Now, when the world glitched, it didn’t turn all pixelated - no, the world stopped. The dust hung frozen in the air, collapsing buildings stopped mid-fall, debris decide to defy gravity and hang right above the ground. I glance around in wonderment, curious as to why I’m able to keep moving in this silent, unmoving panorama.

Nothing obvious makes an appearance. Shrugging, I move to gather a few things to test. I’m able to pick things up and move them as normal. What wasn’t normal is when the item in question was released - it froze in that position.

Grinning, I pull one of my guns and aim over the ledge at one of the adjacent buildings. I fire, once, but don’t move the gun or my hand. The gun fired and reloaded, but I don’t see… Ah. I move the gun away from the location I fired it to see the bullet hanging in the air at the end of where the barrel was. “This could be epicly fun or dreadfully dull.”

With nothing to lose, I make my way to each zombie and fired at point blank range at each individual head. While this takes me quite some time, time is relative at the moment - it being frozen and all.

After a few hundred rounds fired into unsuspecting zombie recipients, I hear a noise that is completely foreign. The fact that there is a noise different from the normal zombie shuffle has the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. A dull whumping sound starts to echo down the stagnate rows of broken buildings. Slowly moving in my direction.

Curious, I quickly make my way back up my lone tower amidst the derelict city. Clearing the final shattered door to the open eighteenth floor, I freeze.

Not frozen in time freeze like everything else, well… like most everything else now.

An absolutely massive black dragon is flying low over the buildings - and it’s heading this way. Veeeeery slowly.

Not taking the time to admire or estimate its size, I duck back into the building and sprint back to the ground floor. Leaping down the staircases, more than four steps at a time, I slow at the ground floor and start to listen again.

Sweat starts to pour down my face and back as I try to start thinking of a plan. Try being the key word here, as I have no working knowledge of dragons other than the old games and C&C that my grandfather and father used to play with their friends around a table. Write up character sheets? Who does that anymore?

Dragons supposedly have incredibly tough armored scales, often breath some kind of fire or similar breath type area of effect, very intelligent, they like gold and other assorted shiny treasure, can sometimes speak or even transform into a different form. Also very magical, though I remember hearing from somewhere that they weren’t magically delicious.

Random thoughts scatter through my mind, panic starting to heavily set in.

I take a slow, deep breath and relax.

Arrows and swords had a very difficult time penetrating the armor like quality the dragons scales take. But I have something better than any sword or arrow. My paired 9mm’s are capable of penetrating at least a quarter of an inch of steel, based on the velocity of the round. So I have a final stand option, though I really don’t want to chance it - at all.

In comparison to this dragon, my mighty 9mm’s are nothing but pea shooters - infinite ammo or no, I highly doubt my chances of fighting and winning.

After an indeterminable amount of time passes, the dull whumping sound becomes fainter and fainter. Sprinting back to my perch on the top floor, I get my bearings and watch as the ginormous dragon slowly flies back the way it came. From the North.

“Huh… I wonder if I made a building fall on it. Definitely need to check that…” I mumble while nervously patting myself down, making sure I didn’t lose anything in my mad dash inside and out the building.

I take the time to pack for an extended trip, not sure how far I’ll need to go before I find that giant monstrosity. Definitely nervous as well. I mean, dragons! Zombies are one thing, lots of people talk about what to do in the event of a zombie apocalypse. No one ever mentions what to do in the event of a dragon-anything. Well, other than run for your life.

I finish inventory and note that I’ve only got a few days worth of food and water unless I ration it out. Sighing, I resign myself to more scavenging before tracking down that black monstrous aberration.

After what feels like days pass, I finally make my way back to the tower to rest a bit. Whenever this glitch resolves itself, I either cleared square miles of undead or just wasted time and bullets on a whim for no gain. The only positive I can see from this is that I didn’t need to eat or relieve myself, as if I was supposed to be frozen as well but somehow wasn’t. On top of that, other than mental fatigue, I didn’t feel the slightest bit tired.

After sleeping until I awoke naturally, I decided to review my situation. Other than food, water, and those weird timepieces; there was sadly little to scavenge. No shiny jewelry, no tech, no cars, no computers, no tools. I did raid more chemicals to fiddle with if this unnatural frozen state continued past this day. That all by itself is weird.

So many things are weird about this. So. Many. Things.

No people. Zombies everywhere. Food, water, even household chemicals, but no tools or tech. Time at a standstill. Oh, let’s not forget the infinite ammo and the fact I’m on a completely new world. Can’t forget those.

After making sure to fire a bullet at any other zombies I came across during my building inspections, I continued doing my search. I tried to keep a spiral search pattern going but it’s easy to get bored finding the same things over and over with no change up. Hell, even written reports left behind by the assumed corporate offices would have been a fantastic distraction at this point.

