Book 1, Chapter 4: Getting Out

[Alen]

Within the large forest to the south of Draenys, the fortress city known as the Undead Bulwark, a group of zombies had gathered. They wore horribly degraded equipment. The shields and swords on their hands were snapped and shredded, and only half of the undead wore barely functioning leather armor. The group marched—rather, shambled forward at a steady pace, a young man with black hair lined with white streaks standing near the middle of the makeshift formation. He looked around nervously and put extra care into his steps, sending orders to his undead to stop groaning as they walked.

The young man ordered the group of zombies to stop as he leaned against a tree, making extra sure that his phone and belongings were still with him. He nodded to himself after confirming, and minutes later, a zombie shambled out of the forest wearing leather armor. It stood in front of him and tried to do a salute, but it was terribly sloppy, and along with its hunched back, gave off a miserable sight.

Alen sighed. “Okay, stop. Just don’t. Stop saluting,” the zombie stopped, staring at the young man with its dead eyes. Alen regarded the zombie. “Fucklord, report.”

The zombie stared at him and groaned.

Alen sighed again. “Fucklord, remember. One clap, no zombies. Two claps, one zombie. Three claps, more than one. Four claps, a group. Again. Fucklord, report.”

Fucklord the zombie clapped three times, but it only produced the sound of slapping wet flesh. Alen cringed and ordered the zombie to head to the front of the group. Transmitting commands through the invisible strings of mana that connected him to his minions, Alen had them advance and prepare to attack any other zombies on sight, with the zombies wearing armor acting as the vanguard. All of the zombies had swords, and most had shields. Alen had wanted the back row to go as a ranged support, but zombies were unbelievably bad at throwing rocks.

He’d been advancing for half a day already. His zombies were fully equipped, and his pockets were full of berries. Alen had been in this forest for about five or six earth-days. His watch had become unreliable, because it seemed that a day was longer in this world.

Alen had managed to create a few more spells since he managed to create Blightbolt, and his zombies, now equipped with the only useable equipment in the old battleground numbered at sixteen total. If he tried to dominate another zombie beyond sixteen, one of his current zombies would go out of control. As they traveled, Alen noticed the undead becoming weaker. The zombies he would encounter were about on the same level as the zombie he had first killed: extensively decayed, as fast as a quick jogger, not very strong, and didn’t give him as much mana to absorb when killed.

If he was right, then this direction was the way out of the forest.

Soon, his thought were interrupted by the sounds of battle. Looking forward, his vanguard of eight zombies were fighting a group of four zombies. Alen sighed at how useless his scout was as he watched carefully. Whenever he saw a vanguard-zombie get into a sticky situation, he’d order the unarmored support-zombies to go and help. A zombie had currently gotten on top of Fuckwad and proceeded to chew through his zombie’s forearm. At Alen’s command, two of the support zombies waded in, stabbing the offending zombie until it dropped dead.

Alen felt a stream of the mana enter him again, and after a few minutes, he felt the last stream enter him as the fighting died down. Four in total. He sent Fuckwad out to scout again, and told the rest of his zombies to advance forward slowly.

This was going to be a long day.

Eventually, night settled in. Alen found a tree and managed to climb up without falling and breaking his legs. He was starting to see zombies less, but he still had his 16 undead set up a perimeter and patrol within a 25-meter radius of him. He’d managed to extend the maximum distance of his Control Undead spell in his experiments, and had managed to increase the spells in his skill list by two. Spells he hoped didn’t find a situation disadvantageous enough for him to use them in.

He stared at the two zombies in the distance, about 10 meters away from him. He’d swallowed his disgust and aversion of them so far, examining them and going as far as to let them surround him as they moved, but he still couldn’t shake his discomfort.

Alen shook his head. Back to jutting his notes down on the virtual note pad he’d managed to fashion with the help of the system. He looked at it as his thoughts appeared on the blue screen.

Notepad

…Control Undead doesn’t wipe everything inside an undead when I take control. When prodding an undead with mana, I found out that what flows inside of them isn’t just my magic. There were strands of something else. When I interacted with those strands using my mana, I felt my muscles react, some shit superimposed with what I was really seeing. Blurry images of a soldier’s training and movement.

Not sure what this means yet, but I’m assuming it’s what lets the zombies process my commands. Part of the body’s muscle memory and mental capacity are still in there, allowing the undead to do some basic functions.

If I’m correct, I can probably create a program that does just that. Find a fresh corpse of something, fuck that sounded wrong, and have my mana flow into the body. As for the strands of muscle memory and shit, I’ll see if it’s an automatic process completed by the spell, or something I have to program into my future spells to make use of. If the corpse isn’t fresh, I’m guessing the muscle memory and processing skills won’t be as intact, as evident through the weak zombies that I’m currently encountering as I move out of the forest(hopefully).

