As he got startled by the sound he noticed an orange, mail shaped symbol on top of his hand. Taking a good look at it he decided it was best to prod it. Momentarily the screen popped up along with an opened mail.

Subject: Congratulations

Sender: System

Congratulations you have earned the title of Royal Undead Slayer. By killing an Elite Mutated Ghoul, which is considered a minor nobility, in its infancy you earned the right to a title.

It will give you recognition amongst fellow hunters, when equipped. Passively it will give you identification skill data on undead up to minor noble for the undead clans, including basic info for Named minor nobles.

With that mail he busted out laughing, this thing was a minor noble? An infant? It almost took his damn life. Still the new data would help quite a bit. If it had technical data like EMC value and weaknesses he would be happy. After taking a breather he walked all the way down to the basement and offed the 13 zombies in there, then he started to harvest the EMC. From them in total there were 24 zombies for harvest, the first alpha didn’t have any EMC in him which was curious.

Not long after, he was standing before the Ghoul, he decided to scan it first.

Ghoul (Elite) (Mutant)

This ghoul mutated due luck and devouring a lot of zombie commanders and finally it evolved, as the mutation was advanced intelligence and harder muscles it was destined to become a minor noble, an elite amongst elites. Unfortunately, it met an untimely end before it could develop any of its talents.

Level 10 (25)

EMC Bonus:  Elite-50% Mutant-50%

EUC: 2000 (5000)

Core: Could not develop.

He was utterly speechless. This damn bugger would give him 60EU value. It even could make a core, but he didn’t want to know how strong it would be when fully leveled. From the looks of it, it was just level 10 with being at its peak close to 25. This one he barely killed as for a stronger one…

Maybe his ball rounds didn’t kill him due to its unique perks, or it was normally that hard to kill. Either way it was dead… more dead.

He had to be on the lookout in the future for monsters with cores or buy them. He didn’t know how useful or similar they were to the one in his Omni-Tool, but he had a good feeling.

Removing the helmet, his hair got pulled somehow. As he looked at it he saw 3 claw marks opening the 2mm thick steel like a can of sardines. This made him go dizzy, if he didn’t manage to shoot its arm off he would have probably died, brains splattered and all.

As he counted his earning while getting rid of the corpses his stockpiled EMC came to the whooping 216. After he finished with the disposal of the bodies (in the basement), he was eager to upgrade. Opening the menu, he upgraded the Energy generation of the core, it went from 1 to 2. Surprisingly the price was still 100 so he upgraded it once more. As the regen hit 3 the upgrade price climbed up to 1000EU. In his flask were left only 16, feeling the need to gain more and now he was quite confident to get them.

But first he had defenses to build. He went to the 4th floor and started working in his makeshift workshop. He nailed planks together and made 50cm thick wooden walls, second he placed them on the 4th and 5th floor to replace the broken ones. As for the front door, he would repair it in the future. Everything valuable is 4th floor and up anyway.

His working hours came to an end, as did the 9th day.

Day 10: 7am-64% Power

His morning was like any other, get up have breakfast, took a shower due to the still working water, not using it for the morning tea thou. With a big bright day ahead, full of carnage, yes he was ready to hunt from the comfort of his home. He could wait 3-4 days to get the materials for the skin suit but he is anxious. He almost died yesterday due to the density of the zombie groups. He had to thin them out.

First was resupply.

Using 5EU to scavenge some steel from scrap and use it to refill his ammo, on average he could around 55 balls total and since he needed to remake 2 APHE round he needed to refine more corpses but he would leave that for later.

When he scanned the dead zombie alpha-1 yesterday he couldn’t extract any EMC so it means that the other one devoured the energy in order to evolve. In other words, he collects the mana in the corpses themselves.

Fortunately, now he has a proper lure for the zombie groups.

As he got to the roof with his two 50round mags, he waited until a good zombie group came in the open. Some of them walked here and there and finally, one walked straight over to middle of the boulevard right in front of his block.

Seating himself comfortably on the bend of the roof he hefted the rifle and prepared to shoot. 24 shots later the zombies were dead… again. Now all that’s left was waiting.

As he expected another mini horde walked by and the zombie alpha couldn’t help himself and jumped to devour the splattered brains. And it was what Plamen was waiting for. Due to its erratic movements during mealtime it took him 4 round burst to nail the bugger in the head.

