Having an enemy is a new experience for me. Sure, I have had to deal with annoying or irritating people before, but my interactions with them was mostly just enduring their antics and thinking about ways to avoid them in the future. Having a twin growing up meant I had back up all the time so a concept such as bullying never really occurred. Plus, I was a dense idiot as a child so I probably wouldn’t have been able to recognize bullying if the guy was punching me in the face.

That said, I now had an enemy, a being that had taken Pesos and twisted her into a mockery of the lovable furball she once was and sent her to kill me. With an enemy now, I had somebody I could blame for everything, whether reasonable or not. Was it this being’s fault I am here in the first place? Possibly, but maybe not. But you bet I’m going to be cursing him for it forever, though.

Demonizing your enemy is a long and cherished tradition of humans, a tactic used to make it easier to kill them and, considering the being had summoned a vengeance spirit against me, I think he is already mostly a demon.

…

That scum, I am going to find him and hopefully get out of this mess. But right now I have two big problems. The first is still a lack of food. After I had defeated Pesos I waited a bit and then continued my exploration of my mushroom problem. It turns out that the mushrooms in this area are in no way digestible.

I found this out the hard way, the scientific method way. I formed an appropriate hypothesis, created a controlled experiment, eliminated as many variables as possible, executed the experiment, and then cataloged the results. You do not want to see the results. Let’s just say, I will not be publishing my findings in any scientific journal despite, what I believe to be, my strict adherence to standard procedures.

The conclusion is straightforward though, it seems there is no part of any mushroom that I can digest without dying. Whether or not the mushrooms actually possess any nutrients to begin with remains undetermined, but it is my opinion that there aren’t any, no matter how I slice it. Perhaps it’s just the setting of this place, but these mushrooms were not meant to be eaten and no amount of cheating on my part was going to change that.

…

Oh God, it was just awful. I thought of several ideas too, on possible ways to make the mushroom edible, including added water to the cleansed dust to make dust patties, making increasingly less dense versions of mushroom shakes, and, as I had suggested earlier, straight up eating one of those god awful mushrooms. That said, I only did one experiment, eating the foul thing straight up. One try was enough; no matter how I alternatively healed and cleansed during the most excruciating ten minutes of my life, the results were always the same, a violent expulsion of the poisonous matter, most often painfully, from the top and bottom.

My father is very lactose intolerant and any consumption of dairy ends with very painful hours on the toilet for him. I have new sympathy for him if what he experiences is anything like what I had.

Needless to say, the result had left me exhausted and weak. Thank God, my heal skill seemed to cure any soreness I had, otherwise I fear I would be bedridden for a week. This experience now is the top of my list of most awful things I have experienced, the now second place being that time during a three hour ride in a hot car in a damp bathing suit. That had been after a morning of canoeing on a river with the whole family, but the itchy butt syndrome that came during the car ride led to extreme measures being taken to relieve the intolerable discomfort at that time.

The conclusion, though, has got me very worried and scared now. I fear that much less the mushrooms, everything in this place will be impossible to eat. I will surely starve to death.

Judas Maude, of all the horrible things here, poison, infection, curses, zombies, wynots, and spirits it is going to be good old fashion food that will be the death of me.

The whole thing only took a few minutes and I am now out back near the place where I had deposited the zombie and Pesos. Pesos is completely gone now, there is nothing left from where I had laid her, not even a big pile of mushrooms. In contrast, the remains of the zombie looked untouched, just as I had left them. How that can be I have no idea, but it is true nonetheless. I do not know what to make of this knowledge, but it is disturbing. I head back to my room to look for a change of clothes, I had ruined my current ones.

This leads me to my second immediate problem. There are a bunch of zombies gathering around my house and around me now. There are like, eight or nine of them and looking closely I see a couple skeletons among them as well, white and sturdy looking. In contrast to the zombies these skeletons show no decomposition, just pristine bleach white bones, presumably held together by some unholy voodoo. In addition, these new foes are holding weapons, unlike their zombie counterparts, both are holding what appears to be long knives. Or short swords, I’m not a weapons expert so I don’t really know the difference.

...

Huh, I suppose that these skeletons are a class up from the zombies.

As soon as I make an appearance all of their heads turn towards me like some sort of synchronized dance and it is really creepy. Then they all start moving toward me.

…

Holy crap, I am not prepared to deal with this. This is supposed to be the starting village, right? I’m supposed to get these things in twos and three at the most, not ten of them at once. How am I supposed to deal with all of these guys at the same time? Plus, the skeletons have weapons? Despite their rusted and crusted look, those things look like they could actually hurt me! I’ve never had to work with weapons before, how am I supposed to deal with this?