Mile after mile, my search broadened. Absolutely nothing. I kept trying to recall if I said or did anything that might have caused the frozen state of the world I was in, but I kept drawing blank. There was nothing special in my actions as I watched the building fall. I even examined each site of the demolished buildings in hopes of finding a crushed body that caused this or an item. Absolutely nothing was found beyond the rubble, even moving a majority of it around to check for anything I may have missed turned up nothing.

“Well, with time halted, I’m stuck waiting to join Claire. I’m not sure what to think of that at the moment. Hey Phil!” I yelled at the zombie near me, “What do you think about all this? Should I be eager for time to resume or enjoy this quiet stillness that prolongs me from my very likely painful death?”

Of course ‘Phil’ doesn’t answer me, but I feel slightly better just talking AT someone. The quiet is really getting to me now.

Well, there is a dragon waiting to be found. Given that it could move, even in this unnatural stillness, I could meet my death that way… Hm.

Singing as loudly and out of tune as I could, I started singing all manner of songs that my parents taught me as a child. I went back to Swinging on a Star quite often, as I made funny faces and dance moves around hordes of zombies and blasting bullets at their faces to the tune.

Unknowing of the amount of time that passed, I finally encounter a new area. That, all by itself, was exciting! Glancing back, I try to gauge how far I am from my tower when I notice I don’t see it peaking at the horizon at all. Working myself up the nearest and tallest building, I still don’t notice it on the horizon. One of the tallest buildings in the area and I don’t see even a hint of it… I must have walked dozens of miles to lose track of that building based on the curvature of the planet. Or it was deleted. Heh.

The destruction from my domino effect is still obvious and it still continues off into the far distance. How fast was that dragon flying and how long did I stare at my handiwork before the world stopped?

More buildings for this new area. Slightly different architecture, coloring, and not as overly tall as where I started are really the only indicators that I’m in a new area. There wasn’t a clear change of decor, it all blended well together. I just happened to notice the changes more as they became more predominant in the area.

Other than the external decor changing, the interior changed a bit as well. No change to the items available to scavenge however. That left me a bit depressed. The volume of undead really didn’t change either, remaining fairly constant to what I’ve been seeing. Here’s hoping those bullets are worth the effort expended.

In my boredom, I decided to run full bore following the rubble of destroyed buildings for as long as I could. Let’s just say that was a very long time, cycling songs I knew by heart and their times led me to believe that I ran for over twenty eight hours without stopping or getting even the slightest bit tired. I also noted only a slight change in scenery with nothing else changing. I didn’t waste my time looking for every zombie to shoot a bullet at either, just at those I encountered on my way towards the giant fireball in the sky.

Changing things up, I went parkour over the rooftops. They were fairly level for miles around, so I enjoyed that bit of added challenge - bouncing around rooftops, bounding over air conditioner units, tuck and roll through windows. Good times.

I’ve found that my knives and garrote wire were both poorly effective. With time remaining frozen, I can’t seem to affect the zombies with my sharp hardware. Sawing with the garrote wire did nothing, not even generate heat from friction. Even my homemade bombs were useless, they no longer blew up. I pouted pretty hard after finding that out. “Don’t judge me Anna! Even the bombs quit working for me now, how am I supposed to find any entertainment?!”

I could pick the zombies up and maneuver them around. That was a very nerve wracking moment when I first tried this, half afraid the zombie would come to life and begin our normal dance to the death. Being that close to start the fight with them would have made me feel like I needed lightning fast reflexes if I wanted to survive. Thankfully, I think, that didn’t happen.

When I figured out the unmoving undead wouldn’t spontaneously jump at me, I took the time to model several areas. Zombies stacked around, upside down, floating over the edge of tall buildings. I always made sure to put bullets to their head or set explosives on them. I also got some experience judging vectors based on their fall trajectory.

Time has lost all meaning. That Gump fellow my father mentioned a time or two, I’m starting to feel like him. Running all over the place, randomly talking to people, really wanting chocolate. Didn’t he have a fascination with shrimp? Bah, unimportant. More running and jumping now.

Running while mentally asleep is a strange state of being. It took a long while to get to that point without waking up shortly after, but I managed it. Sure saved my mind a few times, to be able to just turtle up and let my body continue towards the sun. Blinking up at the sky, I wonder why I stopped. Wait, why am I looking at the sky?

I look around to see I’m somehow on top of water. Not in water, on top of it as if it were solid. Frozen time is something else. I stomp and kick and swing at the water, with no visible effect to it. Trying to submerge myself does me about as good as trying to submerge in the concrete. Talk about the ultimate water bed.

All this trouble and I still haven’t found the damn dragon! Looking back at the buildings, I see the many dust plumes from the wrecked domino effect I caused. Now that I’ve found the end of the catastrophe I made, there are still a few buildings in the process of being knocked over.

“OK! I give! What the fuck is going on and why the fuck am I moving in a frozen world?! You assholes didn’t give me my guide, fucked up my destination, and ruined whatever enjoyment I had kicking the shit out of those undead freaks that saturate this Godforsaken city! Even the damn dragon has disappeared! Fuck you all and the camel you rode in on!” I couldn’t help but throw a temper tantrum.

