《Omni》 1: "Welcome to the..." So, how does a story begin? Hmm let¡¯s start the old fashioned way, with a youth. A one that cannot express himself in the constrains of the normal world, and an event that shatters normality as a whole. For this story it¡¯s a young student, a youth of 25 years of age. He lives in a country with old and rich history, due to some unlucky circumstances the country lost its glory during the second world war so it¡¯s not a good land of opportunity, yet it has aged quite well on tourism. And our MC to be, lives at the very center of it in the country¡¯s capital of humor, he works part time most of the time to support his hobby, a hobby common across the globe. Gaming Its 2020 and he is in excruciating pain waiting for the release of his favorite game, alas fate has other plans for the world, and death and war and all those deities, he will be the hero of his own story. Just like the thousands of others shall soon be. And where is the hero you might ask? Well at home, in front of his computer of course. Playing his maxed out multi-player character and moping the floor with the noobs in multiplayer, he is the type that will grind to death instead of spending a penny for buffing his character. And with less than a week away from the sequel of his favorite masterpiece he is going to suffer a good news bad news kinda of situation. As to where he lives, it¡¯s in the city outskirts, and since the city is quite narrow but quite long, it¡¯s quite broad of an area. His flat was left by his parents who went to work abroad and took his little sister with them. And his grandma passed last year so now he lives all by himself, the bachelor life. He never got too attached to any woman of his age so he is still a gentleman. While we were talking it became around 8pm and since the game series has always come at march this time of the year has come again. He has almost won the PvP match but alas he will never finish, as darkness covered the room ¡°What the? Oh come on I was 40min in the match. Huh seriously¡­ well a blackout hasn¡¯t happened in a while and I payed the bills so it aint my fault. I hope it won¡¯t take long¡± He took out his phone to look at the time 20:04. He turned on the flashlight and looked for the blinds. Looking outside the window he noticed that the whole block is out. ¡°That¡¯s odd. The street lights are on a separate line than the neighborhood.¡± He opened the window and look at the whole length of the boulevard. All it greeted him was darkness. As the full moon was covered by clouds. ¡°No lights in the distance. I guess the whole area is out. Even the clubs down at the city center aren¡¯t using their floodlights. Now where did I leave that flashlight. I hope the food in the fridge doesn¡¯t spoil¡± He walked all the way to the closet and checked for a real proper flashlight. ¡°Damn where is this thing I know I put it somewhere...¡± He didn¡¯t remember leaving the flashlight in the kitchen from last time when he fixed the pipes so his search is in vain. His godly concentration was interrupted by the sound of something falling. Thud¡­ ¡°What the¡­ Ha! Probably the couple next door falling in the dark. Oh,I hope they didn¡¯t hear me¡± Although he likes black humor like any other guy, it¡¯s a lot darker than he thinks. Thud¡­ thud¡­ thud¡­ Banging could be heard over and over. He is wondering what¡¯s with the noise and finally¡­ Crack¡­ Huaaah After all the banging a crack could be heard. Our hero is quite wise and has a bunch of trivia packed up in his cranium so he could easily know that something is wrong. The sound also indicated that something banged against the door until it broke and most of all, it was from inside out. In other words, whatever came from the apartment next door was strong and determined. As any human, curiosity will lead to interesting situations as such our protagonist decided to use the doors peep hole. Due to the darkness he could see only a rough shadow, it was short and in an aggressive pose. He could determine that it is looking around, until it stopped and stared straight at his door. For some reason his heart was beating, his instincts screaming danger, and his mind telling him that something is wrong. Unfortunately, the body¡¯s instincts froze him in place, unable to move he could only look as the shadow turned its head to the side in order to expose its ear. Like it could hear something, like it could hear his heart beating. Bam¡­ Thud¡­ Bam¡­ Bam¡­ The shadow jumped at his door and he fell down. It continued to ram itself against the door like it was its nemesis. Sprawled on the floor our MC didn¡¯t make a puddle out of fear not due to the lack of trying but due to principle. He usually emptied his bladder before a long game session and tonight he was just starting. While the banging continued he got back on his feet and ran to the kitchen, he lived in this apartment for years so he knew it like the back of his hand, forgetting about the tool box an arm¡¯s length away. His hands where shaking out of fear, he wasn¡¯t some hero or a macho, he wasn¡¯t an alpha or even a beta. He was the scrawny guy with witty comments at the corner. He wasn¡¯t forced in that role, it¡¯s just that he liked it there the most, peace and quiet and all that. So no big courage there no girl to impress so he was scared witless. As he went searching for armaments the front door burst with a loud crack, and the sound of something dragging came close and closer. He hurriedly took a pan from next to the sink and prepared to swing. And as the shadow came out of the kitchen door, he could see the broken shape and its ferocity as he saw the face illuminated by the moon revealed from behind the clouds, he became almost stiff. What greeted him was the battered face of the old lady next door, she was covered in blood and her shape broken, and her eyes were a soulless white. Just as fear almost overwhelmed him his preservation instinct kicked in as he swung the pan. Bang¡­ Her head swiveled at 180 degrees but she just kept walking, her right shoulder was dislocated so she could only grab with her left arm. Since she couldn¡¯t see she blindly swung her hand, managing to nick his clothes only made him more fearful as he swung again and again¡­ Bang¡­ Bang¡­ Bang¡­ Splosh¡­ He swung at her arm twice and made a desperate overhead swing caving the old woman¡¯s skull in. As he wasn¡¯t the sports type he was already haggard for breath. The scene was gory with brains splattered all over the floor. He felt sick at the sight he used the table to go around the crime scene and emptied his dinner in the corner. This calmed him down a little as he tough long and hard about what happened. ¡°What the actual fuck¡­ She rammed down two doors, TWO solid wood doors TWO FINGERS THICK. And she was old, how the blips did she do that? And her eyes, like I was something to be devoured. Creepy as hell.¡± ¡°And now she is dead, I bloody killed her. What do I tell the police? Self-defense? She was an old lady for fucks sake. Am so getting jailed I can see the news ¡®A youth pulverizes the nice granny¡¯s head!¡¯ first page material I tell you.¡± ¡°Ok breath in breath out, she is no normal granny she the fringing hulk in disguise. And she moved with her neck broken like¡­ like¡­ like some zombie or something¡± He carefully took a look at the corpse and saw something odd. A small rainbow colored glowing coin close to it, without a speck of blood on it. He didn¡¯t remember owning a coin like that and it wasn¡¯t in the kitchen when he came in. He thought it was hers and decided to inspect it, maybe it was the coin¡¯s fault that she went ku-ku and tried to kill him. As he picked it up he noticed that it was warm to the touch and smooth, nowadays coins are rigid on the side but this one is flawless like a gem. He looked at the corpse one more time before going back to his room. He sat down and tried to figure what is going on, he¡¯s evening became weirder and weirder. Since his mind was on the edge he decided to calm himself down, there was no power, he forgot where he dropped his phone so the only thing he could think of is play around with the coin. He moved it between his fingers with one hand played some cheap tricks and finally he made a coin toss. He threw it with his right hand, as the coin fell he grabbed it with the left hand and slammed it on the top of his right. When he lifted his palm the coin was changing. Its rainbow colors swirled until it became pure white and stated to shine blinding him.If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. When he opened his eyes he was in a white space, in front of him was a desk and behind it was a man in a black suit his features were oddly indistinguishable only his hair color of black was visible, he reminded him of slender with hair, next to him was a lottery wheel about 2 meters across with hundreds of possible selections. As the man I the suit was filling papers with god knows what, he gave off a creepy vibe due to his humanoid shape and alien presence. He took the batch of papers on the desk and tapped their bottom to neatly arrange them before putting them to the side. ¡°Phew the last guy made me a lot of work. I hope you will give me less. Then again it¡¯s all on luck so hope for the best. I am.. well that¡¯s not important. What is, is that you are here to test your luck and for me to tell you the basics.¡± ¡°How did I get here? Who are you?¡± ¡°Here we go again the same questions every single time. Can¡¯t you humans ask something different? No? Though so. Then again shock is quite common so I can¡¯t expect much of you. Here I go blabbering again. Let¡¯s get back to work shall we¡± ¡°First of welcome to the apocalypse¡± Confetti came down from the roof with the sound of a plastic birthday whistle ¡°Clap, clap, clap. Now that this is over we can get started. This is the wheel of fate¡± trumpet sounds rose in the background ¡°You have to spin it and win something so I can go the next participant.¡± ¡°Wut?¡± ¡°Huuuuuuh¡­ spin the bloody wheel¡± Due to his loud voice and domineering presence our protagonist rose up on command and put his hand on the wheel. Looking back at the office worker for approval after a quick nod he swung with all his might. The wheel buzzed at the high speed rotation. ¡°Did you have to spin it so hard? Now it will take a while. Anyway we might get started now as to not waste any more time. Just listen don¡¯t talk. First off the apocalypse began due to unforeseen circumstance, what they are you will find out eventually for now you just have to know that you got lucky. In your area within 10000 people you were the first to kill a zombie without dying due to infection. Fluke or not, you recovered the achievement token and got the first prize. To get a class early. Anyway you are wondering what is a class. Well you played games no? Same logic.¡± ¡°It will make you stronger from the get go. On the wheel there are all the classes. They include professions like soldier, researcher, doctor, engineer, and so on. Fantasy professions like warrior wizard cleric. Of course non aggressive profession can grow differently, simply by preforming the associated work. Killing also works but a doctor to go toe to toe with an ogre is quite unlikely. And with your disposition you¡¯ll probably get engineer or something.¡± ¡°The wheel has also unique, rare and legendary classes, but don¡¯t get fooled by that. Each class has its own pros and cons. A warrior can defeat a god without a problem given enough time. So don¡¯t despair. Oh look the wheel is starting to slow down¡± All that was said in a bored voice, like he repeated it hundreds of times over. As the wheel slowed down it, the letters started to be more visible. Warrior, Terminator, Plague bearer, Crusader and so on everything that you can think of and finally it stopped on a black space with white words it red ¡®Custom¡¯ ¡°For god¡¯s sake, why did it have to be that one? Now my work increased several fold. Huuuuuh! Ok calm down. Let¡¯s get started. Weather you got lucky or crewed over now depends on you. You get the honor of designing a unique class and I get to fill the mountain of paperwork. So what do you want? Swords, magic, guns, light sabers anything fine the simpler the better. Do know that there has to be a balance and limit to what you chose to make.¡± ¡°Uhm¡± Our genius of a hero answered with all of his intellect ¡°Look I don¡¯t have all day. If you got question just ask them. I will try to answer them to the best of my ability. That¡¯s why I got stuck here in the first place.¡± ¡°Anything I want?¡± ¡°Didn¡¯t I make that clear already?¡± ¡°Uhm¡­ are you sure?¡± ¡°For god¡¯s sake just say it!¡± ¡°Ok, ok. But I¡¯m not sure it will be balanced.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t worry we can work it out. If it¡¯s too powerful we just have to make it harder to get or make it into tiers, slowly working its way up. Or make it into a weaker version which need to be upgraded and so on. You can barf a sun for all I care.¡± ¡°Is that so? Then I want to have the abilities from the character of my favorite game!¡± ¡°You sure? Ok let¡¯s have a look.¡± With a poof an item appeared in his hands. It was the DVD box from his game. It had a hard copy in it. No digital download needed all you need is in the DVD. The office man stood there for a couple of minutes just holding the box, just like a statue and suddenly. ¡°Whew that was a nice game. I guess I have to help you in earnest now. If this works it will be a multifunctional class. Though it will be a pain to level and your compatibility for a few of the abilities is zero so you have to work hard to just get them. It will be also resource intensive for you. And since you need a starter tool for it you have a choice. Average or growth?¡± ¡°Huh?