4 Chapter 4 - Travel, Military, and Quests
(Author's Note - Sorry about any bad spelling for the previous chapter and this one forwards. Grammarly's free version isn't so fast at picking these mistakes up when it reaches past a certain amount of words I think it's past 2k it starts to slow down and once past it 5k it could take me by the time I was in the next paragraph for it to pick it up and tell me. Also, dang so many viewers I am pleasantly surprised thanks!)
March 9th
Today is the 8th day of this new mad world. A week of this madness has already happened. I managed to get stronger already. I decided today I would travel out towards the military base and perhaps raid the dollar general near the high school first before heading down. I, however, decided against it. While I did gain wind magic making me have more versatility it didn't mean I could guarantee an escape if I faced another mutated one plus a place like that might've been raided earlier by those who received the text about the military taking in citizens inside their walls to protect them. In the end, I decided to just head down the military since I knew approximately where it was. After finishing packing I headed out with the now cleaned hunting knife, meat cleaver that we had in the house for some reason, and the pocket knife that was sitting on the storage boxes in case we had to open boxes for the restaurant at the house which were the only weapons I brought with me besides the remaining damaged kitchen knives that had been damaged by the mutant, the concrete, from stabbing, and from hitting the tree.
The normally 15-minute drive took me 45 minutes as I had to go around quite a few car crashes on the road. As I headed out there were also a few times I had to come out and fight a few zombies who seemed to be hiding in houses who came out after hearing the car driving down the road. The way I found easiest to kill them is to create a wind blade which cost me 0.1 magic attribute for 10 seconds and using the wind currents to launch it at the cost of 0.1 magic attribute points. The magic points seem to recover at around the rate of 0.1 every minute. So the recovery rate was quite fast. However, the max amount of magic which I started to call mana as it acted more as a mana stat was that it allowed me to create a wind blade for 20 seconds for 0.2 magic, then use a wind enchant to sharpen the wind blade by using another 0.1 to enchant it for 30 seconds, and finally, use the wind current to push the blade around at high speeds 7 times. Every time my magic stat went below 0.2 and recovered back to at least 1.0 it gained 0.01 magic attribute points. So I figured that must be the way to slowly increase my magic stat to 2.0 to upgrade wind magic past introductory wind magic.
When I was about to arrive I checked on my status to see how much I have gained as I hadn't really paid much attention to experience gain other than swearing at the stupid dinging sound that went off every time I killed a zombie either with magic or a knife.
(Rain) - Level 6, Experience 13/64, Human, Beginning Enhancer
Attributes - Strength 1.1, Speed 1.0, Stamina 1.0, Immunity 1.2, and Magic 1.07
Skills - Wind Magic (1/5), Analysis (max), Upgrade (max)
Looking at it my magic or mana attribute stat was coming along quite slowly but nicely. I likely could've leveled it more if I took a less direct route towards the military encampment, however, I decided against it as I felt it would be safer to get there rather than risk the supplies getting damaged should I get attacked by a zombie mutant again. Having looked back on it now. The higher strength attribute zombies seemed to have a naturally harder defense as well. Which in any case was worrying as although I never came across another mutant and the rest were around level 1 or 2 and the occasional level 3 as well. Perhaps that's what it meant that one was an early mutant? That is just simply mutated earlier than the average zombie did. At the same time, the other side of that idea is that an early mutation could just be the introductory phase of a mutation in a zombie. Like how in a game it's low tier, average tier, then a high tier for certain stages of evolution in an item or character.
Leaving that alone as I couldn't determine that just yet without encountering more mutants which I didn't want to encounter anyways. I happened to find a fireworks selling building on the way down the last street to the military base and I also took some of the fireworks with me as I could use it as a distraction for zombies had I needed to do so and the store was isolated in the midst of the highway so there weren't any zombies in there besides the store's manager whose body was sort of hanging over the counter as if it tried to attack something but failed to because of the counter is in the way and what it attempted to attack disappeared leaving it dangling on the counter there before I put the poor store manager to rest. I felt kind of bad killing it since although it was a zombie it didn't really lose any flesh or anything making it seem less human than the others. It just kind of stunk that was it but anybody, if they didn't wash for that long, would start to have an odor as well so I couldn't really make myself feel comfortable killing it other than trying to mentally persuade myself that I was putting the store's manager to rest.
