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  A dinging sound echoed inside his head. “Huh?” he asked intelligently.

  Objective Complete.

  System now loading…

  Initial skills will be granted based on overall performance to date.

  “This…” Scott was not certain what to think. The voice in his head was getting stranger by the moment. Which, admittedly, was a deep concern given that the voice existed at all.

  Pain suddenly flared inside his head. He gasped heatedly as he shut his eyes tight. A stabbing pain in the center of his forehead made him think that he had been shot. However, the truth was proven to be far stranger. When he opened his eyes, he saw a floating panel of light hovering in front of him like it was a perfectly normal thing to see.

  Scott Ambrose

  Level: 60

  EXPERIENCE POINTS

  Item EXP: 1000

  Equipment EXP: 1000

  Skill EXP: 1000

  Trait EXP: 1000

  Waifu EXP: 1000

  World EXP: 1000

  DYNAMIC ATTRIBUTES

  Hit Points: 100/100

  Energy: 100/100

  STATUS ATTRIBUTES

  Strength: 10

  Endurance: 10

  Agility: 10

  Mind: 10

  Spirit: 10

  Luck: 10

  TRAITS

  Cool Under Pressure

  SKILLS

  Itemization [0]

  Identification

  Edged Weapon Mastery [0]

  “What’s... I don’t even?” Scott shook his head to clear it of the odd sensation that lingered. Things! He knew things now. He did not know how, but he knew!

  He glanced at the closest corpse. “Does that really work?”

  Scott looked at his free hand then back at the corpse. He knelt down and touched the body then whispered, “Itemize.”

  He gasped in surprise as a little digital display appeared in the air before him. It counted down from sixty, and when it reached zero some of the warmth fled from his body. The corpse began to shine softly with a strange pure light then started to dissolve. Little motes of blue energy floated upwards then disappeared. Soon, the corpse was gone altogether, nothing but blood and a bit of brain matter was left behind.

  “So, it works…” He looked at his hand once more then shook his head. It made no sense, but he could touch things and turn them into item points or even cause them to drop items like a monster in a game.

  No items were left behind this time, but he checked his status menu. “One item EXP point?”

  How much was an item point worth? Strange knowledge, memories of things he had never done before, suffused his thoughts. He knew how to itemize things. He could discern information about certain things merely by looking at them. He even knew more about how to properly use edged weapons in a fight.

  “Feels like I just ran a mile,” he muttered.

  Itemization would drain his energy and would take one minute to properly activate. He had to do it if he wanted to earn points outside of his missions and objectives. The cost this time was ten energy points, and a minute of his life. The reward was probably not worth the risk.

  While he did not have full knowledge of what was going on, he understood the basics. Kill zombies. Itemize. Get stronger. Survive. There was no time to question things beyond a basic need to understand how to use his new abilities.

  He knew that it would weaken him, but he wanted to try itemization once more. He itemized the corpse of the girl whom he had killed but when he did, he noticed that the time for itemization had increased to sixty-five seconds. This proved to him that it was not a steady number. Once she was purified in the light of his skill, she left behind an item! A dull grey color seemed to radiate from the bracelet. Yet another curious thing to be concerned about.

  Bloodstained Friendship Bracelet

  A friend in need is a friend indeed. This bracelet is a simple of true friendship

  Scaling Attribute: Endurance

  Damage Reduction: 0.1

  The bracelet was nothing more than a few woven cords with a metal clasp. Unfortunately, the strange knowledge inside his head told him that the item was useless as equipment. His current damage reduction was at zero due to the fact that he had no damage reduction skills. Even if he did, the boost was only one-tenth of one percent. That would not block even one point of damage. Given how much damage these things could do to people that seemed to be quite low for a defensive item.

  He itemized the bracelet to see what would happen. It still took a full minute, and by this time some of the zombies in the area became suspicious of his presence. Rather, he felt that they should be suspicious. Thankfully, they were mostly still busy trying to break into the place where their food might be.

  “One equipment experience point?” he asked. From the knowledge downloaded into his head, that confirmed the fact that it was a garbage item. There was a color code specific to each item, meaning that when two identical items were found the one with the rarer color code would be better overall. Though, different items could have wildly different stats and even grey items might be better than some radiant gold items when compared.

  Grey items were the lowest order of items. There were also white, green, blue, purple, orange, and radiant gold items. Grey items were basically just normal items that had no real ability, while the radiant gold version of that item was basically a legendary version.

  Scott glanced at his brush axe. It too had a grey aura.

