Ashes To Ashes

Events, while seemingly inconsequential, are necessary for any wielder of battle-oriented skills. A warrior can't become a farmer without wiping out a few villages every now and then. It's like we're boilers to an engine constantly heating up until, eventually, we need to let off some steam or explode violently. If more than one of us happened to explode simultaneously, I like to imagine two locomotives running into each other at full speed. Anyone nearby will receive a deadly shelling of hot steel and coal.

For seven days, I killed very little, and not a single battle was worth a damn. And that kind of pressure needed to be released. Sometimes I think that's why events were created.

The system played with rules we didn't quite understand. Even things as innocuous as skills held a price. We weren't heroes, we weren't monsters, and we certainly weren't machines. Thankfully we were humans, a species adept at adapting to atrocious situations. Going to events to let off steam would eventually become as routine as brushing my teeth.

…

I leaped off the building smile my face and blood pumping through my veins. The feeling of rightness spread through me uncontrollably; I was almost giddy with the sense of accomplishment. Unfortunately, I'd wiped out three of my fellow users after they tried to kill me on a live stream. But omelets and eggs, killing them, barely touched at my bloodthirst. They only served as an appetizer before the main course.

Below me, cars zoomed back and forth, unaware of what I would do to them. This world of undead was my playground. It was no different than a sandbox in a videogame.

This is not my world, and I had no intention of pretending otherwise.

Undead moved about their daily lives stopping at restaurants to feed themselves on human flesh farmed from various depots outside the city. They drove cars, dated one another, and even owned businesses. Among them, I'm sure there were artists, scholars, and even those who refused to eat human flesh. Protesters roamed the streets with picket signs announcing the act of eating human flesh. In some buildings, the undead went about their daily lives, oblivious to the doom that fell upon them.

I landed my protester. My boots smashed through the man's shoulders, guts, and legs. The concrete under my feet exploded, raining bits of flesh and chunks of silicone onto the protesters like a hand grenade.

As the dust cleared around me, I made sure they had a good look at me. While the dust settled and I stood in all my red-robed glory, I could feel the cameras on me. I raised my left hand, my wanking hand, and conjured a shell of condensed flames compacted to the size of the bullet. Even under the noon sun, the shadow of the building behind me allowed my spell to glow with enough light to reflect power.

A madman's psychotic smile spread across my face, and the cruelty of action began to sink in the crowd around me. The protesters started to scream just before my shell fired into the restaurant they had been protesting.

"You'd think the place was stockpiling gasoline with how quickly it went up."

I heard the rumble of an engine and left of the way as a truck barreled through the protesters aimed for me. I sent another shell of condensed flame into it, and the vehicle exploded. Smoke began to billow up from the scene around me, but the building I had been on was tall, and I doubted the smoke appeared on the live screen yet.

When the undead approached me, her arm torn apart, still limply holding her sign. She looked at me with fear in her eyes. And when our gazes met, I need you; she saw exactly what I was, and for that reason, I didn't destroy her on the spot. My emotions might have been running heavy as I bit my knees and left into a nearby building.

I felt the concrete and steel break and bend as I shot through a building. I raised my hands and unleashed a flurry of Heavy Fireball Bullets. My shells crashed through the building the lucky undead burned to cinders in an instant. Others poured from the building, falling to their deaths to escape the heat. This was only the beginning; I'd only crashed into a single building and set it ablaze.

My bloodthirst tasted my offering and expressed its pleasure by clearing from my mind. However, it wasn't enough to regain myself fully. My mind only cleared enough to plan how I would reach my event target. I leaped upward, crashing through ceiling after ceiling, burning and crushing everything in my path. Through plaster, drywall, and concrete, I clawed my way to the roof of the building. Smoke began to rise all around me as the flames from my path consumed the installation. I could feel it; the building wouldn't last much longer. It rocked back and forth like a swing set on a windy day. I raised my hands and blasted the nearest buildings setting them ablaze before turning and blasting a nearby building at its base.

Death had come for the undead, and fire was its call sign. My shells of flame I'd launched into the building had done their work quickly. And, even as sirens began to go off and I could hear the whirling sounds of helicopter blades, they were too late. My next destination began to bend and lean towards my building.

My target was only two buildings over. I left from my building on to the next as it fell. While the second building leaned, nearly touching the first, I ran across its side. I shot across planes of steel and glass faster than the human eye could perceive, driving myself with Accelerate racing against gravity, aiming myself like a missile.

I leaped at the bend between where the building still sits straight in the steel curled softened from the heat of the flames. Glass shattered against my forehead as my body crashed into my target. 450 pounds of me blast into the undead meat sack in a three-piece suit. Its body exploded like a watermelon dropped on a sidewalk.

My body didn't stop after killing my target. Instead, I kept going smashing through the other side of the building and impacting another before falling through a concrete floor into the underground parking lot of the building. From there, I landed on the equivalent of a Subaru Impreza.

