His dreams were unsettling, as he woke up in a cold sweat. He didn’t remember what it was, only that it wasn’t pleasant in the least. Breakfast, a simple fruit salad.

Prioritizing the perishable food over the preserved ones is a good start. Considering the size of the city and the population of barely 50 thousand the probability of meeting anyone else was low. Maybe if he went to the church a bit more than 1km he would find people, or the malls.

For the moment he decided to get to work, he had a lot of work to do and even had to make inventory. What you have and what you need is the basics of survival. And although he had plenty of food for now, he still had thing he needed. But work has to be done sooner rather than pile up for later, most of it is repeatable so he could focus his mind on other important matters.

With his ability does he really need to put himself in danger in order to find other people? He could probably turn his block in to a fort with a small army of terminators and harvesting drones. Going out only for combat experience or diplomatic missions or something. He has read quite a bit of books and novels about the apocalypse, virtual reality and so on… he had quite a bit of free time.

In most situations people will make societies or groups, sometimes small countries, their leaders will vary from figures of law to sociopaths. And he didn’t want to attract the attention of either of those. He was well aware of his uniqueness. He was a walking factory, true he had 5% efficiency but the quality was godlike. Who wouldn’t want a monomolecular blade with a full carbon nanotube battle suit? Oh and let’s forget the Energy Mana Crystals. At most he needed them for upgrades and replenish energy, but mages? They could probably overclock their spells with them, turning a novice in an artillery emplacement.

Not to honk his own horn, but his value was quite high. From the game the main character class was master of all jack of none kind of deal, true it took quite a bit of time to max out all his skills but they only had 6 levels to upgrade each. And from the looks of it he aint got any skill points. His, so so, knowledge of game lore should help him with development but he still didn’t know how to get skills now that he thought about it, he hasn’t checked his status window yet.

Omni-Tool Stats Pesonal Stats Personal Stats Name: Plamen Yonkov Titles :None Health: 100% Stamina: 100% Class: Explorer Profesion: None Strength: 0.702 Endurance: 0.783 Resilience: 1.092 Agility: 0.821 Dexterity:1.472 Intelligence:1.148 Willpower: 0.832 Perception: 1.205

Abilities:

Fitness: Lvl2 (15/100)

Tool Operation: Lvl1 (80/100)

Debuff:

None

His strength and endurance have the biggest growth coupled with willpower and a bit more of everything. His fitness leveled up, and tool operation is heading there too. For the most part he was happy with his growth, and is hopping that he would continue to do so. The only problem is the lack of knowledge on proper growth in this new brave world. He knew his class had quite a lot of restrictions which is why he knew it is kinda broken.

He has a lot of ideas piling up in his head but he neither had the cash to try or the materials so all he could do was keep working maybe he would grow strong enough not to be afraid from the damn biters. As for proper sci-fi armor he was weeks off, or is he? Just the energy requirements for material extraction were trippy, but not impossible.

He worked long and hard for 3 days. He moved the preserved food to the 5th floor in the middle apartment. He lived in the right one and the left he left for later. He had quite the idea for it but it required materials in order to work. Construction materials like planks, nails, hammers handyman kits and whatnot were all moved to the 4th floor. He was planning to use it as a storage.

Fortunately, the apartment block was reinforced so it could hold the weight. The barricades reinforcement were on his to do list, he was a bit paranoid due to the noise requirements for them. First on the list is to make the gauss gun.

On the morning of the 7th day (4th day of work) he woke up like clockwork and the first thing he did was check his energy levels. He did that every day and due to some luck it was always the same two digits, today was 77% it was more than enough for scavenging 2 smaller corpses or 1 big one, either way he would have more than enough.

After leaving only firewood in the basements he still used the other half as a morgue. He had to find some other place to store the corpses or throw them away, the thought was disgusting to say the least. The first time he did it they were relatively fresh and now were almost a week old. The smell was terrible. He could set them on fire but the smoke would attract attention so that’s out. The only thing left was to slowly refine them into usable materials.

As he refined the second corpse and went to the 4th floor crafting room, which was the right apartment, the one right under his and the closest on to the stairs, he stored the last bit of material in to the fridge turned container.

Good thing about upkeep is, that it is payed only once a day and he found a charge function allowing him to pay for a few days beforehand. Without the energy the different materials in the storage unit will start to react chemically with each other reducing the purity.

He stopped giving the flask energy since it only used it to merge the grains in order to save space and he couldn’t even fill 1% of its volume without the compression so it was fine for now, hence he needed 2Eu per day for the 2 containers.

