Shinji looks deadpanned at the wreckage of his gauntlets, "Well, some of the weapons may break but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make[1]."
Shinji packs it and turns to spread some sweet-smelling spices on the vegetable salad and steamed vegetable dish, 'So many vegetables but so little meat. This is a hellhole for my cooking potential.', he thought with a narcissistic scoff.
Sirena has her eyes closed while smiling, it's amusing to listen to Shinji's thoughts. She also stands up to prowl the perimeter. Shinji has caused the nearby monster to gather.
Sirena glances at the blazing sun, it seems that the planet's current season is summer with a more than average heat. She hears the thoughts of hunger from a distance.
Drax for the first time in his life felt like boss music was playing, 'Wha-...what did Shinji do again?', he went and found him making a smile that didn't feel like a smile. Shinji skillfully shows his cooking skills in front of Drax.
'...so what did he do now.', Drax tries to get context clues. Unfortunately, he is a dunce therefore he can only have a vague distrust of any action that Shinji does, hence, he thinks the food has something in it.
"Did you poison it again?", Drax looks over the food and [Observe]d it and recognizes the ingredients except for the seasoning, "Aha! I knew it!", He was so close yet so far from the truth.
"Sadly, You only get consolation points, " Shinji says, serving Drax the food. The latter responds with a defeated hum, 'Darn it, so what is in this food to have such dangerous music playing about?'
Shinji coughs and spreads his hands and announces, "A huge wave of zombies is approaching[2].", lines of text appear between the 2 palms.
Drax turns to the distance and finds it strange and ironic that plants are attacking. He shakes his head again and flips Shinji off.
"Now, now. Eat first then deal with it later.", Shinji ignores the gesture, the audacity.
'Whatever, the food is innocent- wait...it IS!', Drax tried to enjoy the food only to furrow his brows. If tears were worth not a shred of his dignity then he would have cried a fountain by now.
'Another delicacy, kids would have eaten greens if they had food this tasty...', Drax gives a compliment in his mind and eats everything like a bottomless pit.
Meanwhile, both Lin and Albert arrive after spearheading through the accumulating horde.
"Guys, hordes of monsters are rapidly growing in numbers. Do we get out of here?", Albert asks. He learns the limits of his abilities being in magic and much less at strategy so he asks Shinji, the one he knows is able to handle the situation easily.
"We hold the line.", Shinji says, "But for now just eat this masterpiece."
Albert and Lin look at each other and the latter just shrugs so the former took a serving as the other follows. Drax on the other hand leaves to decimate the monsters. Sirena came back quickly as her physique is already too tired for any of this.
She was just tasked to defend against any weaker monsters with fast or stealth abilities anyway. Her job is done once Drax, Lin, and Albert have gathered.
If someone was wondering, Adalinda, Audelia, and Quad were still under rigorous training under Dongmei. After all, Dongmei takes training seriously.
Taking a breath, Sirena comes behind Shinji and lets her body hang while hooking her arms around the latter's neck.
Shinji just smiles endearingly and turns over. He takes her in his arms and carries her weight, "Aren't you one spoiled girl. Fine, have it your way.", hence, He is now stuck carrying Sirena in the meantime.
Lin looks at them with deadpanned expression, 'Hmm, how will my Sis react to this?', He didn't find this all too bad as it is normal for one to have several partners, though he finds that such relations would be too complicated.
And so he obliviously dodged a bullet.
Albert on the other hand thought, 'Shinji is in such a happy relationship...but for me...', he sighs and stuffs some spoonful of chopped greens.
'It's very sweet.', He thought.
Back again to Drax is a slaughter, his pissed expression can be seen, 'Argh1 F*ck all of this!', although he was annoyed at Shinji gathering the monsters he was actually pissed more so of the battlefield.
The longer the slaughter, the stronger the smell of blood and it made him nauseous. He had gained a slight hemophobia or a dislike of the smell of blood after dying in his past life so as long the fight went by, the bigger his sense of regret and resentment grew.
