As he worked, Daniel lacked the capacity to discuss things with people, but he could definitely plan and strategize in his head. The humans were safe, and five of the eight survivors had combat classes, so once they freed the floor, the following ones presumably would become easier. Better still, there was a wizard with a variety of different spells, a frost mage, and an archer in the groups, along with the warrior and druid. Together, they would be a welcome addition.

That gave them three close-in fighters: himself, the warrior, and Dave. They could tank and let the others unleash hell from a distance. That, of course, was just the contingency. Hopefully, his traps would take down all the enemies.

That was all fine, but it was counting his dragons before they hatched, he assumed since there was magic that there would be dragons somewhere. First, they needed to kill the remaining sixteen zombies on the floor. Daniel was not sure how to think about the plan.

On one hand, the ideal approach would be to lure the zombies one by one into one of his elaborate traps or maybe into a Tamara lightning bolt, followed by Daniel braining them. In a game, that was how it would work, but in reality, the zombies seemed to be almost friends or at least packmates. Already Priscilla had seen one zombie moving between the different groups. There were four teams, three groups confining themselves to hotel rooms, while the last patrolled the corridor. Finally, there were three anti-social zombies who appeared to just shamble around the hallways almost in a random walk style way. He suspected they were being reduced to the lowest level of base instincts.

The moment they tried to lure one, Daniel suspected it would roar and then summon all the others to attack. All of them swarming was a problem.

A chuckle escaped his lips.

Priscilla was busily teasing one of the elite zombies. It was trying to capture the mouse, and she was dodging aside. Even from where he sat a level up, he could feel the reverberations from the strike whenever the two-handed smash crashed against the floor.

Be careful of the speed ones, he thought, imagining the zombie blurring through the air and grabbing the mouse.

He got an image back of Priscilla, stealing the last chip from the packet and running away. It made no sense to him, but the underlying tone was that it was supposed to be a light-hearted diss at him. Sort of equivalent to a human sticking a tongue out at another person. Yet the simplicity of the mental video caused him to chuckle despite himself.

There was a sense of indignation from the mouse and then a feeling of cleverness and this time it was Priscilla dragging away everything that he had eaten in the morning out of his reach.

He chuckled harder.

There was one last image of two fists slamming down towards Priscilla and then she cut off the connection.

He could still feel her moving around below him and distant thumps, so he knew she was fine and just having fun, and cutting off the vision had been in retaliation for him laughing at her.

Well, he could deal with that later, but the idea of distracting the zombies was a good one.

Once they engaged, they would all be coming, so they needed to be set up to expect sixteen of them swarming. That meant using the stairwell and retreating upward to draw them into traps. Possibly he could shut some doors on the floor below to keep the wave of zombies to a manageable size. If he shut the doors right now, ten zombies would be locked up, and that seemed unlikely to change. Taking out or delaying that many enemies from joining the fight would be a huge win. If the doors held . . .

He frowned, trying to work out whether that approach was workable.

There was a lot about the plan to dislike.

He did not like the idea of drawing them up to his home floor; he was worried it might put the children at risk. Particularly with the number of traps that he would need to lay down. The memory of Anthony bleeding out after being caught in the line of fire still haunted him.

Kids were kids, and they were more than capable of getting into places they had been told to stay away from. There was also no way he would let the zombies up to this floor if it was not trapped to a ridiculous level. Not quite a catch twenty-two, but that spectre, all that blood hung over him. It was so easy for something to go wrong when you playing with pressurised wood.

Even with magic, he thought ruefully, physics was still god.

However, nor could he afford not to create a killing field. Because if too many attacked him, if he couldn’t lock them up in the room, then despite his enhanced speed improvements, he would be overwhelmed.

“And?”

He glanced up in surprise to see Tamara had joined him.

“I sneaked away from Janice,” Tamara explained, taking the excuse to sit next to him. “You looked like a man planning to conquer the world.”

“Did I?“ He snorted in amusement at that. “More a man realising that there are no good choices.”

He focused and his hands glowed.

“You are making lots of traps.”

“Yep,” Daniel answered. “The moment we fight downstairs, I think sixteen are going to swarm us.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t.”

“We will have to face them, eventually,” Daniel reminded her. “It is not like we can turtle on this floor forever. We might as well do it now. Ivey thinks they get smarter over time, and the longer we leave them, then the more dangerous they will become.”

“I had not thought about that,” she admitted after a moment. “I guess there are only shitty options.”

“Priscilla,” Tamara cooed suddenly and plucked the mouse from the ground. She had sensed Tamara’s presence and coming running back from downstairs. “I have snacks.” And that was why the mouse had come so quickly. Daniel was sure that if he had called her, she would have ignored him. From her pocket, Tamara produced a napkin that had some slightly broken chips in it. “Leftovers from this morning.”

The mouse happily started digging into the offered food, sending pleased, smug vibes in Daniel’s direction.

“She is very thankful.”

“She is sweet, and I assume the reason you have more information about the zombies.”

“Yep.” He stood up and grabbed another hotel door. “What are the others doing?”

“Alisha is practising her leather working.”

“How?”

“There are lots of dead mutated humans.”

“That is macabre.”

“Possibly, but if I am fighting monsters, I am not saying no to extra protection,” Tamara pointed out and then shivered and not just for dramatic effect. “Even if it is, sort of, like wearing human skin. Anyway, she is busy. Hua is using her cleaning skills to help prepare the leather. Trudy, Jayden, and Elaine are looking after the kids.”

“Elaine? Is that the old woman?” he asked to confirm the name.

Tamara snorted. “There are like eight of us. How do you not know all of our names?”

Daniel grunted in response.

“It is okay, you have been busy keeping us alive.” She patted him on the shoulder. “Finally, Ivey seems to attempting to learn Dave’s language. Janice was annoying, but I think she has switched her attention to Ivey now.”

“Yeah, I have learned a few of them. RAFA,“ he roared.

“That was awful. It is raraf.”

“Agreed,” Daniel said, smiling.

“Yeah.” She grinned back. “Dave likes to say agreed a lot. That is the only one I know. Ivey can almost hold a conversation with him.”

“I know a couple of others but—” Daniel shrugged. Maybe . . .

“You are not going to roar at them again, are you?”

He laughed at that. He was standing in front of another door, ready to pull it apart.

“I am sorry I am not very good company when I am doing this.”

“It is okay. I don’t mind.”

“I sort of feel self-conscious.”

Tamara startled slightly. “I will give you some space, then.”

“Thanks,” he said, his attention already half focused on the door.

There was a perk of interest from the mouse, and he got the impression of an easy score. She ran up onto Tamara’s shoulder and chittered at her like a squirrel, crouching up on two legs with paws together just under her chin.

“Aww. And I will get you some more food.”

Priscilla settled down, radiating smugness.