Chương 75: Chapter 72: Aftermath

I couldn't even begin to tell you how extremely happy I was that we didn't have to manually clean up the aftermath of the undead horde. Honestly, I had no earthly idea how we were even going to attempt to start. Without the core's intervention, I would have had to grab the Bobcat and literally dig up most of the soil saturated by undead awful. But looking around now, everything appeared clean and new. Everything except me, that is.

The others who had been fighting directly at the barriers had a fair amount of mess on them, but it seemed the three of us who fought the behemoth up close had taken the worst of the physical damage. I wanted nothing more than to open my stat screen and review my massive level-ups, but getting clean and out of this disgusting crust took absolute precedence. I had one of the guards jog over to the agricultural yard, grab a couple of fifty-foot commercial hoses, and drag them out to the parking lot.

After hooking them up to the high-pressure hose bibs on the front of the main office, I started peeling off my soiled gear and dropping it on the blacktop near one of the storm drains. The water was freezing cold, but at this point, I didn't care. I started to hose myself off, shedding layers of ruined clothing and tossing them onto the pavement. Once I was standing there in just my underpants, I began to spray down my armor in earnest.

Heavy chunks of rotted flesh and black sinew broke free under the stream, flowing toward the storm drain in a river of foul-smelling muck. I was quickly joined by Pete and Joe, who both let out collective groans of relief as they began to wash the awful mess off their own gear. When I was relatively done, I stored my wet items inside my storage ring and made a straight line for the side door leading into our makeshift apartment.

Everything would still need a brutal scrubbing with heavy soap and boiling water, but that would have to wait until tomorrow. Before heading inside, I explicitly instructed the guards to advise everyone not to put their bloody clothes and gear into whatever washers and dryers they had in their residential areas, as the stench of undead would most likely never wash out of the drums. We would set up proper washing stations out in the parking lot with boiling water and lye soap tomorrow morning.

When I reached the privacy of the side door, I pulled off my soaked underpants, tossed them into my ring as well, and stepped naked into the bathroom's adapted shower setup. I cranked the valve, turned on the blessedly hot water, and just let it pour directly over my head and neck. The heat was so intense it was nearly intoxicating, and the heavy mental tension I had been carrying all night rolled off my shoulders just as fast as the water did.

Shaking myself out of the trance, I grabbed a bar of soap and started scrubbing judiciously. Finally clean and feeling human again, I decided to address my waiting stats while letting the hot spray massage my aching neck and shoulders. When I swiped my hand to open the hidden screens, "shocked" didn't even begin to describe the sheer weight of what I was looking at. First off, the total tally added up to a staggering 2, 582 zombies of various levels eliminated during the siege.

That included the seven undead necromancers, which ranged from levels fifteen to eighteen, and the level twenty behemoth. Oddly enough, right at the bottom of the ledger, we received explicit kill credit for a Human: Level 25, Necromantic Lord. Despite fleeing the area in his farm truck, it appeared TJ had ultimately bit the bullet, literally and figuratively speaking. The heavy round from Joe's Remington must have done the job after all, or the blood loss finished what the rifle started.

Seeing that notification lifted a massive mountain of stress right off my chest. With the ungodly amount of experience gained, it appeared that as Mayor of Novus, I received a passive percentage of every single kill secured within the property boundaries during the siege. When added to the ten percent settlement wide bonus reward, and my 10% bonus for having the title of Mayor, it made for a massive, unprecedented level spike.

I blinked through the flashing prompts, condensing the information down to only what was immediately pertinent: You have reached level 25. New spells and abilities are available. Congratulations. You have reached level 25. You may choose to either maintain or evolve your current class. Choose your path. Pulling up the path selections, the System offered me two distinct evolutionary options, alongside a final choice to simply maintain my current path. I wasn't overly excited about either evolution.

The first was a path leading significantly further down the shadow path as a specialized tracker. If my original class only had me "one foot steeped in shadow," this next evolution would put both of my boots squarely into the dark. I couldn't even imagine the type of spells and abilities I would be forced to adapt to later down that road, and I had no desire to go any darker than I already was. I was even more turned off by the second choice.