It was around 12:30 when I saw the military base in the distance. Unsurprisingly enough I guess was that outside the wall I could see an assortment of cars waiting to get in along with people in military uniforms standing at the gate with guns ready and checking people coming through. There was also more military officers standing walking around the fence in groups of two or three at the least. At the same time, there were a few more patrol groups observing the people in the vehicles waiting to get in. I assumed likely in case they try to cause trouble or if any zombies came they were likely to take action. This part about taking action against the zombies was pretty easy to figure out as they had dead zombies strewn around all over the place and many of the cars waiting to get in that had clearly driven over them at this point. Sitting in line was quite boring they meticulously checked every person going in and out along with everything they brought along.
At around 1:00 I saw a man hugging onto the legs of one of the officers crying and likely begging while pointing at the freighted girl in the car. I wasn't exactly sure about what was going on just yet. Then I head the sound of a gun firing go off and the man hugging the officer's leg suddenly fell down a hole in his head. Then the little girl in the girl started crying and they had someone drag the girl out, bring her to the building on the side, check her before making an officer bring her and what I noticed to be only just a few things in the car along with them towards the base. Then another officer drove the now emptied car towards the blockade and moved it over there before parking it next to a line of other cars there.
When it was around 3:00 in the afternoon I saw that after another car it would finally be my turn to go into the base. They spent around 20 minutes searching the couple and their things and let them move on in. Now, it was finally my turn to go. Right as I was pulling up they told me to wait for a little while. After 10 minutes or so another group of military people came out and took over. Then they finally asked me to get out of my car. After telling me to go inside the small building to the side where a nurse and doctor was there. Seeing it was a guy the nurse closed the curtains on her side and the doctor told me to take off my clothes to check my body. After checking my body they asked me to remove the wrapping I had on my left side which was just holding an ice pack. After making sure that it was just a large bruise I was allowed to put back on my clothes and go back to the car. After coming out of the building they spent another 10 minutes checking my things before telling me to go ahead and head on to the base. They told me to go past three intersections and take a left at the fourth intersection where the military housing is at. In total it took me around 15 minutes of getting checked and another 15 minutes to get there, check in with the people at the building, and park in the small parking garage. After that, I spent another hour unpacking things back into the place I supposed to live inside of.
Finally finishing moving everything and finished eating it was now 5:00 in the afternoon. I spent the rest of my time slowly wasting my magic. I would create 10 wind blades for 10 seconds each to use up my 1.0 magic stat. Then spent another 10 minutes letting it recover back to 1.0 and then repeating it again. During this time I did nothing but continue to material my wind blades and then rest for 10 minutes and then repeat. After doing this for 30 minutes and 30 seconds my magic stat finally became 1.1 allowing me to manipulate up to summon up to 11 at a time if I wished. However, I continued to practice using 10 and used the other 0.1 magic stat as a buffer area to not feel so tired and need to lay on the bed for 10 minutes after just 10 seconds of using magic. Having finished getting 1.1 magic stat at 6 in the evening rested for 10 minutes. Following that, I spent time until 7:42 leveling my magic stat to get to 1.2 since it took another 100 hundred minutes and then around another two minutes interval since sometimes I didn't activate my magic soon enough and it took me twice the interval of the ten seconds I could keep it active for me to activate it then use it before laying there again. I repeated this magic exercise again but this time with 10 of the wind blades before letting it drop to 0.1 before letting it recover to 1.0 or 1.1 and then repeating. By the time I was done lazily leveling my magic stat in my room my magic stat was now at 1.31 and I finally decided to go to sleep for the night.
