Return of the last survivor

Chapter 20: Evolving

Merlin was frowning for one reason. Not because there were too many zombies along the way. In fact he was quit grateful for that, since he could level up with those many points. The problems was the zombies themselves

In the future, zombies not only began to evolve, but also specialise, just like humans and their classes. During the first year, before all the zombies evolved into tier 1 zombies and were mostly unaffected by bullets, many zombies began to specialise.

Specialisation was a process where they changed themselves into specific attributes. For example, some zombies specialised into being faster and more agile, and in the process, they would become incredibly weak to attacks. But they had enough speed to make up for that fault.

And Merlin had seen signs of this specialisation in the zombies he was fighting. Some zombies were losing their skin and their organs were falling out. This was a zombie that would specialise into a skeleton, with the only remaining organ being its brain, covered in a skull that is 3 times stronger than normal bones.

These skeletons would have incredible defences and attack, and their speed would also be great. What they would lose for this specialisation was their ability to infect humans. He also saw on that had backed away from Merlin after seeing how he was killing all the zombies.

This was a zombie that had shown early signs of intelligence, and would later either become a lich, or a commander. Both of which were incredible irritating enemies.

One would command an entire legion of zombies, spanning over hundreds of thousands of zombies, who would resist their urge to feed on humans, and completely follow the Commander's orders like a well trained army.

And liches were even more frightening, especially is they reached Tier 1. When they are only normal liches, they can be killed like any other zombie, a spear through the skull means instant death. But when they evolved into Tier 1, they had no such weakness on their bodies. The only way to kill such a lich was to find their mana heart, a heart containing all the mana of the lich. It is the organ that gives the lich its formidable spell casting similar to elementalists of that Tier, and indestructible body as long as it had enough mana. The only way to kill a lich without destroying its heart was to fight in a battle of attrition with it until it loses al its mana.

However, what was really puzzling to Merlin was the fact that these mutations had already begun during the tutorial, and fully specialised beings could begin to rise within the zombie hordes as soon as a month! In his past life, Specialised zombies only appeared after the first 3 months.

It was then that he realised that everything may not be the same as last time, with some major changes occurring. This made his resolution to complete his plan of taken over the entirety of Staten island even more resolute.

Why? Because this single island, housed nearly 60 % of all the resources along the entire eastern coast. It also had that insanely hard dungeon, which gave the person who defeated it a scroll.

What was a scroll? It is an incredible item that can hold either titles or skills, and opening them would grant the player that particular skill. All dungeons contained various forms of monsters and beasts, and clearing them would give one a scroll, and with that, the dungeon would disappear, leaving a few words behind,

"Blessing to all humanity. Please survive well and live your life to the fullest. - Goddess of Hope"

And when someone died, they would give this message to the remaining companions of the dead person,

"Hehe, another one dead. How long will you last?

-God of death"

These two gods names came up in every dungeon, but were written in a very weird language. It was only until much later, when Merlin cleared this particular dungeon with Jack and a few others, and received the skill, Magic Runes, was he able to decipher the letters. However, he only told his findings to Jack, and they both took the secret to their graves. Magic runes was an extremely useful skill, which allowed Merlin to not only understand the language of those b*stardly gods, but also make puppets to help him fight.

These puppets were extremely useful during the second and third years of the Apocalypse, before the mana burst happened. They would be able to sweep through Tier 1 and 2 zombies like mowers, and if built with good materials and runes, they could even kill off Tier 3 zombies. Even during the latter part of the third year, Tier 3 were the strongest zombies and humans. During those 2 years, Merlin had created hundreds and thousands of puppets, even perfecting a complete production facility.

People used to call Merlin's base of operations in San Francisco the Puppet kingdom. However, the mana burst happened during the fourth year, causing each and every living being to unconditionally skip a rank, and causing most puppets to become useless in battle, only useful for transportation of goods, and other tasks.

One thing that really interested Merlin, and that he had mastered during this period other than defence and offensive puppets, was puppets for transporting humans. Due to the apocalypse, over the course of time, electricity and fuel disappeared, other than a few large groups. And almost every surviving player used running or flying for transportation.

Some strong elementalists like Merlin himself could even use teleportation. But that was at the end of the world. Until then, Merlin used puppets in the form of cars and drove them around. All puppets would naturally need a source of power, and all autonomous puppets like battle puppets needed mana crystals, while others like the legendary mana gun Merlin had created, would use the user's own mana. But this too became unusable after the mana burst, where the mana density tripled overnight.

The dungeon with this scroll was on the bridge connecting New Jersey to Northern Staten Island. But Merlin wanted to set up base at the Bay Bridge to the east, since another more mysterious resource was located in that region.

It was a mana crystal vein. Mana crystals are circular shaped crystals, containing various amounts of mana. This mana can be used to replenish one's own mana, or used in puppets. And they are made in such a way that they naturally absorb mana from the air, to replenished the used mana. Therefore, they become the perfect sources of mana for puppets, allowing nearly infinite mana for low energy costing puppets. And if the mana crystals are processed correctly, their output can even increase 3 times, and can be used for more powerful puppets, like mage puppets, with casting abilities, and tank puppets, with regeneration abilities. Once he had a stable source of income in mana crystals, he could freely recreate his puppet kingdom, and usher 3 years of peace.

Unknown to Merlin, these realistic and thought out plans of his gained him another title, and he suddenly stopped moving as he got another notification from the system. All the surrounding zombies began furiously biting at him, but his skin was so tough that even a normal .65 bullet might not be able to tear through it completely.

He suddenly remembered a certain scene from superm*n, when the main character was standing, chest exposed, and deflecting bullets with his body. He even stopped one with his eye.

But Merlin was soon brought back to reality as he noticed the title he got.

"Sheesh, to think, out of all the smart people in the world, I would get this title…"

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Status

Name: Merlin Ross

Race: Human

Class: Student

State: Embarrassed

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Titles:

Last Man standing

Asura: The enemy of Gods