THUD
The White Eagle's body landed on the ground, releasing a muffled sound.
'This thing found us despite our camouflage, this might not go as smoothly as I thought' Aaron thought.
He jumped off the building he was on and landed on the ground.
He looked up to where he just sumped from with an astonished face.
"Three story fall and there's barely any pain. I might need to seriously reassess my capabilities soo." He continued to mutter to himself as he walked towards Dave's position.
"How'd you do that?" Dave's astonished voice sounded from his previous location, showing he hadn't moved.
"Do what" Aaron asked while continuing to walk towards the gymnasiums direction.
"EVERYTHING! The jumps, the fall, ho are your legs not broken?!" Dave shouted.
"Lower your voice and I'll tell you" Aaron continued to tell him everything he'd discovered about the system.
"So that's how it works, I need to kill a monster myself and increase my strength, otherwise... what?" Dave questioned Aaron who looked at him with surprise written on his face.
"How are you this calm about this? You'd usually be panicking in a situation like this" Aaron said
"OH don't be fooled my friend, I'm quite shaken up right now, but what good will that do me. Survival of the fittest seems to be making its primal return." Dave said with a bitter smile.
Aaron chucked at him.
'Looks like I worried over nothing, growing up In a war zone does give someone a different outlook I guess, the bean pole always panicked at the slightest set back though. I wonder what changed' Aaron thought as they moved towards the gymnasium.
They were attacked by 2 more monsters on their way there, a level 1 and the other, probably a level 2 given its speed, resulting in Dave's first kill. The level 2 ended up escaping though, it seemed to have the ability to turn invisible, a pretty dangerous ability for a snake to have.
'Where do these things come from?' Aaron wondered.
They were about 2 minutes away from the gymnasium when they suddenly stopped. There were people standing right infron of the gymnasium building, unmoving. They stared at the building, not sparing a glance at the duo.
Dave was about to call out to them, but Aaron stopped him.
"Something doesn't feel right. Who in their right minds would stay outside when there are monsters roaming around?" Aaron whispered to Dave.
Dave creased his brows is thought.
'What could they...wait'
That's when Dave thought of something that could make the situation they were in more complicated.
"Could these be the zombies?" Dave asked Aaron.
"Now that you mentioned it, I did see one student biting another's neck a while back, this would make sense if one of them was a zombie and the other wasn't" Aaron replied.
'Well crap, do I just cut them down or look for another place to rest? There's about 15 to 20 of them here, they seem to be focused on the building and haven't noticed us, taking this into consideration..'
"I have an idea" Aaron said to Dave.
Dave stared questioningly at him.
"There's a chance there won't be any zombies behind the building, we can just use the windows there to... hm?"
Aaron suddenly turned his head backwards to see a group of ten people headed towards them.
A few moments later they reached, Aaron and Dave's location. It was a group made up of two teachers and 8 students. One male student was at the forefront, seemingly the leader.
"Hey there, why are there so many of these things gathered here?" The leader asked the duo.
Aaron shrugged hia shoulders.
"No idea, we just got here." He said
"We've been getting attacked by these things on our way here. It's like they don't even think they just attack us the moment they see us, luckily they aren't that fast or we would have gotten swarmed" one of the female students said.
"You were attacked by the zombies? That's interesting." Said Aaron while rubbing his chin.
"Zombies?" The leader questioned.
"That's what we chose to call those guys." Dave said while using his thumb to pint at the zombies.
"OH, sounds fitting. What did you mean by 'interesting' white hair?"
'White hair?' Aaron thought with his brow raised.
He shook his head and explained
"We weren't attacked by even one zombie on our way here, but you guys were, and multiple times from the sound of it" Aaron said.
The leader nodded.
"Then there's a bunch of them gathered infront of the gymnasium where there is most definitely a high number of people gathered. See where I'm going with this?" Aaron explained.
"Yeah, it would make sense if they attacked groups of people over one or two people at a time. The question is, why?" the leader stated.
Aaron shrugged his shoulders again
"What's your name by the way, I'm Alex, Alex Rover" the leader said with an outstretched hand. Alex was quite a handsome looking guy, he had shoulder length blonde hair, brown eyes and a round face. Him being about 10 centimeters taller than Aaron, made him quite tall.
