NOVEL WEB Chapter 13: On the Road
William quietly turned toward the fire escape without looking back.
Going down was much easier, and he slid down quickly.
He then returned to the street he had come from and disappeared without looking back. Even when he passed the police station and entered the street where he had left his belongings, William still felt uneasy.
By the time he returned to the house where he had left his belongings, it was completely dark.
He knew that he was almost invisible to the zombies at that moment.
Although he was very tired, he still went outside after eating something to try something.
He didn't stray far from home. Two streets away, he came to a place where there were about five zombies.
His clothes and leather armor did not have any shine to them. He had also tucked his dagger into the breastplate of his armor, making it impossible for it to shine.
William had never thought that a power outage could be so terrifying.
The sounds of zombies filled his ears, but he resisted his fear.
Now was not the time to be afraid. He had to improve himself.
Otherwise, he would not be able to get out of that highway and perhaps the wilderness, he would have to enter safely.
For a few minutes, he watched the aimless zombies staggering left and right in the middle of the street.
Finally, when those few minutes turned into an hour, the notification he had been waiting for arrived.
[Among the Shadows I →II]
[Among the Shadows II: Chance of being detected in low light, shady, and covered areas -50%. This effect doubles at night.]
The surprise part was that he had added another ability to his repertoire.
"You have learned an ability!"
[Night Vision I: Increases vision range in low light and completely dark environments. +20%]
William was happy to see this ability. As soon as he read the description of the ability, the zombies in front of him became clearer.
He could now make out their outlines a bit more clearly and could vaguely see the glow reflecting off some of their teeth in the moonlight.
William stayed there for another hour. After a while, he got bored and moved closer to the zombies. Even at a distance of almost a meter, the zombies couldn't see him, but they could smell him. In this situation, William killed them and went to find more zombies.
He repeated this several times. He approached the zombies until they smelled him, and when he felt his ability had improved or the zombies noticed him, he killed them and found a new group of zombies.
When he looked at his old leather strap watch on his arm, he saw that it was almost midnight, so he decided to return.
At the end of the day, the user panel looked like this.
[William Aunitidis – Level: 4]
[EXP: 4300/5000]
[STRENGTH: 4.2 (+++)]
[SPEED: 3 (+++)]
[PERCEPTION: 1.2 (+++)]
[LEY: 1 (+++)][SP:0]
[Abilities: Power of Breath I, Weight Master I, Basic Perception I, Silent Step I, Silent Strike I, Piercing I, Among the Shadows III, Shadow Step II, Night Vision IV]
[Blessing: EXP10X]
[System Coins: 7981]
[STORE (+)]
[LIBRARY (+)]
[CODEX (+)]
"Almost there."
William muttered as he climbed into a bed he didn't know belonged to whom.
"When I reach level five, I'll put my system points back into speed. That way, I'll be one step closer to avoiding being caught and dying."
Before going to sleep, William practiced his Power of Breath skill and raised it to the second level.
Then he examined the Codex.
It was his first time looking at it, and even though he had a rough idea of what it was, he was still excited.
He saw two things here.
One was an ordinary zombie. It was as if it had inherited the facial features of all the zombies he had killed, resulting in a genderless zombie.
The other was the [Big Zombie] that he had struggled to kill and even been injured by.
The Codex contained detailed but equally meaningless explanations.
One thing caught his attention. There were some numbers and colors under the explanations of the zombies.
Upon reading them carefully, he found them very strange. He could now understand that this system was almost like a game, but the deaths and zombies were very real.
William shook his head and closed the codex. "Is someone playing a game with us?"
...
The next morning, he woke up to the sounds of zombies and creaking. He immediately grabbed his dagger and the gun under his pillow. When he couldn't see anything inside the room, he went to the window and looked out.
The scene was heartbreaking. There were more than twenty zombies surrounding the house.
William felt like he was being protested.
The zombies weren't coming for William, there was no sign of greed or aggression, but their presence around the house was bad news for William.
"I can reach the base they mentioned in a day, even if I run... But that's in a scenario where I won't be stopped along the way." William shook his head. Then he started emptying his bag.
He took out everything that was unnecessary.
Now, only technological devices remained, and he wrapped them all in a thin T-shirt so they wouldn't bump into each other and make noise.
