to hide any of it from others however, I just didn’t want to talk to anyone period and it had an unintended result. Sis… she meant everything to me.” I’m not sure why I said so much but I was feeling impulsive and I strangely didn’t feel like curbing that impulse.
We walked in silence for a while. It was slow but not uncomfortable like you’d expect after conversing about something so private with someone practically a stranger.
“How many people do you have now?” I asked after a while.
“Six died including our teacher and we met up with from what we can tell is the only other group in the school to bring our numbers up to twenty four. With your group that makes thirty one.” Not bad considering I expected around fifty but I guess the horde cleared away a lot of stragglers.
“Do you have a plan for the gates?” I said as I ignored the slight pang hearing the only teacher I liked in the school died.
“Not really. It’s not a dictatorship set-up so I have to propose everything to the group even though they elected me leader. I can’t decide that on my own and they won’t want to decide until they finish getting over the stress the small horde caused.” She sighed.
“Whatever you do I suggest you do it fast. You could be killing people or yourselves by not watching over the gates with the new padlocks on them. For the watch have four or more people to make sure no one can betray you and run off leaving the gates open.”
“Padlocks? We… we didn’t padlock the gates.” She frowned as one appeared on my face as well.
“So someone either locked you in or others out without anyone realising huh…” I sighed as things suddenly got a lot more complicated.
“I doubt there are any other factions in the school or we would have seen them while scouting and playing the violin so it seems to be the more sinister one of someone locking us in. I’ll ask the others just in case they did it without informing anyone but that’s not likely.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
“Just in case have someone use bolt cutters to remove them regardless and place your own. If it’s outsiders then they have the keys to it and if it’s insiders they might have given the keys to outsiders. Prepare your people for a siege.” She tensed up a bit before sighing and giving a nod.
“It’s annoying how fast everything’s moving…” She trailed off eventually. I didn’t answer.
“Welcome to our humble abode.” I gestured dramatically as I led her onto the roof we where camping on.
“Big bro!” Page yelled excitedly as she ran into me as soon as I came up.
“Hey Page. Did you have fun with tiny?” I laughed as I ruffled her hair, earning a pout which just made me want to do it again.
“Hmph! Tiny kept trying to run away and look for you so she’s in time out.” Oh wow she looks really sad. I guess it hurts to be abandoned by something so cute.
“It’s okay. I’m here now so she won’t run away” I smiled as her face lit up and she ran to remove tiny from the box she was in.
“Big sis!! Tiny was in time out, I told you not to play with her!” Ally sneaked tiny out at some stage and was now being lectured for it. I laughed at the scene but didn’t interrupt while ally looked helpless.
“big bro and big sis?” The guest I accidently forgot about raised an eyebrow questioningly as she asked.
“Her families dead so we took her in. She was crying about how she didn’t have anyone left so I told her we’d be her family and ever since it’s been like this.”
“Your unexpectedly nice Jean.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked defensively as she laughed.
“Nothing, nothing at all~”
“Your voice totally betrays that you know.” I replied flatly.
“Don’t be such a spoilsport.”
“Sigh…” I’m sighing a lot lately huh?
“Big bro! Page finally got tiny back” She smiled radiantly as if the lecture never happened.
“Good job” I smiled as I pet tiny and she started to pur, making page laugh happily.
“Jean another skyscraper started to burn about twenty minutes ago.” Leo told me as he pointed into the distance.
“I know but there’s not much we can do about it other than mark it as a danger zone for travel. Leo have you noticed that the grass has started growing? I know the god said that magic was always around us but I feel like it must of increased in density when the apocalypse started. Soon all these skyscrapers will be overtaken by nature before we even realise.”
“I did but never gave it any thought. The city will look really cool when that happens but somehow I can’t see that being good for us.” I couldn’t help but agree with that.
“It works both ways though. It’ll be easier to hide and move around freely once that happens and I imagine quite a few cool things will appear.” Disaster and fortune always come hand in hand, it is merely a matter of outlook that determines which one you receive.
“I guess” He didn’t sound convinced.
“Well I’m going to train all night so feel free to continue talking without me.” I said as I walked away.
“You don’t want to meet the group?” Lea asked hastily before I could leave.
