Trash in the Apocalypse

Chapter 118: Undead Priest

The stress ball hit the clustered carriers and split the crowd. Some carriers were pushed back, some got squashed down to the ground while the rest were pushed to the sides.

Jun followed right after he threw the ball and smashed the wriggly skinned carrier. A burst of warm energy flowed from within and a notification appeared in front of him.

You leveled up!

[Jun Reyes][Profession - Thug][Level - 5]

[Health - 560][Energy - 210]

[Title - Thug Life]

[Power - 30][Endurance - 26][Speed - 15][Wits - 14][Cunning - 14][Charm - 16]

[Stat Points - 0]

[Trait]

-[Brave]

-[Iron Guts]

-[Strong]

[Skills]

-[Threaten - Lv.4]

-[Rob - Lv.2]

-[Execute - Lv.4]

-[Melee Weapon Mastery - Lv.3]

-[Blueprint - Lv.Max]

-[Howling Rage Lv.3]

-[Sprint - Lv.Max]

-[Time Perse - Max]

-[Water Stride - Lv.Max]

Thanks to eating the energy fruit, his max energy finally received some increase. He still have the remaining fruit while the life fruit remains unused mainly for its immediate health regen purposes. He could use those two fruits as emergency health tonics and could save his life in a pinch.

He cleared the area on the surrounding before moving forward. Area B has the same landmass like Area A, the only difference was that Area B was surrounded by a creek and acted as a small island, The edges of Area B was made of apartment tombs while the center area was comprised of common tombstones and numerous mausoleums. Maybe this part of the cemetery is for middle-class.

With prior experience of battling with the carriers, Jun's group advanced at an unhindered pace. Having mausoleums as covers, they could kite the carriers more effectively. Though the experience they received was little, each and every bit of it would start to pile up to help them level up.

After killing the last carrier, the group huddled at the center of the island where the tallest mausoleum could be found. Everyone brought back gold nuggets dropped by the carriers that they killed.

Jun could be seen looking for something on the nearby bridge. He looked inside the nearby grassy tombs, then found what he was looking for. He came back to the group with a glowing stress ball in his hands.

"You gonna give that back to him?" said Sheila asking whether Jun was planning to give back the stress ball to Evo.

"There's no need to," Jun replied as he showed his palm with the stress ball on top. "Its rechargable." The red stress ball was emitting crimson glow as it received Jun's energy.

"Ohh, that's cool. So that's what he's been up to lately." said Sheila in awe.

Adrian just felt intrigued about the item and moved on to scout the next area.

"His items are useful if you use it properly." replied Jun as the incident where Evo threw a pebble and was expecting it to mow down the chasing carriers behind him flashed back in his mind. That pebble that was supposed to kill those chasing infected grew in size and dropped down in front of him, almost killing him in the process. Evo blamed gravity while Jun cursed him for not doing further tests before actually using it on real situations.

"Let's go."

***

On the bridge stood Jun's group with Adrian as the lead.

"There's two huge mausoleums here with smaller ones on the sides. At the center, there's a sermon podium, surround by apartment-type tombs. There's less space compared here, but we should have no problem clearing it. What should we do?"

Adrian explained his observations as he turned to Jun.

"How did you see that far?" Sheila asked as she tiptoed just to barely see over the heads of numerous carriers blocking the other side of the bridge.

"I have enhanced sight, right? Have you forgotten already? Wait... I already taught this to you! Haven't you learned it?" Adrian replied to Sheila a bit irritated.

Sheila on the other hand, scratched the back of her head and stuck out her tongue. "Sorry... I can't focus enough to learn it."

"What do you mean you can't focus? Focus on something distant and squint your eyes. Channel some energy into your eyes and you should be able to learn it. Anyone can do it!" rebuked Adrian.

Sheila felt embarrassed being yelled at in public, but she smiled and continued scratching her head. She chuckled while lowering her head. The onlookers avoided Adrian's gaze as he looked around.

On the outside, it appeared that Adrian was calm and collected, but deep down he knew he fucked up. He have some serious problems to deal with tonight.

