You have entered a Hard Mode Aspirant Trial of Zombies! Defeat all zombies to clear the trial.

Alex had woken up restless. A day of training had been good to clear his mind and slow down slightly, but it hadn’t changed the underlying reality. He had less than thirteen days to gain nine levels, it was time to get moving.

Conversation with his friends last night had been… awkward. It was clear that none of them were entirely sure how to handle Alex’s problems, and the uncertainty left a weight in the air. Plenty of things were left unsaid, as Alex had done his best to shut down any inquiry about Inspire or how he was coping.

His friends didn’t have a way to fix things, but he did. Get more powerful. After this trial, he would be using another reward. He wanted to see if he could use the massive reservoir of energy attached to his soul. Already, he had formed an odd relationship with it. The mana wasn’t hostile, it was other. It had its own goals, and he needed to work with them. If he managed to find a way to use the mana in service of his own improvement, it should happily go along with his plans.

If that didn’t work, he had a backup. Reach Tier 1, and hope that Mr. Stirling’s hypothesis about the mana type being taken away was correct.

Trying to sort out how he was doing would only waste time that needed to be spent on improvement. He could handle the rest after. If that meant avoiding a real conversation with Becca for another few weeks, then he would have to make sure he was very busy.

Unlike the boar trial, Alex was not immediately faced by a group of monsters after entering. He found himself in a field, much like last time, and pivoted in a full circle to check his surroundings.

There were plenty of zombies to be found, most a good distance away. They were fairly spread out like the boars, but there weren’t any groups smaller than four or five as far as Alex could see. Most were larger than that.

At his eight o’clock, Alex found a monster that seemed a bit too put together to be a zombie. It was nearly fifty feet away, well out of striking distance for anyone but Muhammad. The monster faced him for a second but didn’t brainlessly throw itself forward.

He’d already found the boss. Their speculation that it was an intelligent ghoul was proved accurate. Hard Mode could at least try to be less predictable. A necromantic construct would’ve been an interesting surprise.

As a nice bonus, it would’ve been easier. Alex winced as the ghoul let out a keening wail.

Looked like they were doing things the hard way.

Next to him, Jess cursed. She didn’t let the unfortunate situation distract her though, “Muhammad, what group is going to reach us first?”

“It looks like that scream only drew a few groups,” Muhammad answered, “We have five zombies approaching from behind, another six coming from near the ghoul, and seven from straight ahead. The group from near the ghoul will reach us first.”

“Seems like a wave format, then,” Alex stated. Thanks to the tier-up reshuffling trials, they were the first ones to attempt this specific location. That meant that they hadn’t known exactly what to expect. Still, years spent learning and preparing weren’t useless. They’d struggled in their first trial, and now they were hungry to prove that the education hadn’t gone to waste.

“If the zombies rely on the boss calling waves to assault us, the trial will be trivialized by Alex heading over to finish it off,” Muhammad pointed out. He had already launched an arrow at the group of five zombies, but the distance was too far for the wound to be much more than an annoyance to an undead monster.

“Ghouls are quick,” Jess replied, “If it retreats he could easily get pulled away from us or into another group while we’re stuck fighting nearly twenty zombies without him. Charge the group of six, it will put us near the ghoul in case we want to try that.”

Their charge wasn’t swift enough to border on reckless, but they wanted to engage this group quickly to limit the maximum number of zombies they would have to face at once. They had no way of knowing if the next wave would be triggered after a set time frame or by killing most of the current group of monsters. Staying on the defensive and discovering it was triggered by time could see them outnumbered even more severely.

With the zombies also coming at them, the gap was quickly closed. Becca, Jess, and Anthony clashed with the group of zombies spear first, with Alex bringing his longsword to bear against another. He came in low, slashing his sword into the creature’s knee. The joint was mangled, and the zombie stumbled.

The unnatural toughness of the creatures wasn’t the same as a high Toughness attribute. They weren’t harder to injure, injuries just meant less. If you chopped off a zombie’s head, it might keep on fighting for a while before it finally went down.

On the other hand, zombies could technically be beaten by landing a series of minor cuts until the magic animating them ran out.

In short, they had hit points. Alex was born too long after the fall to have actually played video games outside of a few samples in the library’s basement, but the convenient terminology had stayed in the city’s vernacular.