  Brush Axe

  A machete on a stick. This weapon is good for chopping limbs made of both wood and flesh alike. This weapon was automatically upgraded into an iconic weapon upon your completion of the first mission objective.

  Item Type: Edged Weapon – Sword.

  Scaling Attribute: Strength

  Rarity: Common

  Aura: Grey

  Damage: 240

  Damage Reduction: 55

  Durability: Lightly Damaged

  UPGRADE COST

  Equipment EXP: ???

  Item(s): ???

  Scott rubbed his tired eyes. If this new knowledge could be believed, the damage stat acted as a percentage boost that increased his natural ability to do damage. In this case, the weapon damage and damage reduction scaled based on his strength attribute. It would grant him an attack that was equal to two hundred forty percent of his strength attribute, and a defense slightly over half of that attribute.

  Of course, the actual damage dealt would be determined by the amount of force he used and the competency of his strike. Given his ten points of strength, he was now capable of producing up to twenty-four points of damage during any given attack, and he could ignore over five points of damage received. Though, in all honesty he did not know what those numbers amounted to in an actual fight.

  He looked around for zombies. He had remained quiet, well quieter than the zombies attacking the door, so they had yet to notice him. Quickly, he followed the information provided to him and he checked his skills. Itemization and Identification were straight forward. He could see the names of things and some stats with Identification. The skill he needed to check was Edged Weapon Mastery.

  Edged Weapon Mastery

  The ability to slash, pierce, and cleave with efficiency and skill when you have equipped an edged melee weapon. This skill grants you the basic knowledge needed to fight proficiently with any edged weapon. Prolonged and frequent use of this skill will develop your understanding of edged weapons and how to use them effectively in a fight.

  Level 1/20: 0/100

  Training Acceleration: 0.00

  Developmental Boost Cost: 4

  Damage: x3

  Slash: 0

  Cleave: 0

  Pierce: 0

  Damage Reduction: x3

  Slash: 0

  Cleave: 0

  Pierce: 0

  He twisted around then thrust his weapon. He could feel that there was knowledge informing his movements, but little else had changed. If his new k
nowledge were to be believed, combination of his brush axe and skill had greatly increased his damage potential.

  The most interesting part of the skill was that he could spend general skill EXP to increase his training acceleration. He needed to raise his Edged Weapon Mastery skill experience to one hundred points to gain a level in it. In order to gain experience in it, he would need to use the skill in a manner that counted toward its development. Without any training acceleration he would still gain experience for the skill, but it would be exceedingly slow.

  Each time he used his edged weapon skill, he would also gain a small bit of general skill EXP. These uses would pile up and then become an entire point added to his skill EXP pool. This was true for most skills, as that was the main method for acquiring skill EXP.

  As things stood, it would cost four skill EXP to increase his training acceleration by one point. This was equivalent to a one percent boost. Four hundred points spent would double his skill’s development rate. That boost would last until the skill’s level increased.

  Scott did not know how long it would take to increase the level of his skill, but he had no problem with expending four hundred of his points to double its growth. Spending those points provided no outward sign of any change, but he still felt good about it.

  He checked his other two skills. They were much the same as Edged Weapon Mastery, except their development costs were much higher. Itemization would cost twenty-five skill experience per point increase! Identification was practically a bargain at ten skill EXP per point in comparison.

  There was no item drop for the third zombie, but he did get his item experience point. He quickly looked over his experience points, glad to see that he had some sort of edge now. The trait points offered him the ability to increase his stats indirectly.

  He could expend one hundred trait points to increase a training modifier for his chosen attribute, per attribute point. Meaning, that with one thousand trait points, he could double the speed of his training until he gained another attribute point in that associated attribute. If his attribute increased, the cost would increase as well. Increasing an attribute point would increase his level. Attributes and his level were tied together directly. His provided knowledge did not explain the lack of change in his general sense of well-being, so he was forced to accept things at face value.

  Apparently, there would be a chance to acquire additional traits that would improve his abilities. This was the basic method of advancement, however. He would need to train his attributes directly and that would increase his level. Not that his level would matter much outside of some vaguely mentioned future possibilities.

  While it might have seemed like he stood in place for a long time checking this new information, less than a minute had passed by this point. He could not afford to wait any longer, so he started forward. Scott stopped two steps away, however, as he realized something. He did not feel the same level of exhaustion from itemizing the bracelet that he had felt when he itemized a corpse.

  His eyes roved down to the brush axe in his hand then he slowly turned his head to the tool shed. There was no guarantee that anyone else wouldn’t try to make use of the tools there, but he needed experience points.