My first thought is to run to my room and close the door, initiating my previous strategy of bottlenecking their advance in order to deal with them individually. That strategy also puts me in my room which feels infinitely safer than exposed out here in the open. But maybe that would be the wrong choice here.

My greatest advantage over these freaks is my agility, even the new skeletons appear to be extremely slow. If I trap myself in the room I take away that factor for me. Also, I don’t think I would have enough mp to take everybody out before I run out. I could probably take down the first four or five, but its not like they would let me close the door back up and recoup my mp. If nothing else, the corpses would be in the way of that. And with the new skeletons involved, they may decide to break through my windows too. So, the room idea is out, I fear it would only become a death trap in this scenario.

So that leaves me with only one other option as running away isn't on the table. I’m not willing to give up my sole place of safety to these buggers and I think they would just follow me anyway, no matter how slow they are. I can’t run from them forever.

So that leaves kiting tactics. I don’t have unlimited stamina, and I am not the most athletic person, but I think I can run around these fools long enough to take them out one by one without them actually reaching me. It will take awhile, but it is the option with the lowest risk and highest possibility of working. Let’s do this!

…

Oh, my feet won’t move.

…

And my arms are frozen. I can also feel my heart beating wildly inside of me as if I am going to go into cardiac arrest at any moment.

...

I take another look out at the undead slowly closing in around me and I can now taste my fear. Each zombie looks horribly realistic, mucus, froth, puss, and all other types of ungodly excrements are dripping off their bodies. And the two skeletons are hanging back a little, but their empty eye sockets and cold smiles are sending shivers down my spine. Is this the power of numbers? I’ve never been surrounded by hostile people before and the pressure it is creating is not to be underestimated. Maybe there is an intimidation skill in use? I don’t know, I haven’t received a notification of such a thing.

Bottom line is that I am paralyzed again. I can feel my mind going blank.

The first zombie reaches me and when it touches me I finally feel unfrozen and I let out a panicked shriek and take Thor’s hammer and bash him across the side of his face. I forget to use flare though and all it does is push him away while also knocking his jaw off. It falls onto the ground in a soft thump and I watch in horror as the zombie straightens up and comes at me once more. Another zombie is right behind it.

I think that my current disability isn’t from a skill, but rather I am just a panicked civilian faced with death. I was too careless and I feel that I am going to die here. My hands are shaking and I can barely keep a hold of the marker barrel.

The first zombie reaches out to grab me again and I push its outstretched hands aside and back pedal as fast as possible away from it, sputtering incoherently.

My back runs into another body though and before I can turn around I feel cold slimy hands grab my shoulders and a sharp pain on my neck.

I let out a strangled yell as the pain hurts horribly like somebody is ripping the skin off of my neck. Which, I suppose is exactly what is happening.

The pain makes me move though, returning to me most of my faculties. I pull away forcefully from the new zombie, feeling the rest of my patch of skin ripping away. I give out another painful scream and turn to face this new creature. I see its mouth chewing on the part of my neck it has claimed for himself. I can feel the blood draining away from my face (and my neck) as I stare at the horror.

Thankfully, I guess the pain woke me up out of my daze and I quickly use heal and cleanse on myself even as my left hand presses up against the gaping wound on my neck, trying to hold back the blood loss. I can’t breathe either, the awful sensation of drowning fills me up. I suppose that is my own blood that is filling my lungs.

Looks like he got a good chunk of me.

Even as I heal myself, I bring up my right hand carrying Thor’s hammer and back hand it across this guy's face, this time remembering to use flare on it. His head explodes, just like the first zombie and I am briefly satisfied to see him go down. Thankfully, the blast this time sprayed the gore away from me.

After another second though, I heave on the spot, ejecting the blood from my lungs. A lot of it comes out too, like a pint, all over on the ground. The fungi are going to have a party at that spot later, I am sure. I suppose I have lost a lot of blood from this, and I know that will make me weak. Still, I feel the skin regrowing on my neck, at least my heal is working. I won’t die today.

…

Or at least right now, I still have eight zombies and two skeletons looking to murder me.

Looking around quickly, I retreat towards an area away from the approaching horde, waiting for my wound to finish healing. Soon enough, it does but I feel weak and drained at the end.

