Rat poison pellets. Drano. Cleaning ammonia and a bottle of bleach. Three cases of glass mason jars.
Seeing these items caused Ryu to have a eureka moment as he remembered a popular WeTube video from a few years back that had caused a lot of controversy as it went over common items in the home that could be used to deadly effect as well as court cases in the US where such items had been used either on accident or intentionally that ended up in the ending of a person's life.
Obviously most of the chemical products made sense as they were known to be toxic or poisonous in various ways but the glass jars… well crushed glass introduced into the digestion system of most living beings causes massive internal bleeding and death in many cases.
All of these items created a potential method of killing zombies beyond just dropping things on their heads. It had been confirmed, by many different videos, that the zombies could be killed through methods other than a head shot; it was just a lot harder to do so generally. Even though the zombies and mutants did not have System access they were still a part of the world now governed by the System so they could grant users rewards for killing them. This meant that they also had HP, just like the players, and while most humans had between 50-150 HP at level one zombies tended to be between 300-500 HP and also seemed to have various passive resistances.
This meant that zombies could be poisoned, melted with fire or acid, shot, stabbed, hacked apart, or many other forms of attack with varying levels of resistance. Head shots, being seen as a critical weakness on this particular monster, seemed to gain a massive bonus to whatever damage is done however which almost always results in an instant kill when the brain or spine along the back of the head and neck are damaged.
Could they not also be poisoned or destroyed from the inside out? This was the question that was rattling around inside Ryu's head, especially since some of his favorite classes to play were damage over time classes using poisons, curses, and other such effects. Could this be the real world way to play to his strengths? Ryu decided it was worth a try and went to his freezer to pull out the 25 pounds of questionable ground beef.
He spent the next hour thawing the ground beef inside his microwave in batches so that it would be malleable enough to use. While thawing the meat he also grabbed a couple of ziplock bags before breaking some of the mason jars in his sink to place smaller pieces inside the baggies before sealing them. He then grabbed a small meat mallet and began to gently crush the glass inside the baggies into smaller and smaller pieces, eventually moving onto using a rolling pin to crush the glass jars into a fine powder.
Ryu grabbed his notebook and decided to keep notes as he tested out various methods of spiking the ground beef to see what worked best, if anything really. With the first pound of ground beef Ryu separated the meat into three different piles so that he could mix one with rat poison, one with draino, and one with the powdered glass. Carefully putting on a pair of rubber gloves he mostly used when cleaning his bathroom, he placed generous helpings of rat poison and drano into a plastic baggie before adding the meat and sealing them close. He then smooshed everything together inside the baggies before letting them sit for a while and doing the same with the last baggie of ground glass.
He then used a black magic marker to mark the contents of the plastic baggies before taking another two pounds of meat and making various mixtures of the various deadly contents. Rat poison and drano. Rat poison and powdered glass. Drano and powdered glass. All three together. After marking everything down he then laid out a long piece of aluminum foil on his counter and began taking the mixed tainted meats out before turning them into several meatballs and placing them in ordered rows on the aluminum foil. After finishing he washed his gloved hands and after removing the gloves washed his bare hands again just in case before setting them aside to dry.
Now that Ryu had some more things he could try, other than just dropping planters on the heads of the undead below, he set about making the noise makers which were relatively easy and quick in comparison as he simply took a handful of change before adding it to several empty bottles and tins cans that he capped with duct tape to keep the change locked inside. The finishing touch was when he took an old bed sheet and careful cut it into strips before tying them all together to make a nice long makeshift rope for him to attach the noise makers to so that he would quietly lower them to the ground before jerking the hell out of the rope to shake his noisemakers and attract the undead. The rope just helped to keep them reusable.
Once everything was fairly complete Ryu took everything out onto the balcony and prepared himself for what comes next as he was already hungry and knew that this would either work and give him a safe chance at securing the building or it wouldn't and he would need to come up with some other options to carefully and safely explore his building for food and hopefully caffeine.
Looking at the street below Ryu didn't see too many undead walking around but he knew that this was deceiving as they would come pouring out of any place that might be hiding them from sight once he started. Currently he had about two dozen of the deadly meatballs ready to go and after donning his rubber gloves once again he began by lowering the noise makers to the ground and then beginning to create a racket.