¡± ¡°Sorry got ahead of myself there. I like distractions so I took the liberty of making the class myself I also got a pretty good idea of what you want unfortunately if I make you like the character of the series you will be too strong so, starting on kind of equal ground with the others is a must. Now don¡¯t make that face. Getting a class before lvl10 and after doesn¡¯t make a big deal. It gives an advantage but not much. You also don¡¯t have to go looking for a trainer in order to get the class down the line or something¡± ¡°So here¡¯s what I¡¯m going to do. I¡¯ll disable your leveling system, since the class will be mostly about making stuff early on so you don¡¯t need the experience, and since the class won¡¯t use the magic system even with the psychic abilities it¡¯s also mostly off the table. And don¡¯t worry everything is balance to the letter mostly.¡± ¡°Mostly?¡± ¡°Yeah, the item you can gather from monsters are mostly for the standard system, you know leather, bones, mana crystals. Medieval weapons like swords and spears. Fantasy stuff I believe you call them. to top it off engineers should be able to make firearms eventually, so no need for those. And since you basically use your own power system we got lot of room for improvement. And depending on how you start it might be easier or harder and the way I see it you will need lots of energy to power the gizmos and all the other goodies. So I¡¯ll make it so that you can use mana as fuel. Neat right?¡± ¡°And since everyone got to start with a weapon provided by the system you got to choose your own. But due to the uniqueness of the class you only have one choice left. Weather the weapon will give you a head start and be redundant later on, you probably can buy better ones at the store if you find one, or you can choose a growing weapon. Those are usually quite crappy if given so early on your better off with a stick, but as the name suggest you can make them grow stronger one way or another. So what shall it be?¡± ¡°What is the weapon?¡± ¡°You should know that without asking me. So growth or not?¡± He thought long and hard. What would the weapon be? True he loved the game but he couldn¡¯t even begin to guess. Would it be this or that if it is this stronger would be better or growing would be worse? He had no idea, but he knew one thing. Overall in all of the games he played weapons which grew with the player were rare. In one game there were demonic weapons which had just base stats, attack and attack speed. And they could be fed other weapons and depending on the items it could gain their abilities. The only downside was that the demonic weapon could be fed a limited number of times. But of the weapon could grow infinitely it would be a cheat item. ¡°How much can it grow?¡± ¡°Well growing weapons generally can grow as long as you can satisfy their needs, some weapons are easier other are harder, and before you ask due to universality of the weapon, yours will be one of the hardest to grow. You¡¯ll understand why once you get it.¡± ¡°If it can grow infinitely then ill chose growth weapon.¡± ¡°Whether your choice is good or bad will depend on how long you live now I got a bloody skill tree to make so taa-taa¡± And with those words he was back in his room. His stare locked at the top of his hand, where the coin once was, was now a black circle with a thick outline. He tried to touch it but it was just like a tattoo. After a moment it dissolved like smoke and vanished. Leaving behind only a sense of lucidity. The silence was not kept for long as the sound of crashing was heard from beyond the broken front door. The husband of the granny he just committed homicide upon was coming. Slowly dragging himself. One foot in front of the other. Until he tripped on the debris of the door itself, falling face first in the process, he moaned as he started crawling on the ground and slowly getting up and due to the darkness our hero couldn¡¯t see a thing but he just has to hear it to know that something is coming ¡°Mr. Kristov are you ok? Your wife came earlier and she was really sick. Helooo are you there?¡± All that greeted him was the sound of dragging. He knew something was wrong he just couldn¡¯t believe it. His neighbors were probably zombies, he met slender look alike who offered him a gaming experience in a life time and he really hopes the world hasn¡¯t turned to hell. Most of the books he has read were including guys like himself dying first. Begging for their mommy while some beast is chewing their insides. And boy were they right. He was now frozen stiff from fear, again. As something was crawling closely to him. And in the midst of it he remembered the words of the slender like guy ¡°You were the first to kill a zombie without dying due to infection.¡± And as the words rang in his empty head. He jumped and to the adjacent room. Fiddling until he found the key in the lock turning it counterclockwise to lock it. Since he lived in this apartment for most of his life he knows every nook and cranny while blindfolded. So moving 4 meters in the dark without hitting something is normal for him. Well he did hit his toe on the door frame but who has time to moan about the pain when something I trying to eat him? ¡°Ah fuck my toe¡­ fuck, fuck, fuck. What the?¡± He looked to the back windows and saw an orange light. Walking out on the terrace he noticed that in the distance a whole 5 floor building was on fire. Down on the streets it was pure chaos. When he looked he wished the moon wasn¡¯t shining so brightly. People were chasing each other, some were braking in to shops and stealing food and anything they can get their hands on. The most striking view was the mother and child pair running along the boulevard as a group of people was chasing them like animals, until the mother tripped due to her high heels dragging her girl with her as the group fell upon them and their screams filled the night. Soon similar sounds were coming from all around. People were jumping from the windows 4 floors up, those who survive were jumped upon by the groups. Once the groups kneeling in front of the copses stood up, went to chase the other people running around, the corpses themselves twitched for a while then stood up and joined with the rest of the groups. He stood there frozen in terror. What happened to him tonight was just the beginning and the happy birthday like memory replayed. ¡°Welcome to the apocalypse¡± Chapter 2: "Going orange" Bang¡­ Bang¡­ Bang¡­ The door to the room shook. Moaning was heard from the other side, yet he could not hear it due to his shock, the world as he knew it has ended. His neighbors, friends and probably family are all dead, turned in to those things. All the events slowly started to weight on his mind slowly pressuring him. He knew he wasn¡¯t a hero of some story and couldn¡¯t make a miracle happen, so he had to try his best to survive. All that he saw clicks in to place, he now knew what happened to the Kristovs, but he still didn¡¯t know exactly why. From the scene on the street and the slenders words, they were plain and simple zombies, and not the slow kind. In other words, he was lucky. His neighbors were mostly old people in their 60 or above, so the zombies were slower and more frail than the ones made from younger people. He still didn¡¯t know what his weapon was, but he knew he needed it right now. From previous examples it won¡¯t take long for the zombie to bring down the door, and when it does he has to make sure it doesn¡¯t scratch him, or else. There was no electricity so he couldn¡¯t use the power cable from the night stand lamp, the clothes hangers were plastic so no salvation, there was only one thing left. He quickly took the thick winter clothes and went out on the terrace, closing the door behind him, and not a moment too soon as the door was smashed. The zombie took some damage so it now wobbles slowly, it will take it a few seconds to make it past the 4 meters and the terrace door itself. Going out on the terrace and closing the door behind him, he quickly started to layer the thick clothes on himself, thick jackets, winter pants and so on, he even had a few ski mask due to last year¡¯s vacation. He padded himself and waited. Thud¡­ Thud¡­ Bang¡­ Crack¡­ The zombie managed to ram through the door. He stood there, knees bent, one arm low the other high, preparing for a throw. Wrestling wasn¡¯t something he learned, he did play some of the old MMA games, so the knowledge of the moves was there but no practice. He either made it right or he will become zombie chow. As the zombie slowly made its way to him he acted. He moved his weight forward, his left arm between its legs, his right on its neck and with all his nerdy might he lifted and threw it over the terrace, five floors down to a splat. Thanks to the padding he didn¡¯t get any scratches, and only lost his ski mask as the zombie managed to grab it before being thrown. He looked down below to make sure it was dead. Unfortunately, the splat sound drew a group of zombies as they swarmed the corpse devouring it. While they were busy with a meal he slowly walked backwards trying his best not to attract their attention, soundlessly taking off the winter clothes, he tiptoed to his front door. Thankfully only two from the tree apartments on his floor were occupied. Straining his ears, the other people on the other floors weren¡¯t screaming, they were either dead or didn¡¯t know what¡¯s happening. Looking around he spotted his phone thankfully it was with the flashlight down, he didn¡¯t know whether the zombies could see, better safe than sorry after all. Turning to his left he found the toolbox and took with him to his room, then he went to the kitchen around the corpse and located the knives in the drawer, he bent down and searched for the biggest pot lid he could find. Back at his room he took the broomstick from next to the fire place and started his crafting session. He wasn¡¯t a student in electronic engineering for nothing. He usually assembled his circuit boards by hand and as a result was quite dexterous, and even ambidextrous. He made a makeshift spear using the plastic shaft of the boom and his biggest knife, and used duct tape to make a better hold on the lid. He wasn¡¯t superman by any means but like any youth he watched quite a bit of trivia on the net and one of those was about different weapons so he knew how to use the spear, in theory. He carefully searched his house until he found the flashlight and affixed it to a cap with more duct tape. He didn¡¯t turn it on yet, he turned his phone off in order to save battery, he never knew when he would need it. Putting back on his thick clothes he was ready. As a scrapyard hoplite he marched forward! First steps in zombie apocalypse survival training videos, don¡¯t get infected. Second secure food and shelter, in other words secure an area. He didn¡¯t know what was the situation on the lower floors but he had to check. How could he sleep knowing that his door was busted, and the damn rotheads were walking around? He walked out slowly making as less noise as possible. He was a veteran, he killed 2 zombies with a well-aged base after all. By his logic zombies were quite aggressive and dumb so they should have a problem with stairs. So he braved the stairs one floor down. There a middle aged couple lived on the left apartment, in the middle was an old lady and on the right was vacant, the old man that used to live there got a good job and moved to the capital. So no big danger here by his calculations he has 3 survivors at best or an old zombie and 2 survivors at worst. As he finally made it down with finesse of a ballerina, his heart sunk. The door on his left was broken with the debris on the inside, the same like his door. Now even a worse scenario was in his head, 3 zombies, 1 old and 2 like the ones he saw on the street, fast and furious with an appetite for his flesh. But he didn¡¯t have much of a choice. All of his food was raw and anything ready or half-ready was already eaten, he was going to buy some stuff after the match from the shop across the boulevard and now? He totally forgot about the apartment next his, so decided to brave downwards. He had to brave the whole apartment complex 5 floors down to the basement where his only food was, different pickled foods like fruits and vegies, he even had a few jars of homemade preserved pork. Good stuff. It would last for a few weeks at least if he ate only that. And it was only his share of the basement. There was a segment for every apartment so 15 in total. Nails, planks, axes, hammers, plywood, firewood and so on. It was a literal gold mine for the average apocalyptic survivalist. And it was below the first floor. At least the block had a nice door on the entrance that will hold longer, or at least he hopes. And finally he found his courage and entered the left apartment No:10 (His is 15 btw, with 14 and 13 on his floor). With a somewhat steady and lowered posture he moves one step a time ready to plant the but of his spear and take the zombie charge head on, or turn around and run screaming like a little girl, whatever comes first. Soon the munching of something was heard, as he turned around the corner and took a look at end of the corridor a light from the room was casting a shadow, of something on its knees ripping pieces from somewhere and devouring them. From the door frame a hand was visible, it had a lock of long hair in its palm. The arm itself was shriveled and looked old. If that was the old lady, who was munching? As he took a peak what greeted him was a gruesome sight, the room walls were painted with sprayed blood. At his feet was the old lady with a bashed in skull, from the looks of it, the head was smashed on the edge of the doorframe. Next to the