Worst case scenario, maybe I can find a way to copy my muscle memory and motor skills to replace the ones that aren’t present? That zombie will probably end up like shit, but that’s at least another body to take some hits. Not like these zombies are very graceful when fighting anyways.

Note to self, test this shit out as soon as I find a corpse that isn’t walking…

Alen closed the notepad and yawned, leaning against the tree as he closed his eyes. Hopefully, he wouldn’t fall off in the middle of the night. He didn’t move much when asleep anyways. Plus, even if he did fall, he wouldn’t die, right? The system would probably regenerate crap anyways.

Yeah, that was it. Alen reassured himself and fell asleep.

Morning came as quickly as he fell asleep, and by the time he woke up, he found that there were three less strings of mana attached to him. Alen frowned and hunkered down the tree, ordering his zombies to line up. When they finished assembling, one vanguard-zombie and two support-zombies were missing. One vanguard zombie was covered in blood, and there were fresh zombie bite marks on its armor.

Alen sighed. It was a good idea to put up a perimeter, but these zombies were really useless without being ordered around. He opened up his notepad and put in a new objective.

“…and find a way to make zombies more useful in combat when not being ordered around. Alright, done,” He closed the notepad and had his zombies search for the dead vanguard. He eventually found it, and managed to take out the leather breastplate along with the broken sword. The shield was horribly shredded by what looked like claws though, which caused Alen to frown. He had his zombies bring back the two other swords as well, before having his little group move forward again.

He had a portion of his mana on his nose the whole time, numbing his sense of smell so that he could stand the horrible stench of the zombies. He stood with the vanguard this time, so that he could use his Control Undead spell on any zombies he’d come across.

None came his way though. He was about to return to the middle of the group when a skeleton stumbled into view.

Alen gaped and hurriedly ordered his zombies to not attack. The skeleton saw them and charged, suddenly stopping as a bolt of black-green mana sunk into its skull. It fell to the ground, unmoving before finally standing up after a few minutes of twitching. Its movements were smooth, smoother than the zombies’.

Alen grinned. It looked like the lack of rotting muscles and joints didn’t weigh it down. More importantly though… no smell! It didn’t smell! Alen gave it the leather armor and broken sword, assigning it to his vanguard. Before he continued advancing, Alen tested a few things.

By ordering the skeleton around, he was able to find out that although it was faster and smoother in its movements compared to his zombies, its strikes weren’t as heavy. It could probably only take a few hits as well, with how it didn’t have flesh to soften the impact of blows. As he examined it further, he found that unlike the zombies, the skeleton’s mental capacity was higher, able to understand more detailed commands and retain them.

Instead of flowing throughout its whole body, the skeleton’s functions gathered in its skull, the strands of consciousness wrapping up into a small ball that transmitted his commands to the rest of its body. With this, Alen could confirm that those parts of the mind didn’t have to be spread out over the body, and could instead be condensed into a single spot. He couldn’t do it to the zombies though. Trying to use his mana to move the tiny strands all over the zombies’ bodies was hard, and when he succeeded, the zombie fell limply to the ground, only able to move its head and neck.

Satisfied with the results, he put the skeleton at the back of the vanguard beside him and kept moving forward.

Eventually, he was able to fill the empty spots in his formation with skeletons. As he encountered a lone skeleton, he used Control Undead on it after moving away from his group of minions. As expected, he still couldn’t go past sixteen undead as one of his support zombies went out of his control, dropping its sword and charging towards him.

He almost froze up, but Alen was ready. He expected this to happen. He was prepared. As soon as it charged, the rest of his undead converged on it, pinning it down. Alen wanted to try something with his new minion.

First, he had his new skeleton fight the zombie with only a broken sword.

As expected, it was completely one-sided. Although Alen gave the skeleton a few commands regarding how to fight a zombie, it still lost horribly and got pinned to the ground. Before the zombie could tear his bone minion apart, Alen had his undead hold it down again.

Now, he’d try one of his new spells. He opened the information screen he’d designed and written a few days ago.

Skill Information: Lesser Necrotic Empowerment

Flood an undead minion with necrotic mana, increasing its capabilities for a short amount of time. Effect can be prolonged by sending in a larger amount of mana. Currently uses about 1% of mana per minute of effect duration. Unknown if effect and cost scales as mana thresholds are passed.

Skill Trees: Available.

Alen released the zombie, and sent the skeleton in, casting empowerment as they ran at one another. Suddenly, as the orb of black-green mana touched the skeleton, its bones became coated in his mana, giving it a terrifying black color as the mana programmed spell strengthened the mana that enabled it to move, the lights of the consciousness in its skull glowing brighter as the spell came into effect.

