Not sleeping at night can make you a real zombie in the morning.

John looked around, and, once again, it was far from what he would have expected. Some barriers were set on the place they were entered or created, like the one he fought the slime in. Others were heavily inspired by it, like what happened in the junkyard, it was about the same but with a few differences. There were totally different things like his DIY Castle or the Order's training grounds (the more he thought about it, the more he found both really similar, with their ability to store real items and the dull flat grass plains).

This was something else completely; he had a lot a difficulty recognizing the nice neighborhood of small houses with tidy front yards.

The whole place looked like the set of a post-apocalyptic movie, with rusted metal, destroyed houses either burned down or just laying in bits on the ground.

John was beginning to think it wouldn't be the place to find some nice ladies and settle his kingdom with them when he spotted a naked girl. Maybe there was hope after all.

He left what was left of his house and ran on the street towards the girl; he had been too far to read her name.

Just as he approached her, he noticed that what he thought was just grime on her was actually the color of her skin. And, as he stumbled on a fallen street sign and made some noise, she turned around, revealing her dead eyes, missing lower jaw and burst stomach spilling her guts.

"Graaaarrhhggggg!!!" she groaned.

Zombie lvl 5 creature. (Undead)
This re-animated corpse is stumbling around in search of food. Slow and with bad perception, they are very resilient.
200/200 hp

"Fuck!" John let escape.

So much for stealth and surprise. At least there wasn't.....

Gaia really might have some weird sense of humor. He soon noticed dozens of other zombies wandering in the streets, alone or in small groups. There were also some creatures looking like flayed dogs; he was too far and couldn't focus on them long enough to see a full description, but they were called Carrion Hounds.

He could also see huge vultures flying in the sky.

With so many targets, using spells only would be too long; he would need more than 5 Magic Projectiles to kill even one zombie.

He had to deal with the one he accidentally pulled, though. A Saber was not an ideal weapon facing undead, he would have to see if he could craft or find a crow's beak or a mace if this barrier was the usual biome of his neighborhood.

His body naturally assumed a combat stance, and he started hitting the creature. It was a bit disturbing hitting what was looking so much like a naked girl, even if it was so clear it was just a moving cadaver.

The zombie was slow and sluggish, not helped in its attempts at bitting by the fact that it was missing its lower jaw.

John's attacks with his saber were doing between 16 and 20 dmg. It wasn't much, but zombies didn't have any weak points except for the skull (and his weapon wasn't the right kind to exploit it).

The first kill was an easy one, the crippled zombie barely dealing one or two points of dmg by grabbing him. The hounds and birds would be more dangerous, and he would have to be careful not to be swarmed by dozens of zombies at once. He could maybe manage two or three at once if he had some place to retreat, but not much more.

15xp

That really wasn't much. The zombie dropped 13.37$, a Zombie tooth and one Undead essence 1/10.

The tooth was yet another exotic crafting material, he ignored the description, and it looked like he couldn't Observe the essence. (Maybe when he would get the ten parts needed to have one?)

To stop his mana bar from being full, he pulled the next zombie with a spell. He remembered at what range the first had heard him and tried to pick one that wouldn't attract others.

After another short one sided fight, he received the same measly rewards as the first time. This was really grinding. He would need to kill over 40 of them to level up once, but it would help him rank up his skills and with some luck get a few random loot drops on the way. (With the luck he had, killing tons of weak monsters was better than one or two big ones. It got him a lot more occasions to trigger his Gamer's luck skill and get something nice.)

The fifth zombie finally yielded something different; he dropped 2 zombie teeth and essence shards.

John had used the long and easy fights to look more closely at his surroundings. The place seemed like a replica of his neighborhood set in a zombie apocalypse.

The night sky was not pitch black as expected but bathed in a gloomy red hue emanating from the bright red full moon.

In the distance there was a large structure, like some sort of tower. It was easily miles away and holding something big or dangerous. Besides that, approaching it would imply killing hundred of zombies, and that would take hours if not days.

Pull zombie with spell or slingshot, fight zombie with saber, pick up loot, repeat.

The gains were minimal, but the risk wasn't great either, and it was just next to his house. John was losing a few hp to dmg, but his armor prevented him from getting bitten. He was aware of the possibility that a bite might make him sick or worse, but, if the bites risked turning him into a zombie, the pop up would have told him, right?

The next zombie fell back when dying, and, at the same moment, he saw that he finally dropped something more interesting: he noticed the lid of a trash can, that it moved while falling, tipping over and bouncing on the ground with great noise echoed instantly by a long howling.

John tried to exit, even before trying to pick the loot, but it was saying that he was in combat. He picked the loot and ran to a dark place, hoping that Stealth would be enough to evade at least some of the hounds.