Ryu woke up the next morning as small rays of sunlight made their way through the blinds on his windows and balcony door to shine directly in his eyes. Groaning in annoyance at having been woken up from such a vivid and interesting dream he slowly sat up before making his way towards the bathroom. He had just begun to lift the toilet seat when a sudden realization of what he had seen walking to the bathroom hit him.
He immediately spun in place, dropping the seat and wincing at the loud bang noise as it slammed down, and stared at the front door of his apartment. The barricaded front door of his apartment that showed the "vivid dream" probably wasn't a dream, not unless he suddenly started sleepwalking apartment rearranging anyways.
He quickly did his business in the bathroom before heading into the living room to flip on his TV and computer again and quickly immersing himself back into the still active stream of information. A lot of humans might be zombies now but apparently enough people still survived and wanted to share with the other survivors that information was still flowing in rapidly.
There were government announcements made overnight asking Americans in various parts of the country to link up with others in various safe zones that were rapidly being setup and manned by remaining members of the military and local governments. There were small groups forming in various locations to create local survival groups focused on staying safe or growing stronger or all kinds of different things.
He saw a group of civilians in Texas setting up a large scale safe zone and saying anyone who believed in God, guns, and the freedoms guaranteed by the constitution was welcome to join them as they focused on getting everyone working together to grow strong so when the tutorial ended they could contribute and try to keep Texas as their own little world for whatever comes after.
It was both uplifting to see how quickly groups were forming and what they were doing to take care of each other but also kind of scary just how quickly people were adapting to such an apocalypse scenario. Ryu himself felt like he was still trying to wrap his mind around what had happened as he hadn't even used his System yet. He mentally gave it a thought and was only half surprised to see the System window appear showing selectable options for Stats and Inventory. He mentally focused on stats and watched a window open in front of his eyes appearing to float in the air.
User - Ryu Storm
Level 1 - 0/100 exp to next level
Class - Not Available Currently
Title - Not Available Currently
HP - 100/100
Stats - Average male human has 1 point, super athlete male human has 2
Body - .6 (Body is the aggregate total of your physical stats including strength, speed, fine motor control, sensitivity of the senses, stamina, endurance, damage resistance, etc)
Mind - 1.5 (Mind is the aggregate total of your mental stats including ability to learn new information, memory and information recall, ability to decipher based on available information, etc)
Spirit - 1.1 (Spirit is the aggregate total of your multiversal energy control ability mana for magic systems, stamina for physical systems, chi for cultivation systems, etc)
Meta Stats
Luck - 5 (This is a stat that affects all aspects of your life from how often good or bad things happen to you, to chance encounters, the loot quality dropped, etc)
Drop Rate - 5% (This is the rate at which defeated enemies drop System loot for the user to collect and use. Most enemies drop loot boxes with random loot tables contained inside while named enemies and bosses can drop either loot boxes or special items that only can be acquired from them.)
System Skills - None
System Talents - None
System Achievements - None
Inventory Contents - 0/100 slots currently in use
Ryu focused on the various stats to glean more details but other than the brief descriptions provided they were pretty bare of additional information. The only one that was different was the Class option on the screen as when he focused on that he received another popup with a little more information.
"Ding! User does not currently have any classes available to select from as he has not performed enough actions in order for the System to analyze and provide suitable choices. Once enough data has been collected the user will be informed of available choices!"
This seemed to line up with what a couple of videos he had seen on WeTube were theorizing as it seemed the System was offering people classes based on several factors such as the users notable hobbies, their profession before the System, where in the world they were located, and even their personal beliefs.
Apparently the Queen of England received a class called Sole Ruler that was allowing her forces to fight back quite well against the zombies and mutants. Geeks and nerds were being offered classes based around magic and popular media heroes and villains. Hell, Ryu even saw a gambling addict receive a class that is based around betting called Life Gambler, which allowed him to use dice to do combat and allowed him to do a number of interesting effects as long as the dice rolled in his favor. Ryu didn't think that man would last long unless he had a really high luck stat or skills that skewed the chances in his favor though.