He selected a table next to the fridge as an output zone and selected the blueprint. He thought about it and decided to modify it a bit he added a small scope with a sight on top of it, and redesigned the back of the barrel. He added a lever that allowed to use different kind of clip sizes. Since caliber is stuck at 10mm he could use different kind of lengths or even rounds with a disposable jacket like the needle tank shells.

While he was at it he designed 2 extra type of bullets. One was a spike about 4cm long with groves for the air to make it spin, and armor piercing highly explosive round with a delayed fuse. The human body doesn’t have a lot of sulfur for the explosive so he had only about 1clip of them, the bigger clips were 5 round each due to their size.

With the designs ready he got himself some lunch and started the fabricator. About an hour later he had his first long range weapon. With what energy he had left he made 2 clips of the metal balls and spikes and 1 with APHE rounds. All that’s left is the perfect target practice.

Getting up he went to the attic, removing a few of the roof tiles and exited on the roof. It was a bit slanted so he had to be careful. This gave him a good view all around. After an hour of zombie watching he spotted about 10-15 groups stumbling about. Each group was led one of the smarter zombies. Sometimes when 2 groups meet the leaders would brawl for a bit before retreating.

Intelligent zombies were a nightmare. He didn’t know whether it was pack mentality or if they were somehow controlled but either way they were priority targets. For all the time he was on the roof none of the zombies were paying him attention. Feeling a bit ignored he went down and picked a brick and threw it with his miserable strength close to a group. As the brick shattered on the road the zombie group turned around. For around 5 min they kept their head on a swivel until they kept wobbling in another direction.

From his observation he could deduce that the zombies were either somewhat blind or could see using an unknown method. They hunted using sound mostly. There are smarter zombies which lead a group or pack and are kind of territorial. So far none of the Alpha zombies have won an engagement with each other so it can be theorized due to the size of the groups that there is a limit to their control. The Duels themselves might be a way to gain more combat experience.

He got down from the roof back in to the attic, walking to the end of the room where the roof meets the floor. Due to the low roof he had to squat. After removing some tiles and making a comfy sniper nest he took the Gauss Rifle from his back and for the first time scanned it.

Segmented Gauss Rifle (Unique)

A coilgun with 12 segments in order to reduce recoil, it was designed to accept different clips. Unfortunately, due to it being made with only 2 capacitors for mobility its fire rate leaves something to be desired. With the lack of an inbuilt generator it requires to be in proximity to a remote energy source.

The gun can fire 6 shots at low velocities in less than a second unfortunately the capacitors need to charge before it can fire again. It takes around 10s for them to fully recharge. It also can use all the energy in the capacitors to fire a high velocity round.

Fire rate: May vary due to ammo type.

-For 10mm balls

-50-60Shots/min|340m/s

-5-6Shots/min|1800m/s

Energy:

1Eu/10shots (Low powered)

1EU/1shot (High Powered)

Requirements: Energy relay in proximity

Not knowing what he was actually expecting he was a bit upset to the on point description and surprised due to its performance. If he used less power he could probably make it go full auto but the muzzle velocity will be so slow it will be worse than a pea shooter. For now, it was time to test its performance.

He didn’t know whether the scope needed calibration since it was perfectly aligned with the rifle from the get go, even so he had to make sure the up to 8 magnification works properly. Looking at the clock it was around 14pm with about 12% battery or 12EU. He could shoot his 2 normal clips at subsonic velocities and then some. He put the stock on his shoulder and fired a round without aiming, he wanted to see its trajectory if he could, and he couldn’t. The silvery ball of steel wooshed to the horizon or so he though.

Dejected he aimed at one of the visible zombie groups. Using the sight, he aimed at the zombies’ torso and fired. Even though the zombie was about 80m away from him he missed. He sued to practice with a sports rifle back in the day but man was his aim way off. With a sigh he kept shooting. It took him 15 shots to nail the bugger in the head. Thankfully the shot was strong enough to kill it.

In conclusion the rifle works quite well at around 80m, at the low setting, and he needed to practice. After emptying the clip, he nailed another 4 bugges. The whole group was on alert but thanks to the lack of sonic booms they had no idea what was using them as target practice. The second clip he used with the scope and his aim was a lot better. He managed to kill the rest of the group totaling at 14 kills.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t retrieve the energy from the corpses. His logic told him that he should take his anger out on the other groups. He loaded the spike round switched to high velocity mode. After locating a few mini hordes walking about he took carful aim and took out 2 of their alphas, one shot each. Due to the sheer speed and weight of the round it blew their head straight off. It reminded him of the hitscan weapons from video games.

