Zombie Apocalypse: Am I Counted As 10 People?!

"Ugh..." Elura put her hand over her mouth and went to the back.

"You guys talk about the details, I'm going to wash my hands and face..."

Austin knew that Elura suffered from nausea and depressive attacks, but there was nothing he could do about it. 

He turned to William in desperation, and they began to talk together.

"Alright… now tell me about this route." 

Austin walked over and took a physical map. The map was nearly decades old, but it still showed the highway they were currently on.

William walked over and traced a straight route with his finger. 

Seventy miles north of the northern edge of the city, then thirty miles west. To the foot of a mountain range. He moved his finger to the northern slope of the valley.

"This should be it. They mentioned a secret communications base, and as far as I know, the road ends here. We can talk to Hugo when we get there." 

"Why aren't you talking to him now?" Austin looked at William in confusion. He had a radio—was he afraid to communicate?

"I thought we'd get there quickly, so I didn't think it was important."

Austin shook his head.

"Things change all the time. Just in case, I think we should talk before we leave." 

William nodded. It was the eighth day, so he assumed that if a base had been established, most things had been taken care of.

Still, to reassure Austin, he took the radio out of his bag.

After tuning to Channel 6, he made a few announcements.

At first, he didn't get any response, which made William nervous. 

He didn't want to be caught lying to Austin or shake his trust. 

"This is Hugo… William… are you close?" 

William smiled happily. Austin joined him and shook his head.

"This is William, I found other survivors and we're going to hit the road together. We're at a gas station, it looks solid and there's no shortage of food."

"Wi... William... you may encounter dangers on the road, so adjust your supplies accordingly. We saw a lot of traffic at the north exit... be careful... enter the forest if necessary... the forest may be more dangerous... be careful..." 

William nodded. "Understood, Hugo... we're coming." 

Then he turned off the radio. "See? There's a base, and they're happy to welcome us."

Austin nodded. Although he was glad there was a base, he couldn't suppress his anxiety.

"Okay... but what if they're tricking us... what if they lure us to their base and kill us?"

William shook his head and showed him his dagger. "Don't worry, if that happens, one of them will be the first to die." Then he smiled and put his dagger away.

In fact, he was very nervous about this, but with his five-level status, his power and speed, or rather his confidence in himself, had increased. 

Moreover, they still had a long way to go. Today, he planned to level up one more level and add the point he earned to his STRENGTH stat.

 After a while, Elura came out of the bathroom and joined the team. Then Austin and Elura got fully dressed. Although both of them were missing some items, they had bought some things from the system store.

When William saw their missing clothes, he did some shopping at the system store and gave them to them. More precisely, he was able to give them. 

That was what he wanted to try anyway. To see if the items purchased from the store were specific to them. 

Apparently, they weren't. Others could use his items as well.

Seeing this, he completed Austin and Elura's armor sets. He also bought two long katanas for himself. Both were level 4 and sufficient for protection during the journey.

Then they stocked up on some food from the gas station. 

Then they filled up their gas tanks and took a few bottles with them. Now they were completely ready. 

When the engine started, the gas station's silence gave way to a metallic growl. As the few birds around them fluttered away, William clung tightly to Austin's back. Since he didn't know how to ride a motorcycle, he had to leave control entirely to Austin. This meant he had to trust him—and in the new rules of this world, trust was now the most valuable and dangerous thing.

A few meters behind them, Elura had jumped on her own motorcycle and was preparing to follow them with a look of determination on her face. Despite being pregnant, she refused to stay in the background; she would fight for her child's future on this journey.

As the motorcycle slowly began to move, William turned his head. He saw Elura immediately follow them, riding with the familiarity of someone accustomed to the motorcycle. They were now a team—three people forced to trust each other, walking the line between life and death.

As the motorcycle bounced and jolted over the cracked asphalt surface, William felt the wind on his face. It was not a cool breeze. It was a mixture of the rotten smells of the city, burnt plastic, and dust. Along the road were abandoned cars, some crashed, some burnt with their occupants inside. Others had simply been left behind. A few doors were still open, showing that their owners had acted in panic as they fled.

The buildings along the road slowly descended, then rose again. The city had spread out like a tumor, like the shell of a body that had begun to rot. The vines climbing the edges of the skyscrapers and the fire scars seemed to whisper that even nature had abandoned this place. The faded advertising posters on the walls still showed smiling faces—as if mocking death.

The engine suddenly jerked over a sharp bump, causing William to lose his balance. As Austin cursed, William's hand reflexively reached for the katana behind him. A pair of legs rose from among the broken glass and trash scattered on the road.