Ryu thought a little about what classes he would prefer and knowing how out of shape he was he thought some kind of magic caster or minion based class would probably work best. He wasn't a genius, even his stats reflected he was only slightly better than average in the brains department, but he had a lot of experience from his gaming and geeky pursuits when it came to min maxing classes and which classes he played best in games. He spent some time thinking about this and continuing to watch the news broadcasts until he realized he was hungry.
Ryu left the TV on while he headed for his kitchenette to see what exactly he had left. After a few minutes of rummaging around he found that he had several boxes of spaghetti noodles, a few packets of instant potatoes, lots of different spices and condiments, two boxes of instant noodles, and several cans of vegetables that he ended up with on accident and didn't really like the taste of. He also had several unopened bottles of his favorite soda, some grape drink mix packets with caffeine added to them, and tons of water in various containers.
The fridge contained mostly condiments and water containers currently while his freezer had the most food as it still held a couple of frozen pizzas, a dozen premade dinners from a meal service he tried and liked enough to promote earlier in the year, and a box with 25 one pound vacuum sealed containers of ground beef that were close to expiring from an online butcher shop he promoted over a year ago.
Ryu didn't trust the ground beef not to be bad but had held onto it because he was too lazy to throw it out yet and now he felt that food would quickly become a hard to find resource unless he risked life and limb to go find it so he would keep them just in case. Better to have the runs from slightly bad ground beef than to risk death from being eaten alive after all.
He then spent the next few days doing any number of things to try and get a class. He knew that most people got their class options after having to kill zombies in self defense but he was also seeing that others had gotten various options such as crafting and support classes by doing various things around their homes.
One man, who was frequently making and posting videos in Australia had apparently gotten a class called Trash Fortress which allowed him to turn common everyday items into superior defensive structures and products that could be used to reinforce or build safe zones. He made a new video everyday detailing how he was turning his small town's trash dump into an extremely sturdy safe zone. It was quite inspiring to Ryu to see someone making due with a class based around garbage really.
Ryu played a number of video games, watched anime, read chapters from online novels, read comic books, and even spent some time doing small craft projects around his apartment while taking breaks during the daylight hours to sit on his balcony and observe the new reality around him. He saw a number of tragedies that could have easily affected the mentality of many as the zombies and mutants hunted the streets and buildings of the city around him, but he also saw many inspiring sights as small groups of users banding together to gather supplies and help other survivors.
The most impressive thing he had seen so far, among those showing off class powers at least, was a man that he saw saving groups of people forced to come out looking for food. The man seemed to have some kind of class that was based on one of his favorite first person shooters as he wore armor just like the main character and had an arsenal of weapons that never seemed to run out of ammo.
The weapons, the armor, and the fluid way the man seemed to flow through combat mixing melee and ranged while dispatching enemies in truly brutal fashion would all easily point to what his class was based on but when the man got close enough to his building he could also hear a hard metal rock tune that suited the horrific and bloody carnage wafting on the breeze. It was then that Ryu realized the man was killing mutants and zombies to the hard metal beat that seemed to be playing out of thin air and was like a part of his specific class.
Ryu had watched this man as he "doomed" his enemies to hell with one blast of a firearm, ripped off head, or beaten to death with bare fists at a time until he passed through his part of town and out of sight with a growing group of survivors following behind him at a safe distance. Honestly Ryu was relieved when the man had killed his way through town as it seemed to have led to the defeat of a great many of the zombies and mutants in his immediate area as they were drawn to and then killed by the monster slayer.
It had been 5 days since the System Integration and Ryu was starting to get desperate as he still had no class options being offered and he had run out of completely safe food the night before. He was also fighting off a massive cluster headache that made him feel like ten pounds of garbage stuffed into a 5 pound bag from caffeine withdrawal. He was going to need food eventually but he definitely wanted this headache to go away ASAP as it was driving him nuts.
He really wanted to make a run for one of the system safe zones at some point for the guaranteed safety but he needed to last that long first and secondly a class powerful enough to get him there safely.
