Chapter 72 - New Powers and Old Friends

  Collecting all of the crystals from the dead zombies was every bit as disgusting as I’d guessed it would be, and it took about ten times as long as I would have liked it to. There had to be an easier way of doing this sort of thing, right?

  Maybe it was the way I was taking them down. It was exceptionally difficult to differentiate between the bodies of the six zombies crushed under a single SUV, for example. Even after I lifted the wrecked car, what was left of the zombies didn’t make collecting the crystals a simple project.

  If I could find a neater way of finishing off monsters, it would probably make the crystal collection afterward a whole lot easier. That was a problem for another day, though.

  When all was said and done, I had acquired an additional five hundred and eight new stones, of which forty-one were tier two, the rest tier one. Zombies weren't like most of the other creatures I'd faced. In the past, I'd seen some grey stones, which enhanced some physical aspect, like Natural Armor or Regeneration. I’d also gotten a lot of blue stones for water powers, yellow for air and sky type powers, and clear stones for crystals that boosted one's attributes like Strength or Stamina.

  The zombies dropped plenty of the clear crystals, but they also dropped a load of black ones, and that was a type I hadn’t seen many examples of yet.

  I only had one black crystal slotted and that was for NightVision, the power which allowed me to see in the dark. That had been exceptionally useful during my underwater raid against the Karabos forward base. I had a hunch it would continue paying dividends well into the future too. That said, most of the other black stones were things that didn't have the same level of appeal, like Animate Dead, which would let me bring dead bodies back as new zombies, or Control Undead, which I could have used to take over some of the zombie horde and use them to attack the others.

  Black crystals as a whole seem to fall into one of two categories. They were either designed to make one a really good necromancer or a really good sneak attack rogue or assassin type.

  I spent a few moments identifying and organizing all the new stones I'd collected.

  Fully half of them were clear. There were two hundred and forty two tier one clear stones, with a breakdown of forty-two Strength, forty-three Stamina, forty-one Agility, thirty-eight Intellect, forty-two Will, and thirty-six Charisma stones. In addition, there were twenty tier two stones. I got lucky with those, finding six Strength, five Stamina, two Agility, four Will, one Intellect, and two Charisma stones.

  For the black crystals, there were two hundred and twenty-five tier one stones and twenty-one tier two. Where the clear crystals seemed to be similar in commonality, there were stark differences between the various black spells. Some were clearly more rare than others.

  Among the tier one stones, fifty were for Animate Dead and another forty-four were Control Undead. That was a massive number, but neither was a power I was especially interested in. I figured I’d pass most of those on to other people. Reynolds could use some to help defend Harvard, and Alex might like a few as well.

  There were also twenty-one NightVision stones, which I used to shoot that spell up to tier five right away. I found ten Curse crystals, sixteen for a spell called Drain Life, twelve for Augment Undead, ten for Heal Undead, seventeen Phantom Walk, ten Darkness, thirteen Harm, nineteen Shadow Walk, and three Contagion. For the tier two stones, there were six Animate Dead, six Control Undead, three Drain Life, two Heal Undead, two Augment Undead, and pair of Harm spells.

  Since I’d ranked NightVision up to five, that opened more slots for black stones. Shadow Walk looked interesting. It was a short of ‘hide in shadows’ ability, and while I wasn’t usually into skulking in the darkness, it did complement my existing powers pretty well. That was doubling true if I added the Phantom Step power as well, which would let me jump from one pool of shadow to another, like a short range teleport.

  I had enough crystals to pop both powers up to tier five, so I did. Then, since I had an open spot there anyway, I added Drain Life, also at tier five, and finally Darkness at tier four.

  Once I’d socketed what I could, the net effect was pretty astounding. I’d powered up substantially, adding more to all of my stats and giving myself a new array of black crystal powers as well.

  Magical Stones

  Point 1: Clear Stone (Tier 8) - Strength

  Stolen story; please report.

