Chapter 6

His claws severed the skeleton’s spine, followed by the six behind it in quick succession. They were in one of the monster dens, clearing it out. This one was filled with skeletons. They were surprisingly strong and fast, but in the end, just bones and severing their spines dropped them into a pile fairly easily.

It’s been over a week since they left the safety of the apartment building. In that time something else was discovered about the system. After twenty four hours, starting from level one, going up, that level would no longer give them any Dayle. At first, Shades thought that as they grew stronger, the lower level enemies would no longer mean anything, but after the fourth day, level four monsters didn’t drop any Dayle anymore and he noticed the pattern. At least, as he had thought, the level showed the amount of Dayle that would drop.

Unfortunately, the more moons he activated, the more Dayle it took to activate the next row of them. The shroud covering the field of moons behind each of the planets, needed more Dayle orbiting the planets to push it further back to reveal more moons. Currently, he had five Dayles orbiting his green planet, so he needed five Dayles to activate a single moon for that planet. It just grew harder and harder to progress as he levelled up his planets, but since the enemies he faced dropped more and more Dayles, it was technically a consistent increase in strength as long as he stayed ahead of the timer and kept clearing out monster dens.

He didn’t have a level himself that he could use to base his strength off of, but he could roughly guess how he’d match up against the different levelled enemies. Each type of opponent had different strengths. Some of them being faster, stronger or smarter.

Shades had noticed, however, that all of them were undead. Whether they were zombies, skeletons, mummies, corpse hounds or even undead ogres, they all had to be beheaded or have their spines severed. He somehow doubted that it was only undead all over the world. Whoever made this system couldn’t be that boring… He hoped at least.

Manipulation: 5

Circulation: 5

Restoration: 5

He looked at his planetary levels and was pleased with his progress. He levelled everything equally as they all played a major role in his development and each were important. Every level gave something new, none of them very big developments, but each an increase in his overall survivability and resourcefulness. Some of them only made improvements on previous gains, while others gave variations of the same ability.

Level four Circulation, for example, allowed him to become lighter, while level five allowed him to become heavier. Level three Manipulation made his normal Etherea like acid, to everything except him and Mel, while his fifth level made his blade-like energy burn and well as cut. So far only the fifth level in Restoration changed that ability, making it restore his stamina as well as heal him.

Having cleared out the building, starting from the bottom, he and Mel stood on the roof. She reached to just below his knee at the moment. The monsters still haven’t left their dens, so the only stuff outside were normal zombies and undead wild animals. He even found some mutated undead animals, strangely enough. The birds, though he didn’t know what could have killed them, were bigger and now ate meat instead of seeds and insects. He even saw teeth in one of them, when he caught it, it was like a cross between a bat and a pigeon. They were only level one Corpse Birds, even though not all of them looked the same. They flew around in swarms, like bees, so even though they were such a low level, the amount of them still caused a problem. At least they ate zombies too, strangely enough, cleaning up the streets slowly but surely. Maybe the infected flesh had turned them?

Mel grabbed a hold of him as he took a running jump, decreasing his weight and enhancing his speed, and leapt to the tall glass building next to him. It was the same one he saw that first day and knew it was a den. Crashing through one of the tall glass windows, he rolled to his feet. The shards of glass barely scratched his toughened skin through his clothes.

He landed somewhere in the middle of the building, so decided to work his way down then up. Once he reached the roof he could call it a night and jump to the next building the following day.

He cautiously continued on, Mel floating beside him. They could both perfectly see in the dark so the lights being out wasn’t much of an issue.

“That crash must’ve attracted something, so stay frosty.” He whispered.

“Frosty?” She asked. She had learned not to take everything too seriously as Shades slowly taught her human terms.

“Stay alert.” He answered.

A few minutes later they still hadn’t found anything. Shades was starting to get worried. He knew this was a den, the sounds he heard coming out of it couldn’t mean anything else. If whatever was in here didn’t show themselves by now, it either meant they were still searching for the two of them or…

A low hiss was heard behind them. The hair on Shades’ neck was practically jumping out of him.

…they were waiting for something.

He slowly turned and finally saw what this den’s monster was.

A barely-visible distortion in the air slowly revealed itself to be what they were looking for.

Ekimmara

lvl 20

Shades breathed in deeply.

‘Shiiiit.’

It was the highest level he’d seen yet, and was smart enough to creep up on him. If these things surrounded him, he was going to be in trouble.

Luckily there only seemed to be one. He’d need to end this quickly before others showed up.

