In one of the closed rooms inside the huge auction house a dead woman with her sexy night dress barely covering any of her body, lay on the floor, with a frozen expression of pure bliss permanently engraved on her face.

Safe for the corpse there was no one else inside when a chair standing at the side of the room suddenly moved. Then a vase from across that chair toppled over rolling off the table and shattering. A picture frame on one of the walls keeled to the side and fell off the hooks, breaking apart as it hit the floor with a corner. 

One by one all kinds of objects in the room as if coming to life suddenly began to tremble, move, and fall.

Walls began to vibrate giving off a quiet and dull at first, the sound slowly increased in volume and pitch until it started to sound like a distant scream of a person. As the noise kept growing so did the tone and soon it became a real high-pitched scream of a woman.

As the scream sounded, it reflected from walls echoing and overlapping with itself turning to an eery ghostly screech. 

Then just as suddenly as this poltergeist phenomenon began it stopped all at once leaving the room in a total mess. But the thing that stood out the most was a silhouette of a half-transparent woman in a long white dress floating above the corpse of a woman looking down at the expression of pure bliss on her dead face with a questioning expression.

"There you are, My Lady." Suddenly said a cracking voice, as if a bunch of twigs was broken. "I've been looking for you everywhere." 

"I…was…busy, putting myself together." Said the floating woman with her voice sounding distant as if it was said through the water.

"You dispersed?" Said the crackling voice as the wood planks of the floor bent and cracked, rising up. "What happened?" Said the wooden creature that the bent and intertwined floor planks formed.

"The bitch I was possessing had been sated, and felt bliss." Answered the ghostly figure of a woman.

"I thought souls contracted with Wraith became insatiable until you consume them." Said the wooden creature gazing at the dead woman on the floor, studying her blissful expression.

"They should be, that was unexpected, so I was taken by surprise when she felt satisfied and our contract was fulfilled. Her soul dispersed when the contract was fulfilled and before I could understand what happened, I was dispersed with her." Said the Wraith.

"How did she achieve the satisfaction?" The wooden creature asked.

"We were…fucked…very well fucked." Answered the Wraith, closing her eyes and replaying the dead woman's memory of the moment before her death, and a small smile crept to her ghostly transparent lips.

"Khem." Feigning a cough the wooden creature sounded more like a branch of a tree was snapped.

"Oh…umm, yeah. Sorry. So why were you looking for me?" Said the ghost woman awakening with a startle from her reminiscences.

"We have a problem." Said the wooden creature. "Several to be true. But one is of utmost importance for you to attend immediately." 

"What's going on?" Said the woman Wraith floating in the air, her expression turning grim, bringing darkness to her white figure.

"Shadow squad.  It got in. One of the exits has been captured."

"What? Assemble the warrior!" Said the ghost woman with fury.

"I will take care of that. There is a more important matter." Said the wooden creature. "You need to get back to the throne room. There is something wrong with the dungeon core."

"With the dungeon core? What are you saying? What can happen to it? Did the intruder get to the throne room?" Exclaimed the Wraith.

"No. No one touched it. I would not allow that. It started to dim. It's breaking." Crackled wooden creature.

"Wha…." Started to say the Wraith in shock then turned around and with a flash-like movement flew into the wall disappearing inside.

When the Wraith was gone, the wooden creature sank back into the floor restoring the wooden flooring to its original appearance.

They were gone in seconds, leaving in the room only the corpse of an auction house master wife that Noah fucked into pure bliss.

*****

"Master!" Exclaimed a servant hurriedly approaching a man after entering one of the lavish VIP rooms.

Auction house master that sat quietly chatting with one of the disguised guests sitting near him, threw a glance at the servant before whispering something to his guest and stood up walking up to the servant with a worried expression on his face.

"What is it?" Asked The Auction house Master in a whisper standing in front of the servant.

"We have a problem. There is something wrong with the porters. They brought a few wrong items, disobeying the orders of the auction manager. Then they locked themselves in the vault. The vault door guards are nowhere to be seen. We can't open the door."

"WHAT?! Where is Vernon? What was he doing at that time?" Hissed with anger The master of the house.

"I…I don't know. He was looking for madam, said she was nowhere to be found…"

"Is everything alright, master?" Asked the guest sitting at the plush luxurious chair with a glass of wine in his hand watching the auction scene, without even turning back to look in the auction house master's direction.

"Yes. Minor logistic problem. Nothing to be afraid of. Please enjoy your time here, unfortunately, I must leave you to give orders to my people…"

"Master!" Exclaimed another servant running into the room panting, with fear written all over his face.

"What?" Hissed the House Master with anger.

"The Madam….Madam she…we found her body…she's dead."

"WHAT?!" Exclaimed the Master aloud.

"We came into the room and found her and butler Vernon sitting on the floor near her body, sir."

"What the fuck is going on, here? Send guards to Vernon, and restrain him in the room until I get there. Order them to not touch anything until I get there. I will go handle the problem with the vault. The venue must perform without a problem. Tell the girl on the scene to buy some time." Gave orders, the Master, as he exited the VIP room followed by the servants.

"Master!" Screamed another servant running full speed through the corridor. "Master!"

Housemaster had a sense of deja-vu from this yet a strange feeling of dread spread inside him as he waited for the running servant.

"Master! Dungeon! Dungeon! It's spawning monsters! There are monsters everywhere outside in the black market!" Exclaimed the servant with terror all over his face.

"WHAT?!" He shrieked in shock.

"MASTER!!!" Screeched a fourth servant rushing to the group at full speed.

"WHAT?" Screamed the house master with tears starting to turn up in his eyes.

"ZOMBIES! ZOMBIES EVERYWHERE!" Screamed the terrified servant.

