Dead Man Walking: Living By Day, Dead By Night

It had been two months since Zane and the girls had first arrived at the bunker. During this time it would be accurate to say that their progress had been significant. Not only in terms of leveling up but also in terms of building a sustainable community.

It turned out there were pockets of survivors all over the Carson area, and though battles were waged with some of these survivors, who were, shall we say, more villainous than others? Angelica's expanded abilities allowed her to not only detect lies from people but also their true nature.

This made it easy for Zane and the girls to build up a small community of some fifty survivors based around the neighborhood where the bunker was located beneath its surface. A small wall was constructed around the area, and the undead within it were thoroughly purged.

Armed sentries were posted in a way that made it so there were no blind spots, and had a strict schedule of shifts ensuring that the community of "Gravestone" as it became known, was always protected.

Unlike the safe Zone in Reno which ran out of power ages ago, Gravestone was constantly powered by Olivia's abilities, and because of this it was one of the few "civilized" regions in the world were electricity still functioned like before the apocalypse had begun.

There were also several greenhouses constructed to grow food for the community and enough surplus supplies beneath the bunker to supplement these crops. Meat was probably the hardest thing to come by, as wild animals became less and less common, and livestock were nowhere to be found.

This problem was solved by the wandering caravans that established regular trade between the safe zone in Reno and the newly formed "town" of Gravestone. Which was named as a pun, making fun of Zane's last name, which was "Graves". A bit of self-deprecating humor by the man who was essentially the dictator for life of this small community.

Still, every man and woman was put to work in some fashion, whether as sentries protecting the town, or as farmers in the greenhouses, or as mechanics and maintenance men for the small fleet of armored vehicles scavenged from the old national guard.

Olivia, being a former high school teacher, was tasked with both powering the electric grid and teaching the few children among the town's survivors. While Angelica cared for the sick and wounded. Her abilities had improved significantly as she leveled up to ten.

The Tier II of her ability cured not only one's health points but also more serious wounds and conditions that one might receive. While the Tier III portion of her ability cured disease and infections. Making her capable of curing just about any ailment one might have, whether it was a laceration to the throat, kidney failure, or the undead virus.

In fact, survivors from the Reno safe zone would regularly make their way to Gravestone to undergo Angelica's healing services, in exchange for blood crystals, of course. After all, it was only a 45 minute journey between the two established safe zones, and Angelica was the only healer anybody had ever heard of. At least within the Reno/Tahoe area.

Olivia's powers had also expanded as she reached Tier III of Electric Discharge. Not only were her offensive capabilities vastly improved, but so were her power generation abilities. Theoretically, at her current level, she could effectively power the entirety of Carson city for a week straight with a single charge into a local transformer.

As for Elena, her skill had also reached the Third Tier, allowing her to freeze time for a full thirty seconds. Her cooldown had also lowered to the same as Olivia's, which was 90 seconds after casting. This meant that it only took her a minute to cast her skill again after time had finally gone back to normal.

Madison had undergone a significant change as well. She was carried to level ten by the others in the group, and her force fields were not only significantly stronger, large and could last longer, but she could also repulse them into a powerful shockwave made of pure energy.

Theoretically, if it really came down to it, Madison could very briefly expand her force field around the entirety of what was currently Gravestone, which was a very small community within the ruins of old Carson City.

It wasn't just her skill that had begun to change, or her ability to control them. But rather, her personality and disposition towards Zane and the girls had changed as well. It took her a solid month before Zane could consider the girl trustworthy. But when he tried to take Madison's collar off, she refused. Having apparently developed some state Stockholm syndrome.

Even now, Zane remembered the conversation he had with Madison when he tried to remove her collar. Where, much to his surprise, the girl's face flushed red while she averted her eyes, saying that the only thing that made her different from the other girl's in Zane's life was the fact that she was his only slave.

As much as Zane wanted to remove the girl's collar, she stubbornly kept it on. Causing a brief rift to form between him and the other girls, who thought he was some kind of pervert. And though Zane and Madison had to this day not yet done the deed that would seal their relationship, partially because Zane was convinced that the girl was absolutely fucking insane, the day was rapidly approaching.

Finally, there came Zane. He had changed the least out of anyone in the group. After all, he required significantly more experience than the girls as after reaching Level 10, one's levels took substantially more experience to climb higher.

But today was that day. After taking out the last of Eliza's abominations, Zane stood with several Tier III blood crystals in his hands. With these, he could finally break the barrier and climb to level 15, where, hopefully, his only skill would evolve into Tier IV. That is, of course, there were any unforeseen circumstances.

After standing there staring at the large spherical blue crystals, Zane did not hesitate to pop them into his mouth, where he immediately felt overjoyed by the flavor. What would be the most putrid and acrid thing a normal human being could ever taste was nothing short of a delicacy to Zane.

And as the blood crystals turned into liquid, which he drank with satisfaction, a message appeared in Zane's vision, one he had been waiting a very long time for.

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[Level up! You are now Level 15!]

[+3 Attribute Points!]

[+1 Skill Point]

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