  Point 1, Second Ring: Clear Stone (Tier 8) - Stamina

  Point 1, Third Ring: Clear Stone (Tier 8) - Agility

  Point 1, Fourth Ring: Clear Stone (Tier 7) - Will

  Point 1, Fifth Ring: Clear Stone (Tier 6) - Charisma

  Point 1, Seventh Ring: Clear Stone (Tier 6) - Intellect

  Point 1, Eighth Ring: Clear Stone (Tier 7) - Strength

  Point 1, Ninth Ring: Clear Stone (Tier 7) - Stamina

  +

  Point 2: Yellow Stone (Tier 5) - Flight

  Point 2, Second Ring: Yellow Stone (Tier 5) - Lightning Bolt

  Point 2, Third Ring: Yellow Stone (Tier 3) - Gust of Wind

  +

  Point 3: Grey Stone (Tier 8) - Natural Armor

  Point 3, Second Ring: Grey Stone (Tier 7) - Natural Armor

  Point 3, Third Ting: Grey Stone (Tier 3) - Regeneration

  +

  Point 4: Blue Stone (Tier 3) - Water Breathing

  +

  Point 5: Black Stone (Tier 5) - NightVision

  Point 5, Second Ring: Black Stone (Tier 5) - Shadow Walk

  Point 5, Third Ring: Black Stone (Tier 5) - Phantom Step

  Point 5, Fourth Ring: Black Stone (Tier 5) - Drain Life

  Point 5, Fifth Ring: Black Stone (Tier 4) - Darkness

  After all that, what I wanted most was a bath, so I scooped the crystals into a little canvas sack I had been using to store my spares. Then I took one last look around the battlefield, making sure I hadn't missed any of the creatures. These things were the sort of problem that snowballed. If I left even one alive, by nightfall we'd have a menace on our hands again. But it looked like my demolition of the horde had been comprehensive. I couldn't find a single one that was still moving.

  “One threat put down,” I muttered. Too bad there seemed to be an endless stream of them.

  I took off, flying south over the treetops toward the river. When I hit the Charles, I dove in, still using my Flight power to propel myself downstream. With my Water Breathing power, I could stay there all day, but that wasn't the point this time. I just wanted to clean some of the zombie goop off of me before I made any public appearances. I'd taken to wearing black clothes because they didn't stain as easily as other colors, but it still felt good to get that grime and blood off of me. After I'd swum a couple hundred feet, I shot skyward again, twirling in circles as rapidly as I could. As I flew higher, between the spin, the wind, and the sunlight, I was mostly dried off within a couple of minutes.

  At that point, I angled north again, heading back to Harvard Yard, where Reynolds would be waiting for a report. I found her just inside the northern wall of Harvard Yard.

  It wasn't the best defensive wall in the world. There were sections of brick, but a lot of it was just a long series of metal bars. The wall around the Yard had never been intended to survive a determined attack. It was mostly there to keep out would-be burglars or bike thieves. Still, the people living there had done everything they could to fortify the place over the past few days. Now, Reynolds stood among a crowd of defenders, passing orders to squad leaders and getting her people into position to defend against an attack that was no longer coming.

  I landed beside her and snapped her a jaunty half salute.

  "I come bearing good news," I said.

  "The horde shifted direction?" Reynolds asked.

  "Better," I said. "They're gone."

  "Gone?" she asked. "What do you mean?"

  "They're gone," I repeated. "Destroyed. I took out the entire group. Dropped some cars on a few of them to bottle them up, and then I went in hand to hand. It turns out numbers aren't all that much good against rank. Not if you have the right crystals slotted, anyway."

  She stared at me for a long moment before replying, "There were over five hundred of them at our last report. You killed them all?"

  I nodded. "Every last one. I double-checked, just to make sure."

  "Castle, thank you," Reynolds said. "I don't know how to thank you enough. If that horde had hit our walls here, we maybe could have held, but I couldn't guarantee that, and we definitely would have lost people. You saved a lot of lives here today. Again."

  "Just doing what I can to help," I replied.

  I reached into my little satchel to a corner pocket where I'd shoved fifty of the crystals that I knew I wasn't going to use. I scooped them up into my hand, then passed them over to Reynolds.

  "What's this for?" she asked.

  "Just my contribution," I replied. "It's not good that I'm the only person able to mount this sort of defense. We need more fighters at rank five, six, and seven. We need more people able to hold their own on the front lines. It's not always going to be tier one zombies threatening us. Downtown, we were facing off against dozens of tier five opponents. That sort of fight will come to this place, too. The sooner we get your people ready, the safer you all will be."

  "Then you have my thanks again," Reynolds replied. "I'll make sure these get doled out to the right people."

  "You're welcome," I replied. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go check in on some of the other communities. I'll be back later, though."

  With a wave, I shot up into the sky once more, soaring south and east this time. I crossed the river quickly, zipping past the base at Fenway Stadium. MacGregor and his people were hard at work fortifying the place, and I didn't see any immediate dangers coming their way, so I flew on.

  Up ahead was Alex's Domain. So far, it was still the only Domain anyone had been able to forge. I’d won the control stone he used to found it when I killed the Karabos leader.

  Why did I hand it over to Alex? I guess it was because I wasn't interested in ruling a castle, and he was. I was more into helping out all of the different communities slowly forming from the ruins. We needed more than one bastion, if we were going to survive all of this.

  I slowed as I approached, then shook my head in wonder. As usual, Alex was out there, on the roof, waving at me as I came in for my final approach. How the hell did he do that, anyway? It seemed like every time I visited the man, he knew I was coming. I touched down a few feet away from him and reached out to shake his hand. Alex grabbed my hand and used it to draw me into a hug.

  "Good to see you again, Cameron," Alex said. "We've been hard at work here. Wait till I show you everything we've done."