The night passed in a nearly constant blur of violence, gore, and hacking zombies to pieces. I blocked lumbering charges, severed rotting limbs, and crushed skulls with the blunt side of the axe throughout the entire night. The creatures came at me relentlessly, never giving me more than fifteen or twenty minutes to rest between battles. They never did anything more than rush mindlessly at me, clawing and biting, but their iron-hard nails and exceptional strength more than made up for their lack of intelligence and tactics. They also allowed the creatures to climb trees with ease; hiding in one to escape the monsters didn’t work. They seemed able to sense me no matter what, and they climbed much faster than I did.

I had some advantages, though. While the zombies never stopped coming, it seemed that they were fairly well spread out throughout the forest. As long as I didn’t stand still for too long, I usually only had to deal with one or two at a time, and that was manageable. They attacked predictably and never worked together, and while they didn’t seem to feel pain, they also made no efforts to defend or protect themselves.

I fell into a simple routine as the night went on. When I spotted a zombie, I drew it deeper into the forest to make sure it was alone, then waited for it to close with me. I ducked the initial swipe and hacked at the side of its knee, rarely severing the leg but usually crippling its maneuverability. It always smashed a hammer fist down at me at that point, and I rolled to the side, coming up behind it and hitting its other knee. With its mobility shot, the thing couldn’t really stop me from chopping the back of its neck or skull and putting it down.

And that was my greatest advantage. If these things had been zombie wolves, dogs, or even something like a bobcat, I might have been in trouble. Those creatures were predators, and their bodies were designed to hunt and kill prey. The zombies were humanoid, though, and the human body simply wasn’t very good at taking down prey barehanded. We were tool-using creatures; that was our strength. If the zombies had clubs or axes, it would have been one thing, but weaponless, they were really just weak, stupid, clumsy apes.

Of course, I was just human, too, and while I had a weapon, my body didn’t have limitless reserves of energy. Hunger and thirst both set in fairly rapidly, and while I found a stream to help with the latter, I just had to deal with the former. My muscles grew sore and tired, not fully recovering in between battles, and claw swipes that I should have easily dodged tore my skin and clothing. Fists crashed into my chest and stomach, winding me and knocking me down. Blood loss weakened me further, and I grew sloppy and slow in my own attacks. Blows meant to sever limbs or spines glanced off and left only deep but ultimately harmless gashes in their undead flesh.

The last thing that saved me during the night was the notification that popped up after a particularly nasty fight with three of the creatures. I sat back against a tree, catching my breath and waiting for the bleeding to stop, when the black, blinking dot in the corner of my vision caught my eye. I pulled it up and examined the onyx screen and bright silver lettering that appeared, filling my vision.

Skill Gained: Weapon Focus (Axes)

Rank: Neophyte 1

Benefits: +1% attack and damage per skill rank

Skill Gained: Endurance

Rank: Neophyte 1

Benefits: -1% Fatigue and -1% Pain per skill rank

You have gained the following stat increases:

Prowess +1, Vigor +1, Celerity +1, Skill +1

Immediately, the axe felt more natural in my hand, and I realized I’d been holding it too tightly the whole time, wasting energy and sapping power from my blows. I still felt just as tired and sore, though; I supposed a 1% drop in my fatigue levels wasn’t really enough to notice. The bump to my physical stats, though, made a definite difference.

“Did I get those from all the fighting?” I asked Sara tiredly.

“You did, yes. Pushing your body to its limit has some advantages, John.” She hesitated, then continued. “You know, getting a new profession might help, too, since none of your current ones are particularly useful for you here. Celestial Guardian is locked, and Pugilist only gives you bonuses to weaponless fighting. You’re stacking up XP by killing these things, but I don’t have anywhere good to put it.”

“I hadn’t even considered that,” I sighed, closing my eyes. “Do you have any recommendations? Don’t give me an endless list; just pick a few that you think will be useful on this world.”

“Of course. Here, take a look at these.”

Another screen popped up, this one showing me three profession choices.

Axe Warrior

Standard

A fighter who focuses on axes in combat

Forester

Standard

A person who specializes in movement, tracking, and combat in wooded areas.

Undead Hunter

Unusual

A warrior who primarily battles undead creatures

While none of the options were really great, they were all better than I’d expected. When I’d entered my first Doorworld, all I’d had available were common professions, ones that pretty much anyone could take. I assumed that my existing skills and higher stats were the reason I had more choices in this world, and why the choices were generally rarer ones. Rarer professions were typically more powerful than common ones, often offering special abilities and better stat bonuses per level. At the same time, those professions were harder to level, requiring more of the magical life energy Sara siphoned from creatures I killed, so there was something of a balance, there.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

The decision wasn’t even a hard one. I had two generic professions and one specific one available, and in that situation, it simply made sense to me to select the targeted profession. I’d grabbed Pugilist because it was the one that seemed most appropriate in a world of martial artists, and I’d never regretted it, even when I’d gotten other, more specialized professions later. That same logic pushed me toward Undead Hunter, and I chose it without hesitation.

Profession Chosen:

Undead Hunter

Unusual

Primary Stats:

Perception, Vigor, Skill

Skills Gained:

Tracking

Ability Gained:

Sense Undead, Enemy of Undeath

Skill: Tracking

Rank: Neophyte 1

Benefits: +1% chance per skill ranks to notice tracks or successfully follow them

Ability: Sense Undead

Active Sensing Ability

You can feel the presence of undead. Radius varies with perception. Must be consciously used.

Ability: Enemy of Undeath

Passive Combat Ability

Damage to undead creatures and resistance to undead abilities increased by 5% per Undead Hunter level.

