Nah, what's the worst that could happen?

Surely failing this one quest wouldn’t hurt anything too much. You don't know what the penalty might be but you are too tired to really care. You close your eyes and quickly fall into a deep sleep. You think your dad might wake you when he finishes with work, but he doesn't. The hours slip by during your nap and unseen by you the timer on the daily quest ticks down to zero.

“Quest failed. You will be moved to the penalty zone.” You start awake at the voice in your head speaking to you once more. You’re disoriented from having slept so long and you look around for who’s speaking.

“Moving to the penalty zone in 5 seconds.” You blink rapidly and remember what had happened earlier in the day.

“4 seconds.” You remember the quest you were given, that you’d ignored.

“3 seconds.” You suddenly feel like maybe you shouldn’t have taken that nap.

“2 seconds.” What the hell was the penalty zone?!

“1 second.” Fuck. Everything fades to black and between one blink and the next you are somewhere new. Or are you? This is your neighborhood isn’t it? You look around in confusion recognizing the houses around you.

“Penalty will begin. Good luck Player.” The voice sounds and a new dialogue pops up.

Penalty Quest

Slay 50 Zombies.

Zombies Slain: 0/50

Failure condition: Player Dies

Reward: 100 EXP, +1 Attribute Point, Choice of basic item.

Zombies? What the hell? As you think it you hear a soft moan from deeper in the shadows. A silhouette forms where the light barely touches. That of a person, or what looks like one at least. It’s not long before you can see that is definitely not what’s approaching you. A shambling form slowly becomes illuminated by the nearby street light and you step back, nearly stumbling as your heel catches the curb. The rotten skin and pitted eyes of a zombie greet you as you’re still grasping what exactly it is you’re expected to do here.

“Oh shit, fuck, fuck, shit, fuck. Zombies. Really, fucking zombies?” A stream of profanities spew from you as you turn to flee, noticing then that there are more behind you. “Shit.” You say once more and run, taking advantage of the fact that the things are at least slow to get you out of the circle that has slowly been closing around you. Did they actually want you to die? What the fuck was this? You had to kill fifty of these things? You didn’t even have a weapon! You sprint for one of the nearby houses and try the door, almost falling inside when it opens without resistance. You scramble in and slam the door shut behind you, locking it before you realize that’s probably a useless gesture.

Hurriedly you move through the house, you’re unfamiliar with the layout. It was one of the houses in your neighborhood but you’d never been inside it before. Didn’t even know the family that lived here. It was somewhat voyeuristic to see all of their family photos still hung on the walls, and you suddenly thought about what might happen if they were actually in here.

“Hello?” You call out cautiously while looking around for anything you could use as a weapon. Silence greeted your call. Maybe they weren’t in? You hoped not. Your eyes finally fell on something that might work for you. A wrought iron poker that sat in a rack near a fireplace. You grab it up.

Item get! Fire poker +1 P. ATK

Great. Well, it was better than nothing. You walk through the rest of the house with the heavy iron poker held ready to swing, it doesn’t take long before your arms begin to burn with the effort of keeping it that way. The house itself is completely empty with no sign of anyone having been in it until you arrived other than the personal effects that litter the place in what you assume are their usual positions. As you’re about ready to leave, a pounding begins to sound at the front door. Wet heavy thuds of something pounding on the door with slow but implacable impacts.

You look out a window that gives you a view and bite back a groan of fear and frustration as you see a growing mob of zombies gathering on the front lawn. Several of them are gathered at the front door and are trying to **** their way in. One of the shambling corpses spots you looking from the window and staggers your way. Time to go. You search for a back exit and find it just as you hear the window you’d been watching from shatter.

You throw open the rear door and bolt out, nearly into the arms of an approaching monster. The stench of it fills your nose and you hold back a surge of panic and nausea as you instinctively swing the poker at its head. You hear a sickening wet crunch as the skull of your target is caved in and it falls to the side with one last wheezing moan. At least they fell like zombies in games and movies when you destroyed the head. But even just that one attack takes a lot out of you. You have to do this forty-nine more times?!

From that point on you begin a campaign of quick attacks on the edges of the wandering zombie horde. Luckily it seems like there are only enough of the monsters around to fill your quest target, and they stay fairly close together, slowly wandering towards you wherever you head. You’re able to attack the stragglers of the group and slowly chip away towards your goal of one hundred while resting slightly between each attack. Even so by the time you have gotten half-way through you are weary. Your arms burn from the strain of swinging the iron rod you’d found as a weapon and the poker itself is bent and battered from the heavy strikes you’ve had to use to destroy each zombie.

You need a break, true rest, not just a few minutes here and there, but how are you supposed to find that when the zombies seem able to track you? Or maybe you can find a more efficient way of killing them. If the houses contain all of the owner’s possessions still then maybe you can find an actual weapon.