Joe charged towards Kaius like a maniac. Kaius on the other hand, remained calm and waited for Joe to come to him.

Although Kaius was a Necromancer previously, he used to practice basic sword training to keep himself fit. As the saying goes, a healthy mind needs a healthy body. Hence, his swordsmanship was more than enough to handle someone that brandished a short sword with no prior training.

Clank!

Kaius, with his higher strength and dexterity stats, was able to easily block Joe’s straightforward slash. In one smooth motion, Kaius knocked Joe’s sword aside and took a step forward. He formed his left hand into a palm and hit Joe right in the chest.

Joe stumbled backwards a few meters and fell on his back. As he lay on his back, a look of disbelief and confusion could be seen on his face.

He was already level 4, and with his skill Lesser Strength Enhance activated, he should have been strong enough to easily strike down any level 1 or 2 Player.

Furthermore, it did not seem like Kaius had activated any strength enhance skills. Then, the most plausible explanation was that Kaius was even higher level than himself. Thinking up to here, Joe looked at Kaius with a hint of fear. Joe slowly stood up and was preparing himself for Kaius’ counterattack.

However, contrary to Joe’s expectations, Kaius did not make any follow up attacks.

As though reading Joe’s mind, Kaius looked at Joe and explained, “although I couldn’t care less if you killed and ate other humans, you picked the wrong person to kill this time. I can easily kill you anytime I want. But before you die, try to be useful and help me test out my spell, won’t you?”

Mana gathered in his left hand as he looked at Heather’s corpse.

Summon Skeleton!

Heather’s flesh and blood melted as her skeleton slowly stood up. Then, like a loyal warrior, the skeleton stood beside Kaius, waiting for his commands.

Kaius could feel a connection had been formed between him and the skeleton warrior. It was the same master-summon feeling he had when he called upon his army of undead during his previous life.

Looking at the shocking scene unfold before him, Joe felt as though he was in a nightmare.

“What did you do… what are you…” Joe croaked out.

Ignoring Joe, Kaius handed his sword to the skeleton warrior and commanded it. “Go kill him.”

Grasping the sword, the skeleton warrior obeyed like a puppet.

Seeing the skeleton of his dead wife walk towards him, Joe stood frozen in place, horrified. “Heather… no…”

The skeleton warrior arrived in front of Joe and slashed at him.

“Ahhhhh!” Joe screamed as the physical pain finally jolted him back to his senses.

The skeleton warrior had cut open a deep gash diagonally across Joe’s chest. Blood drenched his shirt in red.

Joe fell on his back. The excruciating pain almost made him faint. However, seeing his wife’s skeleton come at him relentlessly snapped him back to reality.

Without giving Joe a chance to breath, the skeleton warrior arrived on top of him and slashed down.

Seeing his life flash before him, Joe mustered what strength he had left and lift his sword just in time to block the attack.

However, blocking the attack caused more blood to gush out from his chest wound and Joe screamed in pain.

The skeleton warrior cared nothing for Joe’s screams. With both of its bony hands grasping its sword, the skeleton warrior repeatedly hacked down at Joe using all its strength.

Defending each strike caused Joe to experience agonizing pain and he was quickly losing his strength.

Clank! Clank! Clank!

The loud sound of metal clashing was mixed with Joe’s screams as the skeleton warrior mercilessly attacked.

Joe held on for as long as he could until his strength finally gave out.

“Ah-” Joe’s scream was stopped midway as the skeleton warrior brought down its sword and cleaved his head open.

A clump of white light came out of Joe’s body and formed into the shape of some System Coins.

Kaius came over and put the System Coins and Joe’s Basic Short Sword into his inventory.

Although the skeleton warrior had won, Kaius wasn’t entirely satisfied with the result. The skeleton warrior only won because Joe wasn’t in a right state of mind and hence couldn’t use his full strength. If Joe fought like normal, Kaius wondered how the skeleton warrior would do.

Since Joe already died, Kaius can only look for another opportunity to test in the future.

Kaius walked through the kitchen and into the storage room to see if there was anything edible in there.

Looking around, Kaius saw a few canned foods on the shelves, which he quickly put inside his backpack. He saw some boxes of vegetables too, but most of them are already rotten, so he left those alone.

Next, Kaius walked to the other end of the storage room and arrived at the door to the freezer room on the left.

Kaius opened the freezer door and the inside looked straight out of a horror movie.

In the center of the freezer room, a half mutilated human body could be seen lying on top of a metal table.

Kaius walked to the table and looked at the human body. It was the body of a man.

“This was probably their previous ‘customer’,” Kaius muttered to himself. “They really were eating other people to survive until now.”

Looking around the freezer room, Kaius saw even more human body parts.

On the shelves to the side, severed human arms and legs could be seen wrapped up in see-through plastic wraps. There was even a large container full of intestines.