Two people didn't care about the unstable emotional spikes happening on their surrounding as Jun and Nik focused on learning Adrian's self-created skill. Jun didn't feel bad about Adrian not teaching him the skill, having no time to communicate and scavenge together seemed to be the reason, so he just accepts it.

The first one who learned the skill was Nik and it took him less than thirty seconds to learn the skill. Maybe he really is a prodigy or is it that young ones has better control over this new found energy. Jun learned the skill barely five seconds after Nik. He didn't get any notification about having earned additional points. It seems like only the creator of the skill gets bonus stat points.

As he observed everyone, his eyes met with Nik's and both of them agreed not to say anything.

"Let's try something new." Jun gathered everyone's attention by withdrawing a bonespear from his dimensional storage. "We'll stay in the bridge while we kill them. Let's see how it goes."

With Jun's plan, ten people formed two rows on the narrow bridge. There was no spacing and they could barely make large movements.

"Uhh, shall we take turns?" said Sheila.

Jun ground his teeth and felt a bit embarrassed. His grasp on the bonespear tightened and he dashed forward as he yelled: "Charge!"

His loud voice caught every carriers attention and they all focused on him. He skid into a slowing motion, then threw the bonespear into the leading carrier. The bonespear hit the chest of the carrier causing a knockback effect, but has not enough damage to kill it. After stabilizing its body, it quickly followed the others.

Seeing the dense number of carriers dashing towards him, Jun didn't felt threatened and brandished his bonehammer. He also prepared two pebbles and threw it in the air. With proper practice, he finally learned simple trajectories and timing. The pebbles grew in size while in mid-air and dropped straight down ignoring its recent onward motion. The boulders squashed some of the leading carriers and delayed the others behind it.

With the sudden blockade and loss of target vision, the carriers halted on their spots. When the boulders glowed once again and returned to their original size, a burning hammer crashed onto their faces.

Jun timed it perfectly after several practices. Not the surprise attack, but the return feature of Evo's items. Most of debugged items require energy to be used. And to input energy function into the item, Evo had to spent a higher amount of energy just to apply the said energy function.

The old types of debugged items lasts longer but were consumable items that were only one-time use. Compared to these rechargable ones, the old ones were more taxing to produce. Though, it could also be debated what is better depending on the situation: for a long term delay where you didn't have to collect the item or a short delay where you have to retrieve the said item.

The flaming bonehammer decapitated several heads as Jun swung it after the boulders reduced sizes. At the same time, the carriers behind the decapitated ones immediately reacted and lunged at him.

Instead of retreating, Jun dashed inside the horde and swirled the bonehammer around before he could get swarmed. The first rotation was slow since there was a lot of resistance from the numerous bodies that the bonehammer have to drag. But when Jun increased the energy output to twenty energy per second which drained almost ten percent of his energy per second, the resisting force disappeared and the bonehammer mowed everything on its path. Jun swirled around like a tornado three times before stopping. His surrounding was filled with blistering stardust that floated upwards in the air.

Jun shook his head out of slight dizziness and hurriedly looked around. With his reliable team as backups, no carriers managed to come close to him when he stopped spinning. Any carrier that tried to do so were killed by flying bonespears from the distance.

Before Jun could take any action, a hand tapped his shoulders and said, "Leave the rest to us."

Adrian passed by together with Nik and his squad. Sheila stayed back and casts some baby sitting spells on him. When Jun accidentally looked into her eyes, he saw her smirking.

Sheila smiled, then said, "You should stop proving yourself to us. Adrian and I, know how hard you work for everyone. I personally know that you're someone good."

Jun ignored her and muttered in a low voice, "What do you guys know about me? Humph."

Just as the situation was proceeding under normal circumstances, where every regular carrier was killed easily, something appeared from the sermon podium in the distance.

An old man stood at center stage wearing a white linen liturgical vestment with tapered sleeves. There was no visible damage on his face, besides that of dark web-like cracks that spread around the skin of his yellow eyes.