Chapter 2: Walking Through Ruin
As Ryuga began making his way down and hopefully towards the entrance of the building he was in, he killed and consumed any zombies he encountered along the way. While doing so, he rather quickly realised what kind of building it was he was in.
The building appeared to be a relatively large apartment complex, and it appeared to be one of those that had all of the apartments rooms located inside instead of visible on the outside. He had to admit, he seemed to have gotten pretty lucky with his spawn location.
An apartment complex like this was without a doubt one of the best locations to set up a base of operations, mainly due to there being multiple floors as well as potentially a large variety of items that may be found in the rooms.
Medical supplies, perhaps some food scraps, and if he were truly lucky, maybe even some form of firearm depending on what kind of guests occupied this place previously. For now though, unless he encounters other players or humans with guns, his sword was more than enough.
Speaking of which, players referred to those who were brought into the tower from the outside, while the humans he was thinking about referred to those who were spawned by the tower. They were genuine humans, but had different origins to the players.
[Consumed: Zombie (Lvl 3)]
[Experience has been added]
[Consumed: Zombie (Lvl 2)]
[Experience has been added]
As Ryuga continued to consume zombies for experience, he naturally noticed the amount of experience needed to level up increased over time. This was no surprise, if all levels required the same amount of experience, he would've been a fucking universe destroyer in the past.
-
[STATUS PANEL]
➣ Name: Kurai Ryuga
➣ Number of Deaths: 6,582
➣ Level: 6 - [24%]
➣ Realm: Tier-1 First Stage
➣ Mana Gauge: 32/45
➣ Parameters (Points: 0): [Strength: 8] [Agility: 16] [Vitality: 6] [Wisdom: 8] [Luck: 5] (Avg: 8.6)
➣ Skills: [Temporal Overlay (S)] [Mana Manipulation (C)]
-
For every level he gained, two points would be given to him to allocate. For right now, he decided to focus primarily on Agility. He added a few points for Strength every now and then, but Agility was certainly the number one stat he wanted to increase right now.
He had also managed to increase the proficiency of Mana Manipulation from D to C during this time, but he was pretty certain that was as far as he could go for right now. Until he increased his mana, beyond a certain point, he doubted he could rank it up any further.
His capacity of mana wasn't determined by his Wisdom, but increases by five for every level. Wisdom was the value used to calculate the damage caused by magic skills, but since he didn't have anything like that right now, Wisdom wasn't important.
Regarding Mana Manipulation, at its current level, he could improve his Strength, Agility, and Vitality by 30%. For a simple zombie apocalypse, this should be more than enough to survive unless unknown factors are involved.
'Alright, that should be pretty much all of the zombies here in the apartment.' Ryuga thought to himself as he wiped clean his sword. Due to the sword's quality, even after killing so many zombies, its blade was still very much useable. 'I'll definitely come back, and probably use this place as a base. Compared to the stores, the items are lower in priority.'
After all, the inventory space was limited, and the only way to increase it was by using the points they gained to purchase a larger inventory space before advancing to the next floor. In other words, his inventory was not getting any bigger during this next week.
Before deciding to head off, Ryuga made a quick sweep of the entire building to make sure that no zombies were still inside, any that aren't already on the floor that is. After confirming, Ryuga quickly found some simple wooden boards before placing them against the door as he exited the building.
He didn't secure to the door though, one reason being that he had tools to do so, and the other being that it wasn't necessary.
He had two reasons why he found it better to not actually secure them, and that was that by doing so if anyone came by and forced their way in, not only would he obviously know due to the movement of the planks, but he could also save them breaking the front door to get in.
Anyway, since he was spawned in modern Tokyo in Shinjuku, he was pretty familiar with a number of the surrounding stores. The items he needed to prioritise right now were food, medical supplies, clean clothing, and some other more miscellaneous items he knew uses for.
Overall, the first three were the most important.
[O]-----------------------[O]
After leaving the apartment, Ryuga dashed towards a nearby mall he saw back when he was still high up in the apartment building. He obviously didn't run through the streets though, instead sticking to the alleyways and across the rooftops whenever he could.
If there were other humans or players near to this area, he wanted to be the one who notices them first instead of the other way around. One reason being to observe their personality and intentions at the moment, and another reason being whether or not he needed to deal with them.
He wasn't stupid, he had gone through enough to know that taking the life of another human was inevitable. In a world like this, the normal laws people used to follow meant nothing now. He learnt this lesson a long damn time ago.
After some running, Ryuga eventually arrived on a building next to the mall.
Looking at the distance between the building he was on and the indoor parking garage of the other building. Nodding to himself, Ryuga took a few steps back before dashing forwards at full speed, and once he reached the edge, he made a big jump.