overturned table in the middle of the room were two people. One was lying lifeless on the ground, with the shape of a woman, and the other was ripping pieces of her flesh and eating it one at a time. This clearly her husband, just by looking at his bandaged arm you can guess what happened. The old lady zombie broke down the door, they both were in the kitchen as the zombie came in. He provably though she was just sick and tried to reason until she bit his arm. In the heat of the moment he smashed her head on the doorframe, until she laid dead, permanently dead on the ground. The wife bandaged his wounds with great care. The virus soon overtook him as he attacked his wife. Killing her on the spot and continuing to eat her until our hero showed up. As he looked at the scene he felt sorry for them, but he knew that even if he apologized it won¡¯t make a difference, they were both dead, only a shell controlled by a virus or whatever is left. So he decided to put their bodies to rest. He backed away for a bit lifted his spear and put the but on the wall behind him. Pushing in forward and slamming it on the wall to attract its attention. Thud¡­ Thud¡­ Thud¡­ As the zombie stopped its feast and turned around he raised his shield (pot lid) awaiting to bash its hands. His spear was short only about 1.4 meters, even so it was enough to kill the zombie. As a frenzy overtook its mind, dashing madly towards him, the 3 meters between it and the sharp edge were passed in a heartbeat. He angled the spear as it pierced right in the zombie¡¯s mouth. The spear lost its footing on the wall behind him and slid down. He used the shield to guard against the zombie¡¯s hands, protecting his fleshy face. He walked backwards in to the corridor in order to kill the inertia as he tripped and fell down. Surprisingly he managed to cut its spinal cord paralyzing its movements from the neck down. The only thing left moving was its jaw still trying to bite him. Shoving aside the meat pile, standing up he put his foot on its neck and pulled the spears blade back, thankfully it wasn¡¯t stuck. He still remembered how the copses eaten by the zombies will become one of them. As such he went in to the kitchen and just in time to see her twitching, before he could react she madly crawled in his direction. Swinging the edge of his shield down he managed to stun her for a moment. Before he could swing again her hands came and grabbed the shields edges. She pulled it right off his arm. The battle tactic he had depended on the shield, he guarded with it and stabbed at the neck with the spear. In enclosed space the spear was at a disadvantage when he couldn¡¯t push back safely, and without a shield it was impossible. He held the spear with both hands while backing away. While she put threw the shield away, crouched and jumped at him, like tiger. He managed to get to the corridor intersection giving him some space to raise the spear and block horizontally. However, he wasn¡¯t strong enough as he fell down, holding her back with the shaft of the spear. Unfortunately, her hands were free as she clawed at his torso, ripping pieces off his jacket, getting closer to his chest, her rage made her like a wild beast preventing her from focusing on his face. Tilting the spear violently to the side managed to knock her off, giving himself some breathing room. But he was too slow as she jumped at him again this time the spear broke, he tried to kick off but she was too heavy. He desperately tried to hit her with his left hand while holding her off her hands with his right, though his punch was weak and without much force behind it still managed to piss her off as she grabbed his left hand and bit on the forearm. Pain coursed through him as he screamed. ¡°yaaaaaaaaaaah¡± He knew he made a mistake by screaming but, now he didn¡¯t care. His survival takes priority. He swung his right arm with all his might. Something unexpected happened. An unknown feeling at the back of his mind, like the presence of another limb. In his desperation he latched on to it and pulled mentally, right before his fist connected, it was covered in an orange light. As it hit it released a bright electric spark right at the zombie¡¯s temple. He didn¡¯t know what happened but he took advantage of it, pushing her aside he got up took part of the spear with the knife on it. Looking down at the convulsing corpse he lifted the blade up, grabbing with both of his hands and swinging down at the neck, again and again until the corpse stopped moving. Looking at his right arm the light flickered and died out. Coming back to his senses he remembered the noise he made. Listening around he heard something trying to climb the stairs with great difficulty, falling over and over. While feeling impending doom he forced himself to slowly and quietly climb the stairs one after the other. When he got to his floor the sound of moaning and aggressive snarls came from just down below, soon the sound of munching graced his ears. He quietly got in to the closet of his apartment and took the key to the attic, quietly climbing the stairs one floor up to it. Putting it in the lock he turned it and an audible click was heard. Sweat dripped of his temple from worry, straining his ears but the zombie was still busy with his dinner appointment. He slowly got in and locked the door from the inside, the zombie still didn¡¯t react to the weak sound, he quickly found his old couch and sat on it. Unzipping his winter jacket, and taking off his hoody he took a look at his hand. He was greeted by a pleasant surprise. There was only a bruise, about the size of a bite. But gladly the thick jacket protected him from the actual bite and accompanying it infection. He lives to fear another day. Even if it was less than an hour, today¡¯s events were mentally draining for him, not to mention he was hungry. All he could do now was rest, the orange light was a dead giveaway on what the weapon was, but he didn¡¯t want to worry about anything today. As such he laid down, put his jacket over himself and closed his eyes. In a long time, tonight was the first where he fell asleep as his head hit the bed. His dreams were restless, all the fights were repeating themselves over and over. He started feeling more familiar with them, more calm with the blood and gore. More confident in his movements. Soon morning came, he was awoken from the singing of the birds. Once he opened his eyes. Despair filled his heart, his nightmares weren¡¯t just a dream. It was his reality. He groggily got up, who would want to wake up in a middle of the apocalypse? Looking around he didn¡¯t see much. It was the same old furniture, some fire wood here and there, planks. Some twisted nails here and there on the floor and boxes with useless miscellaneous objects, like books, old pottery, empty boxes and so on. He walked to the door and listened carefully. He could hear no noise outside. He knew that the zombie that climbed up to the 4th floor is still there. And he just had the right idea to get rid of it. He picked a nail off the floor, turned the key on the door. No sound was attracted from the click. And slowly got back to the 5th floor as he looked down between the railings. Due to design there is about half a palm distance between the individual railings. As such if you drop something it might drop all the way down to the first floor. If his idea worked the zombies might break their legs in the hurry. Slowly looking down, he aimed and dropped the nail. It managed to fall to the 3rd floor before it hit the railing and started to bounce off the stairs making quite the rucks. Soon the angry snarls were heard as they chased down and up the stairs after a phantom. He went back to the attic room locking the door, the click sound devoured by the zombie stampede on the staircase. He sat down and relaxed. The brain dead idiots were at least 3 floors down so he could relax. Thinking to yesterday he thought about the feeling he got while fighting with the zombie. He felt around his mind but found nothing. He extended his right hand, nothing, wobbling it around, hitting it on the bed. Nada. He had no idea how this thingy works. ¡°Maybe I¡¯m too forceful and need a gentler approach?¡± He tried relaxing and tried calling out to it, with as little thought possible, just like taking out your phone or wallet out. Chiiiiii-Bzzt. With a high pitched sound like an old camera flash it charged and suddenly buzzed in to light. It was appeared like a bracelet made with four parts. 2 semicircular plates were on the left and right side of the arm with an empty space, on top of the forearm, of about 2 fingers along the length, the third piece was a like the other two but directly on top. And finally above the right hand was a 5 cm in diameter ring. The pieces were made of a translucent crystal like substance, with an orange hue. He was baffled, of course it would be an Omni-Tool. He was thinking too hard about it when the slender told him about it. Thou this one looks a tad too simple. The ones he remembered from the game were a lot more complex with multiple moving parts. This one¡¯s simplicity was a lot more attractive to him than the overly complicated ones from the game. Small compact, but still flashy and out of this place. If his memory serves him right, the world became like a game with the most advance class being close to nowadays, a cyborg or something similar. After all mana can be used as a power source if memory serves him right.Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. Stretching his finger out and touching the top plate a 16:9 orange screen pops up.
Personal Stats
Omni-Tool Stats
Softoware Shop
After looking over the simple interface he taped on personal stats.
Omni-Tool Stats Menu:
Personal Stats
Name: Plamen Yonkov Titles :None
Health: 100% Stamina: 100%
Class: Explorer Profesion: None
Strength: 0.672 Endurance: 0.701
Resilience: 1.092 Agility: 0.807
Dexterity:1.436 Intelligence:1.143
Willpower: 0.724 Perception: 1.205
Abilities: Fitness: Lvl1 (4/100) Tool Operation: Lvl1 (1/100)
Debuff: Bruise (left forearm): Left arm dexrerity -3%
The screen before him had different values he could basically guess what they do. They were the basics of all RPGs he played. He was a bit dissatisfied with his willpower, he bravely killed four zombies by himself after all. But he was more curious about his class. It was not from the last iteration of his favorite game, it was a class that he dint know anything about, maybe it was a basic one? As he tapped on the box, the class information popped out on top of the ¡°Personal Stats¡± window.
Explorer (Unique): The Explorer, tasked with going where no man has gone before, to finding new lands and new civilizations. He has to be able to handle the pressure of isolation and be able to survive in the harshest of condition. Armed with his trusty Omni-Tool, he is ready to brave the darkest corners of the cosmos¡­ eventually! Class specifics: Omni-Tool(Soulbound)- (Built in scanner, extractor, and microfabrication-courtesy of Dion-corp.) Basic skill set: Fitness, Tool Operation Professions: ???, ???, ???.
It was less than what he expected, still the Omni-Tool is Soulbound so no chance in losing it somewhere or getting it stolen. Curious about the skills given he clicked on both of them.
Fitness (1): Uncommon, Basic: -You know how to wiggle those muscles as such you get a bonus to training and muscle memory. - +1% in training speed and muscle memory retention.
Tool Operation (1): Common, Basic: -You know how to use tools more effectively, you are more proficient with them and waste less energy using them. -While using tools 1% bonus dexterity and speed, 0.5% less stamina used. Half the bonus for weapons, since they are a tool of war! (Mechanical weapons get the full bonus) Unique: Stacks with Omni-tools upgrades.
They were quite basic as far as skills go, he doesn¡¯t know how hard it is to get common or uncommon skills, so no point in wasting brainpower there. His only concern was the low percentage, the window said basic which mean there is an advanced version or something, and the number 1 is probably important so he should figure it out eventually. Closing the 3 info windows he tried to click on the ??? but nothing came up. Looking at the bruise debuff he found it quite in place. He would know in a numerical value, how much his wounds were inconveniencing him. 3% was just fine, he could still move his hand without a problem but it was somewhat uncomfortable when his skin stretched over the bruise. HE finally clicked on the Omni-Tool tab.
Menu: Personal Srats
Omni-Tool Stats:
Operating System: V 0.1 Core T1: 9% (1)(100)
Menu: Active Functions: (1/1) Analyse: Select taarget Storage: (None) Extract: (Empty Que) Fabricate: (Empty Que) Browse Database : Storage 21%(1Petabyte) Upgrades: Menu
Active Functions: Active Module Slot1: Shock-(0): (0:0)(Discharges all of its energy trough the gauntlet in to an enemy, can and will disrupt an opponent nervous system. Upon discharge loses all power and enter saving mode. WARNING: Can overload nervous system outright killing the target, use with care.) Non-Active Modules:Utility module.
The stats were a bit odd energy was at 9%, he didn¡¯t know why, but reading at the shock tooltip at the bottom he quickly understood. The spark with which he zapped the zombie was the culprit. He got to bed at about 22:30pm and now was about 7 in the morning so about 1% per hour? He got clicked on the Core-T1 tab to confirm his speculation.
Core-T1: It¡¯s a basic evolving powered core. It functions both as a generator and battery, with the ability to use mana as an energy source. Can be improved upon. Generation:1 Capacity:100 Omni-Tool (Special): Can supplement with secondary energy sources in order to increase stockpiled energy!