As a necromancer in his previous life, Kaius had seen much worse gory scenes, so he wasn’t bothered by what he saw. Seeing nothing of use to him here, Kaius left the freezer room and closed the door.

Opposite to the freezer room was the door to the office room. Kaius opened the office door and looked inside.

This room looked more like a bedroom than an office. It had a table and a chair to one side; a bed was placed on the other side. There was another door on the far end of this room that led to the washroom.

Kaius guessed this must have been where the old couple slept.

Kaius looked around and found nothing of interest to him here either.

Thinking of the time, it was getting late in the evening. So Kaius had a quick dinner in the form of his food rations and the canned food he found here.

Going back to the dining room, Kaius walked over to Joe’s body and summoned another skeleton warrior using his body.

The two skeleton warriors followed Kaius around Belwood as he summoned as many skeleton warriors as possible from the zombie corpses lying around.

In the end, Kaius managed to reach the maximum limit and summoned 35 skeleton warriors.

Kaius left a Basic Short Sword with a skeleton warrior. With a thought, he commanded all the skeleton warriors to move towards Durham and kill any zombies they came across. He wanted to see if zombies killed by his skeleton warriors would give him experience and what happens when he’s too far away from his summons.

After giving out his commands, Kaius rode his bike back to Milton.

When he arrived back in Milton, it was already dark outside.

Since Milton had a lot of farmlands, and with food being scarce these days, Milton was an important place to the government as the city can grow a lot of food. Thus, even though the army was already stretched thin trying to contain the portals elsewhere, they still sent a company over to Milton, led by a captain.

The company had built multiple layers of barbed-wire fences around the city as the first layer of defense. Behind them stood the second layer of defense made up of 2m-tall wooden fences. Lastly, there are watchtowers on the main roads leading into the city. The army soldiers man the watchtowers 24/7 in shifts.

These simple defenses are enough to stop the occasional stray zombies. However, there simply aren’t enough people to guard the outer parameters of the city, so Kaius was able to easily hop over the wooden fences and sneak in and out of the city each day.

After sneaking back into Milton, Kaius went back to his community building. Walking into the building with his bike, Kaius bumped into some familiar people.

“Yo, if it isn’t Jack the Coward,” a cocky voice sounded out.

Looking towards the person that spoke, Kaius saw Chad and his gang members lounging around in the building’s lobby.

If this was Kaius’ original world, he would have already killed Chad and his entire gang on the spot for not knowing their place. However, since Kaius just started over in this new world and is still weak, he needed to keep a low profile for now.

Kaius activated Eye of Mana on Chad.

 

Kaius was somewhat impressed by Chad’s stats as a level 2 Player. According to the System, the average adult has 10 points in each attribute. Being a personal gym trainer, Chad clearly has above average attributes in Strength and Vitality.

Seeing the 16 in strength, Kaius guessed that Chad probably put all the attributes he got from leveling up into strength. However, seeing the 6 points in intelligence, Kaius understood why Chad was acting like he had half a brain all the time.

Other than Chad, there are five guys and two girls in Chad’s gang. One of the girls seemed particularly close to Chad. Kaius guessed that she may be Chad’s girlfriend. Looking at the status windows of these people, Kaius can see that only one other person named Taylor is level 2. However, this person has worse attributes than Chad. The remaining people are all level 1.

Although Kaius wanted to keep a low profile, if someone dared to provoke him, he wasn’t just going to let it slide.

“You think killing a zombie makes you impressive? Idiot,” Kaius rolled his eyes and continued walking.

“The fuck you just say to me?” Chad walked up to Kaius, shouting in anger.

Chad’s gang also started to spew various curses and threats at Kaius.

“I merely stated a fact. No need to waste energy getting angry. Facts don’t care about your feelings,” Kaius said with a smirked.

“You must be tired of living, you little dipshit,” Chad got up in Kaius’ face. “You and me outside, right now!”

“Anyone can get into a street brawl,” said Kaius calmly. “If you think you’re all that, how about a wager?”

“What are you talking about?” said Chad, still huffing and puffing.

“Tomorrow at 7am, we ride to Belwood. Whoever kills more zombies by noon wins. If I win, I get your food rations for a month,” explained Kaius.

“Keep dreaming. What do I get if I win, huh?”

“You get my food rations for a month, plus my bike,” Kaius patted his bike. Then he said in a condescending tone, “you don’t have to accept this wager if you’re scared.”

Glancing at Chad’s gang, Kaius continued, “Your little entourage can come as well. Or you can all just stay holed up in the city like cowards.”

“When the fuck did you become so brave huh? Fine, I’m in. You better show up tomorrow morning or else,” threatened Chad.

“Don’t worry, of course I’ll show up,” said Kaius with a chuckle.

Then, Kaius muttered inwardly to himself, “after all, how else could I test the capabilities of my summons.”