Chapter 17-Level 5

Bang bang bang.

At the sound Eric jumps up from the bed expecting zombies trying to break down the door. He calms as he remembers where he is when he hears the voice on the other side of the door.

“Wake up, we are having breakfast and then heading straight out,” Claire yells through the door.

“Alright, I’m coming.” Quickly getting up he makes sure he is dressed. Eric also empties his bags so that he can carry things back with him.

While dressing Eric looks at the screen that popped up while he was asleep.

Base Stat increase

Strength +1

Constitution +1

‘Cool, maybe getting a good night’s rest in a bed helped my body recover from the past few days and with all the exercise I must have grown stronger.’

Then Eric unlocks the door and heads with his things to the main room. He sees that the party is already gathered and eating their breakfast, which consists of a simple sandwich. Maria is preparing the breakfast for not only them but everyone else that is waking up.

Eric gets a round of good morning from everyone except Claire and then he grabs his breakfast. Usually, he eats cereal or something for breakfast, but the sandwich isn’t bad and far better than the previous day's.

“Why did you lock your door? It isn’t easy waking you up through the door.” Claire glared at him.

“Sorry, I automatically locked my door as I went to sleep, I didn’t mean to cause any trouble. Also sorry for sleeping longer than all of you but I usually need an alarm clock to wake up in the morning.” Eric tried to apologize in the hopes that Claire might be mollified a bit.

He doesn’t have much hope for her ever acting friendly with him, but they are a small group and infighting will certainly spell their doom, so he will try for a bit longer to play nice with her.

“Don’t worry about it, Claire seems to be extra pissy this morning,” Anna tells him, turning to Claire she says, “Give him a break Claire, there is a reason he survived alone for a while. We heard what happened the last time he went to sleep. It is also not like you are giving a warm welcome to the group.”

Claire looks like she is about to start a heated discussion with her friend when Bruce decides to shift their focus.

“Ladies, ladies, how about we talk about what we will do today. This is a discussion for another time.”

Anna looks like she wants to object so Eric also says something, “I thank you for your concern Anna, but I have had a very warm welcome to the group. You and everyone were very kind yesterday and dinner was the first time I could relax since this started. What do we call what happened?” Eric then asked trying to prompt her to answer her about something else.

Clearly struggling with herself to decide if she should let it drop or not she takes a few moments to respond to Eric, “We have started calling it The Event, I know not a great name but it sort of just happened in our talks, and yes, we should talk about our day plan.”

Alastor decides to move the discussion ahead and asks Eric, “Is there anything you need supplies wise? We all already have a bunch of things, but we don’t have many extra things regards to additional clothing and such..”

“There are somethings which I am looking for, mainly personal hygiene things such as soap, shampoo, toothbrush, and another set of clothes, I only have these clothes and eventually they will tear.”

“Those shouldn’t be too hard to find. We all already have those things because we scavenged for them. We don’t have any spare things because we only have so much space in our bags, so we mainly focus on food, medicine, and other such things on top of searching for other people.”

“We should talk about our formation for the upcoming battles, it would be safer to talk about it now rather than later,” Bruce interjects into our conversation.

“What you saw yesterday is very indicative of how we fight. Claire would take one or two enemies and aim to kill one while holding the other with her mace. Anna focuses on a single opponent and tries to kill it as quickly as possible to assist us in our fights. Alastor supports us, he keeps enemies still to prevent them from attacking, giving us the openings that we use to kill zombies and whatnot. I take care of all the other opponents holding them back and pushing them around, as you could see I can usually hold off up to 3 enemies, but we were already tired yesterday so one slipped by.”

Bruce seems smug at the fact that he can deal with more enemies than the rest of them. Eric didn’t want to mention him dealing with too many enemies nearly cost Alastor his life.

“After the battle yesterday, I leveled up and gained a new spell, it is called Blink. If I compare it to video games then that means I can teleport a short distance to avoid enemies, so I’m not as helpless as before.” Alastor tells the group.

“With all that in mind I think anything has to be changed on your front, I should focus on dealing with the enemies before they reach us, I can also slow them down if too many are approaching. We can also do things like yesterday with someone jumping out of the way to give me a clear shot, or you Bruce could push an enemy away from you to give me a clear shot. I have no control over my shadow ball once I launch it, and I don’t want to hit one of you if at all possible.”

“That makes sense, we will have to see how you fit in.” Claire agrees. “If we are all done eating let’s grab our things and head out.”

They spent the first few hours heading through the town with minimal resistance. Some zombies and boars approached them, but with Eric dealing some damage when they approach and the combat prowess of the group there are never any issues and enemies are cut down in short order.

