Mike felt exhausted. He’d been clearing floors all afternoon.

Sara and Yunah had been with him every step of the way. It had been one long, tedious exercise, in repetition. In all that time they had only faced anything approaching serious danger, twice.

The first time had been an unexpected apartment party on the third floor. Eight zombie ‘Bros’ were standing together in the apartment’s living room area.

Yunah stumbled onto them after using her super sword to slice through the door.

Although she had been caught completely off guard, her steely nerves and competent swordsmanship saved her life. Her skills gave Mike enough time to come barrelling into the scene and clean it up.

She reached level four a few apartments later.

The second close call was all Mike.

A lone female zombie, shuffling along on the second floor, hadn’t seemed any different from her fellows.

But when Mike tired to dispatch her carelessly, she’d exploded into motion.

Moving at a speed superior to the average unturned human, she’d combined raw zombie power with terrifying control and precision. She hardly suffered at all from the twitching, jerking movements, of her level one counterparts.

The shield, Mike borrowed from Sara, saved his life twice, before he saw through the zombie’s pattern.

As formidable she might have been, her attacks were only a limited variation on a single theme. After finding the gap in her movements he’d taken off her head.

An exclamation mark Mike’s HUD announced his achievement.

The female had been a level two zombie. The first of her kind slain in the region. He’d been given a bonus reward of three hundred credits.

The revelation of her level had chilled Mike to the core.

It meant the gap between levels for zombies was enormous. By comparison a level two player only marginally improved from level one. the player’s only hope was that zombies leveled at a significantly slower speed.

Taking her crystal – a larger milky white crystal of almost a thumb’s length – brought Mike to level five.

Distributing his AP to Spirit left him feeling somewhat energized.

Name: Mike Tanner – Race:Human (Orc)

Occupation: None – Level: 5

STR: 1.6 / QUI: 1.4 / BOD: 1.6 / MIN: 1.1 / SPI: 1.4 [AP: 0.0]l

Purse: 4740 Credits

Skills: [Brute Strength] [Sturdy] [Dark Vision] [Slow Witted]

After a short conference with the girls they’d moved on to clearing the ground floor.

Not that there had been much to clear. The first floor held ‘entertainment rooms’ on both the west and east sides. It also contained a small indoor pool, a gym and a sauna, as well as a handful of offices and supply closets.

There’d only been a handful of zombies in the entire space.

That left the only hostile place in the building as the basement. The basement and its BOSS ‘Randy’. Whoever – or more likely – whatever, he was now.

“I guess we need to talk about the basement,” Mike said, broaching the topic as they sat lounging on couches in the west lobby.

Yunah grunted something non committal but Sara spoke clearly.

“We need to go to the roof first. We all have a lot of credits now. The basement is a BOSS fight. I think we should gather a full party of six.”

Her reasoning was sound. But Mike poked at it anyway, mostly as an excuse to keep sitting for a little longer.

“We’re the only ones higher than level three, you think they can even help?”

Sara snorted, “We formed a party already. They should have gotten some share of the experience from our crystals.”

Mike acknowledged her point. They didn’t know how, but the crystal energy was definitely split between party members. Sara had been the one to prove it by entering level three after Mike absorbed a crystal.

Sara wasn’t done though, “Even if they only gained a single level, we need to gear up. You fought that level two zombie. According to the system it wasn’t BOSS level. Do you really want to fight a BOSS right now?”

Again she had a point. As time passed Sara had begun to step up. After getting a mace from a zombie drop she’d even started to kill here and there, unprompted.

As far as Mike was concerned her analysis was coming from a proven team member. Someone who really understood what they were up against.

But he couldn’t quite shake off his laziness.

“You really want to walk all the way to the roof to shop. Then pick up some cannon fodder just to come right back down here and fight the BOSS?”

Yunah answered, clearly amused by his fake whining.

“We have to Mike. So suck it up. If we don’t clear the BOSS the building doesn’t become a safe zone.

Do you really want to sleep up there with everyone we rescued today all warm and cosy under the stars?”

If anything Yunah’s point was more motivating for Mike than Sara’s had been.

They’d found a few survivors on every floor. There had even been one guy hiding in the closet on the first. The roof now held almost thirty people. Most of which had refused to fight zombies even to save their own lives.

He did not relish spending a cold, potentially wet, definitely miserable night, listening to them whine about how the government was going to show up to save them all. Or worse, to hear how barbaric he was for killing sick people.

The lot of them were spoiled whimps.

Mike recognized he was in the minority.

He was someone who’d adapted unusually fast to the violent new reality. Killing his room mate – then having his body altered by a magic serum – had been an eye opener for him.

Even beyond that, somehow, he just clicked with the new normal.

It hadn’t even been a full twenty four hours and he was starting to get comfortable with the idea of leveling up and killing monsters. Concepts that should never have existed in reality.

He understood where everyone else was coming from. If they survived eventually they’d adapt like he had – like Yunah and Sara seemed to be doing.

But just because he understood where they might be coming from didn’t mean he was immune to their whining. Reality was staring them in the face and most of them refused to see it.

It wasn’t just stupid, it was dangerous.

The zombies might not have been able to knock down a door alone. But the group of ten plus zombies or that level two bitch, might have been able to get inside the rooms.

Whatever they thought to themselves the survivors had been lucky. Without Mike and co. they would have run out of luck sooner rather than later.

“Fine. The roof it is, just give me ten minutes or so. Then we can head back up.” He said.