It was some strange, hybrid amalgamation between a standard Ranger and a Paladin, with an absolute, heavy focus on the eradication of the undead. That was a definite "nope" for me. I had zero interest in forcing my build to specialize in a single enemy type, and I absolutely had no wish to get involved with anything remotely religious or tied to a System deity. Hard pass. The option to maintain my current class was a straightforward upgrade to my existing Ranger capabilities.

Instead of receiving the standard one point to Dexterity and Constitution per level, I would now automatically receive three points to each. Furthermore, my armor restrictions were significantly relaxed. I would now receive active set bonuses for both light and medium armor types, with only minor physical penalties applied if I wore heavy plate. If a tactical situation arose where I absolutely needed to equip heavy armor, I could throw it on for a short time and function just fine.

The fact that I didn't even have to pause to think about it confirmed I was walking the correct path. And that's exactly what the notice read: Choose your path. With that in mind, I selected to maintain my class. The System forced me to confirm through two separate warning boxes, the last one explicitly stating that I would be permanently locked out of changing my class architecture later. Without a shred of worry, I hit confirm.

Instantly, a massive wave of raw power rolled over my skin as the attribute increases took hold. It felt like significantly more than just a standard four-level dump into Dexterity and Constitution. It was a physical sensation unlike anything I had experienced so far. It was then that I remembered the +10 to all stats siege reward. Once the path evolution completed, the rest of the experience held back by the level gate hit. When I looked back at the top of my status screen, my jaw dropped.

You have reached Level 33. You have 48 unassigned attribute points. You have 32 unassigned skill points.

"Holy crap," I muttered aloud to myself, the steam swirling around my face. Twelve whole levels gained from the moment we stepped out of the dungeon until now. I realized then that I still had a massive bank of points left over from defeating the Wyvern, too. In my absolute rush to sprint back and defend the school, I hadn't even thought about allocating them. Those points would have come in real handy during tonight's battle.

I seriously needed to start paying better attention to my interface and stop making such amateur mistakes. Moving further down the cascade of notifications, I saw that I had earned an official settlement title: Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

Siege Breaker: Due to your personal combat prowess and defensive leadership abilities, you have led your budding civilization to an absolute victory while besieged and overwhelmingly outnumbered by the forces of the undead. Rewards: +10 to all attributes, +10% to all core attributes. And once again, the physical attribute increases slammed through my nervous system. As inherently euphoric as standard level-ups felt, this compounding scaling was starting to get ridiculous.

I figured I would dole out the rest of my remaining forty-eight attribute points right now and get the physical transition over with all at once. Seeing that both my Dexterity and Constitution were hovering right on the cusp of the triple-digit mark, I assigned two points to Dexterity and two points to Constitution, bringing them both to a flat one hundred. I then dropped the remaining forty-four points directly into Intelligence, pushing the base score to one hundred and one.

This time, the physical reaction was far, far more intense. The second the points registered, the ten percent scaling bonus from my new Siege Breaker title calculated across the new totals, instantly forcing all three of those primary attributes to a staggering one hundred-twenty. My entire body violently shook. My muscles convulsed and seized up, and my brain swam in a sudden, blinding vertigo.

There was clearly a massive evolutionary threshold crossed the absolute second an attribute bypassed the one-hundred-point milestone. And this time, it wasn't euphoric in the slightest. In fact, it was excruciatingly painful. All I could do was grit my teeth, lean my forehead against the wet tile, and bear the agonizing burning in my marrow. Thankfully, the structural rewriting of my body only lasted about a minute.

The moment my muscles finally released their grip, I slumped heavily against the wall of the shower, breathing like a marathon runner. I couldn't even begin to accurately describe what I was feeling now. With the combination of the level-ups and the title modifiers, I felt vastly stronger, sharper, faster, and more fundamentally flexible than I ever had in my entire life. Yet, paradoxically, my mind still felt entirely exhausted.

