Innate skill scan, Daniel thought, and then heat filled his head, and then it was like the bugs were zapping him once more. His muscles fired off randomly, and he felt sick as energy flooded through him. The pain in his skull intensified, and his brain warmed until it got to where it felt it might be about to smoke.

Then all the sensations vanished, and he just sat there panting. “What’s that?”

“I warned, it’ll be uncomfortable.”

She had warned him, but he had expected nothing like that. “It was horrible.” She looked sympathetic, at least. His head continued to feel fried. “And I don’t think it worked. Nothing came up.”

“That was the scan. Now, ask for the screen?”

“I don’t want to.” There was no way he wanted to risk that feeling happening again. At least not until he had a day or two to recover forget.

Her eyes went unfocused. “It’ll be fine,” she declared.

After a moment, a healing spell hit him. The warming tingling definitely concentrated in his brain. What the hell had that scan done? Her eyes went through another of her strangely unfocused looks, but this one had at least been directed at him. “All better,” she told him.

He assumed it was some sort of diagnosis scans.

“Did you just check my health?”

“Yes, and you’re better. Now don’t be a wuss. Ask to see innate skills.”

Her voice was very demanding, and he wanted to dig in and refuse out of principal. She just looked at him unblinkingly, and he remembered she had been squishing lightning bugs.

She was not looking away.

He would do it, he decided, not wanting to be a coward, but if the pain started up, then he would drop it. Innate skills, he thought, being very careful not to think about scans.

A black screen with green text flickered into existence without even a hint of pain.

Plant:

Power - ???

Utility - Wood Growth, Wood Strengthening, ????,

Special - ????

Strength:

Power - ??

Utility - ?

Special - ???

While the information was undoubtedly interesting, it was not revealing anything unexpected. A significant part of him had been hoping for something epic, like invisibility. For it to have only confirmed what he had already deduced was a letdown. “Nothing new,” he said in disappointment. “Just the wood stuff. Growth and strengthening, which”—he nodded back at the door and his club—“we already knew.”

“What exactly can you see?” she asked with barely concealed impatience.

He told her what was on the screen, and as he talked, her eyes went unfocused, as she was clearly reading something. Her lips turned up slightly and then her smile got and wider.

“This is great news,” she told him.

“What?”

“The question marks mean there are more to be discovered and two separate skills to start with means your core hasn’t atrophied.”

“English this time.” He tried to grin at her while he rebuked her, to show he was partially joking.

“Deformed,” she answered, “and unable to expand. Permanently disabled.”

“That happens?”

She nodded soberly. “Yeah, broken interfaces usually end up getting screwed on both sides, but you have made out like a bandit.”

Daniel was a little surprised at how happy her words had made him.

He was going to be strong and if what she was saying was correct… Then he had only scratched the surface of his capabilities. There were so many question marks.

What other amazing skills were coming?

Could he make plants fight treant style?

Explore with them?

Grow magic fruit?

What about the special category?

If what he did with the door was just Wood Growth, Wood Strengthening, which had included producing deadly thorns. What did special contain?

“What’s next?” he asked, then reconsidered. Maybe a better question was how could he get more information. “Actually…” he stopped talking.

Ivey’s smile vanished at the first question, and her eyes watered. Daniel just looked at her, stunned; that was a sudden change. He desperately tried to understand what had upset her, trying to remember what he had said. All he had asked was what they wanted to do next. “I didn’t mean to—”

“No,” Ivey interrupted him, sitting up straighter and taking deep breaths, clearly designed to push aside cloying emotions.

“To upset you,” he finished unnecessarily.

“No, your question is fine, but the whole situation overwhelmed me briefly. The fact is that we can’t stay here.” Her face suddenly went business-like. She looked down at her dress. “I need replacement clothes; we require food and water?” She waved her hand toward the minibar that was nearly empty. “And a proper place to sleep.” She wrinkled her nose and shot a look at both the zombie corpses and the bugs. “This place stinks. And finally, we are going to have to fight our way out of his hotel and get to safety.”

“So we need to kill some zombies.”

