9 Chapter 8 - Change Begins

(Author's Note - Ugh. I had to rewrite this. I thought I had hit save but it didn't actually save it for some reason so I guess my mouse screwed up and didn't actually click. Now I gotta redo this chapter from after the first paragraph.)

(Rain) - Level 10, Experience 28/1,000, Human, Evolver

Attributes - Strength 1.3, Speed 1.6, Stamina 1.3, Immunity 1.8, and Magic 1.81

Skills - Wind Magic (1/5), Healing Magic (1/5), Analysis (max), Upgrade (max)

Points - 1 Skill Point

March 15th

A new day arrived. Today was much cloudier than the previous two weeks. It's likely to start raining later today or tomorrow based upon the clouds as well. I decided I might as well make use of the day before it starts to rain if it does today or the day after. Throwing on a random rain jacket I had taken from the house one of the times I had gone back I left with the food and water from the last excursion where I picked people up. I also grabbed a few knives and my pistol with the extra magazines as well before heading out. Going into the car I drove down to the gas station in front of the community to get gas for the car while I was out since the car had gotten low on gas.

After, getting gas I continued down towards the direction of the high school. The high school normally being a bad location was considered a decent one right now since considering the timing of the Apocalypse knocking everyone out was at 3 in the afternoon but the school here only runs until 2:30 in the afternoon while most of the people would have left by 3 in the afternoon since people don't like staying in the school longer than they are required to do. I had stayed after once cause I had to stay after for a monthly club meeting once and by 3 around 90% of people have left at that point. Which for a few thousand people with only around 90% left makes it so there are only a few hundred people remaining. On top of that, there are two buildings in which people would be spread over as well making it so that each building spread throughout would only have around 200 at most per building. However, based upon asking the military personnel before the conversion rate of a person turning is around 80% for the initial transformations. With that, the number would at most 160 zombies per building. With at most 40 survivors per building. Add in a few who would definitely hide it out in the cafeteria together, those who would fight back, and those who run away if I had to guess there would be around at most 25 survivors if they were lucky. Since quite a number of those who stay after school have cars so based around the average that would be my guess of around 50 in total if they didn't drive each other away from one building to another. It's also quite possible there are fewer people and zombies as some days just tend to have fewer people who stay after.

Arriving near the school was quite difficult. I already had to stay take down 37 zombies on the way here making my experience points reach 102/1,000. However, for some reason, they were all level 2 zombies. Which was unusual considering just a couple days ago they were still around 50% level 1 zombie. Yet, today I have yet to encounter a level 1 zombie today. They were all at level two with around 10% at around level 3. It was almost as if all the zombies had just naturally leveled up. I had thought it was just the medium level community was just a harder place to level up as they probably ate most of the inhabitants there and a quite a few of each other when people tried to escape. However, it seems now that perhaps that idea was wrong and it was actually the zombies were getting stronger naturally as well.

While pulling into the furthest area from the actual school building I could see around 40 zombies lumbering around outside. I pulled out one of the old kitchen knives I had brought. After equipping one in each hand and a spare left on the ground near the car I enchanted wind magic on the blades before I headed to the building closer to the back of the school first as it seemed the distribution of outside zombies was less than the one in front. Heading by foot walking along the road I walked over to the furthest zombie with the knives in hand and ready to attack. As I reached within fives meters of the zombie it seemed to have sensed me as it turned towards me groaning as it rushed towards me in its fast limp walking speed. Dodging it's left swing by going to backward I use the left knife and stab it into this now extremely dead male student zombie's face.

Having killed it I continued down the street having started from the back and continued killing the 40 zombies out front in the parking lot one by one. After slowly clearing them out my experience reached 182/1,000 points. My magic from enchanting the blades reached a total of 1.83 points when I was finished killing the ones outside. Walking around towards the front of the building towards the other parking lot I killed another 30 zombies with 6 being level 3 and the rest were level 2 zombies. After killing these ones in front my experience reached 242/1,000 points and my magic only got to 1.85 cause I wasted some to make it go on purpose. Continuing to walk around the building all I found was one janitorial zombie in the back of the buildings that was level 3 making my experience now 242 points with no increase in magic since I felt it a waste to burn through magic just since I killed one and I would have to wait for it recharge to 1.0 points to gain even 0.01 of magic so considering the time I decided to be against that idea. After circling from the back of the furthest building in the school I went and checked inside from the door closest to the lunch room. I could indeed see that there were scratch marks from zombies on the door and 24 zombies in front of the door. Clearly, there were people, or a person, inside who considered the food and drink problem and rushed in through the entrance line doors to get inside.

