When the apocalypse started, Zackery Pile had been reading a book. After getting over the initial confusion, he learned to open his status screen from the System and reviewed his stats.
He was so fucking ready for this.
Okay, maybe his stats didn’t look too great, but he had seen plenty of shows, read plenty of books, and had countless hours on several RPG games. He had no family left he was particularly close to at all, and the people in his party were in similar circumstances to his own.
Before even selecting a class, he was already trying to think of the various overpowered things he had seen in various forms of media and began trying to make them a reality. The first thing he tried was pondering the Dao.
Hm. Nothing there. Maybe he wasn’t doing it right. How did that work exactly? Zackery was not religious, but he read plenty of fictional cultivation books before. Maybe he shouldn’t have skimmed over so many of the scenes relating to the Dao in those books, though it was also entirely possible that simply wasn’t a thing available.
It was a shame. Maybe he could have done something cool by interpreting the meaning of life, death, and the void in between or whatever. Could have had a cool axe or something.
By the time he realized that was a total bust and wasn’t going to take him anywhere, he had already met his party and selected a class. All of them had similar backgrounds to himself, and several of them had similar interests and personalities.
He selected the healer class, figuring he was absolutely going to take the magical route. Being a healer might not give him offensive power, but if he got hurt then he could patch himself right up.
Their Tutorial took place on the ocean floor, minus most of the water. The wreckage of the Titanic was the centerpiece, with small lakes of water scattered about around it.
Zackery was incredibly confident in himself, feeling no fear up until the first wave came. Immediately, he realized how horrifying fighting for your life actually was. Seeing a fight in a movie or anime was one thing, the second a fight became real it suddenly got a lot less impressive.
Nobody with pre-System stats would want to fight a pack of feral dogs, even if you gave them a sword. Maybe if they had a gun, but they had nothing of the sort. Zackery momentarily regretted not choosing ranger, but they managed to get through the first wave.
Then the second, the third, the fourth, and even the fifth. They used the strategy of keeping a monster alive and injured in between rounds to rest up, something many successful Completionists wound up doing. Throughout the early stages of the Tutorial, Zackery came to the conclusion that in the low levels it would be best to get a little bit of everything in terms of stats.
Maybe one could skimp out on Vitality by shoring up on Fortitude, but really in the long run a bit of everything would be needed. It was a conclusion another woman he didn’t know named Teresa Weaver would heavily agree with, and up to this point their Tutorial experiences had been pretty similar with some differences.
Nobody was forced to leave the Tutorial early due to an injury, nobody died in the first stage, Zackery did not feel an inclination to kill himself anytime soon and he had no experience in fighting at all. Additionally, he was an extreme perfectionist, wanting to min-max his stats to the best of his ability. Regardless, their early builds were incredibly alike.
Until he got offered
Type: Restoration Magic
Allows the user to cause Restoration Mana to produce dead organics within a consenting individual. Restoration Mana from a single source can only produce living organics or dead organics at a time.
Unlike Teresa, he took this skill. He had a plan, figuring this was probably on the path to becoming a necromancer. Why did he want to become a necromancer? Because they were overpowered, that’s why. Pondering the Dao didn’t seem to be an option, but Solo Leveling, Lone Necromancer, Black Summoner, and so many other series had taught him plenty.
Why bother fighting yourself when you can summon an army to do it for you?
At least, that was his end goal. Throughout the entire Tutorial, he never got a single ability allowing him to summon something to fight for him. He did get offered the Necromancer class to his excitement, but there was nothing about raising the dead or anything.
He could buff himself and his allies based on the number of nearby dead bodies, he could remotely control a corpse with very limited dexterity and range, and he could inflict a living opponent with rot and decay debuffs that behaved like reverse Restoration Magic.
There were now a few offensive skills in his repertoire, but still nothing related to summoning. Damn it, it would be nice if he could make zombie minions at least or something.
He beat the Tutorial with his party, the entire thing being incredibly difficult. He and his party’s background knowledge carried hard, and in reality none of them were actually any good at fighting. None of them had ever been in a fight before and had vastly underestimated how difficult it was. It was purely through utilizing their skills to the max that they managed to come out on top.
After the Tutorial, he expected to be one of the most powerful people in the world. He and his party had hunted lots of monsters in the Tutorial, and there was no way there were many people like that. In lots of shows, movies, and books, if someone went through something like that then it was almost guaranteed they would come out at least in the top 100 strongest people on the plan-
Earth Integration Complete
Congratulations on surviving the Tutorial. Below is your current universal ranking. Maintain a high ranking for additional benefits.
2,000
Come on, really? He was ranked exactly 2,000? Did that mean there were 1,999 people stronger than him? He called bullshit.