The info given was quite useful, keeping an eye out in the fututre for batteries would be a good idea. Clicking on the Operating system window and the Shock tabs opened nothing. The Storage showed none so no luck there, fabrication wanted a blueprint and extraction wanted a valid target. So finally he decided to click on the obvious one. When he clicked on the scanner, the screen became transparent with only an X at the top right visible. On the screen every item including the floor was highlighted. Looking around he spotted what¡¯s left of his spear. Clicking on it a, two yellow lines started to pass over and over trough the spear, one was horizontal the other vertical. As the lines crossed on the screen was slowly being made a copy of the spear and on a window to the left lines of words were being written
Scanning: Unknown Object -Unknown material detected -Scanning host memory for relevant data. (Y/N) -Y -Initiating surface memory scan¡­ -Data retrieved. -Elements detected- Iron, Carbon, Silicon¡­. ... -¡­scanning complete. -Sorting unknown data for future study. -Compiling blueprint- Steel Kitchen Knife -Impossible to compile plastic pipe blueprint, unknown materials -Resource extraction possible, extractible components: 4.7%
¡°Great, an electronic tool without a proper library. I guess I better scan my textbooks when I get the chance. There was a software shop if I¡¯m not mistaken¡± As he quietly muttered to himself he closed the window and entered the menu, there a new option was visible: Blueprints. Deciding to quickly check it first. It was a list with only one option, steel kitchen knife. Taping on it was a 3d rendering of the kitchen knife attached to the plastic pole. There were a few tabs bellow. Modify, Test (software required), Fabricate. He knew what fabricate was for and he couldn¡¯t use ¡°Test¡± so he opened modify. It was a simple 3d rendering program. There were no tool bars or anything. Deciding to prod it a bit, with a touch the holographic knife bend like mold clay. By playing around with it for a bit he found out that it was easy to modify. He could even take out the 3d image out of the screen and use both hands. Is was easy as willing it. All he needed were the right finger movements. By poking or pulling he could change the depth, by crossing his middle finger over his index he could remove material, or doing the opposite and add instead. Usually his hands will shake from time to time before the apocalypse but now? They don¡¯t move a millimeter. His first few remodeling attempts were crappy at best, until he became more proficient in manipulating the hologram, on the 17th try he was almost ready with his project. He made something akin to a steel spear. The blade was something like two triangles with their bases glued to each other. The one that was going to be the tip was almost 3 times longer than the bottom one. The spear blade itself was hollow in the middle making a rhombus like shape, to conserve materials. The shaft was about 2 meters long with a circle shape on the outside and a hollow shape on the inside, of a hexagon. All that based on his understanding of geometry. He didn¡¯t know how many resources were needed for it but at least it looked cool. He was just about to start making a nice shield when and alarm sounded. ¡°Grrrgrglue¡± His stomach declared it presence, looking at the phone it was around 10:00am already, so he decided to get some work done before playing around. Saving his new schematic as ¡°Steel Spear¡±. He closed the design page and opened the shop what greeted him were only a handful of options. And a blinking icon on the upper right. With a tap a message popped up.
Sender: A friend Address: Unknown You needed some software for your tool but it went over the budget, so you have to pay some cash for it. You can only buy a few VI (Virtual Intelligence) Programs in order to compliment your abilities. There are a few libraries as well the first one is free of charge and includes the basic elements and knowledge from your world, it will guess the most common alloys and compounds. I would get the growing VI if I were you, same gig as the growing weapons, I know it is expensive but trust me if you like the growing tool you are going to love it. You can buy the other VI as support later and add the Hive Cluster Program. Great stuff. Just don¡¯t make another Geth uprising OK? Anyway have fun! P.S-I finished your class framework already. Everything else depends on how you use it, you can get most stuff you wanted sooner or later but you know rules, the only extra I managed to get you is the library, those idiots at the forges forgot the most basic thing.
A feeling of gratitude rose in his chest, the slender came to him like an overpaid office worker, but who knew he was thinking that far ahead, he did finish the game in under 30 sec. so he got to have some ability. Closing the mail, he got a good view of the store
Software Store: -VI: (b)(Analytic)- A basic VI preprogramed with analytic algorithms. It¡¯s good at analyzing prespecified data and looking for common points. Price-30s -VI: (b)(Theoretic)- A basic VI preprogramed with a probability algorithm. Good at using relevant data to predict outcomes, theoretical alloys, items, abilities etc. Accuracy depends on available data. Price-45s -VI: (Engineering)- A basic VI with a testing algorithm. Can test various schematics using a simulated 3d environment. Recommended to use with an Analytic VI. Performance depends on supplied data. Price-35s -VI: (b)(Combat)- A basic VI with various combat algorithm. Can be used on a drone platform, humanoid drone platform, can adapt to other platforms give time. Can learn skills one level below its complexity. Speed of learning depends on various factors: current 5% of a 1 all-round stat unit. Price- 120s -VI: (b)(Evolving)-An evolving VI with a basic adaptable software. Can learn through use. Performance depends on available data and personal experience. Can develop skills one level below its complexity. Price 2g -VI: (b)(Hive)- A central management VI. It allows other VI to connect with each other and share data. Improve effectiveness of interconnected VI. Example 2 interconnected basic combat VI performing the same task will have 10% skill learning ability. Inactive VI can share processing power with connected VI. Price 10g -Library (Earth)-Includes all knowledge from earth at a University Graduate Level. Does not include blueprints. Price: Free -Library (M)(Bestiary, Earth Pre)- Includes All information of the living creatures on Earth prior to the apocalypse. Price: 230c -Library (b)(Bestiary, Earth Post)- Includes information on the most common creatures found after the apocalypse, does not include mutations. Price: 300s -Library (b)(Plant Compendium, Earth Post)- Includes information about the most common plants found after the apocalypse, whether or not they are edible or poisonous mostly. Does not include alchemical recipes. Price:465s. -Library (b)(Identification)- Includes the names off all objects, creatures spells and so on. Does not include specific information. Ex: You see something ugly and secretly scan it. With this library it will bring out only its name. Its abilities skills and items will be unknown. Price:15s
. Honestly he expected more from the store. The unknown pricing aside, the libraries we mostly crap, he still didn¡¯t know what oddities the changing world has brought but he was sure that the first thing he wanted was the Evolving VI. It would be good to get the free library. It would give him knowledge about a lot of subjects, he could probably design a fire arm with it and make it from rusted nails and zombie copses but he decided via the fabricator but decided not to. If he got the Evolving VI and made it slowly learn all the info just from scanning it will probably increase its probability rete and learning speed. And he won¡¯t have to waste money every single time he need info on something. Instead he could get a pretty accurate approximation of it. In order not to stumble in the dark getting the Identification library would help a lot. First though he needed money. Unfortunately, he didn¡¯t know how to view his balance. Did he have to carry them, or is it inventory based? He didn¡¯t know how to answer those question nor where to look for an answer. There was one menu he hadn¡¯t checked yet. It was the options menu. In it were various options, a clock, a currency counter, variations on the attribute system and even a bunch of widgets. He put a shortcut and a progress bar for the scanner and even found with a surface scan option, extractor and fabricate options. He turned on the clock with a date and currency counter. He even put a module list. Currently there were listed only the Shock and Utility, with Shock being highlighted. The utility module was something along the lines of a swish army knife. It had various hardlight (Hard holograms like the Omni-tool plates) tools. Unfortunately, they were a bit brittle so no combat use at least yet. There was a fork, a steak knife, spoon, basically cutlery and an electronic lighter, screw drivers with different heads, wrenches of all sizes and so on. It was an engineering toolbox at the tip of your fingers. Though with the fabricator he didn¡¯t know for what to use it for. Maybe he would find a use for it later. Finishing with the exploration of his tool he decided to scavenge a little. Slowly coming down the stairs, everything was deceptively quiet. The zombies have probably congregated on the 3rd floor. On the top of his head he counted about 2-6 zombies per floor. Worst case scenario it was about 18 in total if he was lucky 6, but with an item like the Omni-tool he guessed it was mostly depleted for a while. As he got to the 5th floor he went in the middle apartment, the one where the Kristovs lived. He searched around till he found the kitchen and found some salami, bread and other small stuff. He made a quick sandwich with the help of chef Omni and on a full belly he decided it¡¯s time for a bit of action. Chapter 3: Home Alone As the sun was slowly crawling to the midday point, in a 5 floor apartment block, at the top floor, a young man was about to embark on a journey. He checked his gear and he found it bellow unsatisfactory. The winter jacket left sleeve was almost torn threw, his would be spear was broken in half and barely usable as such. He decided to postpone his expedition. He turned left and entered in to his apartment. Looking around and spotting a blood trail leading to the kitchen, the image of the corpse, lying there, was still fresh in his memory. Deciding to go there first, he wiped out the Omni-Tool and scanned the corpse. The same screen with the atomic composition of the corpse popped out, once it got to molecules it started to return unknowns. He wasn¡¯t a bit surprised. The library the Omni-Tool currently uses was all of his life experiences. However, at the end just after the 5.1% of possible extraction something different appeared.
-Energy source found. -Extraction 3% -Warning: No Storage Found -Recommended Extraction(Y/N) -Y -Extraction in progress...
With this a small, bluish beam with the thickness of a pinky, came out from the edge of the ring, it pierced threw the broken skin and cracked skull, slowly pulsating every second or so. After about a minute, the light show came to an end. And a new screen was shown.
3 EU of mana have been extracted. -Due to lack of storage redirecting energy to power core. (Y/N)
The screen was asking him to add extra power to the core, that means that he can extract extra power from dead zombies, his mind was itching with the idea to try it on live ones. Then another question popped up, why does it ask to redirect the energy? He decided to click no, even if he lost the energy, there were 3 more corpses downstairs and at least 20000 more across the city.
-Beginning mana crystallization. -Crystallization in Progress-Time left: 3s ¡­ -Crystallization complete. -Depositing: Tiny Energy Mana Crystals (EMC) -No Storage Available. -Eject? (Y/N) -Y -Ejecting
Just as the last line popped up, 3 almost transparent grains the size of rice fell on top of his hand. As he didn¡¯t expect it they managed to roll off it and fall on the bloodied carpet. He bent down and picked them up and made sure they were clean and not bloodied, he put them in his palm and went back to his room. Putting them on the table and after a scan¡­
Energy Mana Crystals A crystalized version of mana. This one is purified and crystalized to a high degree, however it has a low density hence its glass like look. Due to its high purity it can be absorbed immediately by a mage, without any side effects. Also useful as a magic medium. Energy Value: 1 Monetary Value: 1c
Sell Use
His eyes popped out as his hearth danced in euphoria. This little grain was not only high grade and can be exchanged for money. It can also recharge his power. The generator mounted on the Omni-Tool can produce the equivalent of 1 Energy for about an hour. And this little grain can do that almost immediately. He was somewhat worried by the fact that most of the loot and magic systems don¡¯t work for him, and was wondering how he would make money, while the monetary system was somewhat figured out by now and money was becoming less of an issue as he managed to reclaim only 3% of the zombie¡¯s energy. By the looks of it he would be more worried about energy in the future rather than money. True he would need a lot of VI if he wanted to make a safe haven for himself, eventually a small army. But the problem was how would he power all of them? So far he could probably extract materials from just about anywhere, corpses, unused cutlery and so on. Reassembling them in whatever he wanted with the assembler. True he didn¡¯t know how useful they were but, it is a fact that they were a part of his Omni-Tool so they could probably grow. With these thoughts he decided to test them out. He opened the Blueprint window and made a schematic for a 5cm steel needle. After he saved it, he took out most of the tools from his toolbox, with the Utility Module he won¡¯t need them anyway, and started scanning them one by one. For composition he mostly got iron, carbon and chromium, finally he selected a pretty big wrench and pressed the extract button on his desktop.
