When I sluggishly crawled back to the cave entrance in this weird half-awake state, I ran into someone I deemed familiar . . . but not very surely, though.

". . ." I stared at the creature sitting at the entrance of the cave with his back against the wall while he gasped for breaths, blood was coming out from his mouth.

I began to use the knowledge I obtain from eating the brain of the corpse earlier again and figured out that this creature is called a human, and it was a male. His state was quite bad as he lost an arm and an eye.

Also from the knowledge I obtained, I also understood by seeing his blond hair that he was a man with Northern origin. By Northern I meant the Northern lands of this continent of course.

"Huh," the man spotted me approaching him slowly from winthin the shadows of the cave's interior. "Who are you!?" He shouted.

At the time, my awareness towards languages was still very dull, so I only understood one or two words he spoke, but generally I got the idea that he was wary of my existence. He was injured heavily and couldn't do anything against me, however.

". . . me?" I used all I got to utter out a simple word with a strange accent. I haven't used my tongue for all these years after all.

The man got even more vigilant towards me as he gripped his sword with his only arm and slowly stood up, murmuring. "A zombie with newly formed consciousness? Strange. . ."

Without even saying anything, the man randomly swung his sword, creating a cutting force rushing towards me despite the distance between us. My sleepy consciousness somehow instantly recognized this phenomenon as a Sword Skill, also everything regarding the skill was transmitted to me as pure information.

"!!!"

It seemed like the brain I ate belonged to a skilled warrior, as I could use his diverse knowledge about combat to instinctively move my body and dodged the sword skill.

At the same time, by judging the situation using those combat experience, I deemed it possible to make a counterattack using a quite similar skill, but with just my fist.

"Gaah!!"

Surprised by the fact that I could dodge his sword skill so skillfully, the man's movement got interrupted for a biref second. Thanks to this margin, I successfully delivered a strike on his chest, sending a shockwave that shook all his internal organs away from their original positions. Of course, my other fist was crushed when I punched the wall, so I wasn't using that one.

The man was standing quite near the wall he leaned his back against earlier so when I blew him away with my strike, his back crashed into the wall, rendering him unconscious instantly.

"It . . . hard . . ." I murmured in a strange accent just like earlier.

It wasn't his bone that was hard, but the control of the skill I just used was. While it's true that I obtained all the information on the skill from the brain I consumed earlier, theory and practical use weren't the same thing. I learned that it was going to take time to get used to fighting while using all these skills and magic I possessed.

In the first place, I had no idea if I could even use magic as a zombie. Within my understanding, one needs a proper body to be able to lead mana around, manipulating it to your liking and from there become able to use magic.

Just a simple Martial Skill I used just now already posed quite some challenge to control. Had the man not been heavily injured, the blow wouldn't have had enough force to harm him in anyway possible. I was aware that the skill Heavy Strike I used just now lacked nearly half the force needed to match what the skill really is—however my superhuman strength was enough to make up for it somehow.

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When I checked, the man was already dead.

As I looked more closely, my mind had a spark.

I sat there wondering about why did this guy look so familiar for a while and finally recalled him being one of the two rude buddies who blew me and Bob away a couple weeks ago—the name Bob was utterly random, by the way.

Have they been fighting all this time?, I thought as I began to consume his corpse exactly how a zombie would normally. It was like a conditioned reflex to me almost.

Half-way through, I realized that I wasn't gaining anything good from eating his corpse, so I stopped and broke the skull from his spine, removing the brain from within the cranium.

. . . and of course, I gulped the brain down.

Slowly, my mind began to digest all the knowledge he stored in his brain. Some were overlapping with what I obtained from the previous corpse, some were brand new. I took my time and sat inside the cave, digging through all the information and knowledge I had with me at the time.

Before I even noticed, my self-awareness rose one step higher than earlier. Seemed like the man I just killed was also someone of the high-class being. Probably Lord-class, I made a guess.

After absorbing knowledge from two brains of two powerful creatures, my understanding about the world became a lot clearer.

For example the thing about "class" I just mentioned.

In this world, living being's strength is ranked into Common, Unique, Lord, Mythical, and Divine class. However, before even judging these more conclusive ranks, creatures decide their leaders and higher-ups through their own racial hierarchy.

For example Goblins. These monsters are born as normal Goblins, then through time, depends on the type of energy that they absorbed, they'll evolve into Hobgoblins. After that are Ogres, and later on, a minority of goblins can even reach Gargantuas. Of course, there are unique individuals with mutations and exceptions.

Then at their fifth evolution, which is beyond Gargantua, they'll reach Unique class as they break free from Common class. For goblins, they can evolve into things like Cyclops or Minotaurs, etc. beyond Gargantua.

From Unique class and beyond, there is no fixed rule on how many evolutions a creature needs before reaching the next classification.

Some can go straight to Lord class one evolution after Unique, some can be stuck at Unique for several evolutions before becoming Lords. Same thing applies for Mythical and Divine class. Though, nobody knows what lies beyond Divine class.

That being said, not all creatures are born Common class. Dragons are Unique class the moment they leave their mother's womb. Some Dragon individuals are even Lord or Mythical class by default. Of course, Divine class is also not an exception. Some supreme beings are just extremely strong since birth.

For a creature that was originally Common class like me, absorbing two brains of two other creatures of Lord class or higher put me through a big leap in evolution.

At that time, I didn't know even with the knowledge I had . . . but later on, the me in the future actually figured out that my half-awake state as a zombie right now is called a Zombie Duke. Of course, not fully a Zombie Duke yet, but an early stage of becoming one.

Incidentally, for zombies, the first four evolutions are Zombie, Zombie Knight, Zombie Baron, and Zombie Duke.

I was quite close to stepping into Unique class, but the energy from the two corpses wasn't enough to push me that far.

Speaking of energy, each kind of creature has a specific place called their Core—where they store all of their most fundamental life force. By eating these parts, other creatures can absorb the energy, making themselves stronger.

In humans case, their Core is actually split into their brain and their heart . . . but their heart is worthless to zombies. However, their brains have nothing worth absorbing for other creatures. This is not explanable, as it's a set rule of the world. Us dwellers can only accept it and obey in order to get stronger.

Back to me sitting absentmindedly inside the cave.

I really did take my time and sit there processing all the knowledge I obtained recently. Took me five days straight to fully integrate all of them into my mind—not sure if I had a brain, though . . .

During that period of five days, I learned everything about the world that was mentioned in the knowledge I obtained from those two unfortunate corpses. Everything was so new and interesting, I couldn't even stop myself from wanting to know more. I've never known about any of these things while being a zombie.

"Enough . . . sitting," I mumbled to myself as I finally stood up and decided to go look for more brains. I really wanted to know more and more and more.

When I looked again, my fist that was crushed by punching the wall had already healed since long.