When he finally felt comfortable moving again, driven more by his increasing hunger pangs than by a real desire for movement, Rev crawled as quietly as he could to the door. This time he opened it as gradually as possible. It still groaned, but much less quietly. This time, there was no answering moan from his zombified jailor. Driven by his desperation, Rev scuttled out of his cell, following the wall in the opposite of the direction the zombie had shuffled in. Occasionally, cracks in the ceiling allowed a modicum of light to seep into the passageway he roamed through. It was barely enough to see, but those moments revealed essentially what he had expected. Dull grey stone cut into blocks that were held together with some form of mortar. It was all he saw in every direction, with no hint of the building’s layout.
He also didn’t encounter a door anywhere along the passageway. It seemed to just be a very long hallway. Rev gritted his teeth after the third time he glimpsed the long expanse of grey nothingness. Refusing to allow despair to seep into him, he continued edging his way down the hallway. He was becoming more comfortable navigating by his strange essence sense; having graduated to moving at a slow walk rather than an uncertain crawl through the dark when he heard a low moan from the passageway behind him. Fearfully, he accelerated his education; quickly taking a luckily non-literal crash course in fast-walking through the pitch black space.
His newfound speed wasn’t enough. Every moan he heard was closer than the last, and he was resolving to make a final stand when he stumbled into a sliver of light. It was all the incentive he needed. With no better location than one of the few lighted areas in the structure, Rev waited. He didn’t need to wait long. A dessicated husk of what he presumed to be a woman due to her long blond hair, and the patchwork scraps of a dress ambled into the light. It froze, moaning questioningly at him for several seconds as he pulled together his suddenly racing nerves. Quick as a thought, the zombie struck; jumping forward in a blur of motion. More by instinct than any kind of skill or thought, Rev brought his hand up into a guard position that intercepted the zombie’s face. It latched onto his arm, and he screamed before realizing that it actually wasn’t causing all that much damage. It certainly stung, but the zombie was failing to cause more than superficial cuts and bruises. As he stared at the creature gnawing his arm, several teeth fell out; clattering to the floor with a soft tapping sound.
A flash of memory ran through his mind about natural armor scaling with his spirit stat before he turned; slamming her head into the wall. Unexpectedly, her skull smashed into a pulpy mess as his investment in the strength stat finally manifested its value. Rev collapsed to the ground in terrified, bewildered shock, and scuttled away to the opposite wall; staring at the barely visible, pulped mess of what was theoretically a former person.
“What… what the fuck.” He said, more as a statement than a question as his mind caught up to the violence his body had dealt. That was when the worst part of the experience manifested. As he watched, bits of zombie flesh jiggled. At first, he thought it was simply a trick of the poor lighting, but then he saw a strip of zombie pulp slowly wiggle up toward the head; as if drawn by some kind of disturbing zombie magnetism. He scuttled away, watching as the body propped itself up; the head still not fully formed as the last bits of skull and flesh knit back together; burrowing into each other like a demented flesh quilt.
It was more than Rev’s wavering heart could stand. With a scream of terror, he bolted back the way he had come, not even slowing for the uncertain footing of the pitch black hall. He manged to outpace the zombie for over a minute before his stamina flagged, and he ground to a slow walk; his mind beginning to clear as the terror fled him. It was seconds later that the zombie slammed into him; silent until it struck, then roaring its victory as it attempted to bite into his neck with only moderate success. Rev emitted a high pitched shriek, driving his fist into and through her skull before rolling the limp corpse off, and resuming his terrified sprint through total darkness. Later, he would say that the strange squirming sensation of the pulped brain matter wriggling off of his closed fist of its own volition was the most disturbing part of the entire experience, but in the moment he barely noticed. Stark, mind-shattering terror was the only thing driving him. This time, his stamina flagged after only thirty seconds, and thought flooded back into him as he realized he needed a new plan. At the rate they were going, the zombie would win a war of attrition as he wore through his last reserves of energy, and then it would slowly, torturously strip his flesh bit by bit. The thought almost sent him sprinting again, but he forced the agonizing, all-consuming terror back as he tried to keep his head. Naturally, that’s when the zombie struck again.
Rev almost lost what was left of his sanity in that moment, but clamped his will down on the bubbling vortex of ravening lunatic fear as he pushed it off, and grabbed the creature’s arms instead. Naturally, it attempted to bite at his hands, but he held it firmly on the forearms, locking the arms in place. The head lacked the range of motion to reach him, while the creature lacked the leverage, strength, and intelligence to do more than windmill its legs uselessly; the occasional contacts leaving no more than small bruises against his increased natural armor. Like this, he frog-marched it back the way they had come through the pitch blackness. When his arms tired, he smashed the creature into the wall hard enough to pulp it again, then dragged the motionless corpse to his destination; moving faster than the trailing bits of flesh could follow.
Rev’s essence sense helped him detect when he had found his way back to the cell that had served as his spawn point, and he threw the motionless corpse inside with the last of his strength; slamming the door closed, and ensuring that it locked. Rev stared blindly toward the cell; shivering first from suppressed trauma as his body wound down his fight or flight response; then in revulsion as one of the trailing bits of flesh passed over his foot in its bid to rejoin the primary host.