Trying to open the door to from outside that lead to the building that was near the entrance to the kitchen I pulled it and it was locked on this side. With the shaking of the door from me pulling it back towards me I alerted the zombies in front of the door as they all rushed towards the door and pushing it open after pushing on top of each other. When the door finally opened from them pushing up against the door the frontmost ones toppled over while the ones behind either fell over on top of them with the few lucky ones walking over of the ones that had fallen down. Using my knives enchanted with wind magic I killed the lucky two standing zombies. Then I created a total of 16 wind blades from above and stabbed dropped it down on the zombies' heads by creating it from above and letting it fall into their heads killing them. Then the remaining six zombies, that were on the bottom of the heap, then I killed them with a normal stab to the head with the knives while they were weighted down by the other zombies' bodies on top. After my magic regenerated I used my wind magic's wind compression to push the 24 dead bodies out into the grassy area behind the side door leaving them there to rot or to be eaten by other zombies as a bait. I walked inside the building with my knives in my hands staring into the main hallway, that was in front only, seeing another ten down the main hall and another two at the end of the hallway towards the right. I headed to clear out the side hallway first. After killing those two zombies my experience gained another 52 points letting me reach 294 points in total.

The side hall had two other branching hallways on the right and one large classroom towards the left. Checking inside the big classroom it was empty which wasn't that strange as this computer room wasn't likely a place for a tutoring session for students. I checked the furthest branching hallway from the door to the kitchen. I checked every room in the hall and found only another 12 zombies spread through the classroom. Most of which were teachers who were still working rather than students. I also found one dead body of a person. This poor teacher had his whole body torn apart with the only things remaining were his bones, clothes, and his items lying around him. Clearly, this man didn't have a good time dying considering it looks like he was eaten alive.

Having cleared out this hallway I went down to the other branching hallway in the side hall. After clearing out every single room in this hallway there were another two bodies of what was presumably the bodies of one male student and one female student. The only things remaining besides their bones, blood, was their clothes, and bags. In total, this hallway had another 14 zombies in total. Finishing checking this side hallway branch that was labeled as the engineering classes area according to the school, I headed around and continued cleaning up the area.

----------------------------------------- A few hours time skip ---------------------------------------------

In the end, aside from the cafeteria and kitchen, I had killed a total of 156 zombies that were inside the building. Surprisingly out of these zombies not many had leveled up much, some were closer but not many reached level 3 only 13 of them did and there was no level 4 zombies somehow with over a hundred usually at least one would be a level 4. Aside from the initial 24 zombies, I killed to enter the building's door it was considered to be a rather low ration. At the same time, in the hallways, I had found many dead bodies. There was a total of 26 more dead bodies found in the main hall and side hallways. There clearly weren't many survivors if I include the number of bodies found in the first side branch hallway. With those dead bodies, there was a total of 29 dead bodies. Following this, I decided to check my status before heading to deal with the cafeteria and then the kitchen.

(Rain) - Level 10, Experience 580/1,000, Human, Evolver

Attributes - Strength 1.3, Speed 1.6, Stamina 1.3, Immunity 1.8, and Magic 1.92

Skills - Wind Magic (1/5), Healing Magic (1/5), Analysis (max), Upgrade (max)

Points - 1 Skill Point

With this, my magic points really went up as I spent a long time clearing the hallways out slowly and retreating back towards the buildings outside to recharge my magic. I only needed to get another 0.08 points left for my wind magic and healing point to reach the conditions for automatic upgrading to level 2. I'm really interested in what kind of magic I can make use of after making it past the first level. For wind magic, I was hoping for a more manipulatable wind magic skill as the ability to use compressed wind with healing magic is really ineffective. You can only place it above the targeted area and let it decompress out with so the healing magic covers the body. Otherwise, I have to physically touch the target location of the healing magic with only an effective area of around 10 centimeters without wind magic spreading the effects out of the healing magic out.

Finally having reached cleaning the school's secondary building up of any zombies besides if there are any in the kitchen and cafeteria. Peeking in through the door to the cafeteria I looked inside and saw only two zombies. However, the door was blocked and I had no way to get through this easily. With not much choice I created a wind magic blade at 0.1 cost, then I used another 0.3 points of magic to triple enhance the sharpness of the wind blade. Then using my full strength I attacked the door and cut off the handles and pulled them out. With the lock no longer in place, I pushed open the door by ramming it and managed to open the door despite the table blocking the way after using my full force. Having finished breaking in the two zombies hearing the noise started to rush towards me. Surprisingly when I used analysis on them one was actually the missing average level 4 zombie and the other was just a level 2.