The disconnect between a zombie and a video game character was that having the hit points needed to stay operational meant very little if you couldn’t walk. Tier 0 zombie fighting tactics thus resembled a group of medieval war criminals maiming their enemies in terrible ways before finally finishing them off.

Alex’s friends were pulling back from their initial blows. They had charged into a collision, but they’d been careful enough to make sure that their spears didn’t get stuck in the monsters. Several zombies were now sporting stomach wounds, but there were two that hadn’t been injured by their initial charge.

Zombies were slow, but asking for a complete failure to react to their charge would be too much. An unmolested monster pushed past its compatriot that had been wounded by Becca, but her enhanced Agility was shown as she easily slid back into a strong stance and stopped it in its tracks with her spear in its neck.

Soon there were four fully dead zombies and two crawling towards them on the ground. Jess motioned for Alex to finish them off, and he moved to do so as she spoke, “That went well. Good reaction, Becca.”

“The other two groups are going to reach us at nearly the same time,” Muhammad stated, “I’ve managed to slow four down enough that they’re far behind.”

He drew another arrow as he spoke, and loosed the shot after he finished. Muhammad’s years of practice and definite talent were shown as the arrow traveled thirty feet and slammed directly into the knee of the zombie. Alex saw that the monster had another arrow sticking out of its upper thigh just above the knee.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

A near miss like that wasn’t something to be ashamed of, but Alex was sure that Muhammad had been upset by it. Hitting a target that small from nearly 100 feet was no easy task, but Muhammad had managed four similar shots while they fought the other zombies.

“Make that five,” Alex grinned. The group of seven was down to five, and the group of five was down to two. He could see the other zombies limping behind their fellows, but the already mediocre pace was even worse because of the arrows that had struck their legs. It looked like Muhammad had been busy while the rest of them engaged in melee.

“Alex, take the duo and then hunt down the stragglers,” Jess ordered, “Disengage and come back to us if you hear the ghoul call another wave.”

Alex moved immediately. The zombies were exactly what he wanted to fight, today. Small enough for a longsword to be effective. Numerous enough to get the adrenaline pumping. Hardy enough that he could work out his frustrations and stress.

After the first engagement, he was confident that his friends would be fine against five zombies. No impulse arose, but he didn’t need one to know what he wanted to do.

The zombies moved to meet him. Alex pivoted beyond the reach of one and met the other’s arm with his sword. The result of the collision was obvious, and the zombie’s hand was left mangled.

Alex went on the offensive. Taking advantage of the training he’d gone through with Mrs. Stirling to make full use of his attributes. He was better than these monsters in every way, and he proved it as he put them down.

They should’ve headed for undead trials in the first place, Alex decided. Part of their improved performance came from their upgrades, but that wasn’t all of it. They were able to fight more aggressively than most because of the healing waiting outside of the trial. Zombies didn’t kill fast, and even a series of cuts and bruises from a fight gone wrong wasn’t as bad as a collision with a boar.

It was odd that the Imprinted hadn’t realized that when they set them up against the boars for their first trial.

Alex shook off the distracting thought and quickly went after the stragglers. He’d finished his first two opponents fast enough that they hadn’t closed the distance yet, but they were approaching. Having a crippled leg didn’t stop them, but it did make them weak and unthreatening.

Forget the impulses of Inspire. Even Alex’s adrenaline was fading as he methodically ran down the zombies. These monsters weren’t much of a threat.

After he finished off the third of five stragglers, another wail sounded.

Thinking a trial was too easy was just tempting fate, it seemed. Alex retreated, having only ventured a few dozen feet from his team.

“Three groups again. A total of twenty-two zombies.” Muhammad stated, “Two of the groups are going to meet up with each other before they reach us.”

“Start picking off as many as you can,” Jess replied, “This is where things get rough.”

The cloth armor of the previous fight had been discarded for leather gear, and Alex was the only one who had opted to keep his forearms bare. Against numbers like they were going to face, a few scrapes were inevitable. As long as they managed to avoid being overwhelmed, they could make it through.

They engaged the individual group first, a total of nine zombies that had been reduced to six before their clash. Muhammad was firing away, but he had brought plenty of arrows.

His knives were a good backup, but if he needed to use them it probably meant that they had been surrounded and the fight was about to get much harder. There was a decent chance that would happen in the future, if the waves continued to be called before the last was finished.