Ryu managed to make it to day six hungry and still with a caffeine withdrawal headache that was kicking his ass when he realized that he was making the mistake so many background characters did in any zombie apocalypse type scenario. He was putting off the hard choices and actions as much as possible in fear for his safety when in reality he was just letting himself get weaker and weaker until he was forced to make a decision that would probably get him killed from being too weak and exhausted to put it into action properly.
Ryu knew that in a hand to hand situation he would likely be killed by any random zombie and he also knew that while he had the small pistol it needed to be saved as a last resort because as soon as he started firing any threat in the area would be drawn towards the noise making a bad situation worse. Since direct combat was obviously not a good idea or playing to his strong points Ryu needed to think of a plan to play to his strengths but first he needed to figure out what his strengths actually were.
Ryu sat down with a notebook and a pen to write down his strengths but was coming up with a blank. He had spent his entire life mostly playing video games and making content for other people to enjoy as those were his real passion so he couldn't really think of anything else. He knew that, according to the System stats, he was above average in intelligence and he had a much higher luck score than most but wasn't sure how to apply that in this situation.
Running his hands through his long unkempt hair in frustration Ryu got up and started pacing before heading out onto his balcony. At one point a few years ago a small company that specialized in selling plants designed for small living spaces had paid for a promotion with Ryu and provided him with a large number of heavy planters with very hardy plants that survived on their own. The only thing that had survived, and thrived, had been the larger planters that had bamboo in them as the bamboo had grown to be almost eight feet tall and thick enough to make a solid staff out of.
Ryu's head was pounding and as he was idly wandering around his balcony looking to see if anything in the streets around him could inspire him he was reminded of the kid's cartoons he had watched as a child. The particular cartoon he was reminded of, by his headache, was when one toon dropped an anvil or other heavy item onto another toon thereby flattening them.
Ryu had an epiphany as he stopped and looked around his balcony at all the heavy concrete and dirt filled planters all over his balcony. He had at least 50 various planters that were doing him no use currently, he was on the fifth floor, and his balcony overlooked the front of the apartment building that faces the sidewalk and street. The zombies wandered aimlessly but what if he could entice a group of those deaders to gather below his balcony? Would he be able to kill them by dropping items on them from so high up? Would the System see those kills as his and grant rewards? How could he attract the zombies without making himself a huge target?
Ryu immediately went back inside his apartment to grab his notebook and pen to start listing down all of the information he knew about the zombies from his own observations as well as what others were sharing online. Zombies were attracted to noise and smell mostly, some of them could see and react to sight but it was iffy, zombies were only attracted to meat that was not tainted by the virus their own bites now contained, and when there was no further stimuli the zombies would generally stay put or wander in a small area around where they last received stimuli.
Ryu was thinking that if he could gather the zombies up that were in the area he could down them with the planters, or try at least, but also if he could get the zombies to gather outside of the building then perhaps he could quietly sneak downstairs to get to the security room. He knew that his buildings had their own security and that they also had heavy duty security shutters that could be activated and which would turn the building into a very secure place to remain. He wasn't sure if the other residents were still in the building either alive or dead but assumed there were at least some zombies in the building that he would need to clear to make sure his home was safe as long as he remained.
Ryu also knew that there were vending machines on each floor that were likely still intact. The company that supplied the machines and restocked them was definitely the best in his city so as long as others hadn't emptied them yet it would give him food and more importantly caffeine so that he could stay inside a while longer. It wouldn't be the healthiest of food and drinks but it was calories at least until he could figure out a better plan.
Ryu then got up and wandered around his apartment looking for ways to make noise makers that he could toss down to the sidewalk and street below with what he had on hand. He was pulling out anything that looked promising such as empty bottles, cans, the big glass jug full of loose change he left in his closet as well as going through every cabinet, drawer, and storage area in the small apartment. He momentarily considered dragging the surround sound speakers from his TV onto the balcony to blast music but thought that would be more dangerous than helpful since he only wanted to drag in zombies from the nearby area not from a block or more away.
He was just checking the cabinet under his kitchen sink when he came across the items and the resulting spark of an idea that would change his life forever.