The Start of the End...and the Beginning of the Next Act!

"Yo, Ryan! You have to come see this! Those fucking Obelisks just cemented themselves into the ground!" I gave an enthusiastic shout as I watched the few hundred feet tall, sleek black Obelisk cemented into the streets of Washington D.C. I watched as the Military prodded at the massive object...then it started to get weird.

People just started to fall to the floor as I watched, my horror only growing when the people started to get up and started to bite people. The last thing I saw was the military personnel who hadn't fallen to the floor opening fire on the ones who had.

If I had to compare it to anything it was like..."Zombies..." I whispered to myself before feeling anxiety and fear pang through me. Goddamn Zombies? It was such a fantastical idea...but what else could explain what was happening to those people on the TV? They fell down, convulsed a bit, got back up and started biting people. That's the MO of a Zombie.

"Ahhh! Get away from me!" my thoughts were cut off by a shrill screaming and I found myself jumping up from the sofa at the scare. Turning around I looked toward the door of the apartment - that voice was coming from across the hall from...what was her name? Stacey, I think?

This would be the point in a novel where the protagonist would rush to save the damsel in distress. Especially if it were a girl like Stacey - she was beautiful beyond belief.

But I just stood there in fear. My earlier thoughts were becoming more and more cemented by the screams of Stacey and others on the floor of the dorm building I lived in. I heard people begging, people bargaining...I'm pretty sure I heard them dying. But those thoughts were soon drowned out when I had the sudden urge to check the hallway of the floor I was on.

It was a stupid idea, but a creeping suspicion egged me on and before I knew it, I was peeking through a crack in the door. It was 8ish in the afternoon so the cheap lights were flickering and illuminating the cheap carpet of the hallway and one thing became very apparent to me - the hallway looked untouched and as clean as it usually was. Which struck me as weird - from the screams, shouldn't there be blood everywhere?

I calmly thought this before I came to a stunning realization that made my blood run cold:

Their attackers had been in their apartments with them. The people on the TV who dropped and started convulsing out of nowhere - if that happened there...what stopped it from happening everywhere?

I closed the door, the flow of my blood thrumming in my ear as I turned around and looked to where Ryan, my roommate had been last - the bathroom.

Bending down, I picked up a baseball bat I kept near the door, which was near our rooms, in case someone tried to break in. We lived in a college dorm apartment with other college students but you never knew how desperate someone could be to steal your stuff. So I convinced Ryan that it was a good idea and we'd brought a few, placing them around the house.

I held the metal baseball bat in my hand and squeezed it for comfort before creeping to the bathroom door. As I approached, called out to Ryan but all I got was a few shuffling noises and groans which didn't spell out a good thing.

My sense of hearing was deafened by the blood rushing around and that being the only thing my ears could seem to pick up other than the noises of the shuffling and groaning inside.

Gathering my courage, I placed my foot against the door handle before letting my weight go against it. The door creaked but I knew that the latch on the other side had been locked as was per in our bathroom - all the bathrooms in this building had a latch lock on the inside of the bathroom. For privacy and all that.

And it seems to be the only reason Ryan's inside the bathroom and not out here trying to gnaw my face off.

It's sad to admit it but my roommate has turned. I don't see another reason for why he hadn't come out of the bathroom after all my calling. Even if he was scared he could have answered me, right?

Thinking this I sighed before bringing my weight backward and off the door as I brought my foot closer to my body before I burst it forward and leaned my body forward to give it some extra momentum. I aimed for just above the handle and with a resounding crack, the door inched forward as I heard the latch lock bending under the weight of my kick bashing into it. I re-found my balance before repeating this process.

I saw Ryan through the gap as I did this - his skin was pale and his veins were black. After the first kick he went into a berserk state and his milky white eyes were trained on me like I was a tasty treat.

Those eyes and the image of what had become of my friend...it sickened me.

Zombie Ryan pulled at the door and the ever-increasing gap with a fervor that scared the shit out of me, to be honest.

Out of the two of us, despite being a few inches shorter, I'd always been the more athletic one. I did a bit of baseball in freshman year and I'd kept up with my exercise so I could stay fit and so my body didn't lose it's tightness that seemed to attract the ladies so. But right now, I could tell the thing in front of me could overpower me in a heartbeat if I gave it a chance.

Every pull it gave at the door cracked the wood further and contorted the lock more than my kicks could, so in the end, I conserved my energy and just readied the bat with both my hands squeezing the metal so much my knuckles had gone pure white.

