Chapter 156 156: 4th Floor Welcoming Party I
As soon as the notification vanished Cole felt someone sink their teeth into his shoulder, his body shuddered as a feeling of hot searing pain blazed a trail from his injured shoulder all the way to the pit of his stomach. The pain was significant enough but still of a different source that Cole could feel his body locking up, like some sort of paralysis. But the worst thing about 8t all was that the person that had latched on to him did not stop chewing, turning Cole's shoulder into a tidy ruined mess.
Cole used his body as an anchor and used [Gravity] creating a blast that flung his attacker of him, but not without it taking a massive chunk of flesh out of Cole's neck. Cole shuddered as his knees buckled under him. Shock filled his features as he realized that blood was spurting and flying into the air. He blinked owlishly as he placed his hand down on his chest and watched as they came away with blood, bright, red, and life giving and most definitely his own.
His senses felt dull, like he was stuck in a thick puddle of mud or something else. He heard low scratching and a bit of a shuffle as the person or thing that had attacked him got right back to its feet. Cole met red eyes on a rotten face. His eyes widened as massive black worms burrowed their way through the rotted and ruined flesh of his assailant and out to slither onto the ground and move away into the darkness. Cole also realized that it was pitch black and that he and his assailant had only been moving by relying on their dark or night vision, but ultimately Cole still had no idea what he was faced off against, and even worse is the fact that he was not healing.
And then the panic settled in again, as Cole realized he was not healing. Somehow the wounds that this thing had inflicted upon him, was not healing. His raised his head up and tried to get back up but he crashed to the ground on both knees and watched helplessly as the most definitely Zombie creature ran at him, snarling wildly and without mercy as it leaped from 5 meters away and crashed into Cole, it's fetid breath and yellowed teeth sinking into Cole's neck, biting and chewing and ripping his jugular out as Cole completely paralyzed could not do anything but remained trapped in his own body as he was eaten alive.
[You Have Died! -400 To All Stats!]
"....."
Cole woke up with a gasp, some three minutes later, right in the same spot that he appeared a few minutes ago. He immediately relied on his domain, trusting full force in his now silver Ranked perception stat. That perhaps was a mistake as he was immediately drowned and assaulted by sensations of everything that was going on all around him. He shuddered as the scents were too strong and the sounds to loud. Even in the dark he could see so clearly that he could pick out the individual cracks on his bones, no more than 5 feet away as the zombie stripped it of meat…..stripped it of him.
[Welcome to the Second Floor, to a world that has been ruined by an all powerful Zombie plague the likes of which you have never seen before. The theme for this floor is….. THE SHADOW OF DEATH!]
Cole rolled his eyes as he rushed forwards, ignoring the next notification as his leg flew forwards and he punted the zombie at the side of the head…. It didn't exactly turn out the way he wanted it too, as before his leg could make contact, the zombie turned unnaturally fast and sank it's teeth into Cole's shins. It was at that point that Cole decided that he would not be taken any more chances with this thing as he drew Blue Obsidian out of it's inventory, absolutely giddy with joy that he now had access to it.
*BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! CLICK!*
The fucker was made of tougher stuff than Cole had realized. The first bullet had sunk into it's skull but it had barely penetrated. However the force behind the shot was still powerful enough to bring it to the ground. Cole had no choice but to rely on precision and keep firing more shots at the same place, the zombies head did not explode, but ultimately four bullets from an extremely powerful revolver would be enough to put any zombie down. Cole felt his right leg shake a bit as it nearly buckled under his weight, he could feel it going numb, Cole huffed the zombie's bite probably had some sort of poison in it that cause paralysis and slowed down or completely eliminated healing.
It didn't take long as the body pixelated and vanished, leaving behind an Iron ranked prism. Cole raised his eyebrows at that. If the zombie he just killed was an Iron ranked zombie then this floor will fuck a lot of people up. There was an intense need for gear upgrades and maybe a skill or two that can deal with these things. Of course he had not used a more powerful skill like [Chaos Blast] yet, but even at that this was just the first opponent and Cole would bet his left nut sack that he probably just faced the weakest version of zombies this floor had to offer, speaking of…. What was up with this floor anyways.
[4th Floor Main Quest I: You find yourself Trapped in an Epic structure of a forgotten age; A Babel Tower. Great marvel of architecture that used to be home to millions of people at least and was large enough to hold entire cities within it's belly. But years of decay, ruin and death haunts this great structure that has now become nothing more than a nest for death. Escape the Building and Seek Freedom in a Ruined World!/ REWARDS: +3 Levels, +300k Tigons, +1 Silver Ranked Prism Of Escape]
[4th Floor Side Quest I: In each Babel Tower there are still functional Societies, scavengers and dystopic hunters who live their lives on the edge. Locate them to gain access to this floors Cradle Facilities./ REWARDS: +50k Exp]
[4th Floor Special Quest I: Slay 100 Baneling Zombie. (1/100)/ REWARD: +1 level, +1 Special Title, +150k Tisons]
[Time to Floor Collapse is 4 Real World Months! Time Dilation Has Been Reduced To a 2 to 1 Ratio, In Game Time till Floor Collapse is 8 Months.]
There were still more notifications to look through, especially some that were a back log from his time on the 3rd floor. If he was really honest with himself, Cole would admit that he really didn't check his notifications that much in the third floor. But ultimately Notifications were not the problem here, Cole had heard movements down the hall, and it was about time too, as he had not really taken a good long hard look at his current environment.
He immediately noticed that he was in some sort of locker room, there were no windows in here, just concrete all around. There was only one way in and out of the place and it was a somewhat narrow door. The problem was that the noise and shuffling he heard was coming from the door, that seemed to open up a hallway, somehow that tidbit of information was clear to Cole due to how the footfalls were echoing. He was able to reduce that he was in a high school of some sort, and quick look down at the zombie that had just taken multiple bullets to the head, showed that it too was a former student…a dude in an American football jersey.
Cole scoffed, but since he had access to his inventory he had see what he had access to. He needed to get dressed or armored up as soon as possible. His time of running around bare chested was over. And then Cole realized that for the whole time he was in the third floor, he and pretty much every other male had been without shirts, pants were the only modesty the system had allowed them, the third floor had been in a primitive time, no proper advancements had been made and if people did live on the planet then they were total and complete savages.
[Night Demon Bounty Hunter Set Equipped! The Skills [Fade] [Chameleon] and [Track] are now accessible to you.]
[Raen Ranger Rifle Equipped!]
Cole smiled as he summoned his bandolier of throwing daggers, extra bullets and bullet belt. His mask and hat right where they belong as they even grew to size his current form. Of course he didn't think it was aesthetic to dress as a cowboy in a dystopic zombie apocalypse but ultimately, this was what he had available to him, and the gear was the best of what any body had access to right now, heck Cole didn't think there was person with threads like his. But his own self inflated ego aside…. Danger had come calling.