This was due to the one and only regret he had in his last life. He was just a simple, normal, and average middle age man before all this, and when I mean 'average' I meant it so the kind with nothing notable but nothing too bad either.
Extrovert with a number of friends, an average wage, graduated but having no honors, had a girlfriend but broke up with not much drama because it just didn't work out. He was kind of satisfied with his life as his work didn't restrict him from enjoying his hobbies, some of which were watching anime or playing games.
He may have made small and minor mistakes over his past and especially his teenage years but he learned to get over them after a while. Unfortunately, he regretted a single thing upon his death.
That was because he couldn't save a life and worst of all, he threw away his own. He didn't die immediately but he could still feel everything, it was torturous. His mind went through several thought processes.
{What was I thinking? I shouldn't have done such a thing... I'm so stupid! The truck was too fast for anyone to avoid much less push out of the way...}, Drax's past thoughts started. He could feel pain all over his body as he wanted to scream only to feel pain in his lungs too. Any muscle that moved hurts.
{Isn't there anyone there?}, He could see that there was no one on the street that evening. Fortunately, the truck driver wasn't a bad guy so he immediately called for the ambulance but at the time an absurd thought appeared in Drax's mind, {Why couldn't I have handled the situation like him? Now the hospital will have 2 bodies to carry which would take too much time...}
He started crying, his fear overtook him as blood flows slowly and the pain gets worse, {Please, I just waste this to end. Let me die already. Why couldn't this be a quick one? I'}, It seemed so fast for his mentality of life to death so quickly. Perhaps due to the situation and his regret of making such a mistake led to him having unstable emotions and mentality.
{AAAAAAAAHH! It hurts! stop Stop STOP!}, Drax couldn't do anything because crying already felt too painful, even thinking hurts, and his head hurts a lot
Soon enough he couldn't form a word in his mind as the word pain itself is overwhelmed by its prime definition felt physically.
But the thing that threw him to the brink of fear, despair, and regret was one seemingly quiet word that resounded in his mind.
"C-cold...", The other victim said in pain.
Like a switch that flipped, Drax's mind ignored all of the pain in that instant and took in all that was before his senses.
He could smell the blood the huge amount of it, the smoke of the truck sneaking through. The rough ground he could feel, its unevenness responsible for most of his pain. The eerie silence atmosphere is occasionally disturbed by the wind, grunts, or the truck driver's worries. The sight of a body, bloody, pale, wounded, a scene he never wanted to process in his brain but did.
Seeing the woman suffering he thought, {She's feeling the same thing as I am. I-I couldn't help her, NO! I made it even worse.}, He wanted to apologize, but he couldn't utter a because of his breath. He was breathing so heavily in pain that he felt like if he spoke once, he would suffocate of lack of air.
More thoughts were raised, {Why should I bother? She shouldn't even respond to me? I still need to see her get picked up by the ambulance...yea-!!}, His eyes opened wide in shock.
The woman doesn't seem to be breathing anymore, too much blood drained out of her body. Drax didn't know what to feel, he could only make up a single word, {Useless...}
Drax didn't know what happened after that, maybe he forgot to breathe and died, maybe he died of blood loss, maybe he passed out of shock and died hitting his fragile skull on the ground.
The only thing he knew after that was a new life birthed in this world. A start he became too comfortable with.
Recalling his past, Drax thought, 'So why didn't I strive to do my best? Because I had the system? What stupid thinking! Only a system is as useful as its user!'
'[Beserk], right? Then I'm getting it! It's just releasing all my frustrations, right?', Drax's face twisted as he kept rampaging around the horde.
Of course, something like that couldn't just manifest a skill that easily. He attacks any monster in sight.
Wounds come up occasionally but the spells that Audelia gave came in handy for a time like this. With this he didn't have to worry about his wounds, the only problem is the huge mana consumption it takes.
It has already been 5 minutes and he has pulverized about 50 monsters in that span but the consumption of mana is just as large. He wasn't that stupid so he retreated with enough mana for emergencies.
On the way back was an ambush waiting for him, sly monsters who were hidden smelt the spices coming from his breath. They crept to Drax's unaware.
