An endless world, monsters devouring each other, abominations defiling the human form. The skies on fire with meteors falling down and gods weeping. Encroaching darkness devouring the moons and stars, and demons crawling out from the deepest parts of the Earth. Feathers and corpses raining from the heavens, and a man on top of a hill watching everything burn with a look of hopelessness on his face.

A look of a man tired of fighting against fate.

A world in chaos.

A world in War.

A loud bang awakens him from a nightmare. Yesterdays’ memories flood his mind, the hellish nightmare all but forgotten, all that’s left is a feeling of harrowing premonition. As he went to bed with all of his gear in case of a worst case scenario, there was no need to waste time. He got up and went to his window.

Carefully peeking out he saw a car had crashed at the office section of the apartment block on the opposite side of the street. From a simple look the car came from his left, looking in the same direction there were corpses crawling on the street, and a few zombies were running towards the car itself.

Not long after a brawly man about 2m tall exited the car with a hunting shotgun. Not long after a woman carrying a child followed. He told the woman to run, to hide, but his loud voice only drew more of the rot heads towards him. Not long after shots followed. He killed 3 zombies and disabled 4 more before his shotgun ran out of ammo.

Screaming he tried to distract the zombies away but it was all for naught, as the child started weeping attracting more to them. The woman tried to calm him down but it was already too late, 2 more groups of enemies soon came in to view all heading towards the trio. Not long after their dying screams greeted the new day.

Plamen was startled not because of the gruesome tragedy scene, but because he hadn’t felt any guilt or fear watching it happen. It was like some promotional video of a 3rd rate zombie movie. He knew he still had his emotions, he was currently afraid of and for himself, and felt a bit bad for them. True he wasn’t the social kind, he didn’t have any people who he would call true friends, well maybe one or two. You get the point.

He was the type of person to cry at a drama, he didn’t keep pretense about himself. It took him a few years to figure it out but people’s opinions of him didn’t matter, so he was living as himself some even called him an eccentric. He was 24 for gods sake.

His average personality aside, nothing he could think of could explain why he was so numb to it all, like he had seen this scene a thousand times, like it was normal. Killing the zombified couple from the 4th floor brought him pity and regret and some shock due to his close brush with death. After the big fight he was tired and his hand were shaking from the adrenaline at best.

On the online news, and a few videos he watched for relaxation back in the day, there were people with social disorder, a psychopath if it was inborn, sociopath if developed. He still cared and had empathy so it was unlikely but similar. All he could do was ask himself the question. “If those people were my family, will I act the same?”. What scared him the most is that he didn’t know the answer.

He closed his eyes and relaxed his mind, slowing down his heartbeat which he didn’t notice when it became elevated. Taking another good look at the street, and as his look fell on the car he had an idea. But first he finally decided to buy the library with the common knowledge. Not only would he have knowledge about the most common molecules and technology he could make a long range weapon.

After a quick swipe of the menu he found the library and quickly bought it. As for the Evolving VI he could probably find a way to limit its exposure to data if necessary. Not long after a new message appeared confirming the installation.

-Library: (Earth) has been installed.

-New data available.

-Schematic tools upgraded.

-New upgrades available.

-New modes added to Utility Module

After the message he took a look at the Blueprints and the program finally had a tool bar. It was simple, there was the Materials tab, which allowed to choose the material of a certain surface to be made from, a components tab for components to be made, and even a compiler for a binary code, with all of the known program languages, some he didn’t even know of.

This gave a lot of options. But first he needed to check the upgrades. Looking at it was a meu with all of the stuff that can be upgraded. After a bit of fiddling it looked a lot more orderly. He arranged it in three tabs abilities, Omni-Tool and VI. For now, the last one was empty. The first one had upgrades for the shock ability, one for efficiency and one for damage, there also were a few greyed out options with a ??? on them.

At the Omni-Tool were the upgrades for the core, storage, data storage, extractor and fabricator. However except for the core and storage(both) the rest were ???. There is a probability for a lack of technological information in order to upgrade.