My magic had dispersed by the time they arrived near the door. Creating another two wind blades using 0.2 points of my magic that had recovered to 1.6 by the time they arrived. Backing up, I enchanted the two blades of magic with wind magic to make them sharper twice each using up another 0.4 magic. Then lightly tossing the blades in the air I used 4 compressed layers of wind on each blade two to straighten them out and two to accelerate them forwards piercing the zombies through the brain, sending a mass of blood, brains, and juices flying and spilling on the ground with the bodies of the zombies. Meanwhile, my blade continued into the wall of the cafeteria and right before creating a hole in the wall I dispersed the wind blades leaving only a current of wind that dispersed before the wall to hit.

Having made my magic drop down to 0.22 I still needed to waste it down to below 0.2 points so I created another wind blade and peaked my head inside of the cafeteria in case there was one more hidden in a corner, however, there seemed to be none left. Taking this chance and ignoring the tables blocking the kitchen, while letting my wind magic charge up to max, I ended up taking a break to eat since I was getting hungry. I went over to the water fountain and cleaned my hands before grabbing a can of "mixed congee" which is basically the same as an instant meal. It had a mix of some liquid, beans, and rice. After finishing the two cans of food, I used the water fountain to clear them out before using the water fountain to clean off the plastic spoons that came with each can. Taking a break one of the remaining tables that were not sitting against a door I rested for a little while longer after my magic had restored.

Slowly I cleared the way to the door and cleared out the tables blocking the tables one by one by moving them towards the middle of the room. In case I got attacked by a zombie or a person I cautiously knocked against the door first to see the response. If it was a zombie I would shortly hear groaning and them knocking on the door. However, hearing no groaning I figured it was people behind the door instead then. Realizing it was people behind the door I decided to try shouting to them through the door since I cleared out the zombies in the area. Oddly enough the kitchen didn't even have a back entrance for me to just bust through so I had to awkwardly try to get in from one of the doors near the side entrance in the cafeteria or the main entrance near the side door to the outside.

(Rain) - "I know you're in there! Please respond! I'm a human, not a zombie! If you can hear me answer me! Otherwise, I'm breaking the door down!"

(???) - "Wait! Wait! Don't break the door down! You idiot, if you keep shouting you're gonna attract those zombies!"

(???) - "Hey! Don't call someone an idiot without a reason! He would be dead if he didn't kill the zombies in the cafeteria or lure them out already! Let him in!"

(Rain) - "Open the door in 10 seconds or I'm breaking it down!"

(???) - "Alright! We got it we are opening the door! Don't break it!"

After they opened the door I saw a total of five survivors inside. Three males and two females survivors. They seemed to have cleared out areas for themselves to sleep on the floor. There was even a blanket on the ground as well. I could only think that perhaps one of these students brought a blanket. Noticing me looking around after entering they closed the door behind me. After looking around I decided to speak to them a bit.

(Rain) - "Hello, my name is Rain. I wanted to ask you guys something real fast. Are there no surviving adults? No teachers at all? Did they leave you or did they all die?"

(Albert) - "Hi there Rain. I'm Albert Brown a sophomore at the school. I'm kinda like the leader of our group. To answer your question the few teachers that were alive either left as fast as they could or for the two that wanted to go out and get some help they never returned."

Albert was a tall guy. He is 2 meters tall which is the same as being over 6 and a half feet tall. He is an extremely tall person. Although his eyes are kinda scary looking I feel that he is at least nice based upon what I have gotten so far. Especially considering the glasses guy at the door was the one trying to not let me in originally while Albert is the one who was reasonable enough to figure out it was safe and let me in.

(Albert) - "Can I ask you something? How is your hair such a naturally deep blue with lighter blue highlight? It looks extremely natural compared to the hair color changes I've seen before. It also doesn't look like a wig as well. I was curious about that. Hope you don't mind me asking you."

(Rain) - "My hair? I don't know how it happened. It just happened overnight one day without me realizing till the next day."

(Albert) - "I see. Perhaps a natural mutation of the hair instead of you becoming a zombie like the others I can only presume."

(Rain) - "So, do you all plan to stay here? I can take you guys back to the military base where they are taking survivors if you would like. However, it would be more convenient if I asked this now, but do any of you own a car on the campus? If so that would allow me to take you guys back after I clear the other building for any survivors."