I check my mp to see it is at 10 and I can only curse myself. What the hell is wrong with me? Why did I have to freeze up? I lost precious time and mp due to that flop, I’m lucky to be alive. What kind of survival instincts do we humans have that makes us freeze up in fear? How is that survival of the fittest?

I got a bad start, but my kiting plan is still the best option for me, it’s just going to be trickier now. I’m going to have to try my best and stay away from the skeletons for now and pick off as many zombies as slowly as I can.

Feeling fully healed and now with adrenaline coursing through me, I hype myself up for the attack. The zombies are slow, but they are also many and close together limiting my movements around them. Still, I can circle them with ease and come at their exposed side, which is what I do.

The first two zombies that I saw are the closest now and I take a steadying breath and run up next to it, keeping it between the second zombie and myself. I bat away his hands and then draw in close for another back handed swing of Thor’s hammer, using as little flare as possible. The head explodes spectacularly again, but he falls forward on me instead, spilling his rotton blood and gore all over me. I can't push the heavy body away from me in time before the second zombie is on me. With my mobility restricted for a few moments, all I can do is hammer down on the new zombie’s head, making sure to keep my mouth closed. It explodes too, dosing my face with its gore. It is stinking and just plain awful.

I quickly push the zombie off of me and retreat again, trying to wipe my face off with my hand and shirt, but those two are just as filthy and nothing comes of it.

I am infected again, but since I am covered in gore, I will just get immediately infected again unless I cleanse my entire body, inside and out, and I don’t have the mp for that. I pull down my stat, and it is at two. I don’t have the mp for anything actually. I’ll have to endure the infection for now.

With so little mp, I can’t engage any zombies, so I run around them a little, stalling for time for my mp to regenerate. The zombies are just as mindless as always, just making a beeline for me in whatever direction I am, stumbling over each other in the process. I study the two skeletons in the meantime though, they are behaving very differently from the zombies. They seem content to stay in the back of the zombies, despite the fact that they are clearly a little faster than them. They also appear to be studying me too, just like I am studying them, as if looking for the right opportunity to strike. If that is true, that means they have at least a modicum of intelligence and are not to be underestimated. I’ll have to be very wary of them.

I run around the corner of my house and wait for the zombies to come at me. It’s been several minutes of running around and I can feel my stamina decreasing at the exercise. And man, despite the gore all around me, I am starving.

I feel that my mp is back up to a level where I can attack again and as the leading zombie comes around the corner, I grab its front and backhand its head again, watching as the head explodes against the wall of my house.

The backhand seems to be the winning technique for me here, while the forearm swing might be able to carry more strength behind it, it needs more room for me to move my arm properly, while the back hand starting at my chest only needs that little space in front of me to work. Sure, I can’t put nearly as much power into it, but with the flare skill, it does not appear to be a problem.

Besides, with all the ping-pong I have played in my life, backhands are second nature to me. My family has always kept an open table available in the basement and my sibling and I all grew up playing the sport. I’m pretty decent at it too.

As the zombie’s headless corpse falls to the ground another two pass the corner together. I think I have enough mp to take them both out, but as I reach towards the first one I see a white skeleton pass the corner too, taking the corner wide to get to the side of me.

My eyes widen at his approach and I retreat right before I was going to attack the two zombies. As I move away, the skeleton stabs with his crusty knife at where I had been, hitting mostly empty air and the sleeve of one of the zombies, embedding its knife into the wall of my bedroom.

…

Oh God, that thing is smart. If I had attacked those zombies, I would have been skewered in my side.

The knife is momentarily stuck into the side of my house, but I do not take advantage of it. Several more zombies and the other skeleton pass the corner too and I back up carefully, watching as the first skeleton wretches his knife out of my house and fixes an evil smile at me.

…

I mean, those things are always smiling because they are skeletons with perfect white teeth, but seriously, that one looked intentionally evil. It’s dark hollow eyes stared at me mercilessly as if annoyed that his attack failed. I shiver, and run around the house once more.

Dang, those skeletons are even more troublesome than I thought.

I run around my house as quickly as possible, hoping to catch some of the zombies from behind, but again, when I reach them they are all facing me as if they had infrared sensors. It doesn’t matter, I take out a couple more as the skeletons are on the wrong side of the pack. I also keep a close eye behind me, making sure nobody is sneaking up.

Sure enough, before I could take out more than three zombies a lone skeleton appears behind me and the other appears in front of me with the other zombies. Sneaky dogs.

I retreat towards the right, away from my house to avoid the pincer attack. The two skeletons look like they are ready for business though, they are no longer waiting in the back of their gang, but are taking the initiative against me. I guess I have taken out over half of their men.

