Chapter 59

Time passed peacefully till the ten electric bug cores had triggered. He was on the stairwell, and he immediately threw himself to the far side of the landing, aware of the risk of rolling down the stairs. Electricity crackled inside him, then energy sparked his neurons and made him spasm on the carpet that had been installed. He twisted, turned, and jerked. Every second movement seemed to throw him closer to the stairs, and he did not want to imagine what would happen if he tipped over and tumbled down them. There was potential for some long falls if he went under the hand rails.

The spasms started fading, and he breathed easier. He was half a meter from the edge. Sweat not caused by the rampant magic drenched him. Too close. Way too close.

The impact of the cores was worse than expected, but at least he had survived, and he hesitated only briefly before swallowing another ten, promising himself that from now on he would make sure he was not in a risky location when the absorption occurred. Part of him wanted to double the dosage, but for all that he had been focusing on the potential fall, his uncoordinated body movements had let him bruised and battered, and he was worried at how a larger dose would play out.

Throughout the rest of the night, he systematically cannibalised all the available doors on their level. It was not as hard as he expected, especially once he got into the habit of using his growth skill to help. A single touch and he could pull it off the hinge and then in complete silence split it in half lengthwise and create perfect handles for him to carry the pieces around.

Then, with half a door in each hand he could take the wood to where he needed it. Then the raw material under his direction transformed itself. Thickening, strengthening, and transforming into death.

As he tramped the corridors, he took to timing himself. Counting in his head was not efficient, but it was the best he had. A count of four hundred per round trip. Probably five minutes, because he knew he was counting fast. With eighty doors to the level, it took four hours to collect them. By morning, only Ivey’s and three other guest rooms were intact. Half of the material was converted into traps and the rest went straight into the stairwell, building up barricades to defend in case any of the monsters got access to the route between floors.

Daniel looked over his creation proudly. A casual observation would have concluded that some sort of god of trees with a satanic bent had gone to work in the area. It was a practical piece of art. There was wood everywhere, with most of it ending in either curling hooks or sharp-pointed branches that would have made a rose bush proud. Possibly the defences were a little overboard, but not even a dozen earth zombies could make an impression on what he had built.

The result was that they controlled the stairwell between the ten floors. If the zombies broke into the stairwell once again, they would be stymied.

Daniel kept working. With everyone else sleeping, and no electronics to pull out to provide amusement, there was not much else that he could do. He stopped, cocking his head, and linked up to this network of early warning systems. The trigger below him was going off.

Below him on floor twenty-one, he felt two zombies trying to burrow through the door. Their claws were scrabbling and were leaving scratches in the wood, but not deep enough to be enhanced like an elite one. He had reinforced the density to prevent or at least weaken precisely this type of attack. The monsters were persistent. They must have remembered that the stairwell existed. Yet despite their focused attacks they were not making progress in cutting their way through.

He hurried down the four flights of steps to reach the door under attack, then paused to think about what he wanted to do. Priscilla had gone to sleep, so he did not have perfect information, but they were clearly not elite. He figured he had three choices: defend the door; let them in and kill them in the stairwell; or butcher them from behind the barrier. Going onto floor twenty-one was not an option, as it was too risky that other ferals would come.

All options had their advantages. A short while ago, he would have been helpless, but now he knew he could take them without his traps, just fight them club versus talon, and even two on one he would win.

The spectacle of Anthony dying because of random chance hit him. Even easy fights could go wrong, and while him versus only two normal zombies definitely classed as trivial, once they crossed weapons there were no guarantees. What was the chance of him losing? One out of a hundred? Maybe the odds were that good, but unfortunately, accidents happened, and if he took a hundred, “one in a hundred” fights, it meant he would lose eventually, and Daniel knew there were hundreds of fights in his future. Simply, he needed better odds.

Those spikes embedded in Anthony. Blood spurting out and Ivey trying to gather her light to heal him and having it fail because of the pain of her own injury.

Ignore them or try to kill them safely?

“You have to strike back sometime,” he mused to himself. He could not afford to ignore advantageous confrontations.

“ROarra.”

They had heard his words and challenged him back in their own nonarticulate way. The scrambling intensified, but their frantic movements actually reduced their effectiveness. That made him smile. Stupid things.

Standing in front of the door, Daniel thought about what he could do. The whole Hulks getting impaled sort of appealed to him. Maybe he could grow the spikes into them. The only danger was hurting them but not killing them, and then they would run.

“Roarra.”

“SHUT UP!” he yelled back. Then stopped himself. He did not want extra zombies to come even if most of them appeared to have gone to sleep.

“ROARRA!”

Predictably, he thought, they were dumb. There was no reason that he needed to be particularly subtle. All he had to do was trap them and tear them to shreds remotely. He flexed his hands and smiled. They had stopped roaring, but their mad scramble had not changed. He glanced around at the mass of traps that surrounded him. There was no lack of supplies.