“They are all tensed now and it is getting dark. Better to meet them tomorrow once they have time to calm down and the darkness will only make them edgy so daytime is better.” I said dismissingly.
“Fine fine. I’ll see you tomorrow then.” She sighed as she hopped off the roof and walked towards wherever her group was situated.
“I’ll train with you as well.” Leo said as he came to join me.
Recently training has become harder since we don’t have weights or anything but things like chin-ups and push-ups still work fine as long as you do them as fast as you can. There’s practically no burn out unless you do it like that. For strength it’s fairly easy to find some bits and pieces to lift around and dexterity is done with the fast activities or a bit of running. Mental stats are the hardest to train now even if vitality is really hard as well since vitality can be increased through training but the mental stats are losing their effectiveness through simple visualisation. I’ll need board games or puzzles to increase them by notable amounts now.
----
‘Status’
[Status Menu]
Name: Jean Paradox
Level: 15
HP: 2190
MP: 1780
Strength: 221
Dexterity: 264
Vitality: 209
Intelligence: 168
Wisdom: 172
Charisma: 231
Luck: 100
Unallocated Status Points: 103
I was stunned. Wasn’t this improvement a little overkill? It was only one night of training but yet my stats where brought up so much…
Is this protégé’s effects? I can’t think of anything else that would have this result…
[Finally understanding how awesome a legendary achievement is? Geez kid there’s many beings who would cry blood if they realised you got this power so easily, by accident to boot. At level fifty you’ll unlock me as a talking buddy so I’ll explain things to you then but protégé is one of the top three powers in existence, made in tandem with one called devour to support the number one power called VIP. The winner of this universe becomes a VIP so work hard.]
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“Are you okay man? I thought you just zoned out but ten minutes is a little overkill even for you” Leo’s voice snapped me out of it. What’s he mean ‘even for you’? That’s offensive.
“Leo we have to reach level fifty” I said seriously as he looked at me weirdly.
“Isn’t that goal a little low? We’re trying to reach mythical levels like one thousand or ten thousand from the start but now our goal is only fifty?” I felt a little stupid at that.
“At level fifty we unlock the god as a talking buddy and get answers so it’s our immediate goal. Of course we’re still aiming for those mythical numbers but we need short term ones as well right?” He looked at me critically as if wondering if I actually had any points in the intelligence stat.
“And you just happen to know that… how, exactly?” Oh wow he even talked slow to make sure I could keep up. I face palmed.
“Stop talking like that, it’s freaky and if you must know mister god just had another one-sided chat with me. I’ve become an OP character, I’m such a badass” I said arrogantly as my hair was swept to the side of my face with a hint of dramatic flare.
“Fuck off.” He spat as I laughed happily.
“No~” I sung.
“Okay seriously, tell me word for word what was said.” His playful appearance faded as he got serious.
Explaining my stat increase and the conclusion that brought me to the chat as well as everything god said he stood there contemplating for a few minutes.
“Yeah. Yeah I really can’t find any reason that I’m friends with such a lucky bastard like you.” He said dead serious.
“Because you couldn’t live without your wonderfully awesome and sexy best friend Jean Paradox” I laughed.
“Seriously I must be a masochist for being friends with you” He sighed with a weak smile.
“And I must be a sadist.” I grinned as he glared at me.
“Well on the bright side I now have a perfect meat shield.” He smiled sinisterly.
“And I have a perfect fodder.” I smiled exactly the same.
“Meoww-rh”
“Yes yes I didn’t forget you tiny” I laughed as she pawed at my jeans.
Picking her up after she completely shattered the evil moment we had and made us burst into laughter we walked back to the group.
The good thing about best friends is you can be pretty much in sinc with them for moments like that and still know they didn’t mean it. To an outsider we probably looked like mortal enemies before but to the trained eye we where just messing around to deflate the tension that built from my news. I love having best friends.
Unlike us, Ally was actually doing something useful with her time all night. She was adjusting her weapons to the new strength and practising with them. While it is mainly her dexterity and strength that gains from such training, being able to effectively use her equipment with such high stats will almost triple her combat power as compared to Leo and I who are brute forcing through right now. Since we are close range fighters mainly anyway that’s not a bad thing but we’ll have to spend some time to do the same as her in the future as well.