I had decided that tomorrow morning I would go to the work office or trade office that the person who gave me the key to the dorm room told me about. He explained it as due to the initial transformation in people they lost around 80% of their officers and around another 5% containing the initial madness resulting in them having only 15% of their forces left after facing that calamity. So although they have areas to grow things they have to clean them out and before they can obtain enough supplies they have to continue to work on getting resources until they can finish clearing the areas and making fields for people to work with. This was a problem cause they had to feed every they took in as well he told me that "If we don't send people on resource missions and tell them to bring stuff back then what can we do. We could only feed everyone some weird slop and rations and hope to last to around next year when crops are ready since the few greenhouses they have on the agricultural area is just small areas for a few of our fellow military that enjoys agriculture." so they had to offer people either food or military supplies or access more benefits like longer shower times, more water, or electricity all in return for what they bring back and give to us to allow to be sustained. Therefore, while mulling over this I decided to go to sleep for the night.
March 10th
Another new day has arrived today and I had woken up staring an unfamiliar ceiling. The ceiling was a white ceiling just like the closet, my room, or my college room. However, the shape and contours, the size of the ceiling, and the shape of the ceiling were different giving me the vibe that I was truly someplace else now. I checked the time on my phone on the dresser to my right and noticed it was already 10 in the morning. I got up went to the bathroom outside of the bedroom, used the bathroom, cleaned up, got dressed, and got a large bag of around 75% of my supplies I brought with me since I definitely couldn't use it all since it would spoil before I finished since I had grabbed everything in a two freezer from the house, the kitchen closet, and what they bought for me for college. Even had I wanted to keep the supplies most of it would've gone bad by the time I was ready to use it since there were too many supplies for me to use with only one refrigerator and freezer in the house. Then I headed out to the car before driving to the work office or supplies trading building and gave them this stuff. In return, I negotiated with them to be able to have unrestricted internet service on my cell phone, along with an increased amount of electricity allowed to be used, which they easily agreed to do so as they needed supplies as more and more people arrived each day and many didn't really bring much with them.
It wasn't to big a surprise that they agreed to allow me what I requested since there was around a month's worth of supplies for a restaurant I had stuffed into the car and I had given them 75% of that supplies. That was enough supplies for a restaurant who receives at least a couple of hundred of customers in a day for 22 and a half days theoretically. So, should they used the supplies slowly then it could last them a month a least since it will mainly be used to added into gruel to feed the freeloaders in the community as a sort of spice in their gruel, or a reward for their military personnel, or even be used for trading out for people who brought back supplies back and wanted to trade it in.
---------------------- Character goes off on a small pervy tangent feel free to skip ---------------------
However, for me, all I cared was having access to unrestricted internet and a higher electricity usage limit a day. After all this stress building up the past days, I just had to be able to access *cough* *cough* adult content *cough* *cough* in order to relax. It's not like I couldn't hold it in or just use my imagination but it was much easier to bust a nut with a visual image in front of you. However, let's be honest it's just not as enjoyable as having an actual visual content in front of you to enjoy which was why I wanted this so much. Although I only get an hour of internet usage a day and two hours of extra electricity each day it was still plenty as I could just download it onto my phone to enjoy. Then with my libido, I felt I could enjoy busting a nut for a few hours without a problem I felt if I really wanted to do so I could that way. After all, the stress of having a metaphorical Sword of Damocles hanging above my head for the past few days has made it harder to not want to masturbate than the actually going through a no nut November had actually given me.
After returning back to my home I took out some food of my full fridge ate something and immediately went online and then I spent the next hour masturbating. Feeling more refreshed after having finally having masturbating for an hour I finally left the house the day to do some of the resource quests and get stuff to trade in.
------------------------ Going back to normal after that small pervy tangent scene ---------------------
After finally leaving the military dorm house again it was now around 12:30 in the evening. I decided to head out and try to get to see if I could raid any locations that might have been less populated at the time of when this Apocalyptic Nightmare had all started.
(Author's Note - See what I did there! Eh! Eh! Sorry I just had to include it >.<)
It was around 1:30 I hadn't run into any zombies I was just driving slowly around the car crashes while thinking about what places I could raid. I know I couldn't raid a place like Walmart as there had to be hundreds in that place since remembering when I got knocked out when this all started it was 3:00 in the afternoon. That was a natural high time for people in many non-food stores. I also couldn't make it down to my parent's restaurant cause if I went it was likely I would get mobbed by zombies that are around the middle school across the street. I couldn't head to the store chains near the hospital as the hospital area was near Walmart as well and the hospital was usually quite busy during the day. I couldn't drive downtown as it was also past the middle school as well. Even if I take a lot of back roads then that would be asking to get mobbed by the ones in the housing communities I'd have to pass through. Finally, I decided to just head back down to the community I was living it originally. The place had been essentially cleared out. If there were any it was those in the houses that didn't escape the house and was still inside. Concluding that would be the best area to raid I decided to drive back down.