  Scott trotted over to the shed and began itemization. Some items could not be itemized, though others could. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to it. When he looked at them for a moment, a blurb appeared but there was no color aura. Inside the shed, only five items had an aura, and all were grey in color.

  He found that he could itemize those five items with no trouble and left everything else for anyone who might find them. “Two item points and five equipment points…”

  There had been a large crowbar in the tool shed that offered slightly better basic damage potential than the brush axe, but he had an edged weapon skill that made his current weapon a far better choice. “Let’s see if we can get out of here without catching any more interest.”

  Scott slipped out of the shed and tried to walk past the building with the zombies all around it. There had to be twenty of the things pounding away over there and he wanted nothing to do with that bit of business.

  The sound of glass shattering echoed through the air as the zombies started to break into the building through a window. A loud feminine cry of fright reached out from the depths. The voice spoke into his mind once more.

  Objective: Protect the survivors in the School Infirmary.

  Enemy Kill Count: 0/23

  Scott snorted briefly and thought to ignore that voice. It was hard enough just to keep himself alive. However, he stopped mid-step. The school infirmary was where Shizuka, the school nurse would be if this were actually a world that acted like a perverse parody of High School of the Dead. He had no idea what her name would be, but if it was possible to protect that miracle of glorious feminine architecture he wanted to try. No! For the sake of humanity, it was a vital necessity…

  He did not know if he could stop that many zombies, but if he could lead some of them away then it might be possible for the survivors inside the infirmary to hold off the rest. At the least, it would let him test his new skill.

  Tired from the itemization, he soldiered on and trotted toward the zombies. The door was closed tight still, no doubt it had been blocked from the inside. The zombies found the windows, however, and now they were trying to make their way inside.

  Scott rushed in and attacked the closest zombie. His eyes widened in surprise when he quickly found his footing and lashed outward with a powerful strike that tore into the top of the thing’s skull. Now that this weird system had appeared, his damage capabilities had increased tremendously.

  He tried to stifle a laugh as he whirled to the side and cleaved his way through another skull. By this time the zombies had noticed him. Only three managed to make it inside. The rest all turned to him.

  Six more zombies bit the dust as he tried to lead them away, though not every attack was a sure kill. Two of the zombies required multiple heavy strikes despite his upgrade.

  Fighting zombies in small numbers seemed entirely possible now. The problem, however, was that the people inside kept shouting or crying out. The two dozen or so zombies had been lessened to nearly half that number, but the remainder were heading back to the infirmary window.

  “Not bad, but it seems like you could use some help!” called a cool feminine voice from nearby.

  Scott glanced over then grinned like an idiot. Now this was more like it!

  A purple haired girl wielding a wooden sword leapt into the fray. With skill, grace, and unerring precision she danced among the dead and with each artful movement a zombie fell to the ground even more dead than before.

  Unlike him, she had elite skills with her weapon. Between the two of them, the zombies were taken down in under half a minute. Scott watched the purple haired girl enter the infirmary through the broken window briefly, then shrugged and joined her. He was too tired to itemize at the moment, and he did not want to miss what was to come next.

  He was greatly surprised to see seven people inside the infirmary. In the show, there were only two, and one of them had even died in the aftermath of the zombie battle. In this nutty perverse world, there were seven survivors. Though, the girl who had helped him probably should not be counted as a survivor of the infirmary.

  “Ding!” Scott blinked as he heard that noise again.

  Objective Complete

  Rewards processing…

  While the voice in his head processed whatever rewards he was supposed to get, Scott looked around the room a bit more. The purple haired girl, Saiko Bustiko, introduced herself to the others. Scott recognized her as Saeko Busujima a notable character though she did look somewhat different in what amounted to real life. He did not recognize any of the others from the show, save for the absurdly proportioned blond school nurse Shizuka Marikawa. Though, she too did look somewhat different than her anime counterpart given that she was three-dimensional. Her name turned out to be, Summer
Oppai, of all things. Admittedly, it was a well-deserved name. Tall and toned, she would have caught the attention of people even without the incredible breasts that her shirt struggled to restrain.

  All eyes turned toward him after she finished. Scott waved them off and said, “Scott Ambrose.”

  “You look exhausted,” said Summer in a sweet and comforting tone of voice.

  “Who isn’t?” asked Scott in an attempt at levity. His grin did not last long, however. He was tired. Whatever using itemization took out of him, it left him ready for food and a nap. Even running and fighting zombies had not exhausted him so much.

  Summer offered him a warm smile, her eyes glittering softly in the dim light of the infirmary. Her smile faded. “True… but, what are we going to do now?”