A zombie.

Its head was crushed halfway, but it was still moving. William drew his sword and swung it down, balancing his body.

CRACK!

The sword passed through the middle of the head, silently killing the zombie.

"First!" said William, a bitter smile on his face.

Every hundred meters along the road, another zombie appeared. Some ran out at the sound of the motorcycle, while others lay motionless and then suddenly woke up. William used his sword every time. The moans of the zombies echoed through the city streets with the hum of sharp steel. Some emerged from under cars, others crawled out of collapsed buildings.

After a few miles, William had relaxed his arms and learned to balance his legs. His stance behind the motorcycle was now more steady. Each zombie was no longer just a target for him; it was a level, a stat point, a reason to survive.

As they approached the northern part of the city, the landscape changed. Skyscrapers had given way to sparser buildings. The northern region was less developed and closer to nature, much like the southern region where William had lived. The roads were narrower, bushes had grown along the edges, and in some places had swallowed the asphalt.

As they passed by the edge of a collapsed bridge, they saw zombies moving inside a sunken bus below. William lowered his head and muttered, "If this engine falls, we'll all go down."

Austin replied, "Then pray that I'm a good driver." Elura smiled from behind her helmet, saying, "I was about to say the same thing."

The trip, which normally took half an hour, took an hour. The piles of vehicles and narrow passages along the road kept William on edge, like a new trap at every turn. Not only zombies, but also jolts, sudden swerves of the motorcycle, and broken pieces of asphalt had become threats.

And finally...

The north exit.

The large highway signs marking the city limits had been destroyed. The middle of the road was littered with wrecked vehicles. But that wasn't the real threat.

William narrowed his eyes.

Instead of silence, a hum greeted them.

Further down the road, hundreds of zombies stood still but clustered very close together... perhaps as many as a battalion. They weren't as dense as the flood in the city center, but their presence here was bad enough.

Austin slowed the motorcycle. "This is... worse than Hugo said!"

William quietly got off the motorcycle. The sun was almost directly overhead, and it was around ten in the morning. Being in daylight rendered his "Between Shadows" ability ineffective, and abilities such as "Silent Step" also lost their effectiveness.

But that wasn't a problem for William.

He reached for the twin katanas on his back. "I'll take care of it," he said. "I'll clear the way."

Elura stayed with her motorcycle, while Austin immediately dismounted and approached as if to intervene, but William stopped him with a glance. "We need you to ride the motorcycle... Besides, I need to level up." William smiled.

At first, Austin didn't understand why his offer of help had been rejected, but he soon figured it out. It was all because of the EXP gained from killing zombies. He understood why William was so powerful now. William had killed zombies, more than he had guessed. 

He had killed hundreds himself, but he wasn't as cold-blooded. When he saw a zombie, a part of his mind kept reminding him that the zombie in front of him was once a human being. Only when the zombie's rotten breath approached him did he realize the situation and take action.

William stepped forward. When the zombies' eyes turned toward him under the sun, the silence was broken. Growls rose. A few in the front row charged toward him.

William took a deep breath… and swung his swords.

When the first head separated from the body, he struck the knees of the zombie behind him. As the zombie collapsed to its knees, he severed its head. Another jumped onto his shoulder, but William ducked, sliding to the ground like a ghost, turned, and thrust his katana under its chin.

[Critical Cut I: Attacks on enemies' weak points deal more damage. +5%]

William's eyes gleamed. "I like it."

As the battle progressed, his breathing grew heavier. His arm muscles began to ache. The zombies seemed endless, but his speed, agility, and deadly dance kept him one step ahead of them. Each sword strike brought a new spurt of blood, each fallen zombie a new experience. 

He jumped onto the zombie trying to get up, pressed down on its stomach, pinned it to the ground, and shattered its skull with a single blow. 

[Strike Momentum I: Attacks made while moving deal more damage. +5%]

William was drenched in sweat but smiling. 

When he laid the last zombie on the ground, his hands were trembling. His face was covered in blood, his back soaked in sweat, but there was a lively light in his eyes. 

"Wearing this armor in this heat is a pain!" he muttered. 

Then the system voice rang in his mind,

"You've leveled up!"

William turned to Austin, breathless. "The road is clear!"

Austin and Elura jumped on their motorcycles. As the three rode through the corpses William had cut down, Elura shouted, "I can't believe you. You literally mowed them down!"

William replied with a pale smile. "That's my job." 

And they continued on their way. They were now on the northern route. William had cut through the danger with his own hands, but what lay ahead was uncertain. 

And according to a preliminary estimate, this seventy-mile road would be more challenging than usual...

...