Page and the three siblings where also being taught some basics with daggers and movement at the same time but for now it’s not enough to be useful. Maybe once their intelligence and wisdom gets over a hundred or so each it will be easier to pick up and years of training for us can be compounded down into a few months or even weeks but for now they only have an average of around forty and while good it is still not enough to make them have any noteworthy progress within a single night. Still even these basics can help them survive as long as no one like us comes along to fight them.
“Sis guess what, this bastards become even more over powered. If he keeps going I’ll fade away like I never existed through the mystical powers of being demoted into a side character.” He complained to ally as soon as we appeared.
“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure not to fade with you so everything’s fine” She comforted in a strangely non-comforting way.
“Will Page fade as well?” Page asked cutely.
“Mascots never fade.” Leo what are you trying to do with this kid? Even ally is looking at you as if you’re a pedo now.
“Page from now on make sure to keep some distance from Leo or you’ll fade as well.” Ally told her seriously. Leo only just realised what was going on and looked panicked.
“Okay big sis. Page will be careful”
‘My sister is a monster’ Leo mouthed to me with a distressed look.
‘Idiot’
He turned to see the sister in question looking right at him with a sinister grin. We aren’t the only one’s who can lip read. She was standing right next to him so even though when he looked she was facing page that doesn’t mean she would stay like that. She caught everything.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll live in your steed.’
With that a distressed Leo went through five minutes of hell being a punching bag for his sister in a ‘spar’. Poor Leo, she didn’t even hold back because of how fast we can heal now… nah not really, it was hilarious to watch. Go ally!
And with that Leo was unconscious for near an hour before he woke up groaning even though his wounds healed.
At mid-day Lea came to fetch us and until then I was training up my weapons a bit while ally switched over to pure physical training. We made the others train as well even if they didn’t like it but they where happy with the results, though they refused to admit it. Well Page admitted it but that’s different.
The group was indeed situated on top of the gym like I suggested through a rope ladder they found and there where even tarps up there to block the sun. Being up here is much safer since the roof is around twenty five metres high, mounted on sturdy walls and has a wide, almost flat space so even hordes will have trouble pilling up here. The gym in question was an indoor basketball court that was detached near a few others like an indoor tennis court, pool, netball and an actual gym so the space was fairly big and if we wanted to, expanding over to the gyms next to us would be easy. Not to mention it’s one of the highest buildings in the school so it’s a pretty good vantage point.
“We should go to the maintenance shed and pick up a pair of snips to cut out a hole in the roof. Kick out the plaster and drop down a rope ladder and you have a safer entrance or exit.” I said to her as soon as we got up.
“Huh? What are snips?” Ally face palmed.
“Ally don’t face palm at that. The only reason we know is because we stuck to the builders like glue when they made the showers at your house. Snips are a tool used to cut metal sheets, I think the Americans call them tin cutters? Don’t quote me on that but it basically makes it a lot easier to cut them.”
Why did I even expect a school of rich and pampered students to know the names of them? Even we only know them because it was so ‘cool’ to see them building that we stuck to the poor tradies and flooded them with questions. They got paid extra for it so they where happy to answer but looking back I can tell we where annoying.
“Ah, um… okay?”
With that she awkwardly led us over to the waiting group.
“I won’t introduce everyone to each other since it would be annoying but this is Jean, Leo, Ally, Page, Lillian, Adrian and Darvey. Jean, Leo, Ally and Page are close enough in a sort of family and Lilly, Adrian and Darvey are siblings. You can introduce yourselves to them later but for now we have other things to discuss. I didn’t bring it up last night since everyone was still stressed out but someone padlocked the gates that lead into the school. I’d like to believe it was someone in our group who did it without telling anyone so if it is please stand up but if not it’s likely someone is trying to lock us in.” No one came up. Darvey sounds like a good name for the oaf but somehow it’s his smarter little brother that had the name while he had Adrian.
“Well in that case we need a permanent watch around the gates and to change the locks. We’ll keep it at two people per gate for now since we’re low on people but in the future it will increase. We have a lot to do today so we’ll split off in groups of two or three to collect items, fortify our base and kill the left over zombies. I have a list that you can volunteer for but just know that everyone has things to do regardless of what you choose. First we’ll go over the new information we got from Jean’s group though.” Well she wouldn’t force my ‘family’ to do anything but we’ll still help. It’s safer that way.
