The Sleeping Beast

As Asher slowly opened the door exiting the room, he was hit by a wave of stench, an unbelievably powerful stench that immediately made him puke out the little contents of his empty stomach.

“If this little stench is powerful enough to make you vomit, you won’t last long in war boy…”

Vulcans voice came with his signature mockery.

Asher did not pay any attention to the old man and slowly raised his lead looking around trying his best to restrain the buildup of new bile in his throat from escaping his mouth; his eyes quivered for a brief second as he saw the walls covered with bodies. They were kept on the wall by a somewhat greyish substance, but that was not what made his eyes quiver, it was that all these bodies were zombies and not one of them was a complete body.

Asher slowly approached one of the zombies on the wall that had a missing leg, as he got closer to the zombie; it seemed to have noticed his approach as its head snapped up

SQUEEEEEEEEE!

A loud screech came from it as it the very sight of prey revitalized it, it struggled against the substance that was holding it to the wall with all its pitiful might.

SQUEEEEEEE!

More screeching came, but this time it was not only the zombie that Asher had approached, it was every zombie that were bound to the walls.

“boyo I suggest you leave this place quick, you may have escaped the dimension collapse, but this place is not any less dangerous for you at the moment and you don’t want to be around when these things awaken the thing sleeping nearby”

Vulcan said, but this time he did not have his mocking tone, his voice was as serious as when he was warning Asher about the dimension collapse, hearing the serious tone in Vulcan’s voice, Asher turned his head to head towards the basement garage exit but then he paused.

“Kana said that I can increase the energy to strength my body from battle right?”

Asher asked in a low contemplative tone.

“Indeed you can…but trust me boy, you are not ready to take on the sleeping beast”

“I understand that but what around these things on the wall here?”

“hmmm the energy you get would be minuscule”

“But I can absorb it and store it in the medal on my chest right…if that’s the case won’t I be able to use the stored energy later to refine my body?”

“HAHAHA GOOD BOY, SMART BOY!”

Vulcan roared with laughter complementing Asher before he continued to say

“You can indeed do such a thing, to be honest that is the best course of action you can take, until you can find place truly safe to use the energy to refine your body you should just store everything in that medal of yours, remember this boy, use your gifts to your advantages, never be humble about them, they are yours to use so use and abuse them!”

Hearing Vulcan’s words, Asher turned back to face the zombie on the wall, he tightened his grip on Blue Moon as his eyes turned cold, in truth Asher knew these things were no longer humans and maybe it was because of what happened in the room, or maybe it was because after having so many of his memories forced to the surface he had regained some of his former disposition he did not feel anything towards these creatures as he moved his hand and with a quick swipe with Blue Moon he decapitated the zombie.

Swish!

With another swipe another zombies head fell to the ground, there was no blood spray as he killed the zombies, it was probably due to the fact that they had turned into zombies, but Asher did not pay no mind to this as he walked down the hallway decapitating every zombie that was on the walls on both his right and left side, sucking in all the energy that came from the bodies of the dead zombies and storing the energy in the golden medal that was on his chest.

When he reached the door way that led to both the staircase of the apartment building and the parking lot, the hallway was completely quite as it once was when he left the room.

“Vulcan…the sleeping beast you were talking about, it’s the one that plastered all those zombies to the wall?”

“That’s an obvious question boy, your smart and your instincts are good, you should stop second guessing yourself so much…in this new world second guessing your instincts will get you killed”

Hearing Vulcan, Asher nodded his head as he opened the door and left the hallway.

The stairs were utterly destroyed, from the first floor down and since he was in the second basement parking, he had no way of reaching the first floor, seeing this Asher slightly frowned, with the stair case gone he had no other choice than going through the basement parking, but remembering all the zombies that were there before and thinking of what Vulcan said about “the sleeping beast” Asher was almost unwilling in his heart to go through the parking lot.

“Can you sense its position Vulcan?”

“Why? Does prince charming want to go and wake the sleeping beauty?”

Vulcan replied to Asher’s question with more mocking making Asher slightly irritated.

“I could pick up its position if I really wanted to”

Vulcan said, but Asher noticed a slight strangeness in his voice

“Why do I hear a but in your voice Vulcan?”

“That’s simple boyo…I can but I won’t, to be honest I don’t think helping you all the time will do any good for you, you need to gain some confidence in yourself, so from now on and until we reach a safe location, you’re on your own, I’ll be going back into the book”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Hearing this Asher went stiff for a second but afterwards he could only sigh to himself and push forward.