-Attempting Extraction -Extraction Rate: 4.2% -Energy required: 1 EU (Y/N)
He was a bit startled. His extraction rate was pretty low, from the energy extraction he knew that it was a volume percentage rather than probability so he was curious why it required a whole 1% of energy when the normal operations till now where didn¡¯t even reduce it, extracting of the Mana included. He selected Y. After it was another babble about lack of inventory, and he canceled it. Deciding to try something different. Why can¡¯t the Omni-Tool deposit the extracted resources somewhere instead of just popping them out like the crystals? After scratching his brains for a while he thought of something. In most strategy video games there is a resource drop off point or a stockpile of some sort so why can¡¯t I make one? True the tool lacks an internal inventory so why can¡¯t it use an external? He got up and went to the closet, he was searching for a metal box about 5cmX10cmX20cm it was an old military first aid kit he bought on the internet a few years back. It was looked quite nice so he bought it. After putting some bandages, pain killers and so on, inside he just left it there. He usually had a few small carton boxes filled with the same stuff that as a first aid kit and other cures of ailments, so he used them instead when he needed it. After he found the box he emptied it on the bed brought out his screen, tapped and held down his finger. After about a second a drop down menu appeared. It had the similar options: Surface Scan, Analyze, Extract Materials, Extract Energy. A bit disappointed he decided to analyze it first. After it was done he repeated the action and this time there was a 5th option.
Surface Scan Analyze Extract Materials Extract Energy Bind Storage
Clicking on bind storage he got this.
Bind Storage Allows to bind a container for the deposition of materials. More Durable containers are recommended. Materials: [O] Energy Crystals: [O]
Confirm Cancel
Taping on the Materials [O], turned it into Materials [X], after confirming. A light similar to the scanner passed to the box, and new information was soon available.
Steel Storage Container (Materials) (basic) This steel container has a capacity up to 1000cm3 or about 0.001m3. It has to be no further than 3 meter from the user in order for the resources to be exchanged. The storage container can only be accessed via a special tool. It can keep its functionality indefinitely as long as it isn¡¯t broken. Solid materials can be taken out in a cube with 1cm3 form, specialized tool can extract the materials regardless of quantity. Upon it being broken the storage designation will be revoked and the materials will leak out in the form of a fine powder. Fortunately, it can be reclaimed with a 100% extraction rate. Unless contaminated. Gases can also be stored in solid form. Recommended for long term storage. WARNING- The materials full weight is applied to the container, handle with care. Upkeep: 1EU/Day
A bright smile shined on his face as another nice surprise greeted him, this is better than an inventory system. He gets a sort of permanent storage for all the materials he could find or need. All he needs is sufficient power in order not to have any hiccups. On the minus side his containers can be broken and the materials degraded in purity. From the mana crystals extracted, it is apparent that the Omni-Tool extract materials with an extremely high degree of purity, which might be the reason its extraction rate is so low, but he can make high quality items without much worry, if he can design them. He quickly reselected the wrench and started extraction.A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
-Attempting Extraction -Extraction Rate: 4.2% -Inventory: (Steel Storage Container) (Materials) FOUND -Energy required: 1 EU (Y/N) -Y -Extraction in progress. Time Left:1m 37s ¡­ -Extraction complete -Depositing Materials (0.7cm3)
His energy fell back to 11%. It took him quite a bit of time for it to finish, longer than the mana extraction anyway. As the process started it was the same beam which pierced the zombies head, but this time it went over the wrench in a grid like pattern disintegrating it bit by bit, from time to time something would be sucked by the beam, flow to the Omni-Tool and travel via an orange cord to the Storage box. Opening the Omni-Tool menu, under storage was listed the new container, and it had a nifty range finder. Deciding to test it, he got up and slowly walked away. The range finder slowly rose from one meter to two, and as it went past three the name grayed out and it continue to increase. This has its own uses, for example it would prevent theft to a point and I can mark my base with it, if it can be renamed it would be best. He taped on the greyed out name and a box with it came out. Looking around he didn¡¯t spot any keyboard, and he doesn¡¯t want to make any necessary noise so he hasn¡¯t tested if there are voice commands. Prodding here and there, swiping over the screen dint bring up anything, until his finger touched the bottom of the screen and pulled down. A laptop like keyboard greeted him. Typing the majestic name of Storage 1 he saved it as default and for now decided to carry it with him. Getting up he looked around for another box but found only his 200ml metal flask, silver plated with the world tree Yggdrasil engraved on it, a true work of art, it was a present from his dad for his birthday. It used to be full of high grade liquor until he drank it all, and now it was full of dreams. As he was about to put it away another idea came to mind. He scanned the container and designated it for storage of energy crystals.
Flask of the World Tree (Unique) (Storage) (Energy Crystals) This flask is a true work of craftsmanship, made from a stainless steel and plated with a generous amount of silver it gave the artisan a canvas on which he could express his soul. Engraved by hand and with great care and love, this masterpiece will help its owner with a sip in a time of need. Storage: 200cm3 (200000 grains/100 000 drops) Unique: It can store energy mana crystals in a liquid form allowing it to be drunk. It increases awareness, regeneration, mental focus, and revitalizes the body: 30% health, stamina and mental focus over 30 minutes-Use/20ml (Liquid) Options: Soulbound-Cost 100000Eu. ???: Locked ???: Locked Upkeep: 1Eu/Day(Solid) | 2Eu/Day (Liquid)
¡°Shit¡± He couldn¡¯t keep himself from swearing. He knew it was a great birthday present for a student but he didn¡¯t know it was that good. And it could be Soulbound, not to mention the unknowns. It was a damn flask and it had high end gaming options on the go. Why? Judging by the description it is due to the craftsmanship and its intended use. Maybe the flask is better used for storing liquids. If some mage used it to store a legendary potion, what effect would it have? Liquid mana is the most he could accomplish at the moment, probably. Quickly opening the flask, he put the three grains in it. Now he had both a material and energy storage (Not counting the core). All that¡¯s left is to test the Fabricator. Opening the menu, he selected the needle blueprint and taped Fabricate. It then prompted for a material to be selected. Due to his knowledge of steels¡¯ crystalline structure the Omni-Tool was able to replicate it, for future reference He should probably find a way to designate the material composition of the different parts in the blueprint before fabrication.
-Fabrication in process (Steel Needle) -Materials 0.05cm3 steel -Time: 15s -Proceed (Y/N) -Y -Fabricating: 15 14 ¡­
As the fabrication process started, an orange tether stretched to the materials compartment, and materials flowed through. Soon it started assembling the needle like a 3d printer. The needle itself was suspended over the circle during fabrication. When the process was complete a prompt about ejection was shown, he ignored it and took the needle by himself, as he did the prompt automatically confirmed the ejection. Looking over his first fabricated object he was quite pleased it looked brand new, he didn¡¯t need to scan it to know that it was very sharp, from what he knows everything is fabricated molecule by molecule, which means that the needle itself has a monomolecular edge, and that is as sharp as you can go without quantum physics. He took some thread, finding some old newspapers and started to fix his jacket. He patched the hole on his left sleeve and started to layer the paper it wasn¡¯t pretty but It would have to do for now. First he has to clear the block, he will think about more complicated stuff later. He fixed his mighty garments and now he needed a good strategy. The only way to stop the zomboes is to break their heads open or to incapacitate them, preferably from the neck down. Worst case scenario he has at least 18 zombies to kill, he doesn¡¯t have a trusty skeleton summon to do the job for him until it drops a defensive item so he has to do it home alone style. Layering a few blankets in the fourth and fifth floor and making sure he has enough room he started to transport old building materials from the attic. Slowly layering down bricks in a semicircular fashion around the staircase to the 4th,5th floor and the attic, he secured them with a few good sized wooden beam that fitted in the bricks holes making a uniform structure. After that he slowly moved few brick on the stairs next to the barricades for throwing or plain smashing the zombies heads. And finally he had to make a face mask, his body had the luxury of a modern day gambeson. He decided to use the fabricator. As the defenses were done, he would be able to hear the zombies coming from a mile away. He gathered all of the useless and rusted metal from the attic and managed to gather quite a significant amount. The fortification process took quite a lot of time so it was around 2pm, his core was at 17 percent so he could gather at least about 20cm3 of iron and a bit of oxygen, if he used the energy from the flask. Opening the Omni-Tool menu he clicked on the 17% and a prompt about using the energy mana crystal, he selected all and agreed. He slowly watched his percentage rise to 20. Just before exiting his look fell on the Core-T1, clicking on it to see if anything different showed up after acquiring the new energy source.
Core-T1: It¡¯s a basic evolving powered core. It functions both as a generator and battery, with the ability to use mana as an energy source. Can be improved upon. Generation:1 Capacity:100 Upgrade: Generation:100Eu Capacity: 100Eu Omni-Tool (Special): Can supplement with secondary energy sources in order to increase stockpiled energy!
He expected to be able to upgrade the core but hose prices were a blow, a single zombie provides 3Eu worth of crystals so it would take over 30 just to upgrade once and those buggers won¡¯t stay still and wait for him to play whack a mole. As similar thoughts were flowing through his mind he remembered about the 3 corpses on the fourth floor. He quickly increased his energy levels to 29% and was ready to start his extraction process. While extracting he thought about his other possible upgrades and decided not to check on them at least until he is finished with clearing his block, he didn¡¯t want any depressing thoughts for now, as fighting relatively freshly reanimated corpses was heavy as it is. Finally, he was ready, using 25% of power he managed to extract about between 0.7-1.2cm3 of material per 1Eu so he had around 23cm3 total material, mostly iron oxygen and other. He had the idea of making a bomb with hydrogen and oxygen mix but decided against it would shock the whole neighborhood drawing every single bugger to him and he didn¡¯t want that. After he made a helmet medieval looking helmet, basically a bascinet with a dropping plate filled with holes. Even though it was only about 1to 2mm thick it was still around 200g of extra weight on his head. At least his whole head was protected with minor visual impairment, thanks to the many small holes. After making a quick padding for the helmets inside he took a few rusty nails and went all the way to the 4th floor. His plan? Make the zombies run up and down the 3 floors, probably braking their appendages in the process. He dropped a nail between the railings, he was quite lucky as it went all the way to the 1st floor and started to bounce around. Soon the sound of wood shattering and legs shuffling is heard. Oddly he heard an exaggerated exhale from somewhere below and the zombies topped moving. Instead they started to climb up the stairs. He could hear that some are scattering while others continued to try and climb the stairs. A few minutes later a lone zombie reached the 4th floor barricade. He lifted a brick and slammed it down on its head. A second time followed by a third until its head cracked and it fell down the stairs. Not long after, a loud scream rang through the block, as a zombies started to congregate towards him. Throwing brick after brick he was able to down the first two zombies before they managed to swarm the barricade and slowly started to move it. Killing one more he went to the 5th floor where everything repeated itself, thanks to the stairs the zombies managed to tumble from time to time which gave him time for a few kills. By the time they made it to the 6th floor where the attic is he managed to kill about 8 of them. At the top were his greatest weapons. He kept his now short spear, and the biggest wooden beams he could find. He was barely able to lift them over his head. He killed two more zombies as he finally threw his first beam. It was quite a blow to the zombies who didn¡¯t have a good footing. He managed to knock most of them down. As he was enjoying his view he saw a zombie staying at the back, just watching. This gave him a creepy feeling he knew the zombies so far were extremely aggressive so this behavior is not normal. There were about 7 zombies left. He kept smashing their head with the bricks. He was fighting close to 15min so his stamina was bound to run out. He was getting more sluggish as only 3 more zombies were left. He hefted a beams with shaking hands, as he was about halfway to lifting it over his head, the odd zombie sprang in to action. In a few big strides he managed to reach the top, it used its comrades as stepping stones in order to jump over the barricade and tackle him. There wasn¡¯t much room to fall to, so his back hit the wall. The padding reduced the brunt of the damage, the zombie latched on to his shoulders tried to bite his head, but only got a taste of metal. Plamen managed to rotate himself to secure room for some movement. He backed in to the attic all while his helmet was being treated as a chew toy, eventually the zombie got somewhat annoyed and grabbed his head squeezing, chewing and clawing at the same time. The helmet could barely hold at it was starting to deform. As he got to an open space he spun sharply, as the zombie lost a bit of its grip on his head, he reeled backwards and viciously head-butted the zombie and spun sharply again and put his leg tripping it. The zombie fell on the floor it quickly jumped back up like it was nothing. But he already expected that and lowered his body and lifted the zombie on his shoulder. After that he relaxed and let gravity do all the work as the zombie fell head first in to the concrete floor. Its head cracked but it didn¡¯t die. The damage managed to stun it long enough for him to get up and make it an acquaintance with his boot, ending the meeting with splosh. For a moment he wondered whether he would be able to extract mana since its brain is literally spilled over the floor. He looked at the barricade, 2 zombies struggling to breach it, unfortunately for them they weren¡¯t enough to do so. His breathing was calming down, they weren¡¯t going anywhere so he was calm and decided to try extracting the mana from them. He raised his arm, pulled up the screen and pressed the energy extraction from the dropdown menu. The beam hit the head of the left zombie and tenaciously followed its movements. After a minute, something expected showed up.
