“The Blood Moon gives four times the normal experience?” Magnus Vane blurted out as he stared at the combat log.
His voice carried across the compound, drawing the attention of several newly turned walkers wandering nearby, but Magnus barely noticed them at first.
For a moment, he actually regretted using the raiders to thin out the Berserkers.
If he had personally killed the entire Blood Moon horde, the experience might have pushed him all the way to Level 11 or even Level 12.
Magnus quickly dismissed the thought with a shake of his head.
“Greed will get you killed.
I probably couldn’t have handled the whole horde by myself anyway.” Reaching Level 9 during his first Blood Moon was already far beyond what he could have accomplished without using the compound to his advantage.
Once he had a proper fortified base, however, Magnus fully intended to find a safer way to squeeze every possible point of experience out of future horde nights.
He closed the combat log and opened the skill menu, turning his attention to the three unused points he had just earned.
Beginning at Strength Level 6, each additional increase cost two skill points, while reaching Strength Level 5 had already unlocked the next rank of Skull Crusher.
The choice was easy: two points into Strength and the remaining point into his main sledgehammer perk.
Magnus selected both upgrades without hesitation.
[Strength Lv.6 / 10 — Strong as an Ox]
[Strength and Strength-based headshot effectiveness moderately increased.]
[You are now stronger than most people could hope to become through ordinary training.]
Magnus spent the final point.
[Skull Crusher Lv.3 / 5 — Crusher]
[Specializes in heavy weapons such as sledgehammers for destroying enemies and structures.]
[You can smash through most ordinary obstacles with overwhelming force.]
Magnus closed the panel and looked toward the walkers gradually surrounding the SUV.
There were more than a dozen of them now, most being former members of the raider camp who had risen after dying during the Blood Moon.
His Stamina had already recovered considerably, and the exhaustion from the previous fight had begun to fade.
Magnus reached into his system inventory and pulled out the new Stone Sledgehammer.
“Perfect timing,” he said with a grin.
“Let’s see what Level 6 Strength can actually do.”
Magnus jumped from the SUV roof and swung the heavy weapon in a broad horizontal arc before his boots even fully settled.
The stone head slammed into three walkers at once and knocked all of them off their feet.
His body felt denser and stronger beneath the crude wooden armor, with muscles tightening naturally whenever he shifted his weight.
Despite weighing several times more than the old Horse-Bone Sledgehammer, the upgraded weapon barely felt more difficult to control.
The difference was immediately obvious.
Magnus could accelerate the Stone Sledgehammer hard enough to make the air whistle around the head, and every swing carried enough force to send a corpse staggering or crashing to the ground.
Against living people, the sight alone would have been enough to make most hesitate before stepping within reach.
Against slow walkers, Magnus no longer felt as though he were fighting anything particularly dangerous.
After facing Blood Moon Berserkers, ordinary walkers looked almost painfully slow.
“Come on,” Magnus muttered as two corpses shuffled toward him side by side.
“You’re moving like you’ve got all day.”
He planted his feet and swung.
Crack!
Both heads burst apart beneath the same horizontal strike, and the bodies dropped almost together.
Magnus continued moving through the group, using sweeping attacks to knock walkers down before finishing them with direct blows to the skull.
None of them managed to get close enough to threaten him seriously.
A few minutes later, the final two walkers collapsed.
[Level Increased]
[Lv.9 → Lv.10]
Magnus rested the Stone Sledgehammer against one shoulder and surveyed the blood-covered courtyard.
Every member of the former survivor camp was now dead for good, either killed by the Berserkers or finished after turning.
Magnus hadn’t personally killed most of them while they were alive, but his decision to lure the Blood Moon horde here had effectively destroyed the entire group.
In practical terms, the compound now belonged to nobody.
He wasn’t about to leave its supplies behind.
Weapons were scattered across the courtyard where people had dropped them during the fight.
Magnus moved some food and other bulky supplies from his system inventory into the SUV’s back seat, freeing space before collecting every usable gun he could find.
In a collapsed civilization, firearms and replacement parts would only become harder to find because nobody was producing them in meaningful numbers anymore.
Even damaged magazines, sights, or other components could eventually become useful.
Once the outside had been cleared, Magnus entered the main building.
The structure had two floors, and almost immediately he found ammunition stacked near one wall and several rifles leaning against a makeshift gun rack.
After checking everything, Magnus counted seven long guns, twelve handguns, and eight boxes of assorted ammunition.
For a group of roughly thirty people, the raiders had accumulated an impressive stockpile.
Compared with Magnus’s own camp, the difference was enormous.
Merle had been the only person carrying a long gun consistently, while Andrea had a handgun and Daryl relied primarily on his crossbow.
Everyone else depended mostly on melee weapons or whatever firearms could be shared.