He could create a hole above them. They were so focused on getting through that they would never notice. Set the traps up over their heads. They would not look up. When he was ready, drop the net, tighten it, and pin them against the wood. Then smack. He imagined thrusting some spikes into the pinned animals. He did not even have to rely only on the traps. To tighten the netting, he could supplement with his strength just like the method he used to infuse tension into wood. Once it was tightened, his magic could freeze it in place.

Could it work?

Probably. Was it the best approach? The simple answer was yes. If he had mastered more of his strength and agility gifts, then sure, a straight-out battle would be smarter, but he was where he was. He would use his non-augmented strength of nineteen. If that proved to be insufficient, then he could always buff himself and then brute force with that enhanced power past any resistance from the ferals.

Springs against the far wall, then.

He did not need a lot of wood, but he lifted the top trap and fed it through a gap that appeared at the top of the door. It was silent. Unknown to the zombies, the components that would be their doom spread out above them. First the vines getting a connection to the far wall. Then the wood started spreading. Two springs and a restraint netting that would drop from above.

As he worked, every now and again he made a small grunt, and it would set them off. The door had survived amazingly well. It would look shredded from the outside, but he had barely had to reinforce it. Without him there provoking them, he was sure the zombies would have given up long ago.

Nets and springs positioned. There were three nets. His hand gripped the vines that led to the main net. That was the one he would draw in and had the bulk of the power. The other two were personal nets connected to the springs. They would land; they would trigger and push the creatures against the door and hopefully pin the arms, which was the primary point of their use. Then Daniel would tighten the primary net with his physical strength before driving the three spike traps he had prepared into them. Basically, it was prepared murder holes that thin slivers of reinforced wood would be driven through.

Everything was ready.

Animal Sense.

Nothing else was in the corridor.

It was time.

With a mental touch, the nets dropped. He yanked on the primary net, forcing them to stumble forward. Such was their surprise at the unexpected pressure that there was no resistance as they face planted against the door. With the zombies in position he triggered the springs and yanked again. Wood Sense told him that they were pinned. His growth magic welded the net closed.

Daniel activated Speed and then strength.

He slammed the first plug through the murder holes. It shot forward. He felt when the spikes hit the skin and then kept going. Then the second one. This one jerked hard as if the second zombie’s skin was tougher, but ultimately the skin gave away. He had prepared six, but the other four were not needed.

Disengaging strength and speed, Daniel was puffing, but it was not too bad. One hand on each of the plugs. The first was in trouble; the shard had gone deep, agonisingly close to the heart, but close meant it was not dying. The other stronger one had twisted back, and the slither of wood was only attached by the last inch.

Growth magic exploded out into that slither, strengthening it and lengthening it.

“RARRA.”

The zombie pulled back further, and Daniel could imagine how agonising it would be to have wood growing inside it. The zombie with the constraining net groaned in response.

“No.”

Magic continued to blaze, and that tenuous connection strengthened. The wood warped, and a hook formed, and then it kept growing.

Squeals came from the other side. He had not forgotten the other zombie the efforts of its companion had given it extra space to wiggle, and it had pulled away from the source of pain but was still impaled. Daniel’s magic flowed there as well, thickening it up and creating an offshoot that went straight for the heart.

They were screaming and scrambling, but Daniel had already turned off the tap. There was no point expending his reserves if normal regeneration could meet the requirements. As they thrashed around, he directed the energy coming into him to grow the wood that bit further. Spikes lashed out into the heart, and then it kept growing, opening like a thorny flower and ripping flesh and organs to shreds.

There was nothing they could do. No heart meant no blood circulation, and just like pre-event, that was death. None of the other zombies on the wider floor were reacting. The wood kept expanding, clogging, and cutting.

Daniel dropped his hands from the plugs. One zombie was still alive, but that would not last. His attention was out in the wider corridor. Two elites had emerged from the den they had been sleeping in. If pushed, Daniel could retreat up the stairwells, but he wanted to try some delicate work first. Hopefully, he could grab the cores without opening the doors. His connection into the bodies was already perforating the heart, so it was easy enough to redirect it to reach out to where he knew the cores were.

Encase them in wood and then physically pull back to the door.

The elites were sniffing curiously. Daniel remembered when the professor had eaten the cores, and he did not want these zombies to get an upgrade.

He yanked the plugs back, and the cores popped out through the entry holes.

At the sudden movement, one of the zombies danced back like a skittish foal, but the other dripped with darkness. Its claws shredded the restraint netting, and the closest zombie flopped out of its shackles. With Wood Sense, Daniel watched even while dragging his loot through the overly responsive wood. The claws slashed again, and more netting was ripped to pieces. The second body fell out.

The zombie with claws was looking at the door.

Instinctively, spikes grew out of the pitted wood. The skittish zombie kicked one of the bodies, and it flew about five meters down the corridor.

That meant it was strength based, and the second was some sort of dark claw magic user similar to the ice one he had seen. The zombies were both assessing the door and then their dead brethren. Another kick and the other body went flying. Staying well clear of the door, both zombies loped over to the bodies.

They fell to feeding, and Daniel cringed.

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