Jake's Story, ch 13

I've decided to take some of your advice and slow down a bit.  I'm still working, I'm just doing half days for a little bit while family is visiting me, probably until Thanksgiving.

However, Jake's Story is not work, it's something I'm doing in my off time.  So here is another chapter. : )

I'm hoping to have another Delvers 5 chapter up by tomorrow, or next day at the latest.

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Gtata was waiting when Jake got back.  The Faceted said, “There is one more test, but it is not necessary for you to take it.  Since you are undead and can walk until your body can’t move anymore, and you don’t need to sleep, a test to see how long you can keep outpacing a walking-speed wall of destruction while the air thins and eventually disappears would be unnecessary.”

Jake didn’t say anything in reply.  The Faceted studied him, like it was waiting for Jake to object.  Maybe it was suspicious.  Then again, it would be surprising if the alien didn’t suspect something odd was going on.  For an undead creature to have a soul and a mind was probably strange enough to begin with.

Finally, after a very long pause, the Faceted said, “This event is unprecedented, but you have somehow achieved an S ranking for this challenge.  Now you may choose two different rewards.  Please provide me with three keywords of the types of rewards you would like, and then the Assessment Room will display some appropriate options for you.”

Jake had been expecting this, and he knew that the Faceted had left out some small, but important information.  For one, Jake could give phrases, not just individual words.  Also, being as specific as possible was much better than vague keywords like, “Survival,” “Armor,” or “Weapons.”

He also knew to be incredibly clear so the Faceted couldn’t try to fuck him over then claim it had been a misunderstanding.  “My first keyword is Chaos Titan Ruins Realm.”  He’d chosen this keyword knowing that it was actually the next world higher than the one his cultivation master’s sect was located.  “My second keyword is Unbound God of the Sword.”  Jake had heard his master mention that name with a tone of respect.  His strategy was to give the most relevant, then the highest level, cultivation-related keywords that he could, which led him to the last keyword he had--his master’s sect itself.  “And my last keyword is Divine Sect of the Martial Wandering Dragon God.”

The Faceted stood still for a moment and its pinpricks of light that could be its eyes didn’t move.  It finally said, “Here is the first group of rewards that you may choose from,” and waved an arm.  A number of globes appeared in the air, hovering in front of Jake.  If he focused on any of them, he saw an image of the reward and a brief description of what it did.  “What do you choose, unclean thing?”

Jake skimmed the rewards.  Everything he saw was good.  There were a few high quality, enchanted swords, potions, medicinal pills, even a few technique scrolls.  Some of the stuff was awesome, and even items he’d heard about but never actually seen in person before.   The problem was he had an idea for how good S rank rewards were after reading so much about them in his past life.  He made a displeased sound.  “I thought you said that if I reached the S rank, I would have better rewards made available to me.  What rank of rewards are these?”

“This is the set of rewards available from rank F to A, all of them.”

“Yes. And I can choose two rewards, and you said there would be more choices, better ones at S rank, right?”

“These are the rewards available from rank F to A, creature.”

Well, that was evasive.  Jake felt a flash of irritated amusement.  The Faceted were still massive assholes, and true to form, this one was trying to fuck him over, keep him from choosing two of the best rewards.  If Jake hadn’t known to challenge it, the Faceted could technically, truthfully say that Jake had chosen a lower tier reward of his own free will.  “I would like to see all the rewards that I am eligible for now, please.  Actually, I only want to see the S ranked ones.”

He was sure he could hear the alien’s voice grating as it said, “Understood.  These are all the rewards that the Room has pulled from its pool of possibilities based on the keywords that you gave.

This is more like it, thought Jake.  He browsed dozens of options at the higher level, all of them seeming more amazing than the last.

Seeds of the Forest Warriors. Plant these seeds in ground soaked in blood to create a silent, deadly army.  The warriors will grow more powerful over time under a number of conditions.

Staff of the Monkey King, degraded copy.  Indestructible staff with secret properties that change based on the user.

