{Main mission: Protect the town.
Difficulty: Very low
Mission description: You accepted a mission to take care of some unknown shadowy creatures on a border village of your country, but when you reached the place it had just survived an attack from various zombies, the bodies still maring the entrance of the wooden gates. Help the city survive until reinforcements arrive in ten days.
Remaining time: 9:23:59:02
Warning: In case of failing the main mission, you will be penalised with a fee of 100 points. In case you are unable to pay with points, your attributes and equipment will instead be used as colateral.
Warning: Due to a diference in the local technology level, some of your equipment has received detriments such as decreased range, more recoil, lesser explosion power, so on, please verify one by one for further specifics.}
Looking through his notification, Aki didn't hesitate and instead went to the closest window to check the time. There were at least three fingers until twilight. He didn't know if that ment three hours, but it was going to be enough for him to get information on general tactics on dealing with the undead.
The moment he opened the door of the wooden room he currently resided at however, he was met with an older gentleman, as indicated by the well groomed and volumous mustache and clean jacket, that seemed about to knock on his door.
"Great timing. I got my wits with me, so i was just about to go ask around about the monsters. Anything in specific you may want to tell me would be greatly appreciated in the coming battle." He smiled, the man still not as tall as himself by half a head somewhat seeming intimidated as he coughed into his hand.
"I was actually sent by the mayor to call you on the discussion for the attack to come." Clarified the man, getting a simple nod and a gesture that asked for him to lead the way. It only took a bit to reach the room they were expected at, but Aki could literally sense the dark atmosphere of the surroundings. There were blots of what he could only call 'dark attribute mana' all around.
There were five people inside besides himself, a short red haired woman wearing tight pants and brown boots, what he could only call a national champion of body sculpting that towered over his 1.85 meters boosted by his increasing vitality, an older woman in plain clothes of boring colors wearing a very serious expression, a bald older man dressed in simple clerical robes and the beanpole gentleman, all sitting around a round table with him standing over his intended chair. Aki really couldn't tell who was the mayor.
"Will you not sit?" Asked the older woman, her black hair with gray streaks the only real sign of old age besides the crows feet in her eyes, but the later looked more to be related to lack of proper sleep, as her eyes were also rather blood shot.
"I'd rather go and look after my own station quickly, familiarise myself with the place for the night after hearing the gist of things. My main worry however, is how is the horde developing? I know there's a cause that should be obvious once someone sees it, but are the numbers increasing, can the place they are coming from be purified, how is our ammo looking, supplies too for the matter?" He asked in one breath, looking through those present and seeing almost no reaction from the tired individuals.
"You don't need to know most of that, but the horde is increasing a bit every night." Spat the ginger. Literally, she even hit a pot with the projectile.
"Understood. How are you taking care of those going sick?" He nodded, imediatly turning to the plain woman in turn.
"Lots of prayer from this guy as he blesses the weapons at the same time, some herbs for the stomach, lots of fever medicine and constantly cleaning their bodies." She shrugged, practically admiting to being helpless.
"I will try my hand at healing them with my energy and then fight with my guns." Aki pointed out, surprising all in the room. "What, did you think i had just locked my room's door because i was in a panic or something?" He asked, pointedly looking at the red haired woman. "I was recovering my energy, used it to get here faster, though it's nothing flashy. And i also took a nap, but besides that, we should probably focus on the fact i can help instead of answering how i know magic. Can i be placed on the location with the highest amount of attackers? Yes? Great. I will begin a triage at the infirmary and help those worse for wear first, if possible completly heal them, but i will be reserving some energy for the fight, of course, never can be too cautious. Nice chat." He said, waving to everyone on the room as he talked fast and passed through the door.
*****
Getting someone to show him the infirmary was quite easy, but treating the patient... was actually even easier. He spent fifteen mana on the worst off cases, because he simply had to exchange his energy with that of a patient and then release the harmful thing in the air, because there was already plenty of that around and it simply wouldn't make a diference if the patient had a full pool of energy, making it so he'd put four shooters back in full health and healed six more bad cases of food poisoning, which turned out to be quite easy as he found that his target being in a weakened state allowed for him to manipulate their bodies without impediment, so he just picked the thoughest looking person around and ussed them as an experiment to fine tune the rate on which the body was able to expel the bad parts of whatever they ate. He had to heal several stomachs and other sensitive organs after getting rid of the thing originally poisoning them, but that was something much simpler after repeated experience.