“I am a healer, so you need to do the killing while I support, and second, they are not zombies, they are feral mutated humans.”

“Are you sure?”

“I am not broken,” she reminded him tartly—and a bit harshly, as far as he was concerned—but then again, apart from lacking text help and manual assignment of skills, his broken interface seemed to be a net positive.

From the undercurrents of her description, he effectively had two full-strength magic builds. From the broken interface, a beast whisperer class, and the attributes upgrades that went with it and then from the personal core, he had his plant magic and probably something related to strength now that he thought about it.

On top of his magic, was he going to be as strong as Hercules as well?

“So yes,” she continued. “I am certain they are not zombies. They are labelled as feral, mutated humans. They are not diseased; they are not undead and don’t turn other people into zombies.” She sat looking at him speculatively. “You have nineteen strength, don’t you?”

“Yep.”

“And you can do crazy things with wood.”

“Yep.”

“And the ferals are usually not smart.”

“Where are you going with this?”

She smiled triumphantly.

“I am thinking about how to fight them safely. They will not attack here because of what you did to the door, so we change the playing field.” She was suddenly animated. “We can move to a new room and lure them in. Then, because you are so strong, you should be able to kill them. I only have nine strength,” she admitted while nodding towards the wall where his suite had one of those twin sets of doors that, if opened, created a double room. Each set needed to be separately opened to allow access between the rooms. He had checked when he had come in, and they had been locked. “Pop those locks, switch rooms, create a trap, and lure them in.”

“What happens if they’re waiting next door?”

She shrugged like it did not really matter. “We kill them, of course. But you are right, we should be careful.”

“How’s this going to help us?”

“We have to start somewhere. Plus, everything is experience.” She looked at him, suddenly realising she might have not explained things fully. “Remember, this is like a computer game. If you eliminate enough of them, we level up and are awarded with extra attributes and skills. Also, we can loot them, and then if we ever find a trader, then we sell all the stuff we have gathered.”

“But.”

She stopped talking and stared him down. “We’re going to have to kill to get out of here.” All that playfulness that had been on the edge of her banter was gone. She was suddenly deadly serious. “We may end up having to fight through every floor. No one is coming to rescue us. We need to help ourselves. How did you think this would go?”

“I hadn’t.” She was right. He had been half thinking about the army coming to save them, but that clearly would not happen. Hell, the army might be zombies now. Ferals.

“It doesn’t matter,” she interrupted. “First step is to get out of here. Not just because of the smell.” She glanced at the bugs and wrinkled her nose. “But for food and water. We need a base camp.”

“Why don’t we just use that door?” He waved his hand toward the exit of their current room where the zombie head was still impaled. While he had grown the structure into the wall, it would not take him long to open it up. He felt more comfortable engaging them in the common hallway than going through someone else’s room.

“I know this is hard for you, but”—she tapped her head—“I have extra information, and I have a university degree. The plan will work.” She smiled encouragingly.

A university degree meant nothing. He could not believe that she had just said that. He had always hated the intellectual superiority at schools. Most of his class had called him farmboy, but he had still been topping the level when he had to quit to run the farm. “I was good at school,” he protested.

“It’s hardly the same,” Ivey countered. “Plus”—she tapped her head once more to signify the extra mystical knowledge—“they will no longer try to get into this room, but the next one is fair game.”

You were a nurse; he thought to himself. If he wanted to, Daniel knew that he could have ended up as an engineer. Thinking of that, his eyes fell once more on the dead zombie’s head. The trap he had crafted had been effective, and he needed to work out if it was something that he could replicate.

“Are you sure they’re dumb?”

“Yes.”

Daniel stared at her a bit longer. The dynamics were strange. They were together but not, and he could not read her.

“The help files are telling me they will avoid this door,” Ivey said with a measure of frustration, having picked up his distrust. “Shades of grey and all, but if we shift a room over, it becomes easier. Trust me.”

“I do?”

Ivey looked relieved.

“Well, let’s do it.” She stood and dusted off her dress. It might have worked to tidy the dress, but did nothing to the bug splatter on her legs. Ready to go, she was standing looking down at him, where he remained sitting on the ground.

