Throughout the entire night, Nathan kept his vigil.
Sleep lingered at the edges of his consciousness like a politician's sweet, empty promises. His eyelids grew heavier with every passing minute, his vision occasionally blurring before he forced himself alert again.
He slapped his cheek lightly.
"Stay awake," he muttered.
The cold night air helped — just barely.
Who needs eight hours of sleep anyway? Civilization clearly overrated it.
The campfire behind him crackled steadily, its warmth brushing his back whenever the wind shifted. Ahead, beyond the fortress wall, darkness stretched endlessly, broken only by the narrow cone of his flashlight beam.
Earlier that night, he had made an expensive but necessary purchase.
Two hundred SC — gone.
In exchange, one hundred fresh 9mm rounds now rested safely in his inventory.
Worth it.
Considering he had been down to fewer than twenty bullets — including the magazine already loaded — the purchase felt less like spending money and more like buying for his continued existence.
Unfortunately, that left him with only 23 SC remaining.
"…I'm officially broke again," he sighed. "Apocalypse economics are brutal."
Still, curiosity won. Testing had to be done, and Nathan had tested a lot.
Over the past several hours, he had killed roughly twenty Walkers while observing spawn patterns.
The conclusion?
They were infinite.
Every time he killed one, another Walker appeared somewhere nearby just seconds later, shambling into the clearing as if summoned by an invisible queue system.
It wasn't random.
It was replacement.
A constant repopulation mechanic that make him suddenly feeling deeply in love with the safety of the improvised fortress he'd built.
Luckily, only five Walkers existed at any given time.
Jumpers and Runners, however, followed different rules.
After further observation — and several more fights — Nathan confirmed they spawning on a cooldowns. Roughly one hour passed before another of those elite-type zombies appeared.
More interestingly…
They never spawned simultaneously.
If a Runner existed, there would be no Jumper, and vice versa.
That's… actually quite merciful, he had concluded.
Walkers were harmless as long as he stayed atop the wall. They clawed uselessly below, occasionally bumping into each other like angry Karens during a clearance sale.
Runners were more dangerous.
Not because of their speed — speed meant nothing against a three-meter-high (9'8") wooden fortress — but because they apparently believed themselves to be professional baseball pitchers.
Nathan had ducked earlier as a rock smashed against the wall.
"…Yep. Identity crisis confirmed, they should just named themselves 'Thrower' instead." he had commented during his second encounter.
Despite being called Runner, the creature threw everything imaginable at him throughout the fight.
Rocks.
Twigs.
Chunks of dirt.
Once, even a detached zombie arm.
Thankfully, his storage ability turned defense into comedy.
Whenever a projectile flew toward him, he simply summoned a heavy enough wooden plank midair as a shield. The object materialized instantly, absorbing impact with an overpowered physics exploit.
Inventory mechanics remained unfairly amazing.
So Runners? Manageable.
Walkers? Background noise.
The real problem was…
Jumpers.
Nathan groaned just thinking about them.
Jumpers could leap from over ten meters (33 ft) away, easily clearing his fortress wall and turning his carefully built defense into what felt like a miniature of a cute Barbie housing.
Worse, they almost never walked — they bounced.
Erratically… unpredictably.
Like caffeinated kangaroos fueled by Russian anthem played at double speed.
Trying to aim at one with injured dominant hand had been a nightmare.
What if his right hand was healthy?
Maybe.
But no — apparently the universe had decided this was a skill issue.
And for reasons unknown, Jumpers appeared far more frequently than Runners.
After defeating four in a row, Nathan had stared into the darkness and asked sincerely: "Do these Jumpers have a crush on me or something?"
Fortunately, experience paid off, and his Increasing Dexterity stat also helped him aimed better.
He got no new injuries while fighting them.
Just escalating irritation — his hand just won't stop shaking while aiming with only one good hand.
Still, one blessing existed.
Zombies never spawned directly on top of the wall.
Nathan shuddered at the alternative.
A Jumper appearing beside him without warning?
It'll be an instant catastrophe.
• × • × • × •
Back to the present.
Nathan exhaled slowly and scanned the clearing again.
Silence — just ignore the Walkers' groans below.