I am running low on stamina though, I was never the most in shape guy to begin with and adrenaline can only last for so long. I am feeling a little sluggish too and I fear that I have yet to deal with the worst of this situation.

Suddenly, I get an idea and checking out my little mp that I have, I risk it and use an expensive cleanse on myself. Immediately I feel a lot better, still tired, but I don't feel sluggish and sleepy anymore.

Damned infection. Looks like I won’t be able to ignore its effects for long, if it's going to debuff me so much. I waste time and run around a bit more. Another zombie appears from the forest and I take out the straggler before he can join the group, carefully avoiding having its gore splatter on me. Man, this is a huge pain, those zombies are walking biohazards.

Congratulations! You have leveled up!

Great, that’s nice to see. I have taken out a lot of enemies though, I had actually been expecting this a little earlier. The exponential growth of required experience to level up appears to be real. The worst part is that leveling up doesn’t fill up my current amount of mp, it just increases my mp pool and my regen rate. I would have appreciated a 30 point fill up, you know?

I look around at my enemies and then spare a quick glance at my status page.

Inner Light: (level 4)

A unique light attribute class able to learn every light attribute skill and uses mana directly for every skill. Class locks all other potential attributes and skill types. Skill usage limited only to quantity of Mana available

Mana:

5/43.2

Regen: 2.135808 per minute

Skills:

Cleanse

Clear body of foreign influences

Heal

Enhances natural healing

Flare

Coat external surfaces with light energy to give a light attribute to object

Jeeze, for how powerful my skills are, my mp amount really is limiting me. I guess that is the balancing factor here, but prolonged battles are not going to be my forte. If my regen and mana pool keep going up by an even 20%, it’s going to take 20 minutes for my pool to fully regenerate no matter what my level is. And that decimal place, who are they kidding?

There are only three zombies left and, of course, the two skeletons. Those skeletons are getting particularly bold too, perhaps sensing my weakness. They do not leave their group of zombies, but always stay at the forefront. They are working together too, looking to pincer me, cut me off, and otherwise trap me and take me out. How come these skeletons are so smart? They literally don’t have any brains, they shouldn’t be able to work together like this.

I am really exhausted now from all the running, but thankfully I am able to keep one step ahead of the skeletons. That said, the skeletons are not letting me get close to any of the zombies and I am unable to pick off anymore without engaging them. It’s a good plan on their part and I am starting to hate them for it.

Looks like if I want to win this fight I am going to have to do it in one explosive encounter, taking them out one by one is not going to work anymore.

So I dance around some more, delaying as much as possible in order to regenerate my mp to max for the first time in this battle. The skeletons look increasingly irritated, too, as I continually dodge and evade them, running around my house over and over again, keeping it between me and them as much as possible. As undead, they probably don't get tired but I bet they are cursing their own lack of speed right now. It's the only thing keeping them from making a shish kabob out of me.

If they had Pesos with them, though, things would be a different story and I look up at my timer counting down her respawn. I’ve got to make sure in the future I won’t have to face them together because unless pesos recklessly charges me again, they could use her speed to trap me and hold me down long enough to kill me off. Or if they had any ranged attackers like mages. Just thinking about it causes me to shiver in fear.

It’s been a good fifteen minutes, though, of me running around and I can tell we are both getting tired if this. Me physically and them mentally. I hope their irritation causes them to make some mistakes and I hope my strength can hang on until the end. These bastards are really annoying.

While I had been running around I had been trying to come up with a plan on how to face these foes, but despite everything I hadn’t been able to come up with anything good. The skeletons are too smart to let me pick them off and judging by the way they have been stabbing and swinging their knives around, they know how to use them. They don’t seem to have much physical strength though, so there is my silver lining. Yay me.

So that leaves only one tactic left to me, bull rush with liberal amounts of flare used. It’s not the smartest thing, but I am getting kind of desperate now. I can feel my legs shaking in exhaustion.

With my mp full now I take a stuttering breath and prepare myself for the charge. I am at a corner of my house again and I noted before I passed it that one skeleton is in the front while the other is in the back. Good, I do not want to take them both on at the same time.

The first skeleton is in the lead and passes the corner aggressively. He doesn’t appear to expect my charge though and I am able to grab its right forearm bone, I’m not sure what it is called, and I shove its weapon away from me. The forearm feels cold and full of tiny pores at my touch but I bring my marker barrel down upon its skull as fast as I can.

