"Adieu, mon chéri (Farewell, my dear)," Demira concluded as she forced me to crush the badge in my hand.

I felt a tugging sensation pulling me away as my vision went dark, only to regain my sight again seconds later, finding myself in the middle of a barely-lit room.

"FUCK!" I screamed as soon as I opened my eyes, trying to vent some of the frustration gnawing at my mind. "I need to become stronger. Fast." I murmured with a somber expression, taking a deep breath to calm myself.

'First things first. I need to know where the fuck I am before I do anything else.' I looked at my surroundings and concluded that I was currently inside a hotel room of some sort.

'A hotel room, a fancy one to boot, or it used to be fancy at least,' I noted as I looked at the decaying furniture of the room, moving slowly towards the room's window to take a peek outside.

'I should be at least six floors high, considering how far away the streets looked.' I quickly exited the room to check the surrounding area and found myself in a hallway with many numbered doors connected to it.

I cautiously and meticulously checked all the rooms in the hallway for any signs of danger, only settling into one of the rooms after I checked them all and found no threats.

'Now let's see what I risked my life for.' I opened the bag which previously belonged to number 28, sighing as I looked at its contents.

"Ropes, eight bottles of water, three packets of dried noodles, and a flashlight," I murmured with twitching eyes. "I risked my life for and killed someone for Ropes, eight bottles of water, three packets of dried noodles, and a flashlight," I repeated out of sheer annoyance.

"And I even lost my knife, too," I complained to no one in particular. [You have two unread notifications. Would you like to view them?] The system's emotionless voice sounded in my head, causing me to stop throwing a tantrum.

'Not now. I need to think first.' I needed to analyze my encounter with Demira while it was fresh in my mind, to figure a way of countering or avoiding her entirely.

It started when she sneaked up on me while I was taking number 28's badge. I didn't hear or notice anything until she was right behind me, which means she was more than capable of stealth.

She also stopped a knife thrown at her face in a surprise attack, merely one centimeter away from hitting her, which means Demira has incredible speed and reaction time, probably more than she showed since she was clearly showing off by stopping the knife at the last possible millisecond.

Demira wasn't an ordinary person, either. She had powers to control or manipulate blood. She could view people's memories through their blood which is the tallest red flag someone from another world like me could come across.

[Do not worry, host. Johnny fully equipped the system to protect the memories of your past life from prying eyes.] The system quickly reassured.

Well, that's a relief, at least. I still wanted to implement defenses for my memories of my own if possible, but I'll leave that to the future as I already have a lot of brainstorming ahead of me.

So, moving on from the creepy memory reading thing. Demira seemed capable of doing many things with blood, like controlling it and giving it different shapes.

There was nothing my current self could do to stop her physically, so I needed to think about her motives, to stay on her good side if I couldn't avoid her in the future.

Demira didn't want to kill me. That much was clear since I was still very much alive. She didn't hide her interest in me, but what was it that piqued her interest, exactly?

She didn't seem interested in me when we first met, merely smiling and walking away without giving me a second glance, meaning that she had developed an interest in me while I was roaming the second floor.

The only thing I could think of as interesting during that time was my brief fight against number 28, but a minor skirmish like that shouldn't matter to someone like her, should it?

She tried to guilt-trip me over killing number 28 and seemed rather impressed when I didn't rise to her bait, saying that I passed, but what the hell kind of test did I pass? The being a cold-hearted asshole test?

She definitely wants something from me, and it was murdering 28 that made Demira think she could get that thing from me.

In conclusion? I had to become more powerful to make sure that I could give her whatever the hell she wanted and stay on her good side or risk getting killed by her, which brings me right where I fucking started. I NEED MORE POWER.

'I can't keep running circles in my own head. System, show me the new notifications.' I sighed, hoping that whatever the notifications were, they would provide a distraction for me to occupy myself with instead of this bullshit.

[You have unlocked the achievement: Cockroach Tenacity (Repeatable)]

[You have been rewarded 100 experience points.]

[Cockroach Tenacity: Survive an encounter you thought impossible to survive.]

'Well, at least I walked away with a consolation prize, even though the name pisses me off,' I sighed while reading the notifications. 'System show me how much exp I need to upgrade each of my parameters.' I decided to use the experience points instead of waiting and testing further because I needed an immediate power-up.

Planning and playing the long game is something that I wasn't against, but I had to make sure that I lived enough into the future before making designs for it.

[Strength: F+ (Requires 20 experience points to upgrade to E-)]

[Agility: E- (Requires 30 experience points to upgrade to E)]

[Endurance: E- (Requires 30 experience points to upgrade to E)]

[Intelligence: E (Requires 40 experience points to upgrade to E+)]

[Energy: Locked (Requires 100 experience points to unlock)]

I had a total of 118 experience points, which meant that I could either upgrade a maximum of three parameters or unlock Energy.

The choice should be obvious, and yet, I had a feeling that unlocking Energy would be the better option. 'System, what do I gain by unlocking Energy?' I asked, hoping for a straightforward answer and not a vague one.

[You will unlock the ability to generate pure energy and manifest it into a specific type of power.]

'What do you mean, specific?' I frowned in thought at the wording the system used when answering my questions.

[In this world, most super-powered individuals require the use of specific energies to activate their powers, depending on what their gifts are.] The system explained.

'What kind of power will I gain if I unlocked Energy?' I asked, trying to remember an example of characters that required using specific energies to power themselves.

[The random kind.] The system replied crisply, causing my eyes to twitch, no, to spasm.

'Will I be stuck with whatever I receive, or will I be able to discard for something else later?' The thought of a gamble like that honestly didn't sound appealing to me.

[You cannot discard what you receive, but you will still be able to unlock the ability to manifest your energy in different ways in the future if you have the required amount of experience points, of course.]

'What to do? Upgrading my parameters seems like the safest but, unlocking Energy could reward me with something quite powerful.

Still, I didn't know the possibilities, so I could end up with something that makes me able to control animal balloons or some shit.

'Yeah, I'm not gambling with my experience points like that, not in this situation.' I concluded with a reluctant sigh.

"System, upgrade-" I was about to upgrade my agility, but I had to swallow my words as the announcer's voice reverberated across the entire city.

"Attention to all players! A special event has occurred!" The announcer stated with an excited tone. "The undead have finally arrived, and they are hungry for your flesh!" he added as a holograph, showing a rotten hand emerge from the ground.

"Whatever you do, don't forget to have fun, and good luck out there!" he concluded as the image in the holograph began moving, showing many zombies crawling out of the ground and begin slowly roaming the demolished cityscape.

"Well, that changes things," I murmured as I made my war towards a window and peeked outside, immediately spotting tens of zombies moping around in the streets below.

'System, does killing zombies reward experience points?' I asked, hoping that the answer would be yes, as hunting zombies will involve considerably less risk than killing people for EXP.

[Zombies do not have life essence as they are dead, but the system can harvest the power that moves them and convert it into EXP at the cost of lowered efficiency, meaning less EXP.]

'I can work with that.' I will at least know what I'm up against and what to expect when fighting the zombies, and I can't say the same about humans.

If I ran into someone as strong as Demira this early in the game, then there is no guarantee that I won't run into other participants who are as strong as her or even more powerful, making the act of actively hunting other players extremely dangerous.

'System, unlock Energy.'