Chapter

Three

The next morning, he knew he needed to make a break for it. Last night had been too close. He didn’t feel safe in the cellars anymore. He didn’t know if he’d ever feel safe again. He loaded a burlap sack up with all the food he could easily carry, as well as a canteen of water.

The undead army entered the town from the north every evening, so he started jogging to the south, determined to cover as much distance as he could before night fell.

On the way out of town, he passed a crow. They’d gotten so used to him they didn’t even fly away when he approached. “I’m leaving. I can’t stay here anymore. I just can’t.”

The crow didn’t judge him. It simply watched him go.

He half jogged, half walked, careful not to exhaust himself. It felt good to be moving. It felt good to get that town and its undead army behind him. The sun was shining, and the air was warm and sweet. He started to feel a little of the fear and chill on his heart melt away, but that was an illusion. He wasn’t really safe. He needed to remember that. He quickly arrived at the forest and followed the road inside.

The forest was thick and wild. Maybe he was used to the carefully manicured national parks, but he had never seen a forest like this. The trees stretched up and covered nearly every inch of the sky, fighting for precious real estate and trying to block each other out. Below, thick underbrush blocked the way everywhere except the road—light green saplings, thin and weak trees trying to reach their parents in the thin light below, and dark green ferns with surprisingly firm, wood-like leaves. The taller trees were all covered in green moss, especially around the base.

It was such a consistent wall of green that the first sign of something else stood out like a sore thumb. White strands of something hung from one of the smaller trees of the underbrush. He hacked his way to it, using the shortsword as a machete, and found strands of something tying the small tree to some of the bigger ones, like a child playing with yarn had strung it all around as decoration.

The thread was as thick as yarn, but didn’t have the same texture. It was strong, almost like hard plastic, and a little sticky.

He strummed it a few times, playing with it, trying to make sense of it.

Something the size of a dog darted out of the shadows at him, and a lucky panicked kick sent it flying back. It was lighter than he’d expected for an animal that size.

It wasn’t until the thing crept towards him again, more cautiously this time, that he knew what it was. The white stuff was spider web. Giant spider web, from giant spiders. The dim light glinted against eight eyes on a basketball-sized head.

It was small, maybe he could take it?

The underbrush behind the spider shook. All of the underbrush shook; it looked like a strong wind was passing through the area, but the air was still. There were many, many more spiders.

Mark turned and ran, not looking back. This had been a bad idea. Yes, the undead were terrible. Yes, only luck had protected him from them last night. One of these nights, they might find him. But they were a known threat; he might be able to survive in the town.

One thing he knew for sure. He would never survive the forest.

He ran the entire way back to town.

A crow was waiting in a field next to the road when he arrived, maybe the same one from this morning. “I’m already back. Don’t laugh; it’s bad out there.”

That night the undead army were back to their usual mindless shambling. Whatever had been motivating them the night before was gone now.

Escape was out. But he had to do something. If he didn’t have something to work towards, he’d go crazy. The only other option was to fight back, maybe by laying traps, or finding other subtle ways to screw with them.

He hadn’t done anything until now because he’d been afraid that if they knew someone was still alive in this town, they’d start checking the cellars. Well, that ship had sailed. Time to get some payback.

He’d start with a small trap, something that could look like a random accident. And he already had the perfect idea.

On his first foray into each of the cellars of the town, he’d found one next to a smaller home that hadn’t been built very well. Unlike all the other cellars, which were supported by strong wooden beams or pioneer masonry, this one really was just a hole in the ground, with one thin tent-pole stick to keep it from collapsing. It would make a perfect pitfall trap, with a little work to help it along. He’d never really made anything like that before, but he figured he understood the concept.

He got a shovel, and started digging out the roof, scraping the dirt off the ceiling until he got to the roots of the grass up above. The entire ceiling collapsed on him, of course, but that was fine. He’d just have to replace it.

He made a false floor over the pit where the cellar used to be with sticks from the forest covered by flour sacks, and then a thin layer of dirt. He was worried that the undead would spot it immediately, but the sun was going down, so he had to get back to his home base cellar before they spotted him.

The next morning, the area was untouched. He was a little disappointed that none of them had fallen in, but it was probably a good thing. The drop was only about four feet right now.

He found he was excited to start work again. The work was addicting. It was nice to have something to do. No, that was an understatement. He’d been hungry for this. He’d been starving for a direction, a purpose. Every pull of the shovel felt like he was pulling life back into himself.

The work took longer than he’d estimated, and the hours flew by.

At the end of the day, he stood up, stretched his back, wiped his brow, took a drink of water, and then was surprised to be alone in a burned-down village full of rotting corpses. Somehow, during the work, he’d forgotten about this nightmare his life had become. He dreaded going back into his home-cellar, and was already looking forward to a hard day of work the next day.

He dug out the cellar until it was twice as deep as he was tall. The work took him several days, but all he had was time.

The System had a nice surprise for him when he was done.

Through training you have increased the following attributes.