Magnus collected the entire cache without hesitation, grateful that similar items could be stacked inside his system inventory instead of filling every available slot individually.
He continued upstairs and opened the first bedroom cautiously.
Magnus had half expected to discover prisoners or other survivors being held against their will, considering the kind of people who had occupied the compound.
Instead, the room contained nothing more than rows of beds and personal belongings.
It appeared to have simply been sleeping quarters.
Magnus exhaled in relief.
Finding prisoners would have created another problem he wasn’t prepared to solve while operating alone.
He wasn’t interested in abandoning people in immediate danger, but neither could he bring every stranger he encountered back to Hershel’s farm without considering food, security, personality, and whether they could contribute.
In this world, taking responsibility for someone meant accepting the consequences if that person became a threat or drained resources the group desperately needed.
He had no intention of collecting followers simply because they existed.
Magnus wanted capable people who could work, fight, hunt, build, or otherwise help keep the group alive.
Daryl, Merle, Andrea, Amy, and Rick’s people all had potential because they brought something valuable beyond another mouth to feed.
His years working on a slaughter floor had taught him to judge resources practically, and the apocalypse had only made that habit more important.
“This place is finished.”
Magnus searched the rest of the building, gathered whatever remaining food and gasoline he could carry, and headed back outside.
Morning had already passed, yet he felt no urgency to return to the farm immediately.
Half of the nearby town was still unexplored, and since he was already here, it made more sense to finish searching before driving back.
“May as well make the trip worth it.”
The SUV had taken a beating during the Blood Moon and now creaked whenever Magnus drove over uneven pavement.
Cracked glass, damaged bodywork, and a battered interior made it look like a vehicle that had survived years of abuse instead of a few violent days.
Even so, it still ran, and that was all Magnus cared about.
He left the destroyed raider compound and continued east through town.
Magnus ignored most residential houses and concentrated on commercial buildings instead.
Grocery stores, pharmacies, bars, hardware stores, and gun shops were more likely to contain large quantities of the same useful supplies in one place.
Searching houses one at a time would take far longer for smaller returns.
Unfortunately, other survivors had clearly reached the same conclusion long before him.
By the afternoon, Magnus had searched three stores, one pharmacy, a bar, and a gun shop.
Most doors were already hanging open, shelves had been stripped bare, and anything obviously valuable was long gone.
He still managed to recover a few overlooked items, including several sealed bottles of liquor and unopened packs of cigarettes from behind the bar.
It wasn’t much, but empty-handed scavenging still beat wasting the trip entirely.
By the time Magnus stepped back onto the street, darkness had swallowed the town.
There were no streetlights, engines, televisions, or distant voices anymore, leaving the place unnaturally silent except for the occasional low groan of a walker somewhere in the distance.
Magnus decided there was no reason to risk driving back to the farm exhausted.
He parked the damaged SUV and chose a nearby house that appeared structurally sound.
The former owner had already turned.
Magnus dealt with the walker quickly and claimed the house for the night.
Inside, he tested the bathroom almost as an afterthought and was surprised when the shower sputtered to life.
“Still working?” Magnus adjusted the controls, and after about a minute, genuinely hot water began flowing.
Apparently, the property still had enough pressure and gas remaining to give him one more taste of the old world.
Magnus stripped off his filthy clothes, folded them beside the tub, and pulled one of the bottles of liquor from his system inventory.
After taking a drink, he sank into the hot water with a long sigh and finally allowed his muscles to relax.
“Every time something like this still works, it might be the last time anybody gets to use it.” Electricity, running water, gas, refrigeration—everything people once considered permanent was slowly disappearing.
For all the advantages the system gave him, Magnus knew he wasn’t fundamentally different from Rick or anyone else struggling to survive.
Without the 7 Days to Die system, his knowledge of future events might help him avoid a few disasters, but it wouldn’t make him bulletproof or immune to a walker tearing out his throat.
Knowing what was supposed to happen was only useful until his own actions changed enough details to make that knowledge unreliable.
The system was the real reason Magnus could move through this world with as much confidence as he did.
He casually opened his status panel while resting in the tub.
[Magnus Vane]
[Level: Lv.10]
[Unused Skill Points: 1]
Magnus considered spending the point but quickly decided against it.
Increasing Strength again would require at least two skill points, and higher ranks would eventually demand even more.
There was no reason to spend a point on something he didn’t currently need just because it was available.
“Save it,” he murmured.
“Build up a few first.”
Magnus hadn’t properly slept through an entire night and day, and since then he had survived the Blood Moon, fought several groups of walkers, looted the raider compound, and searched half the town.
Once the hot water loosened the last tension in his body, exhaustion hit him all at once.
His eyelids grew heavier before he could even finish his thought.
Within moments, Magnus Vane was fast asleep in the warm bathtub.