Ivey rolled her eyes. “Come on. We have to save ourselves and we can’t stay here. We need food, water, and ultimately to escape this hotel death trap and find somewhere safe. I know you are scared but . . .” She wiggled her hands, indicating that he should start moving.

Daniel’s teeth ground together at her tone. It was unfair. It was not her fault that she was here and she must be freaking out just as much as him, but the word choice grated at him.

Was he scared? He was not sure if he was, but he might be. It was hard to tell with all the emotions he that were coiling within him. His stomach felt like it was twisting inside out. It was all reasonable. He shut his eyes briefly to compose himself. He had almost become a zombie. Those words in his head were pretty heavy. The force of those things against the door. Of course, he was scared. Who wouldn’t be? Terrified, but probably also in shock. That was okay. It was a perfectly fine human reaction, but they still needed to make their own luck.

Daniel opened his eyes once more. Ivey looked impatient. She was stuck here in a cocktail dress. How could she be so unaffected? Those zombies had wanted to eat all of them.

“Yeah, I am scared.”

“We need to get going,” she reminded him, ignoring his comment, a bit of her fake, bossy nurse voice creeping in. “Now!” she said more sharply.

Daniel still felt like curling into a ball, but with a pretty girl there, that was the last thing he was going to do. Appearances and all, even if he had already admitted he was terrified. Wasn’t showing a sensitive side good or something? She stepped forward and bent slightly to massage his shoulders before leaning down.

“You have been amazing,” she whispered in his ear, that despite himself, he was very aware of how close she was. She bit his earlobe slightly, sending a hot flush through him.

“Hey.”

She moved away, giggling.

“Let’s do this.” She waved once more at the door.

Let me do this, Daniel corrected the words in his head. He sprang to his feet anyway and went over to his suitcase. How much of that intimate moment was real versus just an attempt to shock him out of his morose thoughts?

He looked at her because he could not help himself. She was keeping it together, and despite him getting initially hung up over the whole hiding under the bed, it was, when he thought about it, completely understandable. All she could do was heal, and the owner of every one of the zombie arms he had fought would have shredded her in moments. In fact, what she had done was admirable. Throughout this, she had kept her head. Killed the bugs while he was unconscious and had stood behind him, ready to fight against the zombies. She had even helped him understand what was happening to the world.

“You’re amazing,” he said.

She blushed, and he joined her standing. Maybe he was happy playing the role of saving the damsel in distress, or at least this one. However, it could absolutely wait till he got dressed.

There was a pile of little black rocks in the suitcase from the bugs and a single larger one.

“What’s this?” he asked while getting a fresh T-shirt, taking the time to hold up the rock.

“That is a feral human core. If we can ever find a trader, they are valuable.”

“What’s a core?”

He also wanted to ask what a trader was, but from the context and the name, it was self-explanatory, and if they found one, then he could find out more. There was enough weird happening that he did not need to chase down everything. She had mentioned a game earlier and if that was the case, then it was a probably a shop that allowed him to turn junk into actual weapons.

Ivey shrugged at the question like it was unimportant, but her eyes went unfocused as she went and checked for him, anyway.

Sexy, considerate, and with a good head on her shoulders. He looked away abruptly when he realised he had been staring at her.

While she was busy reading the screens, he distracted himself by pulling on jeans, socks, and heavy work boots. Daniel immediately felt better. It was mainly the shoes. There was no way that a zombie’s claws would have gone through these hard leather and steel-capped boots.

“You should swallow the zombie one,” Ivey said finally.

“What?”

“Humans can’t,” she said gesturing at herself and then realised what she had just said. “I mean, humans with an interface can’t, but mutated humans . . . I mean, if you have a broken interface like you do, then you can.”

“I’m a what?”

“Oh.” She looked slightly flustered, like she had not been intending to let that slip. “You are classed as a mutated human.”

“What, people can look at me and do the examination thing and what? They see one of those?” he gestured at the impaled head. Ivey might be bossy, but she was right about the need to get a new room and not because of the smell.

