Zane faced off against a new type of zombie. He observed the crawling dead as its motions were no different to a beast with fangs. It looked unnatural, yet it wasn’t. A guttural scream echoed from its open jaw, and the hunter charged on all four.

Zane waited and timed his swing. The fast silhouette closed the distance in mere seconds and leaped. Zane let loose his axe as the glowing edge met the flesh of the hunter, burning through those muscles, cutting them like they were nothing.

The hunter fell and rolled on the ground, getting back on its feet and hand with one of its forearms missing completely. Rather than turning wary, the blood-lusting monster rushed once again. Its speed diminished considerably, yet the hunter did not back down. Its one-track mind made it easier to be read, and Zane winded up his backswing and slammed it hard right on the side of its shoulder. The sizzling noises of flesh being burned lasted briefly for a few seconds as Zane hurled the hunter off to the side, plummeting it to the ground.

He came over, noticing it was still moving. Well, what left of it after he cleaved it cleanly by the shoulder. The head jerked every now and then, moving its jaw ceaselessly, releasing a blood-curling sub-human scream that echoed far into the night of the valley. Zane raised his axe and let gravity do its work. Splitting the head of the hunter in two, ending the spine-chilling growl that he used to hear in zombie films.

Zane gathered his loots as he found something interesting among the bunch. But before he could do anything, the guttural scream he ended came back again from the direction of the forest. More hunters were coming, and even the horde was growing back in numbers, heading towards the only living soul in this valley.

Zane didn’t linger long and bolted back to the Keeper of the Dead. One of the hunters was troublesome enough, but against many along with the horde was a different story. Zane leaped and grabbed the rope. Climbing up quickly, noticing a few silhouettes gunning at him from the back. By the time he landed on the boulder, something else was on the rope. Looking down, another hunter was climbing fast as more of them were jumping at the single rope, competing with one another while the lead chased after Zane.

He chopped the rope and down they went. Zane heard a couple of thuds on the ground, yet the hunters were some persistent bastards he had ever met. They leaped and jumped, trying to get a grip over the base of the mountain range, but no matter what they did, they couldn’t get a grip on the steep terrain.

“That was close,” Zane said. Sighing on relief. He didn’t want to imagine what would happen if one of those things went loose in the open. As he was this close to causing a potential zombie outbreak in a fantasy world. But even if it did happen, he doubted low-level zombies would do a thing to veterans like Langdon.

Ignoring the constant guttural screams of the hunters down below, Zane collected his previous loots and readied to leave. He had been here for a whole week, and for the first time, he was returning back to earth without stumbling over a near-death experience.

“Warp Apartment 9116,” Zane vanished.

* * *

He returned to his apartment yet something felt out of place. Did my apartment get cleaner? He didn’t remember doing any cleaning before he left and so the situation just got a little tenser than expected. Gripping the axe tight, Zane was prepared for anything. Then he remembered the incident with those snooping agents. Shit, did they come for revenge? He wondered.

Zane heard a click at the front door, and he glared with an alert, running right at the doorstep, preparing to give one hell of a surprise. Yet the moment the door was pulled open, Zane saw who it was. He retracted his fist as the guest had her eyes bulged wide.

“Zane,” a feeble voice from a fatigue middle-aged woman. In a matter of seconds, tears trailed down her cheeks as Zane’s mother leaped at Zane for a hug. She wrapped her arms around him as she sobbed, complaining where he had been.

The confusion he had was replaced with guilt. Missing for a whole week without any contact left both his parents spiraling into distress. Zane met eyes with his father. His old man had a stern look on him, frowning at Zane.

“Where have you been?” he asked.

“Sorry, dad . . . I,” he couldn’t really say he went to another world. “I went camping . . . Trying to clear my head a bit.”

Zane’s father glanced at the axe he was holding. “And you need an axe?” he questioned.

“Oh, it’s . . . It’s bushcraft, dad. I make everything from scratch and use whatever nature provides,” Zane replied. “It’s kinda the new trend these days, so I’m just bandwagoning it for the experience.” He forced a small smile.

The father shook his head, sighing. “Well the important thing is you’re safe,” the father said. The family of three got inside the apartment as Zane got an earful from his mother. Even while crying his mother still had the knack in nagging at him, telling him how worried they had been having no contact with their son throughout the whole week. Usually, they wouldn’t be this worried over a man nearing thirty years old, but the recent situation with the train incident made them more attentive to their bachelor son.

