Chapter 8: New Knowledge and Strength (Rewritten)

7 days later

While pulling my sword out of my last target's corpse, I got a new notification.

[Quest: Zombie Infection (Completed)

Quest Description: After being hurt by a zombie your wounds become infected, making them hard to heal, and counsantly briging you torment of your flesh rotting before your eyes. You can gain resistance to this infection with specific steps and correct resources.

Quest Requires:

- Heal 4 Infected Wounds [4/4]

- Kill 30 Zombies [30/30]

- Collect 7 Zombie tooths [7/7]

- Collect 5 bottles of Zombie blood [5/5]

Reward:

- New Skill [Poison Resistance Lvl 1] ]

"Finally, I finished this quest." I said those words after a whole week of struggle and constant training.

"Let's look at the fruits of my labor."

[Name: Alexander Lambert

Race: Human

Gender: Male

Age: 16

Health: 100%

Mana: 97%

[Stats]

Strenght J (J- -> J)

Resistance J

Dexterity J (J- -> J)

Intelligence J

Agility J (J- -> J)

Constitution J (J- -> J)

[Skills]

Talents:

- Swordsmanship Lvl 5 (2 -> 5)

- Marksmanship Lvl 4 (3 -> 4)

- Stealth Lvl 5 (3 -> 5)

- Hand to Hand combat Lvl 3

- Pain resistance Lvl 9 (8 -> 9)

- Poison resistance Lvl 1 [New!!!]

- Tracking Lvl 2 [New!!!]

- Cooking Lvl 5 (3 -> 5)

Magic:

- Earth Magic

-....

Abilities:

- Analysis

- Luck

[Inventory]

-.... ]

(Still not good enough, but I'm happy with what I achieved so far.) In this week, I got stronger and learned more about my system.

When it comes to stats, they represent someone's power, unfortunately not 100% accurate.

They are based like this:

J- / J / J+

[5-10 / 11-15 / 16-20]

I- / I / I+

[21-25 / 26-30 / 31-40]

.....

....

SSSS- / SSSS / SSSS+

[601-700 / 701-800 / 801-1000]

So, when two enemies with [Strenght J-] and [Strenght J] fight against each other, obviously ememy with [Strenght J] is stronger, but it's hard to determine how much stronger without previous comfrontation.

Normal 18 years old Male Stats without any training looks like this:

Strenght J+

Resistance J

Dexterity J+

Intelligence J

Agility J

Constitution J+

On the other hand any normal 16 years old Male usually have Stats not lower than [J].

That shows that Alexander was really weak for his age. Only plus was that he wasn't crippled or seriously ill, so bringing his stats to a decent level wasn't that hard.

Other useful information is limit of my [Analysis] skill, being able to only show me stats up to [SSSS+], at least at the moment.

I also learned about my Skills, their stages and classifications.

I can choose which skill I want to see in my system, so I won't need to scroll through the whole list. I learned this while I Lvl Up my [Cooking] for the first time and it showed itself on it's own.

Skills have different levels:

- After getting Lvl 10 in some Skills you can upgrade then to a higher stage

- 1 stage / basic skill

- 2 stage / novice skill

- 3 stage / intermediate skill

- 4 stage / advanced skill

- 5 stage / expert skill

- 6 stage / master skill

- 7 stage / grandmaster skill

- 8 stage / epic skill

- 9 stage / legendary skill

Some Skills can have less or more stages and also other ways of leveling up, not connected to normal training.

Skill classifications fall into 3 categories:

[Talents] - Skills you can learn through training, doing different actions and studying.

[Magic] - Simply, magic you learned.

[Abilities] - Abilities are somehow weird, they're Skills you got by chance, like my [Luck] or [Analysis], or [Race Skills] like [Zombie Infection]. Also by training like [Talents], but not every skill is recognized as Ability. One of examples of such ability is [Killing Intent], skill that you gain by killing.

(It's all I gathered so far.) Recalling all of this is easy, the hard part was learning it from scratch.

"I need a break, I'm mentally and physically exhausted." In this week, I was either training, eating, or fighting, with my breaks only being my sleep.

And it wasn't nice sleep without any care in the world, I was always sleeping with my guard up.

(It's time to go back to my cave and Main World. I already miss Olivia, Mira and Amelia.)

While recalling another thing that I missed, I shook my head with a smile on my face.

"And, I miss my bed"

*Rustling*

My instant reaction, was to look to at the place this sound come from, with my guard already up.

There, I only saw a big bush, covering my line of sight.

Staring in its direction provided me with nothing, I just simply didn't see anything else that could alarm me.

(Maybe, It was just a wind.)

*Growl*Growl*Growl*Growl*

Suddenly, I heard growling coming from this bush, and just when it started, different pairs of animalistic eyes began to shine in between the leaves.

(Or not.) Right away, I dodged to my left, barely avoiding my enemy's attack, with dog's saliva flying past my cheek.

I was able to avoid the first time, but two others, bite their fangs in my flesh, before I could properly defend myself.

The only thing I could muster, was putting my right forearm in front of me. I used it to protect my neck, from being ripped to shreds.

Second bite landed on my calf, with me hearing movement behind me, signaling that there was next enemy sneaking up on me.

I focused my gaze on the creature that bite my arm, and saw a zombifield dog, with pieces of his face missing, ribbs poking between all the fur he had left. There was also one distinguished feature, glowing green eyes.

[Name: Zombie Hound

Race: Undead [Zombie Animal]

Gender: Male

Age: 2 months old

Health: 100%

[Stats]

Strenght J

Resistance -

Dexterity J+

Intelligence J-

Agility J+

Constitution J

[Skills]

- [Race Skill] Infection Lvl 1

Description:

After getting resurrected undead hounds became wild beasts, with only their instincts left. They are fast, agile and possess good senses that let them hunt their prey a lot easier. ]

"Fucking dogs!" With those words, I started to deal blows to the zombie hound's head. After about 6 hits, his jaws loosened and I regained control of my right arm.

While all this was happening, I used earth spike to penetrate the skull of the one that bite my calf, killing him instantly.

Next, I stomped on the dying hound's head and crushed it. Letting blood and brain mater fly in every direction.

After turning around, I didn't attack right away, but stared at two hounds watching their every move.

They realized that I wasn't an easy prey, and done the same thing, making their eyes glow even brighter.

While staring at each other, I gather strength in my right arm and swung with my sword at them.

My blade quickly came near my target, but before my blow could land, the hound I was aiming at, avoided my blow.

(They're more agile than I originally thought.)

With this new learn knowledge, I knew that I needed to change my approach, so I started to aim at their legs.

This turn out to be a good decision, because only couple minutes later, I dealt with one of the hound's and left a deep cut on other one's side.

Looking at the last injured Hound, left me quite surprised.

Instead of him attacking me, he chose to run away, leaving his fallen comrades behind.

"You're lucky this time. Chasing you isn't worth it, but don't let me get you next time." with those words, I realized that my wounds hurt. Hurt and that's it, the burning feeling from my previous wounds didn't appear this time.

(Turns out that [Poison Resistance] is really helpful.)

Those hounds become a next type of enemies I will need to deal with, but they also let me learn that my new skill was working wonders.

Done with the fight, I decided to head back to cave.

*******************

Alexander's room, Night time

"It's good to be back" as I said those words, my throat weny dry.

(Fighting those hounds made me thirsty.)

I made my way downstairs to the kitchen, after deciding to get something to drink.

But halfway through, I noticed wine bottles laying near living room couch, and sitting on the couch with glass in her hand was..

"Mom?"