Chapter 6

I took a short detour back through the warehouse area until I found a set of shelves with some men's military style clothing in my size and after throwing most of them into my system as spares I noticed in passing I would need to unload some of what I was carrying soon as I was almost at capacity for spaces I had available that wouldn't weigh me down. I grabbed another set and headed for the shower. There was an on demand water heater for the basement bunker's water supply and I took full advantage with a long ass shower that felt truly divine!

After getting out I noticed that my food and water meters were under half and after checking out one of the MREs I grabbed the chili mac dinner meal package and had a hurried meal.

Chili Mac Dinner MRE

+100 Food meter

+10 Wellness (Wellness is a stacking buff that increases your total HP and SP bars over time and can only be lost through respawning and certain other debuffs such as sickness)

Gain the "Well Fed" buff which increases all stats by 1 as well as increasing all exp gain by 25% for 1 hour.

System Note - Arguably the best tasting MRE that the US Army ever started handing out to its soldiers. Close runner ups include the Beef Stew and most of the Mexican themed main meals. If you don't agree then go have that veggie omelet meal you grass grazing inbred…

Taking the flavored drink mix out of the MRE and dumping it into a clean bottle of water from my inventory I was amused to see this also improved the drinks stats, thanks System!

Clean Water, 1 Liter, w/ Orange Drink Mix

Restores 60 water meter.

Grants increased SP regeneration for 10 minutes.

+5 Wellness

System Note - The questions with no clear answers… Batman VS Superman Who would win? Glock VS Sig Sauer Which is the better carry? And of course orange drink mix or purple grape mix which is the best mix to add to a cold thirst quenching bottle of H2O? The world may never know… unless you have the System in which case it's Superman, Glock, and Orange Mix every day baby! Come at me if you disagree!

I hadn't quite noticed it before but either my System was developing a personality or it was merely learning how to better interact with me. Maybe both? Meh, worries for another day even though I did enjoy the snark and humor it was coming up with from time to time.

I looked through my crafting menu and found a simple storage chest schematic that only required wood planks to build, which I had a couple hundred of still, and quickly built three of them. By quickly built I really mean that too as each chest took 7 seconds to complete after I mentally selected them into the queue. 

After finding them in my inventory I was confused at first as I wasn't able to simply pull them out and move them around by hand but I found out why when I put them onto my quick slot bar. When I mentally selected the stack of chests on the bar a wire mesh hologram popped up in my vision that I somehow understood to mean that I could mentally orient the object how I wanted and then place it down. It seemed like it was overly complicated which was odd because everything about the system had been fairly easy and streamlined to use but after placing the three chests, ok it was kind of nice I could put them on walls without having to nail them up myself, I quickly found out why.

When I went to open the chests my hand paused when it touched the chest and instead of physically opening the chest to store items a separate inventory screen popped up side by side with my personal inventory screen.

"Oookkkkk, well now I know why I had to place system storage boxes using the quick bar since they act as a system inventory of their own!" I mused to myself. "I wonder if other people can see or access these since it's a special system function?"

I would have to test this more later if I found some trustworthy survivors to help me out. I quickly transferred everything from my inventory into the three boxes, putting anything food or medical related in one, spare weapons and ammo in another, and then crafting materials in the third. I might need more boxes later as these filled up (each chest only had forty slots) or when I needed to further sort out items but for now this was good enough. 

The only things I kept were the tools on my quickbar, the planks of wood, and the 30 ft of rope I looted earlier. I had some ideas I wanted to play with before dark after all and would need these things as well as a few others in the basement.

I made sure I was fully dressed and headed for the armory. I had seen a couple of rifle options that I wanted to make use of to gain some safe levels. When I reached the weapon racks I grabbed a crowbar to add to my quick bar as well as a 9mm Glock 17 along with magazines and a couple hundred spare rounds into the inventory. I then scrutinized the rifles until I settled on an M4 as well as a longer barrel Winchester 30.06 hunting rifle with an 8x scope. 

I rooted around the ammo chests until I came up with a couple boxes of 30.06 ammo as well as a silencer for the M4 and some .223 rounds to go with it. I knew that even with the silencer the rifle would still make quite a bit of noise since I hadn't found any subsonic ammunition to go with it… until the System showed me why it's the best thing that ever happened to me once again.

M4 Silencer

Reduces noise of firearms to the sound of the snapping of a person's fingers regardless of ammunition type used.

System Note - The item name says SILENCER so it's gonna make that shit quiet. Screw real world science and physics, System physics trumps all comers!

"Thank you Mr. or Mrs. System!" I quietly said my voice tinged with amusement once again.

I knew there were a great deal of zombies in the areas and buildings surrounding me so I had a plan I wanted to try from the roof that would allow me to farm exp without, hopefully anyway, drawing in too many zombies that they became an actual threat. I wanted to use the hunting rifle to take down any Tier 2 or above zombies at range, using the unsilenced firearm to draw in the dead as they are attracted to noise. When zombies get within effective range of the M4, you know the practical range of 200-300 meters not the "Army" effective 600 meters, then I will quietly and quickly take them down as they wander in. When I take down any wanderers within range then I will fire another couple of 30.06 unsilenced rounds and wash, rinse, and repeat. 

I loaded up on .223 and 30.06 ammo in my inventory, as well as spare magazines for the M4 which seemed to auto load themselves when I put them into the inventory (hell yeah, loading mags SUCKS!) I then turned and looked at the other combat gear on the opposite well. I considered getting a full kit but didn't have any plans to head down to ground level to duke it out so I just grabbed a set of knee and elbow pads in case I wanted to do any prone shooting.