Fortunately, it just started to eat so the first lure was mostly “preserved fresh”, and now he had two. Killing off the normal ones shortly after. He managed to kill 7 more groups before he ran out of metal marbles, the ones in his pockets included. He got down from the roof and quickly made more. On his way down he filled a whole drum mag.

He walked with confidence to his kill zone. Once he stepped on the road and looked around there were a dozens of groups visible just on the road. Fortunately for him, they were far away enough and barely paid him any attention.

As he walked to retrieve the hunters prize another group popped up from the corner of the office block across the street.

He calmly took aim and engaged first. He hits the first one of the group and killed two more before the alpha reacted and sent the group after him. Continuous fire fell on front line of the horde as the zombies in their frenzy tripped on their former comrades’ corpses.

Plamen didn’t know it but he was smiling. As he was laying fire on them and retreating by a few steps after every shot he constantly opened distance between himself and the chibi-swarm.

All in all, he was impressed by todays marksmanship, he was improving steadily.

As the dead were laid to rest once more he was happy, he was relatively rich. His gains from 10 groups in total were 168 normal ones and 6 alphas totaling at 594 and 610 total EMC. Comparing this to yesterday he was indeed rich for the moment. If he was not mistaken 1000 copper coins were one silver and 1000 silver coins were 1 gold one and so on. That comes around 610 copper coins if he sells it to the system, still far from the 30 silver for the Analytical VI.

He managed to Upgrade his energy storage two times before the piece increased to 1000. Now he had an official level 3 core, for some reason it still stayed at T1 so maybe there are other requirements?

Anyway simple problems for later, now it was time to clean the mess? Or not, he was out of ammo and couldn’t pile the corpses without exposing himself to danger. There was no energy left in them so no unknown mutations would occur. He still had work to do and was almost out of metal bits to refine.

An average car weight at 2 tons give or take 500kg, an engine is around 150 and with transmission it goes up to 270kg in most cases. He isn’t a mechanic, but he had the library. So the first thing he needed to do was to scrap a few cars. Looking at them there are 8 cars in front of his block. He selected a good sized family car with (minivan one), and started to dismantle the others.

During his scavenging he found 3 car keychains, the van included, so the other keys were probably in the neighboring block. Turning off the alarm of one, he started to disassemble. Since he was close to his apartment block entrance he could run up and barricade at any time.

First re removed the four doors to refines them, each one is about 60kg of steel and a bit of plastic. All in all, after stripping the plastic glass and other unnecessary crap the door was about 50kg of steel which gave him 2.5kg for each door priced at the low, low price of 34 EU with his 71EU in battery he could refine 2 of the doors. He had to find a carton box to store all the rounds though. After 4 hours of nonstop making of metal balls he almost lost his marbles, thankfully he had a whole library to read.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

This time he focused on how to dismantle cars, and how to drive and maintain them. He also found the need for fossil fuels to be redundant for him. He could just make an electric car or something. It would be a good project for the future, he could build it part by part and assemble It without worry, even add magnetic suspension to boot. No need to use batteries and the sort since now he had money he could probably make it use EMC saving a ton of space. He only needed a solid base to hold all the weight he would add.

He needed to mount proper containers first of all. Even though an electric and futuristic van was a good idea, he would roll with the family one for the moment.

He still had daylight left so he started to dissemble the engine, he put on dish washing gloves beforehand dough, the oil would be nasty. All the while working he had his trusty gauss rifle close by. From the 2 doors he managed to make 840 ball rounds which was staggering. If you don’t count the 95% loss of materials. As he was thinking about it he got an idea for his new project.

 An arch furnace. He could probably find the schematics in his data banks and learn from it. It would probably waste a lot more power than the extractor, but the efficiency would be close to 100, he even had to learn metallurgy. He was starting to get another headache.

Disassembling away he got the perfect spot to put the heavy metal doors. He was too lazy to use the plasma cutter, not to mention the lack of protective gear.

After he set them to the left most side of the basement and emptying the room from the other clutter, he planned to use the adjacent one for the furnace and this one for scrap storadge. All he needed were proper materials, and rocks, lots of rock.

But that, is a story for another day… tomorrow.

Day 11: 10am-22% power (67EU)

Groggily he got off of bed, yesterday he worked his ass off by studying and dissembling car doors, today he had to start refining corpses.

