Becoming a Monster

Chapter 6 The Curse Of Johnathan Begins

Grr…

He heard growling still and wasnʼt sure if it was the zombie under them or the first zombie was still alive.

”Argh fucking damnit!” Noah roared out in pain when he felt two hands trying to dig into his ribs, he wasnʼt that dumb not to know who it was that was trying to tear at his insides. Thankfully due to the huge increase in his constitution, his skin was tougher than before otherwise the zombie would have had an easy time digging into his skin. He was only left with two options, retreat or finish the job before the zombieʼs hands ripped through his flesh.

From what Noah could tell, he only needed not even an inch more to push through the zombies face to end it. He still didnʼt have enough strength in his shoulder to use both arms to finish the job, in order to gain the strength he needed he decided to reactivate his skill ʼKilling instinctsʼ to the max for the extra 25%, raising his strength by three which gave him enough strength to plunge the bat the rest of the way to finish the job.

Ironically, after going into his killing trance, his body still used his injured arm while ignoring the pain to push the bat clean through the zombies face.

It would take some time to remove the bat from the zombies face which Noah, during his frenzy, would not allow. Instead he stood up on the dead zombie while the last zombie still laid stuck under it causing the zombie to not be able to move but that didnʼt stop it from trying to reach Noah with its arms searching aimlessly around the body of the zombie above it.

Jumping up hard off the zombie, Noah lifted both of his legs parallel to his hips before slamming them down with full force into the face of the zombie instantly breaking its skull which seemed to be enough to take it out.

With no target left to kill, the effects of the skill soon wore off leaving Noah catching his breath from not only fatigue but from the intense exhilaration from the seemingly never ending carnage he just went through. Even though this is what he wanted, his body still needed time to keep up with his warped mind.

”Huff…Huff…” he looked towards his bitten shoulder and then his ribs. ”Stupid zombies..” then he looked forward to the small piles of zombies with crushed skulls that he barely remembers killing. It all felt like a dream but instead he was just a bystander watching everything go by. ”Fucking skill! How could you be so op yet nerfed at the same time?”

Noah huffed some more as he slowly walked to retrieve his hammer and then sat on the bed to catch his breath. He soon began to recollect his thoughts and go over what had occurred, he took on more than he could handle from the very beginning. As a fanatical reader of apocalypse stories and stories revolving game characters he knew it was best to grind levels with small groups of monsters instead of doing what he just did unless he had a death wish. But then again he knew that he just pulled the short end of the stick, he didnʼt know, well at least didnʼt think that changing into a chimera would be so painful.

ʼWell at least now I know that I shouldnʼt rely completely on ʼkilling instinctsʼ, itʼs an op skill but I couldʼve taken my time in the beginning slowly killing the zombies instead of power hacking every single one and wasting strength. I should be thankful for how they developed our dorms.

Considering that his school had a little bit over ten thousand students living on campus with around five thousand students living in the boys and girls dorms respectively, it would seem like a miracle that Noah only had to fight the ʼsmall amount of zombies from earlier and not an army.

But fortunately, the dormitories were divided by seniority and even then the dorms were split even further.

There were three residences forming the dorms for each gender forming a U shape, with each building having 4 floors. The residence located in the middle were for the seniors, from third year and up while the side residence were for the lower class men.

Since the seniors had a lower student ratio to the newcomers, their dorms only held around a thousand students while the other two residences would each hold around two thousand. Even then, each residence was constructed with a stairway down the center, separating the floors in half.

Cold sweat slipped down his back causing him to have a small shiver at the thought of what he wouldʼve had to experience if the stairway dividing their floors didnʼt exist.

He thought about what he needed to do from here and onwards to secure his survival and his number one priority was his stats..

Sigh.. I really need to find a proper build path for myself.ʼ

He quickly relooked over his stats again and thought about what stat wouldʼve been most useful in the previous fight while also planning ahead for when he finally gets his tamed creatures. According to the skill monster taming, he can only obtain one summon and his experience points would essentially be cut by half since he would have to share it with his creature which made him even more picky about choosing his first tame monster.

If he had to have a monster leech off of him then it better be a cool looking monster or one that was easy looking on the eyes, not a random zombie dude.

ʼFor now Iʼll just take my time and level up as much as I can before then so I wouldnʼt mind if my monster starts receiving my experience afterwards. But until then maybe I should go with a dps(damage dealer)build…I donʼt have someone to support me so having more points in strength could help me not have to rely on anyone if I go up against a monster thatʼs harder to take down. Then again, having more agility would be nice as well since I donʼt have anyone I need to protect, I can always run away at the first sight of danger and fight the battles I can win to get stronger. Sigh this is frustrating..ʼ

He held his head as if thinking was causing him pain. This was a hard decision for him since he isnʼt given a second chance to redo his stats nor does he have a second life. Relooking at his status panel, he looked through his skills and level growth instead of his stats again to get a better idea of his options and after looking through them he was glad that he made the decision to do so.