There were plenty more.  Bisected Sword.  Gloves of Forest Night.  Headband of the Thought Demon’s Third Eye.

Every treasure would be amazing.  But some were better than others for Jake’s current undead form, and some would be a gamble.  He kept going down the list until he found something to help him as he was right now, and that would be useful far into the future.

Endless Storage Ring, Spirit-Bound.  A storage ring with higher than average capacity.  Once worn, enters the dantian for safekeeping, but can still be used as normal.

Wow, thought Jake.  He’d never even seen a storage ring before, only heard about them from his teacher.  As far as he knew, there’d never even been one on Earth before.  On top of that, this one would actually become a part of him, not remain a piece of jewelry.  Some of that advantages to that were obvious.  The ring was definitely going to be one choice.

He found his second choice a few entries later, and when his eyes landed on it, if he’d still been alive, his mouth would have gone dry.

Skill Scroll: Dark Wanderer’s Trinity.  A skill scroll thought to be lost ages ago--the original trio of skills developed by the Transcendental Wanderer.  These abilities have spawned many copies and schools ever since, but this is the original.

An amazing skill scroll! Thought Jake.  There’d been other skill scrolls among the lesser loot, but this was the only one in the high tier rewards, and it even had three techniques!

“I want the Spirit-Bound Storage Ring, and Dark Wanderer’s Trinity skill scroll.”

“Very well.  Now you may leave the assessment room.  Congratulations on your prizes.”

“Wait, do--”

Jake’s words were cut off as his vision spiraled, and the next thing he knew, he was standing in a parking lot again.  Two items lay at his feet, a plain-looking iron ring, and an ornate-looking scroll that had such a profound aura, he thought he might have been able to feel it even before becoming a cultivator.

He didn’t waste time just staring at his prizes.  After bending to pick them up, he put on the ring and was not too surprised when it seemed to vanish almost immediately.  He felt it settle in his dantian in a really interesting way and made a mental note to examine it later.  Then he put the scroll inside to look at later.  How to put things into the ring and take them out were obvious to him, probably because he’d already taken his first steps into cultivation again, even though the method was strange now.

He knew that very little time had passed in the real world, even though he’d spent a lot time in the challenge room.

Time to get the hell out of here, he thought, and began walking.  While he’d meditated in the challenge room ocean, he’d come up with a plan to increase his cultivation quickly.  With his storage ring, it was going to be a lot easier.

He moved towards the biggest road he could see, figuring that he might be able to find a gas station nearby.  That would be the first step of his plan.

***

It turned out that there was actually a gas station right up the road, heading away from the railroad tracks.  He found a street sign, US 41.  But walking all the way to the gas station, or half-shuffling there was stressful. There were crashed cars, dead (double dead) zombies on the shoulder, and a few half-eaten bodies.  Smoke from scattered fires were all over the place on the horizon.  At some point over the last couple days, there’d some violence for sure.  Jake just had to hope that some trigger-happy survivor out there wasn’t going to take his head off.

He looked, sounded, and probably even smelled like a real zombie now, so he wasn’t even sure he would blame them.

Jake made it across the street without any problems. A few distant zombies almost immediately had ignored him, and were far enough away that they would not be not be a threat.  Part of him wished he had the time to look at his new skill scroll, but what he really wanted was to stop being so defenseless.  Realistically, as long as he was still a zombie he was going to be at a massive disadvantage in this new world.

He needed to kill monsters.  A lot of them.

The front of the gas station was busted out.  There were two bodies but  blood was on the ground everywhere. After whatever violence had happened here, some monsters had likely dragged the bodies away to eat them.

Before or during a hurricane, people would have been after different things and would have had more time to buy everything at the gas stations and grocery stores.  But the way the world had changed so suddenly after the Purple Rain hadn’t given anyone in the world any prior warning.  As a result, most looting had taken place out of fear, and millions of people who hadn’t understood the nature of the monster threat had been killed.