To Zane’s surprise, his parents even called the police, reporting him as a missing person. Which prompted the police force to ransack his apartment searching for clues for any lead, and thank goodness he didn’t leave anything illegal or dangerous behind as the situation would have been really bad for him. To make things worse, his parents just got back from giving out fliers to random passersby, and the news broke his heart.

He felt guilty leaving them in the dark like this, but he didn’t have much of a choice. For the rest afternoon, Zane consoled his parents and assured him there was nothing wrong with him. He even took out a stack of cash from selling sapphires and gave it to them. Telling them he had been working on a project with a good profit margin. Both his parents already found those stacks of cash while cleaning his room, but didn’t feel the need to question where their son got them. Yet hearing the good news from their son at least eased off a few of their worries.

But then came the biggest problem he had to deal with.

“Son, is that blood?” the mother asked. Pointing at the dark stains on his blue cloak.

“Oh, this?” he realized he was still wearing the bloody cloak and a gun hiding in its holster. “It’s cosplay, mom.” He blurted it out in a hurry.

“You’re wearing a costume on a camping trip?” the father asked, realizing how weird it sounded.

“Um, there’s a larping convention at where I’m camping, so I kinda got into it and went along with the whole larpers,” Zane explained.

“Larping?”

“Yea, larping,” Zane answered.

“And what the hell is larping again?” the old man with white hair was clueless as a fool. And Zane had to explain everything about larping to his dear old father.

In the end, the father just saw it as kids these days doing weird stuff like tik-tok. By the end of the day, Zane had spent all of his time with his parents like he was still living under their roof. They slept in the living room even after Zane insisted to take his bed, but like always his parents wanted the best for him. Giving up persuading them, Zane claimed his bed and rested his head on his pillow. It really felt surreal to him, returning to normalcy after that killing spree he did to the undead. And it made him wonder whether he was actually normal or not, or slowly turning into a crazed psychopath. Because come to think of it, he sort of enjoyed the killing which was rather bad in a way. But what could he do? The system was made that way, and like any RPG that existed, killing was the way to go.

He was drastically changing and he knew it. Zane just hoped he wouldn’t cross the final line of taking another human being’s life as that really would cement him as a true-born psychopath.

He slept through the night and woke up the next morning full of energy. Unlike before the whole system, Zane was prone to being very lethargic even in the morning and he assumed that vitality stats had something to do with all the physical change he was experiencing. And he was very glad of getting rid of the fatigue. Waking up groggy with a few aches on his back was the worst possible experience after waking up.

Not to forget his morning wood was livelier like always. Staring at it for a while got him thinking about something. Wait a minute, if my vitality is this high would I last longer than I used to? It was any man’s biggest concern, and he couldn’t help but hope his theory to be true. Lasting longer would be nice every now and then.

I probably need a girlfriend first if I want to try that theory out, Zane shrugged his shoulders and left his bed.

The smell of a good breakfast lingered around his nose the moment he went out of his bedroom.

“Come, and eat with your father,” his mother said. He joined and ate with relish like he had been starving for the whole week.

“You really eat a lot these days,” said the mother. Last night he also gorged his food as if he had nothing to eat.

“Don’t you eat when doing camping?” she asked.

Zane remembered the blandness of the fantasy world’s cooking, and it almost made him tear up experiencing it for a whole week. “Your’s better mom,” he said, smiling. He enjoyed his breakfast, but then his doorbell rang.

“I’ll get it,” Zane got up before his mother could run over to the door. As his mother did all the cooking the least he could do was say no to whoever was about to pitch a sale to him. Yet the moment he opened the door, he frowned. Three people stood before him while two of them were awfully familiar.

“You guys again,” he glared at Liz and then at SK. “Haven’t you guys had enough? Or were my words not clear enough the last time?”

There was a hint of threat in his tone, then his eyes landed at the person who stood in the middle of the two. The claw mark scars on his face were quite an interesting and intimidating look to have, and it was genuinely making Zane curious.

“So you must be the big boss,” Zane said, smiling as the curves on his lips held a different type of meaning.