My breathing only sped up and so did my heart beat, the adrenaline I'd only ever experienced during an important baseball game flooding through my system as I realized that if I messed this up, my life was gonna genuinely be at stake. This wasn't a game. It wasn't like DnD. It felt more like Dark Souls...but there were Bonfires in this world, so I guess I can't count on respawning, huh?

I mentally joked with myself to try and keep a remnant of calm but just as I finished that, the door finally gave way and with a hoarse and dry roar, the zombie who used to be my friend charged at me.

Time seemed to slow down as I let my muscle memory take over as I swung the bat.

Despite my fear, it seemed slightly unfounded. The zombie was clumsy and slower than the average person despite it's obvious displays of strength earlier. It just had it's hands outstretched at me and it's attack didn't seem particularly scary. But my fear or suspicion didn't falter and I swung the bat with even more strength.

*CRACK!*

The bat hit the side of it's head and it's head instantly went to the side with a sick crunch, the top side of it's head - where I'd hit it - caving in and splitting open, leaking a clear liquid that was soon followed by blackish blood.

But despite it being my dead friend's corpse, I didn't let up. In fact, that probably influenced my decision to bring the bat back and swing again, this time fully stepping into the swing. I didn't want to look at this sick and twisted deprivation of my friend any longer.

It was cold-hearted to be able to mutilate his corpse, I know...but I was running on survival instincts at this point so such things didn't really matter to me.

The second hit came into contact with the side of the zombie's neck and fully broke it, causing the zombie's head to fall to the side and it's body to crumble to the ground like a puppet without strings. But fueled by adrenaline and not knowing when to stop, I lifted the bat and slammed it into the downed zombie. Again and again. Up and down.

I kept going until I wasn't even hitting it's head anymore, just the gory carpet underneath where it's head had been. When I finally noticed this, I felt the bat drop from my hand as I fell backward onto my ass, a certain numbness flowing over me.

Everything went quiet or rather it would be better to say that it felt like I was hearing everything around me through a hollow wall of plaster. My skin was tingling and I lifted a hand up to my face and upon feeling wetness I brought it back to see what it was - blood. Looking to my forearms, I saw the splatters of blood scattered over them, along with some of that clear liquid that I could only guess was Cerebrospinal fluid.

I felt like I wasn't in my body anymore as I looked at the carnage of both the body and the what that had done to my body - painting it with gore, if what I'd seen was anything to go by.

Suddenly, seeing the crushed skull and blood, I lurched forward and threw up the lunch I'd just eaten onto the floor in between me and the corpse.

I kept throwing up as I smelt the air - a metallic smell I quickly realized was blood and a smell of what smelt like a corpse that had been dead for a few weeks and left in the sun which I also realized was the zombie. I kept throwing up until I was eventually just drying heaving bile out of my stomach. It was painful and my vision blackened at the time when I could breath.

I used the inside of my shirt to wipe away the tears the vomiting had brought out of my eyes and I saw something that...stunned me.

A screen that you'd expect to see in a novel about the apocalypse or in a game.

[System] Loading…

Registering Player [Luthor]…

[System] Updated…

Level Up!

Congratulations! You have defeated a [Zombie] Lv1

Achievement: [Undead Slayer I] - Kill a single Undead Creature of any level

Calculating Randomized Reward…

DING!

Reward: Rare Rank Bloodline [Half-Ogre] + 1500 Credits + Membership of the System

"What...?" was the only thing I could get out before a blob of glowing red blood appeared in front of me and shot into my chest. Then started the pain. Pain so harsh and intense that I couldn't even scream as my jaw locked itself up.

I started to convulse and when my vision blacked, some mystical force kept me from going unconscious like it wanted me to feel what was happening to my body.

Part of me that was conscious started to panic thinking I was becoming a zombie, but a more rational part of my psyche slapped that thought away when I remembered that one of my rewards was a bloodline of sorts. Half-Ogre. Was that what was happening to me? Was I becoming a Half-Ogre?

But these thoughts were all soon buried under the pain of feeling my skin splitting open and stretching back together before knitting the splits together and making the skin stronger than before.

I felt my bones cracking open and then crumbling to pieces before rebuilding themselves from the foundations up. It was excruciating. But I could also tell that there had been a qualitative change in how they were put together. Like they were stronger and denser. But just like everything else, those thoughts were drowned in a sea of unending pain.

And so, it went on - my painful metamorphosis.