The skeleton’s speed increased dramatically, moving aside almost leisurely as the zombie charged and slashing out with its sword. The blade was dull, so it failed to sever the zombie’s leg, but the cut was deep and heavy enough to make the zombie fall. It stood up, limping on one leg as it swiped at the skeleton, but it backstepped, before quickly moving in to stab the zombie in the eye, killing it.

Alen gaped as the raw, numbing mana flowed into him. When he used the spell on zombies, they got a little faster, but their strength was the main point of amplification. Due to this, they could hold down other zombies and swing their swords harder, but it didn’t really look like much to Alen. But now that he used it on his skeletons…

“Holy fuck… that’s OP,” Alen muttered, watching as the buff left his skeleton, returning its appearance to normal.

He had his first skeleton take off its leather armor, and he had a zombie take it. From now on, he’d put the skeletons in the support roles instead of the vanguard. They could definitely pull that off. If he could teach these skeletons to use slings, maybe a bow and arrow, it would be fantastic. He definitely had to test that out as soon as possible. For now though, priority numero uno was getting the fuck out of this forest.

The group of undead and the human leading them advanced forward. Since Alen had his second skeleton scout forward, he could afford to be more lax as it could process commands easier. He also had his minions spread out a bit more. He’d try out flanking tactics on his next encounter.

Satisfied, he opened his chat window and updated his friends on his situation. It looked like they were having a relatively good time. Aside from the unintentional mentions of their lives back on Earth that reminded everyone of what they left behind, it was lively.

Alen continued forward in this fashion, replacing his support zombies with skeletons and feeling the mana seep into him. Then, he moved on to hunting skeletons. It was fairly easy as long as he used Lesser Undead Empowerment, or Empowerment as he’d grown to call it, on his zombies. He only really realized how much the zombie strength buff mattered when he fought enemies like the skeletons.

So far, normal zombies > normal skeletons, while it was the other way around when they were both buffed with Empowerment. He’d tested it to relieve some boredom on his way.

The more he walked, the more Alen realized how much this ‘system’ had affected him. If this was back on Earth, he wouldn’t be able to walk for so long or so far. But here, the occasional pause to recover his stamina was enough. He developed a blister on his foot a few days ago, but it went away overnight, replaced with stronger, more resilient flesh. The living conditions as well. With how he ate and drank, he should’ve been too weak to even walk half a mile by now. In this place though, he was still plenty strong. He’d probably only lost a few kilograms at most, with how gaunt his face had become.

Speaking of which, he still didn’t know what he currently looked like. Alen probably looked like shit, with his ripped jacket, shirt, and filthy worn jeans and shoes. Not to mention the fact he hadn’t taken a bath in a week, and he’d had dirt and blood splashed all over him more than once. If he wasn’t surrounded by rotting corpses, he’d probably be numbing his sense of smell to get rid of his own stench.

He told James to hook him up with a few explosives when they managed to meet up and moved forward in a leisurely fashion, completely unaware that his scent, or rather, his zombies’ stenches, were being tracked.

The plants surrounding him soon turned greener and greener. He could even see the blue sky in the distance. At this rate, leaving the forest would just be a matter of time. Alen’s group of undead killed another skeleton, the mana flowing into him in a refreshing stream. It was no longer as uncomfortable as before, no longer foreign, but fresh like a glass of cold water.

Alen smiled as a notification showed up in front of him.

System Message!

Congratulations! You have passed your mana threshold. Your next threshold will require an exponentially higher amount of mana to pass.

It was about time, really. He’d already killed more than twenty zombies, and about a dozen skeletons on his way out of the forest. This really was a fucked leveling system. The requirements for the next threshold probably increased by the fuck-ton again. Alen pursed his lips and opened up his status.

Status:

Name: Alen

Race: Human

Type: Necrotic

Health: 100%

Stamina: 76%

Mana: 83%

Strength: 11

Dexterity: 12

Agility: 10

Constitution: 11

Vitality: 12

Resistance: 10

Intelligence: 16 (+)

Wisdom: 17 (+++)

Control: 19 (++)

Skills:

Mana Programming, Control Undead, Lesser Blightbolt, Lesser Undead Empowerment, Numb Senses

Alen gaped at the stat increases. All his attributes had increased by one, while Wisdom had increased by a whole four points. Control and Intelligence increased by three and two respectively as well. The increases were even higher for this threshold. As he stared at the stats, he could feel himself changing.

His vision sharpened, and his mind became clearer than ever. It felt like he could control every movement properly, and that he could lift and move more freely than he previously could. He stared at the strings of mana that attached him to his undead. It seemed clearer. More defined. Feeling this way, Alen renewed his motivation to go forward and had his undead speed up the pace.

As they moved forward, Alen stopped encountering skeletons. The forest turned silent, which caused him to frown. It was eerie. He knew this feeling.

