Sen raised his arms in a placating gesture.

The alley’s three new residents faced him, tense, holding their weapons between him and themselves. They stood warily, staring at him in silence. Sen knew what he looked like, of course; covered in blood, grime, and some kind of oily mucus, he stood in the shadows, barely illuminated by the moon overhead. The light shone over his modified arms, covered in vicious plates of bone and ending in clawed fingertips.

He was more than a little suspicious. Sen doubted being half-naked next to a sleeping girl hardly helped his image, either.

He saw one of the freshmen’s eyes dart to Em behind him. Her clothes were splattered with blood and she was bruised—it was clear she’d gotten out of a fight. With a glance, it was easy to put things together in all the wrong ways. Sen spoke up before the misunderstanding could escalate further.

“Okay,” he said, and the three freshmen tensed. Sen took a step away from Em. “I know what this looks like. It’s not.”

The freshman in the lead, a handsome British boy, narrowed his eyes at Sen, “What did you do to her?”

Sen gave him a flat stare. “Nothing,” he said.

He frowned at her, “She’s battered.”

“So am I.”

“You’re one of the bloody monsters, mate. I don’t care.”

“I’m just Spanish, but OK.”

One of the other boys stepped forward, putting a hand on the British guy’s shoulder. This one was Arabic—tall and imposing, with a metal pipe in his hands that Sen was very keen on not getting hit by. The guy motioned towards his arms, “What’s wrong with your limbs?” he asked. “They look like just the ones on monsters in the school.”

“Skill orb. I absorbed one. Look, I’m just a student like you guys. Sen. That’s my name. I’m a third year. Why don’t you three just lower your weapons and tell me who you are?”

“Prince,” the British boy said, frowning. “Where the hell’d you find one of those? And what’s with the massive wok?”

Sen glanced at the wok next to the dumpster, then sighed. “Don’t judge it by appearance,” he said. “This wok saved my life. And as for the skill orb…”

Sen stepped aside, revealing the smoldering corpse behind him. The dead creature was massive, over six feet and bulky all over, swelling with charcoaled muscle and spurs of bone all over its flesh. Sen glanced at it, focusing until the golden letters flashed again.

[Elite] Desiccated Bloodfiend – Tier 0

And when he focused and moved his eyes on the other three, the text changed.

Prince – Tier 0

Human – Tier 0

Human – Tier 0

He was sure that looking at him, the other three could see the same. The Arab regarded him for a moment, before he motioned to the side. “You’re human,” he said, “but you’re still suspicious standing over an unconscious girl like that. Step away from her first. Once she’s with us, we can talk.”

Sen frowned, “Yeah, no,” he said, stepping between them and Em. “I don’t know the intricacies of apocalypse etiquette, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t involve handing over sleeping friends to strangers in some alley.”

Prince glared at him, “We go to the same classes, you bloody streaker. Just step away from her.”

“This is going nowhere,” he said, sighing in exasperation. “I’ll just kick her awake.”

Sen nudged Em with his foot. She didn’t move. Frowning, he kicked her lightly on the leg, still facing the freshmen as her sleeping face distorted into a frown of annoyance. She swatted at his leg.

“M’trying to sleep,” she mumbled. “Go vomit on someone else.”

“Wake up. There are other people here.”

“Huh?”

Em blearily opened her eyes and looked up, searching around the alley until her eyes landed on the other three. Her eyes widened in recognition as her gaze landed on them. She blinked. “You’re that guy who got caught cheating on the Art Appreciation quiz last week,” she said to Prince, wincing as she stood up. “And you’re Assad and Benji from Maths. How’d you call them over, Sen?”

“I didn’t,” he said. “They found us and halfway accused me of assault because you decided to nap in a dark alley.”

She sighed and motioned to his chest, “It’s ‘cause you’re naked again that they’re getting suspicious. What’d I say about your freaky nipples? They probably got scared looking at them.”

“Okay first of all, you’re the one who keeps looking at them. And secondly, my nipples are perfect.”

“Well, they certainly aren’t cute,” she said, bending over to pick up his blazer. Em turned to him with a smile blacker than coal, “Now put this thing back on before I follow through on my urge to pinch and twist.”

Threatened, Sen quickly covered himself up, shielding his chest from the she-demon in front of him. He glanced at the other three.

“That enough proof for you to stop pointing that table leg at me?”

