chapter 19

Blackout would begin in five minutes. Zed and Kagami were sitting just ten minutes out from the closest Military base. 

"So explain how you know about this blackout thing please, " said Kagami with a little confusion.

"Am I not the smartest person you know? Just trust me and I will tell you another time. All we must do is break into the military base while the blackout occurs and retrieve a tank. Oh, and one last thing, if you see anything of interest tell me." Replied Zed as he stared at the digital clock which sat on his dashboard. 

The time read 8:56 am. As minutes passed by the pair sat in silence until only one minute remained. 

Zed pulled out two lighters and gave one to Kagami. They had already gone over the plan multiple times so both of them were ready.

With only 30 seconds remaining until the blackout, they flicked the top of the lighter back creating a spark. From that spark, a fire ignited. Both held the lighter under their hand. Since the lighters may not last the entire 20 minutes they both had a second ready to go. If the lighter went out they would have 10 seconds to light a new one before they fell unconscious.

Since one didn't need to hold the pain in one spot, it wasn't too bad. If Zed could give it a rating it would be a 2. Then again he had experienced a lot of pain. Although Zed found it hardly irritating, Kagami was sweating. He wasn't used to this much pain and at times Zed even had to remind him that it would be over soon.

After about ten minutes the first lighters went out so they moved onto the second one's. In another ten minutes or so the two could begin their mission.

Eventually, an alarm went off. Zed had lost track of time and was staring out the window. It was completely silent so when the alarm had gone off he immediately let go of his lighter. 

"New mission ready. Fight your way through the zombie masses and retrieve a tank from within the nearest military base. Mission bonus for retrieving an M1A2 SEP is included." said the system's voice. 

Along with the system's voice, a window popped up. It read that the total possible experience gain would be 20,000 x 2. The double experience was because this was now technically the refining stage. 

Since he had earned experience before from the last three missions Zed decided now was a good time to level himself up.

As Zed thought about his stats screen it popped up into existence. In front of him sat a screen of stats which read:

Zed (lvl1): (3 levels available)

Health: 13/13

Magic: 5/5

Strength: 21/21

Agility: 38/38

Intelligence: 467/467

Learning Rate: 967/967

Abilities:

Swordsmanship, boxing, irregular learner, marksman, water Elementalist, etc

At the top of the status screen was his name and level. The level had remained the same and therefore needed to be manually activated. As Zed thought this the system brought up a pop-up screen.

[Would you like to level up?]

[Yes/No]

Of course, Zed picked yes and the three levels were put into his overall level which now sat at level four. 

The system's voice came to life once again, "you have received 22 x 2 attribute points. Choose an attribute or multiple attributes to place points into." 

That was a total of 44 attribute points, most likely due to the refining stage of the apocalypse. Although that wouldn't make sense since it was his experience which would be multiplied, not his attribute points. As Zed thought about this he came to the conclusion that the system had its own double attribute system of sorts.

Listening to the systems trusting voice he chose to split his points into three separate parts which would help him during his mission of retrieving a tank. The three parts he chose to split the points up into were the health, strength and agility attribute.

His new stats were as follows

Zed (lvl4):

Health: 23/23

Magic: 5/5

Strength: 30/30

Agility: 53/53

Intelligence: 467/467

Learning Rate: 967/967

Abilities:

Swordsmanship, boxing, irregular learner, marksman, water Elementalist, etc

Zed chose to put 10 points into health, 9 into strength and 25 into agility. The reason behind this choice was because in his past life he had been one of the strongest not due to his pure raw brute strength and instead through his extreme speed and agility. He had also learned techniques to accompany the speed with which he fought. Of course, he wouldn't neglect strength since it was still important, however to him speed would win against strength 9 times out of 10.

Zed, now no longer distracted turned the key in the ignition. A powerful roar was released from the engine as he began speeding down the road towards the army base.

Very quickly Zed had reached the base. Right ahead of him was a concrete barrier which had been erected from the road in order to stop people from entering the base without permission. 

The falcon came to a screeching stop. Zed and Kagami got out of the car. Currently, Zed was wearing a full suit of hockey armour which would protect him from any zombie bites. 

"Kagami, you need to find this tank. When you do I need you to gather as much fuel, tank shells and machine gun ammo as possible and load it into the tank. Then escape back to the workshop." Zed said as he handed Kagami his phone with a picture of the M1A2 SEP tank.

Kagami nodded as he took the phone and waited by the gate at the front of the base. 

Zed went into the office and found the passed out guards key. He then placed the key into the gate control and pressed a button. The gate opened and Kagami ran in the direction of the tanks holding a suppressed pistol and knife.

The night before they had talked about where Kagami could find the tanks at. 

Zed then ran through the gate but went the opposite direction. He had other plans. The more zombies to die to his hand the better. 

After Zed had run for a minute he finally reached a hanger where there were multiple planes were stored. Walking up to each, he placed them into his inventory. After this, he went to the fuel supply and took it. Zed continued throughout the hanger until every plane, fuel storage, weapon and ammunition was stored within his inventory.

At this point, his inventory was on its last 12 slots available. Zed would need to bring along a few more things so he decided to move onto the next building just across from the hanger.

As Zed opened the doors twenty or so Completely torn apart faces looked up at him, their bloodshot eyes staring at him like a piece of nicely cooked steak. Before even a second had passed the began to stand up from the feast which sat upon the ground and start walking towards him. Some even crawled, leaving a trail of guts and organs.

Zed smirked as he bolted forward with a tremendous speed which would make a trained athlete look half baked.

Without warning a zombies head had been sliced in half and one side fell onto the ground. Zed had pulled his katana out from his inventory and used it to decimate the approaching undead.

The blade sliced through the air separating the dead from the undead. With each swing of the blade, another zombies head fell to the ground followed quickly by its now completely lifeless body. Blood sprayed into the air with every stroke of his katana, until not even a single zombie remained.