The Octo-Puss were fast, they were very fast and agile, but they had one weakness, they liked to make long leaps as they hurled themselves at their enemy. Once they were in the air there was no way that they could change the direction that they were going. Later when Louie thought about the fight he would conclude that it might be an instinct of the octopus from when it was swimming underwater, since it's easy to change direction if you miss your prey underwater.

And once they figured out that the Octo-Puss were vulnerable to elemental spells they turned out to be not as deadly as they look, but they would still be deadly to anybody that got caught unawares.

After the fight, there were a couple of confusing moments when the loot from the monsters turned up some strange items, like the Dark Roast coffee cup with the words 'Wake Up!!!'.

This came from the Octo-Puss that used a coffee machine as camo and the roll of black garbage bags that came from the pedal bin camo Octo-Puss or Octo-Pi or whatever you call a group of these creatures.

Louie the cup.

He had first thought it was plastic but turned out to be one of those newfound bamboo cups that looked like plastic and the roll of black garbage bags.

Wake Up!!!

Fill this cup with warm water and see it turn into Coffee, made from a Dark Roast that has a robust, full-body taste.

The flavours from the coffee's country of origin are almost entirely roasted out, giving it a VERY strong bold and smoky taste.

Strong enough to raise even the dead.

Junk bag.

Garbage? No problem. Place garbage in these bags and forget about it. Anything that is placed in these bags will be transported to a dimension where one man's garbage becomes another man's gold.

Courtesy of Sullivan SSS.

"Well Claudia, you will never run out of coffee again," Louie said with a smile.

She shuddered, "uggh, I hate coffee, why couldn't it be a teacup? at least it's not soulbound and I'm certain I would be able to get a good price for it at the market."

Louie, still holding the coffee cup, shrugged. "I will buy it from you."

She agreed and he placed the cup in his inventory.

'There is something strange about the description of the cup, I will work on it later.'

Sher scratched her head, "Sullivan SSS? Why does that sound familiar?"

They finished looting and healing, checking their gear for any damages done by the octu-pi before they continued their trek towards the river.

They neared the footbridge that crossed the Berg River that Shira has been using for her nightly crossings.

It was unusually quiet as they got closer to the river.

"Where're all the monsters? Not one attack in the last two blocks, not even any rats?" Brock asked as he looked around nervously.

Slowly they became aware of shrieks and growls with the occasional roar mixed in.

They reached the bridge and saw where all the creatures were.

The footbridge was covered in a vine with big white blossoms and the air was filled with a sweet-smelling scent.

Slak blom

The creamy-white blooms are beautifully shaded with primrose, shell-pink, lavender and golden tones with the blooms arising in 30cm long bunches, and dangling enticingly from anything they are allowed to scramble over.

The flowers are pollinated by small creatures which are attracted to its intoxicating scent and sweet nectar which it secretes during the day, and then produce long, slender, green bean pods which turn a golden brown when ripe. The attractive bright green foliage is evergreen in mild climates, with a soft, downy texture.

"I'm telling you, I only crossed over here during the night, it was never like this, it's usually quiet," Shira explained to Louie as they watched the bridge that looked more like a cross between a WWF Royal Rumble and a Reggae festival. Some of the monsters stumbled around clearly intoxicated.

Louie shook his head, "this looks like that scene from Jamie Uys, where the elephants eat the rotten Amarula fruit and get drunk as skunks."

Sher shook her head, "it's the scent given off by the flowers, it drives some monsters wild."

"Jhees, Magical catnip."

They stood for a while and watched the horde of monsters fight for the flowers.

"Ok, let's take a long way around, I don't want to wait around till tonight, and I don't want to wade into that mess today"

They could have used the Lady Grey str bridge to cross the Berg River but something had taken the bridge out the second day after the pulse, Louie had asked around but all he got was that it was big and had a lot of tentacles, so they decided to skipped that and cross the River at the Oosbosch str bridge which they had used to enter Paarl from the direction of the mountain.

Last time they followed the main road where now they travelled through the neighbourhood parallel with the river moving north and then plan to cross the river and come back south again, which turned a relatively straight 500-metre trip into a 4-kilometre monster-filled trek.

They wearily avoided the Medical Centre that was across from the Boy Louw Sportsground, which had turned into another jungle that teemed with monsters.