The third freshman, who he assumed was Benji, lowered the table leg with a grimace. Prince and Assad followed, and Em gave them a smile of genuine relief. “Thank god you three are alive,” she said. “Are there more of you?”

“Yes,” Assad said, nodding. “We were in the underground pool for PE. The coach heard a commotion outside and we found…” he motioned around them with a tired look, “Well, it wasn’t a good first few hours after that. Not a very good start to Eid.”

Sen relaxed, his shoulders sagging as he leaned back against a nearby wall, “If there’s a group of survivors, what are you three doing out here?”

“Food,” Prince answered. “The world’s ending to some vampire invasion, and we’ve all watched zombie movies. Next step is obvious, innit? Get food and water and try not to die. Three of us managed to sneak away from the coach to get food for the rest of the class. Y’know, before it’s too late or some bloke comes in and takes it before us.”

Sen and Em shared a glance. She looked away and scratched the back of her head, while Sen sighed. “About that,” he said. “You three are headed to the cafeteria on this side of the school, right? The one a bit farther down this alley.”

“Yeah, Glassy’s. With the see-through walls and stuff.”

“We just came from there.”

Prince blinked, “Why’re you two out here instead of gathering food, then?”

“Well… uh,” Sen hesitated. He glanced at Em. She sighed.

“We kind of set the cafeteria on…”

An explosion cut her off as the metal door leading into the cafeteria blew off its hinges, smashing into the alley wall. Fire flared out from inside and the LPG tanks combusted, shattering glass and spraying fire out from the windows. The five of them turned to the massive plume of smoke and flames rising a few dozen meters away.

“…fire,” she finished, wincing. “We did it to get away from the vampires.”

The three freshmen turned to stare at her as more howls erupted in the distance, headed for the western cafeteria. The sound made four of them freeze.

Sen was already sprinting for dear life.

Sen stood in an empty fifth floor office, the unpainted walls cold and lifeless all around him. He stared out of the window, and outside, the vampires swarmed all over the university, skulking out of the shadows and tasting the air with their tongues. They circled around the western cafeteria, but stayed far from the flames. The ones that didn’t fanned out; their claws clicked against the floors as they stalked the corridors and gardens, searching for flesh to devour.

“I knew we shouldn’t have thrown that rock to distract them,” one of the freshmen said, and Sen glanced back to find Benji with his face in his hands. His glasses laid on the floor next to him as he sighed. “It was too risky. We almost got Em and a senior killed, and the cafeteria ended up exploding because of it.”

“We didn’t know, mate,” Prince said, knocking the back of his head against the wall. “Can’t say sorry for things you had no control over. We failed ‘cause we had a rubbish plan. We’ll do better next time.”

“I don’t want to go out here again, man. When we get back, I’m staying. I’m not joining the next run.”

Prince pursed his lips, and the room fell into silence.

“…Sorry we set our food on fire,” Em said, and Assad sighed.

“It’s… not okay, but we don’t blame you. We’re sorry for leading the vampires to you, as well. We only intended to distract them and clear the way down.”

“So what now?” she asked. “Can we come back with you to where everyone else is?”

“Of course. We can’t just leave you here. But…”

The three freshmen shared a glance. “There isn’t a lot of food left,” Benji said. “Some people brought lunches, but when we get back, someone will have to go out for food again until the authorities come to evacuate us.”

Sen perked up at that, turning to him. “There’s been word from the police? There wasn’t any signal from the cell towers when I last tried.”

“We fetched a radio from the broadcast room. There was an emergency broadcast to stay indoors and avoid the sunlight when we flicked it on. Something about a potential bio-weapon or terrorist attack.”

“Absolute rubbish,” Prince muttered. “What kind of terrorist attack gives you a status screen? Not to mention bone guy’s arms over there. That isn’t something you get from a bloody terror attack.”

Sen nodded, “Yeah. The weird nickname aside, it’s too… out there. Zombie vampires and status screens aren’t part of any terrorist group’s M.O., as far as I know.”

“Fuckin’ surreal, innit? Can’t even take it seriously anymore.”

Assad sighed, “I’m having a hard time believing it all myself.”

A round of quiet nods swept across the room, and Sen turned away. He looked outside of the windows again, noting the full structure of the school. It was a massive, C-shaped structure of glass and steel, climbing up six floors with a swirling plaza in the middle that climbed to join with the third floor on the campus’s eastern wing. Looking at it from so high up made it look like a skyscraper lying on its side, curling into itself.

