"Hmm, why are you still here?"
"Hiik" James was startled when he heard the voice from behind, as the figure of the Merlin in front of him disappeared. He was acting like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, as he jumped out of his hiding spot, turned around and glared at the calm Merlin standing behind him.
"Why are you still here?" Merlin questioned once more, slightly more impatiently because every second within the tutorial period was extremely precious. He didn't want to waste more than a few minute arguing with this brat.
"Ah! Sir! I want to follow you sir!"
"…" Merlin was stunned for a moment, before recovering and chickling softly and reaching out to James' determined face. He then grasped at the air and pulled, recreating a similar scene to the one with the chief. Only this time, James did not resist, and was not hurt in the slightest.
That faint white light entered Merlin's hand and disappeared.
"Alright, follow me. But don't get killed along the way"
"Yes sir!"
With this, the two were off, and Merlin told James to run behind him with all his speed, and he attracted all the zombies in the area with the same clash of rods.
…
Halfway through his massacre, Merlin noticed something through his mana. Since the beginning of the apocalypse, Merlin had been continuously releasing his mana in small bursts, which wouldn't be sensed by normal beings and would simply pass through them. Only other beings with mana, as well as mana crystals would register on this.
He was doing this for two reasons, and naturally the first one was to watch out for strong foes, a habit he brought back from the future. The second reason was to increase his mana perception.
This was not a stat in the system, but it would still affect the result of a battle. Similar to how fast the driver can change gears could potentially allow him to win the race, mana perception too affected battles, especially between equally matched mages and elementalists.
However, the amount of mana he had at the time was pathetically low, and these mana bursts could only cover the area of half a meter around him. But by now, he would sense a hundred meters around him.
At this point, his mana burst had detected something around 95 meters to his right, but Merlin couldn't stop now since it would allow the zombies to reach James, who was already beginning to lag behind. Merlin decided to note the detected being's movements and take action depending on that.
Because of that, Merlin had stopped creating sounds while fighting and simply decided to deal with all the present zombies quickly, and then confront the being shadowing them.
Slowly, the number of zombies on the road reduced, and Merlin was slowly clearing the entire horde, without attracting more.
Within 10 minutes, Merlin had cleared nearly around half of the remaining few, but he suddenly frowned.
The mana emitting object following them suddenly changed direction from shadowing Merlin to charging straight at him.
Merlin quickly infused some mana into his metal rod, and swung it with all his might. This instantly obliterated all the zombies 10 meters in front of him, but it also overloaded the metal rod which disintegrated from mana being forcibly injected into it. This was the reason why Merlin hadn't injected mana into his weapons earlier. Anything that was not a magic metal like copper, or gold, would instantly explode upon exposure to mana. This might even injure Merlin, therefore he decided to inject so much mana that the rod would disintegrate before it could explode.
With this, he had enough breathing room to deal with whatever was coming for him. Turning to his right, Merlin was shocked to see an extremely fast and small shadow dashing between open spaces inside the crowd of zombies.
"Move back!" he yelled at James, who quickly stopped, turned around and began running back.
The shadow's speed was enough to make it seem invisible to a normal person. They wouldn't even be able to see a faint after image. However, Merlin was a human nearing the level 5 threshold. He could be considered the strongest human currently. But he too could only see a black shadow, unable to make out what it was. This speed was terrifying, and Merlin was instantly on guard. He roused half his mana reserves to boost his speed and defence to the point where even heavy armour piercing rounds wouldn't affect him, and he was fast enough to outrun those bullets.
With this defence erected, and his speed nearly doubled, Merlin clenched his empty hand into a fist, and gathered most of his remaining mana reserves into that one spot. Normally, a human who was not Tier 1 yet would simply explode their hand by collecting this much mana into it. But Merlin had his experiences in controlling mana from his past life, and was able to barely hold onto his hand with all his concentration.
Almost all of his remaining mana was put into his hand, causing it to let out a faint blue radiance, as it began to shake violently. He was preparing to destroy that sheer might, obliterating it on the spot, along with everything within a 10 meter radius, as soon as it entered his kill zone.
However, it suddenly stopped 11 meters away from Merlin. This was confusing as it was, but what was even more confusing was what that shadow really was.
"Blood Wolf?"