Within thirty seconds the street below went from just a few isolated walking dead from before to dozens appearing at fast walks and shuffling jogs from all over the place. Ryu was even surprised, and mildly mortified, when he saw a dozen undead shuffle out from the front entrance to his own building. It was a good thing he hadn't decided to head down on foot and trust his ability to physically confront the deaders.
Ryu lifted the noisemakers back up with the rope until they were hanging quietly a few feet over the heads of the dead before tying off the sheet end to one of the heavy planters. Taking a brief moment to decide on where to start Ryu chose to begin with the planters and taking one of the smaller and lighter ones he carefully aimed and then threw the planter out towards the packed crowd below… and was rewarded by a system notification after watching the planter easily level one of the dead below, flattening its head like a rotten melon facing a sledge hammer.
"Ding! Congratulations user for defeating your first zombie! User has been awarded with 10 exp and a first time kill Blue Loot Box! Ding! Congratulations, your Luck has increased the rarity of the loot box to an Orange Loot Box!"
Ryu jerked a little bit in surprise from the ease with which he managed to down the zombie using his trick while also reading the results of the system message. Ryu knew that most games that had loot rarity used colors to denote the increasing value, rarity, and strength the items within them contained.
White or Gray was usually normal or trash items, green was considered uncommon or magic, blue was considered rare or superior, purple was often considered epic, orange was often legendary, and then after that it varied from game to game. When Ryu focused on the orange loot box that was in his system inventory the system quickly showed him the rarity levels he was working with and much like he had thought white, green, blue, purple, and orange were as he thought but there were two additional levels above those as well. Red loot was considered mythical items and usually were one off items with no duplicates in the multiverse while the final rarity was gold loot God level items.
Ryu didn't know if the loot he could get from the boxes was based on his current stats, levels, or classes so he decided to wait a bit and finish his experiments before opening it. He refocused on the zombies below and after using the noise makers to gather the dead back into a tight mob below he began throwing a couple more planters. He continued this process, downing zombies below, until he managed to reach level two.
"Ding! Congratulations on reaching level 2! You are the first user to reach level 2 without having chosen a class and will receive a reward when you choose your first class! All level up rewards are currently being held back until a class is chosen by the user."
Ryu was bouncing around doing his version of the Truffle Shuffle from an old movie he loved as a kid when he suddenly realized just what the system was saying. He leveled up but it didn't give him a class and he also didn't get any of the benefits a level up might typically grant. No stat points to assign, no talents, no skills, and nothing to indicate what he might get after he got a class.
Ryu had really hoped that with all the games and otaku media he consumed the last couple of days, combined with killing the zombies, that he might gain a class finally. He had even assumed that leveling up might even force the system to give him class options but that obviously wasn't enough.
He sat down a little put out by his findings but after a couple of minutes he regained his composure as he realized that even though it hadn't worked out the way he wanted he still ended up with a net gain from the situation. He hadn't lost any rewards, they were just delayed until he could gain a class and since he didn't really know how to make that happen he decided to stay focused on what was really important… killing the undead below enough to try and secure his building for food and caffeine.
Ryu went back to attracting and clearing zombies below until he ran out of planters to toss down, gaining another level and reaching level 3, before he started using the poisoned meatballs. He was pleasantly surprised to find they actually worked, as soon as the meatballs reached the ground the zombies immediately started grabbing and consuming them.
The two dozen meatballs were more than enough for the remaining zombies to manage to grab and eat a couple each. The first five minutes nothing seemed to be happening but after 15 minutes the undead were in various stages of distress.
Some of them were bleeding through their orifices, some were stumbling around even more drunkenly than before while the ones that consumed the glass and rat poison mixture seemed to be the most affected as they were rapidly leaking fluids before simply collapsing and Ryu could see he was getting kill notifications as the poisons did their work.
It took time, over an hour actually, but eventually every single zombie that had consumed a meatball died leaving Ryu as a level four user. He had just cleaned and removed his gloves after heading back inside, already planning in his head how he would get downstairs as quickly and quietly as possible to seal the building when the notification he had been waiting for finally arrived.
"Ding! Congratulations the system has analyzed enough about your actions to offer you several classes to choose from! Please choose carefully as you only get these options once all future classes will be based off the class you choose first and the actions you take using it."
"Please choose from the following classes!"