Alex couldn't sleep.
He wanted to call his parents again, but the fear of not being able to connect stopped him.
He wanted to talk to someone about what happened, but there's no one to speak to.
He could only wait... and prepare.
Alex grabbed the canned beer off the table and switched the channel on the tv.
Most of the channels now were all showing movies as if all the local stations decided to follow the same script of not showing any news or updates regarding the situation.
That's why Alex had his phone and laptop on top of the table, showing different videos.
On the laptop, it was the same multi-panel view of the building's perimeter.
On the phone, he's scrolling on social media to get real time news on current events.
But his focus was mostly on the TV, watching the movie about a zombie invasion that's being played on a major channel.
"Huh. What a coincidence."
"They even have the guts to play this kind of movie right now?"
Alex didn't see anything useful, just people dying for making stupid decisions.
"Why did they not lock the gates and build a wall instead? It's obvious the zombies will not go away. Why did they let a bunch of civilians roam around when everyone knows the city is already infested with the undead?"
"Lockdowns and martial law should be in place to minimize the casualty and spread."
Alex took another sip of his beer and lightly shook his head.
"Who am I kidding, I just got lucky this is a secluded place."
Alex played around with the crystal stone he got earlier, trying to find out what's up with the item.
It's something that came from that monster so it should do something.
But no matter how he held it, or what he tried to do with it, nothing happened.
"It's not even glowing! Damn it."
"Maybe it's not a crystal? Maybe it's a piece of bone or something?"
"Well, one last thing to try. Here goes nothing!"
Alex closed his hand with the crystal stone inside it. He slowly breathe out and started performing the breathing technique.
So far, most of his problems were solved with this method and he won't shy away for another one.
As he gathered energy on his hand, he became excited when he got a reaction.
The crystal stone started heating up after feeling the energy on his palm like it was attracted to it.
Alex grinned sheepishly.
"Now what?"
The stone kept getting hotter, and Alex's palm started sweating more and more.
But nothing else happened...
"Hey, you're getting really hot now. Do you have something to say? Are you trying to communicate with me? Come on, give me something..."
Alex stared at the stone intently.
Still no response aside from the stone becoming warmer.
"Maybe I'm doing something wrong? What if..."
He changed his approach towards the stone.
Instead of protecting his hands with energy, he tried to include the stone as a part of his body.
Nothing happened because he was having trouble spreading his energy to another object.
There could be multiple reasons why he's unsuccessful. A couple of things he could easily think off is he didn't have enough energy to perform the action or it's not possible with his current control.
Once the energy left his palm, Alex could only grab to the lower parts of the stone and everything dissipates before reaching the halfway point.
"This is not working."
He can't get the stone to absorb his energy. He doesn't even know if he should be doing that...
He continued experimenting on it while watching online streamers show live footage of their places while hidden or obscured in high places.
Most streamers found on ground level already died with their streams on weird angles or having black screens.
Alex grabbed his notebook and wrote another entry for the crystal stone.
Zombie loot:
1. Crystal stone: a strange stone with unknown property and usage.
With nothing better to do, he went back to his previous notes about his understanding on the special energy.
"I'm already successful in using it for offense and defense. I can easily circulate it for regeneration and can do simple enhancements on my senses."
"Aside from control, I can be more productive if I try to enhance my mental and spiritual capabilities... that sounds really strange when I'm saying it out loud."
"First, let's go with mental. What can I do with mental? Hmm... Recall things easier, memorize more stuff, increase learning speed? Is that even possible?"
Alex stood up and looked at the bookcase and its contents.
"Let's find out."
Alex spent around ten minutes before giving up.
The only thing he managed to do was protect his brain when he enveloped it with the special energy.
He did a little experiment on his heart if he can control or improve his mood but nothing worked.
"Well, that's for the best I guess. If it's so easy to control people mind and feelings, what's the point of being a human."
"Enough of that, let's continue watching people do dumb things online."
He spent the rest of the night watching a group of young men fighting a bunch of zombies on a high building.
There's a woman among them who's not very pretty but has a great pair of boobs, which attracted a lot of views.
"Lucky bastards... why do sons of rich people always have access to guns? Well, they have security guards so guns shouldn't be off limits if they want to play with them."
By now, it's common knowledge that zombies turn to dust after a minute or so but it was the groups first time seeing a crystal drop from a zombie.
They quarrelled for a bit on what to do before deciding to feed it on an unwilling person.
Based on the group hierarchy, it was the bottom feeder guy that everyone talks smack on.
The poor guy couldn't even refuse even if he wanted to and closed his eyes as he popped the crystal stone to his mouth.
Just like a piece of candy with an unknown flavor or effect.
What happened next shocked everyone - the poor guy started coughing blood and slowly started turning into a zombie.
He choked and had trouble breathing.
He tried to vomit his stomach out but could only cough out blood.
Then he dropped still before charging to whoever's nearby.
He was easily gunned down by his previous friends and he fell lifelessly on the floor, showing a bloody mess to the camera.
Alex stared at the crystal stone near his plate of nuts and moved it next to his phone where no food is nearby.
"Let's not die that way."
He took another sip of his canned beer.
"Ahh~ I wish I could get drunk easily but it seems impossible if I'm collecting energy."
Though he was drinking beer, he could feel the toxins getting slowly removed from his system as the regeneration takes effect after cycling through his stomach.
"Might as well practice energy control. Right now, I can actively use the breathing technique while protecting or enhancing parts of my body. I don't have enough to cover my whole body yet but as long as I don't get surrounded, there should be no problem relying on partial protection."
"Then should I train about controlling three at the same time?"
Alex did what he thought.
He continued using the breathing technique to gather energy and applied a layer of protection on his hand.
This is something easy to do for him at the moment.
Next, he enhanced his eyes and everything become clear wherever he looked.
He marveled at everything because everything became high quality.
By coincidence, he glanced at the balcony - which caused a shiver down his spine.
Through the silky curtain, a shadowy vague figure with red eyes can be seen staring at him while squatting down like a dog.