Chapter 5

They stood in front of each other. Shades, not daring to breath. Ex-sexy-chick just staring straight ahead. He thought about quickly shutting the door, but assumed since one zombie made it up here, that others would have too and shutting the door would alert all of them. Simply quietly opening it seemed to have alerted her as she was standing right outside of it.

‘Right, so she should just walk away after a few minutes…’ He barely dared to blink, sweat rolling off of him. ‘If they could smell, I’d be dead by now.’ He thought, relieved.

Right up until she slowly started shuffling up to his door.

‘Shit, shit, shit! They can smell?! No, impossible, they don’t even breathe! Could they sense living meat or something?? Dammit! I should’ve thrown a piece of raw meat instead of a freaking fork!’ His thoughts ran wildly as he slowly backed into his kitchen, she-corpse about half a metre in front of him. He could see Mel still sitting on his shoulder, but she didn’t seem to be doing anything.

‘Ok, ok. Chill. It’s not charging me or anything yet, maybe investigating what opened the door? Or whatever’s making the breathing noises right in front of it? Or the sound of sweat dripping on the floor? Or does it have my scent?!’ His thoughts spiralled again before he brought them under control. He still had his sharpened stick in one hand, and since no other zombie wandered into his apartment, he figured this one was the only one who heard.

Trying to get out of its face, he angled off the side towards his room. The thing went forwards a few shuffling steps, before slowly turning in his direction.

It felt like an hour, at least, but eventually they were both in his room. His legs bumped against his mattress. ‘Do or die.’ He thought. Not seeing any other choice, he pointed the stick at one of its eyes, gripped it with both hands, took a deep breath, and thrust.

Luckily his trembling hands didn’t mess up his aim, and his stick went through its right eye, far enough to puncture the brain.

It froze, its mouth slightly open. If it didn’t look so dead, he thought it would’ve looked shocked.

Barely a few seconds passed when the wound started glowing a dull yellow.

‘Shit, what now…’

Not long after that, it started turning into dust, starting from the hole in its head where its eye used to be, flowing outwards. It barely took a few seconds before only a small dust pile and a tiny, floating golden orb remained.

The orb flew into him and, knowing what he would find, he opened his character interface and saw the golden Dayle orbiting around his star.

‘Well that answers the question of where I’d find more of those.’ He only got one, which wasn’t really enough to make a difference. ‘It is a level one Corpse so I guess it makes sense.’ He thought. Maybe the level showed how much orbs he’d get? He have to take down something with a higher level to be sure.

He got some confidence at how easy that was and, sparing one last glance at the dust pile, walked back to his front door. He berated himself for not even thinking of using his speed.

“Any reason why you didn’t help me out there?” He whispered to the Shadowling, now practically lounging on his shoulder.

“You had it quite in hand.” She whispered back, waving her hand dismissively. “It was only level one after all.”

He just sighed, grateful that she knew to speak quietly at least.

Peaking around the corner, he spotted one to his right, near the stairs going up, and two more to his left at the stairs going down. These ones didn’t stand still, they moved about aimlessly, bumping into things. He wondered briefly why these ones weren’t also just standing still but decided to move on for now, just one more thing to figure out as he went along.

He was about to head to the two on the left, confident he could take them out, so he could leave the building and find some actual weapons, before he had an idea. One he wanted to kick himself for thinking, but couldn’t deny the desperate times.

He looked back at the stairs leading upwards. And the apartments that could have some valuable stuff he could use. They were practically begging him to loot them! He mentally groaned. His inner gamer was rearing its head. Onwards! It shouted, untold treasure awaits!

He thought of the walking orbs, waiting for him to collect them.

‘Might as well get some easy orbs while it’s still relatively safe to get them, and experiment with my powers some more.’ He thought, walking slowly to the zombie guarding the other stairs.

Using the same tactic, he thrust the makeshift-spear into its eye before it reacted to his presence. He barely waited for it to crumble into dust before moving on up the stairs.

On the next floor, he found five of them, relatively close together. He also saw two doors open with a few shadows walking around inside. ‘Time to test this speed of mine.’ He supposed, channelling the power inside him, speeding himself up. The previously slow-moving corpses now seemed to walk through sludge. Shades could keep up this speed for about half a minute. He didn’t want to burn himself out in case something happened so he kept it at that speed for now.