At around 2:15 I arrived back in the community. I only had to stop once to get rid of a level two zombie that was roaming around in front of the car near one of the churches in renovation on the way there. I went and raided the houses on my houses street. After raiding them one by one I turned back and went home at 4:15 in the afternoon since I was getting hungry at that point. I did encounter a few zombies in a few of the houses however, they were all level 1 zombies and there was only a total of ten of them. On the way back I decided to check my status while driving down the road to the military base.
(Rain) - Level 6, Experience 25/64, Human, Beginning Enhancer
Attributes - Strength 1.1, Speed 1.0, Stamina 1.0, Immunity 1.2, and Magic 1.33
Skills - Wind Magic (1/5), Analysis (max), Upgrade (max)
I when I got back to the military base I drove to one of the side entrances as those who go out for resources allowed access to the side entrances to check in through since they didn't have to check you, register you into their database, and then have assigned you one of the now empty dorm apartments. In the side entrances after you show them your pass all you have to do is let them check your car and have you get checked to make sure there weren't any injuries otherwise if you did I was told they would have to take you to into a quarantine for a few days to make sure nothing happened. Based on this fact that they kept checking I assumed they didn't know about enhancers like myself. I noticed after all that has happened that there was a zombie I ran over one time that didn't give experience so it was perhaps a mechanic where you only got experience from actually fighting the zombie, like in some of the zombie apocalypse based novels.
After eating a large meal I went over to the resource center and turned in what I got for the day. This time I traded it in for a pistol, 5 magazines of ammo for the pistol, and an extra 30 minutes of internet rights a day for a week. I was disappointed that unlike the first time I brought stuff they didn't give me a permanent increase to my access but couldn't really complain about it. After returning to my room at around 6 in the afternoon I worked on upgrading my magic to 1.4 status points before stopping for the day. I then sat at the desk in the living room with a piece of paper and a pencil writing down places to grind experience at. The requirements were first they couldn't be too overpopulated such as places like Walmart, the middle school, or big communities. Secondly, it would be best if they had a place where I could stay above the zombies and just launch blades of wind down at them so perhaps I might need to go to Mr.Roberts' house and take his ladder and then position myself on top of a roof of some building. Then finally, it has to be somewhat open of a place so I can still escape quickly from if I have to do so.
In the end, I decided to grind the medium gated community that was across the street from the small community I lived in. Even if people had tried to escape it was unlikely that they did escape and likely caused a blockade at the exit gate since that gate has always been slow. So if I sit on top of the small building in front of the gate I can take out the ones blocking the gate then move over to the first building of the community and climb onto it with Mr.Roberts ladder and then just sit there and clear the area. Thus, I finished my initial plan of what I plan to do for tomorrow. My goal was hopefully to clear out a good number of that community in order to level up since I wanted to reach level 10 and get to the status of evolver and see what's the difference between that and a normal enhancer. My only current guess as what it might do is perhaps it would increase one of my stats by a larger portion or perhaps give me another skill. If it gave me another skill I would prefer one that was versatile like wind magic, perhaps water magic so I wouldn't have to carry water around, or a fire magic as I could set up some flora and then burn it with magic as a trap would also be just as nice was just a thought running throughout my mind until I went to sleep for the night.
(Author's Note - I was thinking about putting the next day in. But RNG somehow had it that a mutant shall appear in the next one so I decided this chapter would get the short end of the stick while that one gets to be dragged out a bit due to a fight between Rain and another mutant. I was kinda surprised that I got mutant appearing so soon as the first one was planned and this one was pure chance. A 1/1000 chance to be exact is what I set a mutant appearing at was. So the fact out of the 132 zombies I had planned out for that the 103rd one actually got lucky enough to become a mutant was hella lucky XD. All that's left to see if he's lucky enough to get a skill book as well as that's a 1/100 chance. I doubt it.)
