Chapter 7-Break Room

Looking outside Eric sees that the sun has long since risen and is nearly right above him. He also realizes that he is quite hungry, his last meal was lunch the previous day which consisted of a train station sandwich. It surprises him that he didn’t notice his hunger beforehand, but he was immersed in a life and death struggle and then all the new information.

Eric was very lucky to have found a gas station because it is bound to have food and supplies of some sort. He puts the crystals, the orbs, and the scroll into the sack but leaves the sack on the table. Eric figures he won’t need them when exploring the gas station for anything useful.

About to open the door into the main room Eric remembers the two bodies. Should he just leave them, should he move them outside or should he bury them. He doesn’t know. The store clerk would deserve a burial, but he doesn’t have a shovel, so it would be a bit difficult for him. In the end, he decided to drag the bodies outside in the hope that wild animals would find the smell repulsive and flee, he opens the door and is assaulted by the smell. Eric thought the smell of the blood on the train to be bad, but this tops it easily. He could practically taste the rotting corpse and the brain fluids that are on the floor.

Closing the door again Eric takes a moment to collect himself. Looking around the room he checks to see if there is anything that he can use as a makeshift mask. He remembers that he never actually checked this room. The room has a couch, a small coffee table, a tv that doesn't work, a normal rectangular table below the window with four chairs surrounding it, a few lockers alongside one wall and another door. On one of the chairs, he can see that there is a backpack. It is filled with a notebook, some clothes, and a Playboy magazine. Eric has never opened a real playboy before, he grew up with the internet, so he never had the need to buy the magazine. So purely out of curiosity, he opens it. After about a minute of looking through it, he takes all the things out of the backpack and puts all his things in the backpack as it is larger and easier to carry, making sure not to forget the magazine.

‘With the internet down now, I’m sure this can be used in some trade for something. I’m only taking it because of trade.’ Eric tells himself and moves on. Opening the other door, he sees that it leads to a bathroom. There is a shower and a sink, checking the tap there is no water coming out.

‘Doesn’t matter much, it wouldn’t have been warm anyways and with the Orb of Water it is simple enough to get water.’

Looking through the cupboards he sees some hand sanitizer and while he doesn’t feel dirty he doesn’t think he is currently very clean, so he uses some. Smelling the strong scent of the sanitizer he figures he could put some of it on the mask to overpower the smell of the bodies a bit, so he places it with his things. Now he only needs to find a mask.

He is about to close the cupboard when he sees something that everyone usually takes for granted and is thrown away the moment it is used. But when you don’t have it it is the only thing you desire. Toilet paper. There is a plastic bag with 16 rolls of toilet paper, he grabs the bag and places it next to his other things.

The only other place Eric hasn’t checked yet are the lockers. Trying to open them Eric isn’t surprised to see that all three lockers are locked. He already thought of a way to open them, but some might argue that it is very dumb what he is about to do. Eric moves to the other side of the room and faces the lockers. Grabbing his staff, he aims at the center locker. Next, he focuses on the spell formula in his mind, filling it with mana and fulfilling the formula’s last condition to use it.

“Shadow Ball”

After creating the spell and chanting the incantation a ball of darkness that gathered around the staff’s head shoots out towards the lockers. It travels faster than he thought it would. When the orb hits the middle locker, the metal door caves in. Not to the point that the door falls off but to the point that Eric could pry the door open. He repeats this process for the other lockers.

Before he grabs anything Eric wonders how others would view his actions. He is breaking into lockers and stealing their contents, but then remembers that according to the screen which he woke up to most humans are dead, so the owners of these things are likely also dead. Eric hopes that they died peacefully and happy, but considering at least one of them is dead lying in the store, after having been turned into a zombie, which probably involved him being killed by that other zombie.

From what he knew they might have turned into spirits or ghosts upon death and are now going to haunt him because he is robbing them.

“…Let’s hope not. Sorry, dead guys, I’m just trying to survive, please forgive me.”

Inside the lockers, he finds a big duffel bag with a bunch of My Little Pony stuffed animals inside and a hunting knife. Eric decides not to think too much about that and simply empties the bag and places it and the knife with the other stuff on the table. In the second locker, he finds a climbing harness with rope, gloves, and boots. The boots don’t fit him, and he doesn’t know what he would do with the harness, so he grabs the rope and gloves and puts with the other things.

In the last locker, he finds a moldy sandwich, old smelly socks, a calendar, and a bandana. The calendar is of the playboy kind with a naked girl for each month. For the same reason as with the magazine he immediately puts it in his bag without thinking further about it. The bandana is all in black with a red skull in the front. Smelling it Eric believes it might be new but decides to better wash it at some point.

Eric's Status Screen

Status Screen

Name Eric King Level 2 Age 19 Stength 9(0) Gender Male Constitution 9(0) Race Human Dexterity 12(0) Class Warlock Agility 12(0) Profession - Intelligence 19(2) HP 90/90 Wisdom 16(2) Mana 196/196 Charisma 9(0)