After taking a deep breath to calm himself down, Danny contemplated what his following actions should be.

The building was a complete mess and taking the crystals out of the undead he had killed would be a long and tedious process. There were quite a few zombies spread around and roaming the factory yet, some of which were still trying to cross the road of corpses to get to him.

However, now that the bulk of the horde had been dealt with, Danny did not think he would have too much trouble dispatching the randomly scattered stragglers. Without the huge numbers of the horde to back them, the remaining zombies would be easy pickings for him.

A quick look at his wristwatch told Danny that less than an hour had passed, much to his astonishment. However, thinking it over, he realized it made sense.

The fight had been brutal and intense. There was little time in between him killing one enemy and the next showing up to take its place. Looking back at it, at every single minute of the battle, Danny had to deal with quite a few of the mindless creatures. His kill-rate per minute was quite high.

The more frantic the pacing of the clash, the more dangerous it was to him, but also the faster he went through all the zombies throwing themselves at him.

A quick mental calculation told him that if he fought at every minute, let’s say five zombies on average in order to make the math simpler, then in one hour he would have gone through 300 zombies. That was an insane amount of enemies.

Danny’s perception of time had been slightly tilted at the time, so he could not estimate the real numbers with any accuracy, but taking into account how fast he could move his body and swing his weapon around, smacking heads left and right, and also how densely packed the creatures were, Danny believed he definitely had fought more than five zombies per minute.

He would only know the exact number after he finished cleaning the place up and gathering the precious shiny stones, but it was safe to say that there were at least a couple hundred enemies involved in the melee - and that was him being conservative with his guess.

Shaking away his amazement at the stupidly high number of creatures he had laid to rest in one go, Danny turned around and entered the emergency stairwell. He needed a break and maybe even take a short nap before he could continue with his plans.

The path to the stairway on the opposite side of the floor was completely littered with bodies and slippery from all the blood. He had no intention of adventuring atop the treacherous path right now nor did he want to deal with the remaining zombies on it that still failed to reach him to this very moment due to their own inability to steadily walk atop the bodies of their former companions.

Danny supposed he could go inside one of the rooms of the third floor at the side corridors that were not blocked by the piles of corpses to rest in it or even go down to the second floor and pick one of the rooms there - since the fight had not extended into the second level of the building proper, keeping itself contained to the stairway, and the hallways there were not filled with bodies or drenched in blood -, however, Danny preferred to head to the roof.

He felt vulnerable leaving his backpack all by itself there with all his possessions and the cherished remnants of his mother. Also, Danny really wished to disassociate himself from all this carnage, even if just for a couple of hours. The fresh air and gentle rain which was still falling from the dour skies would do him good.

He wanted to get away from the thick smell of blood that permeated the air and maybe clean himself a little bit, before he was forced to dive into the blood and gore once more.

Ignoring the threatening growls of the zombies that fruitlessly tried to drag themselves forward towards him, Danny closed the emergency exit door behind him and headed up the stairs.

No zombies had managed to enter the stairwell during the time it took for the massive battle to conclude as far as he could tell, but even if they had, he would not care to deal with them right now. He was beyond tired, so unless anything posed a direct threat to him, Danny had no wish to get tangled with any more zombies at the moment.

He climbed the steps to the roof before going out into the open. A sideways glance revealed that his bag was still exactly where he had left it. Untouched.

He walked a few steps forward and spread his arms wide while stretching his tired back, pleasantly feeling the satisfying cracks of his bones and spine as he did so. The thin raindrops hit his face and armor, washing him and carrying away some of the grime, blood, sweat and all manner of dirt that somehow found itself attached to him.

‘Ah, this is what I needed. It feels nice to be alive.’ He thought with a timid smile hanging on his face as the chill water refreshed his body and helped cooling him down.

There were few things in life that were as calming and reinvigorating than immersing oneself in a cold shower after an extreme bout of exercise. He felt like an overheated machine being cooled down.

After he enjoyed himself for a while, Danny went back to pick up his backpack before coming closer to the stairwell exit. He could take shelter there from the rain, as there was a short overhang extending to the area in front of the doorway. That was where Danny intended to rest.

As pleasant his moment under the rain had been, remaining exposed to the elements while he rested was ill-advised. Danny didn’t know if he could still get sick after all the soul gems he ate. It stood to reason that if his whole body was stronger overall, his immune system should also have gotten more resilient.