On the down side the coils started to heat up. The barrel was quite warm to the touch and it could go another 200 rounds or so of constant fire but it would a bad idea to push it. With the gun in hand he had quite a bit of leeway on combat. All he needed now was proper armor. And he had just the idea.

Carbon nanotubes would make quite the fashion hit so he first started to design the under suit out of the most normal type of nanotubes, in a spark of genius he scanned himself and got a mannequin for the design software. Now he just needed to place the fabric over it and it would fit like a glove… probably. After making the suit a whole piece with a zipper in front. It went from the top of his neck all the way down to his toes. With a tight hood for the head. On specific places there were places where he could attack armor pieces, and a few tubes in a vain like pattern running across the whole suit, their purpose is to regulate temperature. All the tubes were filled with water and connected to a small temperature regulation unit at the waist.

In the design it didn’t have a control panel, his idea was to connect it to the Omni-Tool. After he saved the suit he started to work on the armor pieces. The suit itself was quite light and 10times stronger than steel so armor plates might be overkill but better safe than sorry. You never know when devils with god slaying sword would show up. His high tech armor would probably be paper to them.

He went easy this time. While his suit was good against stabbing and slashing he needed something to against blunt attacks. So he designed impact resistant plates. They were quite simple, requiring rubber and soft carbon nanotube fabric for structural integrity. This way the armor would have a sturdy shape and be somewhat flexible. The rubber would negate the impact damage and the fabric would keep it together adding extra defense.

Happy with his design he shaped the armor. He started on the different pieces. Firstly, the helmet was a similar to a barbute, he made the visor with transparent aluminum (yes that’s a thing look it up) it looked similar to clone trooper helmet, minus the smiley at the bottom part. Next was a cuirass, thanks to the rubbery material it was flexible enough for the user to bend forward. For the top of the cuirass he added an optional bevor to protect the neck from the front.

Rerebrace to guard the shoulder to the elbow, for both arms. And vambraces with elbow guards for the forearms, while he was at it he added rubber coating to the knuckles of the gloves for punching and on the palms and fingers for a grip. Adding armor to the side of the tights and proper greaves with knee protectors and a quick scan of his winter boots, remade with carbon nanotubes and high quality rubber for the feet.

All in all, he was happy with the design, it was mostly modular so he could mix and match the whole set in any way he liked. With the new schematics done he was ready to call it a day, it took him quite a while to make the stuff properly, he had to even dig up the actual library in order to find what he needed and how to properly design it. But, this suit is the best he can do for a long time, he is no genius who can make alloys and new material compositions out of thin air. The only problem were the materials and energy. Huh… another thing to add to his long to do list.

As the sun is setting he can only sigh to the upcoming grind fest.

Next morning the 8th day began. He wanted to take a fringing break, laze about and eat ice-cream. But as the song goes “there is no rest for the wicked” as such he had work to do. He already cleaned out the important stuff from the basement and made a rifle, metal he could get from the cars parked in front of the apartment block, about 8-10 cars in total. He hasn’t counted them yet but they shouldn’t be that many. So no problem for steel, as long as he could sneak properly. He had to clear the whole neighborhood for safety and EMC, but he needed armor for safety reasons.

Finally, he decided to try his luck. Going to the front terrace he looked down and spotted the parked cars. Taking out a glass bottle he droped it down. As the glass shatters the sound reverberated through the empty boulevard. Aaaand nothing. He drops a second one then a third and finally a fifth. Waiting for a few minutes a zombie group toddles bellow. The alpha looks around and tries to figure out where the sound came from. Soon after he is just below the terrace.

Taking out the gauss rifle he takes aim and fires a full powered spike blowing the alphas head off, at around 15m even a child wouldn’t miss. As the recoil kicks his shoulder back he prepares for another shot. Switching to the balls he finishes off the normal zombies, barely wasting 20 rounds in total with 11 kills. He still needs to work on it.

Just as he is about to head back in he hears the faint sound of groaning. From the side of the apartment block in front of his, a new group comes over. As it comes closer their alpha charges in a fenzy towards the first one, he sniped. It starts to eat and devour the 1st alphas brain matter, licking it literally from the pavements.

Alpha-2 starts groaning and moaning like proper zombie, it hugs itself and screams towards the heaven. Soon after its limbs grow thicker its skull expands and an explosion occurs. What’s left on its spot is deathly grey bald figure, its lipless mouth full of razor sharp, dull yellow teeth. The hands tipped with blackish nails 5cm long, walking with an animalistic posture ready to pounce at its meal.

As it looks around with its black beady eyes it spots the front door to his block, for some reason it decides to rip open the door and enter. The sound of violent wood breaking is heard and all the zombies outside soon follow.