Strength +1

Vitality +1

He didn’t really feel any stronger, but it was nice that “limited” System access included stuff like this. Was it possible that he’d also be able to gain experience and level up? The part of his status screen that said “Level: 1” implied that it was possible. His status screen had said that his System was “Locked,” so that might mean he wouldn’t be able to yet. No way to know for sure. He almost wished he had stayed back to kill that giant spider.

On the other hand… nope.

With the pit suitably deep, he had one last thing he wanted to add.

With some of the remaining chunks of wood he’d rescued, he sat in the cellar and whittled them away, turning the blocks of wood into toothpick-sized splinters. He also found a mill, or rather, a millstone with the mill burned down around it, and found that the stone was really good at making sawdust. He scraped wood back and forth on it for hours, until he had four big flour sacks full of sawdust. He left all the sawdust and splinters at the bottom of the cellar.

Some crows flew near and gave him questioning looks, so he explained. “Sure, let me lay out what I’m doing here. I’ve been digging that hole, but I’m starting to think that a simple pitfall trap isn’t going to work. Even if I could get the pit ten or fifteen feet deep, and I sincerely doubt that I can, what’s the guarantee that a fall like that would even kill an undead like that? It wouldn’t even kill a person, not unless they landed on their head somehow.”

He gave a polite pause to see if the crows wanted to add to the conversation, but they didn’t even caw. “Yeah, it’s got to be strange for a bird to think of a fall as something dangerous, but to us land creatures it is. I was thinking of sharpening wooden stakes to put at the bottom, but piercing damage mostly hurts things that can bleed. I don’t know how well it would work against these guys. So we’re going to try fire.

“And not just any fire. Have you heard of a dust explosion? I remember seeing a video once where a baker tried to put out a grease fire by smothering it with a bag of flour, and it just exploded. Hopefully this sawdust will do something similar here.”

“My plan is, when the ghouls fall into the cellar, they’ll kick up a cloud of sawdust into the air. After that, a single spark will be enough to make the whole thing explode, and hopefully the splinters and the rest of the sawdust will burn quick enough to do some lethal damage.

“Now if only I can figure out how to provide the spark…”

He facepalmed loud enough to scare away the crows. “The ghouls are all carrying torches,” he shouted after them. “They’ll provide the spark themselves!”

For the last touch, he made a house. A little dollhouse, but he used the best remaining wood and gave it a roof of dried grass. It was an ugly, crude little thing, but hopefully the ghouls wouldn’t be able to resist running up and knocking it over. He despised the undead and their irrational need to destroy everything left standing. It’d be poetic to use that against them. He gently placed it over the pitfall trap, praying that it wouldn’t be too heavy and make the thing collapse prematurely.

That night, he could hardly sleep, but for once it wasn’t from the terror or the fear. He listened as the ghouls made their nightly pilgrimage, their soft footfalls walking through the town. Quiet and deadly, only audible because there were so many. He’d been tempted to find a cellar close enough to watch the whole thing go down, but that was madness. He stayed in a cellar as far away as possible.

For the first few hours, he thought he’d failed. That was fine. Something to work on tomorrow.

Suddenly, he was jolted awake by the sound of screeching. A ghastly scream echoed through the night, an angry tortured soul. No, not just one; at least three voices screamed into the night, and then suddenly there were loud footsteps everywhere. Other ghouls took up the alarm. They made strange, warbling cries that echoed all across town.

Terror gripped him. Mark hid behind some flour sacks. They were so small, such a thin layer of protection. Stupid. Everything had been fine. Why did he have to stir the pot? Surely this would convince the ghouls to check the cellars again.

But they never did. They ran all across the town, but never checked underground.

Eventually the calls of alarm died down. The footfalls slowed.

A notification appeared.

Alert!

You have defeated:

Undead Warrior of the Flaming Horde [22]

Due to level disparity extra experience will be rewarded.

Alert!

You have defeated:

Undead Warrior of the Flaming Horde [21]

Due to level disparity extra experience will be rewarded.

Alert!

You have defeated:

Undead Soldier of the Flaming Horde [26]

Due to level disparity extra experience will be rewarded.

Alert!

Your System is currently locked. Experience confiscated.

His heart sank. It didn’t seem fair. Kill the bad guys, level up, get stronger, that’s how this type of world was supposed to work. What was he supposed to do now? That pitfall trap had taken days to make. If he wanted to trap the whole army like that, he’d be working at it for years at this point. And that was only if they were stupid enough to keep falling in. He didn’t think he’d be that lucky.

He dismissed his notifications, and another one popped up.

Behold!

The System is locked for children as a mercy, not a punishment. A Quest has been applied on your behalf. Hold fast; aid is coming.

He blinked and read it again. And again. Something stirred in his heart, something he hadn’t felt in a while. Hope. This was a good sign, right? This notification felt different than the others. It didn’t use the same terse, mechanical language as his other notifications; it felt much more direct and personal. Also somewhat scriptural. Had that goddess Solia taken an interest in him again, or could it be someone or something else? He had no way of knowing.

As depressed as he could be about losing out on the experience, he was actually feeling pretty good. He had definitely killed three monsters, gained a lot of information about the System, and now there was a Quest for someone to come and rescue him. He couldn’t wait to get out there and find the remains of the ghouls he’d killed.