In Daniel’s brief exposure to them, the zombies could be accused of being many things. Overly bloodthirsty, a tiny-weeny bit aggressive, prone to committing unnecessary property crimes, and on absolutely the wrong side of the beauty spectrum, but they were proving to be not completely stupid.

First the hand trying to open the lock, and now that the gap in the door had appeared, they had immediately stopped throwing themselves at it while they clearly assessed what was happening. The one that had peeked inside had taken one look then retreated.

There were even grunts from the corridor like they were communicating.

“What’s happening?” Daniel asked, looking at Ivey, hoping she could provide an answer.

The plan in his head had them rushing into the gap and getting in each other’s way. The overcrowding would then make them easy to dispose of, sort of like shooting undead fish in a barrel.

“I am not sure.”

“Maybe deciding who gets to eat which parts,” he quipped before immediately regretting the joke when Ivey flinched. “If it was me, I’d be sending the weakest in first.”

Then a different thought occurred to Daniel.

If the zombies could think, they were probably deciding to work out how they could get into the room without being splattered themselves. Not who went first but how to break the door down. It was pretty clear that trying to sneak through the gap he had left was not optimal for them. The prey was trapped, so their best play was to expand the hole.

“Grab more wood,” Daniel told Ivey, stepping forward and keeping his back to the wall where the hinges were in order to give him as much separation from the gap in the door as possible. He did not want a reaching claw to snipe him while he was doing his magic.

Thump!

The door rocked once more. Dust puffed from above him. They had looked at the hole, found it wanting, and decided to create a more suitable version.

Oh no! Daniel thought. They knew what they were doing. His hand touched the wood. The process felt laborious and difficult because he refused to shut his eyes. He needed to watch the hole to make sure a zombie did not sneak up and catch him unaware.

Once more, he felt his consciousness infuse the wood. It was in terrible shape. Internally, hairline cracks ran through the entire structure.

Daniel had two aims that required his focus. The primary one was to stop it from falling apart, and his magic immediately rallied, smoothing over those cracks, throwing on rough and dirty fixes. The second aim was the same, but approached the problem from a slightly different angle. Ultimately, if they kept launching themselves at the door, eventually, it would fail. It was just physics. His magic, as had already been demonstrated, could only do so much. Plus, years of farm work had taught him that even metal bent if you hit it enough times—and wood was far more delicate.

It was a cliché as anything, but in football the best defence was a good offense.

He needed to counterstrike.

Lots and lots of thorns had to be the answer. Their enthusiasm for shoulder charges would wane if they were throwing themselves on four-inch-long spikes.

Magic flowed out of him, fixing what he was feeling. It was sort of like a game, but completely different. There were no percentages or durability available. There was no ticking health counter that represented him mending the wood that would decrease with the next zombie attack. All he had was his gut feeling. The door was struggling despite what he had done. Papering over the hairline fractures was just that. It dealt with one problem, but there were proper cracks and other fault lines he had not touched. His mind immediately fell to reinforcing those as well, with a sizeable chunk of his focus going on the hinges.

It defied natural laws and common sense, but under his command, the wood in the door grew into the frame and vice versa.

It was hard work.

Thump!

“Piss off!” he groaned out loud as everything he had done had fallen apart under that one blow.

There had to be a step change in his response.

“Think.”

Only seconds had passed, and from the sounds of it, Ivey had only just reached the couch and was struggling to pull out the broken sections, with the staples and cloth bindings restricting her. There would not be any help from that quarter.

Crack!

The fault line split the door almost in half. The zombie was moving away to launch itself again. Daniel reinforced the one area.

Time!

There had to be some way to delay them.

It had hit the same spot continuously. A position that was now fractured and broken more than elsewhere. It would probably keep striking that spot. At heart, they were just animals. He needed a method to cushion the impact, like air bags.

I am better than you, he thought as he shut his eyes to focus on what was necessary.

Agonising pain struck his foot.

Instinctively, he tried to step back, but it was pinned to the ground. He could not afford to do anything about it.

With eyes firmly shut, he focused on the wood. The only thing that mattered was strengthening it enough to stop the next blow. Something had attacked him. Whether it was a bug, a piece of wood with a nail in it, or the more likely outcome of a zombie claw, none of that would matter if his fix was not slotted into place.

If the door broke, it was all over. He had to reinforce the timber further to let it survive while installing his own version of an air bag.

His energy concentrated into that one spot. It was around his head height; Daniel figured the monster was jumping and leading it with the shoulder. Every time, as far as he could tell, it had hit the same spot. If it struck there a fourth time, a trap would be in place.

“Fu . . . farker!” he groaned, the words bursting out as his foot bones were ground together. Not a nail on a piece of wood. Instead, it was a goddamn claw that was currently being twisted around.