Plamen stayed at the terrace his eyes focused on the scene bellow, he was paralyzed by fear. He knew that whatever that is, he was afraid of it on an instinctual level. Like it was the reincarnation of death itself. Having something like this to roam around his living space was mortifying.

After coming to his senses he walked slowly to his own room. He put his reinforced winter jacket, the slightly bent helm. Checking his energy reserves, it was at 13%, he had around 19 when he started, used 4 to refine some scrap in order to refill his clips and was left with using 3 more for killing the zombies and an hour of regen on top of that.

He put the drum mag in his rifle and got ready for some action. This THING looked like a hunter and he had no reason to become prey. If he let it come to him he would be at a disadvantage. Plamen didn’t know what it was doing down there

. It entered with what looked like purpose, like it wanted something and it’s been close to 15 min since then. More than plenty for it to hit the first barricade one floor down. And it still hasn’t.

Armed with his will and rifle he started to descend the stairs slowly. Having to avoid his own noise makers while wobbling in the thick padding. He had no military training so he walked and move the best way he could. One foot in front of the other leading with the right side of his body while keeping the rifles handle with his left arm, its barrel lowered ready to rise and shoot a bullet straight between a zombie head.

As he got passed the first floor and reached the ground one he turned left and saw the basement door broken with the debris partially on the outside. Like something just smashed the door with a swipe. Turning around the corner, in the dim underground corridor, at the bottom of the stairs there was a zombie. It just stood there like it was waiting. And the known sound of flesh ripping and meant being voraciously chewed was coming from the inside.

Not wasting any time, he lifted the barrel and shot once making a fist sized hole in its head. Just as the body fell with a thud, he had already moved back and focused on the noise. The sound of eating was still continuing. Being somewhat ignored by a whatyamacall it was both an annoying and welcome feeling.

He slowly walked out the block and picked a few of the whole glass bottle pieces which miraculously survived, he threw them down the stairs. As the sound of breaking glass echoed through the moldy corridors. The sound of chewing stopped.

Nails craping concrete was the most appropriate description of the current atmosphere. Taking careful aim he patiently waited. Seconds later a head came into view. His firing zone at the bottom of the stairs is just 1 square meter with the trap to the left, the head coming from the right. Without even verifying the target he just pulled the trigger once, hitting it on the side of the temple.

The normal sound of bones breaking and brains squashing wasn’t present. The head just hit the wall, thanks to the recoil, with a thud. And what’s left of the steel ball fell to the ground. Angry growls soon followed the figure to which the head belonged slowly stood up and looked towards him. This thing, took a low powered shot to the head and lived.

He used the full powered spike shot to make sure he didn’t miss when shooting at alpha zombies. But a normal human would be dead by being hit with around 6g of steel flying at 340m/s in the head not to mention a zombie.

The thing jumped up and charged at him with lightning speed. As it was about to reach its prey, he finally reacted. Dumping a 6 round burst in to its head and torso. Unfortunately, newton is quite the bitch on weekdays, as the inertia carried the death fiend through the barrage and crashing on top of him. With his mind cold and numb, he decisively shoved the thing off of him rolled to the side and stood up and darted up the stairs.

When it was on top of him he noticed that the side of its temple where the bullet hit mostly fine, it was just a scratch. He lucked out as the burst managed to stun briefly and he managed to run away. Due to quick wits he survived the 1st encounter, and now he was prey.

As he got to the fifth floor he forced himself to calm down and changed the clip to the APHE one, he wasn’t going to hold back. Setting the Gauss Gun on full power he took aim and waited.

The sound of crashing and angry growls were coming closer and closer, and finally the grey nightmare shot to the middle platform between the 4th and 5th floor and crashed in to the wall, this barely slowed it down as it charged straight towards the barricade.

Plamens’ nerves were shot, he couldn’t get a proper aim so he dodged to the right. And the monster broke right through the barricade. Now he knew what the other crashing sound was. It was like the barricade wasn’t even there.

Just as it was about to get up and charge again he took a fast aim and fired, the round landed on the things right shoulder and soon after a small explosion blew its arm apart with a bang. From the blasts recoil it was smashed in the wall. Getting up and wildly charging straight at him, due to its missing arm and shoulder it lacked balance so he could once again dodge, the black claw scraping against his helmet.

Before it could get up he hit it the rifle stock sending it to the floor. As it was about to stand up he put the barrel in its mouth and pulled the trigger. Firing a high powered shot basting its head off.

His arms shakily dropped the gun, muzzle still lodged in its jaw. As he sat down the only thing through his mind was that he had more cleaning to do.

As he was about to close his eyes he was snapped awake by bell like…

~DING~