I read through the profession and realized that it wasn’t just fairly specific; it was uniquely tailored for fighting undead. So long as I was battling zombies, that was great, but if I had to fight something living, none of the profession’s benefits would apply to me. That was fine; it wasn’t like taking Undead Hunter closed the others off to me or anything.

That was the thing about professions. I could take as many as I wanted, but I had to choose which to put XP into. I couldn’t kill a zombie with my fists and level both Pugilist and Undead Hunter; I had to decide where to apply the energy Sara took from the thing’s death. I could also only put that energy into a profession if I’d gained the XP following that profession. Killing zombies wasn’t going to help me improve my Alchemist profession, for example.

I dumped the 51 XP Sara gathered into the Undead Hunter profession, then rose to my feet. I’d been too long in one place, and I was sure the zombies were gathering. Curiously, I activated my newest ability, Sense Undead. It was a simple matter of relaxing my thoughts and concentrating. Instantly, I could feel a sense of wrongness all about me. It wasn’t a specific sensation, the way my Sense Imbalance ability made me nauseous. Instead, I could just tell that something wasn’t right in pretty much every direction. That sense was strongest to my right, so I went left and headed deeper into the forest.

Sara was right, as usual. The new profession was a lifesaver, quite literally. Twice, my new ability led me around larger clumps of zombies that probably would have had me for dinner, quite literally. It also let me hunt the creatures, locating solo zombies and killing them before I could draw more of their kind to my location. I was still tired, starving, aching, and ready to drop, but at least I was keeping ahead of the bigger groups of zombies – and staying alive.

Even so, there was simply only so much my body could take. My right arm muscles shook, and my hand spasmed so much that I had to switch the axe to my left hand. I couldn’t run anymore; the best my legs and back would tolerate was a staggering, lumbering sort of jog. My head swam and pounded, and my shoulders throbbed with weariness. I’d battled dozens of zombies, and my new body simply couldn’t tolerate the strain.

I tripped over a tree root and fell heavily, not able to bring my hands up in time to take my fall. My nose smacked into the ground, and I felt blood starting to run from it. I tried to push myself back up, but my arms refused to support my weight anymore. I managed to roll onto my back and stared up at the sky. The mammoth moon no longer dominated overhead; I had to look around to see that it slid over toward the horizon, where only the top edge of it was visible through the evergreen trees. I closed my eyes, trying to catch my breath and let my muscles recover, feeling around me with my Sense Undead ability.

The zombies were everywhere, of course, but most of them felt distant. That wouldn’t last. I knew that they could sense me somehow, just as I could them, and while I tried to recover, they’d close in. Even as I lay there, I felt one of the creatures begin moving my way, and with a quiet groan, I forced myself to rise tiredly to my feet. My calves cramped and shrieked at me as I did, though, and I fell back onto the ground with a cry. I tried to straighten my legs, but they refused to respond. I tried to push past the pain and rise anyway, but my legs wouldn’t hold my weight, and I dropped to the needle-covered earth once more.

I gripped my axe as a zombie staggered out into my view. I pushed myself to my knees; I couldn’t dodge well that way, but I could fight, sort of. I was using my off hand, my mobility shot, and my head swam with weariness, but I wouldn’t go down quietly. I hefted the axe, considering throwing it at the zombie. If I could hit it in the forehead, I’d stop it before it got to me, and honestly, I didn’t know if I had it in me to dodge anymore. I gripped the axe loosely, held it above my left shoulder, and took careful aim…

I froze as I realized what I’d been about to do. Was I really going to try and kill one of these things by throwing my only weapon at it? I’d be as likely to miss as anything, and then I wouldn’t even have an axe to damage it with. I lowered the weapon, shaking my head. The fact that I even considered flinging my weapon away was a testament to my exhaustion.

The thing was, the zombie didn’t really look like it was doing all that much better than I was. It staggered toward me, but its movements were jerkier and heavier than I’d seen on any other creature. It crashed into trees as it stumbled forward, bouncing off the heavy trunks and swiping blindly at each it slammed into. Its rotting flesh seemed only loosely tied to its bones, and chunks of meat and skin sloughed off it with every movement. Even as I watched, one of its legs folded beneath it, and it fell to the ground. It continued to drag itself toward me with its hands, but after a few feet, one and then another of its rotting fingers tore off. A moment later, it collapsed face first onto the ground, spasming and shaking but no longer headed toward me.

I stared at the zombie, stunned. My exhausted mind couldn’t make sense of what was happening, and I began to crawl toward it on my hands and knees. I was certain that it was going to rise again any instant, and I wanted to make sure I ended it before it could. As I neared it, though, something stopped me completely.

A growing radiance filled the sky above me, and soft, silvery light filtered down through the trees. I barely noticed until I saw the wisps of smoke rising from the monster’s flesh. I looked at them, perplexed. Was it – burning? I froze and watched as the thing’s flesh bubbled and roiled, sending up steadily thickening clouds of black, oily smoke. It wasn’t burning, I decided; it was boiling, instead.

A single golden beam of light bathed the tops of the trees above me, drawing my exhausted gaze upward. I looked back at the zombie, which had stopped moving and simply lay there. The smoke rose more thickly as the light brightened around me, and it began to whip about as if pushed by a breeze that I couldn’t feel. The monster’s bones were mostly exposed at that point, and even they were cracking and crumbling to powder that was steadily carried away by the eldritch wind.

I fell backward. My tired brain struggled to process what was happening, but I dimly understood that dawn was rising, and with it, the zombie was dissolving before my eyes. I activated Sense Undead, and a wave of relief swept over me as I couldn’t feel any trace of the wrongness all about. Whatever happened to the zombie in front of me must have been universal.

I was safe.

That realization drained what little strength I had left in my muscles. My trembling body finally gave out on me, and I fell in a heap to the forest floor, blessed darkness taking me at last.