Blink worked exactly as Alastor suspected, but it never came to the point of him needing to use it. At one point a group similar in size to the enemies that appeared yesterday, but Eric slowed down the first group so that only 3 boars reached the group, and they were killed before the other 3 reached them.

“Having one more person, and a ranged DPS at that helps immensely,” Anna commented.

“I agree, it wasn’t easy dealing with enemies alone, knowing that without mana I can’t do anything.”

At lunchtime the group all headed back to the church, to drop off the what they scavenged and get lunch. All homes that they encounter are a complete mess as if something broke in and trashed them. They also find some bodies, but they suspect that most bodies turned into zombies.

Eric managed to find what he was looking for, he found two sets of clothes that would fit him and there were more than enough toiletries in all the houses for Eric. The group also found a lot of non-perishable food and medicine, the main things they are looking for.

Lunch at the church was a simple affair with some beans and bread. After emptying their bags, the group headed out again.

Throughout the next few hours, many members of the group leveled up. Alastor reached level 4 which helped his mana pool but otherwise didn’t do much. Both Anna and Bruce leveled up to 5 at the same time.

At level 5, both of them received powerful new skills to use. Anna was able to identify weak points on an opponent, not just places like the brain or heart, but she managed to kill a boar by attacking the front left leg first, it seemed that a previous injury made that spot a weak point for that boar. This can be extremely powerful when facing unknown enemies.

To test it she convinces Bruce to leave the group for a moment, and after a bit of concentration she identifies in addition to the normal weak points of the human body, such as his head, also his left foot is identified to be a weak point. It turns out that he has a blister on his foot that hampers his movements a bit. Everyone concurs that it is powerful, but to make the most out of it she needs to improve and practice.

Bruce learns a skill that allowed him to spread mana throughout his body, bolstering all his stats from strength to charisma by a considerable amount. When active he becomes nearly twice as strong as before.

Both of those skills made them powerhouses in all further combat. Claire reached level 5 the previous day and had also received a powerful spell. When she uses it an area of 10 meters around her all allies would be healed and enemies would receive a lot of damage. She says she couldn’t use it the other day because she ran out of mana.

This brings the group to the conclusion that at level 5 everyone receives a powerful skill or spell. Making Eric wonder what he will receive. In the afternoon they are heading back to the church when they get attacked by some zombies. Eric had already resigned himself to not leveling up that day when after defeating the zombies he receives a notification.

Level Up!

4→5

Level 4 +1 Strength 14 +2 Constitution 13 +1 Dexterity 14 +1 Agility 14 +1 Intelligence 29 +5 Wisdom 22 +3 Charisma 12 +1

“Hey, I leveled up.”

“That’s great, so what spell did you get? Is it powerful?” Anna immediately asked the question that everyone was wondering. Everyone, especially Claire, seemed interested in his response, everyone was excited if their conclusion was correct and them having figured something out about this new reality.

“I don’t know if it is powerful, it is called Servant Call, so maybe I get a partner that will help in combat. That would be very valuable.”

“Try it out.” Alastor was eager to see what a powerful spell would be for Eric. Alastor already considered Eric’s Shadow Ball to be very powerful, with him not having a single way to deal damage.

“Lets first head closer to the church, I don’t want to play around with a new spell carrying around all these bags.” Eric was also eager to test out this spell, but he wanted a chance to look at the formula a bit and analyze it.

Servant Call

Level -

Requirements: Warlock level 5

Cost: 100 mana

Description: Summon a bound familiar.

The spell gives Eric two spell formulas. Trying to understand them he can tell that the first one has a condition that he doesn’t have a familiar from the abyss, the rest of the formula Eric doesn't understand but he gets the feeling that it connects him to the abyss to pull a familiar through to him. The last part of that spell binds the caster and familiar with one another. The second spell formula is far simpler and simply summons a bound familiar to his side. Eric isn’t sure from where though.

In front of the church, it is time to find out if the abyss is another name for hell and if Eric will summon a demon as a familiar. With what little conversation he had with Claire throughout the day he guessed that she was very religious, and suddenly becoming a demon summoner would not get Eric in her good graces.

Eric's Status Screen

Status Screen

Name Eric King Level 5 Age 19 Strength 16(0) Gender Male Constitution 14(0) Race Human Dexterity 15(0) Class Warlock Agility 15(0) Profession - Intelligence 34(2) HP 144/144 Wisdom 25(2) Mana 342/342 Charisma 13(0)