Zackery went on to claim a City Monolith, competing against several other Completionists in a tournament. He came out on top, as nobody particularly wanted to fight him one on one. His rot and decay skills would make it so anyone that didn’t have a healing skill of their own would inevitably die after facing him. Even if someone killed him in the tournament, they would die before the next round.
This just confirmed to him that he was incredibly powerful. Besides, he should be the one to lead everybody. He had read plenty of kingdom builder stories. He named the city Stormwreck and went on to try solving several problems.
Water wasn’t an issue due to the city’s environment, though the architecture was all completely alien to him. Feeding over half a million people was the next big struggle, though the System started them out with enough rations to last for a few weeks. Then he wanted to get a sewage system set up, and then, and then, and then…
Zackery did not know how to handle most of that, but that was okay. Good leading was just proper delegation, that’s another thing he knew from fantasy. Only issue was, he was kind of introverted and didn’t really know anyone all too well outside of his party.
He managed, but not nearly as well as he expected to. It took a few days before people could even communicate with each other properly, they all needed to level up
He eventually managed to get some people to work with him, though the effort of setting up a labor force was a lot slower than he would like. Zackery spent most of his time actually hunting monsters, as ironically enough Stormwreck had a bit of a zombie problem.
It was all a massive pain in the ass, getting other people to do the shit they really should be doing anyways. Zackery didn’t have a lot of experience with negotiating, convincing, or managing at all.
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Nearly a month had passed since the Tutorial, and while Zackery was doing well in regards to his level it felt like he had stagnated in terms of managing the city. They were getting by, but that was about it really. Extremely disappointing.
An Ambassador from The Mall is coming with her protection detail to meet with you. The message appeared when Zackery placed his hand on the City Monolith, which was in a protected space. He sighed, mentally preparing himself to deal with more people who were likely incompetent.
Besides, what kind of name is The Mall?
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“Holy shit this place is fucking awesome!” Preston said as they arrived. If Teresa was being honest, she had to agree.
Stormwreck looked pretty friggin cool.
It was like a coral reef above ground, with houses built into the terrain itself. Massive corals and barnacles the size of apartment buildings were turned into, well, apartment buildings. Oftentimes the ocean and its contents can be really creepy, at least in Teresa’s opinion, but everything was so bright and colorful it didn’t quite activate that eerie ocean feel.
Another interesting thing is that they didn’t teleport to a City Monolith.
“Hands up please, our healers will check you for zombie bites and you can go on your way.” A security guard approached them, wearing tank armor. Several healers were on standby and approached, using what Teresa detected as
and
“You guys have zombies?” Teresa asked.
“Doesn’t everyone?” The guard asked back.
“Uh, no. Definitely not. So what, you get bit and die?”
“No, not necessarily. Zombie injuries will deteriorate your health until healed. If you die with injuries from a zombie, you become a zombie. If you get healed or even just have enough health and regeneration then you’ll be fine.” The guard explained. “I can’t see your level and I was told to expect some high profile people, so I imagine most of you would be fine with just a few bites or scratches. If one of you has healing skills then you really won’t have anything to worry about. I encourage you all to read up on the local laws and safety procedures when you get the chance.”
The healers all stepped away after just a few seconds. Their Restoration Mana was unable to find any injuries, confirming they were not in fact bitten by zombies. A problem Teresa didn’t think she would ever have to deal with.
“Oh, another question.” Teresa asked. “Why did we teleport here? Normally teleporting brings you to the City Monolith.”
“It’s a teleportation station. You can teleport from here and to here instead of the City Monolith. The city bought it from the System just recently out of safety concerns.” The guard explained.
The ‘station’ was outdoors. It was essentially a large and flat metal disc with white glowing circles spotting the ground in an organized pattern. Pretty useful, though probably expensive. They still didn’t know exactly how many people lived in Stormwreck, just the general location.
“What does Restoration Magic do to zombies? I’m curious.” Preston asked. Actually now that he brought it up, Teresa was curious too. In the Tutorial, she had faced off against strongholds of skeletons. According to Preston, in a lot of games that kind of magic would kill undead monsters. Holy magic, healing magic, whatever. Different games called it different things, but Teresa never used
Though she did use
“Good question. Short answer is it depends on the skill.
will prevent their attacks from being toxic and continuously draining. Otherwise, not much. Necromancy is a healer archetype, and that’s pretty effective.” The guard answered.
“Thank fuck, so using
Someone ran towards them at a respectably high speed and stopped at the edge of the station, looking at Teresa’s party and Saylee. He was wearing the light warrior gear mixed with several unique items, and
“You must be Saylee, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” The man said, looking at the woman in question. “I’m Patrick, I’m also the Lead Developer here. Not exactly an Ambassador, but we send them out on exploratory missions.”
“The pleasure is all mine.” Saylee responded with a smile. Teresa caught Preston trying desperately not to laugh at something, but had no idea what he was thinking. Thankfully, he didn’t say anything that would get them in trouble and kept it to himself.