-Mana is in a turbulent state -Extraction Failed
. It was a short and descriptive. The Omni-Tool Might be precise but it had its limits. He offed the zombies and started to look around. He walked down, along the way to the first floor He found 3 more zombies with broken legs trying to climb the stairs. They were of no threat. All he needed was a good ol¡¯ brick. He was getting a bit worried about the corpses left. If he could, he would have disintegrated the corpses. Unfortunately, it required about 1Eu for every 1.5 kilograms of mass so it was close to 50Eu for just one corpse, averaging at 75kilos and he would get mostly organic materials which he couldn¡¯t use for the moment. So he was prepared to pile them up somewhere. The basement came to mind. He would have dumped them outside if he could but it wasn¡¯t safe. Even now he could see from the terrace, groups of up to 20 zombies slowly moving around. Worried about it he decided to rest for a bit and continue to work. While taking his break he would start to gather the mana from the corpses. About 48 from the normal zombies and 15 from the smart one. Totaling at 63 energy units. He was glad, this number was very satisfying. Deciding to save up for and upgrade he got to heavy duty work once more. He found the most remote part of the basement he could, and looted it. This time he could be a little more leisure with the noise as he started to stockpile the food on the fifth floor and the materials on the attic. Since the block lacked an elevator, and there was no power to boot he had to work during the daylight. Soon one part of the basement was clear and he began to drag the corpses there. It was filled quite quickly as the 20 corpses piled up were quite a gruesome sight he felt oddly calm, come to think of it he had quite an adrenaline rush during the fight but he was emotionally calm back then, why? True he didn¡¯t consider the zombies human. Most of them were disfigured and only looked human shaped, so that¡¯s a plus, and cleaning the corpses was a chore, disgusting but still more of a chore. The blood was just red, other than the slight disgust and turning of his stomach due to the unpleasant smell and sights he wasn¡¯t emotionally disturbed. He should probably think long and hard about the problem in the future. As the sun was starting to set he fixed two of the barricades. Taking out a big piece of ply wood he used duct tape to fix the hole on his front door, got to bed and slept like never before. Chapter 4: "Grave Robber" An endless world, monsters devouring each other, abominations defiling the human form. The skies on fire with meteors falling down and gods weeping. Encroaching darkness devouring the moons and stars, and demons crawling out from the deepest parts of the Earth. Feathers and corpses raining from the heavens, and a man on top of a hill watching everything burn with a look of hopelessness on his face. A look of a man tired of fighting against fate. A world in chaos. A world in War. A loud bang awakens him from a nightmare. Yesterdays¡¯ memories flood his mind, the hellish nightmare all but forgotten, all that¡¯s left is a feeling of harrowing premonition. As he went to bed with all of his gear in case of a worst case scenario, there was no need to waste time. He got up and went to his window. Carefully peeking out he saw a car had crashed at the office section of the apartment block on the opposite side of the street. From a simple look the car came from his left, looking in the same direction there were corpses crawling on the street, and a few zombies were running towards the car itself. Not long after a brawly man about 2m tall exited the car with a hunting shotgun. Not long after a woman carrying a child followed. He told the woman to run, to hide, but his loud voice only drew more of the rot heads towards him. Not long after shots followed. He killed 3 zombies and disabled 4 more before his shotgun ran out of ammo. Screaming he tried to distract the zombies away but it was all for naught, as the child started weeping attracting more to them. The woman tried to calm him down but it was already too late, 2 more groups of enemies soon came in to view all heading towards the trio. Not long after their dying screams greeted the new day. Plamen was startled not because of the gruesome tragedy scene, but because he hadn¡¯t felt any guilt or fear watching it happen. It was like some promotional video of a 3rd rate zombie movie. He knew he still had his emotions, he was currently afraid of and for himself, and felt a bit bad for them. True he wasn¡¯t the social kind, he didn¡¯t have any people who he would call true friends, well maybe one or two. You get the point. He was the type of person to cry at a drama, he didn¡¯t keep pretense about himself. It took him a few years to figure it out but people¡¯s opinions of him didn¡¯t matter, so he was living as himself some even called him an eccentric. He was 24 for gods sake. His average personality aside, nothing he could think of could explain why he was so numb to it all, like he had seen this scene a thousand times, like it was normal. Killing the zombified couple from the 4th floor brought him pity and regret and some shock due to his close brush with death. After the big fight he was tired and his hand were shaking from the adrenaline at best. On the online news, and a few videos he watched for relaxation back in the day, there were people with social disorder, a psychopath if it was inborn, sociopath if developed. He still cared and had empathy so it was unlikely but similar. All he could do was ask himself the question. ¡°If those people were my family, will I act the same?¡±. What scared him the most is that he didn¡¯t know the answer. He closed his eyes and relaxed his mind, slowing down his heartbeat which he didn¡¯t notice when it became elevated. Taking another good look at the street, and as his look fell on the car he had an idea. But first he finally decided to buy the library with the common knowledge. Not only would he have knowledge about the most common molecules and technology he could make a long range weapon. After a quick swipe of the menu he found the library and quickly bought it. As for the Evolving VI he could probably find a way to limit its exposure to data if necessary. Not long after a new message appeared confirming the installation.
-Library: (Earth) has been installed. -New data available. -Schematic tools upgraded. -New upgrades available. -New modes added to Utility Module
After the message he took a look at the Blueprints and the program finally had a tool bar. It was simple, there was the Materials tab, which allowed to choose the material of a certain surface to be made from, a components tab for components to be made, and even a compiler for a binary code, with all of the known program languages, some he didn¡¯t even know of. This gave a lot of options. But first he needed to check the upgrades. Looking at it was a meu with all of the stuff that can be upgraded. After a bit of fiddling it looked a lot more orderly. He arranged it in three tabs abilities, Omni-Tool and VI. For now, the last one was empty. The first one had upgrades for the shock ability, one for efficiency and one for damage, there also were a few greyed out options with a ??? on them. At the Omni-Tool were the upgrades for the core, storage, data storage, extractor and fabricator. However except for the core and storage(both) the rest were ???. There is a probability for a lack of technological information in order to upgrade. With a slight disappointment he checked storage and found that it required at least 1000 EU for a 1cm cubed. Which was quite high for his current self. He knew that what he lacked was a proper infrastructure, from what he knows and experienced so far his class is crafting oriented. And every crafter needs proper resources, storage and so on. He could probably build more storage but could not keep up with the upkeep. Looking at the clock it was 10am and he had around 22% power. Considering the need of 1EU for a small container integrity, and probably more if he wanted to store materials in an unnatural form, like solid nitrogen. Just mentioning the need for the 3m proximity in order for the material transfer to work was a headache in itself. Going to gather materials and coming back to store them was annoying but necessary as the only portable container he had was the medkit. For the moment that should suffice, and currently he needed a long range weapon. He couldn¡¯t use firearms due to the noise, bow and arrow was our and the crossbow as well due to slow reload and the smart zombies. If he could solve the energy problem he could design a coilgun or a railgun, though he must make them sub sonic as far as projectile speed was concerned, a lot less noise that way.Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. If the Omni-Tool could transfer matter, could it transfer energy as well? There was no power since the blackout so he picked his phone that usually stayed connected to its charger. The battery was at 72%. Doing a quick scan, he got the prompt to upload data from the phone, to which he agreed. On the pop up screen he held his tap until the menu shoed up and a charge function as well as a pair one were there on top of the others. Selecting charge and the battery jumped to 100 in less than a second. There was barely a pulse coming from the Omni-Tool. Next he removed the battery, scanned and checked the menu again. The charge option was greyed out but the pair one was not. As he selected pair the phone turned on. There were no notifications so the drain on power is probably negligible. After moving 3m away from the phone it shut down. With the good news of plot ar¡­ conveniences his spirit of engineering was spurred. He opened the Blueprints menu and started to design his weapon, due to pairing he could power it directly with the Omni-Tool as long as it is in the 3m range. Firstly, he made a ceramic tube about 3cm long and 1cm inward diameter and the walls 2mm thick, next he placed 2 plastic squares with a whole in the middle 1.2mm wide where the tube would fit. After placing a non-conductive coating on the tube he wound copper wire around it. After making the coil he secured both end of the used wire on the 2 plastic plates. Next he copy-pasted the whole thing 12 times, connected the tubes and made the gun barrel. Using some detectors and transistors he made the coil switching circuit. When the trigger is squeezed the projectile gets pulled towards the barrel of the first coil by the magnetic field, after the sensor at the end of the first coil and the beginning of the 2nd is activated the first coil disengages and the second one activates, it pulls the projectile forward and further accelerates. Once it reaches the end of the 2nd coil and the 2rd sensor activates the projectile gets pulled by the 3rd coil while the 2nd shuts off, and so on and so on. This design allows for less recoil as it gets distributed between the 12 coils. After that he added 2 big capacitors under the barrel, the grip and trigger behind them. It was quite short, currently at around 40cm so he added a drum mag with around 50 1cm pellets and finally the collapsible stock over it, for the stock to be retracted in close quarters. He wanted to add a big blade on it but found it redundant. Finally, he encased the gun in plastic, and the blueprint was ready to go. After a thought he browsed through the components menu and found an Omni relay, it would serve as a direct connection with the Omni-Tool for a circuit, like a battery with a remote recharger. All that¡¯s left were the materials. Harvesting them will take a while. He had a good source of plastic and carbon in the basement, the zombie corpses. Plastic is made from oil and the oil itself is organic in nature. Copper he had plenty of, him being an engineer and all that, semiconductors were needed in miniscule amounts for circuitry, which were easy to find if you know where to look, molecular extractor and all that jazz. And the final obstacle, energy. He didn¡¯t know how much he needed to use any organic organism is a great source of most elements in the periodic table, but most had at least 50% water content and humans were about 60-75 depending on age. Most organic molecules had primarily carbon and hydrogen so that¡¯s another minus as he didn¡¯t know which parts the Extractor uhm extracted. So he decided to try it out. First he gathered the copper wire he had, since it had to be refined by the Omni-Tool it would return at best 5% of its mass so it was low but on the up side the purity will be top notch and the coils will be perfect. After looking around the various apartments in the block, front bashed open courtesy of the zombies, he found what he considered enough copper and left refinement for later. And finally the zombies corpses. As he got to the basement he was just to