Ryuga tucked his legs in a bit as he soared through the air, easily making it through and into the carpark by a few meters. Once he touched the ground, he performed a roll to break the fall before skidding to stop after planting his feet.
His Agility was at sixteen at the moment, far above the peak of normal human beings. From what he knew, the peak of normal human potential was around the ten mark, and with his Agility nearing double that, making such a jump was incredibly easy.
'If I remember correctly, each level of the carpark for this mall should have an entrance into the main mall near the centre area.' Ryuga narrowed his eyes and glanced around. 'Hopefully, my memory of Tokyo hasn't deteriorated too severely after so long.'
After rushing towards the centre of the carpark garage, Ryuga quickly noticed the room built in the garage with walls made entirely out of glass. From what he could tell, based on the fact that none of the windows were shattered, most likely no one had entered the mall through this area.
Whether or not there were people or not inside was another question entirely.
Finding the sliding door entrance, Ryuga coated his arms in mana before rather easily prying open the closed doors. He didn't bother opening them fully, just enough for him to walk in. After doing so, he immediately looked up at the escalator leading to the next floor above.
Obviously, the escalator wasn't functioning at the moment, so Ryuga quickly and silently ran up. Before completely exiting off the escalator, he stopped and crouched down before silently poking his head out and looking around.
The interior of the mall was simple, a large open building separated into three floors that could be seen from the first, with each floor being connected by other escalators around the building. It was your typical modern shopping mall.
'Alright, food and medical supplies are first up. Clothes usually aren't taken as top priority compared to them, so there should still be more than enough clothing left around.' Ryuga thought as he glanced around at the relatively quiet building. 'Hmm... I don't like how quiet it is. In any case, I just need to be on guard.'
Even if there were other humans or players here in his building, he still needed to get some resources. He'd much prefer he run into the humans spawned within the tower, players were evidently much more dangerous compared to common humans.
'Alright, time to move.'
[O]-----------------------[O]
From top to bottom, Ryuga began his little rush around and collected whatever it was that he found best to take with him. With only an inventory capable of holding at max thirty different items, which couldn't stack by the way, his choices had to be smart.
When it came to food, he found whichever foods that wouldn't go bad or had a long standing shelf time. These mainly came in the forms of canned food, biscuits, and so on. Medical supplies... there wasn't much luck. He could always visit the clinics around the area later and try his luck with them.
Moving onto clothing, it just as he suspected, the humans spawned into this world along with potentially some other players haven't looted as much clothing compared to food. There were still plenty around, so he only grabbed around two shirts, three pants, and some socks and shoes.
While rushing around, Ryuga found it rather odd that no zombies were anywhere to be found. That either meant that someone had cleared them out, or by some miracle no one was in the mall at the time of the outbreak that occurred in this world.
'Alright, this feels much better...' Ryuga thought to himself as he walked out from a backroom within what looked to be one of the clothing stores. However, instead of his previous uniform, he was dressed far more casually. 'The school uniform is seriously nostalgic, but it's way too annoying to move in.'
Ryuga was now wearing a simple white t-shirt underneath a hooded open short black vest that reached halfway down his upper body with somewhat longer sleeves that barely reached his elbows. The jacket was somewhat loose, and had silver linings along the edges and at the beak of the hood.
As for his lower body, he had on a pair of dark-grey liner leggings underneath a pair of black athletic shorts. Of course, to go with that, he also put on a pair of proper black and white running shoes. Running in his black leather shoes before were a serious pain in the ass.
'Hmm, maybe I can find a backpack somewhere in here?' Ryuga thought to himself as he began walking towards the exit of the shop. 'Clothes take up way too much room in the inventory, so having a bag I could just stuff them into would be smart.'
Seriously, a pair of still packaged socks took up an entire inventory space, it just wasn't going to work. With the sheer number of shops in this mall, he was more than willing to check as many stores as he could to see what he could get.
It wasn't just for surviving this floor either, the items you get from previous floors remain on your person and can be brought to the next floor. A backpack was useful in any floor, and food was obviously very useful in any floor as well.
'Alright, next store is th-!'
As Ryuga was about to walk out of the store, he instinctively jumped back when he heard a rather loud sound echoing through the shopping mall. Quickly planting himself against the wall and crouching down, Ryuga narrowed his eyes as he focused on his hearing.
Seconds passed by as Ryuga continued to hear sounds of things most likely hitting the ground, ranging from loud and sharp sounds to deeper thuds. If he focused his hearing enough, he could hear what sounded like whispers.
'Other people, huh? Did they just arrive or have they returned?' Ryuga thought to himself as he peaked his head around the corner. The sounds seemed to originate from the bottom floor, but it was always smart to check your corners. 'Most importantly, are they players? Well, one way to find out.'
Silently, Ryuga crouch walked over to the railings of the floor he was on before carefully looking down over the edge.
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