Even so, there was no reason to take any chances. Why would he expose himself any further than he needed when there was a perfectly sheltered place he could lay down in front of him?

Danny retrieved a towel from inside his backpack before swiftly wiping himself. His job was rushed and sloppy however, as he could only think of resting at the moment.

It had been quite a while since he had felt so thoroughly exhausted. The past days and weeks, even during nighttime, before going to sleep, Danny hardly ever felt this drowsy.

Now that the excitement of the battle was gone and the adrenaline that kept him going throughout the whole fight was dissipating from his bloodstream, he could feel the weight and consequence of his actions coming back to bite him with a vengeance. Tiredness, soreness and pain took over his whole body.

Danny threw the dirtied towel aside, never to be picked up again, as he would hardly be keeping it given the amount of gunk that stuck to the once white fabric, before he sat with his back against the door to the roof.

That way, if anyone or anything tried to follow him there – undead or otherwise – they wouldn’t be able to open the door without pushing him out of the way first, alerting Danny in the process that he had company.

Placing his bag in his lap, Danny adjusted the alarm on his wristwatch to wake him up in a couple of hours before resting the back of his head against the cold steel frame of the door and closing his eyes.

A few second later, he was already deep asleep.

*Beep* *Beep* *Beep*

“Hmmm… Shut up…”

A couple of hours later, Danny woke up to the beeping sound of his wristwatch. After cursing the ungodly device – which was only natural – he shook his head and slapped his cheeks to chase away the drowsiness.

Then, Danny stood up before examining his body condition.

“Well, that’s not as bad as I thought.” He said with some surprise.

From how he felt immediately after the fight, Danny thought he would be racked with pain right about now. Instead, a dull ache had set on most places he had been wounded, with just a few spots that had it rougher during the fight coming out worse for the wear.

He had bruises all over. Mostly on his arms and torso, as those areas were the ones that took the brunt of the punishment. Still, it was clear that his armor had saved him from a world of hurt.

The chest plates that protected his torso were flimsily hanging to the mesh underneath. The undead almost managed to rip it off completely after repeatedly clawing at his chest and stomach.

The area protecting his left arm also seemed particularly trashed. It looked as if he had thrusted his whole left arm into a grinder.

Whenever a zombie managed to dodge his attack and got too close, Danny used his non-dominant arm to ward them off, which resulted in him sustaining a few nasty bites there.

The protective bracer that was made out of some kind of hard material which Danny could not name – the same one that formed the plates on his chest, stomach, spine and other armored areas - had cracked in many different places. Also, the mesh which formed the underlying layer of his armor had been torn in many areas, as the hard material did not fully cover his whole arm. There were many spots where the much more fragile material was exposed and it clearly was not zombie-proof.

His helmet on the other hand had done a good job of protecting his head. Though the headpiece would probably need to be scrapped after his return to the settlement, given the beating it took, Danny did not care, as it had fulfilled its purpose admirably.

In fact, he would have to pretty much replace all of his armor, with the exception of his pants. Thankfully, his legs didn’t come under too much assault, as the undead preferred to go for his upper body instead, saving Danny from the shame of walking around with his underwear in plain sight.

“I hope there’s a spare set at Hank’s camp.” Danny clicked his tongue, annoyed at the loss of the gear he acquired just recently.

Then, he did a few stretches and lightly moved his body to assess the extent of the damage he suffered and to discover how much he would be impaired going forward. He was pleased with the results. Danny guessed he would be able to use 80 to 90% of his strength without issue, which, honestly, was much better than his initial estimations.

‘Hmm, not bad at all’ he thought while rotating his shoulders one at a time.

After that, Danny retrieved his helmet and broke off its visor. As he could not see properly with the visor lowered due to the numerous white scars that covered the plastic protection - and given that he could not lift the thing up anymore ever since the mechanism responsible for flipping it up got busted during the fight - Danny decided to do away with the thing entirely and rip it off, transforming his flip-up helmed into an open-face one.

Putting it back up and strapping his bag to his back, he stretched his neck before pushing the door to the stairwell open.

“Time to finish this and check out how large the haul from this mission was.” Danny smiled, already imagining how he would be swimming in soul crystals very soon.