13. A New Companion?

Blood and guts were painting the street red. Leon was charging forward with the newly acquired azure sword. Everytime he passed by a zombie it would be sliced in half at the waist or its head would be removed from its shoulders.

Spike was trailing a ways behind him while carrying Alexis. They continued like this for a couple of hours until his arms got tired. So he returned to spike and pulled out the obsidian bow and started preemptively shooting arrows into the zombies ahead of them.

At first he would miss a lot, unlike the sword it was much more difficult to use. Over time he began hitting more and more shots.

Around mid day, they decided to take a break and get some food in them. Since they have spike guarding them, they decided to set up camp in the middle of the street.

There were many buildings around but none of them looked to be in good shape and the time it would take to clean them up would just not be worth it.

Leon pulled out his trusty camping stove and began cooking up some sausage. Leon found that Alexis is an avid meat lover. So he always cooked up different meats when the chance arose.

While they were eating there meal, spike jumped up and started clacking while looking in a certain direction. A group of stray dogs suddenly emerged from the alley. They looked starved, like they haven't Eaten since the start of the apocalypse.

They were letting out these deep gutteral growls, they had patches of fur ripped out in different places and were definitely feral at this point.

Leon assumed the smell of meat is what attracted them. Normal people would try to be safer during the apocalypse but Leon is different now. He understands that before he was relying too much on spike to fight all his battles.

He needs to get stronger himself so that he doesn't get injured like this again. He might not be able to recover his eye sight even after he recovers.

He expected the smell to draw in more enemies. He wants to use them for training.

He stands up and pulls his obsidian bow from his back, takes aim, and fires at the closest stray dog.

The arrow made of mana flies out heading straight for the dog but it swiftly jumps to the side and dodges. Then it takes off running to attack Leon.

Leon quickly swings the bow on his back and unsheathes the azure sword, slashing out and striking the dog as it was leaping mid air. The stray dog falls to the ground in two pieces as blood flows out on the ground.

By this time the other strays have surrounded their makeshift campsite and are slowly moving in on Leon.

He needs to finish this quickly before they get close to Alexis. The azure sword in his hands let's out a low humming sound like electricity. Leon looks over at three of the dogs that are close together and releases a horizontal slash in their direction.

A horizontal blue slash breaks through the air and explodes directly into the three dogs killing them instantly.

Over next to Alexis, spike is fighting with one of the strays that snuck behind and tried to get Alexis. The stray dashes forward and bites spikes front left leg. It clamps down and tries to rip his leg off.

Unfortunately for him, spike doesn't have any meat to get bitten off. Spike rears and snaps down on the strays neck breaking it and throwing the stray aside.

Leon turns to the last dog. He's much bigger than the others and looks to be more intelligent as well. It doesn't matter though, Leon dashes forwards and slashes at it with his sword. The stray jumps backwards dodging the slash. Before Leon can recover, the stray leaps at his neck trying to take Leon down in one go.

That's when spike jumps in front of Leon and takes the full brunt of the attack. It doesn't hurt spike at all and he quickly recovers. Leon's releases slash after slash of the blue energy from his sword at the stray.

Surprisingly it is able to dodge most of them except the last on hits it right in the chest. It falls back a couple of feet and spike charges forward to finish it.

There's a huge cloud of dust blocking Leon's sight. Once spike ran inside the dust cloud he couldn't see them anymore and silently waited.

A couple of seconds later spike emerges with the large stray dog in his teeth. The stray is completely limp, dead.

Leon releases the breath he was subconsciously holding and walks over to spike.

"Good boy, spike!"

Spike drops the body on the ground and happily receives his masters praise.

"Clack clack!"

Leon pets the skeleton wolf on his skull as he jumps around excitedly. He looks over to the stray dog that he assumes was the leader of the pack.

He flips it over to reveal a D rank core and a shiny ring. Surprised, he grabs the items to examine them. The D rank core, although rare, was something he has seen before and stuffed it into his bag.

As for the ring, he holds it in the palm of his hand. It's a dark green color, very smooth and shiny. It's called the decrepit ring. It allows the user to summon a zombie dog to fight on the user's behalf.

Leon's eyes go wide once he reads this, it was already extremely lucky for him to get spike. But now he's obtained another summoning item!

He slips on the ring and immediately summons the zombie dog.

WHOOSH!

A swirl of energy congregated in front of him. After a few seconds it dissipates and leaves a large dog behind.

Honestly, it's disgusting.

Those were Leon's thoughts when he first laid eyes upon his new companion. It's green rotting flesh was loosely hanging from its body. It smelled like it bathed in a sewer drain. If not for its ability it was hard to say if Leon would ever summon it again.

It's ability was very fitting. It could breath out a mist of poisonous gas that would quickly degrade anything that came into contact with it.

It was powerful that's for sure. Leon hesitantly approached his new summon. It's half rotted tongue was hanging out of his mouth as he panted happily. Leon reached out and petted him.

If you could look past the absolutely horrid appearance, then he was actually pretty cute.

Either that or Leon is just starting to lose his grip on reality. Either way, he now has two protectors for him and Alexis.

After packing up the camping stove and food. They began walking down the street again. With the two dogs on either side of Leon and Alexis, nobody is able to get past them easily.

They came across a small group of zombies and Leon decided to test out his new companion. He commanded the zombie dog to release its poison breath on the group.

He barked happily and ran off towards the group. When he got in range he crouched down low and breathed out a putrid green mist that enveloped the group of zombies.

Before they could even react, their legs had already melted and they fell down only to have the rest of their bodies melted. It was quite the gruesome sight.

This ability would be very helpful against enemies with a high physical defence. Whether it was armor or even a shield, he would be able to melt it into nothingness.

Leon was extremely happy. He now has two companions that can fight separate from him and also protect Alexis. Who wouldn't be excited about such an item.

From this day forward Leon decided to be on the lookout for other summoning type artifacts. They were by far the best in his opinion.

As the sun drops past the horizon in the distance, Leon hurries to find a good place for the night. He kind of misses his place back in the settlement even if they were only there for a few days. It was comfortable and safe.

At least he doesn't have to worry about other people harming Alexis just to get to him. He finds a police station that looks like a good place to stay for tonight.

As the group walks inside the police station, they make there way farther back to the armory. There's glass on the floor that crunches with every step they take, and puddles of blood here and there but as usual, no bodies.

When they get to the armory where the police keep weapons and ammo, Leon pulls out the azure sword and strikes the lock off the gate. The inside is mostly untouched and clean. There are guns of all kinds lining the walls and tables.

Leon cleans off a table for them to sleep on. He spreads a couple of blankets across the table. After closing the gate, he and Alexis lie down on the table to get some rest. Spike and his new friend are laying in the floor in front of the gate to keep watch.