Wind brushing his black hair.
Then—
Somewhere out there, something groaned.
A groan that had his nerves accustomed to immediately send danger signal to his brain.
Nathan tightened his grip on the pistol.
He saw movement. A familiar silhouette launched from the darkness.
"Alright, here it comes again!"
A Jumper rocketed toward him, limbs twisting midair as it aimed straight for his position.
Nathan reacted instantly.
A thick wooden block materialized between them.
*CRUNCH…*
The Jumper slammed face-first into the obstacle and dropped onto the wall, stunned and twitching briefly.
Nathan didn't hesitate.
He raised his pistol.
*BANG!*
*BANG!*
*BANG!*
Controlled shots punched into its skull until the body finally went still.
Silence returned.
"This strategy," he breathed, lowering the gun, "remains undefeated."
Against Jumpers, timing and obstruction were everything.
The key rule: never summon defensive blocks as part of the wall itself. Doing so will permanently add an obstacle to the platform, restricting his movement.
He had learned that lesson the hard way—
Okay… maybe not that hard.
During an earlier Jumper/Runner's cooldown period, he experimented by attaching a smaller block directly to a bigger one.
It stuck.
He discovered he could no longer store those block individually. The system treated the collided structure as one. Storing something meant absorbing a whole structure back into storage as raw material.
And he have so many better things to do than to store his whole fortress away. Because that meant rebuilding everything from scratch.
In zombie-infested territory.
"…Yeah. Not happening."
Now he summoned shields separately so they could be dismissed afterward.
Well… mostly.
His first defensive block — the one that stopped the first Runner's thrown sword — still sat awkwardly near the northwest corner like misplaced furniture.
At least it stayed out of his primary-manoeuvering route.
Another discovery came from storage experimentation:
He could not summon objects where they would intersect with living matter — or more accurately, bio organic mass, even zombie's corpses. Attempting to do so triggered a system error message.
Probably a balancing rule.
Otherwise, he could simply spawn a wooden block inside an enemy's torso. And that'd be completely overpowered.
However, summoning blocks above zombies worked perfectly as intended. Gravity handled the rest, flattening them on the block's way down.
It seemed like an efficient ammo-saving strategy at first — until he realized that over-utilizing cube-shaped blocks created convenient climbing platforms for zombies outside the wall.
So he abandoned the idea — at least for prolonged, repeated use.
As the Jumper's corpse finally dissolved into stillness, familiar notifications appeared.
[You have slain a Jumper — E-Rank]
[EXP +10]
[Level Up!]
[SP +2]
[Hunter's Gallery Kill Count — Jumper: 2/3 → 3/3]
[Jumper kill quota fulfilled — Dexterity: 2.4 → 2.6]
Nathan blinked.
"Hohoho…"
Warmth surged through his body.
It felt as though invisible hands rewrote him from the inside out. His exhaustion vanished instantly, his muscles relaxed, and his breathing felt somewhat… deepened.
And then—
The pain in his right arm disappeared.
Not simply reduced — gone.
Slowly, and cautiously, he flexed his fingers.
"…No way."
He hurriedly unraveled the bloodied bandage.
The wound had vanished.
Not just healed — erased, as if it was never been there.
Smooth skin remained where torn flesh had been hours earlier.
Nathan stared in stunned silence.
Then he grinned.
"If I could marry Ms. Level Up," he said solemnly, "I'd do it without hesitation."
He immediately opened his status window.
—————————————
Name: Nathan Nightshade
Class: Hunter
Level: 1 → 2 — EXP: 3/200
Condition: Fine
HP: 28/28 | Stamina: 28/28 | Mana: 14/14
———
Vitality: 2.7 → 2.8
Strength: 1.3 → 1.4
Agility: 1.6 → 1.7
Magic: 1.2 → 1.4
Dexterity: 2.6 → 2.8
———
SP: 2
———
Skill
Hunter's Mark (lv.2) | Hunter's High (lv.1)
—————————————
Nathan's shoulders trembled.
Then a strange, gremlin-like laugh escaped him.
"Gwehehe…"
He covered his mouth, but the grin refused to fade.
"I could look at this status window all day long," he said reverently. "It's just so beautiful…"