Surprisingly, the night after the world went to hell was relatively normal. Aside from various beast roars that came from outside the house from time to time, Alex was not disturbed at all. That was why he managed to sleep soundly and wake up energetically the next morning.

'Well, time to level up I guess. It's been a day and I've only gotten to level 7. This world is filled with crazy people after all. I'm sure some of them have probably reached close to level 20 already. I can't allow them to gain an advantage over me like that,' Alex thought as he got up and washed his face.

With the water still running, Alex made himself a meat broth made out of badger meat for breakfast. Despite the fact that they are wild badgers, their meat actually tasted really good. Perhaps his culinary skill have improved? Although these badger meat didn't restore health points when he ate them, but at least Alex enjoyed his breakfast.

After that, he took a bath in his bathroom. Alex had already completely given up on holding 'drinkable water' inside his bathtub because the water had already turned moldy in less than a day. Instead, he had decided to loot all of the surrounding bottles around the neighborhood area and store water in them before the water system stops working.

Once he have killed all of the horned badgers in his area and looted all of the bottles within, it was already close to midday. Unfortunately, the neighborhood only contained about seventy badgers, which was not enough at all to bring his level up to level 8. With his drinking water source secured, Alex brought three water bottles with him as he made his way over to the central Santa Cruz area.

'How the heck would I have to repair this thing?' Alex thought wryly as he looked at his claw gauntlets that looked like it was showing signs of slight tears.

The claw gauntlets have already lost almost half of its durability after Alex used it to kill the giant tortoise yesterday. Couple that with the fact that he had been using it continuously in combat for three hours in the time for him to get back to his house, its durability have already dropped down to almost a third. Unless he found some way to fix these gauntlets soon, Alex might very well lose his only weapon in this apocalypse very soon.

'Maybe I can find new ones?' Alex suddenly thought.

When Alex made his way over to the downtown area, he was surprised to find out that there was a new type of beast prowling around the area. Other than the horned badgers that he had killed almost five hundred times by then, there was a new breed of monsters assaulting him. It was small though.

'That fucking squirrel again! Why are there so many of them in here?' Alex thought wryly as he hastily retreated.

Only after he retreated for more than three minutes did he realize that these squirrels was fundamentally different from the squirrel that almost killed him the day before.

They looked exactly the same as the thunder squirrel that he faced yesterday, but that was all about it. They didn't have the thunder squirrel's deadly speed nor do they have its capability to emit lightning from their bodies. Other than their sharp claws and fangs, they were only slightly faster than the regular horned badger.

After killing one of them, Alex found out that their name wasn't even called thunder squirrel. They were actually called the fanged squirrel, and the thunder squirrel seemed to be a mutation that came out of their species. The hierarchy to them seemed to be the thunder squirrel being the boss while the other fanged squirrels were its minions.

Needless to say, Alex killed them all with pure vengeance right after he figure that out.

Unlike with the horned badgers, Alex did not leave even a single one of these fanged squirrels alive. Everytime he met one of these squirrels, Alex would immediately charge at them with reckless abandon as he ripped their little bodies to pieces. By the time it was noon, all of Santa Cruz's downtown area was completely devoid of any fanged squirrel and Alex managed to level up to level 8.

'Hmph! Since I couldn't be the one to kill you last time, I will exterminate your whole race as my revenge you stupid fucking squirrel!' Alex cursed at the dead thunder squirrel that almost killed him yesterday.

There was one thing that Alex found strange when he ran around the downtown area as he killed the squirrels. It was the fact that the horned badgers and the fanged squirrels both seemed to be avoiding the half broken down Regal Cinema inside the area. When Alex got close to it, a very bad feeling assaulted his gut and prevented him from just wantonly entering.

There was some terrifying monster inside the cinema, Alex was sure of that. The fact that the other beasts avoided it meant that they didn't have a good relationship with the beast either. In fact, Alex had seen a few horned badgers that would sometime bring about a pile of dead carcasses along with other piles of food that they scavenged into the building and left hurriedly after that, as if they were paying tribute to some kind of devil.

While the monster would probably bring in a lot of exp for him, Alex wasn't that stupid. He knew nothing of the monster inside the cinema, so if Alex charged in without any plans in mind, he would be killed. He had already almost faced death in the face just yesterday because he did not detect the thunder squirrel coming at him. Alex did not want to experience that kind of helpless feeling again.

That was why Alex decided to prematurely leave the area before he finished clearing up all the horned badgers. Since the monster in the cinema seemed to have and god and worshipper kind of relationship with the horned badgers, Alex was worried that the monster in the cinema would notice him if he wiped out all of its followers so suddenly. Before he made enough preparations, Alex did not want to draw its attention yet.

That was why he left to other areas and started clearing monsters by droves. After he went around most of the ruined city, Alex found out that there were at least five species of monsters in the city. One of them was the horned badgers, which made up most of the monster population in the city. There were the fanged squirrels, which are rare but can be found in most areas. There were the flying spiky crows that were mostly active around the Natural Bridges area. There were also the rare saber toothed mountain lions up the path to University of California Santa Cruz and the aggressive steel seagulls flying around the Beach Boardwalk.

