New chapter is live.
Settle in, take your time, and let’s see what waits in the dark 🖤
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The two sides collided.
Thirty seconds was enough to decide it.
The raiders were hit like people standing in the path of floodwater.
They were bitten, dragged down, and killed so fast their firearms could not save them.
Seven or eight Berserkers remained after the clash.
They lowered their heads and growled through bloody mouths, swaying slightly as if trying to locate Evan.
On the roof, Evan narrowed his eyes.
The deaths below deepened the red haze in his vision.
“There are two ways to survive a Blood Moon.”
“One: build strong defenses and keep the walkers out until morning.”
“Two: kill every walker that came for you.
If you do, the Blood Moon ends early.”
“These Berserkers are already down by more than half.
Seven or eight left.
I have a chance.”
He moved as soon as the thought settled.
Evan rolled off the roof, dropped to the ground, and ran back to the car before the walkers fully reacted.
He slipped inside and slammed the door.
Crash.
The walkers whipped around.
Their gray-white eyes carried the same blood-red tint as Evan’s.
They slammed into the windows at a sprint.
Glass burst across the seats, shards sticking in rotten skulls as half-dried blood and pus leaked from the wounds.
“Raaah!”
“Eat this, you ugly bastard!”
Evan drove the Horse-Bone Sledgehammer through the broken window and rammed it straight into a walker’s mouth.
The walker dropped, stunned.
The car was cramped, but that was the point.
It kept the Berserkers from piling onto him all at once.
Evan fought to turn the sledgehammer, then brought it down onto the skull of the walker trying to crawl through the window.
Crack.
Bone split.
Brain matter splashed across his face.
The stench hit his nose.
His heart hammered.
Veins stood out like old roots along his arms, and for a moment Evan looked more violent than the dead around him.
One walker had already climbed through the front.
This was his first real close-range exchange with the Berserkers, and they were more agile than he had expected.
A mouth full of rotten teeth snapped toward him.
Evan gritted his teeth, shoved his boot into its chest, and kicked hard.
At the same time, he grabbed the car’s cigarette lighter and jammed it into another walker’s eye.
“Eat.
You like eating so much?
Then eat this.”
Heat sank through the eye socket.
Rotten fluid hissed and dripped onto Evan’s chest.
Evan released the sledgehammer and punched.
The walker’s skull caved in.
He shoved the corpse off himself, the red in his eyes deepening.
Before the others could force their way in, he grabbed the Horse-Bone Sledgehammer again and climbed out through the broken window onto the car roof.
Then he swung like a golfer at the next walker trying to climb up.
The blow smashed it senseless and sent it collapsing to the ground.
After that, Evan dealt with the rest like a man playing whack-a-mole with a sledgehammer.
One after another, he knocked them down and finished them.
When every Berserker lay still, Evan stayed on the roof for another twenty minutes.
Only when the blood mist began to thin and the Blood Moon blurred overhead did he finally exhale.
His body gave out all at once, and he collapsed onto the car roof.
“Killing seven or eight Berserkers is more exhausting than killing twenty ordinary walkers.”
Cold sweat covered him.
He could not stop breathing hard.
If he had faced the full group alone, he might have survived, but it would have taken a piece out of him.
Facing Blood Moon Berserkers alone was nearly hopeless.
That only strengthened his resolve to build a real survivor community.
Not just Daryl and Merle.
Rick’s people too.
In the apocalypse, people were often the least valuable resource.
They were also, sometimes, the most valuable.
Rick’s group was full of survivors with the potential to become something more.
If Evan brought them in, he would gain the strength he needed for future Blood Moons and future enemies.
He rested on the roof with the Horse-Bone Sledgehammer planted beside him for a long time.
Dawn had begun to brighten the sky by the time the raiders killed by the Berserkers started to rise again as walkers.
Only then did Evan recover enough to move.
A light, cheerful jingle sounded near his ear, and a screen appeared in front of him.
[First Blood Moon Survived]
[Time Until Next Blood Moon: Doubled]
[Reward 1: Horse-Bone Sledgehammer upgraded to Stone Sledgehammer, Quality 2]
[Reward 2: Equipment – Rogue Gloves, Quality 3]
[Reward 3: Skill Magazine – Hunter’s Bow]
Heat moved through Evan’s hand.
The Horse-Bone Sledgehammer planted beside him changed shape.
A layer of soft leather appeared around the handle, separating his palms from the rough wooden shaft.
The head shifted too, turning from rounded bone into a square, brutal block of stone, as if two or three bricks had been hammered into place.
The hammerhead had changed from bone to stone, and the weapon’s weight had multiplied.
If Evan had not invested in Strength first, he might not have been able to lift it.
Evan took bread and bottled water from his inventory, ate, drank, and kept reading.
[Rogue Gloves, Quality 3]
[Part of the Rogue set.]
[Lockpicking Speed +6%]
[Lockpicking Success Rate +6%]
[Stamina Recovery +0.65/sec]
[Movement Speed +7%]
[Noise generation reduced.
Detection chance reduced.]
[Description: If you are an assassin, this is exactly what you want to wear.
Put them on and cut down every sleeping lamb that never sees you coming.]
The stats were good.
Evan was not impressed.
“You won’t give me Agility points, but you keep giving me Agility gear.
What exactly are you trying to do?”
The system gave no answer.
He looked at the third reward.
[Skill Magazine: Hunter’s Bow]
[Effect: Increases Bow Crafting level (maximum Lv.
75).]
[Bow Crafting Lv.
1-10: Primitive Bow]
[Bow Crafting Lv.
11-20: Wooden Bow]
[Bow Crafting Lv.
21-35: Iron Crossbow]
[Bow Crafting Lv.
36-55: Compound Bow]
[Bow Crafting Lv.
56-75: Compound Crossbow]
“If I can raise it high enough, crafting a few compound crossbows would be useful.”
System-made gear came with attributes.
It was better than ordinary hand-built weapons.
Even if Evan did not use them himself, he could craft them for people in camp later.
Daryl came to mind first.
If Daryl got his hands on a proper compound crossbow, his effectiveness in a fight could improve dramatically.
Evan put the heavy Stone Sledgehammer and the Rogue Gloves into his inventory, then flipped through the magazine.
The magazine dissolved as the system absorbed it.
[Bow Crafting Lv.
1 -> Lv.
5]
[Level Up]
[Level: Lv.
6 -> Lv.
9]
[Unspent Skill Points: 3]
One magazine had raised Bow Crafting to Lv.
5.
Evan barely registered it.
Then he noticed his character level and froze.
He opened the system log at once.
[Kill: Berserker Walker]
[XP +1200]
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Want to keep going?
I hope this chapter gave you another reason to stay with the story.
There’s still plenty ahead, and things are only starting to unfold.