He slowed the pace of his group until they grinded to a halt. Alen swallowed his disgust and had his zombies surround him and his skeletons. Two zombies were missing. As he listened carefully, the forest wasn’t being quiet. There was a sound. A low thumping as something made its way towards them. He tensed up as it walked out from the darkness of the forest as the sun began to set. Then, he remembered. His zombies had died when he fell asleep. One of the shields were shredded. He trembled as he stared at the monster in front of him.

In front of him, a massive white form walked out of the trees. It was as large as a four-wheeler, and bone spurs the size of his torso jutted out from its back. It opened its mouth and let out a low growl, its teeth lined with tartar and decay. Its mouth dripped with a sickening mixture of congealed black blood and bubbly saliva. It circled him and his undead, as if to mark an area that he would never pass. The white bear dragged its long claws across the ground and stood up on two legs, three meters tall. Its red eyes looked straight at his group and Alen felt like freezing up again. Finally, with a roar, it charged at him with thundering steps.

Alen hurriedly backed up, sending his undead forward in a panic. The bear tore through two of his zombie-vanguard before he was able to cast Empowerment on his undead. The skeletons turned black and intimidating as the spell surged through the strings of mana that kept them connected, and the zombies’ rotting muscles bulged as they charged at the bear.

It slapped a skeleton with its paw and completely shattered it with a boom, a zombie had its torso bitten off. Two skeletons jumped on top of the bear, stabbing it wildly with their broken swords, but only irritating it as the swords were too dull to pierce its thick flesh, breaking further as they hit the bone spurs. Alen didn’t even think of fighting it as he ran away. The strings of mana grew more taut.

Tighter, tighter, until they snapped. Past thirty meters, Alen couldn’t maintain the connection. He felt his undead slip from his control and stopped in his tracks. From the sounds he heard, his minions didn’t even last ten seconds.

The forest once again returned to silence as Alen slowly backed away.

Then, an earth-shaking roar reverberated out as trees fell at the bear’s reckless charge. Alen felt his heart tighten, his face paling as he turned around and ran.

It caught up to him quicker than he would’ve liked. Its claws raked at a tree, slicing it in half as it fell to the ground with a loud crackle. Alen circled around a tree and the bear jumped, landing beside him with a boom and swiping out with a claw. Alen tossed his body to the side, rolling to his feet with the help of his improved stats as he continued to run.

The bear roared behind him in anger as more trees fell. Wooden shrapnel flew and sliced his skin as the monstrosity shredded the trees in its way. Alen hit his shoulder against a tree as he ran, almost falling over as he twisted his body and stumbled forward. His lungs burned. He looked at the darkening sky above.

The orange-tinted sky was getting closer. Closer. The air was starting to turn fresh, the temperature changing to a refreshing cool that beat against his tired body.

A boom rang out behind him, the claw missing by a fraction as it cracked the ground behind him. Alen fell forward. He scrambled back up, cuts on his skin. He saw something white in the corner of his vision and twisted his body, rolling and standing up again. His shoulder hurt. Badly. He felt moisture on his hand as he clutched it. Alen kept running.

It was getting closer. The gray sky was receding from his vision.

He was getting closer. He was running. Booms rang out all around him, intermixed with the thundering ringing in his ears and the beating of his heart in his chest, as if it wanted to rip through it and leave his body. His lungs were filled with liquid magma. His legs were lead. He couldn’t feel anything but the pain and fatigue that coursed through his body.

Alen controlled his mana, sending Blightbolts out forward in a frenzy, the process of programming the spell omitted by the system. He heard screaming. He was screaming. The Blightbolts rotted away at the wood, causing trees to fall and slow the advance of the bear behind him.

He couldn’t breathe. He was forgetting to. Air left his body faster than he could gulp it back in. An entire tree sailed over his head. The bear had probably slapped it towards him. It blocked his way. He jumped over it, one of his shoes catching on a branch and slipping off, throwing him off balance.

Alen scrambled forward, using his hands to dig at the ground and move him forward faster as he tilted to the side unsteadily.

He burst through the tree line, covered in wounds and gasping for breath. His foot caught air as he tumbled forward and rolled down a hill. He grunted, the blood from his mangled shoulder splattering on the green grass. His world spun and in those moments, he couldn’t differentiate up from down, left from right.

Finally, it stopped. He stared at the open sky in front of him. It was full of stars. Two moons stared down at him. It was a sky without the oppressive gray clouds. It was alive. On his back, he felt soft grass and healthy soil. The air was fresh and smelled clean. The stench of rot and decay was now gone. The thundering in his ears slowly died down, replaced with the whispering breeze and harping crickets. Every breath he took was invigorating.

A cool breeze swept past him and Alen felt something wet roll down the side of his face as his haggard face grinned madly through the pain in his shoulder.

He had gotten out of the forest. He had taken his first step forward.

Alen wasn’t afraid anymore.

He was free.