Thanks to his upgrades he now produces energy 3 times faster hence he should be able to make stuff out of carbon faster.

First he scavenged a corpse from the basement and got to work. He had to make a sweep and clean up the streets. He stated by dragging the corpses away from his block and piling them up as high as he could which wasn’t that big, he wasn’t a one-man army. And were are talking 170 corpses.

It took him most of the day to achieve this feat of housework. And unfortunately the day came to an end.

For the next week he did the same thing over and over. Get up eat, hunt zombies, make piles of corpses, scavenge for food and supplies. And for all this time he didn’t see any survivors. Well alive one anyways.

One of the zombies had leather armor and quiver on its hip but nothing new. Most of the zombies were surprisingly preserved. Even though it has been close to two weeks they don’t decompose, well until he killed them for energy.

He even met another ghoul. Those buggers have a taste for decomposing corpses. And since he was piling them on the boulevard he had plenty of lures. They barely noticed him. Fortunately, those little buggers were normal level 10 ghouls they even were a small pack of 3. Thank god he kept sweeping the neighborhood, though normal they were faster than zombies. There claws couldn’t break steel as easily, which he found the hard way.

 And boy does the 30 EU per kill was good. In total he managed to sweep around a radius of 200 meters around his block. In total he gained another 1167 EMC, from the 20 or so groups, which he saved for later use.

 Thankfully the block is situated next to a river, or more precisely the whole boulevard runs parallel to a river. It isn’t very big, just 4-5m across with depth from 50-300cm depending on where you stand.

What’s good about it is, that it was dug in during city planning in order to prevent overflow, it even had a walls build to prevent landfalls during rain, making it a good 3-5m drop to the river bank.

And you know what’s the best part? ON the other side of the river, just across the bridge is a machine factory. Back in the days when the city used to be an economical hotspot they made quite a bit of the machines used across the multiple factories doting the cityscape, now? Most of them are abounded today, this one still machined metal to some point, it’s a real shame how the mighty have fallen.

He would clear it out soon. After he started with the nearby blocks. He had to clear the office building, and the 2 apartment block flanking his. Maybe he would build a wall in due time to make a nice safe zone for himself. But he needed Combat AI for sentries first.

And today? Today he would finally make inventory. From the foods he had around 500 1liter jars of preserved fruits and vegetables, close to 60gk of pasta. 26kg of flour, 10 kg of rice, 35kg of food with long shelf life and around 50kg of food that would get spoiled soon like chocolate, sweets and meat which already did and was thrown away.

Unfortunately, the store under the office building was supposed to resupply with goods Monday next week and the apocalypse came Friday evening so no proper long lasting food and big supplies in there. He had the idea to synthesize food block from extracted materials, from the zombies. But somehow he couldn’t make himself do it. Even though he is going to kind of use the zombies flesh as an armor.

And medication, he had almost everything you could think off, and if he ran out he could synthesize more. From something other than zombies, I hope.

Well mental block aside his situation was looking good. He needed to eat around 1kg of food a day vitamins included, if he was rationing and he wasn’t planning to. Water he had around 80liters bottled and would find more, he added a water purifier to the to do list.

During his recent work spree, he moved a few furniture pieces to the fourth floor and made a proper materials storage room. The fridge as the most robust one was used for storing Omni-Tool Materials. Due to zombie refinement he gathered enough materials for the skin suit, and even a bit extra for the helmet.

While he was slave driving himself, he had thought about the suit more properly, he found it somewhat lacking, the arms and legs were good. But he had a thick rubber carbon covered sleeveless shirt to protect his torso and his family jewels were left defenseless, so he designed a codpiece (google it) and made the front part of the jacket long enough to cover it.

Second he made a heavy type armor with thicker plates to go over the jerkin (look it up before commenting) and finally he modified the helmet design, it was mostly unchanged but he put heavy duty air filters on the both sides of the mouth, due to certain materials (carbon nanotubes, bigger ones) it could filter everything bigger than an oxygen molecule, viral free with a small oxygen tank and an oxygen extractor.

Using a specific crystal (look oxygen retaining crystal or something) and a pressure regulator he could harvest oxygen even when its dissolved in to water, not to mention his water electrolyzer. And finally he put a one-way black tint on the visor, for safety reasons. Oh and a voice modulator for a Darth Vader feel.

All that’s left was to clean the filters regularly which would be annoying if he didn’t make it 3 thin layers, easily replaced.

