Ambros groggily opened his eyes, biting back the urge to scream in pain as he did that. Not like he could scream, or even talk, it seemed. He looked down to see all his limbs still intact. ‘That’s a relief…’ he thought, as his attention turned to the system messages he received before passing out.
‘Well, if there is something positive about this shit of a situation I have found myself in, it is that my skill leveled up.’ he thought, without much enthusiasm as he looked at the last system message.
‘Haha, yeah, like I’d want to return after barely escaping with my life. I must have been fucking lucky to even get out of there.’ he thought as he heard a loud roar from the direction of the danger zone.
‘System, the time, please.’
‘Ah. It hasn’t been long since the fight.’ he thinks as he begins trying to get up, but his body screams in protest.
‘System, can you just display my health and, what was it again… essence force, yeah.’ he asks the system in his mind as the screen pops up that shows him the asked information.
‘Ah fuck, I shouldn’t have carelessly been looking for trouble, took me so long to get rid of my arrogance before, wouldn’t want it to return.’ he reminds himself as he goes against his inner screams and stands up, almost falling over just as he does that.
“Cough, cough.” he coughs as blood spews from his mouth. “I’ll die sooner or later if I stay here, I’ll return to base and recuperate, I should have some of that gel leftover. Can’t believe I got to fight again in a few hours, at least this trip wasn’t a complete waste as I got at least some essence points on top of the barrier upgrades. System, display my coins and essence points.” he commands, starting to slowly walk away from the zoo. ‘I’ll come to get my revenge, you better count on it.’ he threatens in his thoughts, giving a glance to the direction of the danger zone.
“Put all my points into vitality, and give me one of those band-aids as well. The healing should stack, right?”
“Good enough,” he says as he grabs the band-aid and applies it over a wound on his chest. Ambros slowly makes his way back to the Pentagon, the walk there isn’t long by any means, so it took less than half an hour to get back. On the way, he encountered a few mutations, but even in his horrible condition, he was able to slay them, with difficulty no doubt.
When arriving at the Pentagon, he made his way back to the office with the chairs and computers, where he sat down, applied the gel, and went to sleep.
Ambros awoke to a new system message, which he read and raised a slight eyebrow to. “Timed attacks, ah yeah, I remember. The monster attacks on claimed places, rewards, and 24-hour intervals… What the hell, I had over fifteen hours until its start, how long have I been asleep?” Ambros asks as his breathing gets faster and uneasy. “What’s the time, system.”
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“I have been sleeping for so long? Display my health and essence force.”
“Alright, good enough. Unless I have to fight another strong opponent, I should be fine. Pray that the system is nice for the first timed attack, eh?”
“Ah, I should have a few essence points from my way back, if there are any, System, add them to dexterity.” as Ambros said that, he felt his body becoming a little lighter and some pain easing.
“Time to protect my, what is this place, home? Sure, let’s go with home.” he says as he heads out.
When the system finishes its short speech, Ambros instantly starts seeing hordes of insect and arachnid-type mutations. Another short system message pops up and Ambros instantly dashes into action.
When Ambros starts his mutation slaughter, he quickly realizes that the mutations aren’t strong, nor dangerous, but what they do have is quantity.
“Damn, why-” Ambros starts complaining to himself, but he is quickly interrupted by multiple spiders spewing their venom at him. “-are there so many of them!” he finishes, after slamming his hammer into the ground with all his strength, creating a shockwave big enough to kill tens or hundreds of the nearby mutations, yet it doesn’t seem like their numbers have lessened at all.
‘I wonder if I can weaponize my barriers.’ he thinks as he wipes off his sweat. His breathing has gotten heavier, and it seems that he is slowly starting to get tired.
“Might as well try!” he exclaims as he gets swarmed by a big group of cat-sized mosquitos. He focuses on sharpening and extending his barriers in the horizontal direction, like a big spike. ‘Yes! Make a spike!’ he tells himself as his veins get slightly bigger and glow blue, as a warm feeling flows through them.
Suddenly, multiple thin spikes shoot out from the ground, impaling everything inside the twelve-meter range.
“Fuck yeah! System, display the skill,” he says as he slams his hammer into a spider on the ground.
“Exactly what I wanted to see! Display my essence force and health, system.” Ambros says as he kills multiple bear-sized snails with a horizontal slash type of attack.
Ambros nods as he acknowledges his current situation, and goes back to slaughtering insects. He rushes in the fastest he can currently go as spikes rise from the ground. They are larger and in a larger quantity than before.
Half an hour later, Ambros finishes smashing the head of the last ladybug insight.
“Well, this is nice and all, but why the hell did I not get 100% contribution, I am sure there would have been an extra reward for that,” Ambros questions in an irritated tone, as he slams his sledgehammer to the ground and walks back inside.