They had first thought that the centre was filled with humans, but had in fact turned out to be undead infected with a kind of mushroom that infect and reanimate dead bodies, of which there were alot around.

Fungus Reanimated Dead

This walking corpse is animated by a fungus that thrives in high mana areas and infects fresh corpses, this corpse wears only a few soiled rags, its flesh rotting off its bones as it stumbles forward, arms outstretched grasping for release from its existence or maybe brains to eat.

Medium undead, neutral evil

Armour Class 8

Hit Points 22

Mana Points: N/A

Speed: Slow

Immunities: Poison

Condition: Infected

Senses: Darkvision 20 metres, Perception 8

Languages: It understands the languages it knew in life but can’t speak

Special Traits:

Explosion: Upon reaching 0 Hit¡ points this undead will explode, spreading the fungus spore in a 2-metre radius, infecting all it comes in contact with,

Spores will only survive outside a body for 2 minutes.

Actions:

Bite

Body Slam

Louie shared the report with everybody, but still, there was a lot of it that he didn't understand. Ben said that it sounded like something that you would find in Dungeons and Dragons, a tabletop game that his brother used to play.

Louie made a note to talk to Koert and see if he could tell him more about what all the stuff on the report meant.

'Zombies, infected zombies, that's just great.'

"Well at least they are not World War Z zombies," Shira remarked.

"World War Z? I assume that's a movie?" Louie asked.

"Yea, think of its zombies as undead hundred-metre sprinters, hopped up on PCP, with unlimited endurance and all of them want to eat your face."

Louie shuddered. "Damn, that sounds nasty."

The zombies were attracted to anything living and Louie thought to talk to the rest of STC to send their golem spiders to hunt down and kill the zombies since they should be immune to the fungus.

There was an uproar in the branches of the trees behind them and they all spun around, weapons at the ready, looking for an enemy.

The trees were silent, the kind of silence that just waits for you to turn your eyes away for just a second before attacking you.

The sense of danger slowly vanished, as if the monster suddenly decided that they were not worth the effort, and the sounds of nature, whatever the new forest sounds should be, slowly returned to the forest.

Louie shook his head as he straightened up and looked over at the forest that used to be the sports ground.

Before the pulse, there was a tiny copse, nothing more than a few trees, then with the release of all the mana it started to multiply and grow. There were no words to describe the speed with which this new forest grew. One day it was a tiny copse of trees. No more than 20, maybe 30 together. Then with the release of all the mana, the forest exploded.

He shook his head as he turned back to look at the Medical centre.

He made a note on his Minimap and they moved on to the bridge.

They had crossed the bridge which looked worse for wear and Louie promised himself to make time to see if he or someone in the Town has the Skill that could strengthen and maybe repair the bridge when he gets back.

They were travelling down the road when they noticed something strange, there were fewer abandoned vehicles around the streets, in fact, they were mostly cleared of anything metal.

He had also been smelling smoke since they had left the marketplace which now grew stronger.

As they rounded a corner he was what looked like the possible source.

Louie saw a bank of smog hanging over a couple of buildings.

"What the hell is that?"

"That was the Materials Recycling Facility and Municipal Dump," Trok said. "Somebody turned it into a base, I heard they attacked the messages that were sent out to call the leaders to the first Paarl meeting."

Louie looked at the monstrosity of a wall that was being built before removing binoculars from his inventory.

It was a strange picture that presented itself through the binoculars.

"Damn."

"What?"

"They got working steam engines there. I see at least three working cranes being used in building the base."

The one patched-together crane, which looked like it was built by a steampunk enthusiast on crack, was billowing a column of black smoke and sparks from its exhaust as it lifted a block of what looked like compressed metal to the top of the 5-metre tall metal wall.

"What the fuck? There is somebody hanging from that block like a monkey." Trok exclaimed.

The block of compressed metal was lowered onto the wall where somebody encased in a set of heavy armour, wielding what looked like an honest-to-god lightsaber, started to weld the block to the one next to it, making the wall higher.

Louie tried using on the armoured lightsaber wielder but he was either too far or the skill don't work through binoculars or both.

'There is something strange about that guy doing the welding, he is walking slowly like the armour is way too heavy for him, and they are big, at least 2-2.5 metres tall. Strange.'