go around the corner when he heard, the sound chewing and something skittering around the floor. He turned around went to his basement and took a 2m log axe, usually used for wood chopping, and a small hammer. After closing in on the sound he noticed some rats, big ones. This part of the city doesn¡¯t have any rats, it has mice sure but rats? No sir. And he doesn¡¯t remember rats being this big, recalling that rats were at best as big as a cat if a wonder occurred. These were as big as a dog. It was barely the 3rd day and mutated monsters already appeared. He was getting another headache. There were 3 of them, busy devouring the corpses. One of them was bigger and had white spots around its neck. He didn¡¯t have any traps so he was questioning whether he should attack or not. On the plus side he could get extra energy which he would need in order to upgrade the core. Seeing as the rats were in an eating frenzy, he quietly snuck behind the biggest one and swung down with an overhead chop. The axe head sunk into its back breaking a few vertebrae, as the rat screamed and its lower body got paralyzed. The other two finally noticed and charged immediately. Since he was close to the door he made one step back and one to the side hiding from the rats¡¯ view. He prepared for another heavy swing. As a head popped out, he swung without hesitation beheading it. As blood gushed from the headless corpse the other rat raced over its comrades¡¯ body and charged. He let go of the axe and took hold of the hammer. The rat jumped without warning, he managed to block with his right sleeve covered in paper. As the rat was about to sing its teeth into his arm, instead of trying to pull it back he pushed it further in to its mouth. The rat was surprised as the hand it wanted to rip trough was shoved in between the jaw and the skull where there were no teeth, and it couldn¡¯t use its full strength. During the rats¡¯ confusion he lifted the hammer up and brought it down on the back of the neck bellow the skull. From the pain a muffled screech was given off by the rat as it tried to retreat but it was too slow as the second hit came down, then third, fourth and by the fifth the rat was dead. He turned around and saw the rat with the spots trying to run away using its front paws, it looked quite pitiable and quite agile too. Picking the axe up he finished the it off. After a quick extraction he got 21 energy, 15 from the big one and 3 from the normal ones each. At the corpse storage room, the small window was broken and there were claw marks on the concrete, its where the rats came from, in conclusion he needed to move the food and chose a new corpse storage asap, at least until he could refine a whole corpse Total EMC 84, if he could get the zombies on the street and kill the maimed one he could get enough for an upgrade. Was it worth it? The answer is yes. Will he do it? No. He wouldn¡¯t take unnecessary risks. He must make the weapon first then he could just snipe them. He started off with the first corpse it was from the old neighbor lady she was quite light by the looks of it around 40-50kg he figured there are needed around 1 EU for 1.5kg or so, around 30EU should work. He decided to have breakfast first it was already 1pm so he needed to work for another 3 hours before getting the needed energy, and due to the rats he had the perfect work plan. Breaking the lock on a few basements he started to pile up the pickled fruits, vegetables and meat. After he cleared around 4 of the basement rooms it was around 5 pm so he searched the apartments for perishable goods and had lunch with a day old stew. He worked until sunset which came around 8pm, as the tool had 34% and finally decided to scavenge that corpse. On the 4th floor he found a nice fridge empty it out and made a storage container with around 2m cubed it had 1Eu upkeep. He emptied out his portable one and went down to the basement. The corpse took nearly 10 min to properly disintegrate and 32% energy, alas he didn¡¯t have enough carbon for the gun, though the trace quantities of other various elements almost enough for the electronics. A second one should fix the problem, with the current regeneration it will be the day after tomorrow before he could refine a corpse again. As the sun was about to set he prepared for bed, he used the light from the utility module to help him check the barricade from the 4th floor up. Once it was secure he set up a basic perimeter alarm with strings and dozen beer cans filled with noisy clutter he found here and there. And the end of day 3 came to an end with a microwaved meal. Chapter 5: "Newton can be quite the..." His dreams were unsettling, as he woke up in a cold sweat. He didn¡¯t remember what it was, only that it wasn¡¯t pleasant in the least. Breakfast, a simple fruit salad. Prioritizing the perishable food over the preserved ones is a good start. Considering the size of the city and the population of barely 50 thousand the probability of meeting anyone else was low. Maybe if he went to the church a bit more than 1km he would find people, or the malls. For the moment he decided to get to work, he had a lot of work to do and even had to make inventory. What you have and what you need is the basics of survival. And although he had plenty of food for now, he still had thing he needed. But work has to be done sooner rather than pile up for later, most of it is repeatable so he could focus his mind on other important matters. With his ability does he really need to put himself in danger in order to find other people? He could probably turn his block in to a fort with a small army of terminators and harvesting drones. Going out only for combat experience or diplomatic missions or something. He has read quite a bit of books and novels about the apocalypse, virtual reality and so on¡­ he had quite a bit of free time. In most situations people will make societies or groups, sometimes small countries, their leaders will vary from figures of law to sociopaths. And he didn¡¯t want to attract the attention of either of those. He was well aware of his uniqueness. He was a walking factory, true he had 5% efficiency but the quality was godlike. Who wouldn¡¯t want a monomolecular blade with a full carbon nanotube battle suit? Oh and let¡¯s forget the Energy Mana Crystals. At most he needed them for upgrades and replenish energy, but mages? They could probably overclock their spells with them, turning a novice in an artillery emplacement. Not to honk his own horn, but his value was quite high. From the game the main character class was master of all jack of none kind of deal, true it took quite a bit of time to max out all his skills but they only had 6 levels to upgrade each. And from the looks of it he aint got any skill points. His, so so, knowledge of game lore should help him with development but he still didn¡¯t know how to get skills now that he thought about it, he hasn¡¯t checked his status window yet.
Omni-Tool Stats Pesonal Stats
Personal Stats
Name: Plamen Yonkov Titles :None
Health: 100% Stamina: 100%
Class: Explorer Profesion: None
Strength: 0.702 Endurance: 0.783
Resilience: 1.092 Agility: 0.821
Dexterity:1.472 Intelligence:1.148
Willpower: 0.832 Perception: 1.205
Abilities: Fitness: Lvl2 (15/100) Tool Operation: Lvl1 (80/100)
Debuff: None
His strength and endurance have the biggest growth coupled with willpower and a bit more of everything. His fitness leveled up, and tool operation is heading there too. For the most part he was happy with his growth, and is hopping that he would continue to do so. The only problem is the lack of knowledge on proper growth in this new brave world. He knew his class had quite a lot of restrictions which is why he knew it is kinda broken. He has a lot of ideas piling up in his head but he neither had the cash to try or the materials so all he could do was keep working maybe he would grow strong enough not to be afraid from the damn biters. As for proper sci-fi armor he was weeks off, or is he? Just the energy requirements for material extraction were trippy, but not impossible. He worked long and hard for 3 days. He moved the preserved food to the 5th floor in the middle apartment. He lived in the right one and the left he left for later. He had quite the idea for it but it required materials in order to work. Construction materials like planks, nails, hammers handyman kits and whatnot were all moved to the 4th floor. He was planning to use it as a storage. Fortunately, the apartment block was reinforced so it could hold the weight. The barricades reinforcement were on his to do list, he was a bit paranoid due to the noise requirements for them. First on the list is to make the gauss gun. On the morning of the 7th day (4th day of work) he woke up like clockwork and the first thing he did was check his energy levels. He did that every day and due to some luck it was always the same two digits, today was 77% it was more than enough for scavenging 2 smaller corpses or 1 big one, either way he would have more than enough. After leaving only firewood in the basements he still used the other half as a morgue. He had to find some other place to store the corpses or throw them away, the thought was disgusting to say the least. The first time he did it they were relatively fresh and now were almost a week old. The smell was terrible. He could set them on fire but the smoke would attract attention so that¡¯s out. The only thing left was to slowly refine them into usable materials. As he refined the second corpse and went to the 4th floor crafting room, which was the right apartment, the one right under his and the closest on to the stairs, he stored the last bit of material in to the fridge turned container. Good thing about upkeep is, that it is payed only once a day and he found a charge function allowing him to pay for a few days beforehand. Without the energy the different materials in the storage unit will start to react chemically with each other reducing the purity. He stopped giving the flask energy since it only used it to merge the grains in order to save space and he couldn¡¯t even fill 1% of its volume without the compression so it was fine for now, hence he needed 2Eu per day for the 2 containers. He selected a table next to the fridge as an output zone and selected the blueprint. He thought about it and decided to modify it a bit he added a small scope with a sight on top of it, and redesigned the back of the barrel. He added a lever that allowed to use different kind of clip sizes. Since caliber is stuck at 10mm he could use different kind of lengths or even rounds with a disposable jacket like the needle tank shells. While he was at it he designed 2 extra type of bullets. One was a spike about 4cm long with groves for the air to make it spin, and armor piercing highly explosive round with a delayed fuse. The human body doesn¡¯t have a lot of sulfur for the explosive so he had only about 1clip of them, the bigger clips were 5 round each due to their size. With the designs ready he got himself some lunch and started the fabricator. About an hour later he had his first long range weapon. With what energy he had left he made 2 clips of the metal balls and spikes and 1 with APHE rounds. All that¡¯s left is the perfect target practice. Getting up he went to the attic, removing a few of the roof tiles and exited on the roof. It was a bit slanted so he had to be careful. This gave him a good view all around. After an hour of zombie watching he spotted about 10-15 groups stumbling about. Each group was led one of the smarter zombies. Sometimes when 2 groups meet the leaders would brawl for a bit before retreating. Intelligent zombies were a nightmare. He didn¡¯t know whether it was pack mentality or if they were somehow controlled but either way they were priority targets. For all the time he was on the roof none of the zombies were paying him attention. Feeling a bit ignored he went down and picked a brick and threw it with his miserable strength close to a group. As the brick shattered on the road the zombie group turned around. For around 5 min they kept their head on a swivel until they kept wobbling in another direction. From his observation he could deduce that the zombies were either somewhat blind or could see using an unknown method. They hunted using sound mostly. There are smarter zombies which lead a group or pack and are kind of territorial. So far none of the Alpha zombies have won an engagement with each other so it can be theorized due to the size of the groups that there is a limit to their control. The Duels themselves might be a way to gain more combat experience. He got down from the roof back in to the attic, walking to the end of the room where the roof meets the floor. Due to the low roof he had to squat. After removing some tiles and making a comfy sniper nest he took the Gauss Rifle from his back and for the first time scanned it.
