Chapter 10

Slate

There was no damn blue screen. The Voice simply intoned, or maybe it implanted, the words into my head telling me about preexisting points in both Body and Ki. I must have gained attribute point in Ki from yelling the word but I do not know where the others came from. I did note that the asshole Voice took the first word muttered on the list as my choice. That is something that must avoided in the future. I would need to carefully plan out my path to power in advance, prepare myself for each level up and be ready to spit out the attribute quickly to avoid another accident. Let me just check the wiki…..

Fucking internet was still down. No internet really sucks balls. First off there was no porn. That shit is almost as bad as the world ending. Secondly, there was no convenient group of people out there to compare knowledge with about what is happening. I would have a hard time planning my way without outside help. I guess I was stuck playing blind for a while, until I can meet some other survivors.

The stats did let me extrapolate a few things though. Since I have a 0 in Mind, and my mind still works, these stats are not a baseline number. They must be a bonus to natural bodies. That should mean that the stronger I get my original self, the greater the buff from the Body stat becomes. My ability to see in the darkness may be a result of the points in Body or Ki, or it could still be something else, hell it could even be a mutation like comic book heroes. Maybe there was a chance for the purple goop to change people beneficially. If it was a skill I had gained then I gained it without putting a point into it. That means I might be able to improve my special abilities. Of course if being able to see 25 feet with this nightvision skill took a week of sitting in a pitch black room, than I can assume it will be just as insanely hard to gain other skills.

I also apparently have the ability to heal major wounds. I am not sure how long it took to do so, but it seemed like only a few days. Being able to regenerate over time was a key factor in RPGS. It would be tough to level a toon if you spent weeks online waiting for him to heal after every fight. Some table top and the occasional harder video game would even require you to recover your hit points over a full night’s sleep, but that was not the case here. It caused me to wonder about death mechanics and if they had changed.

This game seems too grounded in reality to be based on hit points. I saw Big John die shortly after having his throat ripped out. If this was a game with HPs his character should have started with a huge amount of due to his size and strength. If there were HP’s then the damage would also be number based. That meant he shouldn’t have died to just one critical hit. So I am ruling out a HP based system and will continue to act like people and creatures will still die if critical body systems were interrupted.

Sitting down again to meditate again, I thought that the new energy ball must be my Ki. I was able to slip into the trance easier than ever. The ball in my core had grown by about 50%, and was now comparable to a small grape. The noticeable difference in my meditation and increase of the little ball were obviously linked to my Ki attribute.

Feeling something new, I went with it. My consciousness separated from my body in such a way that I became aware of my surroundings while my mind was a peace. My introspection become clearer and I could see into different parts of my body. It was hazy and vague, but I could see what was happening in it. The muscle groups that I had pushed in my previous work out almost glowed where a small amount of energy circulated. Testing a theory, I followed the Ki back to where it originated in my core. Concentrating, I attempted to draw the energy out. Like popping a cherry, I had to force a hole into its warm, tight cocoon. Once I could pull it out through the gap I found I could move it around, and send it flowing through me.

If a guy in a disembodied Zen like trance could say “Holy shit”, I would have.

My closet nerdism had also led to me to read some Chinese light novels, mostly Wuxia and Xainxi, so I had an idea about how the people in those stories cultivated. Most of them pulled the energy of the world into their, cores or dantians, and then circulated it to make the body stronger. Since I already had the energy, I simply pushed it out began to move it through my body.

It was tricky to move and took a lot of concentration. It naturally wanted to follow certain directions but I could not understand way. It was as if there were preexisting pathways that were like one way streets. If focused hard along those lines it would move faster than its natural pace. As I kept at it and it became slightly easier to move. It was as if the lines it traveled were growing infinitesimally wider and letting more energy move through. I began panting and sweating from the excursion. Moving the Ki faster than it wanted to flow was taking a tremendous toll on my body. The small gain seemed to be my limit for now so I relaxed and let it circulate slowly.

Once the energy was out of my core and moving through my muscles it never returned to its starting point. My tiny grape had withered and only a little flicker of power remained in it. I tried to grow it again following the same principles of cultivation from Wuxia. Focusing, I attempted to find the latent energy of the world. A huge ocean of it existed all around me but it seemed like only tiny flakes of it were compatible with my core. Reaching out I pulled the matching specs of energy towards me and watched as they slowly moved towards my center. When the specs touched the energy inside of me they melded seamlessly and little balloon of energy enlarged just a tiny little bit. My chest was heaving again from the effort and I knew I was putting too much strain on my body. So again I relaxed.

Not focusing on anything for the moment I stayed in my trance as my breathing came back to normal. I noticed a few other things about Ki during my explorations. First was that when I had been letting the Ki circulate it seemed to pool in the area of my wounded arm and my regeneration seemed to increase its pace. I have been in this new trance for a few hours now, and it seemed like it had almost finished its healing. Another thing I noticed was that the tiny specs of matching Ki floated towards me their own, albeit much slower than when I reached for them. It seems as though my Ki well will refill naturally if given enough time, or I can speed up the process by working at it.