Louie looked up over the wall towards the clearly visible Tree,

'Might be a good idea to build an observation platform on one of the branches, with a good telescope I bet you would be able to see really far, and also right into this basecamp.'

Louie tapped Trok on his shoulder and with a flick of his head indicated that they should move back away from the corner from which they were observing the going ons at the strange base.

They moved back half a city block before they huddled up and decided to bypass the base and move on to the Shelter.

"Let's leave them for now, they haven't attacked anybody except shooting a warning shot at the messenger and they certainly don't look like they need any help, we can see if we can make contact with them at a later stage."

They all agreed and turned away from the base.

They set off to the outskirts of the industrial neighbourhood where the Shelter is situated.

It was only a few blocks away that they came across the first undead.

Louie shook his head as he looked at the skeleton that was standing in the middle of the road.

It looked like your typical skeleton that looked like it had stepped right off the screen from Oblivion. It had no flesh and looked like the bones were gnawed clean by rodents, on its skull it was wearing a tattered headband with a couple of broken feathers and it was sporting the tattered remains of a leather vest and was armed with a long stick that it used like a spear.

Further down the road was another skeleton stumbling around swinging a piece of iron pipe at a lamppost, the strange behaviour suddenly made sense when they saw that it had a cooking pot on his head like a helmet but it covered its eye holes and was as blind as a bat.

Looking around carefully they soon saw more groups of skeletons

Louie used and sensed that more than a few skeletons were stumbling around in the ruins.

"Do not attack the skeletons," Shira warned.

"Why not?" Louis wanted to know, "they look like easy experience, they are practically trash mobs."

Shira looked uncertain for a moment scratching her head before she answered.

"I have found that they seem to have a kind of alarm call, attack one of them and nearly every skeleton around them will rush to the one that you attacked. Watch."

She picked up a rock and after carefully aiming, she threw the rock against the wall so that it ricocheted, hitting the head of the skeleton.

Immediately a wave of mana could be seen rushing from the skeleton as it spun around looking for its attacker.

It looked at the rock on the ground and then at the wall from where the rock had come. About another ten skeletons rushed from the broken homes to join the attacked skeleton, they all stood around looking at the wall.

The first skeleton looked down at the rock and poked it with its stick. Louie could swear that it looked confused, if a skeleton could look confused.

"You got to take it out with the first hit or the nearby skeletons will rush to its aid, but as you can see, they are dumb as shit," Shira whispered.

"How did you get past them?" He asked her.

"I sneaked past, and as I said, they are as dumb as shit and not very fast, but there are more here now, much more and they have started travelling in groups of three."

There was a literal horde of skeletons around the shelter and he could Sense many more in the ruins.

"Ok here is what we are going to do, I will lead them away, like pulling a train, once they are clear you guys head for the gates, but first I want you guys to sit tight, I'm going to go make a surprise for the skellies."

"Can't you use that exploding spell of yours? the one you used during the insect wave?"

"? I could but most of that wall around the shelter looks like nothing more than concrete drywall tied to a palisade fence. The spell would turn those skellies into shrapnel that might easily rip through the fence."

Trok looked thoughtful for a moment before he nodded.

"Just hang tight for a moment." Louie lightly slapped Troks shoulder.

They nodded and Louie moved back to an alley that they passed a couple of moments ago.

He looked at the remains of the buildings on both sides and using he reached out into the rubble around him and started forming the trap.

It took him about half an hour to finish the trap and moved back to where his friends were waiting for him.

"Ok, I'm ready."

Louie waited till they had all moved across the street he saw them activate their stealth skill and practically disappeared as they crouched next to a wall.

Suddenly a sense of danger swept through him as a chill ran down his spine.

Unlocked: Danger Sense

"Fuck." Louie cursed as he swiped the notification away. He mentaly made a note to adjust his notification settings to not appear when he was in tense situations.

Instead of dodging he rolled forwards, as a piece of rebar whizzed through the space that was occupied by his head a moment ago.

'Shit I didn't even sense that mob sneak up to me, how the hell can a skeleton sneak anyway.'

He rolled to his feet and ran towards the horde of skeletons near the wall of the shelter, away from his group that was all hunkered down in stealth a couple of meters to the left of him.

He heard a couple of shouts and saw people waving at him, the skeletons at the back of the horde/mob started to turn towards him as he released a wave of into the crowd of monsters.