As the staircase had collapsed, the only route left for Asher to take was through the parking garage, however, Asher advanced with some trepidation, he still recalled the amount of zombies that were there when he tried entering it with his elderly neighbor.

 It was pitch black inside the parking garage, however, because of the fusion between him and “The Book of Slaughter” his perception had increased by quite a bit thus allowing him to navigate through the darkness, but none the less Asher still choose to move at a slow pace, what Vulcan had said was still reverberating in his mind, he knew that he was more or less on his own in this place and with the knowledge of “the sleeping beast” sleeping somewhere close by, he could only nervously move forward at an almost crawling pace. Asher could see zombies bound to pillars and walls and like the others in the hallway there was none with a complete body, in fact, these zombies were in worse shape than the ones in the hallway, seeing this Asher couldn’t help but pause for a second as his heart rate increased and he began to sweat a little, what’s more, it became more apparent that these zombies were not just simply dismembered but they were eaten, even though Asher stood some feet away from the zombies, he could see bite marks on their bodies.

He did not want to approach the zombies any more than he had, if they noticed his approach and started to scream like earlier than he would no doubt be in an extremely difficult position, so he turned around to try to find another path with fewer zombies.

As he continued to walk he started to notice something else, there was moss and grass growing around the parking garage, which he found odd, because it would take many years for something like that to happen, but according to his knowledge with everything that happened it couldn’t have been more than two days, for that matter he never thought of it before because he did not have time, but if it had indeed been two days he would no doubt be hungry and thirsty, but he was neither of those.

“Perhaps it has something to do with the breathing technique”

He thought to himself, that would explain one issue, but the first issue of the moss and grass was still unexplainable, the only thing he could think of was to ask Vulcan, but no matter how much he tried no responses came, he could only shake his head helplessly and proceed forward.

“Is this some kind of sink or swim kind of thing?”

Asher said in his heart as he pressed on.

The basement was still littered with cars, but because he had no idea how long the beast would stay sleeping or where it was, he decided against searching the cars, he also thought that maybe he could start one and drive his way out, but something told him that would be an extremely bad idea as well so he quickly discarded that notion.

The darkness and the silence was slowly starting to get to Asher, the further he went the more he felt uncomfortable, he became somewhat jittery, the longer he stayed inside the basement the more he became nervous, the basement was not that large of a place to begin with, but he saw more and more zombies on the walls, but no sign of the sleeping beast, which made him draw two conclusions, either the beast was still asleep and he had yet to come across it, or it was awake and on the prowl, neither of the two meant good news, the routes he could possibly take were growing fewer and fewer, if things kept on going as such, eventually he was going to run into it, which was something he would rather avoid, as for the other reason, if it was on the prowl, how long until they ran into each other, this was something that made him extremely anxious.

After a few more minute’s Asher finally found a safe path, it had relatively no zombies and was practically a straight shot to the exist, Asher couldn’t help but smiling and releasing a small sigh of relief, he quickened his pace a bit and moved forward, he had enough of the garage and wanted nothing else but to leave it, but he realized that the further down the path he went the darker it grew, he slowed his pace back to a creep but then his body froze.

“What the hell is that?”

He thought to himself as his heart beat quickly increased and he started to sweat, the end of the hall was completely pitch black, he could no longer see through the pure darkness in front of him, every fiber in his body was screaming in warning and he instantly realized death…death was the only thing at the end of path, as  he quickly scanned around the area, he knew that it wasn’t the fact that the end of the path was too dark for him to see, it was actually blocked by something, it was a body of some sort, it was 3 meters in length and slowly breathing in a rhythmic way, which told him that it was asleep.

“The sleeping beast”

Asher said to himself, he instantly made the decision to find another way and turned but as soon as he turned his entire body froze once again; his breath was caught in his throat, his heart felt as if it stopped beating, his back was drenched in sweat and a cold sensation ran throughout his body, he slowly turned his head to look behind him, but what he saw were two red eyes staring at him through the darkness, they were cold and unfeeling, he felt as if he was caught in the vision of a tiger looking down on its prey, except this beast was that much more fierce, Asher’s face paled and his heart finally made a thump, but with that thump the beast made its move, before Asher could blink, it already crossed half the distance to him.