”With the added bonus of my constitution and high spirit, I could be considered kind of tanky right now no? Well that zombie was still able to take a nice chunk out of me but it couldnʼt bite through my bone or at least I hope not. Iʼll let leveling up take care of my constitution for now while I increase everything else.”

After making his decision, he went back to his status to raise his agility by two and his strength by three. Looking at his stats now, he was satisfied with his decision, he wasnʼt worried about saving points for a tough situation, thatʼs what his skill ʼkilling instinctsʼ was for.

Attributes

Strength:11->14(15)

Agility:12->14(15)

Constitution:14->18(19)

Stamina:12->17(18)

Magic: 5->7(8)

Spirit:38->40(42)

Nodding his head after looking at his stats, his eyes sparkled when he remembered the second most important thing besides leveling up and that was obtaining the loot.

He quickly gazed around the room to see if there would be a bunch of wooden chests around the room, but instead of what he assumed he would find, he was welcomed by another site that did not disappoint.

Instead of the previous wooden chest, what appeared this time was a chest made out of bronze. Just from this alone Noah could at least decipher that bronze was a step up from wood which means better drops. He excitedly made his way towards the chest that laid next to the last zombie he killed, but when he arrived next to it he frowned while in thought.

ʼDoes this mean that the chest collects the drops from all the monsters around or do I actually have such shitty luck that out of so many zombies only one dropped loot? No, no that canʼt be…ʼ

Before he opened up the chest, he looked upwards as if he was communicating to whatever being in charge of everything thatʼs happened.

”If I offended you in any way just know that Iʼm sorry but please, PLEASE! You have to play fair!”

After pleading to the powerful being, his excitement returned as if he succeeded while he bent towards the chest to obtain its contents. Just like last time he made sure to not open it too fast since he believed thatʼs why he was so lucky to obtain a weapon. What Noah doesnʼt know is that everyone who killed their first zombie, dropped a weapon of some kind.

Continuing to open the chest, he noticed two things while the chest wasnʼt fully opened. A big pile of gold and something glowing. After seeing the glow his curiosity immediately peaked and shoved open the chest to verify what it was, only to be surprised that the glow and gold wasnʼt all there was in the chest which further caused his heart to beat loudly in excitement.

The first thing he did was to check everything else and to save the glowing orb for last since it was common that the best things should be first or last.

Looking into the chest, other than the gold and the glowing orb there was also a steel dagger and a sheet of paper, well more than a sheet of paper, it was like parchment that seemed to be made out of wool.

Noah wasnʼt very interested in the dagger but that didnʼt stop him from hoarding it either, just like in his last battle, it couldʼve come in handy if he lost his weapon or was too tired to swing his heavy hammer. But imagine the surprise he experienced when he started to read the parchment.

Jonathan Bell

Player: Jonathan Bell

Race:Human

Class: Knight

Lvl 1

Ex: ?

Health: ?

Stamina: ?

Mana: ?

Attributes

Strength:?

Agility:?

Constitution:?

Stamina:?

Magic: ?

Spirit:?

Skills

Warriors Aptitude(lvl 0)

Rodeleros(lvl 0)

Do you wish to roll for character skill?

It didnʼt take a genius to realize that the parchment was the status panel of one of the students who was now a dead zombie. What confused Noah about the situation was why did only one person drop a skill and not the others, but like all games he could only pinpoint to one thing.

”Fucking drop rates! Of course you would add that as well..But..Iʼm sorry Jonathan, just know that you died for a good cause…probably, and yes Iʼll roll for the skill!

He mentally confirmed to roll for the skill, which for Noah was a very exciting moment, but it turns out that actually rolling for the skill wasnʼt as grand as he thought it was. Not even a second later, it was already over.

Skill Rodeleros confirmed, would you like to learn it?

ʼWhat, just like that? No special effects or actually rolling for it? And I donʼt even get the best skill? Hey I said i didnʼt want to be the protagonist but this isnʼt what I meant?

Sigh....Calm down, maybe this skill is good too, i donʼt even know what it means.ʼ Noah tried to console himself while he focused on the skill more to find out what it does.

Rodeleros- Or shield bearer, the art of using the shield. Increases the durability of the shield as well as the amount of damage the shield can withstand and mitigate.

Noah blinked in confusion as he read the skill once again.

ʼYou get to pick a skill and you choose this? You donʼt even start with a weapon and you choose a skill you might not even get to use? No wonder you died so fast.ʼ He had once pitied the fellow but after witnessing the skill he chose, he could only shake his head in contempt. He believed Jonathan, like a lot of people during this time, thought they would be the protagonist and would get exactly what they wanted when they needed it.

Even Noah thought he was one at one point as well when he got the species change but then he also realized that numerous people would get good rewards too as long as they took the initiative like him. He wasnʼt going to be overly prideful and believe he was better than everyone else but he wasnʼt going to give up the idea of being one of the strongest no matter what he has to do.

After returning his attention back to the skill, he decided to not accept it and hold onto the skill. He remembered the novels he read, usually there was a skill limit for how many you can learn but he didnʼt believe it would be the same this time around but better safe than sorry right?

Now that he got the other items out the way, he was finally able to turn his attention to the glowing orb.