Multiple mobs were hit but not one was destroyed as he had hoped, he saw the waves of power erupt around the mobs as his attack triggered their alarm call and more mobs rushed from the ruins.

'Shit, I thought skeletons would be more brittle.'

He ran along the back of the mob and threw more , attracting their attention as he started kiteing them away from the wall.

He heard shouting and saw a couple of people frantically waving and shouting at him from where they were standing behind the wall.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his group rushing to the gate in the wall as he ran down the street pulling a train of about a hundred skellies, which were increasing as more and more joined them from the ruins.

He noticed the alley coming up and threw another couple of before throwing two fist size stones, that he had imbued with a , at the back of the mob just to make sure that he has all of their agro.

He had made sure that they saw him throw the stones, they were not the brightest and he was afraid that he might lose some of them if they started looking around.

The spells triggered and made the skellies stagger but not much more since he didn't imbue the stones with the full power

As he rounded the corner he saw more skeletons join his train, he ran across the six-meter-long scaffolding board before kicking it into the hole he had prepared for the creatures.

Running on the narrow ledge down the length of the alley he saw the mob rounding the corner and stumbling down the stairs to the bottom of the hole which used to be the alley.

The hole was three meters deep and five meters wide and it stretched the length of the alley. Louie ran down the ledge to the end of the alley while the skeletons streamed around the corner, down the stairs and rushed after him.

He had made sure that the pit was just deep enough that they can still see him but not reach him.

He stopped at the end of the pit and his danger sense triggered and he ducked as a piece of rebar sailed towards his head.

"Spearthrowers, should have foreseen that."

He saw the last stranglers shuffle into his pit as he moved behind a huge monolith of stone that dominated the end of the alley.

He removed the wedges securing the balancing slab of stone and gave it a massive shove.

Slowly the multi-tone piece of stone teetered towards the pit before it started picking up speed.

The ground shook from the massive impact and some of the nearby structures collapsed as the stone monolith crashed into the pit, destroying all the skeletons.

"Damn that was loud," Louie exclaimed as he waved the dust from in front of his face.

He hid in a still-standing alcove for a while and as no creatures showed he moved back to his trap. Using he moved the stone out of the pit to reset the trap again. He reached out to one of the intact skeleton hands and got the notification to loot the whole mob of creatures, which he accepted.

Louie saw an insistent blue icon flashing in the lower left-hand corner of his vision.

"Huh?"

He opened his notifications.

Danger Sense

Because you have a high Perception and the skills: Sense, Survival, Tracking, Intuition and Monster Expert, you gain an uncanny sense of when things nearby aren’t as they should be. This Skill gives you a sliver of Precognition and will give you an edge in sensing danger and trying to avoid it.

He swiped it away.

Unlocked Subclass: Trapper

'Damn? I didn't know you could get more than one subclass.'

Trapper

Congratulations, for single-handedly using a combination of the simple pit and deadfall traps to lure and destroy more than two hundred of your enemies in one go, you have unlocked the Trapper Subclass.

When active this class grants you the knowledge of how to create five simple traps.

You can build traps 10% faster and your traps will do 10% more damage.

Level this Subclass to unlock more trap blueprints.

Cost per trap:

SP: 60SP

MP: 30MP

'WTF? Active?'

He opened his status page and saw that there was now an active behind his Subclass and that by concentrating on his Subclass he can now switch between Exterminator and Trapper.

There was now also a section in his status known as Subclass proficiency that shows the five traps that he could build.

"What's this shit?" He concentrated on the pit trap and suddenly there was a blue glowing wire grit of the trap on the ground.

"Damn, this looks just like when I pull up a blueprint of a mini fort."

He saw that there were figures in the top left and right-hand corners, the left showed the amount of SP and the right showed MP.

He concentrated on the wireframe and as he started to manipulate the size of the frame the amounts in the corners would fluctuate showing the cost of creating the trap.

"Nice." He dismissed the trap and moved on to the next notification.

Congratulations you have received the Title: BoneBane.

BoneBane

For destroying more than two hundred skeletons at once, you receive the Title of BoneBane. When this Title is active, any creature made from more than 90% bone will hate you on sight and will attack you immediately.

With this Title active you will deal 25% more damage to Skeletal creatures and receive 25%less damage from skeletal creatures.

This Title might have unforeseen effects on this Titleholder.