Out of all of these beasts, the spiky crows and the steel seagulls were the hardest for Alex to deal with. Since they fly around in the sky, the only way for him to attack them was to use up his life energy beam skill. Since he still didn't have 50 points in vitality yet, most of his shots became important as he could not retaliate for a while once he had fired his beam. It gave Alex quite the headache.

The only thing that Alex was glad about was the fact that he could feel himself getting closer and closer to level 10. Everytime he killed a monster, Alex realized there was an invisible thread of energy that came from the monster he killed and into his body. The size of this thread differed from monster to monster, and he felt it grew smaller every time he leveled up. From that, he concluded that they were exp points filling up into his body.

After killing the crows, the seagulls and the mountain lions, Alex could easily feel that they gave tons of exp points. Just killing one of them granted almost the same exp points that he gathered from killing fifty horned badgers or fanged squirrels. Alex had only killed about thirty of them each, yet they easily leveled him up to level 9. The horned badgers and the fanged squirrels could never compare at all.

'Although I couldn't make it into Natural Bridges, the University of California Santa Cruz, or the Beach Boardwalk, these places might hold boss monsters like the one in the cinema,' Alex thought as he rested after coming back to his house.

With the amount of monsters getting denser and denser when he tried to get much closer to these areas, Alex was sure that these monsters were protecting something. Since boss monsters seemed to have a sort of god and their worshippers kind of relationship, it wouldn't be too farfetched to think that the monsters gathered around the area to protect their boss. That must have also been why the amount of horned badgers downtown was much larger compared to the other areas even though they were spread out everywhere.

'If I assume that the thunder squirrel was the boss monster for the fanged squirrels, then I should expect the same level of difficulty when fighting the boss monster of the horned badgers inside of the cinema,' Alex concluded as he fried the fanged squirrel meat on the pan.

After finding out this day that fanged squirrels exists, Alex had completely turned his diet to consist mostly of their corpses. All of the 10 storage rings that he wore on his fingers were all filled with squirrel corpses. The reason as to why Alex did this was mostly because he was petty and wanted to make sure the thunder squirrel's race would all go extinct inside his stomach.

'If I want to kill that monster in the cinema, I would be better off if I can get stronger first. Maybe if I level up the life energy beam skill...'

Alex had used the laser beams countless times during the day, so he had somehow felt familiar with using it and it has even leveled up to level 3. The consumption on health and stamina along with its destructive power was still the same, but the amount of control that it brought Alex was massive. At this point, Alex was not confined to shooting out the beam from just his hands. In fact, he could shoot it out from any points of his body. Alex remembered how cool it felt like when he shot two life energy beams out of his eyes and shot down that spiky crow.

Unfortunately, he was not used to it, and shooting the beam out of anywhere other than his hands tripled the cost of creating the beam. That kind of consumption could never be used in a proper fight. That was why he couldn't rely on it as a trump card in his fight against the monster in the cinema.

'Maybe I can create a new skill out of this?' Alex thought to himself.

While it was cool the first few times, Alex became bored of it after a hundred times firing the life energy beam. The beam always had to go in a straight line, so it severely limits Alex's attacking options. Especially when he was fighting against those flying birds back then. His attack was too linear and easy to avoid. Alex needed an option that would allow him to hit targets over a bigger area.

'Can I make the beam spread out larger? Or maybe I shouldn't try to make it into a beam at all?' Alex thought as he tried to create the beam again and control it.

Unlike last time when he did it according to what the skill book had taught him, Alex focused most of his attention to guiding the life energy of his body to condense into a sphere. His idea was to make a sort of bomb that would explode all of the life energy contained in it over a large radius. Alex wanted to see if he could modify his devastating life energy into something that he could use to decimate all of those flying bird monsters at once.

In the end, Alex got his wish. A ball of blue light formed in his hand as Alex strenuously controlled his life energy to stay within the ball. His body was wholly sweating and veins could be seen on his neck and face as Alex tried to keep the sphere from breaking apart into a beam. The worst part was the fact that his body was turning paler and paler, as his health and stamina points were both being used up at an incredible pace.

Before Alex could not bear it anymore and collapse, a sound spoke in his head.

'Life Energy Blast' skill learned!

'Life Energy Manipulation' skill learned!

After that, Alex collapsed on the floor as the sphere of energy in his hand collapsed into several beams that shot out from all directions from within his home. Instantly, various big holes were created on his house's walls and ceilings. Fortunately, that was the extent of the damage since it was still standing quite sturdily.

Alex himself was in a very bad shape. His body was aging at an accelerated pace as he felt the last of his health and stamina points draining away. Alex knew that he would die at the rate that his health points was dropping, so he immediately pulled out some smoked tortoise meat and ate them. In the end, it took about five of the tortoise meat before Alex was back to his normal healthy condition.

"Fuck!" Alex swore as he still felt his stamina hitting rock bottom. He immediately, made his way over to hide under the dining room's table before he passed out.