Chapter 157 157: 4th Floor Welcoming Party II
Cole took a deep breath and made his way to the entrance, his rifle summoned and held tightly in his hands. This was a new floor and if the of the previous floors were to be followed then without a doubt there was still more danger to go through before he would be able to find some semblance of peace. He quickly moved until he was besides the entrance to the locker room, he held his breath as he counted down from three, letting the approaching foot falls be his stopwatch.
Cole swiftly stepped into the hall and pulled the trigger of his rifle using [Double Shot] and making sure he was firing straight at point blank range. The Zombie's head snapped back with a loud crack as it crumbled to the ground. Cole had almost forgotten Just how powerful the rifle had been. But beyond that the gun was still a very powerful piece of equipment that Cole had not been able to bring to full bear…. At least until now. With silver Ranked stats he could cause a lot more damage than his 8ron ranked self would have ever been able to manage.
Cope quickly looked up and realized truly just as he had suspected this was a hallway. And while there was a smattering of dust covering every square inch of the hallway, there was still enough of it clear for Cole to see that he was probably within a school. There was a massive and somewhat faded crest on the wall that read Zarafin High. Either way regardless of what had happened here or what this place used to be. It's halls were now crawling with some of it's former students, all of them not getting the memo that school was closed….. permanently.
But in the end you had no choice but to cut the dead some slack, after all they couldn't help their current state of….. undeath? Either way there was four of them ahead of him and three behind him. Normally he could face off against one or two or three with some difficulty of course, these creatures are extremely powerful and it took real effort to dispatch the first one he had faced, it would take a lot more to handle seven of them at the same time. But luckily, Cole had just the right tools for this occasion.
The guns were not dealing with these things in the manner that he wanted them too, the zombies were resilient and above all they were fast, extremely so for that matter. Staying at range was not the way to go about it, these things will kill him and multiple times too. He already died once and he honestly did not like it, so it called for a different strategy. Cole used [Fade] having access to the signatures' skill of his cowboy get up was a good feeling and it would keep him out of a lot of trouble. The Zombie's paused 9mce he disappeared, it was obvious that they had already sensed him and were about to make a move, but somehow they had lost sight of him.
Of course it wasn't just somehow, they were zombies, Cole did not think that they could see well enough in the traditional sense, and probably relied on sight or perhaps smell or a combination of both to be able to track their prey. But they couldn't see him which exposed Cole to N aspect of the [Fade] skill he never knew about. It seems it did not just make him invisible, the details were in the name of the skill itself. He faded, perhaps for the duration of the skill he ceased to be a part of this plane of existence or his presence within it was erased enough that nothing or no one could find him.
Cole rushed forwards and stabbed Black Malakai through the throat of the first zombie, the fact that red blood still came out, along with a black sludge surprised Cole. For one he did not think the zombies should have any blood left in their bodies or even if there was blood in their bodies by now it should have been properly coagulated. But instead the blood was still fresh and with the way it was spurting still flowing. These things were not your normal type of zombies, that much he could see now, and he had to be a little careful with the way he moved.
Attacking broke the [Fade] skill, but it was still easy enough for him to fall back into it as he took a step back from the downed zombie and ducked under the wild swing of another, turning with his momentum to stab his sword into the stomach of the zombie then tearing it from one side to the other, letting it's guts spill out in a shower of red blood and black sludge. He used [Fade] again then left a delayed [Chaos Blast] behind as the group of four zombies rushed in his direction while he weave last them under the cloak of invisibility.
He made sure to give them a wide berth, for some reason his body was now really susceptible to whatever energy was left behind of his chaos Blast skill. He really did not fancy loosing his mind again and devolving into a bloodthirsty demon with nothing but destruction and death on his mind. Cole chuckled as the explosion went off, blasting limbs and heads to pieces. Of the 5 zombies in the hallway, only one was left, and even then it was missing it's legs and much of the rest of it's power body. Cole walked up to it and stabbed down with his sword, making sure to end it's misery as he stood up and observed the hall from both ends.
He saw that there was a stairwell at both ends of the hallway, he saw that they led up to another floor, and down to another. He had already established that he was in a school, so going up would mean going deeper and going down was definitely the path to finding a way out. But the problem is he had no idea if he should go left or right, he did not want to end up on the other side of where he wanted to be, what he needed right now was a safe place to be, so that he could properly observe and take care of everything that he needed to do.
He had to really consolidate his abilities and maybe get a new one….or perhaps it would be better to wait until his class upgrade quest has been completed or he gets a sub-class. Either way, the longer he waits, the more the system would have the chance to review his choices, and make a sub-class that was better attributed to him. He hoped he gets a pure caster class, it would add more range to his options than just being an assassin/affliction specialist. But then again he wasn't exactly an affliction specialist, the affliction came from his sword, but even then most of his enemies die before he even uses that skill. He needed to have a real thought about his build and see what he can achieve with the prisms he now owned and to see what his subclass or class refinement can offer him.
Cole chose to go left, perhaps that was him trying to do the opposite in order not to get jinxed, but ultimately in all the movies he has seen and the time he spent in college, Cole had been homeschooled by some of the best teachers and professors the country had to offer, so he did not really go to high school outside of the time his cousins graduated and it became a family affair...they were dead now….. he killed them. Cole sighed as he shook his head, he really wish he could do something about this weight that he was feeling at the back of his neck….. killing his cousins had changed him a bit and that change seems to come with trauma or perhaps it was guilt of it's own.
He turned down the stairway just in time to get tackled by a zombie, it's jaws frantically snapping and biting trying it's hardest to break through his armored clothes and attack him. Cole hit the stairs hard, the hard floor causing more damage to him than the zombie that tackled him, however he could still feel that the zombie was stronger, stronger than the others, what made it even worse was the fact that it was in the body or rather it was a body of a 14 or 14 year old girl…..he was being assaulted by a Loli zombie. Cope shuddered, perhaps he should not have phrased it that way.
Using his [Energy Manipulation] Cole coated his elbow with [Negative Energy] and smashed it down on the zombie's head. What he wasn't expecting though was for it's head to explode like a watermelon, leaving Cole covered in things he would rather not have been covered in. But he was still a bit shock, while his blade had been extremely effective, it was nothing compared to what his energy just did. But then again there was a lot of factors to consider, for one his race had changed, for two he was now silver Ranked in all of his stats. That meant he was a lot more dangerous and his energy was a lot more potent…..Cole was now a powerhouse…..one step closer to the top…..but then again with what was coming, would it be enough?"
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