CH 5

Chapter 5: Let’s Go To School

The first place I headed for was the school I go to everyday.

The reason was simple. It was close by, and it looked like a safe place to be.

I lost both of my parents in a car accident, and as a result of being shunned by all of my other relatives, I ended up formally enjoying the free spirited-ness of living by myself living alone. After the accident, I decided to live in the same apartment as I have always lived, with it being “close to school” one of the deciding factors.

Rather than spending more time commuting, I’m more of the “wants to sleep for as long as possible before heading out to school” type.

The Miyabigaoka High School was less than five minutes away from home on foot.

Fortunately, most of the zombies along the way seemed to be busy with fresh, steaming raw meat, and didn’t even look at me. Still, two of them came up towards me.

After I finished killing the attacking zombies, the fanfare rang in my head once again.

–Congratulations! Your level has increased!

Another level up, huh?

If I was “Level 2” up until now, I suppose I’m “Level 3” now…

I seem to be going well.

But still, it’s not surprising…

After all, it seems that I needed to defeat more enemies to increase my level from 2 to 3 than what I needed to increase from 1 to 2.

This really felt like a game.

— Please choose the skill you would like to learn.

— 1 – Sword Technique (Intermediate)

— 2 – Auto-Maintenance

— 3 – Martial Arts (Beginner)

— 4 – Hunger Resistance (Weak)

— 5 – Natural Healing (Weak)

Hm?

I had to think about it for a little, despite the road ahead being filled with zombies.

“I think I can understand what ‘Sword Technique (Intermediate)’ is, but what about ‘Auto-Maintenance’?”

— “Auto-Maintenance” is a passive skill that will restore your deteriorated gear to 60% durability over time.

I tilted my head to the side once again.

“When you say ‘gear’, you mean things like this sword? Or will it restore things like expired food to normal?”

Though I asked him, Mr. Hallucination (a nice pet name I came up with for the voice in my head) was like…

— Please choose the skill you would like to learn.

— 1 – Sword Technique…

He started again from the top.

So he seemed to be the “relatively inflexible” type.

Either way, my intuition as a gamer was whispering words into my ears. The “gear” the skill might be referring to could very well be the Japanese sword I had right now.

So in short, this would be like a Skill Tree, like the ones commonly found in RPGs.

If you strengthen one skill, it will start to branch off into several other skills, allowing you to steadily strengthen the skills from that line.

First, I had acquired a skill called “Sword Technique (Beginner)”.

That’s why now I had two options that each allowed me to specialize in fighting with a sword.

Then, the skills that I have not chosen could be divided into lines as well.

I imagined it would be something like…

“Martial Arts (Beginner)” would lead towards something like a “monk” class that would have skills for specializing in bare-handed combat?

“Hunger tolerance (weak)” would lead towards a “survivalist” class of sorts? I don’t know.

“Natural Healing (weak)” would lead towards a class that improves vitality, and maybe other healing skills?

Or something like that.

I heard groaning around me. There were enemies all over the place.

I’m the type of person that can’t choose well under these circumstances.

Whenever I make decisions like these in a hurry in a game, I would later check a walkthrough for it and go “Aw, I should have chosen this other thing instead”.

Ah, I’ll be darned!

Frustrated, I decided to just say “eeny meeny miney moe” and be done with it.

As a result…

“Okay, let’s go with ‘Auto-Maintenance’.”

This Japanese sword is a keepsake from my grandfather. I want to be able to use it for as long as I can.

— Understood. Applying Skill effect.

Then…

…

What is this?

…To my surprise, this time, there were no dramatic changes.

It made me wonder if the skill had bugged out or something like that.

Then again, this might be one of those skills that will come into effect later… maybe?

Now that I think about it, 60% isn’t all that great… is it?

Oh well.

*sniff*

Still brooding over it, I finally reached the school gate.

“Whoa.”

The first thing I saw was a lot of zombies vigorously roaming through the school’s playground.

The school gate seemed to be only halfway closed. Apparently, they tried to prevent the invading zombies from entering the school grounds by closing the gate, but it seems that didn’t go as planned.

I then noticed two unfamiliar students of our school had become lunch for the zombies in front of the school gate.

You poor things.

Since they were students from the same school as I was, their deaths had weighed on my mind, if only a little.

So I resolved myself to avenge their deaths.

With a quick swing of the sword, I sliced through the back of the zombies’ necks, completely eliminating them.

Fortunately, the zombies seemed to be too immersed in their meal, so they didn’t bother to defend themselves.

The next thing to do was… that.

The students that were being eaten just now.

I’d have to deal with them as well.

I thrust the tip of my sword into their foreheads, so that they wouldn’t rise again from the dead.

Were they alive?

Were they dead?

Was I just preserving their dignity?

I didn’t want to think about such complicated things.

The entire operation was completed in a matter of seconds.

There was no point in staying here any longer.

The school gate made a rattling noise as I closed it, blocking the access to the outside.

After I locked the gate with a click, the next thing that I had to do in order to finally feel safe was to exterminate every zombie left in the school grounds.

Then I felt another groan, but this time, it came from my belly.

Ah.

That’s right.

I haven’t had lunch yet.

Let’s go take care of that quickly.