There were basically two diseases acting in this population, one being polution of the very air they exchanged energy with, which was similar to moving somewhere with a higher concentration of carbon in the air, though less imediatly noticeable or outright harmless if you can maintain proper nutrition, and the other was the infection of food with the energy on the surroundings, which was then ingested before rapidly decomposing as all the energy was liberated from it to attack the living body in it's surroundings, upseting the stomach and stopping the body from properly dealing with the problem as it would with what should be minor cases.
No one would eat the food that had already reached worse stages of decomposition when there was a horde of fucking undead beating at your door every night, so the food poisoning wasn't actually that bad, though their bodies would still get sickly because they were almost entirely filled with mana that was dangerous for them, sans food poisoning that could make people become undead after completly dehidrating themselves.
Really, the whole thing could be fixed with some medication from the XXI's century, though that wouldn't last very long or be accesible in this scenario, nor it's magical equivalent be much better. No, a priest with some power that could focus the living people's ability to refine energy to get rid of the cause and a mage to remove the sickness on the infected, that was the more effective solution, the only thing stopping them being the energy consunption.
They needed more fighters though, and plenty of young and old people would simply die if not treated, which would heavily impact moral as they likely loved ones, nevermind the fact they'd rise from the grave and try to kill people.
The experience also revealed to Aki that his natural regeneration was 10% of his total per hour, which ment he would generally be utterly uncapable of healing even the ten people he did heal, nevermind stay over half energy for the fight. Luckily, there was a whole village of people that had no use to their own energy, so he only had to ask one person to gather volunteers and over fifty transfers later, he had exausted his time for healing, leaving all volunteers with a deep feeling they had just shed blood.
They still had over fifty percent of their energy, so nothing should happen to these people as long as they did not ingest anything contaminated, and he told them as much. He also explained they should call the priest to try and bless the whole building again though, because otherwise the other patients were going to suffer, and he wouldn't fucking be taking the blame for that!
Reaching the wall, there were several looks of respect and even a bit of awe on the crowd, but he really didn't care much. It wasn't that he didn't think of them as anything more than NPCs in a game, he just didn't care much about people he didn't know in general. Garnering respect was nice, sure, but it was quite the mudled thing to him.
More important, turned out to be his new skill, 'Energy transfer', which had become apprentice level through the last couple of hours and now slightly boosted the conversion of energy into diferent tipes.
The undead were getting close, but it turned out to not be close enough to shoot with the pistols and rifles around there, so instead Aki asked some fighters to contribute a bit of their reserves, nothing that would actually debilitate then, but with a big enough number would allow him to test something.
They agreed.
So now instead of firing with everyone, he was preparing a new spell or so to say.
He remenbered the times he'd saw women thrown on the ground like objects, laughing men having fun breaking them in disgusting ways. He remenbered the young boy that died with his organs exposed because canibals wanted to eat him alive and hear his screams as entertainment. He hated. He furiously wanted to rip to pieces each and every one of those scum again.
Opening his eyes, he saw more victims. These undead would never become people, they would die as tools for a stupid master so he could get the attention of someone for yet another monster to profit off the suferring of others. He would liberate them.
*Fuuoo..... BOOM*
Looking at his hands, Aki realised that yes, he had cast a fireball, but it had also burnt his skin a bit. The emotions were still there though, so he shoved another at another direction, quickly reaching close to empty on his mana.
Luckily there was a lot of mana in the air due to the great amount of polution.
He would die... One day, but now he would kill.
*Fuuoo..... BOOM*
Decay was inevitable.... So was he. He could simply never give up the stage.
*Fuuoo..... BOOM*
DEATH..... VIOLENCE!
*Fuuoo..... BOOM*
*Fuuoo..... BOOM*
And then he fell to his knees, mental energy spent and a bit bellow half health. Actually looking over the wall showed that there were only a twenty or so undead that were not on fire. No one shot a bullet though, they all looked at him. His mind was quite blank at this moment, so he just said what came to mind.
"KEEP SHOOTING IDIOTS!"
And passed out over the palisade of the wall.
*****
Linda was completly shocked. That was not how a mage was supposed to be, nevermind how one should be casting fireballs the size of their own head!
He was better than her, sure, but his skill had been sloppy at best. Yet he only got better and better as he drew on the toxic mana of the surroundings instead of going crazy or dying. It was clear he was taking all of that out of his ass, but it still worked! Was this the diference between someone normal and a genius?
Was that why her teacher had left the big cities? What he ment when he said that the views of a mere mortal were nothing next to what a true warrior of the capital could do?
....Maybe she should talk with him. If it really was as she thought, than the hordes would not stop comming just because they could easily defeat then with his help.