This location looked like people had started looting, and then had been attacked by monsters in the act.

Luckily for Jake, it looked like the place still had everything he needed. First he brought every gas container he could find out to the pumps.  It took him a while to figure out how he might actually be able to get the gas into the cans. Power was out, but this gas station had some sort of backup, at least he thought so. He tried to locate a switch behind the counter that would let him turn on one of the pumps.

He spent a while poking around but eventually gave up.  There was likely some sort of backup power, but he didn’t know where it was, and he wanted to get the hell out of dodge.  If it was a generator it’d be noisy, too.  He had a feeling that if he stayed out in the open by a highway too long, he would be far less likely to survive long enough to put his plan into action.

There was no handy lake in this area to escape into.

When he’d searched the gas station, he’d found some keys under the counter.  One of them unlocked a port outside used by the fill trucks.  Then Jake found a rubber replacement hose in the back room and shambled back outside.  He really wished that he had a pump.  There was probably some clever way to get gas up to where he was to fill containers, but he couldn’t figure it out.  His specialty had been magic study, cultivation, and killing monsters, not siphoning.

For once, his deadened senses would be helpful.  Jake lowered the hose into the hole and sucked up a mouthful, a stomach full, maybe even a lung full of gas.  Then he vomited all of it into a gas gan. The process was slow and disgusting, probably bad for the gas too.  He didn’t need the stuff to stay super pure, though.

After each gas can was full, he put it into his storage ring.  Then after he ran out of purpose-made gas cans, he emptied out cleaning products in the parking lot and used their bottles. After that, he used two liter bottles of soda. Then water bottles.  When all was said and done, he had hundreds of gallons of gasoline in his storage ring.

If anyone had thrown a match at him at that moment, he would have been goner.

Jake avoided as much broken glass as he could to avoid making too much noise and visited the gutted gas station one more time.  He hunted around, looking for any more items that might be of use later, tossing them into his storage ring.  One item that was crucial to his plan was so perfect it even made him try to form a smile.  He didn’t think he’d pulled the expression off very well, but Jake didn’t care.

Now it was time to go monster hunting.

***

At this point he feared humans with weapons, or newly-waken abilities more than zombies.  As soon as he moved off the larger road, he immediately felt safer.  Deep down, he knew the feeling of security was probably an illusion.  If any humans fighting back against the monster invasion saw him, he’d be toast.

This soon after Purple Rain, ghouls were the most dangerous monsters that would be commonly encountered, but they completely ignored Jake.  He was just another monster.  In fact, he was a zombie covered in gasoline.

He walked into a nearby muddy river or creek to clean most of the gas off of his clothing and skin.  Since his plan included fire, he didn’t want to accidentally turn himself into a Jake-torch.  He wandered around a bit after that, getting his bearings and figuring out where he could set his plan in motion.

Tifton, GA seemed to be a mid-sized town, and Jake didn’t see a lot of movement.  People had probably already fled or were laying low.  Jake could just imagine people aiming rifles at him from distant rooftops and deciding not to waste bullets on a random zombie.  He hoped.

He moved south for a while, but wasn’t finding what he was looking for.  Most of this part of Tifton seemed to be industrial in nature, or office buildings.  Jake doubled back, returning toward where he’d come from.  At one point he spotted an abandoned motorized wheelchair and briefly considered using it to move around quicker, but decided against it.  Especially while he couldn’t talk, drawing attention to himself like that would not be wise.

His exploration finally took him right back to where he’d started, through the parking lot of the Georgia Department of Agriculture and back to the railroad tracks.  He headed north for a bit before stopping and turning in a full circle, taking in the houses he could see now.  This was it.  If his luck held out, he wouldn’t get shot and would be able to accomplish his goal while also helping the survivors in this area.

He just wished he wasn’t so damned slow.  Thank God for his fledgling cultivation base or he’d really be screwed.

