BLADECRAFT: The Undead Spear Emperor

System Activated

Ozias stumbled forward, all his bravado fading away at the same time he almost kissed the ground.

‘Fuck meee!’ he cursed as he stumbled forward, his face planting in the butt cheeks of a random man while trying to run away.

The government had issued a city wide announcement, urging everyone to head to the nearest underground bunker for safety.

The bunkers were rarely, if ever, used, so most didn’t know where they were heading and just followed the crowd. This caused a great stampede that got lots of people trampled on.

This was more terrible than getting attacked by the walki… Zombies.

People had started to call them Zombies, and somehow… The name stuck.

This seemed to make more sense to them.

They were Zombies.

‘Zombies,’ Ozias iterated.

He paused and looked around. He had run away after causing damage to his dead supervisor’s legs, making it unable to follow him, and he had also torn a hole through his head. Yet, it still squirmed and moved, seemingly not dead.

He then chose to head to a bunker, following the crowd.

Everyone was rushing in one direction, with only a few moving in the opposite, perhaps searching for their loved ones or trying to retrieve something.

If one looked closely, though, they would notice that some were calm—too calm for it to be normal.

Ozias concluded that it was probably out of ignorance… or they knew something.

Taking a deep breath, he changed course and began following a man who looked like he was some k-pop singer.

The man had a pink bag slung over his back—a weird color for a man—and a pink furred cat sitting on his shoulders.

He had pink hair, wore pink glasses and clothing, and his gait was too relaxed.

Ozias ignored the weird fit and tailed him from a distance, struggling through the crowd.

It wasn’t an easy task, but he eventually broke through… just to see the man in pink swinging an axe, with a blade the size of his torso, at a Zombie.

The creature fell in two halves, and from its body, motes of light rose and entered the pink man’s orifices.

Ozias’ eyes narrowed into slits, his curiosity rising.

Where the axe had come from, he couldn’t tell, because it definitely hadn’t come from the bag slung across his back. The bag was too small, probably containing nothing at all.

And that was when he saw it.

The cat tapped the axe… and it vanished in a swirl of pinkish energy.

The whole display was noticed by a few still wandering around. However, instead of their curiosity getting heightened like Ozias’, they were mortified, running as far away from the man as possible.

The man was about twenty-five feet away, and Ozias stood behind a building, watching.

Suddenly, a man ran past Ozias, tears and snot dribbling down his face. Behind him was a Zombie, this one, though, looked different.

It had two heads and four arms, and as it approached slowly, Ozias noticed that it also had four eyes on each head.

He watched as the Zombie stumbled towards him with uneven steps, its hands swinging limply by its side. Spittle poured out of its mouth, and a foul stench wafted off it.

Ozias’ grip tightened on his makeshift spear, his heart pounding out of his chest.

For some reason, he had easily adapted to the whole situation.

Everything felt like a hoax, a scene pulled right out of a fantasy novel. Yet, he was taking in all of it calmly, and reacting in kind.

If he were to panic and let his fears take precedence over his rational mind, then he was as good as dead. Not everyone was lucky after all.

Suddenly the Zombie stopped, its glazed-out eyes focusing on him.

A sense of foreboding fell over Ozias, and his instincts kicked in.

Run!

The word resounded in his mind like an explosion had gone off in his head… But he didn’t move. He was paralyzed by the sudden fear.

The Zombie suddenly flashed forward at a speed inhumane, its four arms spread out, swiping forward to grab at him.

Ozias snapped out of it and raised his weapon up, hitting the Zombie squarely in the chest. The charge of the Zombie resulted in him getting pushed back and almost falling to the ground.

However, he planted the other end of his weapon into the ground, creating a stable hold and using the Zombie's momentum against it.

Still, Ozias took several steps back, the weapon staked into the ground tearing a long trench in it.

He came to a stop, and without wasting a motion, swerved into an overhead throw, hurling that disgusting mass of flesh over his head.

‘If I don’t learn to kill these things now, I might not survive long enough to learn them later,’ Ozias thought to himself, steeling his resolve.

The Zombie, somehow, flipped through the air and landed safely on its feet. That scene made Ozias shudder in shock, but he calmed himself, his breath entering a steady rhythm.

The Zombie then fell forward, catching itself with a single step before blasting ahead, its speed greater than before.

In that instant, Ozias gained an insight, and information from an unknown source trickled into his mind, his eyes flashing with a soft blue light for a split second.

His stance shifted, his arms pivoting into a strong hold over his weapon, and his muscles tightening in all the right places.

He took a strong step forward, all his actions flowing into one another seamlessly, and just like in his memories of his grandfather, his body lashed out like a spring drawn taut, the spear whipping forward from an unexpected angle.

The Zombie almost seemed to present itself to the attack, its face deforming in real time, and one of its heads crumbling into a rain of flesh and blood.

It crashed into a wall, right after Ozias jumped to the side and rolled to his feet.

Everything happened in a flash, but Ozias didn't pay the new feeling any heed. All help was welcome, but he must not be distracted—not at such a dire moment.

Regardless, the cosmos had no care for that as a screen suddenly blocked his sight the same moment the Zombie moved again.

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[System Activated]

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