“Some might.” Ivey’s eyes went unfocused. “But the monsters we are fighting have a feral prefix,” she said finally. “So, I think just ‘mutated’ won’t generate a reaction. There might even be lots of others like you out there.” She smiled brightly at him.

Daniel just grunted and looked down at the small rock in his hand. “How do I use it? What does it do?”

Ivey shrugged. “Swallow it, your body absorbs it, and you get powerful.”

“How?”

“There are loads of technical information, but if you eat it, your body and core absorbs some of its spells and power.”

“Where did it come from?”

“It was in the chest of that thing?” She waved. “I collected it while you were unconscious.”

“No. That’s bloody cannibalism.”

Ivey shrugged, unconcerned. “Once they have gone feral, they are no longer classed as human.”

That is a weak argument, he thought to himself. The rock he held had been part of someone. “I’m not eating it,” he declared, inadvertently wrinkling his nose and turning away from the core.

“I didn’t think you were such a wimp.”

Daniel’s jaw dropped at the accusation. Just because he did not want to partake in cannibalism did not make him a wimp. The whole idea was ridiculous.

“Stop being a baby.” She grabbed what was their last bottle of water. “Just swallow it like a Panadol.” She opened the bottle and passed it to him.

“I’m not.”

“Yeah, you are,” she told him. “The only question is how long we spend arguing about it. Those things want to kill us, so we need to get stronger.”

“Why don’t you take it?”

She rolled her eyes at him. “I can’t,” she reminded him. “Don’t you remember?” She waved a hand at herself. “Normal. It will be bad for me. Drink up.”

She shoved the bottle at him once more.

Daniel really considered digging his heels in. The idea of consuming something that was part of a human worried him. Ivey’s eyes were hard. She would not yield, and why wouldn’t he do it? Because it felt wrong? Zombies were wrong. He looked at the dead body and remembered the others that had also been in the corridor.

He had been lucky when he had killed that first one and there was no guarantee that the next would go so easily. He flipped the pebble and ran his fingers over it. This core would apparently help him get stronger.

Boom! The memory of it. The shaking of the wall and puff of wood dust. The protesting creaks as the door returned to its normal form. That was out there, and it wanted to eat them. This object that looked like a tiny stone would help him fight them.

Another glance at the distorted corpse stuck in the door. This would strengthen him to fight them. Boom! And, of course, the roar. Daniel looked at Ivey. She was helpless and needed protecting, but she still had bug splatter on her legs. She was fighting hard and doing her bit and deserved to survive, and there was no help coming to save them. He had been subconsciously clinging to that hope, but Ivey had thankfully shattered him of that delusion. It was up to him, and he might have nineteen strength, but he was not strong enough.

While attempting not to think where it was, he tossed it in his mouth and swallowed with a rush of water. Just like a big pill. There was an aftertaste of dirt, so he drained more water to clear his mouth, even spitting out a mouthful in the hope it would help. The water splattered on to the carpet.

“Charming.”

His head snapped up, but she was smiling at him. Good enough for him. He tried to feel his stomach, wondering what was going to happen. He shuddered, thinking about what he had just done. That was part of a human.

Stuff it. This was not something for him to stress over. The world was changed, and he did not have the luxury of civilities. None of the survivors did. It was literally kill or be killed, and he intended to survive.

Still, he had expected a reaction, but nothing was happening. “Was it supposed to do something?”

“It will take a while to work,” Ivey told him. “And it is only one core, so you’re not going to wake up as a superman.”

She walked over to the doors curiously.

“How are we going to do this?” she mused.

“Carefully,” Daniel promised. His mind was already forgetting the strange rock that he had swallowed and thinking through the problem. While it was unlikely that there would be zombies in the next room, he wanted to plan for the worst. He glanced at the door and the dead zombie. He remembered that fight.

“Very carefully,” he corrected.

There were various ways to approach this, but ultimately, a more cautious style was called for. Charging in was something an animal would do, and he was human and needed to use every advantage that he had.

Proceed carefully. They had shards from the mirror, which they could employ to get visibility in the room without exposing themselves. Then, when they were sure it was clear—and only then—would they open up the door. If there was a monster, then he would let it throw itself at the door and then snap the wood over it to pin it in place, just like with the first one. Then brain it.

