As Alex lay on the ground—nasty taste and probable zombie infection spreading through his whole body and growing stronger—something deep within Alex told him to stay down and accept his fate.
He could rest and do what he needed to soon enough. Or maybe never. That would be fine, too… right?
But that something wasn’t at the core of him.
Whatever was at the core had a different message, No. Must… get… to… door…
After what felt like hours, he was able to move again.
He forced himself to his feet and staggered, his shoulders slamming into the walls as he practically pinballed toward his goal, if much slower than that implied. In fact, he seemed to cover much more distance going from wall to wall than actually toward his destination.
But he kept going.
It didn’t matter if he was exhausted.
He kept going.
It didn’t matter if his own hands started to look a bit like tasty snacks.
He kept going.
He felt like his vision was getting weaker, or the light in the hallway was fading, but he kept going.
Finally, he fell forward, his hand catching the handle and unlatching the door to allow him to continue his fall through it.
Everything seemed to pause, and he found himself floating in the black void once more.
He recognized the System’s suppression returning, and his mind cleared.
Oh… Oh, that’s bad.
He now had four pop-ups from the system.
Kill Notice:
Undead Commoner, level 1
Reward:
Experience to be granted when in a safe location.
Apology Tutorial Addendum:
Nicely—if messily—done.
It was a fairly standard kill notification. It was interesting that experience wasn’t granted until a safe location was reached, but that was hardly the most pressing thing. No, the most pressing thing was likely the next message in line.
This was the one that had been in a green, rather than a blue notice window.
Warning:
You have been infected with Plague - Zombification
You lack the Fortitude to resist—or any other Attribute to fight it off in a System recognized manner.
Undeath will occur in 3 minutes without outside intervention.
You have been afflicted with First Infection Paralysis, Duration - 5 min.
Apology Tutorial Addendum:
We do hope that the end you chose was to your liking.
May your preferred afterlife be as real as you believed.
Three minutes? The panic was setting in, making it hard to think. Still, he managed to process the rest of the information.
Wait… I was stunned for five minutes. The plague should have only taken three… How am I alive?
Another system message drew his attention then, already waiting for his perusal.
Error Notice:
Life energy potent beyond expectation, recalculating time until Undeath.
Recalculating…
Recalculating…
Time determined.
Undeath will occur in 12 minutes without outside intervention.
Tutorial Addendum:
Oh?That was unexpected.
Well, when you can move, walk fast.
So, somehow he’d been given twelve minutes instead of three. That meant that he’d had seven after that completely-empty-chip-bag paralysis wore off.
…What now? Oh, censorship and translation of intent… right.
Regardless, seven minutes wasn’t too terrible. He’d been fast… right?
Quest [The Hallway]: Complete
You have exited the hallway.
Reward:
Your Race Rank will be determined momentarily and level 1 will be granted.
Your starter Skills will be granted momentarily.
Hidden Quest [The Hallway]: Complete
You have used your initial means of damage as the primary means to pass through the hallway.
Reward:
To be determined by a Watcher.
System Addendum:
Error: Skills cannot be granted to a plague-ridden.
Error: Zombie is not a valid Race for Apology Tutorial Participants.
Analyzing…
Analyzing…
Analyzing…
Escalating request.
Please hold, and you will be assisted by the next available Watcher.
Your inquiry is important to us, and we appreciate your patience.
Alex stared at the prompts, feeling ill.
“So… I’m going to become a zombie… great. Or, I’m already one and only the System’s interference has brought me back to sanity for the moment?” He would almost be grateful for all the information he got, except for the small fact that he was effectively undead.
As for the information he’d received. There was a lot of it, even to his muddled mind. The zombieism was some sort of magical plague passed from host to victim rather than affecting everyone who died.
It was fast acting, too, relatively speaking.
It wasn’t ‘count to ten, undead arisen,’ but it was fast enough that any protracted conflict would be influenced by those turning.
Once again, however, it hardly mattered. He sighed. “Well… this was dumb.”
“I rather agree.”
Alex jerked, looking up and finding that he was suddenly not alone.
Before him stood a woman made entirely of cheesecake.
When did he last eat? He was rather hungry… Just one bite?
What? He shook his head, and suddenly the woman was de-cheesecake-ified.
“Well, you’re rather… on the edge, aren’t you.”
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Alex just groaned in frustration.
“Your physical state is entirely suspended. You cannot turn while we are speaking, and I know you are capable of speech.”
“Who are you?” Alex managed to force out.