With a slight disappointment he checked storage and found that it required at least 1000 EU for a 1cm cubed. Which was quite high for his current self. He knew that what he lacked was a proper infrastructure, from what he knows and experienced so far his class is crafting oriented. And every crafter needs proper resources, storage and so on. He could probably build more storage but could not keep up with the upkeep.

Looking at the clock it was 10am and he had around 22% power. Considering the need of 1EU for a small container integrity, and probably more if he wanted to store materials in an unnatural form, like solid nitrogen. Just mentioning the need for the 3m proximity in order for the material transfer to work was a headache in itself.

Going to gather materials and coming back to store them was annoying but necessary as the only portable container he had was the medkit. For the moment that should suffice, and currently he needed a long range weapon. He couldn’t use firearms due to the noise, bow and arrow was our and the crossbow as well due to slow reload and the smart zombies. If he could solve the energy problem he could design a coilgun or a railgun, though he must make them sub sonic as far as projectile speed was concerned, a lot less noise that way.

If the Omni-Tool could transfer matter, could it transfer energy as well? There was no power since the blackout so he picked his phone that usually stayed connected to its charger. The battery was at 72%. Doing a quick scan, he got the prompt to upload data from the phone, to which he agreed. On the pop up screen he held his tap until the menu shoed up and a charge function as well as a pair one were there on top of the others.

Selecting charge and the battery jumped to 100 in less than a second. There was barely a pulse coming from the Omni-Tool. Next he removed the battery, scanned and checked the menu again. The charge option was greyed out but the pair one was not. As he selected pair the phone turned on. There were no notifications so the drain on power is probably negligible. After moving 3m away from the phone it shut down.

With the good news of plot ar… conveniences his spirit of engineering was spurred. He opened the Blueprints menu and started to design his weapon, due to pairing he could power it directly with the Omni-Tool as long as it is in the 3m range. Firstly, he made a ceramic tube about 3cm long and 1cm inward diameter and the walls 2mm thick, next he placed 2 plastic squares with a whole in the middle 1.2mm wide where the tube would fit.

After placing a non-conductive coating on the tube he wound copper wire around it. After making the coil he secured both end of the used wire on the 2 plastic plates. Next he copy-pasted the whole thing 12 times, connected the tubes and made the gun barrel. Using some detectors and transistors he made the coil switching circuit.

When the trigger is squeezed the projectile gets pulled towards the barrel of the first coil by the magnetic field, after the sensor at the end of the first coil and the beginning of the 2nd is activated the first coil disengages and the second one activates, it pulls the projectile forward and further accelerates. Once it reaches the end of the 2nd coil and the 2rd sensor activates the projectile gets pulled by the 3rd coil while the 2nd shuts off, and so on and so on.

This design allows for less recoil as it gets distributed between the 12 coils. After that he added 2 big capacitors under the barrel, the grip and trigger behind them. It was quite short, currently at around 40cm so he added a drum mag with around 50 1cm pellets and finally the collapsible stock over it, for the stock to be retracted in close quarters. He wanted to add a big blade on it but found it redundant. Finally, he encased the gun in plastic, and the blueprint was ready to go.

After a thought he browsed through the components menu and found an Omni relay, it would serve as a direct connection with the Omni-Tool for a circuit, like a battery with a remote recharger. All that’s left were the materials.

Harvesting them will take a while. He had a good source of plastic and carbon in the basement, the zombie corpses. Plastic is made from oil and the oil itself is organic in nature. Copper he had plenty of, him being an engineer and all that, semiconductors were needed in miniscule amounts for circuitry, which were easy to find if you know where to look, molecular extractor and all that jazz.

And the final obstacle, energy. He didn’t know how much he needed to use any organic organism is a great source of most elements in the periodic table, but most had at least 50% water content and humans were about 60-75 depending on age. Most organic molecules had primarily carbon and hydrogen so that’s another minus as he didn’t know which parts the Extractor uhm extracted.