Hurrying forward, it was almost too easy as he stabbed them one after the other. Soon only five small piles of dust remained. Grimacing, he looked down at his broken spear-point. He got a little over-zealous with the last one and the point broke off against its skull.

“Well that didn’t last very long.” He mumbled. He took out the only sharp knife he had and looked at his blunt spear. It was a pretty cheap knife and wouldn’t last very long before it became blunt if he kept sharpening the wood. He’d rather only use it for emergencies. He looked at Mel, wondering if she had any ideas, when he saw that she’d somehow caught a fly and was playing with it. She flicked it from one hand to the other a few times, before spearing it with a claw. Shades blinked. A sharp, black, Etherea claw.

“How’d you do that?”

“Hmm?” She looked up from where she was, floating by his side. “Do what?”

“With the claws? How’d you make it sharp?”

“This?” She raised a hand and formed sharp claws on her fingers. “It is one of the natural forms of Etherea.” She said before looking thoughtful. “I assume you will unlock the forms as you progress and become stronger but I don’t really know.”

“Hmm… Maybe the new journal could explain it.” He wondered.

Opening it, he mentally thought about how to unlock his natural forms of Etherea. Instead of a written answer, he once again received intuitive knowledge. It was as if the system uploaded information into his brain, knowing what he wanted. This time it was a lot easier to understand.

“So apparently, if I upgrade a certain power ­­­enough times, I’ll start knowing how to use that power in different ways. Only you have natural forms.” He told her.

At the moment he had about the mass of two moons on each of his planets. The first moon for each, basically unlocked that planet’s power.

‘So… Level one?’ He thought.

The journal started adding to its pages.

Manipulation: 1

Circulation: 1

Restoration: 1

‘Yeah, that’s about right.’ He thought.

Focussing on Manipulation for now, he started adding Dayle to the blue planet’s moons. After about five moons got converted, he felt more knowledge enter his head. He was starting to get used the sensation.

Now, instead of needing to rely on something’s density and thinness for it to be sharp, he could form a different type of Etherea energy. One that was naturally razor sharp. Like an Etherea blade.

This energy was a lot more expensive to form but there was barely any resistance as he formed five claws on his hand and cut through the wooden wall of the hallway like it was wet paper. He brought his hand closer, observing this new energy. It looked almost exactly the same as the previous one, except it was constantly in motion, like running liquid. At the moment it looked rough and uneven and he could only form shapes about an inch long so chose claws, following Mel’s example. But he knew that as he became better at using it and kept upgrading his Manipulation, it would become more refined and cut through harder objects a lot easier.

Manipulation: 2

Circulation: 1

Restoration: 1

“Hey Mel?”

“Hmm?” She hummed, looking over at him, seeing his grin.

“Want to play a game?” He said, forming his claws. There was still about seven stories left before they reached the roof of the building.

She returned his grin and ‘extended’ her own claws.

The sun was reaching its highest point in the sky when they finally reached the bottom of the building, nearing the front doors.

Shades laughed, seeing Mel’s expression.

“It was hardly fair.” She pouted. “I’m still a Shadowling. Look how small I am!” She floated right in front of him, extending her arms above her head. From her toes to her fingertips, she was barely taller than the length of his face. “We’ll see who wins once I’m your height.” She crossed her arms, turning around.

Shades blinked, surprised.

“You’ll grow bigger?”

“Well, of course.” She said, turning back to him. “The more powerful I become, the more I’ll grow. You didn’t think I was called a Shadow-ling for nothing did you?” She grinned.

“Well, no… I sort of assumed you’d grow a bit I guess, just not that big. You’d look properly frightening at the size of a normal human.” He scratched his chin, looking thoughtful. He didn’t see her sad look at his possible disappointment. “To be expected of course. Can’t have the companion of the mighty Shades look anything but frightening.” He puffed his chest with pride, looking off into the distance, imagining his greatness. He also didn’t see her grateful smile as she sat on his shoulder.

“Hey, can I get some food?” She said, poking his neck to get his thoughts back to the here-and-now.

Absent-mindedly he just waved her on. “Yeah sure, take whenever you want.” His healing regenerated his blood fairly quickly so he didn’t really mind when she took a few sips.

When she didn’t see his finger, she just shrugged and bit into his neck.

