Legendary Vampire in the Apocalypse
Chapter 12: Young Man, Against the Apocalypse

Chapter 12: Young Man, Against the Apocalypse

"Fuck me..."

Dion grimaced at the sight of what lay ahead of his door, scanning through the peephole.

It had been several hours of his preparations to leave the apartment, potentially for good.

It had been, regrettably, far more time than he had been willing to waste because of his need to get himself out of the city as fast as possible.

This apartment was on the seventh floor of the building, dauntingly high enough for him at this point.

He almost felt sorry for the pride that he had always had in the view that he had constantly woken up to honour himself with.

Especially looking at the space, distorted through the lens of his door peephole, ahead of him.

Butchered, and skewered zombie corpses were strewn, heads crushed against the wall, and the disgusting stench of their deaths burned his nose, such that even through the door he felt it smear across the back of his mouth.

And right ahead of him, the window had been broken inwards.

Dion had to lurch backwards at some point, stumbling a few steps as he tried to control his senses.

Vampiric senses were just too much stronger than humans!

"She’s merciless...." He muttered to himself, pinching his nose while he greatly appreciated the cleanup that she had done for this floor.

’It makes me wonder just how strong she is in comparison to us newly Awakened.’

The door creaked open, and he leaned his head out of the opening, glancing down the hall, moonlight shining upon him.

But it was blocked from his face, which was hooded by a black cotton cap.

Bringing his head further outside the apartment threshold, he found a similar carnage had been strewn down the hall.

Dion sighed faintly, his red pupils, in his emotional turmoil having been elongated to slits, calming back to a round shape.

Then he stepped out and began hustling down the halls.

He kept his strides swift and as silent as possible, dressing in all black once more, this time wearing his thickest shoes, which were only sneakers, his thickest trousers, and a long-sleeved shirt under a hoodie, smelling fresh for what could likely be the last time for a while, and his jaw clenched.

’Just because this floor is still clear doesn’t mean that the others will be as well. Until I’m sure that at least three or four floors down from here are clear, I can’t go knocking on doors to see if there are any other students alive in here. The noise would likely attract zombies, or worse.’

The wall to his right side was lined with windowpanes.

Through them, moving blurs along with him, was the fallen Lullin City, witnessed by a moon much closer and larger than usual.

Birds continued to fly as if wholly unaffected by the chaos, and perhaps considering their behaviour, the other animals were the same.

The moonlight, basking down upon his hurrying, felt so soothing, helping him maintain his calm, but it didn’t make him feel any stronger as he had hoped.

It was only comfortable, and thus came his regrets that it wasn’t helping him regenerate any more of the mana that he had spent so long waiting to recover.

Dion walked right past the elevator, and as he slowed down his footsteps, he focused on his hearing, approaching the stairs.

They can hear me?’

Dion’s face darkened under the shadow of his cap.

There were several zombies on the floor below, their groans rumbling within his ears as if they were right beside him.

’Or is it their sense of smell? If they even have it left?’

Oddly, they were all headed towards him.

’To hell with it! Just move, and kill them! I won’t get anywhere if I don’t fight to survive.’

He strode down the staircase, and he immediately came to face one that was moments from stumbling up the staircase.

His bat rose high, and his expression remained cold as he swung hard.

The wind whirred, and the shatter of bone and squelch of brain matter resounded.

The zombie’s corpse thudded hard against the wall to the side, and before it could slide down the wall, he kicked hard against its front.

Its body smashed into the four other zombies that had been right behind it.

{You have felled a Level 10 Destitute Zombie, harvesting its essences. Your Strength and Endurance have been nourished significantly. }

Dion raced down after the zombies that had toppled over one another, and he opened his free hand.

The hand suddenly clasped onto the empty air, and a fireplace poker materialised in it within those moments, from a brief flash of red light.

Right at the last step, he jumped up, and he descended, spearing the poker into the head of one zombie as the soles of his shoes broke through the skull of a second one.

Then, without pause, he jumped off of the one he crushed, pivoting as he pulled the poker free, and with his other hand, he swung hard at the third zombie that had been halfway through rising, attempting to lunge at him.

The metal bat shattered through its skull; however, it didn’t wholly destroy it as it had the other one.

Be that as it may, with his strength—a few times greater than a single grown man—he threw it tumbling down the hallway where there were more zombies approaching from.

Without regarding them immediately, he swiftly pivoted.

His ears had caught the guttural, ravenous groans and lunge of the last zombie.

Dion then had, with strangely fluid motion, turned away from the zombie, letting it attempt to catch empty air.

Then, as it groggily readjusted, he skewered it through the forehead with the poker.

{You have felled a Level 8 Destitute Zombie, harvesting its essences. Your Strength and Endurance have been significantly nourished. }

{You have felled a Level 10 Destitute Zombie, harvesting its essences. Your Strength has been nourished significantly, and your Endurance has been nourished.}

{Your Strength has been enriched, raising to E+}

{You have felled a Level 7 Destitute Zombie, harvesting its essences. Your Strength has been nourished. Your Endurance has been nourished slightly.}

Within moments of those messages sounding so politely distant in the back of his head without distracting his attention, he watched as a mystical phenomenon occurred before him and within himself.

And at the same time, a dozen more zombies trudged in, approaching down both paths of the hallway.