“I am a Watcher. Specifically, I’m the Watcher tasked with watching you—because of your selections—until the Apology Tutorial starts.” She smiled. “I thought my job was done when you got yourself so thoroughly infected, but you made it to the door, and that makes things complicated.”
“How so?”
“You have earned quest rewards that we cannot grant because of your condition.”
“You could just heal me?”
“No, we cannot, not directly. That would be considered interference.”
He sighed. Of course they couldn’t. “This can’t be that uncommon.”
They must have been doing some System nonsense, because he was feeling quite coherent when he should be panicking.
Still, he didn’t like how cheesecake-like the woman was still looking.
The woman shook her head and sighed. “It actually is uncommon. In fact, this is the first instance I’ve ever heard of, and we go over error logs rather rigorously. Most who get infected simply fall over and turn. The initial infection paralysis in this variant of the plague is rather brutally effective against the un-leveled. The very few who overcome the paralysis in one manner or other still die well before getting to the door. There are some few who do get to the door, do so quickly enough that a minor reward can correct the issue, but that is different. So, if you had gotten to the door before the plague took all but complete hold…” She looked at him and seemed to realize something. “Oh! You didn’t see the counter.”
She waved her hand and a new pane appeared.
Plague - Zombification Timer:
0:01
“As you can see, you were essentially out of time. In the System, things don’t wait on the timer, they simply have taken full effect when the timer hits zero. You are, in all but name, an undead.”
Alex grunted. “I was afraid of that.” He sighed. “What about my hidden quest reward? It says that you can choose my reward.”
“Oh! That’s a thought.” She tapped her chin. “As I said, it would be too much to cure you outright… I could change your race, make you a half undead, half human? Then we’d let you switch back and forth?”
He shook his head. “I feel like that would take more effort than it’s worth for me.”
“Yeah, you’re clearly not defiant enough for that…”
“What about raising my… Fortitude?”
“No, I can’t grant you sufficient Fortitude to resist such a Plague, definitely not after it has this firm of a hold. That would be Tutorial breaking to say the least, even if the System would allow it.”
“An ‘Attribute’ then?” He thought he remembered that the warning had mentioned that an attribute might be a mitigating factor.
“Hmm… Yes, that could work. But you’d have to have the seeds already. Let’s see.” She waved her hand again, and something appeared beside him.
It was an insane mess of tangled pathways and interconnected loops.
It took him much longer than it really should have in order to realize that the thing was him, or really a somehow abstracted map of his body.
The woman sighed again. “Every part of you—all but your blood—has been entirely taken over.”
Alex frowned, confused. “Wouldn’t my blood be infected first?”
“Not for a magical plague, at least not undeath ones… at least not this undeath one. Blood is full of life magic. Additionally, it seems like your blood has quite a bit more life magic in it than usual. From what I’m seeing, it is the reason you held out for four times as long as expected.” She was nodding. “It is why you are still ‘you’ at all, in fact.”
“So, can it be a blood attribute? Is that a thing? I don’t really know… Like… umm…”
“It is ‘a thing,’ yes.” She smiled, humor glinting in her eyes. “Everyone has aspects, but most aren’t magical enough for the System to bother to quantify. You already have two seeds—which is rather impressive for an un-leveled—but only one factors at the moment. Still, this might be the fix we need. Any fix would need to be Life magic based to be useful in this case, regardless… It might be preferable as a skill though.”
Alex didn’t quite understand the last bit, but he still latched onto what mattered. “So, Life…uh… finds a way?”
“That could work.” She nodded. “As your hidden quest reward, I can take the aspect that you already have and bring it to the surface, allowing it to be powerful enough that it will overcome the plague. Since you already have it, it isn’t giving you something too powerful. You’d have unlocked it or augmented it eventually, if you survived. It is actually already how you survived. Like I already said, that’s what gave you four times the usual time before Undeath. Huh. Well, let’s see… There are a few ways that I can manifest the latent aspect that might work. We are all about choices here, after all. One moment… There we go.”
Hidden Quest Reward Assigned:
A Choice Must be Made
Blood Attribute - Life Finds a Way (Unique)
Details:
Immunity to non-magical disease, viruses, poisons, infection, etc.
Innate ability to combat magical plagues and necrotic poisons.
Skill - Life’s Purging Cycle (Unique)
Details:
Immunity to non-magical disease, viruses, poisons, infection, etc.
Innate ability to combat magical plagues, poisons, parasites, foreign material, etc.
Skill - Life’s Dominion (Unique)
Details:
Innate Ability to contest anything unwanted within your body or attempting to breach your biological defenses.