So he decided to try it out. First he gathered the copper wire he had, since it had to be refined by the Omni-Tool it would return at best 5% of its mass so it was low but on the up side the purity will be top notch and the coils will be perfect. After looking around the various apartments in the block, front bashed open courtesy of the zombies, he found what he considered enough copper and left refinement for later. And finally the zombies corpses.

As he got to the basement he was just to go around the corner when he heard, the sound chewing and something skittering around the floor. He turned around went to his basement and took a 2m log axe, usually used for wood chopping, and a small hammer. After closing in on the sound he noticed some rats, big ones. This part of the city doesn’t have any rats, it has mice sure but rats? No sir. And he doesn’t remember rats being this big, recalling that rats were at best as big as a cat if a wonder occurred.

These were as big as a dog.

It was barely the 3rd day and mutated monsters already appeared. He was getting another headache. There were 3 of them, busy devouring the corpses. One of them was bigger and had white spots around its neck. He didn’t have any traps so he was questioning whether he should attack or not. On the plus side he could get extra energy which he would need in order to upgrade the core.

Seeing as the rats were in an eating frenzy, he quietly snuck behind the biggest one and swung down with an overhead chop. The axe head sunk into its back breaking a few vertebrae, as the rat screamed and its lower body got paralyzed. The other two finally noticed and charged immediately. Since he was close to the door he made one step back and one to the side hiding from the rats’ view. He prepared for another heavy swing.

As a head popped out, he swung without hesitation beheading it. As blood gushed from the headless corpse the other rat raced over its comrades’ body and charged. He let go of the axe and took hold of the hammer. The rat jumped without warning, he managed to block with his right sleeve covered in paper. As the rat was about to sing its teeth into his arm, instead of trying to pull it back he pushed it further in to its mouth.

The rat was surprised as the hand it wanted to rip trough was shoved in between the jaw and the skull where there were no teeth, and it couldn’t use its full strength. During the rats’ confusion he lifted the hammer up and brought it down on the back of the neck bellow the skull. From the pain a muffled screech was given off by the rat as it tried to retreat but it was too slow as the second hit came down, then third, fourth and by the fifth the rat was dead.

He turned around and saw the rat with the spots trying to run away using its front paws, it looked quite pitiable and quite agile too. Picking the axe up he finished the it off. After a quick extraction he got 21 energy, 15 from the big one and 3 from the normal ones each. At the corpse storage room, the small window was broken and there were claw marks on the concrete, its where the rats came from, in conclusion he needed to move the food and chose a new corpse storage asap, at least until he could refine a whole corpse

Total EMC 84, if he could get the zombies on the street and kill the maimed one he could get enough for an upgrade.

Was it worth it?

The answer is yes.

Will he do it?

No.

He wouldn’t take unnecessary risks. He must make the weapon first then he could just snipe them. He started off with the first corpse it was from the old neighbor lady she was quite light by the looks of it around 40-50kg he figured there are needed around 1 EU for 1.5kg or so, around 30EU should work. He decided to have breakfast first it was already 1pm so he needed to work for another 3 hours before getting the needed energy, and due to the rats he had the perfect work plan.

Breaking the lock on a few basements he started to pile up the pickled fruits, vegetables and meat. After he cleared around 4 of the basement rooms it was around 5 pm so he searched the apartments for perishable goods and had lunch with a day old stew.

He worked until sunset which came around 8pm, as the tool had 34% and finally decided to scavenge that corpse. On the 4th floor he found a nice fridge empty it out and made a storage container with around 2m cubed it had 1Eu upkeep. He emptied out his portable one and went down to the basement. The corpse took nearly 10 min to properly disintegrate and 32% energy, alas he didn’t have enough carbon for the gun, though the trace quantities of other various elements almost enough for the electronics. A second one should fix the problem, with the current regeneration it will be the day after tomorrow before he could refine a corpse again.

As the sun was about to set he prepared for bed, he used the light from the utility module to help him check the barricade from the 4th floor up. Once it was secure he set up a basic perimeter alarm with strings and dozen beer cans filled with noisy clutter he found here and there. And the end of day 3 came to an end with a microwaved meal.