Then he took a few cans of food, which would last him two days at most, but he was planning to reach the base in two days at the latest anyway.
William then climbed onto the roof and quietly stepped onto the tiles through the roof window. Here, he admired the sky.
He hadn't seen such a sky in this city for a long time.
The air, which was always slightly cold, had begun to warm up.
"Summer is here."
William sighed and then climbed onto the roof of the house opposite, using the electric wires for support.
By this time, all the zombies had noticed him. There were no shadows, and it was not nighttime, so it was inevitable that William would be noticed.
Suddenly, dozens of zombies were behind William.
Some were faster than normal, some were slow, but among them were those who were fast enough to catch up with William as he climbed down from the roof.
William killed these first-level zombies with a few strikes of his dagger and began to run.
This time, he didn't bother hiding much, as he would be returning along the same path he had come.
He knew the route and the zombie density, so he wasn't afraid.
He no longer feared ordinary zombies, except for the powerful ones in the city center; these zombies were there solely for him to gain experience.
After running for about a mile, William reached the entrance to the highway.
The situation here was relatively calmer, with few zombies except for those gathered around the cars in some places, and William wanted to take care of the crowd of zombies behind him first.
He turned back and killed the twenty or so slow zombies chasing him one by one.
These twenty zombies finally filled his exp bar, and William started the day by leveling up.
William gave this system point to SPEED and felt his legs become lighter.
When there were no zombies left around him, William began to walk quickly on the highway.
After running for a while and killing a few more zombies, there were not many cars left on the highway. Only a few that had crashed...
The highway had four lanes and was empty. New Telludure was not a very big city; it used to be a town and had only recently become a city.
Therefore, the population density was not very high. As far as he could remember, the total population of the city was 187,000.
He even remembered that there had been a nationwide debate when this highway was being built, and the president had insisted that it be connected to every city, so they had such a wide highway, but he had never seen any traffic on it.
There was only a little dead traffic at the entrance to the highway, and after a few kilometers, William felt like a traveler in the desert.
After a while, he found himself at a gas station on the side of the highway.
The area was littered with zombie corpses and exploded, crashed cars.
William sensed something strange here.
It was very quiet...
Much quieter than normal...
William didn't leave immediately. He climbed a small hill on the side of the highway and watched the gas station for a while.
Next to the gas station was a rest area, a small hotel, a small restaurant, and a parking lot. Several trucks in the parking lot had exploded, and William could imagine what kind of hell had been experienced here that day.
The hotel's doors and windows were wide open, which made the likelihood of human life there almost zero, and the restaurant was also filled with broken tables, scattered plates, and bowls.
However, the inside of the gas station felt strange.
William looked around for a few seconds and, seeing no zombies, focused on the gas station.
From what he could see from this distance, the entrance to the gas station was locked. There were only a few small windows.
After almost half an hour, he saw some movement.
Inside, there was a woman and a man, at least that's what he could see from the small window.
William became curious and got up from where he was sitting.
He approached carefully.
He came to the bottom of the window, where he saw the couple and quickly glanced inside.
There were indeed two people inside.
A woman and a man. The man was wearing only a leather jacket, and nothing covered his lower body.
They were naked.
The woman was wearing only underwear and her upper body was naked.
William's face flushed, but he made the connection between the leather jacket the man was wearing and the few motorcycles outside.
William looked again, this time more carefully.
[Human Lv2]
[STRENGTH: 2]
[SPEED: 1]
[PERCEPTION: 1]
[LEY: 1]
This was the man's information. His perception ability was still at level one, so it wasn't very clear.
William knew how to improve this ability, but he didn't have time for that right now.
[Human Lv2]
[STRENGTH: 1]
[SPEED: 1]
[PERCEPTION: 2]
[LEY: 1]
William looked at the pair and shook his head.
"They're not a threat to me."
William then checked around the gas station and didn't encounter any zombies. So he saw no reason not to go to the front door of the gas station and knock, but he remained vigilant nonetheless.
"Knock knock knock…"
He knocked on the door and took a few steps back.
He waited a few seconds and heard no sound. He had expected as much. The apocalypse had struck, zombies were rampaging, people were fighting for their lives, and here he was, knocking on a door in the middle of nowhere?
…