No wonder most in his group were girls, even the teachers were female.
"Aaron shaw" Aaron said while shaking his hand.
"Dave Shaw" Said Dave.
Alex raised his eyebrows in surprise?
"You're brothers? How's that even possible" He questioned.
"Nah we just grew up in the same orphanage" Dave said with a chuckle.
"That makes way more sense." Alex sighed.
"Anyway how are we going to get into the gymnasium?" He questioned.
Aaron turned to stare at the zombies.
"How many among you have offensive skills?" He asked Alex and his group
"I have an ice related offensive attack" Said the girl from earlier.
Her name was Rachael, she had waist length blonde hair tied in twin tails, blue eyes and was about 1.6 metres tall.
"I'm more into support, but about five more people have offensive skills in my group, I asked earlier." Alex said.
"Good, I need all those with offensive attack to aim at the zombies' heads, you don't need to kill all of them, as long as you can distract..."
"Wait," Rachael interrupted Aaron.
'I've been getting interrupted a lot lately' Aaron internally grumbled.
"What?" He questioned in an annoyed tone.
"You want us to kill people?" Rachael asked with apparent distaste on her face?
"Did you not hear us say 'Zombies'?" Aaron questioned back.
"How sure are you that they are zombies, you could be wrong, we could end up killing innocent people. Maybe they are affected by some kind of sickness and can be cured." Rachael argued.
Aaron stared at the zombies in contemplation.
'In novels, the zombies don't ever turn back, but I can't treat this like a novel, lest I kill innocents like she said. It would have been so much simpler if we could just kill them and get this over with.'
"Sigh fine, aim for their legs, they won't be able to attack us if they can't move." Aaron said.
"Won't the sound if battle attract more monsters?" Alex questioned.
" you have a better idea?" Dave questioned back.
Alex shook his head.
'The plan I had come up with before is still valid, but the chances of getting noticed while moving in a larg group are high. It's better to just eliminate the problem now.' Aaron thought.
"Alright, remembe to aim for the legs. Now move" Aaron said while sprinting towards the zombies, crossing the distance between him and the zombies in an mere moments.
SLASH!, SLASH!, SLASH!
He instantly cut the legs of 3 zombies the instant he reached them and moved on to the next.
"How is he that fast?" A teacher asked in astonishment.
"You can ask him later. Attack." Rachael said while firing two ice bullets at the zombies.
Swish, Swish
"Fire ball!"
"Mudd throw!"
"Stone bullet!"
The rest of the students followed her lead, sending attacks left and right.
'Why are they screaming out their attacks?' Arron questioned while crunhing.
SLASH, SLASH, SLASH
His figure turned into a blue as he increased his speed.
"Boost" Said Alex
BOOM! BOOM!
The student's attacks suddenly got stronger, a result of Alex increasing their damage output.
A few minutes later, all the zombies in the vicinity were down.
__
[ Level 1 monster "Tainted Human" stalin ]×5
[ 5 Experience points gained ]×5
__
" you people need to work on your aim, you waste a lot of MANA whe you miss. " Aaron said, using a zombie's clothes to clean his sword.
CREAK
The gymnasium door opened, revealing a most welcome sight after a hard fought battle.
Hair as dark as midnight, light blue eyes that looked like they contained the sky within them, pale skin, an hour glass shaped figure and as if to put a cherry on top, a spear in hand.
All the guys stared at the beauty in front of them with wide eyes, Aaron included. But he stared for a different reason than the rest.
This girl...
'I could swear my throat was just pierced' Aaron said with cold sweat running down his back.
He narrowed his eyes and moved towards the girl, stopping five metres infront of her, strengthening his grip on his sword.
"Can we enter the building?" He asked the girl before him.
SWISH
The girl stepped forward, instantly disappearing from his sight.
Aaron instinctively swerved to his right and swung his sword for a horizontal slash.
A spear tip passed where his chest was just a second before, missing him by a mere 3 centimeter.
"What was that for?" Aaron asked with his sword a centimeter away from the girls neck.
"You" the girl said, staring into his eyes.
"Fight me."
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Aaron's stats will be in the Author's Thoughts.