Jake’s understanding was that he was still on the edge of town--he hadn’t gone through a downtown area or anything like that before getting off the train.  If his luck held out, the wandering zombies would continue to ignore him.

He hoped he wouldn’t run into any people, either.  Maybe they’d gone to the center of town, or a different area.  Still, whether people shot at him or his monster hunting plan worked out, he needed weapons.

Jake took a left on East Golden Road and mentally cringed about being out in the open again.  There were a lot of zombies milling around in this area, far more than the industrial area he’d just come from.  Jake spotted at least five of them as he moved down the street.

When he’d reached  a promising looking side street, he turned right, moving deeper into the residential area.  What he was looking for was his future killing ground.  He needed a fenced yard that wasn’t too small, and wasn’t too large.

Of course, everything hinged on one of his natural zombie abilities working that he hadn’t used yet, but he had to have faith that it would.  He didn’t want to call any extra attention to himself until he’d had a chance to set his trap.

Finally, Jake found a little yard with a chain link fence that would probably be perfect.  The front door was ajar.  Jake moved up to the door and knocked.  He almost tried to say, “Anyone home?” but knew it would just come out as moans.  It wasn’t worth trying to speak.  Besides, in the middle of the end of the world, with monsters roaming the streets, a house with an open door was probably a good indicator that there weren’t any survivors inside.

He cautiously moved inside and found the body of an old woman in the living room.  A zombie was eating her hand.  The zombie, an eviscerated teen girl, looked up but then quickly got back to her grisly meal.  Jake had been dismissed.

Killing the zombie would be difficult in his current state without any proper weapons, so he ignored it and moved deeper into the house.  The little rambler had a few rooms off a central hallway, and he inspected them all, looting, throwing anything of value or interest into his storage ring.

When he reached the last door, he saw the pictures on the walls and realized it had been a man’s office, maybe the husband of the dead woman being eaten in the other room.  One wall had been decorated with framed pictures of old warships and planes.  Plagues on another wall made Jake think the man had been a retired Navy soldier.

He found a .38 revolver and half a box of bullets in one of the desk’s drawers.  It took him a while to fumble loading the weapon, but he managed.  The pistol went into his pocket, and the ammo went into a different one.  Being armed again felt nice.

But the real treasure was the room’s swords collection.  A weapon rack stood against one wall below displays full of American Civil War memorabilia.  Next to an old musket were a few sabers.  Jake knew how to use a saber.  In fact, he might even be considered an expert.  Ironically, he’d begun carrying a saber because they were one of the most common types of real swords that scavengers might find and then sell on the market, so quality blades were cheaper.

But despite being adept at using one, he only had a passing knowledge of how to classify antiques.  Some of the swords in this room looked like American Civil War sabers, which made sense given the displays on the wall.  But there were a few that either looked order, or even newer.

Jake put all the swords into his storage ring, only pausing to examine the last one.  He was sure after a closer look that it was a custom made modern, and looked like it’d been made extremely well indeed.  There was a maker’s mark that he didn’t recognize.

He was in Georgia, so finding weapons in a random house wasn’t that unlikely, but he’d still been lucky to stumble upon such a treasure trove, especially in a relatively humble home.  Jake was tempted to go through the rest of the house, looking for guns or more ammo, but decided not to.  He had a lot of work to do, and he wanted to be done before night fell.

At the end of the day, even if he found more ammo or guns, he’d still be a zombie.  That fact needed to change or he wasn’t likely to survive much longer, much less be of any help to his family.

Jake turned and solemnly saluted the chair behind the room’s desk.  He didn’t know whether the man who’d used this office was still living or dead, but Jake would be eternally grateful for his new weapons either way.  If he ever met this man, he’d return everything and pay what he could.  For now, the least he could do was keep the corpse in the home from being desecrated any further.

He held the salute, and the moment felt long and heavy.  Jake was determined to show what respect he could, and refused to feel silly about it.  After saluting, he also bowed for good measure.  Then he left the house, ready to start building his trap.