“First things first,” he muttered to himself.

“What?”

Daniel knew he was blushing slightly. “It helps me to talk things out loud,” he admitted without bothering to hide what he was doing. If she took it the wrong way, then that was not his fault.

“Cute.”

He shot a quick glare at her, but there was nothing mocking in her expression.

With a shrug, he placed his hand on wood. Before doing anything specific, he pushed further, just like when he had been manipulating the door via the wall. His consciousness sank in, and a moment later he could sense the next door with the wood calling out to him. This time, he would not push himself too far, so he stayed passive and did not manipulate the second door.

Instead, with his extended awareness, he checked it out, searching for weaknesses and any gaps in the doors seal.

The one thing that he wanted to avoid was opening the first door and discovering the second door was already open and a zombie was waiting to pounce upon him. He had no desire to fight a zombie one on one, instead he wanted to create traps to do the killing and for that plan, he required more time. Once he was completely satisfied that they had double door protection, he withdrew his mental touch.

“Shush,” he ordered. “We need to be quiet for the next bit.”

“Take your time.”

The words might have been supportive, but the tone was anything but. She was itching to get going, and Daniel completely supported her. He wanted to escape too, not necessarily to his personal farm anymore, but at the very least, out of the city. He had never liked central Melbourne before, and with the zombies, it was even worse. There were also the giant bugs. Given them, then who knew what would be at his place? Trying to survive by himself seemed foolish, so it might be best to throw his lot in with other survivors. But not in the city. Daniel’s gut told him that the country was safer.

First, he had to escape from a dead skyscraper and then a hostile city.

Why on Earth had he come?

To chase fame. It seemed pretty silly now that it had resulted in him being on level twenty-five in a zombie-infested hotel. Daniel had been running the numbers furiously in the privacy of his own skull. The hotel had been nearly full the previous night. His room was on level twenty-five out of forty-five. What was it, eighty rooms per floor, even if half was occupied? That was an awful lot of potential zombies above and below him, let alone how many bugs were out there. Then again, not every person was converted. He was tempted to conclude the animals were the bigger threat, apart from that unfortunate fact that there had been a pack of zombies outside the door.

The screams he had heard waking up made a lot more sense. How many of those had been one member of a couple being transformed like what almost happened in this room? He would find out. Once they started carving their way out of this place.

In fact, all he knew was that there was a group roaming the corridor. Maybe that was it. Even the optimist in him did not think that was likely.

If there was only one pack of zombies, they would still need to contend with the creepy crawlies. Daniel looked at the sheet in the corner. The guts were soaking through the white fabric, turning it yellow and green. Their room had been inundated with them, and if that indicated the global changes. . . . He stopped that thought, as he didn’t want to imagine what that would look like.

If hotels were having bug problems, then he could only shake his head at the threats out on the land. There were spiders everywhere there, plus mice and rats. If innocent centipedes had been changed as much as they had, then what would a farm look like? Hell, what about farm animals? The ram he had hated him. Was it going to be six feet tall and breathe fire now? Possibly, staying in the city was the smarter approach.

On the other hand, he could only imagine how powerful his plant growth abilities would be in an actual forest. Maybe that was where all the question marks under the special skill would come in handy? Maybe his destiny was to build a tree kingdom. Daniel smiled at that thought.

It did not matter. These were all thoughts for later. They needed to survive the night first. If there were an odds maker at a track looking them over, Daniel knew betting on himself and Ivey would be like putting your life savings on a goat against thoroughbred racehorses. Not if all the insects had been enhanced were like those that had fallen through the roof. If that had happened, the zombies were the least of their threats. His mind touched on spiders. He did not suffer from arachnophobia, but mutated ones . . . well, he would let himself fear them. One more glance at the door.

He wanted to sit down, but was not willing to. There would be more out there than just zombies. Best not to tell Ivey. He would follow her plan. After all, she was right, staying still was death. But whether or not Ivey was impatient, he would not be rushed.

