The One Luna

The following morning, everybody was getting ready, Apple and Mabini finished cooking breakfast for everyone. Everything else seemed normal as everybody grabbed their food, besides Boni who had a huge smile on his face, with Elise seemingly stopping herself from smiling, and was blushing the whole time.

In the midst of everybody wondering, someone very nonchalantly commented, "Elise-chan, Boni-dono, it seems like you both 'got lucky' last night."

"Pft!!!"

"[email protected]#@%#"

"EW YOU SPIT YOUR FOOD ON ME!"

"WATER! I'M CHOKING, SOMEBODY GET ME WATER!"

Whether it was the fact that somebody who had such a stoic expression on her face, or the fact that nobody would have expected Hana of all people to make such a sudden comment of that sort, everybody was caught off-guard. Regardless, it was enough to uplift everyone's mood, as if the apocalypse wasn't going on all around them and they were just a bunch of friends having fun.

"Oh, by the way, Elise. You mentioned that your father is in the military, correct?" Luna inquired.

"Yes. I never actually spoke about the specifics, but we were actually originally from Belgium. He retired as a General, in order to better take care of me, and moved to America, where I was actually born. It's a long story, but, what with such a predicted long-term peace, after my mom passed away, he dropped everything for me." Elise had a proud expression on her face, seemingly confident of his father's capabilities.

"Mn, I see. What was his name?"

"Gerard Mathieu Leman. He was responsible for the military education of King Albert III, of Belgium. He was contracted by the Philippines to help train the troops, and gain more experience on modern guerrilla tactics as well. I knew he was passionate about it, so I encouraged him to take the offer and I told him I'd like to enjoy the beaches here as well." She added.

"I understand. Boni, keep a lookout for that name, and put out a notice for Elise as well, along with welcoming survivors that are farther from the government evacuation site. A lot of people don't trust Buencamino, so they might welcome the option of coming to us instead."

"You got, bro. I'll put it out now so we can have it up before we leave." Boni patted his c.h.e.s.t to assure that the task would be carried out completely.

After all that was done, the group headed out in the direction of the schools. Specifically towards the USLS and CSA campus*. His goal wasn't necessarily the schools themselves, but because the area is full of local businesses, that would have iron gates to close down shop after every business day. That would give people some sense of security, along with enough food in the storage, which would be more likely of a hiding place that some scared survivors would go for.

With that, the group set out. The plan was simple, Luna still felt that leveling should be his priority, but he didn't want everybody to fall behind either. With his current body's constitution, it wouldn't be an issue for Sura and himself to take turns murdering zombies and evolved zombies all day long.

Boni lead the rest of the group to look for survivors, while hunting down zombies, and looking for more supplies, since more wouldn't necessarily hurt.

Meanwhile, Luna set the EXP he got, to be evenly shared between the group. Although Boni and the rest were killing zombies as well, it wouldn't nearly be as fast as the Luna-Sura duo mowing down zombies with their capabilities. The goal was simple, Luna didn't want to baby sit them all the time, so he wanted the rest of the team to hit level 10 as soon as possible.

This would help decrease the chances of anyone dying or getting infected, drastically.

The plan was going smoothly, they had found survivors, and after explaining to the general state of the world, and about the <Nation> system and what would be required of them, the survivors knew this was the best, if not the only way for survival. Although Luna's home was quite large, it was not enough to accommodate more than 30 people.

By the end of the day, their group went up to 25 people. It was still quite worrisome, it seems the Philippines really got hit hard, with the apocalypse starting at 3AM in the morning, even with the booming voice heralding the arrival of the zombies, people who were asleep and got woken up, were still groggy, thus reducing the amount of inital survivors even more.

As for the other reason, it was most likely because they had already flocked to the Government Center evacuation area. They went ahead and leveled the new members of the <Sovereign Nation> to 10, in anticipation of the fight for their <Territory>.

Once that was taken care of, Luna switched his EXP sharing back to just him, and proceeded to keep grinding.

After several hours of grinding, it was starting to get late, but just as he was planning to leave, he noticed a man and woman wearing a lab coat, making a break for it and running towards them, "Help! Please help us!".

Right behind them, there was a hulking zombie, twice the height and body mass of an evolved zombie. It didn't take a rocket scientist to guess that this was probably a new, further evolved variant.

"Perfect." Luna said, he had been itching to really find out the capabilities of his new body, as even the evolved zombies posed no threat to him anymore.

"You two! Stay with her!" Pointing to Sura, the two immediately followed his instructions.

Gripping his blades tightly, Luna tapped his feet once and immediately disappeared from the spot he was in. The two people wearing lab coats were stunned. Where did he go?

They looked towards the hulking zombie variant and noticed Luna had already appeared beneath it, and slashed at it's legs. With how thick it was, Luna honestly only expected him and his newfound strength to cut at most, halfway through it's thick calves, he had targeted this spot specifically because it was to test his strength, or else slashing behind the knee would be more effective. Much to his surprise, he cut through it cleanly.

The variant lost it's balance and fell over, what was more shocking, was that the muscle fibers were like worms, as if looking for the lost part that got.

Luna didn't give it any more chances to recover, going straight for it's head, with that zombie dead, an orb which was visibly more dense, entered Luna's body.

<Congratulations! You have reached level 20!>

After receiving that notification, new information flooded in Luna's mind. As he quickly skimmed through them, a huge smile started forming on his face.