Then they all heard the screams and shrieks of terror coming from the direction of the auction venue as the mob of horrified guests rushed out of VIP rooms into the corridor, dashing for the exit, pushing and pulling each other.

*****

Brianna sat with a happy smile in the auction hall filled with disguised people that were competing with their bets, throwing up hands with sticks with seat numbers written on them. This was another novel experience for her. She and her sister were home-bound for decades because of their monster nature and never left their territory, only coming to their Aunt Cassandra's Mansion or later into nearby towns belonging to her territory, where they only visited prestigious luxury shops and were surrounded by the guards of Vespertine house. Always conducting with a noble bearing, strictly following the rules of etiquette, and not able to do whatever they wanted. Yet they were nobles just in name. Their Threadweaver house could not even afford a maid or to repair the house. They were not full-fledged nobles, but neither were they free as common people, able to go wherever they wanted. Getting out and experiencing the world was her greatest dream.

And here now, with Noah, she felt the freedom she never had in her life. Traveling through unknown forests, sneaking into enemy camps, diving into dungeons. All of these were new experiences that she was happy to participate in. But this event, an auction, was one of her long-lasting dreams. A true experience of a noble lady. Only big cities that were too far away from their territory had such venues. She read lots of stories of the different mythical items sold at auctions, where nobles fought for them with their money and prestige. Having a chance to bet a thousand for a small useless thing, wasn't that a prerogative of true nobles!

Well, this was a gathering of criminals and outlaws but an auction nonetheless! It was the next best thing of a true noble auction event she dreamed of. So she was imbuing with experience to the utmost.

"Fifty thousand! Who will give Fifty-five?" Asked the girl on a scene speaking quickly in her melodious voice.

Brianna lifted her seat number sign quickly.

"I see, fifty-five thousand." Said the auction girls smiling happy smiles at Brianna. Brianna smiled back at her through her veil before turning to look in the direction of a man that she was competing against, glaring at her through his mask. He quickly raised his hand again fully intent on beating her.

Brianna wasn't even aware of what was auctioned at the moment, she was just enjoying the experience of fighting over a lot. As the item was announced she was busy watching the scene to learn how many people were interested to know if the fight would be intensive or not, choosing the most intense ones as her chance to barge in. It's not like she would be paying for any of the items anyway. So she just raised her number pretending to fight for items while doing it for fun…oh and Noah also asked her to buy some time here, prolonging the bets with her raising the prices…but this was a side task. Fun! She was having the fun of her life.

The auction girl has long noticed that this elegant madam in the veil was an active participant, that raised a lot of prices of the items auctioned today and as a side effect the auction girl's commission for this event, so she smiled and interacted with her as if beckoning her to bet more, recognizing her as one of the wealthy people in the crowd. 

Brianna was about to raise her seat number again when Noah finally gave a signal to proceed with the plan. She smiled bashfully but shook her head giving up the fight.

Brianna closed her eyes, concentrating on the round medallion in her clenched fist attaching an unseen thread to it, before releasing it from her hand and letting it drop to the floor under her seat. But before it hit the ground, the medallion stopped in the air, floating for a few moments before turning and flying close to the ground toward one of the empty seats in the hall, where an occupant went to a restroom while the items he was not interested in were presented on the scene.

Once the medallion reached the seat she targeted it slowly dropped to the ground and a moment later someone dropped on the seat out of nowhere.

As the occupants of the nearby seats were intently watching the auction they did not even notice that someone appeared near them. The only one that was startled was the guest behind, gazing at the figure that just appeared in a stupor. However, before he could even understand what was going on the figure stood up and turned around shocking him with its dead face.

Just as he jumped up ready to scream the figure jumped at him with monstrous speed biting into his neck with its teeth. The people around jumped from their seats in shock looking at how the two people struggled on the ground. With their scream, the auction stopped with the entire hall watching the scene in bewilderment. 

But their questioning gazes quickly turned to fear as they saw another person in the hall being jumped at by a second assailant. 

The guards reacted almost immediately, rushing for the people that disturbed the event, but stopped halfway as they saw more and more people in the hall being attacked. 

They were horrified seeing how the people that were attacked stood up with their assailants and attacked other people just as they were attacked themselves. Crazy people, attacking others multiplied by the second, only they were not people. They soon realized that these crazy people were all dead. Zombies. The hall was attacked by zombies.

Their shock lasted for a few moments before they pulled out their swords and rushed at the undead monsters.

The hall was full of criminals and outlaws, many of which had quite high-level systems and were good fighters.

Guards and warriors jumped forward quickly putting down the monsters…or that was their intent. What they were met with, however, was far different from their expectations. 

Zombies were not high-level monsters, they were strong and attacked in numbers, but with a good team, beginner warriors were able to defeat them as they were dumb and slow.

The ones attacking them now however were different. All of them mowed with shocking speed slipping between the swords hacking at them from all sides so quickly, many warriors could not even see their movements. 

Their strength was so great they broke bones in hands of anyone that tried to guard himself against their punch.

But worst of all they knew how to fight!

All of that combined with tenacity and immortal-like body of undead that did not die unless their monster core was shattered or their head cut off. But even this brought a surprise to the warriors fighting these Zombies. Even when their head was cut off, the head rolling on the ground bit at the shins of the people, while its body jumped at them without stopping. Soon guards began to fall prey to their bites one after another, turning into new enemies shortly after.

No wound, no amount of swords and arrows stuck in their bodies could stop these monsters as they jumped over the heads of a horrified screaming mob rushing out of the hall and pulled down random people in the crowd to bite into them, turning them into new addition of their nightmare army.

The Zombie apocalypse has begun.