Start

A man sat cross-legged on a black couch in a white room with four walls. Those walls were covered with white leather and underneath it was soft padding.

This room represented one that psychotic people would visit so that they could not harm themselves.

The man's gaze went into nowhere and his head was nocked back into his neck.

"Maaaaan~~ What the hell is this shit...." The man complained again after readjusting his head forward again.

"If the afterlife is some sort of infinite room of boredom then please, kill me now. Or whatever you do to make this stop. This is making me insane already. Which is an irony being in such a room."

"Oh, not that I was insane or anything but I sure will be soon..."

There was of course no response to anything he said and the man started to have some veins form on his forehead.

"Fuuuuck!!" He started getting a psychotic outburst and spasmed around on the couch as if to want to destroy it. But even that would not work, no matter what.

The man had been here for many hours, days, and maybe weeks already. And staring at the same white walls made him come close to insanity.

He even tried to off himself by breaking his neck or anything that would result in death. Even clawing himself with his nails to reach his intestines.

But all those attempts just resulted in nothing. His neck would not snap, no matter what and his wounds healed nearly instantly and only the pain remained.

"Dear god...Fuck you for this place." And here again, with that simple complaint, the men went back to being a vegetable.

To the man's surprise though, a sound rang through the room and let him jolt into attention looking around to identify what was going on.

There was suddenly a table in front of him with a big red button.

"You got to be kidding me..." A short pause with a small smile surfacing was seen on his face. "Well, let's nuke whatever that is aimed at." He just pushed the button without a care in the world.

Then a holographic screen appeared in front of him. It surprised him how it worked but just shrugged it off. It was footage from people enjoying life in various places. Looking at it for a while the man started to reminisce about his own life and even reached out his hand unconsciously towards it.

Right at the moment when he nearly touched it, the scenes changed and what was shown was something out of a horror movie.

His hand immediately went back to himself while his eyes still looked at people getting ripped apart and eaten alive. Only to stand back up and stumble around to kill others that were still healthy.

Everyone seeing this would know that this was a zombie movie.

Before the man could figure out what movie this exactly was, it stopped.

"Oh, come on~. It just started to get interesting as well." The man leaned back into the couch again because there was only the room in front of him again.

He was already going back to nothingness as a vegetable but suddenly another screen appeared.

Analyzing it, on the left upper corner, there was a three-dimensional figure that looked suspiciously like the man on the couch.

That got his attention and he leaned forward trying to press the screen.

To his surprise, the screen interacted with him this time around.

[Name: Axel Schrift]

[Race: Human]

[Physical Ability: F]

[Mental Ability: F]

[Status: Healthy, Minor Psychological Trauma]

The man only raised a brow at the status and snorted.

"Is this supposed to be funny? Well, consider me intrigued. So what do I do with this here then?"

He went on and clicked on the other side on some icons and a window opened with Inventory labeled over it.

[Inventory: Empty]

"Oh...I see. Then this should be SKILLS?" He touched an icon that showed a human head with a cog in it. The inventory one was a simple backpack icon.

And just like he thought another window appeared after the first closed.

[Skills: None]

"Hey now. I was not that of a blank freaking slate...Well, thinking about it I would guess I am not really good at anything..."

After getting interested in experimenting a little bit more with the screen it soon became boring.

There was nothing special after that besides some other options like time and map. Which were stuck at 00:00 and black nothingness.

Not knowing what else to do he just pushed the x on the right upper corner even if he would regret it disappearing forever.

When the screen closed another screen opened and there was text on it this time.

[Welcome, Player. Distribute S.P.E.C.I.A.L points and chose 1 Perk.]

"Huh? Now, this is interesting." Axel saw different attributes like in the Fallout game and just like in the game he had 21 points to distribute.

Placing a hand on his chin he started thinking. First, he increased one stat with as many points as possible. Since there was a confirm button he could still experiment.

And by the looks, 10 was the maximum a stat could have. Just like normal, really.

Strength - 5

Perception - 4

Endurance - 5

Charisma - 4

Intelligence - 3

Agility - 4

Luck - 3

After some thinking it through he made sure to keep more physical than mental. He was not really the smartest person anyway. So it didn't matter, but having a good body could go a long way.

And if someone looks good, it helps a lot. Not that he knew what 4 charisma would really do.

What made him worry was that he did not know for what scenario he builds these stats.

Since it is Fallout-based, he thought to take the world of Fallout into consideration but even that could backfire if he ended up going too balanced.

But then again, most attributes were very important. If he were agile and stealthy but could not perceive threats, it would be useless. An incredible lung without strength would make him also useless if he had no escape. Muscle without endurance is called glass-canons for a reason.

"You know what? Fuck it, confirm." He just pressed the button and did not look back.

[Choose a unique perk.] A massive list of abilities started popping up and a slider showed that there was even more. There even seemed to be a search function.