And at the other end of the campus, across the vast, open sports field and several hundred meters of open ground, was the second set of campus buildings.

…Along with the second cafeteria.

The vampires were all over it, swarming along the ground like ants. They wore student and faculty uniforms, but their forms looked anything but normal. He spotted several kinds of them—from the beast-like prowlers, stalking along the shadows, to lithe, winged vampires, perched along the balconies and ledges with their leathery wings tucked into their backs. Sen watched one of the normal vampires twitch, then abruptly mutate, two extra arms bursting free from its shriveled back.

He shuddered.

They were evolving; mutating with every second that passed. And as he watched it happen, another notification sprang up in front of him.

Essence Density – Very Low (Depleting)

Essence absorption halted. Generating essence based on Spirit attribute.

Current speed: 10 essence [Tier 0] daily.

He could feel the lack of essence in the air, now. Breathing felt easier compared to earlier, when he’d run through the hallway full of essence-leaking corpses. The air in the fifth floor felt light to him, flowing in and out of his lungs with ease when it had felt like a thick fog before.

And if he was to venture a guess… it wasn’t just humans that could absorb essence to improve their stats. As if to agree with him, he watched one of the monsters outside bulk up, turning into a bloodfiend with a whipping, spear-tipped tail of bone and withered flesh. He felt his jaw clench, his stomach sinking into a pool of ice.

The fucking vampires could level up too.

He took a glance at his interface, his ranks in Body and Mind suddenly feeling inconsequential in the face of the beasts outside. And beneath his paltry attributes, his essence had stopped ticking up.

‘Essence: 703,’ it said. Sen pursed his lips as he spoke into the quiet room.

“Are we really holing up in the school’s underground sports complex?” he asked, his fingering hovering over the interface. “For how long? How long until the authorities do something about this mess?”

“They didn’t give an evacuation schedule,” Assad replied. “We don’t know when help will arrive.”

“Then we can’t come back empty handed,” Em said. “Not when it looks like the monsters outside are getting stronger and stronger. If we wait too long, it’ll be impossible to gather food from the other canteens like you planned.”

Sen nodded, “And I doubt the professor in charge would let you three or anyone else slip away a second time, either.”

Benji looked up, face wary. “What are you two suggesting?”

It would be a stupid idea, he knew. An impulse, reckless and sudden. But Sen forced his shaking hand down onto the interface anyway, pressing down on the plus sign next to his Body attribute.

Body [Tier 0] increased! Rank IV -> Rank V

It drained an entire five hundred essence out of him, leaving him with less than half of what he had before. Yet, the increase filled his body with power, heating up the veins in his muscles and flaring the heat nesting in his heart. The rush made him feel powerful. It made him feel stronger than he actually was.

And it was enough for him to follow through with the idea racing through his head. He turned his head to the four people with him, fists clenched.

“We can’t make it across the field to get to the second cafeteria right now,” he said, glancing outside, “but we can get food from somewhere else.”

Sen pointed outside, to the ground floor and the rest of the curling building they were in. And there, resting in the shadows, were treasure troves of food and drinks, locked away inside metal cages and glass walls. They were all over the school. In the halls, near the fountains, outside—the vampires walked around them, unaware of their value. Prince and Assad looked out with him, eyes wide.

Vending machines. Inside the campus, there were many left unattended. And with the kitchen explosion luring all the vampires outside…

“I don’t have any bills on me to buy out from those,” Prince said, grinning.

Em nodded as she stared straight at one a floor below, visible through the glass walls. Sen could practically see her eating the granola bars with her eyes. Em glanced at him and flashed a grin.

“Sen ‘Projectile Vomit’ Salazar,” she said. “Are you proposing we steal from the campus vending machines?”

“They’ve had it coming for a long time now,” he said, breathing out to calm his wits. Instead of the vampires, he channeled his attention towards an enemy he’d known for far longer. “Those stupid vending machines have taken my bills without coughing anything up for too long. It’s about time I got my revenge.”

“Anyone got a hammer?”

“[Bone Armor],” Sen said, and plates of reinforced bone erupted across his skin, coating his arms and legs in protection. In his limbs, power swelled from his rank five Body attribute, roaring through him like fire.

Sen looked down at his fists and murmured loud enough for everyone to hear.

“Who needs a hammer?”