Rev finally slumped to the ground in exhaustion as the last of his panic-fueled adrenaline faded from his body. Heedless of the quickly reforming corpse mere feet from him, he huddled up against the wall; still staring blindly at the pitch black space which he knew held the ravening dead woman. When the zombie reformed, he learned several things. Firstly, she couldn’t see any better in the utter darkness than he could. He determined this by the fact that she simply returned to her original patrol-style pattern; shuffling audibly in circles as she emitted low moans. Second, if she had any essence, it was completely undetectable to his essence sense. Granted, the whole point of the zombies was apparently that they were essence-depleted, and he currently only seemed able to detect metal and earth tinged essences. Still, the fact that his sonar-like essence sense was blind to them was valuable knowledge. Third was what happened when he activated the purification function of his core.
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Would you like to purify Unknown Common Tier Human Female?
Full purification: 1000 essence
Partial Purification: 0/1000 essence
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Full purification, naturally, would permanently cure her zombified state, but partial purification was essentially a slider that allowed him to devote essence to purification that only lasted for a set time. What’s more, the time conversion wasn’t linear. The minimum essence investment of 1 essence was worth exactly one minute, but two points of essence was worth two minutes and thirty seconds. Moving the slider higher continued to increase the time frame in a similarly non-linear manner until one thousand essence removed the time limit entirely. His hunger and thirst-addled brain refused to do the math as the time limit seemed to go up inconsistently; doubling from one point to the next only to have long stretches of only increasing by ten to twenty percent, then randomly tripling from a single extra point. He could also swear that the formula was changing dynamically due to unknown factors as he moved the slider up and down experimentally. The almost psychopathic need to understand the underlying formula spawned a light headache, so he closed the window.
“I’ll be back for you when I can spare the essence.” Rev thought silently as he shoved himself to his feet with the maximum possible stealth, and once again ambled down the hallway he had been following before his interruption.
It took half an hour to reach the end of the hallway; his journey proceeding much faster now that he felt comfortable walking at a brisk pace based purely on his essence sense. The hallway culminated in a simple wooden door. At first it refused to open, but his cell key proved useful once again when it opened this door as well. Beyond the door lay blessed light; a small courtyard with a bare dirt floor bounded by stone walls on all sides. He was forced to squint as his eyes struggled against the harsh glare of a setting sun framed inconveniently just opposite the door. Part of him wanted to collapse in relief as he finally left the pitch black prison environment, but he still had no idea where he could find food and water.
Forcing his exhausted body to continue forward, he entered the courtyard. There was a door in each of the four cardinal directions, and each door featured a decayed, completely illegible sign. Unfortunately it was clear that he didn’t understand the written language of this world. Sighing, he followed the first rule of adventure, and chose the door to the left. Once again, it led to a long hallway, and after half an hour he encountered more empty cells. With a shrug, he turned back; seeking to avoid more zombie encounters.
The third door was much the same, and he turned back again. Finally, the door to the right of his starting position yielded exactly what he needed. After another short hallway, he walked out into a large open space. Before he could begin exploring, lights flared into being around him as if reacting to his presence. What he could see looked like a central lobby area; crumbling desks and furniture littered the space haphazardly, with the center of the room dominated by a shattered marble statue.
Stepping gingerly around the stone chunks of a man with flowing long hair, a billowy robe, and a single dot in the center of his forehead, Rev examined the room for anything useful. All he found was decayed, crumbling paper, a few metal pens that had mostly given in to rust, and a single clay cup that was largely intact. Rev stuck two of the less decayed pens into his pants pocket in case he needed sharp objects later, but left the rest behind. Once again, he was faced with three mystery doors, marked by letters he couldn’t understand. This time the door on the left yielded the most important discovery.
After another short hallway, Rev found a door that positively thrummed with essence. Inserting his key, which once again proved effective, he opened the door to find a kind of freezer room. The air was cold, and as he stepped inside he realized the low temperature was being caused by a large metallic orb placed on a pedestal in the center of the room. It positively oozed essence, and as he stopped to touch at it with his recently acquired senses, he knew that he could draw on the energy in much the same way he had with his cell bars and the stone walls. The essence it exuded was dozens of times thicker though, and he decided he had a good place to cultivate in the near future so long as he could stand the cold.
Even more important than the essence were the many crates stacked against every wall. He counted at least a dozen two foot cube crates that were piled in each direction, and all of them contained food. The crates had been organized by type. One entire wall held nothing but frozen meat, another held vegetables and grains, including both rice and some kind of noodles, while the third held various kinds of fruits. He couldn’t identify the fruits or vegetables, which he chocked up to being on a different world, but he didn’t care. It was enough to know that he had a supply of food. Grabbing several vegetables that looked like round cucumbers, and a box of noodles, he hurried out of the room; grabbing chunks of rotting wood from the former desks in the lobby to use as fire-wood. Using his shirt to carry the full load, he transported his newfound treasure to the dirt courtyard.
Leaning on vague memories from the time his mother had talked him into joining the boy scouts for several months, which he had done more out of a sense of obligation than actual interest, Rev set to work; by bashing a wooden chunk against a stone wall, he made a pile of splinters of varying sizes. Collecting the smallest splinters into a pile, he used another chunk of chair leg as a surface; setting the pile on it. He then used the original wooden chunk to form a very crude mortar and pestle; grinding the splinters even further until they were more like a chunky powder than wood. Luckily, the fact that the wood was soft and dry from what seemed like years of decay was making the process much easier than it should have been. Finally, having formed the basis for his fire, he selected a long, thin stick left over from his earlier bashing.
After half an hour of mindlessly rubbing his stick against the wood powder while cursing at it, Rev finally managed to create a workable ember, and quickly piled several splinters onto it; blowing on the ember carefully. Finally, exhausted, battered, starving, and desperate, Rev’s fire began to spread over the piece of chair leg. A single tear fell as the simple comfort of a warm light provided his survival-tensed body with release.