Alex got to work making sure that didn’t happen. He cut down the zombies they faced quickly, focusing on optimizing his movement. He’d let his discipline run a bit slack in the last trial, and he’d fought a bit too aggressively against the first wave of zombies here. He didn’t need to be wary of shallow cuts, the real enemy was exhaustion. Wave trials, especially ones filled with zombies, didn’t take you out on the early waves.

By running around to monopolize kills on wounded targets, he drained himself more than he should have. He was still well within his limits, but he’d start pushing them if he kept going at that pace. With Inspire oddly silent, it was better to slow down and conserve his energy.

Jess hadn’t been necessarily wrong to send him off after stragglers. He needed the contribution and the others were able to focus on their targets confident that he had the others handled. The problem was the time between waves. It was shorter than it should be.

The massed group of thirteen zombies had been made into eleven before they met, but that was still nearly three zombies for each of them. Alex handled more than his three, the only zombie that managed to affect him left a shallow cut on his arm that was hardly noticeable. Anthony got punched in the chest when a zombie got past his guard, but his armor made that a minor issue.

Still, the fight wasn’t quite over when the call sounded for the third time. Alex frowned, “How many more zombies are out there?”

“It looks like it’s going to be five waves,” Muhammad answered, “Around 150 zombies in total.”

Alex winced, that meant the waves were going to continue increasing in size. If the boss struck alongside the fifth wave, it could be a serious threat.

Or, it would be just as easy as the first wave. It was hard to hate Inspire when the mana made things so much simpler.

Alex pushed the thought away. He was almost certain it was his own, untouched by Inspire, but that didn’t mean it was worth considering. Relying on power that wasn’t his own wasn’t how he would become powerful in his own right. He needed to earn it.

Inspire staying away was a good thing, even if it meant that he ran himself a bit ragged facing monsters.

The voice reminding him that he wasn’t likely to be the one to suffer if the group struggled definitely wasn’t coming from the mana. It was far too authentic for that.

The third wave passed slowly. The group had been tied up by the last of the second wave for too long to take down any of the groups before the others could join. They still tried, but Alex was forced to turn and face a second, thankfully smaller, group before they finished the first. Muhammad dropped his bow for the first time and joined him, withdrawing a knife as they worked to dismantle undead.

The two of them fought a quick battle. There was no time for conserving energy, as a larger group was not far behind. If they were both tied up for too long, the larger group might overwhelm their allies.

Alex fought, and the zombies fell. He moved into a rhythm, noticing but not worrying over the wail that he heard as he engaged the last monsters of the third wave. His friends were quickly forced to disengage, moving to go after a group of ten that would strike them at the same time as a group of twelve if they didn’t reposition across the field.

Alex went for the group of twelve. Maybe it was impulse, maybe it was just who he was. He’d only taken a few shallow cuts at this stage, and he knew that his Toughness was high enough to handle several more without issue. He didn’t fight to kill but to delay. The zombies let him kite them, but he couldn’t bring them too far away from his friends without leaving them himself.

Alex took several more cuts from this group, but it wasn’t anything too severe. The zombies had strong fingernails, but Alex’s Toughness wasn’t comparable to a natural human’s. Even solid contact couldn’t leave anything particularly deep. Most blows that hit him fell uselessly against his armor as he made sure to make use of the leather.

His main goal was to avoid attempts to grab and hold him. One against twelve was foolishness, but the zombies weren’t powerful enough to capitalize quickly as long as he stayed moving. If he was alone, he would’ve needed to flee, there was no room for offense when he was outnumbered so badly. Instead, he was joined by Becca and Muhammad after wasting the monsters’ time for a few minutes.

They didn’t scold him for going off alone, seeing that he was fine. The fight continued, and Alex spared a glance to check Jess’s and Anthony’s conditions. They were fighting together behind him, maybe ten feet away. Their fight was more of a steady retreat towards Alex and the others, as they didn’t share Alex’s exceptional Toughness.

The sight spiked Alex’s adrenaline, and he set upon the remaining zombies before him with renewed vigor. The sooner they died, the sooner he could relieve his friends.

The wail signifying the fifth wave came from much closer than the others. Alex turned around to see the ghoul bearing down on Jess and Anthony while it called for the last of its brethren.

The impulse felt like an offer, instead of a demand. Alex didn’t think twice.