They had cleared each floor, competing to see who could take out the most walkers, relatively easily. Checking each apartment for anything useful took up most of their time. They didn’t find something they didn’t already have enough of. Mostly food and water. They did find a lot of sharp objects he could’ve used as weapons, but since he didn’t really have a need of something sharp anymore, they just left them, taking one or two for emergencies. They didn’t find any survivors, the building was still somewhat new and each apartment was pretty expensive.

They found some doors broken down and saw that there were bloody trails leading into the rooms. Shades guessed that the people were trying to escape but led the walkers to their door. Since they now knew that there were people in there, they broke down the doors to get to them. He was grateful that no one decided to break down his door to try and escape from them, or that they didn’t hear him when he was practising his powers that first night. All of this must have happened that first day when he was asleep.

There were many zombies on the roof for some reason. Shades assumed that people trying to escape, led them there since the streets were full of them, trapping themselves in the process. He couldn’t see much from up there, just the nearby streets. He stayed in an apartment district, so buildings just as tall as the one he was standing on surrounded him. He thought about jumping from one building to the next but decided to first be sure of his strength before trying something as crazy as that, or when he had no other choice.

Shades opened his c-screen and saw at least thirty or so orbs circling his star. He decided to bring his other two planets to level two as well. The green one made it possible to increase his strength as well as his speed. The red allowed him to focus his healing. He could now heal a hole in his hand in under ten seconds if he delayed everything else. He knew, because he actually cut a hole in his hand to check… It was for research purposes!

All of that took about a third of his orbs. The rest he dumped into his star, hoping that a lot, all at once, would finally show him what actually happened.

He finally noticed something as he did so. Mel grew bigger. And, he assumed, more powerful. Now she was about a few inches taller than his hand.

‘But she said that she’d grow stronger as I did. The star couldn’t just be an indication of her power could it? Did something change in me too then?’ Since he didn’t see any difference in his powers, he thought it may be physical.

He started jumping up and down and running around, and immediately noticed a change. He felt stronger, faster, his eyesight and hearing improved, practically everything about him.

‘The star is me!’ He realized. ‘That’s why it’s in the centre with the planets orbiting it. That’s why it looks like the most important piece!’

He whooped, glad at finally figuring it out.

“Hey Mel! Come check this…out…” The words stuck in his throat when he saw his reflection in one of the entrance’s decorative mirrors.

“Oh…”

Now, he knew that he definitely wasn’t that pale when last he checked.

He looked as if he hadn’t been in the sun for months. His hair was darker and his ears slightly pointier. Was he imagining it or did his teeth feel sharper?

“Hey, are you alright?”

He looked at Mel and realised he was hyperventilating.

Panicking, not knowing what else to do, and knowing how much it calmed him down, she bit into his neck again.

It seemed to work and his breathing slowly went back to normal.

“What’s wrong?” She asked steadily, at least knowing he was fine.

He rubbed his eyes, looking tired.

“Sorry.” He sighed. “Wondering about it, and seeing it for real are two slightly different things.”

“What are you talking about?” She looked up at him confused.

“I’m turning into the same race as you, Mel. Our powers are similar. The stronger I make you, the more I physically change. Soon… I probably won’t even be human anymore. If I’m not something else already.” He looked down.

She stared at him for a moment, not really knowing what to say.

“Well…” She hesitated, looking sad. “If you don’t-“

“No.” He looked up sharply, knowing where this was going. “We’re not going to stop.” He stated, pointing at the front doors. “The world is changing and we need to change with it if we want to survive. People are going to start coming after us, Mel.” He walked up to the doors. The zombies outside hadn’t noticed them yet. “We’re going to compete in something, or be tested somehow, and I’m guessing the results of failure won’t be pleasant. These zombies are only stepping stones. Fodder. There’ll be bigger monsters to face, worse demons to vanquish.” He had a determined glint in his eyes. The zombies outside seemed to have noticed something, some of them started shuffling towards the entrance doors as Shades made no effort in keeping his voice quiet. “When that benefactor of ours finally shows themselves and tells us that it’s our time to face the music, or if someone else shows up and demands our blood… Do or die, we’ll have to be ready. If I’m not human anymore… then that’s fine.” He pointed his fist at her, grinning. “At least I won’t be alone, eh Mel?”

She grinned, her eyes shining, and bumped his fist with hers.

“Of course!”