It was not to be, though, as the skeleton is able to take the force of my blow with its left arm by grabbing my own right arm before I can shatter its skull with Thor’s hammer. Either the skeleton is stronger than I thought it would be or I am just too weak right now, and while it can’t muster its strength to stab me in the side, it can hold my right arm in place to prevent me from smacking it. He appears to want to hold me in place so that his buddies can get me.

It’s a good plan too as his grip has me locked in place, but I am not about to allow that to happen to me. I grin at it quickly and use flare on my right arm where he is grabbing me and am pleased to see is hand smoke and then disintegrate at the touch. Before he can recover I follow through on my blow and smash his skull in, the shards hitting me and cutting my face at the force of the explosion. I am glad again that I am wearing glasses, although they are pretty smeared right now.

Instead of collapsing headlessly like the zombies, this skelton just falls apart, its bones disassembling and falling to the ground.

I don’t have time to enjoy my victory though as the other three zombies and the last skelton are on me, the skeleton looking particularly vengeful after the loss of its friend. I don’t have time to disentangle myself so I switch to brawl mode, swinging and smashing recklessly against my enemies. Two of the zombies go down before I feel a slicing pain at my side. I turn to see the other skeleton with his knife buried into me.

Thankfully, it is not a disabling wound, although it is extremely painful. The pain just gives me strength right now though, and, with my arms tangled up in the two zombie corpses and the one zombie still alive, I turn and headbut the skeleton, who is standing too close to me, as hard as I can. Of course, I use my flare skill on my own forehead.

That skeleton’s head explodes too, disassembling and falling down just like its earlier partner. Its knife is still embedded in my gut though, but I ignore it and I focus on the last zombie, trying to scramble over the bodies of its fellow men. Still enraged, I untangle myself and smash the last foe away, it too, falling down headless and defeated. Looking around quickly, I see that that was the end of them, my hour long and exhausting fight finally reaching its conclusion.

Despite myself, I let out a roar of triumph, like the T-rex standing over its fallen prey. At least I hope it’s that awesome. Hopefully I won’t be attracting more attention with that noise.

The pain and foreign object inserted in my side requires my immediate attention though, and I look at it with a twisted grimace. I almost pass out from the sight, the rusted and crusty handle sticking out from my back, where one of my kidneys is located.

Man, if I didn’t have the heal skill I would be dead several thousand times over. I was infected so many times during that fight I lost count. I look up to my unread messages and see a (23) listed there. I open them up quickly and see that, yup, they are all infection notices. Dang, no special rewards for me? Not even another level up? Curses.

I look at my remaining mp and decide to wait a few more minutes before taking the knife out of me. I cleanse myself just in case and immediately feel a little better. Blasted infections.

Taking more steadying breathes, I am not looking forward to taking this knife out, it is going to be awful. I don’t even remember the pain of it coming in, but It will surely be even more horrible coming out. Thankfully, it’s just a stab wound and not a slice across my stomach. I don’t think I could handle seeing my guts spill out.

When my mp reaches 20, I decide it was time and reach down toward the hilt. Just touching it hurts like the dickens and I can feel my pulse quicken at what I am about to do.

I take a quick deep breath and then pull it out as fast as possible. I let out an awful yell, the kind that would make bystanders cringe and I don’t think I got it out very cleanly. I probably cut up more stuff taking it out than when it came in.

It looks like I bit my tongue too, when that happened, I can taste the iron liquid filling my mouth. I’ll have to remember to be more careful next time.

With my eyes tearing up, I use heal and settle down quickly as the pain slowly fades from both my side and my mouth. And my head actually, it was quite sore from where I headbutted that skeleton.

I also using my cleanse skill and I keep the knife and head to my room, picking up the other skeleton’s knife along the way. To the victor goes the spoils I guess, but I am not sure how much more helpful these will be against the zombies and skeletons. Maybe against those wynots.

I am tired, just dead tired. Actually, I am alive tired, that sounds more appropriate because I am alive and have survived the ambush. I’m not sure if these things naturally gathered, if Pesos had summoned them, or if my enemy called them against me, but either way I survived and got stronger. Now I am very hungry and sleepy, but for now, the food will have to wait.

I deposit my new knives on my dresser and fall down into my bed, hardly bothering to take off my gross stinky clothes. It’s time for a well deserved nap and I cast a quick heal and cleanse on myself before I go to sleep. Doesn't hurt to be carefull, I also made sure I locked my door. I’ll have to figure out food when I wake up.