Daniel’s eyes still shut firmly while he focused on the door. The next blow was coming. A sliver of wood above the spot that had been dislodged in previous attacks fell further down at his command, swinging out to point out into the corridor. The moment it was aligned, his wood growth power flowed into it, immediately strengthening the base material. Making the cells smaller and more compact and increasing the density of the fibrous substance in each cell to increase its strength.

The claw in his foot moved further.

“For all’s holy!”

The edges of the splinter at a macro-level sharpened, and the point got focused. It quickly resembled a spear point with a sharp tip and four ridges radiating outwards at each point of the compass sliding back to the wall. It was four inches long—as he had learnt his lesson—and one inch wide.

Not quite an air bag, but some of the energy of the blow would be directed into mangling the monster’s shoulder.

Thump!

“ROARAAFS!”

Everything Daniel had done had gone into the moment. The door shuddered, and the spear tip bent. It was no longer straight line. Instead, the tip embedded in the zombie’s shoulder opened up like a flower.

It was better than an exploding hollow bullet. Fragging out once inside the target would always do more damage than the same force on the outside. This improvised weapon did that just—on steroids. Structurally, it was fused to the door, and that connection strengthened even as the zombie bounced away. From shoulder to hook to door, the force was conveyed, and the entire structure rocked and some patches he had put in place broke while new cracks formed. Everywhere critical held. A gap looking out into the hallway formed up above his head. Luckily, it went straight up and did not impact the structural integrity of the barrier. If it was spread downwards, he would shout different things.

The door held, and the fish was hooked. Daniel did not want to imagine what had happened. The spike the zombie had impaled itself on was brutal. It was not a normal spike; instead, he had grown the wood out from the tip once it was inserted. A combination of physics and his magic had caused slithers of wood to hook out in all directions, cutting through the internal flesh of the monster. The narrow tip went in, but to pull it off now, it would take half the shoulder. Each of the thirty hooks he had grown would take a chunk with them.

Daniel looked down.

His blood was soaking the carpet. The zombie’s arm had just reached him and driven two of its fingers right through his foot. He should have put on his work boots.

The monster was the ambiguous female or male one with a gaping wound where his club had popped out its eye. Clearly, while he had been distracted, it had snuck into the hole that he had created. Luckily, the afterthought of thorns around the gap had caught it and stopped it from reaching further. It was why he was alive. If it had a longer reach, Daniel knew that it would have mauled him to death in the couple of seconds of forced inattention. As it was, it had settled for what little it could do and that was to stab his foot.

It saw him looking at it.

“Rawghr,” it said.

“Farker,” Daniel answered and while refusing to relinquish his contact with the door, he drove all of his weight onto the club. Into the wrist of the creature near his foot. Almost without meaning it but secretly pleased with the outcome, he grew the spike so that it went all the way through the arm and into the hard flood with a solid chunk. Next time he hit an eye he would get brain.

The hand grabbing his foot spasmed. It made the pain worse, but the zombie was unable to control its own limbs. The random withering had both nails out of his feet for a moment.

Daniel yanked the suddenly free foot away.

The impaled zombie, the one trying to batter the door down, was thrashing, which was making the whole door rock, but without momentum behind it, the door would hold through, it creaked alarmingly.

The androgynous zombie tried to pull back, but all it did was to get its other shoulder caught on a barb.

Daniel smiled at it, or more precisely, grimaced. He pushed hard down on the club. Bones ground together and the zombie snarled at him. Forward or backwards, its skin was hooked on the barbs dropping from the door. If its skin was not so tough, it might have torn free, but as it was, it was stuck.

Daniel took a tentative step and almost collapsed as the pain made his leg buckle.

“Healing,” he gasped. Warmth flowed through him. He continued to swing around, keeping his full body weight pressed on the club to stop it from moving.

The thrashing zombie outside and the one stuck on thorns were combining to stop the others from trying to swarm him. It was time to make a statement.

Daniel touched the wall. Cheap wood panels, but it was enough that he could reach the door through them. It was harder than interacting with the wood directly, but it worked. Right behind the zombie’s head, a spike grew.

“You are not eating me today, arsehole.”

It growled back, sounding almost confused.

Daniel grinned ferally and then, pivoting forward, drop-kicked the head like he would a football. It tried to position his mouth to bite, but was too slow as Daniel’s foot slammed into its nose.

The head banged straight back on the spike. Suddenly it was pinned, shoulder and skull. The hand freed from club started scrambled for purchase.

“I am no one’s food,” he shouted before kicking it in forehead. The head rammed fully onto the spike, and it emerged from its nose.

Oops! The spike emerged right where his first kick had connected. If impaling had only taken one kick, he would be begging for healing once more.