This next bit was delicate. He reached out and touched the door, learning its quirks, how it was attached to the wall. The handle that kept it closed. Wood moved and shifted at his directive, and despite his hopes, the whole thing groaned as the stress patterns shifted.

Hopefully, it would go unnoticed, but if the room was occupied, then its inhabitant knew now.

As he worked, he realised that there had been no screams since the very start. Hopefully that meant everyone had learnt to hide like them and not that they were all dead. Putting his body into it, he opened the door agonisingly slowly. It was hard work. There was an automatic door shutter attached to the top that had rusted. It squeaked in protest, but he pushed for a fraction longer, and it fell away. Finally, with a chunk of wood free, he manoeuvred it to rest against the wall. It had been solid, which suited him just fine.

He reached in and touched the other door. Now that he had direct contact, assessing the state it was in was significantly easier. His power went to work immediately, strengthening and merging it with its frame. It took only seconds, and he let out an explosive breath the moment it was finished.

“Tense,” he commented, wiping the sweat off his brow. He had been worried about a zombie crashing through before he was prepared. Now it would easily survive blows from the massive zombie that had almost blown the outer door apart. They were safe once more.

With the first step of his plan completed, he turned his attention to the door he had pulled off. It was time to get creative with his magic. Once more, he sank into the wood. This time, he had an active purpose and desire to use what was there rather than force it to comply with his wishes. That meant a lot of the work was understanding the structures of the door and internally reinforcing. While he worked, he was careful not to overextend himself. Mana depletion was a thing. It was a risk that he needed to track. To help, he visualised a massive lake, or maybe it was the tiniest pond. It all depended upon his perspective. It represented the magic that he had available to use and the continuous replenishment that occurred. There was a thundering waterfall that crashed into the massive expanse of water that he had visualised. On the far side, there was an overflow. Anything that went out of that exit was lost permanently to him. Daniel went to work, keeping the pool as full as possible without triggering the overflow.

This state meant a one hundred percent utilisation of his mana regain.

Given the early zombie attack, he did not want to eat into his reserves for what was just pure preparation.

A tap on his shoulder jerked him out of his focus.

“What on Earth are you doing?” Ivey asked.

“Working, you just can’t see it.”

“It has been half an hour.”

Daniel glanced at the window from the light. It was mid-afternoon, so they had plenty of time.

“It takes as long as it takes,” he said with shrug, turning back to the door.

“Do it faster.”

Annoyed, he looked at her. “We rush this, we die. We need to do things properly.”

“Do properly faster.”

Ignoring her, Daniel fell back into the world of wood. Plucking together shapes, balancing density and flexibility, sharpness against durability, all the time refusing to drain his reserves. Being knocked unconscious for an extended period was not part of his game plan.

Finally, he looked up from the wood.

“What have you been doing, anyway? You have just been standing there holding the door with your hand glowing.”

Daniel smiled. “Preparing,” he told her. “Now is the fun part.”

Engaging his magic once more, he dug his fingers into the wood and yanked backwards. A couple of chunks of wood came out, and he kept going. In short order, the original door was reduced to just parts.

“All that to break down a door that we might need?”

“No.” He dug in amongst the wood dust and yanked the object now. “Crafting.” Triumphantly, he held up a bow, or at least a bow minus the string. “Was doing it from memory. Hopefully, it’ll work. These, on the other hand, are almost perfect.” He held up a variety of spears. “I have enhanced them for strength.”

Daniel kept pulling stuff out of the rubble. A couple of dozen arrows, a dozen different spears of mixed sizes, and a new club for himself, given that Ivey had clearly taken over the last one.

Now to see if there were zombies next door. He placed his ear against the door. His mind going through it and there was an abrupt impression of…

Daniel jumped back from the door wide eyed. What had just happened?

“Did you hear something?”

“No,” Daniel said. “Yes… no,” he corrected with a shrug, trying to understand what had just happened. He had got an impression of a monster, moving from one side of the room to the other. Almost like it teleported. “Felt.” Ivey looked sceptical. “I felt something there.”

Ivey subtly re-positioned her spear. “A feral?”

Daniel put his head on the door once more, trying to recapture the feeling. Nothing happened. “Lets do this.”