And finally he got to fabricate the skin suit, while he was at it he started to read the library once gain he had to earn to refine materials properly, although he knew that it could become irrelevant once his robotic servant reached high enough proficiency and work somewhat by themselves.

As the work was done he stripped down to his underwear, put the suit on and finally the helmet. Looking himself in the mirror he found it somewhat lacking, he was quite slender almost looked skinny and the helmet on top of that looked silly. He made it a bit bigger so that he could add padding, rubber and cotton mesh for comfort under the hardened graphene exterior. You can’t make that without an atomic assembler. The codpiece looked nice though.

Ultimately, he found the evilest and ultimate problem he lacked a bat belt I mean a utility belt. He didn’t have pockets, nor did he have a place to hold his gun properly. True his gun was designed without a strap so he had to affix one to it… somehow.

With a quick design he made the super belt of his dreams. It had 6 black pouches, 4 small in front and 2 at the back, with 4 secure places on the sides to add drum magazines. When he placed his spare one and it just clicked in to place.

Lovely.

The pouches were big enough to hold 2 of the spike clips in front and 3 in the back ones without problems. Since he felt somewhat empty he made another 6 clips 3 drum and 3 heavy, with the appropriate ammo of course.

All that’s left are the neon lights to make him look like some super soldier, thanks to the graphene the armor was a darker shade of black, thanks to the lack of reflective surfaces, he would blend in a shadow, none fucks given about enemy awareness.

Best part the suit, with the helmet on it is air thigh, after he closed the air filters and switched to internal air supply of course. With the inbuilt heating system and thanks to the thermal insulation, he could probably survive vacuum of space until his oxygen ran out.

While enjoying his comic-con look he noticed something missing, punches and kick were all the rage but we wanted something with more… swag. A sword sounded perfect but he lacked proper knowledge to use it and was obvious with what he was armed.

Now he had extra energy generation so he could waste some on experiments so why not. He looked at the Omni-Tool panel. Nothing new and surprising. He selected the multitool Module and fiddled with the options. Not long after an interesting option greeted him. Overcharge.

He had no idea what it did but he turned it on anyway form its description it improves performance of tools at the cost of extra energy. Usually this module barely uses any energy the hardlight constructs were recycled even if the broke… broke. That though was repeating through his mind.

The multitool module tools were a lot, and I mean a lot. Most of the time he just thinks of the tool he needs and bam it makes it. Usually it fits the job perfectly other times? Not so much, due to lack of experience of course.

If the tools became more robust he could use them as a weapon. A surprise weapon, or even an Omni-Blade. True the real one was made from flash-forged carbide blade or whatever. But the game didn’t have hardlight holograms, aka photonic crystals.

If he could make them stronger he could make actual combat armor from thin air, in the game Tech Armor mostly serves to shred any and all attacks on the user and in turn reducing damage. But proper armor could absorb the hit itself.

If only he could make skills. For now, he doesn’t know how. But he could try to work something out. So far the module reacted to his wishes maybe he has to want a wrist mounted blade really hard? Or a sword or whatever.

He first tested it with deferent knives, a butcher knife, a bread knife, a fruit knife etc. It created them almost instantly. It was working well so far. He focused on the image of a wrist mounted blade. But he forgot to think about the vambrace connecting it to the hand as a result the crystalline blade fell off, usually he spawns them in his palm.

He focused on the image, the crystal image flickered on and off a few times and each was closer to his mind image than the previous one. And finally on the 13th time it was made. It wasn’t as flashy as the one in the game, it had more assassiny feel to it. It was just a blade about 1m starting from the top plate of the Omni-Tool extending forward, it looked quite stabby.

 And of course, a pleasant screen greeted him.

- A new tool has been made

- Register? (Y/N)

 - Y

- Name:

- Omni-Blade

-Generating Skill

Omni-Blade (Unique)

A tech skill. It is a specialization of the multitool module. It allows for a blade attached to the Omni-Tool to be made, resulting in a deadly surprise. The crystal can be reinforced with extra energy to increase hardness.

By default, the tool is with a monomolecular edge making it extremely sharp, unfortunately due to its crystalline nature it is somewhat brittle and lacks durability, additional energy might be supplied to remedy the problem.

-Default Durability: 1/1

-Deploy: 1EU+1 For each durability point above 1