Coming out meditation I stood up and decided to test my physical limits. First things first, I started to punch, kick and dance like a moron on YouTube. My coordination was higher, and my center of balance seemed more stable but I had no basis of comparison. I did not know how drastic the improvements were. I did know some basic fighting mechanics but after several minutes I could not feel any improvement in my shadowboxing. Sadly, becoming an instant ninja did not seem to be in the cards.

If someone were to have seen me punching the air they would be generous to call my form mediocre. My law enforcement training consisted of only a few courses for gaining physical control of a suspect. One was called defensive tactics (DT), and the other was called pressure point control techniques (PPCT). DT was nothing more than a short class on how to escort people out of agitated situations and a few arm lock take downs. PPCT was similar. It was an over view of the bodies pressure points to manipulate and control people using pain compliance. Both classes were very informative but very short.

I never gained the instinctual muscle memory needed to execute precision control techniques after just a week or two of classes. To master a physical talent, like martial arts, you have to dedicate a lot of effort to learning its ways. With my natural size I had not had many violent confrontations with suspects. It made me lazy and I never put the effort into truly learning the techniques, or learning to fight in general.

If I had to classify myself with words, I would call myself an instinctual fighter. A brawler that uses pure physical strength and size to absorb and shrug off blows a trained warrior would deflect or avoid. My size is a huge advantage in a fist fight. You lose power punching upwards, and my wide shoulders tended to absorb most strikes aimed at my head. My flat face and square jaw would keep most from ever calling me handsome, but they were built to take an impact.

People always say it’s the size of the fight in the dog, not the size of the dog in the fight. It’s true to a point, but it is mostly some bullshit that little people say. There is a reason welterweights don’t fight heavyweights after all. A superiorly trained small guy might take me down, but the people who put that kind of effort into taking care of and educating their body were few. They also generally don’t fight outside the ring and didn’t fight the police either.

Although confident in my size and ability to fight due to my successes against drunks, training was still needed. But how do I to start? In books most protagonists would go find some old wandering warrior master and then impress him in some random way. The master would teach his student an obscure path to martial greatness and asses would be kicked. Acting like the idiot I was, I glanced around looking for one. No such luck. It looks like I’ll just have to wing it like normal. Besides, I wouldn’t be only fighting people but monsters. How the hell was I supposed to train for that?

Continuing my shadowboxing I knew that to survive I needed to get some weapons. When I fortified my basement, making it worthy of the name of bunker, I had stocked it with the best weapons I knew of: guns. Unfortunately on the run I tried to shoot the monster that killed John but my gun didn’t work. My Glock 22, used by most of the police officers in America and known for its reliability, failed to fire. The ammo in it, Winchester Rangers, were top of the line. I had not picked up the gun since my return so I did not know which part of the weapon failed. There had been no reason to check before learning I could see in the dark but there was now.

I got the weapon out and ejected the round. Looking closely in the dim light there was a little indention where the firing pin hit the primer. It meant that the bullet had failed. After chambering another round I contemplated the benefits of test firing it in the basement. With what happened to electronics I decided finding out if my guns would fire was worth the risk of something hearing a shot. Besides, if the gun would shoot it could be used to defend me anyways. Snagging a set of ear plugs, I went into the bathroom dumped a bunch of blankets in a corner to create a not so safe backstop. I pointed the .40 caliber at it, hoped for the best and pulled the trigger. The machine that had never failed me before the change made the same impotent click again. After trying a dozen rounds I never heard an earth shattering kaboom, and every one of them had the distinct impression of pin denting the primer.

For some reason, guns no longer worked.

In most end of the world scenarios, I thought that the more guns you had, the better off you would be. The Remington 870 12g Shotgun and Colt AR-15 I tested next both failed to fire as well. Whatever changed world did not want electronics or firearms to work. Without a background in physics I had no way to figure out why none of it was working. I still needed a weapon though, and my 3 ½ holdout knife was not going to cut it.

Muhaha, look at me making horrible puns in the dark.

After seeing all the movies on living in and going through an apocalypse, I always thought it would be zombies that destroyed society. Well maybe not walking dead zombies, but something more like infected living people that were like the ones in 28 Days Later. The fast as hell scary type zombies. During my bunker preparation I took into account the following things one must know for the zombie apocalypse.

Own lots of guns. It seems that with lots of guns, you can always get the other resources you need, if you’re willing to bend your morals. Well bend them to the point of murder anyways. Bunker down and survive the initial changes and only than attempt to move around to secure more resources. Know your enemy and prepare to hide, flee or fight them. Killing the walking dead type zombies would be much easier than the freaky fast Jimmy John’s type zombies. Don’t trust the government, police or big corporations. In every post-apocalyptic story they are almost always the bad guy.

I had been relying on guns as my weapons, but the other three rules still applied. It’s seemed like primeval weapons were what I needed. I needed something pointy and sharp, and I needed it now.