Unfortunately for them, a blast of light was enough to kill one of them and the stab of the spear was enough to drive them away.
Drax looks over, "Oh, thanks. I thought I could bait them but this is easier.", He scans the bodies with his skill and heads over to Shinji, took a bowl, dropped multiple monsters' body parts from his magic pouch, and left.
He internally knew the plan of Shinji, an autonomous grind is always part of an RPG game after all. Shinji would continue to create food to restore energy and he would periodically kill monsters in this exclusive 'event' made just to help him level up his skills and spells.
Drax passes by Kaitlyn's tent, he didn't know why he would check on her but as much as it is scary to look at her, it would make his gut feel bad if something bad to one of his classmates who he could also consider friends.
'Huh?', Drax thought he saw something and shook his head, 'Eh? Oh, she really looks like a corpse with such dead open eyes. It even looks blank...'
But then he saw Kaitlyn get up with a grunt. She sat upright and gripped her head with her other hand supporting the first.
After the initial headache, Kaitlynn holds both her hand on her arms and said, "Ugh, it's a bit... Cold.."
As if a flip switched a chill went up Drax's spine, he hurriedly says, "Ah, uh, Shinji made some food so it could help anyway a horde of monsters were attracted by his food so I have to go, aha..!", he ran past Kaitlyn's tent leaving the latter stunned.
'What is wrong with him?', Kaitlyn clutched her head again. It seems that with her abilities suffering drawbacks she suffers from headaches and uncomfortable chills, 'It's uncomfortable. Even my abilities can't block it.'
'But, it seems that it was effective...', Kaitlyn could feel her [Psyche] strengthened and her abilities and she got [Mind Immunity] and as for her [Dark Mind] it has grown stronger but it is unfortunately not strong enough become a 5-Star ability.
Surprisingly, 4-Star [Dark Mind] was easy to get through all the harsh environment she went through. Although, death wasn't her biggest obstacle but actually killing a human being.
Out of students currently in the group, only Shinji, Lin, Dongmei, and Kaitlynn have killed someone. Unexpectedly, Quad hasn't killed yet for the empire but it's easy to understand he has a strong mentality as he was raised to be the shield and sword of the empire.
As the 'daughter' of Zhou Emerson, she was tasked to always 'dispose' of any of her rouge 'siblings'. The only way she could have lived with such guilt, resilience, and willpower to endure experiments at the same time has strengthed her ability to this degree.
Kaitlynn was expecting to rest from it all when going to the academy but trouble and death wanted to follow her here too. What made her feel very threatened was that someone was able to kill her with her strength.
4-Star [Dark Mind] shouldn't be underestimated as not only does it cancel senses and memories temporarily for manifold increase in senses and thinking ability but it also is directly related to [Psyche] which also gives her a much higher mentality than others. What makes her even more overpowered is that having 2 [Psyche]s meant double the mentality.
There are even more abilities than that like instant response, which was strengthed by the berserk potion, which could make Kaitlynn perform the same move she has done before. She can also set it so that if a condition or stimuli is received, she would perform a certain action which makes it both instantaneous with her processing power but also effortless as she can use her thinking ability for other things.
Unfortunately for her, her first ability was the thing limiting her from getting her second ability making her only have 1 ability in her second [Psyche].
Now back to Drax who ran through the forest heaving heavily, he felts like his heart is threatening to be crushed. Tears once again formed in his eyes, the only times he has ever cried like this was when he experienced the realistic pain in the fantasy world.
'IT WAS HER? WAS IT HER? IT COULD BE HER? CAN IT BE HER?SHINJI!YOU ASSHOLE, YOU WANTED THIS? NO! I CAN'T THINK LIKE THAT! I CAN'T BLAME ANOTHER PERSON AFTER ALL THAT HAS HAPPENED...yeah, Shinji is only the one setting the dominoes. The pieces were already there before he touched it.', Drax thought.
He didn't know when it started but he went around slaughtering again, and this time with more aggression and viciousness than last time. He was too engrossed in his thoughts and fighting that he couldn't even feel his wounds and fatigue.
