Chapter 3: Imminent death

In the hallway below he encountered some good news. There were a couple of dead zombies. Someone had killed them recently. There were still a handful of them left, but they didn't cause much trouble. Soon, Adam found himself in front of half a dozen charred corpses. He approached the first apartment and knocked on the door. To his relief, one of his neighbors opened it.

"Adam! So you're alive after all."

"Yes, Jane, I'm glad you're all right. The world has gone mad."

"I'd invite you in, but I've got the place a mess and I really didn't expect anyone to dare leave their apartment."

Jane was a beautiful woman, and although she and Adam had been on a couple of dates, nothing had come of it. Her personality was as bright as the sun, and despite the situation they were in, she was still talking and smiling as always. However, Adam noticed that her eyes were bloodshot and her tone of voice was different. It was obvious that all this had affected her, so he proceeded to explain again what he suspected.

"I would help you, but I can't anymore. You don't know how close I came to dying. I only killed these zombies in the hallway when I felt I could do it safely. I'm not ready for anything stronger."

Adam felt a little disappointed. He was about to say goodbye when the door to the apartment next door flew off with a bang and a zombie appeared snarling. Adam cursed, brandished the flamethrower and fired, while Jane slammed her door shut.

[Zombie Crawler].

To his horror, the zombie jumped, avoided the flames and stuck to the ceiling like a spider, advancing towards him with frightening speed.

Adam ran for his life, climbing the steps three at a time toward his apartment. The zombie grabbed at the stair railings to pull himself up, but Adam pressed the mouth of the flamethrower against the Crawler's hand and the monster screamed in rage, jumped to the ground and paused for a few seconds to observe the horrible burn the hot metal had left on his hand. Then, the crawler start climbing the stairs, after his prey.

Counting the seconds, Adam realized that the zombie would catch up to him before he could reload his weapon, so he stopped and prepared for a desperate fight, right in front of the Marriz's apartment.

He hid behind the wall next to the staircase and waited. The zombie arrived a few moments later, taking huge strides and very angry. Adam screamed, lunged at it and pressed the flaming nozzle of the flamethrower against its chest. The sudden attack caused him to lose his balance, so Adam managed to carry him to the railing and throw him down.

However, before falling, the zombie managed to grab hold of the railing. Adam pressed the mouthpiece against his fingers again and it fell from the fourth floor howling in pain. This alerted all the zombies on the other floors and even some in the building across the street.

Adam peeked out and looked down, but as feared, the zombie was still alive and angrier than ever. He got up and began climbing the floors jumping from railing to railing, ignoring the pain of his burns.

Adam backed into the hallway and waited for the zombie to come up. It wasn't long before the creature appeared and glared at him from the railing with what looked like malicious intelligence.

Adam didn't fire, he waited for the zombie to approach, which it did slowly and without taking its eyes off the flamethrower. The monster was more intelligent than he expected, so he tried to remain calm and not rush. The creature continued to advance and he continued to retreat. He left the Marriz's apartment behind and headed step by step towards Emma's apartment.

To do so, he rounded a corner and ducked behind the wall, losing sight of the zombie for a moment, which almost caused him to lose his life. Instead of continuing down the hallway, the zombie jumped, went over the stairwell and over the wall and landed behind Adam.

Adam realized what was happening just at the last moment, and was only saved because he stopped to wait for the zombie to cross the corner. The creature leapt toward him as Adam turned in desperation. He felt a heavy blow to his ribs, where the zombie, using his arm as a spear, pierced him with its long fingernails. But at that moment, and out of pure instinct, he lined up the nozzle of the flamethrower with the head and fired.

The zombie's head was covered in flames and moments later it exploded violently, leaving the hallway even worse than it was.

Adam fell to the ground in agony from the pain. But even in that situation he had enough mental clarity to crawl back to his apartment and use a health potion.

The result was incredible. His wound closed and the pain stopped. But Adam didn't stop, he also consumed one of Emma's antidotes. He didn't have to be a genius to guess that zombies could probably infect humans. After a few minutes with nothing happening, he breathed a sigh of relief.

However, the health potions seemed to come with a rather unpleasant side effect. Adam was hungry and thirsty, as if he hadn't eaten or drunk for days. In addition, he felt so tired that he almost fell asleep right then and there.

Adam got up to prepare something to eat, but was in for an unpleasant surprise. The faucets spouted a ridiculous amount of water, which frustrated him a bit in the preparation of a pasta. The same thing happened with the gas stove, only one burner was working and it barely gave off a flame. He assumed it had something to do with the limitation of the services that the system was talking about.

Good grief! It hasn't even been half an hour since all this started and I feel like I've been fighting for days He thought.

In the end he decided to think no more and devour what he had prepared and then go to sleep. At first he doubted if sleeping was a good idea, but he was so exhausted that he had no other choice. So he decided to rest for only half an hour so as not to waste so much time.

Just as he closed his eyes and was about to fall asleep, a new message startled him.

[Engineer have risen to level 3].

[New skills unlocked:].

[Basic flamethrower expertise: you have survived difficult combats using only one type of weapon, next time you will find its handling much easier].

Before he could rejoice at what had happened, he fell asleep. Half an hour later he awoke to the sound of the alarm he had set on his phone. He felt as if he had slept all night.

He got up from his bed and went to open the door to his room, but the door flew open when he pulled the handle. Alarmed, he thought there was a hidden enemy, but when nothing happened, he looked at his hand quizzically. What had happened?

Unable to put the matter aside, he tried to repeat the process and try other things. In the end he realized that he was stronger than before. The ultimate proof was that he could now much more easily lift a weight with which he previously exercised.

After a few more experiments, he realized that he was also more agile and seemed to be in better physical condition. The change was not so great, but it was noticeable. The only explanation he could find was the level he had gained before falling asleep.

A little more encouraged by the idea that it wasn't just the zombies that were getting stronger, Adam grabbed his flamethrower and tested his new ability.

Expertise in mechanical weapons allowed him to know the basics of all such weapons, but the new skill was concentrated on the flamethrower. Just by holding it, he realized that the weapon was much better than he had imagined. For example, by pressing the trigger for just an instant, he could fire several flames before he had to wait for it to reload again. He also learned a lot about the properties of the flame he was firing. Adam had already noticed, the flamethrower's fire was quite powerful.

He now understood that the fire possessed magical properties that allowed it to consume to ashes everything it touched; all in a much faster manner.

With more confidence he left his house prepared to clean the rest of the building. It was then that he noticed that the shouting and growling from the constant fighting everywhere had stopped. Only now and then could the occasional scuffle be heard and, to Adam's horror, in the superblock across the street, he noticed zombies walking the halls, some of them different looking.

Adam couldn't find any people killing zombies, which led him to wonder why he was doing it. While he knew his reasons made sense, he couldn't help but think that Tarin and Jane, to whom he had explained what he was trying to do, refused to help him. They were all still locked in their house, hoping the zombies wouldn't attack them.

In addition, he now realized that leveling up was very important, as the zombies were constantly evolving and those with low level would be easy prey for those monsters.

He realized that his talent was much more powerful than he had thought. While the others were still paralyzed by fear and uncertainty, he did not hesitate for a second to adapt to the new world.