Alex frowned. “Why is the first one the same, but… weaker?”
“Ahh, attributes are much less common than Skills, and generally more broadly influential. They can impact things like your race and class selection positively, by giving you better options. They are also far more affected by your innate aspects, which is what we are trying to bring forth.”
She hesitated a moment, before seeming to decide to continue.
“These are also just the basic descriptions. Unique ranked skills are more influenced—upon initial receipt—by the individual receiving them than most skills are.”
Alex didn’t really understand that, except that the details were only the most basic generalization of what the attribute or skill would do. “So… why wouldn’t I just take the first one?”
She gave a half smile. “Like you said, when it comes to basic capacity and initial functionality, it would be weaker than a Skill of the same rarity. It would also function rather differently. They would all have added effects were you to choose them, but I cannot forewarn you of those. The skills will be more powerful as a rule, however.”
Alex almost simply took Life’s Purging Cycle with that information, but something held him back. “Can I ever lose skills?”
“Absolutely. If you choose incompatible classes or under certain other conditions.”
“Can I lose an attribute?”
“Lose? No, not while you live, not how I believe you mean the question. They can grow and expand, just like a skill—if with more difficult conditions—and so you could ‘lose’ it in that sense.”
That made it easy. Alex would take something that he couldn’t lose over something that could be taken away, and he’d make that choice every time. “I choose the Attribute.”
“As you wish.”
Blood Attribute - Life Finds a Way (Unique)
Details:
Immunity to non-magical disease, viruses, poisons, infection, etc.
Innate ability to combat magical plagues and necrotic poisons.
Description:
Your blood is so rich in Life Magic that it can even overcome undead flesh in order to heal.
The regeneration rate granted by your blood is one hundred times human standard, while still being based upon your Physical Fortitude.
This alone cannot raise the dead nor kill the undead.
Regeneration requires blood within the damaged area to have effect.
If you have blood, you have life.
Apology Tutorial Addendum:
Specifically your blood.
You’re not a vampire.
“There.” Cheesecake lady said. “I’m going to let time move forward for you now. It wouldn’t do to have you infect one of the others before you were cured, not after they’ve survived their own tests. The System would get… unhappy with that outcome.”
“Wh—” He was cut off by a green prompt.
Plague - Zombification Timer:
0:00
System Addendum:
Error. Physical form not completely subverted.
Recalculating…
Alex screamed as it felt like his very blood was on fire, burning away his body.
That was likely a fairly accurate description, if he’d had the mental space to consider it.
The Watcher, whoever she had been, was gone as quickly as she had arrived.
His ‘health bar’—or whatever it was—had been all but entirely gray-black, but now, a vibrant, verdant green seemed to be bursting through that undead color. At the same time, the little bit of the bar that had been knocked away entirely was rapidly refilling.
His voice went hoarse from the scream, but a moment later, a warmth filled his throat, and he knew that his voice had been repaired.
What felt like an eternity—but was probably in the range of thirty seconds—passed before the pain had fully abated.
A blue prompt appeared even as the pain faded.
Notice:
You have cured Plague - Zombification, level ?? x [79.996/80]
You have done so using your innate Attributes alone.
Reward increased due to the affected individual’s state of infection upon the start of the curing process.
State of infection before curing began: 99.99%
Reward reduced due to this plague’s inability to combat magical resistance.
Reward:
Due to Blood Attribute - Life Finds a Way (Unique)
Reborn from Blood
Race Reforged
Apology Tutorial Addendum:
Nicely done. You chose wisely.
Well, that was interesting on so, so many levels that he couldn’t consider at the moment.
Therefore, he refocused on the more esoteric things that he’d learned through this experience.
The Watcher had mentioned ‘others’ just ahead. So he would, in theory, not be alone much longer.
There were hidden quests as well as rewards for surviving diseases.
He glanced down at himself and saw that he looked emaciated. He almost laughed at his own silliness. He looked exactly like he would expect someone who was just ravaged by a plague to look. He was practically skeletal—his clothing hanging off of him like never before—but he seemed to have good coloration.
He wasn’t sick anymore. Worst weight loss process ever…
He hesitated, thinking on rewards for beating diseases. “Huh. I suppose that we had rewards for disease survival pre-System, too. Isn’t that what immunity was?”
He shrugged. There was a lot that needed his attention before he went down that rabbit trail.
But maybe…?
Before he could consider further, another notice flashed into existence.
Finally.
As I am launching this new series, ratings and reviews help immensely!
J.L.Mullins
https://discord.gg/millennial-mage
(It's for my other fiction too.) ??????