Level Up, Farming.

As Rael heard the inhuman sound suddenly stop, his grin slowly faded away.

'I need to find a way to get out of this place.'

A few seconds later, Rael's ears perked up as he heard someone running down the hallway.

"Stop!" Rael suddenly shouted.

As if following an order, the person who had been running stopped near Rael's confinement room.

"There's a monster here!" A familiar voice was heard; it was Daniel, who had abandoned his colleagues and ran for his life. Luckily, the 'thing' didn't follow him.

Or perhaps it didn't know how to open a door?

"Let me out of here, I can help. Did you see the strange message given by the Apocalypse System?"

Hearing those unfamiliar terms, Daniel, still shocked by the previous events, was stunned for a while.

After shaking his head to discard those useless thoughts, he hurriedly replied, "Stay away from the door. I'm going to open it. But if you make any sudden moves, I'll shoot!"

'This bastard is probably afraid, seeing that he didn't respond to my threat. I'm going to milk out every bit of information you may know about this… Apocalypse.'

Making sure that his gun was loaded, Daniel pointed it at the door before slowly taking his keys out and unlocking it.

Creaking sounds could be heard as the old door of the confinement room slowly opened.

Daniel was still sweating from his earlier running, and hearing those creepy sounds made by the door didn't help him calm down at all.

In fact, it only intensified his fear even more.

But after the door opened by itself, he saw that Rael was calmly sitting in the opposite direction, looking at him.

Because the confinement room had only a small 30 x 30 centimeter window, it was poorly illuminated.

Adding to Rael's disheveled black hair, he looked very menacingly in Daniel's eyes.

"What do you know about this Apocalypse System?" Asking this, Daniel pointed the gun at Rael; he was prepared to shoot if the latter made a wrong move.

Raising his hands up in the air as if surrendering, Rael smiled as he said, "There's no need to be so panicked; I won't do anything foolish. You have a gun pointed at me, after all."

Despite saying that, Rael's face didn't have an ounce of fear on it. But Daniel didn't see this; in his mind, the young man before him was too afraid to do something else.

"Step out of the room carefully; don't make sudden moves."

"Oi, I'm not so stupid; don't worry about me," said Rael as he slowly got closer to Daniel. "You should worry about the thing that followed you here."

Daniel jolted when he heard Rael say that; by instinct, he slightly turned to check his surroundings.

And that was everything that Rael was waiting for; he suddenly dashed towards the man, using every ounce of power stored in his body to increase his speed.

His footsteps were very nimble as he rushed ahead, completely not thinking about the fact that Daniel may pull the trigger by mistake, which he did when his ears perceived a sound coming from Rael's direction.

Bang!

Trying his best to turn his head back and see what Rael just did, Daniel was also confident in his thousands of hours of practicing his aim.

'That bastard really tried to kill me.'

Even to the point of being close to shooting someone without looking.

However, Rael was smart enough to take every possibility into consideration. That's why he didn't dash directly at Daniel but slightly to his right.

This allowed him to dodge a bullet and cover a few meters, leaving only two meters between himself and Daniel.

Perhaps he was really calculating his opponent's move as he was running, but Rael took out a piece of metal from his sleeves that looked very sharp before throwing it toward Daniel's neck.

Unfortunately for Rael, Daniel had already turned his gaze to him and proceeded to dodge the incoming attack.

Something he did when seeing Rael's hand throwing something at him.

Still, no matter how fast one could think, if the body didn't keep up, it was all for naught.

The small piece of metal thrown by Rael managed to scratch Daniel's neck, but it was nothing serious; only a few drops of blood were lost.

'This fucking bastard…!' When rage overtook his senses, Daniel didn't wish for anything else other than killing Rael ten thousand times.

The real problem, though, was that Rael never intended to kill Daniel with that; it was only a distraction meant to serve his purpose.

Getting closer.

After being an arm away from Daniel, Rael flashed a grin before punching the man in an unexpected zone, the neck.

The same area scratched by Rael's sneaky attack and one where Daniel didn't expect him to try and punch.

Using his free hand to block the attack sent his way, it was too late for Daniel to do anything else other than fully taking the raw force of a punch launched by Rael with his neck.

Crack! A cracking sound was heard, and then Daniel's body lost balance and fell to the floor, dropping the gun in the process.

"Mmpf… You…" Clutching his neck, Daniel could barely speak. His neck was probably broken by Rael's monstrous power.

'He's going to kill me… He's going to kill me…'

Some tears gathered in Daniel's eyes when seeing Rael get closer and closer to him.

"You know, I don't hate you."

Rael stopped one meter in front of Daniel.

"I understand that you were only a pawn sent here to keep an eye on me. But you're also a clown."

As Rael said this, he squatted in front of Daniel while taking the gun from the floor.

"And I hate clowns."

———

(Congratulations! You received 50 XP!)

Rael wasn't surprised by this; he checked his XP bar and saw that it also changed.

[Experience Points](XP): 50/100

"So I'm halfway there, huh. I wonder what I'll get when leveling up." Rael got up from Daniel's body, he looked at his bloodied hands, which he used to strangle the guard before going his way.

Looking at the rest of the solitary confinement rooms, Rael listened for a while before smiling like a fool, a dangerous one.

"It's time to farm a bit more XP…"

As Rael took his time to gather experience, more and more people around the world began to awaken from their deep slumber.

Unfortunately, some of them died right away because those people who were in close proximity to them transformed into something else.

Right when the last person was awakened, a new message from the voice who announced the apocalypse was heard.

"Detected that every life form is now conscious."

"Total number: (4.509.272.383)/(9.383.266.912)"

**Quest Log**

- Main Quest: Survival

- Objective: Survive for the next 24 hours.

- Reward: Unique Skill.

Rael smiled, seeing this. 'I've been waiting for something like this. Hahaha!'

Laughing as he checked his XP bar once more, Rael decided to take his time.

[Level]: 2

[Experience Points](XP): 30/400

Not caring at all that the numbers shown by the system referred to the people who had lost their lives up to this point...

'Firstly, I should use these points…'

- Attribute Points: 6

It seemed that every time he leveled up, he would receive 3 Attribute Points (AP); currently, Rael only had 6 of them.

Three points were allocated to stamina, one to strength, and the remaining two to agility.

**Attributes**

- Strength: 15

- Stamina: 15

- Intelligence: 12

- Agility: 14

- Perception: 16

Even though he only increased his attributes by 6 points, Rael could feel his improvement; it was like he trained himself for a few months.

'Now let's go back to farming.' Feeling the joy of getting stronger, Rael was excited to see how far he could go.