Sneaking to the guard that had a shotgun strapped on its neck, Nile could not help but feel nervous. For some reason, he was a little uneasy and he could feel  some sort of tension around the air.

As he gets closer and closer, the uneasiness and tension he feels just keeps on getting stronger and stronger. And as he was making a step to get in a meter distance from the zombie guard. It suddenly turned its body sideways and made a swiping motion with its arm towards his direction, to be precise, his head.

Nile’s eyes immediately bulged, and with fast reflex, he duck and made a swiping-upward motion with his butcher knife to the zombie guard as a counter attack. Even if the butcher knife was dulled and was no longer as sharp as before, with his 4.9 body strength being in use, it still easily slash the zombie’s arm clean, at above elbow length.

After the swiping-upward motion, he made a step and while doing so, he twisted his hand from above and made the butcher knife descend, the descending butcher knife landed on the zombie guard’s head, cleaving it cleanly until it arrived at the zombie guard’s chin.

From Nile’s perspective, he could see the head of the guard split, a moment after the butcher knife descended. And for a split second, he saw the greenish substance that was now the dead Apocalypse Virus. .

Although he felt gross again seeing the head getting split, Nile managed to keep himself together..

Well, the other zombies around him started jogging towards his direction after all, he could not afford to be careless.

Just like the zombie guard from before, these zombies were no longer like the zombies that he killed earlier, as these zombies’ movement clearly surpassed them by more than a fold.

Now, these zombies are swiping their arm towards him, unlike the previous zombies that will only want to bite him. These zombies are clearly smarter and more ferocious.

These zombies seem to have finished hibernating, but for some reason, are still quite weak.

That was why he felt uneasy earlier, it turns out that these zombies have already finished hibernating. They will only need to consume some Apocalypse Virus for the final step just like him, and they will then mutate into a Level One°.

They even lured him to approach. Well, their intelligence was still not sufficient to be compared to normal humans. But this would still pose a problem, to a normal human of course.

But for Nile that was already on the verge of breaking through to Level One°, heh, not a problem at all.

The tension he got earlier disappeared as he cleared the confusion in his mind. Along with these are the severed limbs of the zombies swiping their arms towards him.

And sometimes, some zombies will fall to the ground with their head split in half, sometimes, they fall to the ground while missing the other half of their head.

As he cleared the zombies around him and their numbers kept on getting thinner and thinner, he felt a little exhaustion wash over him. Glancing at his energy stat, he notices that he currently has only half of his base energy stat left.

As he could no longer get stronger from these weak Apocalypse Virus the System made that portion, into something that replenished his energy.

‘Although these zombies have all already finished hibernating, it looks like they still did not consume the other zombies Apocalypse Virus. They can only be considered as half-step into Level One° for now just like me, although due to them not consuming Apocalypse Virus made their stat lower than mine allowing me to evade and kill them easily.’

For Nile, the zombies were still moving slowly. Even with his stat alone, he was stronger than the zombies, he did not have a problem killing them directly.

From his perspective, the zombies are moving so slow, he could easily avoid it. It looks like he was still fighting the zombies from before, but now an upgraded version as they now knew how to attack.

But Nile knew the fact that this zombie and the earlier are not the same, it’s because of him getting stronger that he felt they are still the same.

…

After finishing the zombies around, Nile busied himself by collecting the dead Apocalypse Virus around him. The dead Apocalypse Virus was now used as energy replacement for him, and of course, the most important, Apocalypse Point.

He felt it was a pity though, because unlike before, the zombies’ heads are halved, he could no longer experience that poking feeling. 

The tingling sensation he felt while getting stronger was also no longer there, what replaces it is the refreshed feeling he got after collecting Apocalypse Virus. 

He counted and including the zombie guards, there were 18 zombies that he had killed. For a counselor, isn’t this a bit of luxury? In his former world, even the Village Captain or Village Chief will not have this luxury of having 15 maids. Heck, the Chief won’t even have a mansion this big.

After collecting the Apocalypse Points, his energy was now back at full, while his Apocalypse points now totalled into 38. The 18 zombies that he killed earlier gave him 9 Apocalypse Points and add it with his past Apocalypse Points that was at 29 before, his Apocalypse Points are now totalled into 38.

Nile then approached the zombie guards one by one, collecting the guns with their own ammunition.

The revolver’s six bullet slot was fully loaded, he also took another 13 bullets, from the guards side pocket. The shotguns were not loaded, but on the two guards belt, he took five 12 gauge of ammunition, totalling into ten 12 gauge shotgun ammo.

Although after this fight, Nile thought that guns were no longer necessary for him as he can easily kill zombies now, but he still ultimately decided to keep them, considering there are stronger zombies out there.

He still decided to pick it up and store them in his storage space, he will not have to carry them anyway. Maybe in the future they will be useful. He thought. 

Before storing them though, he made sure to load the shotguns with 2 shells each. He also made sure to pump the slide backward then forward to load the chamber with a shell, the shotgun was now ready to fire with just a squeeze from the trigger. 

With these guns, his goal of coming here was already accomplished. Although the gun was no longer useful to him, he still felt glad that he came here as he now has more Apocalypse Points than before. 

As it was already high noon, he decided to explore the mansion first. He wanted to take shelter from the heat of the sun as well as explore this mansion a bit before moving again to search for more zombies.

His goal on coming here was to search inside for guns that the counselor might have left, but because of the guards outside carrying the guns themselves, he no longer needs to search for a gun inside.

He only wanted to try his luck, maybe he could find some food that was still in good condition inside. His food will only last him for dinner, he doesn’t want to spend his Apocalypse Points on the food that was in the System Store for now.