“If you’ll follow me, I’ll bring you to Zack. I’ll also answer any questions you have and give you a general rundown.” Patrick said, nodding to the security guard.
“I wasn’t told anything about zombies from your Ambassador.” Saylee commented, an eyebrow raised.
“Truthfully it’s both not as big a deal as you think and a big deal. The zombie situation is totally under control, it’s just that Portals around here have a tendency to spawn undead for some reason. Thankfully, zombies are pretty easy to kill. Everyone knows what a zombie is, destroy the brain or even just do adequate damage and it’ll die. Pretty much anyone can take a zombie at an equal level, even the untrained. The only issue are the high level sprinting zombies, but even then it’s not like they’re smart or anything. Only the turned zombies are.” Patrick explained.
“Turned zombies?”
“A zombie that came from a sapient being, not a Portal. The ones from a Portal are easy to deal with, but if someone dies with a bite or something then they’ll come back as an equal level zombie while retaining most of their skills.” Patrick continued. “Once again, this rarely ever happens. We pretty much solved the zombie apocalypse in a couple weeks, they’re really easy to deal with. Especially when you can shoot fire out of your hands or whatever.”
“How is it between here and New Haven?” Jake asked. His grandfather, his last remaining family, was located there. Stormwreck was incredibly close, so they teleported to save time.
“Not too bad, it’s an easier trip than going to Arconette I’ll tell you that much. A whole lot of lakes are between here and Arconette, makes navigating a lot slower than just going in a straight line. Getting to New Haven is barely half a day’s trip, depending on your travel speed. Personally I can make the trip on foot in three hours.” Patrick explained. Teresa was already liking this guy, so far he seemed more open than Ezio at the very least. That didn’t mean she was going to let her guard down anytime soon though.
“Stormwreck seems to be pretty well developed.” Teresa complimented. “You said you were the Lead Developer? How’s that been?”
“Stressful.” Patrick answered honestly. “We have a large population and I’ve been working closely with Zack on managing it, though there’s always more to be done. Realistically I think it’s going better than I expected, just not exactly in the same ways I expected.”
“What do you mean?” Teresa asked.
“Zack and I were in the same party, and all of us were into similar movies and shows. A lot of fantasy isekai, and-”
“Oh shoot I love isekai.” Preston said, grinning. Jake just groaned, shaking his head.
“Then you get how it could be helpful, sorta. We already knew a lot about the mechanics of role playing games and shows, so it was largely figuring out how exactly it works in real life.” Patrick continued. “Like I said, it definitely helped. It seems like our party caught onto stuff a lot quicker, but at the end of the day progressing at all is tough as shit. Honestly, I’m pretty happy with how things turned out, though how well things are going depends on who you ask.”
Teresa could understand that, kind of. It depended on how you looked at it. On the one hand, she couldn’t deny that the whole aspect of being able to level up and improve stats was incredibly fun, but on the other hand seeing people get eaten alive by monsters definitely wasn’t.
“We got a lot of fish here and I know a few places where you can get Japanese food. Not sure why, but there’s a lot of Japanese food. If you like sushi, then you’ll love it here.” Patrick shared.
So far, Stormwreck seemed really nice. At least on the outside. She was fully prepared for them to have an issue with trafficking, a high crime rate, or something. Everyone walking about seemed pretty content, though there were groups digging up the ground in a few spots throughout the city.
“What’s up with that?” Teresa asked as they walked, nodding towards the digging.
“Eh…” Patrick hesitated for a moment, but collected himself. “One of the first things Zack wanted to do was get a sewage system up and running. So we’re working on that.”
“That would definitely be nice.” Teresa affirmed, though she wasn't oblivious to the fact Patrick didn’t look too happy about it.
“Yeah… if you guys have any plumbers or pipefitters, please let me know. It’d be a huge help, and I’d be more than down to figure out something to pay you back. Oh, and we’d pay them really well too of course.” Patrick promised. He seemed a little desperate there, or perhaps just genuine. Maybe it was just a ploy to get Teresa to let her guard down, so she was still keeping watch of their surroundings.
They approached a particularly large structure made of blue, orange, yellow, and red corals all growing as part of a dark blue rock. It was larger than any of the structures nearby.
“Here we are, Zackery will be inside.” Patrick said, leading them in.
“This them?” A man asked, sitting beside a City Monolith as he looked at a screen only he could see.
“Yes, this is the Ambassador from The Mall and her protective detail.” Patrick answered. Saylee stepped forward and introduced herself.
“My name is Saylee, and I am here to represent our city. We’re hoping to negotiate teleportation rights and possibly even engage in mutually beneficial trade. We have much to discuss.”
“Zackery.” The man responded, standing up. His eyes glanced over everyone present, likely using