“RADVAIIRF.”

The bellow was intense, and the door rocked. There was also a thump, which Daniel imagined was a large body hitting the floor.

Feeling slightly foolish, he leaped to his original spot. Now the dead zombie was providing an additional barrier; his feet felt safer, and once more he started reinforcing the door, eyes mostly shut but making a point to keep looking down regularly. They were still striking hard, but the big one was no longer throwing itself at the door. That let his mending to outpace the damage, giving him time for ancillary work.

Ivey was next to him, handing him bits of wood. Without hesitation, he used them to shore up the gap he had created and now wanted sealed. Fusing that wood into position while growing the thorns on the doors outside, he slowed down the repairs slightly to match the damage that was being done.

They had survived, and all that was left was to finish the job.

There were frequent grunts of pain as a zombie hit one of his new thorns.

He kept working, turning the door outside into an array of points that a porcupine would be impressed with.

The blows got less frequent, and Daniel realised they had won. In fact, the assault on the door had stopped minutes ago, and he had been mindlessly reinforcing.

He dropped his hand.

“I don’t feel so good.”

The girl was looking at him in concern.

“I’m going to have a . . .” A healing spell hit him and seemed to do nothing. “Lie down.”

He stumbled towards the bed. The world was swaying, and the carpet tripped him, and he fell straight down onto the mattress.

Everything hurt but it was too much effort to get up. Healing hit him and did not make him feel better. He shut his eyes.

Log Report 5 - Entry 3

Oh yeah.

Who’s incredible.

My colleagues were so right to call me a genius.

There was an entire pack of deconstructed sapients and the co-wobub that I broke rules to create saved the day.

Bang, kick, smack and he wiped them out. I give his fighting prowess at least a nine. There were a couple of errors in the fight. He forgot to use his magic early. I took off four points for that. Then he let his foot get spiked. That was minus nine, but I added three back because he focused through the suffering to finish the spell.

Wait?

Do these bipeds suffer pain?

Let me consult my reading material.

Apparently, the answer is yes. According to the cultural pack and I quote.

All large fauna encountered, including humans that will act as your host have advanced pain sensors spread throughout their skin and body. Pain feedback is a key component of their ability to assess and apply suitable treatment for wounds. It is inappropriate and detrimental to survival to turn off this feedback loop.

That last line has been added between the last event and this one. But I had already worked that out after what my last host did.

Turning off pain-receptors is a bad idea!!!

Having seen it first-hand I can assure you it is a REALLY bad idea.

Don’t do it.

Really, I’m disappointed that was not spelt out prior to now, but at least they’re finally getting their act together. What it’s only been millions of alpha particle conversions.

*Yes, that was sarcasm*

Hey look at that definition. According to this the bipeds have a preferred name for themselves. Apparently, they like to be called humans. I will use that preferred mode of address from now on. If I slip, you can’t blame me because it’s always difficult to get your head around the nomenclature of the new species.

Returning to analysing the fight. The co-wobub keeps the plus three because he was definitely in pain and... Maybe that’s a bit generous only a small part of him was affected after all. I might give him only two back. For keeping his composure. That seems fair.

Where was I? Oh yeah, the fight. One deconstructed sapience dead, a couple of injured and a larger group driven away. I’m giving it an official score for the fight of eight out of a hundred. Take out the crazy dumb mistakes and it would have been a nineteen, not bad for a first attempt.

Also the bipeds, both my host and the co-wobub were super dooper lucky. They managed not to fall over once during the fight! I would have expected them to celebrate that, but not a single thought in my host acknowledging their luck. Mind you, the co-wobub fell over immediately after the battle, so there was that.

Now the final awesome bit of news. With them successfully surviving that minor skirmish, it’s a new personal record for me.

My host has now *drum roll* survived for the longest time yet. I’m so getting better at this job and the multiple independent ‘anonymous’ reviewers who bad-mouthed me must be eating vicoata by now. Whoever left those hurtful comments was probably one of my peers who recognized my genius and was trying to knock me down a peg, or like the bipeds say that reviewer was suffering tall poppy syndrome.

Anyway, I’m very proud of my new survival record. It’ll be really exciting to see if I can smash it further and help my host to survive twice as long as my previous one.

How great would that be?

Strategically nothing has changed and I’m going to make sure my host and the pet (?) co-wobub will both get strong together.

For completeness regarding the word pet. While I’m confident in the terminology, I will admit I’m not a hundred percent sure that it is the correct term, but before the next update I promise I’ll spend more time scanning the cultural pack to confirm that pet accurately describes their relationship.

Go team bipeds.

Total Falls: 4 (+1). (I’m sure it’s only that low because of some ridiculous luck stat.)

End Log Report