Quickly taking the opportunity while the zombie turned a corner, Loann threw an ice shard in the direction on the zombie's kneecap, but missed and hit the leg instead.
Thinking about how he needed to train his aim, he saw that the spell still had the effect they hoped for and the zombie harshly fell to the ground face first.
Not missing his shot, Steven sprinted towards the zombie and stabbed it in the head, the dagger easily making its way to the brain.
The duo was afraid of the blade getting dull when used as a stabbing tool, but it seemed like their worries were unfounded after seeing the blade still gleaming with a menacing light.
Seeing their strategy work, they decided to kill the 3 others before taking a rest.
While they successfully baited the second one and easily killed it, Loann was a bit too confident in their tactic the third time and threw the pebble too hard, attracting both the zombies at once.
Not wanting to lose more time, he decided to simply shoot one in the head with an icicle which instantly killed it, while Steven took care of the other one that fell after being stabbed in the leg.
The blond boy finally leveled up after killing the last one and decided to put his free points in Wisdom, continuing the trend.
Taking a 15 minutes rest, Loann restored his lost mana and they both decided to take a trip to the mall on the road to get some supply while they could.
As they were stealthily making their way towards the building, they both noticed more and more zombies on the road, so much so that they had to take some detours not to be detected.
Finally reaching the entrance of the mall, they both made their way in with surprisingly little troubles considering there weren't any zombies near the entrance. Although, they could see zombie bodies on the floor and some remains of what they could only guess to once be humans.
When they entered the mall, they were surprised to receive a notification saying:
***!!!*** you have received the following area quest:
"The mall mayhem"
-Main objective: Survive 5 minutes.
-Secondary objectives:
Kill as many zombies as you can.
Rewards: EXP (Depends on how many zombies you killed)
Their first reflex was trying to exit the building, but as they reached for it they were blocked by what they could only assume to be an invisible barrier considering they could still see the outside.
Trying to remain calm, they could both see a timer slowly ticking in their field of view, and only a few seconds later they saw waves upon waves of zombies limping towards them, coming from the second floor.
Not wasting too much time, both of them decided to take advantage of what little buffer they had left before the creatures swarmed them, and run inside a relatively safe-looking store that apparently sold luxury clothes before the arrival of Mana.
Surprisingly, the inside of the store was mostly clean apart from a few knocked-over mannequins.
Thinking quick, Loann asked Steven to create a small puddle of water with his mana, and the blond boy didn't hesitate either and spent all his mana on his water creation skill, making a disappointingly small puddle of water under the store's door.
Lucky for them, the store had closed its security curtains before, and they looked quite sturdy.
Meaning, zombies could only enter at most 3 at a time at the door, and the duo made sure to use that to their advantage.
While Steven was resting with a pale face after using all his mana, Loann quickly started slashing at the first zombies that limped at the store's front, and combined with the water on the floor, made the first group of zombie fall down.
Making use of his abnormal stats and the dagger's sharpness, he managed to cut off most of the zombie's legs, effectively making a zombie wall with only a few zombies.
Taking a moment to breath, he tried to count how many zombies were slowly walking towards them, and quickly realized there was at least a hundred of them converging as a horde towards their location.
Remaining clear-headed, he remembered that the system earlier announced that the rewards would ramp up with each zombie kill he got.
Checking the timer, it showed 3 minutes and 38 seconds remaining.
Thinking of a plan, he gave Steven the dagger and asked him to cover him while he went and tested something.
Grabbing the nearest pieces of cloth, he used his flamethrower skill and lit it on fire, lightly burning his hand in the process also.
Throwing the burning cloth towards the zombie pile, Loann realized his new-found strength wasn't something he was used to, and so the cloth flew farther than he expected, luckily still landing on the edge of the ever-growing pile of zombie that were starting to slowly push forward even with the metal curtains blocking them.
As the zombie began burning, he still pushed forward towards the duo and unknowingly ignited his fellow brain-eaters in the process.
Loann noticed Steven was fiercely stabbing the heads of the zombies that were ahead, and he was quickly getting exhausted from the effort.
While the dagger could go through their skin like butter, it didn't mean it was as easy to cut through the hard skull of the undeads.
Taking the opportunity to test it, Loann told Steven to grab a stamina potion, which he quickly drank.
Meanwhile, Loann used his flamethrower skill as much as he could, quickly exhausting all his mana.
In a few seconds, the blond boy was back to his feet with what felt like infinite vigor, as he went on a stabbing spree.
As he started to ramp up kills, they both noticed the timer was slowly approaching zero, with only a dozen seconds left.
Most of the zombies were either completely or in the process of being burnt to death, and as the timer hit zero, the both heard a notification.
***!!!*** you have finished the following area quest:
"The mall mayhem"
-Main objective: Survive 10 minutes. (Completed)
-Secondary objectives:
Kill as many zombies as you can.
Total kills: 107
Personal kills: 83
Rewards: EXP
***!!!*** You have reached level (5). +1 to all stats, +3 WIS, +3 INT, +5 free points.
***!!!*** You have reached level (6). +1 to all stats, +3 WIS, +3 INT, +5 free points.