Ready to just be done with it, I pulled up the long list of newly available spells and abilities. A massive, scrolling wall of text appeared in my vision, and I instantly realized I had absolutely zero mental bandwidth left to read through it all tonight. I thought about just closing the screen and going to sleep, but a deep fear that I would forget about it before tomorrow's work forced me to stay focused. I thought about what I had critically lacked during the battle against the behemoth.

My standard arrows had been less than useless against its thick hide. Yeah, they penetrated the rotting tissue and dealt minor damage, but the damn thing just tanked the kinetic force and kept right on coming. Scrolling down the list, one specific combat ability immediately caught my eye. I tapped it, allocating the choice.

Power Shot (Beginner 0): Imbue your ranged weapon with a concentrated mixture of both mana and stamina to greatly increase the kinetic output and physical knock-back capabilities of fired arrows. Deals 3x base bow and arrow damage to the target. Knocks back the target 1 yard for every 10 points of total damage inflicted. Thankfully, at level twenty-five, the System only permitted me to select a single specialized ability from the milestone tier, saving me from further reading.

The only remaining task was assigning my free skill points. I quickly discovered that the interface wouldn't allow me to manually dump points into anything that had already reached the Master tier. However, I was able to spend points to manually force my most critical everyday skills right up to the baseline threshold of Master 0. I quickly allocated the necessary points to max out my Sword Mastery, Bow Mastery, and Sneak. That left me with exactly eleven unassigned points.

I dumped five of them into Spike Growth to boost my crowd control, and the remaining six directly into the new Power Shot ability to level it up right out of the gate. With the ledger finally balanced, I pulled up my full status screen to check my final progress. STATUS: Name: Derrick Miller Race: Human Level: 33 Class: Ranger Specialization: Shadow Ranger Titles: Mayor of Novus: - Grants plus 10 to all stats. Grants 10% experience bonus when training skills, abilities and spells.

Siege Breaker: - Due to your personal combat prowess and defensive leadership abilities, you have led your budding civilization to an absolute victory while besieged and overwhelmingly outnumbered by the forces of the undead. Rewards: +10 to all attributes, +10% to all core attributes.

Core Attributes Strength: 64 (76) Dexterity: 100 (120) Constitution: 100 (120) Intelligence: 101 (120) Wisdom: 59 (70) Charisma: 59 (70) Health: 1, 200/1, 200 Stamina: 1, 200 / 1, 200 Mana: 1, 200 / 1, 200 Carry Capacity: 760 lbs Armor Class: 112.

5 Skills Hand-to-Hand: Beginner 8 Blunt Weapons: Apprentice 1 Axe Mastery: Apprentice 8 Sword Mastery: Master 0 Bow Mastery: Master 0 Daggers: Apprentice 0 First Aid: Journeyman 5 Building: Master 0 Crafting: Master 0 Wilderness Survival: Journeyman 8 Sneak: Master 0 Herbalism: Beginner 7 Alchemy: Beginner 7 Inspect: Beginner 9 Dodge: Apprentice 7 Spells & Abilities Minor Heal: Apprentice 5 Tame Animal: Apprentice 3 Spike Growth: Apprentice 5 Dark Vision: Journeyman 1 Ambush: Beginner 5 Hunter's Mark: Beginner 8 Marksman: Beginner 9 Power Shot: Beginner 6 Shadow-Stitched: Beginner 0 Unassigned Attribute Points: 0 Unassigned Skill Points: 0 I exhaled a long breath, finally exiting the status screen, and reached out my hand to turn off the water.

Before my fingers could touch the valve, the bathroom door clicked open, and Denise's voice echoed through the steam from right behind me.

"OH WOW!" she exclaimed, her eyes tracking the visible changes to my physique.

"That good, huh?" I replied, turning around with a tired but wicked smile.

"Most definitely, yes," she stated, quickly shedding the rest of her leather armor and clothes and stepping straight into the hot stream with me.