Nothing else caught my eye so I headed back up through the building while thinking about what I wanted to test in addition to farming exp. I wanted to play with my crafting system a little bit and try to build some simple structures on the roof, perhaps get some of the growing boxes finished and planted to test my theory on growth times for a system user. 

I also wanted to get the rope I had knotted every few feet and then secured to the rooftop and thrown over the side so when I wanted to leave or get back inside I already had my route setup. I could always lock the rooftop access hatch from inside the building after all and all the glass in this building was the ballistic resistant kind, no one was gonna climb up the rope halfway and then smash their way inside without me hearing it.

Reaching the roof I got the rope situated first and after spending a few minutes tying knots in it I simply tied off one end to some of the water tower piping. After testing it to make sure it was secure and would break anything I simply tossed the rope over the nearest edge of the building and then looked over the side to see it was only a few feet short of the ground, easily within grabbing distance by any adult. I didn't see unaccompanied children surviving in a world like this very well anyways so… it should be good right?

I next opened my crafting menu again and decided to start with some simple wood blocks as they seemed to be the most basic of building materials for creating structures not to mention the schematic notes said they were both upgradeable and modifiable into different shapes and structures while being placed. I wasn't sure exactly what that meant but I didn't mind playing around with the options to find out either. I started about 50 blocks in the crafting queue to see they would take about five minutes so it was time to start farming exp.

I loaded up the M4, attached the silencer, and then set the rifle against the waist high side wall along the edge of the roof before pulling out the Winchester hunting rifle to load it up as well. The Winchester had a small internal magazine, at least this model of rifle did, which held five rounds and was a bolt action rifle. I didn't know if the scope was zeroed or not so I decided to take care of that first. 

I walked around the edge of the building until I found a stop sign that looked to be about 300 meters away before using the half wall to brace the rifle. Carefully I focused on the center of the sign, steadying my breathing to control my heart rate. I took a final deep breath before letting it half out and then holding it for a fraction of a second as I gently squeezed the trigger so lightly that when the rifle fired it came almost as a surprise.

I could see the stop sign doing a little shake and shimmy dance which let me know I hit it and when I refocused I saw the shot was a little high and to the right. I quickly adjusted the scope using my camp knife to adjust the knobs for up/down and left/right movement of the scope before taking two more careful shots to find I was now zeroed in at 300 meters. 

I wondered if shooting zombies that didn't know where you were counted as a "stealth" shot to trigger that huge damage bonus? If it did then what if you stealth headshot a zombie? Did it apply to one and then the other or what? Things I would try and test out today before the sign got too low in the sky.

I noticed that while before I zeroed the rifle I had only seen about a dozen zombies walking around here and there total I could now see a couple dozen moving this way from any direction I looked around my new home.

"Looks like zombie fishing is gonna work out jjjjjuuuussssstttt fine." I said to myself with just a hint of smug self satisfaction.

I was looking over the many slowly approaching deaders but I wasn't seeing any of the big roid ragers, or anything else that stood out as a potential danger to watch out for, so I simply grabbed my M4 and began downing the zombies. I knew that ammunition was going to be one of my biggest limiting factors in this world, at least until I figured out how best to gather materials and make my own, so for now I took my time and focused on getting good headshots in.

Since these were all Tier 1 zombies, and I didn't see any with a health bar over 100 HP, each headshot was a kill so I wasn't sure if a sneak bonus was being applied or not. I would have to test more later for that but for now the exp was rolling in. Each kill was getting me 10 exp and most kills only required a single shot. I won't lie and say I was a dead eye crack shot who only needed one bullet per enemy every time, but it rarely took more than two shots because even when I needed more than one it wasn't because I missed completely it was usually because I hit them in such a way that the brain was damage enough.

The first wave I cleared out got me to level 5 and I saw that each level increased the exp you need to the next by 100 so to go from level 5 to level 6 I needed 500 exp. I now had four points I could assign to stats, perks, or crafting but I was going to save them for later tonight. After a quick check of my status as well as making sure there were no more large groups approaching I swapped rifles and down a couple more zombies at distances of 400-500 meters to attract more groups in.

After a few shots, and seeing more groups of zombies slowly approaching but not in range yet, I refocused on playing with the building portion of the system. The brick walls of this building had a durability of 350 points while the concrete surrounding the basement walls had a durability of 700 leaving doors with various levels of durability ranging from 150 for a wooden door to the 350 the ballistic resistant glass doors have or the 1000 the steel security doors have.

I was assuming the durability would be higher for system crafted items and I was curious how they compared to upgraded versions of themselves as well. I found these blocks were also like the system chests in how they were used and placed except that I could also mentally envision what shape and orientation I wanted them to take as well before placing them. 

I placed one along the outside edge of the rooftop wall, essentially extending the roof out by the 3 feet by 3 feet by 3 feet the block was sized at. When I placed it a plywood box, for lack of a better description, appeared and was attached in place magically. I could see this block had a durability of 50 points, which considering it was hollow was fair, and that I could also mentally pick the block back up to be placed somewhere else. 

I grabbed the stone axe I had made earlier in the day off my quick bar and noticed I could swing at the block while focusing on upgrading it, rather than farming it, and in three swings the box upgraded from a 50 durability hollow box into a single solid block of wood that now had a durability of 500 points! 

I knew that crafting would probably be better but a solid wood chunk has more protection than a solid brick wall in the real world? Hell yeah, my System is the best!