It was very selective what we told others like, for example, my achievements so they don’t know everything but pretty much everything else they do. We brought back a lot of information to them. Within thirty minutes she had said everything and split everyone off into groups but us.
“Leo and Adrian will watch the left gate and Ally and Lilly will watch the right. I’ll take page and darvey with me to the maintenance storage room to pick up some tools before coming back and fixing up a better entrance.” I already told Lea before hand that I’d have people from my group take watch. I was worried about something happening so I wanted Ally and Leo to watch a gate each and the other two where just the only people left.
“No offense but I don’t think we should hand over the watch to outsiders Lea. They just got here but yet they are going to watch both gates without any of our own people. It’s fishy.” Annoying.
“Jean was the reason my class even survived the start of the apocalypse and the reason we came to camp up here. Not to mention those three killed the entire horde, thousands of zombies, without help. Right now Jean alone could kill us all and you can’t deny that after what you all saw but instead he is helping us. He’s probably the most trustworthy individual here because of that. While all of us are banding together out of necessity his group doesn’t need us at all so why would he betray us? I understand what you mean Chase but think about the situation more.” Well yeah.
“I only wanted Leo and Ally on a gate each since I trust them and their strength so if you want to swap with Adrian and Lillian and they agree then go ahead.” Her speech was made redundant by my cold voice. It’s not unusual since my voice is usually cold but recently I’ve been around people I care about so it hasn’t been like that much. I still like the speech though so good work Lea!
“Can I swap with you Adrian?” A girl asked hesitantly.
“Yeah sure!” He was overly enthusiastic about his reply and startled her.
The girl he liked, Jessica, had somehow managed to survive. Obviously the girl who asked to swap wasn’t her since no way would he be enthusiastic about letting her cozy up to such a handsome guy like Leo but rather it seemed like she had some sort of special relationship with the girl who asked and Jessica pleaded silently with puppy dog eyes. I’m actually starting to pity Adrian a little.
“O-okay…” She was a little dazed.
“I’ll have some people send you a pair of bolt cutters and new locks each once I get them.” I said after no one else volunteered for a switch.
“Sure man. What do we do with anyone who turns up at the gates?” Leo asked.
“Make them leave immediately or once any immediate danger which made them seek refuge has passed with a second option of staying but being subjected to basic questioning. We need to check that they aren’t spies before letting them in since the threat of whoever locked everyone inside still looms over us." I got some dirty looks but no one objected.
“Look for bites as well.” Lea added. I forgot to mention anything since I just figured leo and ally would do it regardless.
“And what will we do if they find someone bitten?” Random guy one asked.
Lea looked to me for an answer, which made me a little uncomfortable.
“Detain them. We’ll try to bring their vitality up enough to survive the infection and if they ask we’ll release them outside the gate but until all hope is lost and they have turned into a zombie we will treat them like any other person other than the obvious levels of caution.” Leo surprisingly spoke up for me.
There was a pointlessly long discussion about how we will be cautious with them before Lea just interrupted by saying “Treat them like humans and don’t let your guard down. Is it really that hard? Hurry up we’re wasting time” Her words stopped the procrastinating.
I pulled Ally to the side before she could run off for her watch.
“Be careful.” Her face showed a faint surprise but she nodded confidently.
“Aren’t you becoming a play boy, telling the cute girl to be careful before she goes on duty? Now stop raising death flags you idiot I’ll be fine.” She smirked.
“You know why I warned you” I grumbled but clearly wasn’t really annoyed.
“I know I know, easy target blah blah blah. Shoo already, I have an extremely boring day to get over and done with so stop letting me procrastinate dammit.” People will underestimate her gate since it’s two girls watching over it and while strong Ally isn’t invincible and she knows that as well. I only reminded her because it felt right not because I thought she needed it.
“No you really look all too happy to procrastinate.” I commented flatly and got a forehead flick in reply.
“I’m leaving, don’t raise any more death flags for me while I’m gone or I’ll kill you.” A small chuckle escaped from her mouth despite the serious voice she put on.
I decided not to say anything else so she could keep the illusion of a cool exit she fools herself with.
Time to get to work.