"I don't remember there being so many of them. What is going on?" Looking through the list it sure became apparent that these were not the perks from the games.

What made it obvious was that after searching around for quite a while Axel found a "Convenience "Store perk with the description to carry around a small convenience store that could level up.

From the description, it was like one of those weird money greedy and time-consuming browser games where one would build their own convenience store instead of a farm or whatever.

The most busted thing about it was that the items inside the store could even be taken out and placed inside his inventory. That practically meant infinite food and water for him as long as he invested enough time into developing that perk.

It was so good that he immediately chose it while completely ignoring things like mutant powers and stuff.

[Convenieance Store Perk, LVL 1, activated. Proceeding to roll soul transfer.] It didn't even take a second later and the screen vanished.

Shortly after the world around him disappeared and he lost consciousness.

---

Waking up sometime later he could feel the hard floor underneath him. Looking around he could see that he was inside some gym because there was a basketball court in front of him.

His own position was in the upper corner of the seats where people would typically sit and watch the game. It was probably some school from the looks of it.

The clothing he now wore was rather tattered and dirty. Blue jeans, black sturdy boots, a beanie, and a white muscle shirt with a red checked shirt above that was everything he had.

That and the beige backpack close by that was used by him as a cushion.

"Now, where the hell am I? Not that I am complaining but this should at least not be the Fallout universe.", grumbled Axel lightly and suddenly some fragments of memories started to appear in his head.

"Oh shit...The Walking Dead? And the outbreak is only a few weeks old. Just great. How come the guy decided to take shelter inside this gym of all places? Was the previous owner of this body dumb?"

Realizing something he could only sigh.

"Right...Intelligence 3...Fuck."

His body was definitely not the same anymore as it was from the white space.

His hands were much smaller, and it shocked him at first.

Considering something Axel immediately looked into his status.

[Name: Axel Pierce]

[Race: Human]

[Age: 10]

[...]

"Come one now. I am back at being a kid?"

There were actually a few changes in his appearance like his dirty blonde hair and green eyes. His body was also a rather muscular lean build of barely 150cm now. Good, that he was lean but bad that he was small.

Thinking about these changes and looking at the three-dimensional avatar in his status he could see some resemblance of his own youth from his past life.

Just that his old body had brown hair and same colored eyes.

If he will grow back into his old self then those changes were a small matter, really.

And as long as everything else still functioned the same and didn't impede his motor skills like a limping leg or whatever, it was fine.

His young appearance could also become some very good bargaining chip in survival.

All things considered now it was obvious this body lived its life before he took over. Or at least it had simulated memories.

"First things first." Axel opened his backpack and looked inside it to look at his stuff.

There was a handgun with about 2 mags of ammo. One inside the gun and the other in form of bullets lying in a transparent plastic bag near it.

At least the guy was smart enough to keep the bullets dry.

That was surprisingly a small relief to know he had a weapon and some ammo. There was even a weapon for close range in form of a combat knife.

Being smarter than the previous body owner he took the combat knife out of the backpack and placed it with its leather sheath into his right boot. What use was it in his backpack anyway?

The next agenda would be getting some belt to actually fixate it to his limb.

The same goes for the gun that he placed underneath his jeans at his back after flipping the safety lock on. His checked shirt would cover its existence plenty enough.

The rest inside was some water and food. Rather small rations. Not worth mentioning much.

What Axel did next was look inside his status again.

To be precise in his skills section to activate his perk. He wanted to make sure the things he chose actually worked. It would have been something else if he were scammed and given some glorified toy to get rid of boredom.

Good thing it actually opened up and loaded the perk.

There was actually not much to do in the browser game right now but to stock up on some stuff like food variety. Then hire employees and let the game run in the background on its own.

And to make things sure he took out one water bottle and a sandwich from the store that appeared inside his inventory and from there into the physical world.

The consequence was that it did reduce his projected winnings in the game but that didn't matter as long as he kept it moderate for now. Going bankrupt in the game would spell disaster. At least as long life didn't normalize here.

"Need to juggle that somehow and not overdo stealing at the start." He put the stuff back into the store since he was not in need of it for now.

Thinking about it he also tried to put the gun into the store and suddenly a notification appeared.

[Insufficent level for "Gun Store". Purchase license to operate "Gun Store". The item was returned to the inventory.]

A big fat grin appeared on Axel's face when he read that notification. Actually, he guesses keeping the gun inside his inventory ain't such a bad idea as well.

But people would ask stupid questions if they get curious where he got a gun out of a sudden. That is why he made sure to place it back in the same position as before.

"Oh, this will be such a cakewalk, I think.", he said confidently. "Question is, what am I going to do? Rebuilding society? Oh, wait. First I need to get someone to speak to or else I really am going to go insane."