It hadn’t done anything yet and seemed to be eyeing him up and down, dismissing Mel entirely. Assessing him. It stood a few feet taller than him and looked like a giant bat with no wings. Leathery red skin covered its long bone-thin limbs, along with extended razor-sharp black claws adorning its hands and feet.

Suddenly, it practically blurred past him, leaving him with five deep claw marks on his shoulder. The only reason he still had his head was because of the constant slight circulation of power coursing through him, speeding him up just enough to dodge it, if only barely.

It crouched on all fours a few metres away from him, hissing menacingly, getting ready for another leap.

“Go high Mel, look for a gap.”

He sped himself up, matching its speed, and rushed it as Mel flew up above them. He formed his own claws as he closed in, going for its legs. It leaped to his right before jumping at his face again. Rolling underneath it, getting another small slice on his cheek, he managed to get a shallow cut on one of its trailing feet, eliciting a pained hiss as the spot blackened and started flaking. Shades was surprised at the intense result of a shallow cut. It was too, apparently, as it looked at its foot. Its distraction was barely a second, but at the speeds they were moving, that cost it its life as a black blur flashed past it. Mel severed its neck, given the small opening she needed when it looked down as its wound.

“Nice Mel.” They fist-bumped as its neck started blackening and it turned to ash.

“Why was this different than the others?” She asked, pointing at the pile of ash. “The burn of your Etherea was a lot more effective than usual.”

The journal received information about anything he killed, filling its pages like a type of bestiary. The more monsters he killed, the more information he’d get. It gave him some pretty interesting stuff to read sometimes, details and lore of whatever he killed.

“So that’s why.” He muttered, grinning as he mentally read over what the book said about this one.

He explained further as Mel raised a questioning eyebrow.

“It’s a type of vampire. Apparently there’s a whole bunch of different types of vampires. An Ekimmara is a primitive one that doesn’t have a human form. All vampires are weak to sunlight and fire, and since the Ekimmara is one of the weakest types, our burn effect, even at our low level is still pretty effective.”

“So that’s why it waited for us.” She said. “To get as close to the middle of the floor as possible, away from the sunlight.”

Several hisses followed her statement.

Turning, they saw about five more of them. These ones were smaller.

Fledgling Ekimmara

lvl 15

“We have their weakness.” He said, forming his claws again. “If that wasn’t the only adult Ekimmara then there’s probably only one per floor along with a few of these guys. Let’s clear this place out before it gets dark, they’re much stronger then.” He blurred forward, a trail of Dark Etherea in his wake.

Shades and Mel were sitting on the edge of the roof, watching the sun set.

“That place was a gold mine.” He said, checking out his interface and all the orbiting Dayle. “We were lucky we had their weakness though. Their speed is nothing to sniff at and apparently they have pretty good healing.” He laughed a little. “Let’s not just jump into the side of a den like that next time, yeah?”

“Hey, it was your idea.” Mel said, poking his side, which had practically become a habit by this point. “I said we should wait for sunrise and go in cautiously.”

“Nobody has time to wait for sunrise.” He said, fending her off and distributing his Dayle. He had enough to upgrade all his powers.

They were all now level six. Unfortunately, they just gave him boosts in previous abilities. Mel at least grew a few inches, he noticed, as she sat on his knee. He found it interesting how the bright star didn’t give off any light to his surroundings. It wasn’t technically a sun, but it still looked like one.

“So where to next?” She asked.

He absently put his hand on her head.

‘So warm.’ He thought, fascinated by the strangeness of her ethereal hair, but still focusing on his different interfaces.

“I only need to eat once a day now and with the increase in my storage space, we have enough food to last us a few more weeks.” He shrugged. “Keep hunting, I guess, work our way north. It’s as good a direction as any.” He thought of the few groups of survivors he’d seen. He avoided them as much as possible, he didn’t need to test how resistant his skin was to gunfire just yet, which was how he found some of them in the first place, firing away at anything that moved. He thought they were idiots for attracting even more of the walkers, but didn’t go out of his way to let them know of the fact.

Some of them were hiding out in some of the buildings. Shades sometimes saw a light every now and then at night in some of the buildings’ windows. He guessed they must’ve realised that the actual monsters didn’t leave their dens. He didn’t think barricading themselves from the walkers and waiting for help was the best idea however. They were safe from everything but themselves.

Food wouldn’t last forever. Sanitation was probably becoming an issue by now. They’d fight over the scraps.

He didn’t really know what they could do. Start farming out in the wilderness before the food ran out? If birds turned into undead carnivores, other things probably did too. How would people survive? Only a very small number got special abilities. How would the average person live in this new world?

Such thoughts filled his mind as he lay back and stared up at the stars.

Day 9