Segmented Gauss Rifle (Unique) A coilgun with 12 segments in order to reduce recoil, it was designed to accept different clips. Unfortunately, due to it being made with only 2 capacitors for mobility its fire rate leaves something to be desired. With the lack of an inbuilt generator it requires to be in proximity to a remote energy source. The gun can fire 6 shots at low velocities in less than a second unfortunately the capacitors need to charge before it can fire again. It takes around 10s for them to fully recharge. It also can use all the energy in the capacitors to fire a high velocity round.Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. Fire rate: May vary due to ammo type. -For 10mm balls -50-60Shots/min|340m/s -5-6Shots/min|1800m/s Energy: 1Eu/10shots (Low powered) 1EU/1shot (High Powered) Requirements: Energy relay in proximity
Not knowing what he was actually expecting he was a bit upset to the on point description and surprised due to its performance. If he used less power he could probably make it go full auto but the muzzle velocity will be so slow it will be worse than a pea shooter. For now, it was time to test its performance. He didn¡¯t know whether the scope needed calibration since it was perfectly aligned with the rifle from the get go, even so he had to make sure the up to 8 magnification works properly. Looking at the clock it was around 14pm with about 12% battery or 12EU. He could shoot his 2 normal clips at subsonic velocities and then some. He put the stock on his shoulder and fired a round without aiming, he wanted to see its trajectory if he could, and he couldn¡¯t. The silvery ball of steel wooshed to the horizon or so he though. Dejected he aimed at one of the visible zombie groups. Using the sight, he aimed at the zombies¡¯ torso and fired. Even though the zombie was about 80m away from him he missed. He sued to practice with a sports rifle back in the day but man was his aim way off. With a sigh he kept shooting. It took him 15 shots to nail the bugger in the head. Thankfully the shot was strong enough to kill it. In conclusion the rifle works quite well at around 80m, at the low setting, and he needed to practice. After emptying the clip, he nailed another 4 bugges. The whole group was on alert but thanks to the lack of sonic booms they had no idea what was using them as target practice. The second clip he used with the scope and his aim was a lot better. He managed to kill the rest of the group totaling at 14 kills. Unfortunately, he couldn¡¯t retrieve the energy from the corpses. His logic told him that he should take his anger out on the other groups. He loaded the spike round switched to high velocity mode. After locating a few mini hordes walking about he took carful aim and took out 2 of their alphas, one shot each. Due to the sheer speed and weight of the round it blew their head straight off. It reminded him of the hitscan weapons from video games. On the down side the coils started to heat up. The barrel was quite warm to the touch and it could go another 200 rounds or so of constant fire but it would a bad idea to push it. With the gun in hand he had quite a bit of leeway on combat. All he needed now was proper armor. And he had just the idea. Carbon nanotubes would make quite the fashion hit so he first started to design the under suit out of the most normal type of nanotubes, in a spark of genius he scanned himself and got a mannequin for the design software. Now he just needed to place the fabric over it and it would fit like a glove¡­ probably. After making the suit a whole piece with a zipper in front. It went from the top of his neck all the way down to his toes. With a tight hood for the head. On specific places there were places where he could attack armor pieces, and a few tubes in a vain like pattern running across the whole suit, their purpose is to regulate temperature. All the tubes were filled with water and connected to a small temperature regulation unit at the waist. In the design it didn¡¯t have a control panel, his idea was to connect it to the Omni-Tool. After he saved the suit he started to work on the armor pieces. The suit itself was quite light and 10times stronger than steel so armor plates might be overkill but better safe than sorry. You never know when devils with god slaying sword would show up. His high tech armor would probably be paper to them. He went easy this time. While his suit was good against stabbing and slashing he needed something to against blunt attacks. So he designed impact resistant plates. They were quite simple, requiring rubber and soft carbon nanotube fabric for structural integrity. This way the armor would have a sturdy shape and be somewhat flexible. The rubber would negate the impact damage and the fabric would keep it together adding extra defense. Happy with his design he shaped the armor. He started on the different pieces. Firstly, the helmet was a similar to a barbute, he made the visor with transparent aluminum (yes that¡¯s a thing look it up) it looked similar to clone trooper helmet, minus the smiley at the bottom part. Next was a cuirass, thanks to the rubbery material it was flexible enough for the user to bend forward. For the top of the cuirass he added an optional bevor to protect the neck from the front. Rerebrace to guard the shoulder to the elbow, for both arms. And vambraces with elbow guards for the forearms, while he was at it he added rubber coating to the knuckles of the gloves for punching and on the palms and fingers for a grip. Adding armor to the side of the tights and proper greaves with knee protectors and a quick scan of his winter boots, remade with carbon nanotubes and high quality rubber for the feet. All in all, he was happy with the design, it was mostly modular so he could mix and match the whole set in any way he liked. With the new schematics done he was ready to call it a day, it took him quite a while to make the stuff properly, he had to even dig up the actual library in order to find what he needed and how to properly design it. But, this suit is the best he can do for a long time, he is no genius who can make alloys and new material compositions out of thin air. The only problem were the materials and energy. Huh¡­ another thing to add to his long to do list. As the sun is setting he can only sigh to the upcoming grind fest. Next morning the 8th day began. He wanted to take a fringing break, laze about and eat ice-cream. But as the song goes ¡°there is no rest for the wicked¡± as such he had work to do. He already cleaned out the important stuff from the basement and made a rifle, metal he could get from the cars parked in front of the apartment block, about 8-10 cars in total. He hasn¡¯t counted them yet but they shouldn¡¯t be that many. So no problem for steel, as long as he could sneak properly. He had to clear the whole neighborhood for safety and EMC, but he needed armor for safety reasons. Finally, he decided to try his luck. Going to the front terrace he looked down and spotted the parked cars. Taking out a glass bottle he droped it down. As the glass shatters the sound reverberated through the empty boulevard. Aaaand nothing. He drops a second one then a third and finally a fifth. Waiting for a few minutes a zombie group toddles bellow. The alpha looks around and tries to figure out where the sound came from. Soon after he is just below the terrace. Taking out the gauss rifle he takes aim and fires a full powered spike blowing the alphas head off, at around 15m even a child wouldn¡¯t miss. As the recoil kicks his shoulder back he prepares for another shot. Switching to the balls he finishes off the normal zombies, barely wasting 20 rounds in total with 11 kills. He still needs to work on it. Just as he is about to head back in he hears the faint sound of groaning. From the side of the apartment block in front of his, a new group comes over. As it comes closer their alpha charges in a fenzy towards the first one, he sniped. It starts to eat and devour the 1st alphas brain matter, licking it literally from the pavements. Alpha-2 starts groaning and moaning like proper zombie, it hugs itself and screams towards the heaven. Soon after its limbs grow thicker its skull expands and an explosion occurs. What¡¯s left on its spot is deathly grey bald figure, its lipless mouth full of razor sharp, dull yellow teeth. The hands tipped with blackish nails 5cm long, walking with an animalistic posture ready to pounce at its meal. As it looks around with its black beady eyes it spots the front door to his block, for some reason it decides to rip open the door and enter. The sound of violent wood breaking is heard and all the zombies outside soon follow. Plamen stayed at the terrace his eyes focused on the scene bellow, he was paralyzed by fear. He knew that whatever that is, he was afraid of it on an instinctual level. Like it was the reincarnation of death itself. Having something like this to roam around his living space was mortifying. After coming to his senses he walked slowly to his own room. He put his reinforced winter jacket, the slightly bent helm. Checking his energy reserves, it was at 13%, he had around 19 when he started, used 4 to refine some scrap in order to refill his clips and was left with using 3 more for killing the zombies and an hour of regen on top of that. He put the drum mag in his rifle and got ready for some action. This THING looked like a hunter and he had no reason to become prey. If he let it come to him he would be at a disadvantage. Plamen didn¡¯t know what it was doing down there . It entered with what looked like purpose, like it wanted something and it¡¯s been close to 15 min since then. More than plenty for it to hit the first barricade one floor down. And it still hasn¡¯t. Armed with his will and rifle he started to descend the stairs slowly. Having to avoid his own noise makers while wobbling in the thick padding. He had no military training so he walked and move the best way he could. One foot in front of the other leading with the right side of his body while keeping the rifles handle with his left arm, its barrel lowered ready to rise and shoot a bullet straight between a zombie head. As he got passed the first floor and reached the ground one he turned left and saw the basement door broken with the debris partially on the outside. Like something just smashed the door with a swipe. Turning around the corner, in the dim underground corridor, at the bottom of the stairs there was a zombie. It just stood there like it was waiting. And the known sound of flesh ripping and meant being voraciously chewed was coming from the inside. Not wasting any time, he lifted the barrel and shot once making a fist sized hole in its head. Just as the body fell with a thud, he had already moved back and focused on the noise. The sound of eating was still continuing. Being somewhat ignored by a whatyamacall it was both an annoying and welcome feeling. He slowly walked out the block and picked a few of the whole glass bottle pieces which miraculously survived, he threw them down the stairs. As the sound of breaking glass echoed through the moldy corridors. The sound of chewing stopped. Nails craping concrete was the most appropriate description of the current atmosphere. Taking careful aim he patiently waited. Seconds later a head came into view. His firing zone at the bottom of the stairs is just 1 square meter with the trap to the left, the head coming from the right. Without even verifying the target he just pulled the trigger once, hitting it on the side of the temple. The normal sound of bones breaking and brains squashing wasn¡¯t present. The head just hit the wall, thanks to the recoil, with a thud. And what¡¯s left of the steel ball fell to the ground. Angry growls soon followed the figure to which the head belonged slowly stood up and looked towards him. This thing, took a low powered shot to the head and lived. He used the full powered spike shot to make sure he didn¡¯t miss when shooting at alpha zombies. But a normal human would be dead by being hit with around 6g of steel flying at 340m/s in the head not to mention a zombie. The thing jumped up and charged at him with lightning speed. As it was about to reach its prey, he finally reacted. Dumping a 6 round burst in to its head and torso. Unfortunately, newton is quite the bitch on weekdays, as the inertia carried the death fiend through the barrage and crashing on top of him. With his mind cold and numb, he decisively shoved the thing off of him rolled to the side and stood up and darted up the stairs. When it was on top of him he noticed that the side of its temple where the bullet hit mostly fine, it was just a scratch. He lucked out as the burst managed to stun briefly and he managed to run away. Due to quick wits he survived the 1st encounter, and now he was prey. As he got to the fifth floor he forced himself to calm down and changed the clip to the APHE one, he wasn¡¯t going to hold back. Setting the Gauss Gun on full power he took aim and waited. The sound of crashing and angry growls were coming closer and closer, and finally the grey nightmare shot to the middle platform between the 4th and 5th floor and crashed in to the wall, this barely slowed it down as it charged straight towards the barricade. Plamens¡¯ nerves were shot, he couldn¡¯t get a proper aim so he dodged to the right. And the monster broke right through the barricade. Now he knew what the other crashing sound was. It was like the barricade wasn¡¯t even there. Just as it was about to get up and charge again he took a fast aim and fired, the round landed on the things right shoulder and soon after a small explosion blew its arm apart with a bang. From the blasts recoil it was smashed in the wall. Getting up and wildly charging straight at him, due to its missing arm and shoulder it lacked balance so he could once again dodge, the black claw scraping against his helmet. Before it could get up he hit it the rifle stock sending it to the floor. As it was about to stand up he put the barrel in its mouth and pulled the trigger. Firing a high powered shot basting its head off. His arms shakily dropped the gun, muzzle still lodged in its jaw. As he sat down the only thing through his mind was that he had more cleaning to do. As he was about to close his eyes he was snapped awake by bell like¡­ ~DING~ Chapter 5: "SURPRISE ****-Blade" 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 novel; please report. 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