(Albert) - "Wait. Clear out the other building? Did you kill the zombies in this building? From the engineering hall all the way to the weightlifting's room?"

(Rain) - "Indeed I did. I can be considered a somewhat seasoned zombie hunter right now."

(Albert) - "I see. Let me speak to the others real fast. I will tell them what you told me."

(Rain) - "Alright. That's not a problem at all."

After Albert went and called them they sat huddled around in the opposite corner of the room with the occasional glances shot at me and my currently slightly bloody appearance from killing the zombies at the beginning. The ones I stabbed with the normal knives got my pants dirty. So my pants were currently still covered in splashes of blood. Finally, after another 15 minutes, they came to a conclusion. However, considering Albert is the only one who was talking to me and the others were cautiously staring at me I could tell that either they didn't trust me or they thought I was dangerous considering if I was right I had killed zombies and most of them didn't look like actual zombies besides those that somehow unhinged their jaws or were covered in blood from eating a person.

(Albert) - "We have come to a conclusion. We would like it if you could bring us to the military base camp today if possible. Some fear that if you go to the other building you might not make it out and be able to return to take us there. So they wish for you to take us there to the base now if possible Rain."

(Rain) - "Alright, you five grab your things. We are heading out."

Saying that I grabbed a knife from under one of the kitchen tables on the side and had it in hand before turning around and opening the door to the side entrance I came into the building from. After, walking out they saw the bodies of zombies throughout the hallway and outside the building when they stepped out and nevertheless they were all shocked by what they saw. All dead with heads open and pouring out. Leading them to the car I had to open the back seats up and then all of them put their stuff in the back behind the back seats. Then we headed out towards the military base. After driving there it was already a bit late by the time we got there. It was around 6 at night. The camp still had lights running with their generators running hard still. After arriving there at the front entrance that had only one car in front we waited for another twenty minutes before heading for our turn. I stepped out of the car telling them to come out and head to the building over there on the side for them to get checked. Pulling out my identification card I told them I found these survivors in the high school's secondary building. After a few rounds of questioning and them checking our belongings, they told me to they would get someone to send them in and that I could go by myself back to doing my things as they would take responsibility for them from there. Thanking the officers there I headed to get myself checked and came back out after that and they had already grabbed their stuff and left. Not much choice since it was somewhat late now and it would be a waste to go back at this time as if I do I would just save myself an hour drive since by now most of the cars had been bulldozed off to the side for the main roads leading down to the military base in order for smoother transit of personnel.

When I arrived at the house I ate a little bit of food from the refrigerator, cooked, after I finished eating, and showering it was now 8:00 at night. Having finished that I decided for the next three hours to raise my magic stat up towards 2.00 so my magic skills upgrade. After only 2 hours and 40 minutes of my planned 3 hours of training had passed my magic stat had finally hit a full 2 points. Right then I received a notification telling me I did indeed finally finish pushing my magic stat up.

(???) - "Congratulations! Magic stat has reached 2.00 in total. All magic skills now level 2/5. Wind Magic has gained two new abilities. Wind Manipulation to control air currents and Wind Defense that creates a layer of wind that blocks up to double your current magic stat in damage for 4 hours. All old Wind Magic skills have increased effects now. Healing Magic has gained zero new abilities. Healing Magic effects increased and the range of healing magic has increased double it's prior size now."

With that, I tested the new wind magic skills somewhat. Wind blade that was a previously a small blade the size of a butter knife was now the size of a proper dagger. Despite the increase in size the weight, feel, and usage of magic all stayed the same. On top of that my wind compression magic now can double compress for the same cost of a single compression did before. Meanwhile, my enchanting magic rather than an increase in strength increased in its number usages. The wind enchants can now not only increase strength but also be applied to something to provide a natural draft wind pushing on it towards its directed direction which thereby increases the speed of the target by 5% and the amount of wind pushing it forward varied. The Wind Manipulation ability costs 0.2 to use, however, the effects of it are just as good as wind compression but its a bit easier to control which kinda makes up for its higher cost 0.1 at the same time has the ability to have better control than wind compression since manipulating wind was easier to control and wind compressions is the same as trying to roughly control explosive packs of wind instead of a steady stream of wind. Finally, I gave up on the idea of wind defense as I wouldn't be able to shower as it was likely a skill that would block the water from falling on due to constant wind that would be blocking my body for 4 hours.

(Author's Note - Next time we go back to school. Yep. Again. Gotta finish clearing the other building you know. For those of you who read ahead on the name list then yeah this next chapter will include the girls.)