At seeing the parking lot, I had other plans. My bloodlust had been somewhat sated by my rampant destruction. Really squishing people did far better than just burning them. They were something satisfying about crashing with my bare hands, but a Fireball couldn't give me.

I searched the parking lot for something that I wanted. It didn't take much time to find a Hummer or its equivalent in this world. The vehicle even had a trailer hitch, and when I inspected the inside, I found the seats could be folded down with enough space for Kale.

Now, my inventory seems to have very few limits. I couldn't just open up a wormhole and slide the Hummer through. No, when it came to my inventory, I'd pick up everything that was stored inside. Now, this Hummer was super heavy duty. I could tell this belonged to someone important with the bulletproof glass, the titanium armored plates, and the stab-proof tires.

That made finding the keys to this vehicle much more manageable. And the odds were good that they were in this building.

"First things first," I lifted the Hummer starting at the backend, and the second I touched it, the alarm went off. I placed a steady hand under the vehicle, stretched out my spectral limbs, and lifted it off the ground. Then, with a sigh, I opened my inventory and slowly slid the vehicle into a slot. And just like that, I had stolen my first car. I was actually kind of proud of it.

Now that a lot of my bloodlust was out of my system, I could focus on everyday things like welding the carriage to the Hummer and getting the keys to the Hummer.

The second my inventory portal closed, the alarm was silenced. 10 seconds later, a security guard crashed through the building, huffing, and puffing, and staring at me. He looked me up and down, sniffed the air, and leaped off the railing.

Before his legs touched the ground, I swiped with a spectral arm chopping them both off at the knee. The undead landed on his nubs and screamed.

A smile spread across my face. "Wow, I didn't know you could even feel pain. This is going to be more fun than I thought.

I pulled nameless out of my inventory and placed it at his throat. There was something about cold steel that spoke so much louder than invisible fists.

"You're going to pay for that. The authority will let me eat you alive, and it doesn't matter what any protester says, you attacked me, and when they catch you, you're mine." Bob, the security guard, said.

The undead grinned with rotten teeth. Bob was hardly the best model of undead I'd seen. Even the protester looked healthier than him as far as undead health went. That being said, I did just cut off his legs. So maybe I was a little harsh. But when a flea threatens to eat you alive, what else can you do but crush it. Of course, this particular flea may have the information I need.

Once again, perhaps I was too harsh with this creature; it posed about as much threat to me as a flea did when I was normal. My spectral arms lifted Bob off the ground by the shoulders instead of the neck. I wasn't trying to kill him, yet I would give him a chance to tell me where I could find the keys to the Hummer.

I clapped my hands together with my sword held in my armpit. The nameless blade is more of a profit at this point than an actual weapon. Why would I need it to kill something as weak as this undead?

"I'm looking for the owner of the Hummer. If you tell me where he is, I won't cut your head off." Once again, my sword was a necessary prop but not my weapon of choice. I planned to leave him alive or crush him utterly. It all depends on how he answers. If he was accommodating, I might even leave without burning the building down. At this point, it's all up to him.

The undead fidgeted for a second, kicking his nubs until he realized he could free from my grip. "I won't tell you anything. Kill and torture me. I don't care. I'm proud of you. I am. Can you say the same?" Bobby undead said.

I shook my head, and a giddy smile spread across my face. The undead actually looked a little terrified. That or maybe his situation finally dawned on him.

"I doubt you're the only one who knows the owner of the Hummer. Maybe if that were the case, I could waste time torturing you for answers. Or maybe I could collect a bunch of you just to get a consensus of what's true and was not. Of course, you might say whatever you think will stop the pain, but if you know only the truth will set you free, and everyone else besides you know that too, you might be more likely to be truthful. Hell, you might scramble over each other to tell me what I want to know." I shook my head and laughed. "That's what I never get about people who are against torture. All you need is enough of a consensus, and you can get very accurate. I learned the law of large numbers in sales; people in large numbers become more predictable. So why not change things up a little bit by asking questions you already know the answers to to make it easy to find the liars. And when you don't know what we already know from the questions we ask you, you're much more likely to let something important slip." I said.

Bob, the undead security guard, stared up at me, horror written on his face. "I've seen the face of evil today." The undead said.

One of my spectral fists punched through his skull ending the creature. I took the security badge off his chest, was sold a jaunty tune, and swiped it to open the door. With the death of Bob, my bloodlust was finally sated. While the feeling of contentment wouldn't last forever, but this event had eased my soul somewhat.

The best part, I didn't feel bad about it; it was like drinking a Pepsi zero. No sugar added but all the Pepsi taste and caffeine.

With the security guard's death, my mind began to really clear up, and I began to understand some of the information my enhanced senses were telling me. I tapped my foot and listened to an echo that traveled hundreds of feet beneath the subterranean parking lot. Who knows, maybe I'd find the owner of the enhanced Hummer down there.

Now all I had to do was find the keys to my new Hummer and quickly finish off the targets. I'm certain Kale would enjoy a nice air-conditioned drive to Bridle.