“I can’t even check on my health status for fucks sa….” I don’t even finish as the blue screen I thought would never appear again suddenly snaps into view.

“...No words. I have no fucking words for this.” I mutter as I see the utterly massive log of messages that were waiting for me when the status screen finally appeared.

“Congratulations you complete and utter asshat! You are only now checking your status screen after 3 months, 12 days, 14 hours, 37 minutes, and 16 seconds! Completely ignoring the notifications that would have appeared to help you on your way, you have managed to now waste a ton of time having to go through all of them - one by one. Every. Single. Message. And. Prompt. In reverse order, so that nothing makes any sense. Like you. Have fun!”

“Ugh.” My drill sergeant is the only one who would have received the look of utter disgust and loathing this message put on my face. “Reminds me of my first girlfriend.” Except her, she was batshit crazy.

Information dump like nothing else occurs, messages are overlapped like a bad Skylight operating system. To sum up in the correct order, I had the initial stats of:

Name:

Gram D. Randal

Age:

29

Job:

Soldier

Level:

1

Exp:

0

To next lvl:

1000

Race:

Human

Stat points:

0

HP:

50

MP:

50

SP:

50

HP Regen/min

2.5

MP Regen/min

2.5

SP Regen/min

2.5

Strength:

5

Agility:

5

Intelligence:

5

Endurance:

5

Dexterity:

5

Wisdom:

5

Charisma:

5

Luck:

1

Talk about puny as all hell. If that’s the average baseline for an adult in this reality, basic training would have sucked sooo much. Thankfully, my world baseline was transferred over during the migration, so my level one stats would look like:

Name:

Gram D. Randal

Age:

29

Job:

Soldier

Level:

1

Exp:

0

To next lvl:

1000

Race:

Human

Stat points:

0

HP:

490

MP:

620

SP:

530

HP Regen/min

24.5

MP Regen/min

31

SP Regen/min

26.5

Strength:

32

Agility:

32

Intelligence:

42

Endurance:

34

Dexterity:

38

Wisdom:

29

Charisma:

28

Luck:

2

“Tadaa! Now we’re talking!” This is a muuuuch nicer baseline. While I’m no gaming guru, I do know my math and almost seven times the base stats to start is pretty damn decent if I do say so myself.

“Pretty damn decent! There, I said it. Myself.” Yup, dipping into crazy. Definitely not getting the benefits from it though. Claire would have had my head for that comment. Heh.

Based on all the backlog of windows, each zombie was at least fifty levels above me - at all times. So as I progressed, so did their level. Given that they were zombies, there was an experience penalty of half the normal experience I normally would have gained. This run of five and half months has still catapulted me into a very comfortable starting level.

On top of that, all my actions cumulatively add towards my stat progression. If I do one hundred push ups, I get experience towards increasing my strength and endurance stat. From all my running, jumping, lifting, dodging, shooting… well, the little blue screen sums it up well - any action under duress or in a battle to the death will culminate in personal growth. That means all that fighting and shit I did since I got here? Boosted me up like a champ. More so since I wasn’t dumping stat points from leveling up into my stats, which resets the counter for each stat to zero.

One thousand push ups for a strength point? Well, if I did nine hundred and then boosted my strength even one point with my stat points - back to zero percent I go. The ninety percent experience towards an increase in strength is totally wasted.

The best part of all that mess? When time froze, I was STILL getting stat gains. I might have shit luck but my base stats before adding points for leveling will be OP! I hope… Status!

Name:

Gram D. Randal

Age:

29

Job:

Soldier

Level:

25

Exp:

325,124

To next lvl:

25,876

Race:

Human

Stat points:

125

HP:

920

MP:

960

SP:

930

HP Regen/min

46

MP Regen/min

48

SP Regen/min

46.5

Strength:

75

Agility:

84

Intelligence:

76

Endurance:

74

Dexterity:

97

Wisdom:

60

Charisma:

55

Luck:

2

Holy hell. If you subtract the base five stat points, ignoring my shitty luck, that’s 486 stat points gained from the migration and fighting and doing crazy shit. If I’m level twenty five and I have 125 stat points to spend, that is equal to five stat points a level. At five stat points per level, if I gained 486 stat points then that would equal a little over 97 levels in growth without spending stat points! Hot damn!

“That would put me at an average level of 75 and I’m only a third that level in reality! Why level 75 Bob?” Because I’m now in the habit of talking to the frozen zombies around me, “Level 75 because warriors or those in their specific class will do more than just use stat points! That’s right Bob, they would be working hard too with their class training and life or death struggles. At least, that’s what the little blue screen tells me. Oh, and the price is wrong Bob.” Crazy train, whoo whoo!

“So, sober moment Felicia. That means if I save these wonderful points and keep on working, I’ll earn towards higher rewards later on! Felicia! Put some damn clothes on! They’re all torn and totally inappropriate to be out in public!” Yelling is very cathartic.