It was the same exact scenario before his death, all pain shut down and the senses were overwhelmed. It felt very natural...like a skill
//
Gained the skill [Beserk] - Lv.1
[Beserk]
Type: Skill
Description: It isn't just reckless slaughter, It's the key to making a muscle head a machine killer.
Effects:
If one's strong emotions take them over the following effects will happen:
- Battling will become instinctual rather than strategic.
- Senses are magnified and overwhelmed. Making them push to their limits. This includes danger sensing.
- All Pain is shut down
- Thinking becomes unstable, emotionally or mentally may be a possible side effect.
//
'I would have discovered it sooner or later... maybe when she was on the brink of her death I realized it. Then I did a last-ditch effort with [Berserk]...', Drax kills a monster with a punch
'But... I see now how this [Beserk] works. All my pain has gone away and all my senses are overwhelmed. All of my fighting have become primal and factors in the skill [Battle Instinct]. This also feels natural as it makes me the best killing machine.', Drax noticed how he always landed a hit on spots that are fatal to the monster.
'And... [The Zone] too? No, [The Zone] isn't increasing my strength but its also leveling up at a fast rate... does that mean that in a high enough level [The Zone] could strengthen me?', Drax thought
His mind kept drifting to the battle and his thoughts repeatedly and in a very quick and fast manner not knowing what time it was or where he went. He didn't stop, he felt like he shouldn't, he wanted to let it all out.
'NO! Going with my gut now will be dangerous!', Drax seems to realize that his frustrations have got to him and he has been too engrossed in fighting.
Upon that realization all three of the skills [Beserk], [Battle Instict], and [The Zone] either deactivated or went into passive mode. Drax trips and lands on the ground realizing the amount of injury he's been in all this time.
"AHHHHH!F*CK", Drax was in so much pain right now.
Luckily, a white light appears and his wounds recover slowly. He looks up to a concerned Audelia.
"uh, Ah! How did you get here?", Drax asks.
"Senior Dongmei brought us back but because of the beast horde, she told us to train here. We found you a minute ago and you were very wounded so I came to help.", Audelia says with worry.
Drax tilts his head to see Adalinda and Quad jogging up to him, "Hey! I killed a lot, could you guys help me collect them?", he says with an awkward chuckle.
Quad looks around and gawks, "You sure are a strong person. If only I could have such strength."
Adalinda also looks and shows a very shocked expression, "How...did you do this?"
Coincidentally the place they currently are is a field of many small plants and shrubs making the visibility high, hence, they could see the massive trail of corpses that Drax went through.
"Ahaha...it...a long story.", Drax says with a sigh.
At the same time, Dongmei is standing in front of Shinji with her expression grim.
Shinji knowing the reason why walks over with Sirena and pulls her in by the neck, "You're not jealous are you?"
Dongmei pouts, "Who is jealous of you two? I-i...", she failed to rebut due to her lack of social skills.
Shinji chuckles at how easy it was and gives her a kiss. Dongmei is left stunned in silence.
Shinji then hides behind Sirena, "Ahem, uh, don't kill me okay?"
Dongmei looks at Shinji and glares at him but it only became cute due to her blushing face.
'At least it's working.', Shinji thought but then his thought process was eliminated.
"What are you hiding behind me for? Is she not your problem?", Sirena says with malice and pushed Shinji forward.
'Ah...I'm done for.', Shinji thought.
He was not.
[1]: [A reference to a meme template called 'Some Of You May Die'. The meme also is depicting a scene in a certain Shrek movie]
[2]: [Another PvZ, is the Author some PvZ addict? Anyway, it references the point at a certain level where there will be a horde of zombies going all out with the biggest numbers.]
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Author's Note:
I'm late for 3 days. It's a bit sad but I go on.
I'm still deliberating to make 1k chapters every day to not only motivate my ADHD but to also pressure myself to the point where it actually works.
And lastly, LASTLY, I REALIZED THAT I HAVE BEEN SPELLING KAITLYN wrong! SO OFFICIALLY KAITYLN IS NOW KAITLYNN. ;-;